The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City — John Shaqi
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
As it requires a three-fourths vote to grant money--that is, eighteen
members--it is sometimes impossible for the King to get that number
together. There is a mode of preventing the absence, or the opposition
of members, from defeating favorite schemes. It is by way of
"reconsideration." The time was, when a measure distinctly voted down
by a lawful majority, was dead. But, by this expedient, the voting down
of a measure is only equivalent to its postponement to a more favorable
occasion. The moment the chairman pronounces a resolution lost, the
member who has it in charge moves a reconsideration; and, as a
reconsideration only requires the vote of a majority, _this_ is
invariably carried. By a rule of the Board, a reconsideration carries a
measure over to a future meeting--to any future meeting which may
afford a prospect of its passage. The member who is engineering it
watches his chance, labors with faltering members out of doors, and, as
often as he thinks he can carry it, calls it up again--until, at last,
the requisite eighteen are obtained. It has frequently happened, that a
member has kept a measure in a state of reconsideration for months at a
time, waiting for the happy moment to arrive. There was a robust young
Councilman, who had a benevolent project in charge of paying nine
hundred dollars for a hackney-coach and two horses, which a drunken
driver drove over the dock into the river, one cold night last winter.
There was some disagreement in the Ring on this measure, and the robust
youth was compelled to move for many reconsiderations. So, also, it was
long before the wires could be all arranged to admit of the appointment
of a 'messenger' to the City Librarian, who has perhaps less to do than
any man in New York who is paid eighteen hundred dollars a year; but
perseverance meets its reward. We hear that this messenger is now
smoking in the City Hall at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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