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CHOATE versus PLATT.
OFFICE OF
THE CITY VIGILANCE LEAGUE
OF NEW YORK,
Room 408,
UNITED CHARITIES BUILDING.
NEW YORK CITY.THE CITY VIGILANCE LEAGUE,
UNITED CHARITIES BUILDING.
New York City, December 14, 1896.
• ■■■'( ' •.... , ■■ ■
The senatorial candidature of Joseph H. Choate as against that of
Thomas C. Platt is now definitely announced. The City Vigilance
League enlists itself in this struggle from no motive of party, but in
simple loyalty to the principle that when right and wrong are arrayed
against each other, he is either recreant or a poltroon who does not
stand by the right, and by words and works demonstrate his allegiance
to it.
We indulge in no miscellaneous vituperation of Mr. Platt. His
life is known, and the methods of his performance and the quality of
his intentions perfectly understood. He represents Mr. Platt. In all
the hard-fought battle that has been waged here in our city for muni-
cipal purification, he rendered-us no help and intimated to us no sym-
pathy. The redemption of New York was of no use to him. Mr.
Platt has no use for anything that is of no use to Mr. Platt. His
alliances are with Tammany Hall. The organ of Tammany Hall is
his organ.
The State has very widely expressed its gratification at the defeat
which Tammany suffered here in 1894, but every private citizen and
every representative who sustains Mr. Platt in his present quest of
power helps by so much to re-enact Tammany, or at least helps by so
much to give currency and respectability to the policy and purposes
that are Tammany’s own. Spelling Tammanyism with ten letters
does not alter its distinctive genius. If Mr. Platt becomes Senator, it
will be because he has paralyzed the moral sense of the public by an
effrontery that has forgotten the art of blushing, and because he and
his accomplices have fooled the intelligence of the public by a jug-
glery that is reputed to have lost the faculty of remorse.
The Commonwealth has now the opportunity of asserting itself
in the greatness of its moral strength and saving itself the lasting in-
dignity of a vast humiliation. Mr. Choate has a record that is alsoWritten large before the public eye, but writteii luminously. He is
larger than the office proposed and therefore the office seeks him
rather than he the office. Unlike Mr. Platt, he is no beggar at the
public crib. He fills a large angle in the general regard because of
his native proportions, and not because he has acquired the art of con-
spicuity. He exercises a mastery over men because of what he is, and
not because of his versatility in the performance of tricks. The dis-
tinguished part which he played in the recent Constitutional Convention
not made him, but only helped still farther to reveal him. New York
will honor him by making him Senator, but he will honor New York by
being made Senator. He will not hesitate to run for an elective office
for fear tha.t tainted chapters of his life will be ransacked and brought
forth again to outraged public inspection. The man in his strong
personality, in the nobility of his character, and in the brilliant activities
of his life, will plead more urgently than any words can do for the en-
dorsement of his fellow citizens and for the suffrages of the members
of the Legislature.
Will not you, the recipient of this letter, consider carefully its con-
tents? And will you not use your best influence with your fellow-
citizens, and induce them also to use their best influence with your
Representatives at Albany, that the State may come out of this crisis
in a manner that shall bring us honor at Washington, and that shall
impart a quickening impulse to the cause of good citizenship and
exalted statesmanship throughout the whole of the Empire State ?
William T. McElveen,
C. H. PARKHURST,
President,
Chair Man of State Campaign Committee.