THE LATE JOHN MORRISSEY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5390, 6 July 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE LATE JOHN MORRISSEY.

(From the New York Tribune.) There are many men like John Morrissey in the lower ranks of American life, but so few have stood like him ia the strong light of. public office and political notoriety that New Yorkers came to regard him asa phenomenon. He was not that; his character was rather ordinary ; his faults and vices were of a common kind; his ambitions were--not high nor strange; his virtues were coarse and cheap. The offences by which he first distinguished himself in the world were crimes of violence, not of baseness; and after he had emerged from the dangers of the prize-ring, and the bar-room chance-medley, and the occasional riot with policemen, and had tasted the sweets of notoriety,' he conceived, as many others-- of his - class have done, a perfectly natural desire to be thought better than his old companions and to “ live respectable.” Ideas of respectability differ. Mr. Morrissey's scheme consisted in wearing a good coat. It implied no particular change in his morals, and only a little variation in his manners. Prize fighting would not do any longer ; so he reformed himself into a gambler, and set up a first-class hell; and inasmuch as his patrons spent a great deal of money, and did not out one another’s throats for the sake of the stakes, lie made no doubt that he was now entitled to the consideration of an honest hard-working citizen. -

It is unnecessary to say that the second calling was much worse than the first, moro immoral and mors dangerous. But Morrissey appeared to think that his abandonment of the prize-ring entitled him to immunity as to other pleasant and profitable vices. Having opened a gilded and alluring pest-house for the corruption of good society, he asked the ap-plause-of the virtuous on the ground that he no longer made it a.business to exchange blows with a half-naked ruffian for the amusement of the mob. And a great many people were ready to admit this droll claim. There seemed to be a feeling in some quarters that Mr. Morrissey was quite a Prodigal Son., returned and repentant, and fully entitled to the fatted calf and all the nther honors and attentions. He certainly became a much quieter member of society. He ceased doing things which endangered his being looked up. Yet he made his money by a nightly violation of the law, and he ; might, have been looked up if laws in this' free country were always -made to be executed.' Ho had the notion that ho did mb harm, since men were going to gamble anyway, and if they did not do it with 'him they were likely to do it in worse places. He aimed to have only those whom ho called “ gentlemen" at his gamblinghouses, and said he expected to win money only of those who could afford to lose it.. He had that kind of honor and,of honesty of which men-of his stamp are frequently'not devoid. ■He would not break his word. Ha was a staunch friend so long as he continued to bo friendly, and when ho became a foe, the object of his hostility was left iu do doubt respecting

his feelings. He had a good deal of the prizefighter’s respect for fair play and the bruiser’s brute courage. He would not steal. Iu the midst of rascals he kept his hands from theft.

There was nothing in his politics except honesty as to money matters, and a crude idea that working men—with whom he had nothing whatever in common—ought somehow to get a living out of the public treasury. As a member of Congress—though he surely was not the only unlearned man in the national Legislature,—he was a mere cypher. He exercised no Influence, joined in no debates, had; no views, -and sensibly tried to present none. In the State Senate, and especially as a leader in the lower kind of politics in New York, he counted for more. He had a rough commou-sense, which was often better than the. sagacity of better-trained men in estimating popular tendencies and judging how political plans would, work. He could gauge quite accurately too the public temper about public men, and the effect of given movements upon the feelings of voters. His opinions as to.the resiilfc'of an election in this city, or even in the State, were generally trustworthy, and often singularly accurate. He was above petty grudges in politics as in life. AVhere his friendship was given it could always be counted on ; and iu any ordinary matter the kindliness of his disposition could be trusted for fair, and even for generous action. He would always go a long distance out of, his way s to do a kind deed. These are qualities which all classes appreciate, and iu. spite of the fearful odds which his past career laid upon him, they gave him a certain popularity and very considerable influence, even among the better classes of this city. More than once he had the active support of Doctors of Divinity. Yet, after all, his politics were the ward politics of New York. They never rose higher than the tricks and rivalries of the.caucus, the personal animosities of faction, the clashing' of rings and cliques. He may have had some dim notion that one law was better than another, but it. was only as it affected the fortunes of • the party to which he happened to be attached. He knew that some party men were greater knaves than others, and as a rule be respected the least rascally. His natural preference was for'a frank bully rather than a mean thief, and we do not know that he has any better claim to the reputation, of a reformer than that he followed the bent of his disposition. .He never accomplished anything in politics. He was always the tool of shrewder politicians, who used him to serve their own purposes, and who thought it did not matter that the metropolis of America was represented in its Senate by the keeper of a gambling hell, provided their wretched little schemes were promoted by electing ,