Although the finances of the State were calling for the most skillful handling, the legislative body acted without even the most ordinary business prudence. While the time limit for the payment of the city taxes and for the collection of the special one per cent tax levied in September, 1868, had to be extended[102]; while the credit was so weak that it was found necessary to enforce under penalties the acceptance of the State warrants for licenses and taxes by the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and Bernard; while the State was in such straits that an annual tax became necessary to pay the interest on bonds[103]; and legislators were being put to the embarrassment of being told that the Waterworks Company had suspended the water until they should pay their bill,[104] they were voting themselves their pay with a generous hand and squandering State funds in sheer extravagance. They early[105] manifested anxiety for their pay, appropriating $250,000 in 1869, $500,000 in 1870, for the mileage and per diem of members and clerks.[106] Their selfishness took the form in 1869 of instructing the warrant clerks to sell the warrants at their market value in order to pay the members in currency,[107] and in 1870, of giving their warrants the preference. Their attitude toward themselves is perhaps illuminating in explaining their actions. One member had insisted that they ought to accept their money in warrants, “in which form the government pays the community,” when another angrily retorted, “I desire to assure him of the very important fact that what we, as the Legislature, give to the community ... is without money and without price. They are so valuable that the price cannot be fixed--there is no standard.”[108] And another member naïvely wants to know if he does not consider the General Assembly the State. Even more telling is the following exhortation of a member to the House: “I would like to know if there is a great thing and a good thing, in the name of God, why not let the Representatives of the State of Louisiana have a hand in it.”[109]