162 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



of New York, at which entertainment Mr. James Fisk, 

 Jr., was an honored guest. The next morning the 

 whole press was in a state of high indignation, and Mr. 

 Bowles had suddenly become the best-advertised editor 

 in the country. At an early hour he was, of course, 

 released on bail, and with this outrage the second Erie 

 contest was brought to a close. It seemed right and 

 proper that proceedings which, throughout, had set 

 public opinion at defiance, and in which the Stock 

 Exchange, the courts, and the Legislature had come in 

 for equal measures of opprobrium for their disregard 

 of private rights, should be terminated by an exhibition 

 of petty spite, in which bench and bar, judge, sheriff 

 and jailer, lent themselves with base subserviency to a 

 violation of the liberty of the citizen. 



"It was not until the 10th of February that Judge 

 Cardozo published his decision setting aside the Suther- 

 land receivership, and establishing on a basis of author- 

 ity the right to over-issue stock at pleasure. The 

 subject was then as obsolete and forgotten as though it 

 had never absorbed the public attention. And another 

 1 settlement' had already been effected. The details 

 of this arrangement have not been dragged to light 

 through the exposures of subsequent litigation. But it 

 is not difficult to see where and how a combination of 

 overpowering influence may have been effected, and a 

 guess might even be hazarded as to its objects and its 

 victims. The fact that a settlement had been arrived 

 at was intimated in the papers of the 26th of December. 

 On the 19th of the same month a stock dividend of 

 eighty per cent, in the New York Central had been 

 suddenly declared by Vanderbilt. Presently the Legis- 

 lature met. While the Erie ring seemed to have good 



