Let us consider first the various gradations of corrupt action with reference to the advantages offered and sought. There are crassly venal persons, of course, whose itching palms are held open to receive cash bribes, but after all these are the small and stupid minority of the army of corruptionists. Many who would scorn a direct bribe are, however, quite willing to accept considerations more tactfully offered but almost as purely material in character—shares of stock, railroad passes, salaried positions, _etc_. In pointing out the distinction between bribery and corruption, the large possibilities of “auto-corruption” have been touched upon. The absence of a personal tempter seems very often to veil the real nature of a corrupt act, and contemporary usage completes the illusion of innocence. Tax-dodging is a case in point. Here the citizen is seeking, not a bribe, of course, but merely to cut down as far as possible an inevitable deduction from his income. He may depend upon his political influence, his friendship with assessors, his contributions to campaign funds, or upon the misrepresentation of facts in obtaining the reduction, but he would refuse indignantly to offer a cash bribe to secure action which he knew would be disadvantageous to the government. He might refuse with equal heat to accept a cash bribe to secure his continued allegiance to a party or his continued support of particular politicians. It hardly occurs to him that in a sense he is bribing himself with a part of his own income. Of course this case leaves open the question of the justice of the tax and of the failure of the state to provide suitable technical safeguards to prevent evasion. Unjust or ill-constructed tax laws do not, indeed, justify corrupt action on the part of individuals, but they do transfer part of the moral guilt to the state. Other instances of veiled corruption readily suggest themselves—the intrigues of banks to secure the deposit of public funds, the devices employed to escape tenement-house, sanitary, or life-saving inspections, the appropriation by officials of government supplies or services as “perquisites” of office, and so on.[19]