Except for political objects, there is no good reason why that city should be singled out for legislative scrutiny. The same men who do the investigating in public will admit in private what every well-informed person knows is true--that no city in the State is so well governed as New York. No city in the State has a lower tax rate; no city has a better police regulation; no city has a lower ratio of crime; no city has better streets; no city has a better fire department; no city has better parks; no city has better schools; no city has a better health department; no city has a better credit; no city is so comfortable a place to live in. That bad men sometimes get in office there is true. That frauds upon the city treasury sometimes occur is true; that mal-administration sometimes happens is true; that ideal municipal government has not yet been attained there is true; but these things are as equally true of every city in the world, they are truer of other cities of our State than they are of New York.--Lexow Commission, vol. i., p. 10. In order to get round the Governor’s veto, prominent members of the Chamber of Commerce guaranteed to the Committee counsel’s fees to an amount necessary to enable them to prosecute the investigation. Thereupon the Committee was appointed and set to work. All its members were Senators of the State of New York. It was presided over by Mr. Clarence Lexow. The names of the other members were Edmund O’Connor, George W. Robertson, Cuthbert W. Pound, Charles T. Saxton, Jacob A. Cantor, Daniel Bradley, with William A. Sutherland and John W. Goff as counsel. The only member of the Committee representing New York City was Mr. Cantor, who presented the minority Report, which maintained that the Republicans were as bad as the Democrats, and that most of the officials in the Police Department implicated in blackmail, fraud and corruption were Republicans. [Illustration: JOHN W. GOFF.]