[About this time]

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

☞About this time, men should be careful to what documents or petitions they affix their signatures. There are always, while the Legislature is in session, attempts made by sharp practitioners among our local officials to benefit themselves in some way by Legislative aid at the expense of the people. One such scheme, at least, has come to our knowledge recently. One of the justices of the city is hawking around the purlieus of the City Hall, and the politico-alcoholic establishments in the vicinity, a petition for the passage of a bill making the duties of justices remunerable by fees instead of salaries—in other words, to give each of the too numerous justices five or ten thousand a year instead of eighteen hundred each. There are abuses enough now with some of the justices and their satellites the constables; but if the fee system were restored these last jackals would be around everywhere, inciting people to quarrel and get drunk, so that they might have a pretext for arresting them and making additional fees for themselves and their ermined patrons.