THE LAST OF THE TWEED FRAUDS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 340, 21 March 1874, Page 3

THE LAST OF THE TWEED FRAUDS.

It has already been announced by telegram that Mr. Win. Tweed, the manupulator of the Treasury Accounts of the City of New York had been convicted upon his trial. American files to hand contain full accounts of the proceedings, and from the " New York Herald " we extract the following report of Judge Davis's remarks in sentencing the prisoner. He said :—": — " William M. Tweed, you stand convicted by a jury of twelve honest men of a large number of crimes charged against you united in one indictment, and that verdict, in the opinion of the Corut, could not have been otherwise without a violation of the oaths which the jury had taken, an utter disregard of the obligations under which they rested, to speak the truth and the whole truth only by their verdict. The proof in this case, from the moment it waa first presented to the jury to the people's case was simply a mathematical demonstration of your guilt. Holding a highly responsible and honorable public office — yourself honored and respected by a large class of the community in which you lived, and, I have no doubt, loved by your associates you, with all the important trusts devolving upon you, with all the opportunities you had — had you faithfully fulfilled yonr duties to the puplic— to win the honor and respect of the whole community, saw fit to pervert the opportunities you possessed and the powers with which you were clothed in a manner more wicked more infamous, and more outrageous than any instance of a like character which the whole history of the civilised world contains. Instead of protecting the public you plundered it, instead of standing guard when the law placed you over the treasury of your country you threw that treasury open, not merely to your own rapacity, but also to the avarice of your associates, under circumstances which make it transparent that you were engaged in a concerted conspiracy to plunder the treasury of the county, in which yourself and your associates in crime were principally to benefit. The evidence on the subject can leave no manner of doubt on the minds of any. The commencement of it all

was the entering by you on those duties as president of the board of audit on the sth of , May, the date of the organisation of the • board of audit. The very next day after that your career of plunder began— the 6th of May — and from that day forward consecutively till the -whole 190 accounts before that board had been audited and certified and warrants issued and the money paid. The evidence is conclusive that the whole proceeding was instituted to carry out a concerted plan to enrich yourself and those associated with you. If there were no other testimony, that, in my judgment, would be conclusively established by the faot that on each of these several claims, as they were passed on and ultimately paid, your share of the plunder was clearly fixed and prescribed at 24 per eent.,while the share of your associates has been fixed by a Bomewhat similar standard of plunder. It is impossible to believe that the distribution of 190 cases, in which the moneys were received on these j warrants — that just 24 per cent of each sum I should always be allotted to you, without an understanding in advance, by a concerted arrangement, that this exact sum should be your fixed proportion of the moneys of which the country should be plundered. When we see a machine invented by some genius, turning out aff each revolution a certain amount of product, and of some manufacture, we argue that there is some mind behind it, and we marvel at the reflection and thought that have produced that result. The machinery with which rau operated produced like results in sueh*forn?that it is impossible not to see thot there lay behind it a concerted conspiracy by \vhieh you, iv common with the others who shared the plunder, were to reap the benefits of your great and awful crime. It is in vain to suggest that yonr trial and conviction have been the result of any partisan feeling ; that this was, after all. as one of the jurors summoned on the panel expressed it, a struggle between the " ins and the outs." No. The whole struggle has been a struggle between honesty and fraud, between virtue and crime. It is true that prominent, able, honorable men of all parties united at once to investigate and develop the true character of these frauds. Mr. O'Conor, who has been ntimed in connexion with these frauds in the course of the trial, has aided in (lie work — a man who holds the foremost rank in his orofession, trad -vvlio stands -without a stain upon his character, as pure and noble a man as any in this great city — immediately came from his retirement to aid in the rescue of this great city from the systematic course of plunder to which it has been so long subjected. Mr. Tilden, who stood as the leading man at the head of the Democratic State Committee, devoted weeks and months of toil in ferreting out these crimes and ascertaining, through the bank account, their extent and character, till he was able to lay bare the whole course of fraud and plunder, as presented on this trial, with absolute clearness and simplicity. The truth is so plain that no man can fail to read it. I need not name any other prominent m_en of you* party who took tm active part in these proceedings, and which led to the development of these groat frauds and to your convictioi 1 . It would be wrong and unjust to entertain for a moment the idea that your conviction has been the result of persecution at the hands of any person or party. It has been the result of the ascertainment and production of evidence so clear and plain that never in my experience or reading have I seen a ease where the evidence was so utterly overwhelming and where it was so impossible for the jury to fail to come to a just and conclusive verdict. Through the whole of the trial you remnind up to the very moment of your conviction as calm and serene as though you relied upon your innocence, when it was overwhomiugly apparent to all that your serenity was only that of audacity, that confidence in the omnipotence of corruption rather than reliance upon your innocence. (J utlge Davis uttered the last sentence with much emphasis and earnestness of manner, striking his clenched hand upon his desk.) The duly of tlie Court now is to pronounce upon you the sentence —a sentence that may be adequate to your crime. The pri&ouer was then sentenced, to iinprisouracnt for thirteen years in the aggregate, ani to pay fines amountiug in all to 12,500 dollars.