CORRUPT GRANTS OF CITY LAND.
In this procedure he was but doing what a number of other contemporaries such as Peter Goelet, the Rhinelanders, the Lorillards, the Schermerhorns and other men who then began to found powerful landed families, were doing at the same time. The methods by which these men secured large areas of land, now worth huge sums, were unquestionably fraudulent, although the definite facts are not as wholly available as are, for instance, those which related to Fletcher's granting vast estates for bribes in the seventeenth century, or the bribery which corrupted the various New York legislatures beginning in the year 1805. Nevertheless, considering the character of the governing politicians, and the scandals that ensued from the granting and sales of New York City land a century or more ago, it is reasonably certain that corrupt means were used. The student of the times cannot escape from this conclusion, particularly as it is borne out by many confirming circumstances.
New York City, at one time, owned a very large area of land which was fraudulently granted or sold to private individuals. Considerable of this granting or selling was done during the years when the corrupt Benjamin Romaine was City Controller. Romaine was so badly involved in a series of