The
offices were thus filled by rapacious and unscrupulous men. The agents
who had helped to elect them, or impose them upon the people by fraud,
were supported and protected in their villainies; and in the
consciousness of impunity for crime, walked the streets heavily armed
and ready on the instant to exact a bloody revenge for an interference
with their infamous schemes, or an attempt to bring them to merited
punishment.
In San Francisco the effects of all this were visible at an early period
in the prevalence of crime and outrage; in the laxity with which
offenders were prosecuted; in the squandering of public property; the
increasing burden of taxation; and the insecurity of life and property.
Now and then when the evils of the system weighed with the most
depressing effect upon the business part of the community, some
spasmodic effort for a time produced a change. But a temporary check
only was applied. The snake was scotched, not killed. The ballot box
upon whose sanctity, in a Republican government must the liberties of
the people depend, was in the hands of the pliant tools of designing
politicians, or of desperate knaves ready to bargain and sell the result
of the election to the party or individuals who would pay the largest
sum for it.
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