That personage in tax peril was never put to fret in obtaining one to make the oath. If he himself lacked hardihood and hesitated at perjury, why then, the town abounded in folk of a daring easy veracity. Of all that was said and written, of that time, in any New York day, full ninety-five per cent, was falsehood or mistake. Among the members of a community, so affluent of error and mendacity, one would not long go seeking a witness who was ready, for shining reasons, to take whatever oath might be demanded. And thus it befell that the affidavits were ever made, and a reduction of eight billions and more, in the assessed valuation of personal property, came annually to be awarded. With a tax levy of, say, two per cent. I leave you to fix the total of those millions saved to ones assessed, and also to consider how far their gratitude might be expected to inure to the yellow welfare of the machine--the machine that makes no gift of either its forbearance or its help! Speaking in particular of the town, and what opportunities of riches swung open to the machine, one should know at the start how the whole annual expense of the community was roughly one hundred and twenty-five millions. Of these millions twenty went for salaries to officials; forty were devoted to the purchase of supplies asked for by the public needs; while the balance, sixty-five millions, represented contracts for paving and building and similar construction whatnot, which the town was bound to execute in its affairs. Against those twenty millions of salaries, the machine levied an annual private five per cent. Two-thirds of the million to arise therefrom, found their direct way to district leaders; the other one-third was paid into the general coffer. Also there were county officers, such as judges, clerks of court, a sheriff and his deputies: and these, likewise, were compelled from their incomes to a yearly generosity of not fewer than five per cent. Of those forty millions which were the measure for supplies, one-fifth under the guise of “commissions” went to the machine; while of the sixty-five millions, which represented the yearly contracts in payments made thereon, the machine came better off with, at the leanest of estimates, full forty per cent, of the whole.