During the following Spring, William Paxen Hallett, a member of the “Big Four” against whom the Equal Rights party had so energetically protested in 1836, was made the defendant in a civil suit involving grave fraud. As referee in a suit for damages of one John A. Manning against one Charles J. Morris, Hallett had wrongfully reported that only trifling judgments remained outstanding against Morris, and the court had accordingly given the latter a year’s time in which to make good a judgment for $3,496 rendered in favor of Manning. It appeared, however, in the proceedings before the Superior Court, May 20, 1839, that Hallett knew, or should have known, of a previous judgment against the defendant for $15,014.44 in favor of one Nathan Davis, who during the year of grace seized upon all of Morris’s property, thus defrauding Manning. The testimony was so convincing that Hallett was forced to compromise the suit by paying the damages asked for. Through the influence of the organization, however, he escaped prosecution. The “ring” of Police Justices had for several years been a crying scandal. Whig and Tammany magistrates were equally involved. Public clamor fixed upon John M. Bloodgood, despite his private charities, as the first victim. The Assistant Aldermen impeached him in January, 1839,[14] and submitted the case to the Court of Common Pleas, by whom he was tried.[15] Testimony was brought out tending to show that the Police Justices, by means of an understanding with policemen and jailers, extorted money from prisoners and shielded counterfeiters, thieves, street walkers and other malefactors from arrest or conviction. The charges were dismissed.[16] Stronger testimony of the same kind was brought out in May, 1840, on the trial of Police Justice Henry W. Merritt, and other testimony involved in the same way Special Justice Oliver M. Lowndes. The case, however, was dismissed.[17] A strong public agitation had been waged for the reorganization of the criminal courts. The _Weekly Herald_ of February 1, 1840, had made the statement that the farce of conducting the correctional machinery of the city involved a yearly sum of $1,360,564--this sum being the total of judges’, policemen’s and court attendants’ salaries (about $50,000), added to the blackmail exacted from offenders, and various “pickings and stealings.” The statement was an extravagant one; $700,000 would have been nearer the mark. But whatever the sum, the acquittal of the Police Justices by their fellows in judicial evil-doing indicated that the carnival was to continue. The Tammany leaders had been “out” for the two years 1837-38, and were now vigorously making hay while the sun shone, while such of their Whig contemporaries as still held office were vying with the chiefs in systematic and organized plundering.