So open had become the shame that Stoneman was compelled to increase his committees in the morning, when a corrupt majority had been bought the night before.
He arose one day, and, looking at the distinguished Speaker, who was himself the secret associate of Oakes Ames, said:
"Mr. Speaker: While the House slept, the enemy has sown tares among our wheat. The corporations of this country, having neither bodies to be kicked nor souls to be lost, have, perhaps by the power of argument alone, beguiled from the majority of my Committee the member from Connecticut. The enemy have now a majority of one. I move to increase the Committee to twelve."
Speaker Colfax, soon to be hurled from the Vice-president's chair for his part with those thieves, increased his Committee.
Everybody knew that "the power of argument alone" meant ten thousand dollars cash for the gentleman from Connecticut, who did not appear on the floor for a week, fearing the scorpion tongue of the old Commoner.
A Congress which found it could make and unmake laws in defiance of the Executive went mad. Taxation soared to undreamed heights, while the currency was depreciated and subject to the wildest fluctuations.
The statute-books were loaded with laws that shackled chains of monopoly on generations yet unborn. Public lands wide as the reach of empires were voted as gifts to private corporations, and subsidies of untold millions fixed as a charge upon the people and their children's children.
