e, they
are well content that they acted as they did.

As illustrating the methods which are not infrequent in connection with
the work of the State legislatures, I may mention that I once acted
(without premeditation) as witness to the depositing of two thousand
dollars in gold coin in a box at a safety deposit vault, by the
representative of a great corporation, the key of which box was
afterwards handed to a member of the local State legislature. The vote
and influence of that member were necessary for the defeat of certain
bills--bills, be it said, iniquitous in themselves--which would have
cost that particular corporation many times two thousand dollars; and
two thousand dollars was the sum at which that legislator valued the
aforesaid vote and influence.

It is not always necessary to take so much precaution to secure secrecy
as was needed in this case. The recklessness with which State
legislators sometimes accept cheques and other easily traceable media of
exchange is a little bewildering, until one understands how secure they
really are from any risk of information being lodged against them. A
certain venerable legislator in one of the North-western States some
years ago gained considerable notoriety, of a confidential kind, by
being the only member of his party in the legislature at the time who
declined to accept his share in a distribution which was going on of the
mortgage bonds of a certain railway company. It was not high principle
nor any absurd punctiliousness on his part that made him decline. "In my
youth," said he to the representative of the railway company, "I was an
earnest anti-slavery man and I still recoil from bonds." It was said
that he received his proportion of the pool in a more negotiable form.

It would be easy, even from my own individual knowledge, to multiply
stories of this class; but the effect would only be to mislead the
English reader, while the American is already familiar with such
stories in sufficiency. The object is not to insist upon the fact that
there is corruption in American public life, but rather to show what
kind of corruption it is, and that it is largely of a kind the
opportunity for indulgence in which does not exist in England. The
method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the
temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the
absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not
exposed to the same system