Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1881 — The Case at Albany. [ARTICLE]

The Case at Albany.

Bribery has come to be regarded as only a venial offense at Albany. There is probably not a man in either branch of the Legislature who does not believe Sessions guilty of attempting to bribe Bradley ; not one who has not all along believed him capable of such an act. There is not a Senator or Assemblyman who is ignorant of the true character of the notorious lobbyists, Barber, Van Vechten, Edwards and others who haunt the capital, or who doubts that they are ready to use money corruptly in carrying candidates and bills, or that they make their living in that way, A number of members of the Legislature have testified or made formal statements w ithin the past two weeks concerning attempts and offers to bribe that have fallen within their own personal knowledge. And yet we observe no marks of strong indignation at the prevalence of this form of corruption. Sessions, Barber, Van Vechten, Edwards, all are treated with the same degree of good nature and friendliness as if they were men by whom the thought of bribery would be spurned with loathing. A frequent visitor at the headquarters of the lobbyists has been Mr. Chauncey M. Depew. Bribery is made by positive law a criminal offense, but it is evidently not considered at Albany a moral offense in itself, or an evidence of degradation. Some degree of meanness may be thought to attach to the man who accepts a bribe, but evidently none to him who offers it. That Sessions himself feels this, is shown by the good humor and complacency with which he has conducted himself under the accusation that has been investigated, For these reasons it is taay to believe

a mere charge of bribery, though really a pernicious and wicked offense, when made against a Senator of questionable antecedents, especially when he acknowledges with the greatest coolness that he has for yearn been an expert at lobbying, and deliberately swears that he does not remember the name of a single person for whom he lobbied, nor the character of a single measure that he tried to put through. A false accusation of bribery, however, would be a crime so detestable and degrading that there is no man in the Legislature, not even the most corrupt and tainted log-roller, whom we should be willing to believe guilty of it. Even against the notorious lobbyists, who hang on the outskirts of the Legislature, the charge that they were endeavoring to convict an innocent man of a statutory crime by perjured testimony would seem in the highest degree improbable. Even in Albany, or in any of the most corrupt of modern legislative assemblies, there is no difference of opinion as to the baseness of such a crime. For these reasons it would be impossible, even if there were no corroborative evidence in the case at all, to believe that Mr. Bradley’s accusation is false. — New York Sun.