With this preliminary sketch, we can now proceed to a consideration of how Astor profited from the banking system. We see that constantly the bold spirits of the trading class, with a part of the money made or plundered in some direction or other, were bribing representative bodies to give them exceptional rights and privileges which, in turn, were made the fertile basis for further spoliation. Astor was a stockholder in at least four banks, the charters of which had been obtained or renewed by trickery and fraud, or both. He owned 1,000 shares of the capital stock of the Manhattan Company; 1,000 of the Merchant's Bank; 500 of the Bank of America; 1,604 of the Mechanic's Bank. He also owned at one time considerable stock in the National Bank, the charter of which, it was strongly suspected had been obtained by bribery. There is no evidence that he, himself, did the actual bribing or was in any way concerned in it. In all of the legislative investigations following charges of bribery, the invariable practice was to throw the blame upon the wicked lobbyists, while professing the most naive astonishment that any imputations should be cast upon any of the members of the honorable Legislature. As for the bribers behind the scenes, their names seldom or never were brought out or divulged. In brief, these investigations were all of that rose-water order, generally termed "whitewashing." But whether Astor personally bribed or not, he at any rate consciously profited from the results of bribery; and, moreover, it is not probable that his methods in the East were different, except in form, from the debauching and exploitation that he made a system of in the fur regions. It is not outside the realm of reasonable conjecture to suppose that he either helped to debauch, or connived at the corruption of legislatures, just as in another way he debauched Indian tribes. Furthermore his relations with Burr in one notorious transaction, are sufficient to justify the conclusion that he held the closest business relations with that political adventurer who lived next door to him at No. 221 Broadway. This transaction was one which was partially the outcome of the organization of the Manhattan Bank and was a source of millions of dollars of profit to Astor and to his descendants.