the House of Tammany-the Ring

and its adherents either crushed or

escaping, with only Hall, whose term had not expired, still clinging to a tottering fragment. Opposite to this is still another page, "The Political

Suicide of Peter

'Brains' Sweeny"

-Sweeny having

resigned from office and withdrawn

66 WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT? TO THE VICTOR BELONG from public life the

THE SPOILS

day following the fatal election. In his letter of resignation he declared that henceforth his official duty would be confined to the single act of voting. Mr. Sweeny, it may be added, subsequently made a flying trip to Canada, later to join his brother James, also concerned in Ring financiering, in France. Eventually he paid four hundred thousand dollars to the city and was forgiven.* It has been

66

*Mr. Sweeny's "Bill of Health" was obtained and the money restored to the city in the name of James M. Sweeny, who had died subsequent to the Ring exposures. This subterfuge was freely condemned at the time, as the following brief extracts will show:

Evening Post, June 7, 1877:

Of course, nobody will be deceived by this disgraceful and offensive sham. The suit of the people was not against James M. Sweeny. He is dead. The proceedings are not against the estate. It is not believed that he had any estate. It is known that he lived by the breath of his brother, that he was but a mere miserable tool, and that nobody would have been more astonished than himself if it had been suggested that he should pay to the city of New York, or to anybody else, several hundred thousand dollars, or any other sum.

said that he never really participated in the Ring profits. If this be true, then the writer may be permitted to add that Mr. Sweeny paid a very large price for the privilege of keeping very bad company.

Mr. Tilden, who, with James O'Brien, had been elected to the Legislature, must have forgotten his agreement to protect Connolly, for on November 25th the latter was suddenly arrested on a complaint to which

the only affidavit was made by Tilden himself. Connolly realized

Evening Express, June 8, 1877:

The release of Sweeny on the payment of $400,000 is an insult to the tax-payers of the city and an outrage on justice. . . . It is nominally paid out of his dead brother's estate, but even Lawyer Peckham admits that this pretence is too thin to be believed; and it is justified on the scoundrel's ground that compounding with felony pays better than to exact square-handed justice of the felon. And then to give Sweeny a certificate of character on top of this transaction, shows that somebody's ideas of decency are strangely demoralized and that the "Brains" of the old Ring still has his pals where they can do the most good.

There was much more of this, and the sentiment was echoed by the public and the press generally. Several later attempts have been made to rehabilitate Mr. Sweeny's reputation; but these efforts have met, and are likely to meet, with slight encouragement. The official obloquy recorded against his dead brother's memory remains a serious flaw in Mr. Sweeny's title to exoneration.

SOMETHING THAT DID BLOW OVER-NOVEMBER 7, 1871

that he had been trapped and offered to settle for a million dollars. A million and a half was demanded. Connolly's wife, who was present, demurred.

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Richard, go to jail," she said, and "Slippery Dick" that night slept behind the bars and remained there until January. Then he secured bond and joined the "Americans Abroad," the number of which increased with each outgoing steamer. Almost a score of indictments were prepared against Tweed, but it was not until the winter of 1873 that he was behind prison bars, and then for misdemeanor. Later he was imprisoned in Ludlow Street jail in default of a three-million-dollar bond. Thence he escaped to Europe, to be captured, as we shall see later, in a manner which would add the final touch to a triumphant crusade.

Hall-brazen, defiant and shameless to the last-clung to the wreckage until his term of office expired, "The Last Thorn of Summer," as Nast depicted him. Neither the Herald nor the

Tribune was ever fully convinced of his guilt, and Nast, in a cartoon, showed the younger Bennett and Mr. Greeley whitewashing him until his real identity was almost lost. In another place Greeley as Diogenes is "discovering " him as the one honest man. One reflects that " Elegant Oakey" must have had a most winning personality to have inspired ever so little confidence in these shrewd journalists, when ruin and wreck lay all about him, and only oblivion and exile before. The colony of expatriates claimed him in due season, and when, long after, he returned to his native land, broken in body and fortunes, he eked out a paltry living by a petty law practice, and through contributing archaic humor to the comic weeklies.

Of all the fortunes acquired by the Ring and its adherents, scarcely the remnants of a single one exist to-day. Less than a million of the loss was recovered by the city, but the men who had sold themselves for plunder had not the ability to preserve their ill-gotten price. Some of them died in exile, others in prison. Some were allowed to return and testify against their fellows, and all, or nearly all, have perished from the sight of men, and left only dishonored names behind.