Davis, also smarting, wrote him a letter drawing him out, he suffered himself to be drawn out to the length of two columns and a half in the " New York Tribune," in a letter roundly abusing the court and imput ing improper motives to them, which I char acterized at the time as " vindictive and indecent allusions"1 (12 Albany Law Journal, 53). This started the ball, and then ensued a most ferocious and disgraceful attack on the court by disgruntled Judge Davis and others, embracing some news papers which ought to have known better, including " Harper's Weekly," which hired (I assume he did not do it gratuitously) Albert G. Browne, once reporter of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, to vilify the court in that otherwise respectable journal, to the extent of six and a half pages! (See "Mr. Browne wipes out the Court of Appeals," 12 Albany Law Journal, 308.) After all these years, I see no reason to 1 These are quoted in the following, from 12 Albany Law Journal, 57 : — "Mr. O'Conor writes, that ' when dialing with peculators, the Court of Appeals have been ' admirably astute ' in the same uniform direction of impunity '; and that Mr. Tweed, ' by using the courage of a Rinaldo, has, either in his own person or through a representative, thrice bearded public justice in that high tribunal and has, on each occasion, received its award that as against hint or his the weapons devised by the people's advocates were vain and hurtless.'1 "As a remedy in the future for this state of affairs, Mr. O'Conor does not advise more care in the preparation of their cases by the ' thick-witted advocates for the people '; but animated with the spirit of a crusader, he invokes ' from the suffering class a determined resistance to the power by which they are enthralled, and an inflexible resolve to reform existing abuses,' "Mr. O'Conor then proceeds to account for this fearful state of affairs. He writes : ' Because the local judges had, in most instances, received their offices through Tweed and his associates, the lawyers, who were charged with the duty of prosecuting for the public, anticipated difficulty in the earlier stages of the suits; but they had no suspicion that like agencies had influenced the construction of the highest court. They felt assured that in all cases against the robbers, whatever might happen elsewhere, the judg ment of that tribunal would not merely be in aceordance with law, but that in pronouncing it the judges would be animated by an earnest love ofjustice and an active zeal for its advancement! He regrets that his assurances in this regard have not been realized."
modify what was written at the time : " Mr. O'Conor was wrong in this " — namely, his assertion that under the decision of the Court of Appeals, Judge Davis was liable to an action by Tweed for false imprisonment — "just as he has been in everything else connected with the case, except his original declaration in the Fisher case, that cumula tive sentences are illegal." (12 Albany Law Journal, p. 81). "After all, this crusade of Mr. O'Conor is a very ridiculous display. If any other lawyer in the state had been guilty of it, he would have been treated with no consideration whatever. Judge Davis would have committed him. But Mr. O'Conor has a high and commanding posi tion at the Bar, and so believes himself in fallible." "The palpable object of the letters has, and we confess to our surprise, most signally failed. The newspapers have, with scarcely an exception, denounced both their motive and spirit, and have censured Mr. O'Conor and Judge Davis in unstinted terms. But the fact has been very generally recognized that the latter deserved the greater condemnation, not only because of his position, but because it was so apparent that he was the instigator of the whole affair " (12 Albany Law Journal, p. 49). In the course of the same litigations, Mr. O'Conor again disapproved of the Court of Appeals. This was in what is known as the "six-million-dollars suit," brought under a statute specially enacted in 1875, to enable the city and county to recover the spoils from the receivers. Fearing that, if prose cuted in the name of the city and county, the action would not be effectively pressed, Mr. O'Conor caused it to be brought in the name of the people of the State. Mr. George Ticknor Curtis at the time having pointed out that this was erroneous, Mr. O'Conor replied in a letter, in terms " more pointed than polite," maintaining the regularity of his course. The Court of Appeals, however, in People v. Ingersoll, 58 N.Y. 1; S.C. 17 Am. Rep. 198, disagreed with him, l
