and nobody's. The result is, that corruption prevails to an alarming extent in these primary party elections, which rule and control the legal elections of the people-the nominees of the rum and rowdy delegates, no matter how unfit for office, carrying all before them, according to the usages of party, in voting for what they call "regular nominations," but which ought to be called irregular, disorderly, and mob nominations. For instance, look at the proceedings on Thursday last, in the nineteenth wardvoters carried to the ballot-box in scores of waggons, from various localities; and, in other wards, hundreds of democrats voting for Scott or for Fillmore-men ignorant and steeped in crime—picked up in all the purlieus of the city, and purchased at a dollar a head; and some, it is said, so low as fifty cents, to deposit in the ballot-box a vote they had never seen. This demoralising process is playing fearful havoc with our institutions, rendering them, to a vast extent, not only a nullity, but perverting them to mischief— to bad and corrupt legislation-and to the mal-administration of public justice. The judicious grieve at these results; but what can they do to arrest the progress of the evil?

"The following is a faithful and exact description of the system:-A lazy fellow, who hates to work for a living, and encouraged by the success of ward politicians, who have grown fat upon corruption and the spoils of office, devotes his energies, day and night, to the acquisition of influence in the ward in which he resides. He spouts -he brawls in the bar-room, and affects public virtue of the highest order. He is a patriot of the first water, and "a clever" fellow to boot. He treats the rowdies

whenever he meets them, and makes them his fast friends. He is most diligent in attending to all matters of public interest connected with the ward or the city. If he has sufficient ability, he draws up resolutions for public meetings and committees, and studies the forms and precedents of political organisations, so that he has them at his fingers' ends, and he is consulted as an oracle upon all OCcasions of doubt or difficulty, or importance. If there is an honest man in the ward of the same politics, who has any taste or ambition for public affairs, and especially if he shows any talent, he takes every opportunity to blast his character, and calls him a traitor, an intriguer, a demagogue, or some other hard name. For the simple and the confiding, he promises to obtain situations in the Post Office, the Custom House, and the Police. He thus gradually acquires the influence he seeks, and soon finds himself a far more important man in the ward than his neighbour, who is a man of real worth and respectability. His position is found out by those who want to use him. He is for sale to the highest bidder, either to defeat his own party by treachery, or to procure a nomination for any scoundrel who will pay for it. He has no politics of any kind. He has rascality to sell, and there are those who are willing to purchase it in order that they may traffic in it, and sell it themselves again, at a very high profit. For instance, the agents of Fillmore, or Scott, or Webster, come to one of these ward politicians, and they make a contract with him to secure the majority of the ward. Sometimes he succeeds completely, and sometimes only partially, as there are other politicians as cunning and as mercenary as himself, who manage to get their names on

the ticket, and, acting independently of him, must have their price, whatever it is, particularly if they find they can turn the scale, and hold the destiny of the ward or district in their hand. Hence it is that when the public imagine that a ward has gone for a particular candidategone for Fillmore, or Scott, or Webster-they are astonished to find that they were deceived, when the final result is declared, and it turns out to be the very reverse of what they had anticipated. The agents of the candidates see the purchasable delegates between the time of their election and the time that they elect the district delegate, or during that time-perhaps in the interval of taking a recess to "get a drink," or while leaving the room on some other emergency—and the matter is made "all right," and comes out to their satisfaction in the end, notwithstanding protracted ballotings, adjournments, and deceitful appearances of obstinacy.

"Nor is it always with money that the delegates are purchased-the promise of a fat office has sometimes an equally potent and magic effect. But it is most frequently with money that the operations are transacted, on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,' or that the men for sale have no faith in the promises or the success of the purchasing party. The sums of money thus given are incredible. We have heard of a case in one of the lower wards of the city, in which one man got, at the time of the late democratic district conventions, the enormous sum of two thousand dollars, out of which he said he bribed a majority of the delegates in the district, and kept the balance for himself.

"The dangers to which this system may lead are appall

ing to every true patriot who calmly and attentively considers its tendency and possible results. * * *

66

We do not say that any of these cases will ever be realised, but there is peril; and the facility with which corruption is practised in the ward and district nominations, show that it is not impossible on a larger scale, and where there would be actually fewer men to bribe. Every friend of these republican institutions, which were cemented by the best blood of our revolutionary ancestors, ought to lift his voice and use all his influence against this system, and strike at it where only it can be wounded effectually-in its first inception, in the ward primary elections. What are the remedies?

"In the first place, honest men ought to attend the primary elections, and not leave them in the hands of rowdies and scheming politicians; and they ought always to vote for the best men. In the second place, there ought to be a registration established, by which no man could sail under false colours, or deposit a vote at a primary election, unless he belonged to the ward, and belonged to the party to which he professed to belong; and the inspectors of the election ought to have the power to administer an oath to every voter, and perjury in such cases ought to be made as much a criminal offence as it would be in any legal proceeding. If this cannot be done, or, being done, does not check the evil, there is but one remedy remaining, and that is the stump nominations, or self-nominations, that prevail in the South and West. The primary elections, as carried on in this city, and in the North generally, may be for the convenience of party

and for the interest of politicians, but they are unknown to the Constitution; and when they threaten to subvert the very design of that Constitution, and to nullify our most cherished institutions, it is high time for the people to consider whether they ought not either to abolish them, or take them out of the hands of the wirepullers into their own hands. They have the power, if they will only exert it; and to this complexion it will come at last. Meantime, our political system, so beautiful and so free, and so well adapted to guard against despotism on the one hand, and the licentiousness of the mob on the other, is so abused and so perverted from its original design, as to become the source of public demoralisation, the reproach of the United States, and the laughing-stock of the enemies of republican institutions all over the world."

It appears then, from the above, that one of the principal remedies against corruption, in a State whose revised statutes of 1845-6 nominally enact the secret ballot, is now considered to be open voting!

Neither can it be said that the above description applies to New York only. It is expressly stated in the above extract (p. 133), that the same system is carried on "in the North generally;" an assertion which, as a