G BRIBERY OF VOTERS. [CHAP. XX. 



the citizens here, whether, as New York is called the 

 Empire State, Pennsylvania the Keystone State, 

 Massachusetts the Bay State, and Vermont, when 

 the question of its separation from New Hampshire 

 was long under discussion, &quot; the Future State,&quot; 

 in short, as almost all had some name, had they any 

 designation for Georgia ? It ought, they said, to be 

 styled the Pendulum State, for the Whigs and 

 Democrats get alternately possession of power; so 

 that each governor is of opposite politics to his pre 

 decessor. The metropolis, they added, imitates the 

 example of the State, electing the mayor and alder 

 men of Savannah one year from the Democratic and 

 the next from the Whig party. It has been of late 

 a great point, in electioneering tactics, to secure the 

 votes of fifty or sixty Irish labourers, who might turn 

 the scale here, as they have so often done in New 

 York, in the choice of city officers. In the larger 

 city they were conciliated for some years by employ 

 ment in the Croton waterworks, so that &quot; pipe- 

 laying &quot; became the slang term for this kind of 

 bribery ; here, it ought to be called &quot; reed-cutting,&quot; 

 for they set the Hibernians to cut down a dense 

 crop of tall reeds (Sesbania vcsicaria), which covers 

 the canal and the swamps round the city, grow 

 ing to the height of fifteen feet, and, like the city 

 functionaries, renewed every year. Some members 

 of the medical college, constituting a board of health, 

 have just come out with a pamphlet, declaring, that 

 by giving to the sun s rays, in summer, free access 

 to the mud in the bogs, and thus promoting the 

 decay of vegetable matter, the cutting down of these 

 reeds has caused malaria. 



