The Charleston Daily News

THE POLITICAL ARENA.

TAMMANY REPUDIATED.

Address of the Democratic Reform General Committee of New York

The following is the address issued on Tuesday by the Democratic reform general committee to the Democratic electors of the City and County of New York:

NEW YORK, September 25.

To the Democratic Electors of the City of New York:

The time has come for Democracy, in its great stronghold, to pass an ordeal from which it shall emerge, if not unscathed, at least assuredly purified and exalted. It is an hour, not for misgivings and despondency, but rather for good hope and great rejoicing, that at last the opportunity offers for the redemption of the grand old party from the shame and degradation into which it has been steeped by the corrupt practices of some of its leaders in this city. No true Democrat, though humiliated by the exposure of the dishonesty of his partisan chiefs, will contemplate that exposure with regret, for it brings to him the privilege, the duty and the power of devoting himself, with glorious promise of success, to the sacred mission of cleansing the temple of his political faith.

There is no need to recapitulate the crimes of the men to whom has been delegated the guardianship of Democratic interests in this city. The shameful record is before the world, in all the hideous blazonry of unmitigated depravity. Honored with trusts and responsibilities that would be, to every heart susceptible to honorable and manly feeling, incentives to scrupulously honest conduct, they have been proven faithless to every trust and to every obligation, and have yielded disgracefully to the promptings of miserable avarice and dishonorable ambition. Not only have they shamed their party—for it is not a simply partisan interest that appeals to you—they have brought the municipality which they have misruled to the verge of ruin, betraying the honor and weakening the credit of the first city of the republic.

It can do you neither service nor pleasure, Democrats of New York, to rehearse the history of folly, fraud and treachery, the proofs of which have been paraded before the public, against the leaders of Tammany Hall. In our courts of justice, in our public journals, in our public streets, in the households of citizens of every class and of every partisan creed, the humiliating story has been made the theme of discussion, of sorrow and of indignation. So far as legal responsibility is involved, the judiciary will doubtless do their duty. Do yours, Democratic citizens, where political responsibility is involved. Too long has it been a reproach and an injury to Democracy that four men should wield its power in its stronghold, even were those four as honest and capable as they have been proved corrupt and reckless. The tremendous machinery of such an organization should, under no circumstances, be abandoned to the absolute sway of any four individuals, whomsoever they may be. Such a dictatorship naturally invites a spirit of corruption into its narrow sphere. Let us hereafter protect the broad principle of Democracy from the peril of false interpretation from the lips of any petty combination of cliques.

We appeal to the Democratic electors of the City and County of New York to put aside, at this crisis, the lesser objects of their several local and inferior organizations, and, in the presence of the common danger, to unite against the common enemy, making the downfall of the present administration in Tammany and the redemption of the Democratic party their paramount political obligation.

MAX GOEPP.

WILLIAM H. WICKHAM,

BENJAMIN WOOD.

ABRAHAM R. LAWRENCE,

WILLIAM C. BARRETT,

Committee.