substantially nothing, and in employing his surplus wealth for further purchases of land and in investments in other profitable channels. No scruples of any kind did he allow to interfere with his constant aim of increasing his fortune. His indifference to compunctions was shown in many ways, not the least in his open support of notoriously corrupt city and State administrations.
This corruption was by no means one existing despite him and his class, and one that was therefore accepted grudgingly as an irremediable evil. Far from it. Corrupt government was welcomed by the landholding, trading and banking class, for by it they could secure with greater facility the perpetual rights, franchises, privileges and the exemptions which were adapted to their expanding aims and riches. By means of it they were not only enabled to pile up greater and greater wealth, but to set themselves up in law as a conspicuously privileged body, distinct from the mass of the people.
THE PURCHASE OF LAWS.
Publicly they might pretend