By the year 1888 no less than 1,400,000,000 francs had been expended in one way or another, while not one-third of the necessary work had been done. Of that £55,000,000 nominal amount not a few millions sterling found their way into the pockets of deputies, senators, and even Academicians, to say nothing of commissions and brokerages of more or less legitimate character. Politicians in France are no worse than politicians in other countries. But the proportion of well-to-do men among them is less than elsewhere. There was consequently a margin of them always on the look-out for an opportunity of adding to their income, and this margin was much larger in the National Assembly before payment of members than it is to-day. For such men the Panama finance was a glorious opportunity. Nobody could suspect de Lesseps of being consciously a party to a fraud. To make a French venture like the Panama a great success, in spite of all difficulties, was a patriotic service. To receive good pay for doing good work was a happy combination of circumstances none the less gratifying that, the work being honestly done, remuneration followed or preceded in hard cash. The extent to which this form of corruption was carried and the high level in the political world to which streams from the Panama Pactolus were forced up is only partially known even now. But so wide was the flow and so deep the stream that, when the outcry against the Company began in earnest, statesmen whose personal honour had never been challenged were afflicted with such alarm, on the facts being laid before them, that they did their very utmost to suppress full investigation. This, however, was not easy to accomplish. For there were no fewer than 800,000 French investors in the Panama Company. All of these were voters and all had friends. It became a question, therefore, whether it was more dangerous to the Republic and its statesmen--for personal as well as political considerations came in--to compel full publicity, or to hush the whole thing up as far as possible. Meanwhile, the public, and important journals not suspected of Panamism, took the whole thing down from the Cabinet and the Bureaux into the street.