ital might be employed in
any way not inconsistent with the laws and Constitution of the United
States and of the State of New York." The people remembered the
terrible yellow fever scourge, and the Legislature considered only the
question of relieving the danger with pure and wholesome water; and,
although the large capitalisation aroused suspicion in the Senate, and
Chief Justice Lansing called it "a novel experiment,"[157] the bill
passed. Thus the Manhattan Bank came into existence, while wells,
brackish and unwholesome, continued the only sufficient source of
water supply.

[Footnote 157: "This, in the opinion of the Council, as a novel
experiment, the result whereof, as to its influence on the community,
must be merely speculative and uncertain, peculiarly requires the
application of the policy which has heretofore uniformly
obtained--that the powers of corporations relative to their money
operations, should be of limited instead of perpetual duration."--Alfred
B. Street, _New York Council of Revision_, p. 423.]

That was in 1799. Four years later, the Republicans of Albany,
realising the importance of a bank and the necessity of avoiding the
opposition of their own party, obtained a charter for the State Bank,
by selling stock to Republican members of the Legislature, with an
assurance that it could be resold at a premium as soon as the
institution had an existence. There was a ring of money in this
proposition. Such an investment meant a gift of ten or twenty dollars
on each share, and immediately members clamoured, intrigued, and
battled for stock. The very boldness of the proposition seemed to save
it from criticism. Nothing was covered up. To put the stock at a
premium there must be a bank; to make a bank there must be a charter;
and to secure a charter a majority of the members must own its stock.
The result was inevitable.

It seems incredible in our day that such corruption could go on in
broad daylight without a challenge. At the present time a legislator
could not carry a district in New York if it were known that his vote
had been secured by such ill-gotten gains. Yet the methods of the
Republican promoters of the State Bank seem not to have brought a
blush to the cheek of the youngest legislator. No one of prominence
took exception to it save Abraham Van Vechten, and he was less
concerned about the immorality of the thing than the competition to be
arrayed against the Federalist bank in Albany. Eve