“Long ago,” he said, “I made a vow to the people that in the performance of my duty no influence would control me but the dictates of my conscience and my determination to do the right--as I see the right--day in and day out, regardless of political future or personal consequences. Have no fear--I will stick at that.”
These were brave words. But Sulzer proved unequal to their promise. All he did was to go far enough in the surface appearance of independence to rouse the Tiger of Tammany to a fury of vengeance.
Tammany soon found an occasion to carry out this intention, and they removed Sulzer from his office. This act of private vengeance cost Tammany four years of control of the city government of New York, for Hennessy’s disclosures made the public eager to administer a rebuke to Tammany, and this rebuke took the form of electing Mitchel as Mayor.
The Tiger’s opportunity to impeach Sulzer came about in this way: When Sulzer filed his sworn statement of campaign expenses, Tammany scented some gross discrepancies and did some shrewd detective work. The result was that they discovered that he had not included in his list of contributions the $2,500 he had received from Jacob H. Schiff, nor the checks of several others, including my own, which amounted in all to many thousands of dollars. By careful investigation they had established the fact that he had not applied these moneys to his campaign expenses, but had deposited them to his personal account and used the money as margin with a Wall Street broker for stock-market speculation. Thereupon, Tammany leaders in the State Legislature arose in the Assembly Chamber and impeached William Sulzer of high crimes and misdemeanours. They charged him, among other things, with filing a false statement of campaign expenses, with perjury, and with the suppression of testimony; and demanded his dismissal from office. The Assembly sustained a motion for his impeachment. When I returned from Europe in September, 1913, I found that his trial was in progress, and I was summoned as a witness to testify before the High Court of Impeachment.
It would take the pens of a Macaulay and a Swift to do justice to this modern burlesque of the trial of Warren Hastings. I use the term “burlesque” in no sense of disrespect toward the Court and its setting. The dignity of the proceedings was almost awe-inspiring. But the defendant lent no such exalted interest to the event as did the romantic figure of Warren Hastings. The offences of Hastings had, at least, the dramatic merits of their magnitude. Burke’s indictment of him was a recital of crimes worthy of the treatment of a Greek tragic poet. Hastings’s accusers were distressed queens, pillaged treasures, and suffering peoples. Burke’s plea for a verdict was an appeal to the conscience of mankind.