This man, connected, though secretly, with Rivers and Munro, was
indebted to them and the votes which in that region they could throw
into the boxes, for his elevation to the office which he held, and was,
as might reasonably have been expected, a mere creature under their
management. Maxson, of late days, however, whether from a reasonable
apprehension, increasing duly with increasing years, that he might
become at last so involved in the meshes of those crimes of his
colleagues, from which, while he was compelled to share the risk, he was
denied in great part the profit, had grown scrupulous--had avoided as
much as possible their connexion; and, the better to strengthen himself
in the increasing favor of public opinion, had taken advantage of all
those externals of morality and virtue which, unhappily, too frequently
conceal qualities at deadly hostility with them. He had, in the popular
phrase of the country, "got religion;" and, like the worthy reformers of
the Cromwell era, everything which he did, and everything which he said,
had Scripture for its authority.
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