the national politics, through half a dozen bloated political scamps, located in this city and Albany. Firemen of New York, and other citizens, are you prepared to incur these perils? If not, arise and resist the superhuman efforts to disgrace and destroy you! Grasp and hold with giant strength the little you have left of the right of suffrage;—cling, with undying firmness and affection, to your noble organization; resist the attempts to saddle this tax-ridden city with an additional tax of nearly one million of dollars, for the support of a paid fire department, and avert the possible contingency that some mushroom scoundrel may, at no remote day, haughtily dispense the curses of monarchy or unlimited despotism on the ruins of your country! A paid fire department, composed of a limited number of hired mercenaries, could not protect this city so effectually as a voluntary system. It could be done in the cities of Europe, where the habitations are composed of bricks, granite, marble, and other substances impervious to fire, but not in New York, where almost every edifice is a pile of shavings, or combustible matter. Moreover, hired civilians are the same as hired soldiers. Both work for pay, and not for public utility and renown. But the volunteer firemen of New York are as zealous and courageous as the soldiers of the Revolution, while paid firemen would evince the slothfulness and cowardice of the British in that memorable contest. Any man contending for liberty, and his wife and children, can easily rend to fragments three cowardly mercenary combatants, and a volunteer fireman of New York, panting for deeds of valor, and the love and respect of his fellow men, can effect more than half a dozen paid lazzaroni, who go to their perilous task as slaves go to the field.