A new reform movement sprang up, which quickly developed into the City Reform party. The reformers proposed, as a first step, to amend the charter. The granting of leases for more than ten years was to be prohibited, and the highest bidder was to get them. A two-thirds vote was to be required to pass a bill over the Mayor’s veto. Work to be done and supplies furnished costing more than $250 were to be arranged for on contract to the lowest bidder. Any person guilty of bribery, directly or indirectly, was to be sentenced, upon conviction, to not above ten years in prison and fined not over $5,000, or both. The right to sit as Judges of the criminal courts was to be taken away from the Aldermen, as was also the power of appointing policemen. The Board of Assistant Aldermen was to be abolished, and a Board of Councilmen, consisting of sixty members, was to be instituted in its place, the collective title of the two boards to be “the Common Council.” The Aldermen were to be elected for two years (as determined in the charter of 1849) and the Councilmen for one year. An efficient auditing of accounts and claims against the city was called for, and only the more popular branch of the Common Council was to originate appropriations of money. Tammany had grown suddenly virtuous again, and responding to the public clamor over the disclosures, had declared its devotion to pure government. At a “reform” meeting of the Young Men’s Union Club, John Cochrane, one of Wood’s lieutenants, who later announced that he would vote “for the devil incarnate if nominated by Tammany Hall,” declared: “Reform is at home in Tammany Hall. Its birthplace is Tammany Hall.” The purification movement advanced so unmistakably that Tammany approved the amendments, and the legislative bill embodying some of them was supported by the Tammany delegation in the Senate and Assembly. The bill passed, and upon being submitted to the people of the city, in June, 1853, was adopted by the significant vote of 36,000 to 3,000. One of the benefits due to the City Reform party was the reorganization (1853) of the police under a separate department. The police were compelled to wear a uniform against which there had been bitter prejudice,[25] and the term of appointment was made dependent upon good behavior. Fortunately for the City Reform party, the division between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells” extending throughout the State caused the nomination of separate Democratic tickets in the Fall of 1853. There seemed less than ever any vital difference between the professed principles of the two. Under the name of “National Democrats” the “Hardshells” met in City Hall Park on September 26, and resolved: