And if there ever was a candidate for office, during Bennett’s long editorial career, whom he did not sell, or if there ever was a truly virtuous aspirant for public honors, whose election Bennett ever sincerely advocated before the people, without a cash consideration, I should like to see the most extraordinary anomaly. Bennett very ingeniously plasters his victims with disgusting panegyric, for a brief period, when he lets loose the dogs of Tartarus, and while they devour them, he fills his coffers with gold from every candidate in the field, to whom he has pledged his support. But he is very old, and the devil will soon have him, and millions will rejoice when old Nick drags him to his fervent realms, and begins his merited tortures. And it will require wasteless years to burn the sins from his infamous and loathsome and nauseous carcase. The creation of James Gordon Bennett’s Tax Payer’s Party, after his cash advocation of all the abandoned scamps of America to office for thirty years, is the most amusing proposition of the age. And yet the omnipotent ballot stuffers may come to his rescue, and adopt his plans. And why should they not? Is not Barnum again abroad, and about to shake the world with another humbug. Barnum has grown prodigiously affluent since the Hard times began, and since money became scarce, and since people began to starve, and since the elements of Pluto leveled his Oriental Palace to the ground, (which was highly insured!) and above all, since he took as partner, that cunning old rat, James W. Gerard, who, like Dick Connolly and Simeon Draper, is ever found in all political camps. Gerard was the real originator of the Joice Heath imposture, and all of Barnum’s humbugs, and has borne him through all his financial clock troubles, for which he has got enough from Barnum to enable him to sustain his chariots and postilions and magnificent establishment in Gramercy Park until he dies. It was Gerard who introduced Kingsland for Mayor, and other successful candidates, and, in the dark, advocated Fernando Wood’s course down to his disastrous exodus from public life. And it was Gerard who sustained Matsell through all his infamous career, down to the famous meeting in the Tabernacle, and in the Legislative lobby, even going into the seats of members, and coaxing them in various ways to spare Matsell. And it was Gerard who, after Wood had fallen, went into the camp of Tiemann, where he is now, in order to cut the throats of Tiemann and the Coopers the first opportunity, and is at this moment, in collusion with Bennett in the formation of a Tax Payer’s Party. “All things to all men” is the motto of Gerard, and he has played his card adroitly for nearly half a century. But he has now probably got his last set of false teeth, and his last wig, and will probably soon die of old age like his old friend Bennett, who have operated together in ambuscade, for thirty unbroken