lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for his sole benefit. His passion was to get together an estate which would equal the largest. Extremely penurious, he loaned money at frightfully usurious rates and hounded his victims without a vestige of sympathy.13 As a trader and government contractor he made enormous profits; such was his cohesive collusion with high officials that competitors found it impossible to outdo him. A current saying of him was that he made a fortune by "pinching the bellies of the soldiers"—that is, as an army contractor who defrauded in quantity and quality of supplies. By a multitude of underhand and ignoble artifices he finally found himself the lord of a manor sixteen miles long and twenty-four broad. On this estate he built flour and saw mills, a bakery and a brewery. In his advanced old age he exhibited great piety but held on grimly to every shilling that he could and as long as he could. When he died about 1728—the exact date is unknown—at the age of 74 years, he left an estate which was considered of such colossal value that its true value was concealed for fear of further enraging the discontented people.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER II
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