Grave charges were also made at the time of Mr. Hanna's candidacy for the United States Senate that he employed the methods which he had found so advantageous in public-service-corporation politics, but his biographer, Mr. Croly, indignantly denies the allegation, showing very conclusively that Mr. Hanna won his nomination squarely on the issue put before the Republican voters and was under the rules of politics entitled to the election by the legislature. Mr. Hanna's career, says Mr. Croly, "demanded an honorable victory. Like every honest man he had conscientious scruples about buying votes for his own political benefit, and his conscience when aroused was dictatorial.... It does not follow that no money was corruptly used for Mr. Hanna's benefit. Columbus [Ohio] was full of rich friends less scrupulous than he.... They may have been willing to spend money in Mr. Hanna's interest and without his knowledge. Whether as a matter of fact any such money was spent I do not know, but under the circumstances the possibility thereof should be frankly admitted."[59] In his political science as well as his business of politics, Mr. Hanna looked to the instant need of things. He does not seem to have been a student of history or of the experience of his own or other countries in the field of social legislation. As United States Senator he made practically no speeches, if we except his remarks in favor of ship subsidies and liberal treatment of armor plate manufacturers. On the stump, for in later years he developed some facility in popular addresses, he confined his reflections to the customary generalizations about prosperity and his chief contribution to political phraseology was the slogan, "Stand pat."[60] When not engaged in actual labor of partisan contests, Mr. Hanna seems to have enjoyed the pleasure of the table and good company rather than the arduous researches of the student of politics. He had an immense amount of shrewd practical sense, and he divined a good deal more by his native powers of quick perception than many a statesman of the old school, celebrated for his profundity as a "constitutional lawyer and jurist."