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Wikipedia: Matthew Quay
Matthew Stanley Quay (September 30, 1833 – May 28, 1904) was an immensely powerful Pennsylvania political boss; “kingmaker” (Benjamin Harrison, 1888). “Boss” Quay’s political principles and actions stood in contrast to an unusually attractive personality. He was a resident of Beaver, northwest of Pittsburgh; today, his house is a National Historic Landmark.
     
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Matthew S. Quay Historical Marker
Name: Matthew S. Quay
Region: Pittsburgh Region
County: Beaver
Marker Location: Pa. 68 (3rd St.) at Insurance St., Beaver
Dedication Date: July 22, 1949
Behind the Marker
Except for George Washington Plunkett of New York, no political boss in the late 1800s was as quotable as Beaver County’s Matthew Quay, who once famously described politics as “the art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting the one from the other.”
 
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March 1861, Southern Literary Messenger, pg. 164, col. 2:
Who does not know and see how the money of the few buys the votes of the many, in order to protect the property of the few against the demands of the many?
 
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Boss Rule in the Gilded Age:
Matt Quay of Pennsylvania
By James A. Kehl
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press
1981
Pg. XIII:
His success converted Quay into a highly successful party boss and prompted him to express one of the more cynical definitions of the American political system: politics, at least in the late nineteenth century, was “the art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting the one from the other.”
 
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American National Biography
Putman - Roush
By John Arthur Garraty
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
1999
Pg. 25:
Quay attributed this unbroken success to an application of his definition of politics: “the art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting the one from the other.”
 
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Pennsylvania:
A history of the Commonwealth
By Randall M. Miller and William Pencak
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press; Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
2002
Pg. 253:
For example, he (Matthew Quay—ed.) staying power to adhering to the following definition of politics: “The art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting one from the other.”