e same time, the Ring drew large sums from the public
treasury. Men who were notoriously poor when they went into office were
seen to grow suddenly and enormously rich. They made the most public
displays of their suddenly acquired magnificence, and, in many ways, made
themselves so offensive to their respectable neighbors, that the virtue
and intelligence of the city avoided all possible contact with them.
Matters finally became so bad that a man laid himself open to grave
suspicion by the mere holding of a municipal office. Even the few good
men who retained public positions, and whom the Ring had not been able,
or had not dared, to displace, came in for a share of the odium attaching
to all offices connected with the City Government. It was unjust, but
not unnatural. So many office-holders were corrupt that the people
naturally regarded all as in the same category.

In order to secure undisturbed control of the city, the Ring took care to
win over the Legislature of the State to their schemes. There was a
definite and carefully arranged programme carried out with respect to
this. The delegation from the City of New York was mainly secured by the
Ring, and agents were sent to Albany to bribe the members of the
Legislature to vote for the schemes of the Ring. Mr. Samuel J. Tilden,
in his speech at Cooper Institute, November 2, 1871, says that
$1,000,000, stolen from the treasury of the city, were used by the Ring
to buy up a majority of the two Houses of the Legislature. By means of
these purchased votes, the various measures of the Ring were passed. The
principal measure was the Charter of the City of New York. "Under the
pretence of giving back to the people of the City of New York local
self-government, they provided that the Mayor then in office should
appoint all the heads of Departments for a period of at least four years,
and in some cases extending to eight, and that when those heads of
Departments, _already privately agreed upon_, were once appointed they
should be removable only by the Mayor, who could not be impeached except
on his own motion, and then must be tried by a court of six members,
every one of whom must be present in order to form a quorum. And then
they stripped every legislative power, and every executive power from
every other functionary of the government, and vested it in half a dozen
men so installed for a period of from four to eight years in supreme
dominion over the people of t