For several years the Ring continued their robberies of the treasury, enriching themselves and bringing the city nearer to bankruptcy every year. Taxes increased, property was assessed for improvements that were never made, and the assessments were rigorously collected. Large sums were paid for cleaning the streets, which streets were kept clean only by the private subscriptions of the citizens residing in them, as the writer can testify from his personal experience. The burdens of the people became heavier and heavier, and the members of the Ring grew richer and richer. They built them palatial residences in the city, and their magnificent equipages were the talk of the town. They gave sumptuous entertainments, they flaunted their diamonds and jewels in the eyes of a dumbfounded public, they made ostentatious gifts to the poor, and munificent subscriptions to cathedrals and churches, _all with money stolen from the city_; and with this same money they endeavored to control the operations of Wall street, the great financial centre of the Republic. They built them country seats, the beauty and magnificence of which were duly set forth in the illustrated journals of the day; and they surrounded themselves with every luxury they could desire--all with money stolen from the city. Did any man dare to denounce their robberies, they turned upon him with one accord, and the whole power of the Ring was used to crush their daring assailant. They encouraged their adherents to levy blackmail upon the citizens of New York, and it came to be well understood in the great city that no man, however innocent, arrested on a civil process, could hope to regain the liberty which was his birthright, without paying the iniquitous toll levied upon him by some portion of the Ring. Even the great writ of Habeas Corpus--the very bulwark of our liberties--was repeatedly set at defiance by the underlings of the Ring, for the purpose of extorting money from some innocent man who had fallen into their clutches. The Ring was all-powerful in the great city, and they there built up an organized despotism, the most infamous known to history. No man's rights, no man's liberties were safe, if he ventured to oppose them. They even sought to strike down freedom of speech and the liberty of the press. Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, in the speech from which we have quoted before in this chapter, makes this distinct charge against them. He says: "Mr. Evarts went to Albany last year, and carried with him my protest against the passage of the law giving to the judges a power unknown in the jurisprudence of this State--unknown in the jurisprudence of the United States for the last thirty years--_whereby it was secured that any member of the City Government that might be offended_, _could put his hand upon the city press_, _and suppress its liberties and freedom of speech_."