The sale of nominations to office first became notorious in 1846. Prices ranged from $1,000 to $20,000. This circumstance alone is almost convincing proof of universal corruption in public affairs since no one buys an office unless with the knowledge that money is to be made corruptly in its administration; and this is usually impossible or too dangerous to be undertaken unless the general administration is so corrupt as to be tolerant of fraud, bribery and extortion. The common council was notoriously for sale; it was believed that every city department was corrupt. In 1851 the Williamsburg Ferry scandal broke out and it was shown that $20,000 in bribes had been paid to New York City aldermen. The “Forty Thieves” was the name given to the New York City aldermen of 1852, to whom one Jacob Sharp first applied for a franchise to build a street railway on Broadway, New York. An injunction was obtained; but they passed the franchise in defiance of the injunction. Of the aldermen who thus voted, one was imprisoned for a fortnight and the others fined. A similar affair was the sale of the New York Third Avenue Street Railroad Franchise by the same board of aldermen; over $30,000 was said to have been paid in bribes for this franchise, a great sum for those days. Occasionally when a quarrel broke out over the distribution of the spoils the most appalling disclosures were made; such as those on an investigation by the Grand Jury in 1853, when it appeared that the aldermen demanded a share in every city contract. On February 26th, 1853, the grand jury of New York County handed down a presentment with testimony to the effect that enormous sums of money had been expended for the procurement of street railroad franchises in New York City. It was ascertained that $50,000 had been paid in 1851 for the Eighth and Ninth Avenue Railroad franchises; that in 1852 $30,000 was paid in bribes for the Third Avenue Railroad franchise; that money was paid for aldermanic votes on franchises of the Catharine Street, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Grand Street and Wall Street ferries. Numerous other instances were given of bribery of members of the common council in connection with sale of city property and other contracts. Evidence as to police corruption was plentiful. The chief of police had received one hundred and sixty-three conveyances of property in one year. (_Board of Aldermen Documents_, Vol. XXI, part 2, No. 55, pp. 1333-35 and p. 1573; Myers’ _History of Tammany Hall_, 167.) Out of sixty thousand votes polled in 1854, ten thousand were for sale. “In the city at this time were about ten thousand shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating and breaking up meetings.” In 1856 Josiah Quincy saw $25.00 paid for a single vote for a member of Congress. The day “was enlivened with assaults, riots and stabbings.”