The ferocity of the attacks upon Dr. Parkhurst provoked a reaction in his favour. The City Vigilance Society was formed by the association of forty religious and secular societies of the city. The work of sapping and mining went steadily on. In order to bring odium upon Dr. Parkhurst, the police suddenly decided to close up several houses of ill-fame, so as to turn their unfortunate occupants into the streets on one of the coldest nights of the winter of 1892. Dr. Parkhurst met this by promptly providing homes for all the dispossessed women. Foiled in this cruel manœuvre, the police prosecuted Dr. Parkhurst’s detective for an alleged attempt to levy blackmail. This was Satan reproving sin with a vengeance, and for the moment it had a temporary success. The detective was convicted, in the first instance, but on appeal the verdict was set aside. Undaunted, however, by this reverse, Dr. Parkhurst began to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. He got up cases against forty-five of the sixty-four gambling and disorderly houses which were allowed to run by the police captain of a single precinct. The trials followed with varying results. It was evident that the difficulties in the way of obtaining a full disclosure of police corruption could only be overcome by special measures. Public opinion was now deeply stirred, and the Chamber of Commerce memorialised the Senate of New York City to hold an inquiry into the Police Department of New York. The Senate appointed a Committee of Investigation, and passed a bill providing for the payment of its expenses. This bill was vetoed by Governor Flower, himself a Democrat, whose veto elicited another illustration, if it were wanted, of the marvellous Pharisaism of Tammany and its friends. [Illustration: GOVERNOR FLOWER.] Where party feeling runs high, anything that one party proposes the other one opposes, and Governor Flower, finding the Republican majority of the Senate in favour of the investigation into the misdeeds of the New York police, could only see in it a Republican plot for the manufacture of political capital in the division of political patronage. So he took special objection to any investigation of the Police Department of New York. The following passage from the veto message deserves to stand on record as one of the most extraordinary eulogies ever pronounced upon a rotten system on the very eve of its exposure. Speaking of New York, Governor Flower said:--