The Erie people needed a first-class representative at Albany to watch their interests before the legislature. Gould was selected as the fittest man to act in the capacity of a lobbyist. First giving out that he was going to Ohio, Gould quietly slipped up to Albany, with five hundred thousand dollars of Erie cash in his pocket. Here in a day or two he was arrested, but released on five hundred dollars bail to appear in a New York court on Saturday. He appeared on that day, but his attorneys secured a postponement, and he was allowed to return to Albany in charge of an undersheriff. Arriving in Albany Mr. Gould was conveniently taken sick, and unable to return to New York to attend the court proceedings, though he drove to the capitol in a snowstorm. The officer reported him to the court as a “runaway,” but the matter was afterward settled, and, in the language of Mr. Adams, he “assiduously cultivated a thorough understanding between himself and the legislature.” In this he was materially aided by the cash with which his pockets were so liberally filled. Corruption ran high. One senator was recorded to have accepted seventy-five thousand dollars from one side and one hundred thousand dollars from the other. One man was paid five thousand dollars by Gould “just,” as Mr. Gould remarked, “to smooth him over.” The corruption at this session was investigated by a legislative committee in 1869. Gould was a witness, but he endeavored to conceal the facts as much as possible. In the famous Erie investigation of 1873, however, Mr. Gould testified as follows: