The evidence fails of proof that the governor ever received a bribe for his action on any bill,[362] but it is difficult to escape the suspicion of his complicity in corrupt transactions, if it be true, as was alleged, that no bill which the governor favored could fail and none that he opposed could pass. He admitted his use of his patronage to remove personal enemies and appoint friends “as a custom of governors”[363] and that the government had been guilty of some abuses created by his connivance, but emphatically denied the perpetration of any frauds,[364] declaring on oath that he stood before the Congressional committee with “clean hands.”[365] But his duplicity in other ways seems clear, while the fact stands out that with a salary of eight thousand dollars a year he testified that he had made far more than one hundred thousand dollars the first year of his administration[366] and by 1872 was reported worth a million dollars. He was surely willfully deluding himself when he uttered this boast: I believe I have since I have been governor of the State, under circumstances and embarrassments of the gravest character, and under difficulties that I am surprised myself that I have been able to overcome, administered the State government in the best interests of the people of the State, and have produced as much harmony, good feeling, and prosperity as it was possible for me or any one else to produce under the circumstances.[367] In a series of remarkable pen pictures the governor brought charges of dishonesty against most of the custom-house reformers--against Senators Ray, Casey, Packard, Lowell,[368] Carter.[369] His attack on Carter may be considered typical: Mr. Carter was also, and is now, the paid attorney of the New Orleans, Mobile, and Texas Railroad Company, from which he receives $833.33 per month, or $10,000 per annum, and for which he has never done one hour’s service. The contract for his employment was made with him by the company after he had kept in his pocket for thirty or sixty days a bill which had passed the legislature almost unanimously, and immediately after this contract was made, by which he became the attorney of the company, the bill was signed by him.[370]