unts
which the Committee made, that he had received large sums
of money from a person for whom he had obtained a lucrative
Government contract. But his term of office as Vice-President
expired before any action could be taken, and he died soon
after.

Mr. Ames, whose character as a shrewd and skilful investor
and manager of property stood deservedly high, recommended
to his friends the stock of the Credit Mobilier as a safe
investment, and one in his judgment very sure to prove profitable.

It has been often asked how the managers of the Credit Mobilier
could be guilty of bribing men when nobody was guilty of being
bribed. But the answer is easy. The managers of the Credit
Mobilier knew that they had violated the law, and that an
investigation would ruin their whole concern. The men who
received the stock were in ignorance of this fact. It was
as if the managers of a railroad whose route under State laws
is to be determined by a city council, or a board of selectmen
or some other public body, should induce the members of such
a board to take stock in their enterprise, intending afterward
to petition the body to which the subscribers belonged to
adopt a route very near land owned by them, which would much
increase its value, the receivers of the stock being ignorant
of their scheme. The person who should do that would be justly
chargeable with bribery, while the persons who received the
stock would be held totally innocent. That was the judgment
of the House of Representatives which acquitted the members
who had received the stock, but held Ames, who had conducted
the transaction, censurable. A large number of the members
voted for his expulsion. Ames was a successful business man.
He was regarded by his neighbors as a man of integrity. He
was generous and public spirited. But he and his associates
in the Union Pacific Railroad seemed, in this matter, to be
utterly destitute of any sense of public duty or comprehension
of the great purposes of Congress. They seemed to treat it
as a purely private transaction, out of which they might get
all the money they could, without any obligation to carry
out the act according to its spirit, or even according to
its letter, if they could only do so without being detected.
They seemed to have thought they were the sole owners of the
Union Pacific Railroad and of the Credit Mobilier corporation,
and that the transaction between the two concerned themselves
only and