A legislative seat was a two-edged sword to cut both ways.

You could trade with it, using it as a bribe, bartering vote for vote; that was one edge.

Or you could threaten with it, promising nay for nay, and thus compel some member to save your bill to save his own; that was the other edge.

A mere bribe from the lobby owned but the one edge; it was like a cavalry saber; you might make the one slash at a required vote, with as many chances of missing as of cutting it down.
Every argument, therefore, pointed to a seat; whereat Patrick Henry Hanway bent himself to its acquirement, and at the age of twenty-six he was sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution and told to vote in the Assembly.

In that body he flourished for ten years, while his manhood mildewed and his pockets filled.
The native State of Patrick Henry Hanway was a moss-grown member of the republic and had been one of the original thirteen.