The friends of municipal reform in New York have won
an important success. They have always asserted that the agents of Tammany Hall in the New York police have raised a revenue by selling impunity to the keepers of -saloons, night-houses, and gaming-tables, and at last they have ob- tained a conviction, a man named Bissert, in the employ both of Tammany and the police, having been found guilty of extorting £110 from a woman for permission to keep a disorderly house. The Recorder, to the amazement of the city, sentenced Bissert to five years' penal servitude, and the reformers hope that they are at last on a clear road to success. We have seen Tammany beaten and victorious too often to feel certain that their hope is well founded, but they have at least gained this advantage, that they see where their efforts must be directed. If they can purify the Courts, they can beat Tammany; if not, everything will fall back into the old rat. To purify Courts seems easy in a Christian country, but when Judges are elective and wretchedly paid, and the real defendant is the strongest of electoral organisations, purification is apt to need more than soap.
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