are procured without danger of extortion, another at which fair
arrangements are made with boarding houses, another from which, if sick or
destitute, he is sent to Ward's Island, and half a dozen others, important
as helps to one who has no knowledge of the usages of the country to which
he has come. I refer to these arrangements, among a multitude of others,
in order to show what administrative talent and what constant attention
were necessary to ensure the regular and punctual working of so vast a
system. To this duty Mr. Verplanck, aided by able and disinterested
associates like himself, gave the labors of a third of a century,
uncompensated save by the consciousness of doing good. The composition of
this Board has just been changed by the Legislature of the State, in such
a manner as unfortunately to introduce party influences, from which,
during all the time of Mr. Verplanck's connection with it, it had been
kept wholly free.

Yet Mr. Verplanck had his party attachments, though he never suffered them
to lead him out of the way he had marked for himself. He would accompany a
party, but never follow it. His party record is singular enough. He was
educated a federalist, but early in life found himself acting against the
federal party. He was with the whigs in supporting General Harrison for
the Presidency, and claimed the credit of suggesting his nomination. Mr.
Clay he would never support on account of his protectionist principles,
and when that gentleman was nominated by the whigs he left them and voted
for Mr. Polk, though he was disgusted by the trick which obtained the vote
of Pennsylvania for Mr. Polk under the pretence of his being a
protectionist. Subsequently he supported General Taylor, the whig
candidate for the Presidency, but the nomination of Mr. Buchanan, in 1857,
saw him once more with the democrats, from whom he did not again separate.
When the proposal to make government paper a legal tender for debts was
before Congress, he opposed it with great zeal, writing against it in the