New York Times article, dated April 5, 1861, on Legislative Corruption:

The State Assembly has expelled one of its members for having entertained a proposition to receive a bribe for his vote. The case as against him was very clearly made out. Indeed, he scarcely denied the fact, -- and the main effort of his counsel was to show that those who offered the bribe were still more culpable than he.

Our Albany paper says that Mr. GIBBONS has the sympathy of his acquaintances, who think that he is quite as much sinned against as sinning. That is probably true, -- but we trust it will not be regarded as laying any foundation for an appeal to public sympathy on his behalf. Legislative corruption is eating, like a deadly cancer, into the heart of the Republic. It is destroying our character, vitiating our laws, depraving the public sense, and converting the Government, in all its departments, into a despotism where the basest scoundrels bear undivided sway.

There is but one way to check this, and that is to put the ineffaceable brand of infamy on every public officer who can be proved guilty of corruption. We care not what may be the extenuating circumstances of his case, nor how many copartners he may have in his crime. This is a kind of guilt that is not diminished by being shared.

Nor have we the slightest sympathy or respect for the plea so successfully urged to screen corruption, that he who offers a bribe is equally guilty with him who accepts. It is not true. A public officer, sworn to the faithful and upright performance of his duty, clothed with public responsibilities, and acting not for himself, but for a great community, commits a greater crime when he takes a bribe than does the interested party, acting under no such sanctions, who offers it. And justice is wholly defeated by confounding their guilt.

But whether this be so or not, the public welfare imperatively demands that corrupt public officers should be brought to rigid and unbending justice, and that legislation which punishes both parties alike, simply, screens guilt by rendering its detection impossible.