of
Supervisors, should be received, and, on sufficient evidence, paid.
Mayor Hall is the responsible man for all this. He knew it was a
fraudulent violation of duty on the part of every member of that Board of
Audit to pass claims in the way they did.

* * * * *

"Fellow-citizens, let me call your attention for a moment to the
after-piece of these transactions. Our friend, Mayor Hall, is a very
distinguished dramatist, and he would consider it a very serious offence
to the drama to have the after-piece left out. Now, what was that
after-piece? When the statements were published in regard to these
frauds, Mayor Hall published a card, wherein he said that these accounts
were audited by the old Board of Supervisors, and that neither he nor Mr.
Connolly was at all responsible for them. A little later--about August
16th--Mayor Hall said it was true they were audited by the Board of
Audit, and, in doing so, they performed a ministerial function, and would
have been compelled by mandamus to do it, if they hadn't done it
willingly. I do not deem it necessary in the presence of an intelligent
audience and the lawyers sitting around me on this stage, to present any
observations upon the idea that 'to audit and to pay the amount found
due' was a ministerial function. . . . . . .

"So we pass to Mr. Hall's fourth defence. On the burning of the vouchers
he made a raid on Mr. Connolly. He wrote him a public letter, demanding
his resignation in the name of the public because he had lost the public
confidence; and at the same time he was writing to Mr. Tweed touching and
tender epistles of sympathy and regret. You might at that time, if you
were a member of the Club, have heard Mr. Hall in his jaunty and somewhat
defiant manner; you might have seen Mr. Tweed, riding in the midnight
hour, with countenance vacant and locks awry, and have heard dropping
from his lips, 'The public demands a victim.' And so he proposed to
charge upon Connolly, who had legal custody of the vouchers, the stealing
and burning of them. He proposed to put some one else in the office of
the Comptroller when Connolly should be crushed out of it, and so
reconstruct the Ring and impose it a few years longer upon the people of
this city. . . . . . .

"The sequel showed that the vouchers were taken by Haggerty, whom Mr.
Connolly sought out and found, and prosecuted. Then, again, a little
later, when it happened that Mr. Keyser swore that indorsements f