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[Description: 564EAF. Page 114. In-line image of the silhouette of a man holding aloft a tattered flag while debris flies through the air around him.]

7. CHAPTER VII.
MILES GOING INTO CITY POLITICS.

We learn, said the Herald, one day,—just as the
November election in New York City and State
was being cleared off, and the municipal campaign for
December opening,—We learn that Private Miles
O'Reilly, Forty-seventh regiment New York Volunteers,
is about to devote himself to a reconsolidation

of all the political interests in this city, on the
simple basis of the “spoils.” He thinks, by throwing
aside all clap-trap of principle or patriotism, and
uniting all the now warring elements of the political
family in an immense Joint-Stock-Consolidated-Grand-Junction-Lobby-League,
that the managers on
all sides will be enabled to fill their pockets much
more readily and with much less trouble to themselves.
His idea is to take the total assessed value
of all property, real and personal, on Manhattan
Island, as his “base of operations;” and to make
arrangements for its absorption at the rate of twenty-five
per cent. per annum by his new political company.
Shares will be issued to all existing political
interests, on the same strict system that was observed
in providing for the stockholders of the “Consolidated
Stage Company” in the city railroad legislation
at Albany during the last half dozen years.
We learn further that Private O'Reilly, in order
to carry out these views, has issued a caucus circular
calling together all the parties in interest, for the
purpose of arranging the details and settling the apportionment
of stock which is to be given to each.
This caucus meets at the St. Nicholas to-morrow
evening, and its proceedings will doubtless prove of
the highest interest. The only objection of any
weight that we have heard urged against Private
O'Reilly's plan is, that his organization cannot be
permanent, as, in four years, at twenty-five per cent.
per annum, it will have absorbed all the property,
real and personal, of the city, and there will be
“nothing left to steal.” To this Private O'Reilly answers
that, when all the taxpayers have been turned
out into the streets, full means of activity will still
be left to the organization in plots and efforts to
cheat each other. “Inside rings” will then have to
be formed, having for their object a further “consolidation”
of plunder. He is also sanguine that,
with the triumph of the scheme in this city, politicians
all over the State and country may take it up,
until finally it shall be placed in a position to dictate
one of its own members or agents for the next Presidency.
The proceedings of the caucus will be
looked for with interest.