I lost my health, and finally—but I won’t mention names—I taught a candidate for Alderman of the Fourteenth Ward. That was the first public man I ever taught in New York. There was a man named Gouraud, a Frenchman, a teacher of the art of memory. I found he was trying to humbug the public. I saw he was an impostor, and exposed him. He had secured the press and the people, and I exposed him. I attended his lectures, and saw there William Cullen Bryant, Horace Greeley, Judge Oakley, and all the leading men and women of the city. His system was an exploded system of the Sixteenth Century. I exposed him in various cities. I exposed him, and stopped him. He was denounced in Philadelphia. Through educating public men, I got into politics. There may be a desire to get me into prison as soon as possible, and so I will be brief. The Recorder—There is no desire to get you into prison, Mr. Branch. Branch—I taught the Aldermen till the California mania broke out, when I went to California. I wrote a letter to the New York _Herald_, about alligators on the Isthmus, which gave me the title of “Alligator.” I taught servants and public men. Alfred Carson wanted me to write his reports for him, which I did. In 1855, I got into the Matsell campaign. I pursued _him_. You all know the result. I went to Brandon, England, to find his birth-place, and I found it. Soon after I saw Carson, I found that the officers of this city were very corrupt. Carson asked me to write his reports. He informed me that the officers around the City Hall interfered with the affairs of the Fire Department. I advised him to resist it, I wrote his reports for some years, I got through with the Frenchman, Gouraud. I got through with teaching public men and servants, and with the fire and Matsell campaign. I thought I would start the _Alligator_. I did, and _I don’t regret it_. There is a gang of thieves around the City Hall, and your Honor knows it, and we all know it. I pursued them hard, days and nights for years, in defence of honesty, industry, and the tax-payers, rich and poor, but especially the poor, who go to corner groceries, barefooted, naked, who live in attics. I—a lunatic, so-called, have passed my days in their defence. Ask Carson; ask Harry Howard—I saw him here to-day—ask the editors, if I have not passed the midnight hours in their editorial habitations—if I have not been true to them, to Carson, and all for whom I professed friendship—to all whom I found advocating the cause of the poor tax-payers? Do I regret the establishment of the _Alligator_? No; and why? I have attacked thieves indiscriminately. Hitherto these men had reputation as public officers, and amid tears oftentimes, my shafts have fallen harmless. But now, I have struck at a dynasty which has existed in this city for thirty years, the Peter Cooper guild. He was Alderman in 1828, ’29, and ’40. Tiemann was Alderman in 1839, ’44, ’62, and ’63. Through