in stock at par value had been taken directly by State Senators and from $10,000 to $25,000 in stock distributed indirectly.[11] Perkins charged Thurlow Weed with accepting a $500 bribe.[12] The investigating committee reported finally that it could find no proof involving any but one of the accused.[13] As the bill for the charter had originally passed the Senate by a vote of 27 to 2,[14] and as the members of the investigating committee had been chosen from this majority, its conclusions were naturally viewed with a good deal of suspicion. The Equal Rights men complained that 75 per cent. of the whole of the bank notes circulating in New York City consisted of depreciated paper. The circulation of these in notes of $5 or under amounted by March, 1835, to nearly $1,500,000. One establishment alone, whose weekly payroll in 1834 amounted to $40,000, paid the greater part of this sum in depreciated notes. The wage-earner was in constant fear that any morning he might wake to hear that the bank whose notes he held had failed. Frequently the worst deceptions on the public were connived at by the officials. The Hudson Insurance Company, for instance, with a nominal capital of $200,000, was permitted to issue bonds to the amount of $800,000, upon the most fictitious resources. This was far from being an isolated instance. The law allowed a bank with only $100,000 capital to loan $250,000, thus receiving interest on more than twice the capital actually invested.[15] The Council was more than ever a hotbed of venality. Numberless small “jobs” were perpetrated without public notice; but when it was proposed in October, 1831, to give the Harlem Railroad Company the franchise for the perpetual and exclusive use of Fourth avenue, free of all payment to the city, Alderman George Sharp, one of the few public-spirited members, drew general attention to the matter by an energetic denunciation. After every other means had been resorted to without success to influence his vote, he was told that he would be excluded from the party by certain persons at Tammany Hall. Alderman Stevens, who declared that he had seen stock given to members of the board and to the “corps editorial” to secure their influence, was also threatened. The words of these two men proved conclusively the truth of what for a long time was common report: that the group of Tammany leaders not only controlled the party nominations but threatened public officials with their displeasure, with all which that implied--exile from public life, loss of political influence, perhaps ruin of fortune--in case they did not vote for certain measures whose “merits” were recommended to them.