an intellectual history of political corruption ||

An Intellectual History of Political CorruptionBruce Buchan; Lisa HillISBN: 9781137316615DOI: 10.1057/9781137316615Palgrave Macmillan

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10.1057/9781137316615 - An Intellectual History of Political Corruption, Bruce Buchan and Lisa Hill

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An Intellectual History of Political Corruption


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Political Corruption and Governance

Series editors:Paul M. Heywood is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Sir Francis HillProfessor of European Politics, University of Nottingham, UK.

Dan Hough is Reader in Politics and Director of the Sussex Centre for the Studyof Corruption (SCSC) at the University of Sussex, UK.

This series aims to analyse the nature and scope of, as well as possible reme-dies for, political corruption. The rise to prominence over the last 15 years ofcorruption-related problems and of the ‘good governance’ agenda as the principalmeans to tackle them has led to the development of a plethora of (national andinternational) policy proposals, international agreements and anti-corruptionprogrammes and initiatives. National governments, international organisationsand NGOs all now claim to take very seriously the need to tackle issues of cor-ruption. It is, thus, unsurprising that over the last decade and a half, a significantbody of work with a wide and varied focus has been published in academic jour-nals and in international discussion papers.

This series seeks to provide a forum through which to address this growing bodyof literature. It will invite not just in-depth single-country analyses of corruptionand attempts to combat it, but also comparative studies that explore the experi-ences of different states (or regions) in dealing with different types of corruption.We also invite monographs that take an overtly thematic focus, analysing trendsand developments in one type of corruption across either time or space, as wellas theoretically informed analyses of discrete events.

Titles include:

Bruce Buchan and Lisa HillAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION

Dan HoughCORRUPTION, ANTI-CORRUPTION AND GOVERNANCE

Political Corruption and Governance SeriesSeries Standing Order ISBN 978–113703457–1 (hardback) and978–113703458–8 (paperback)(outside North America only)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing astanding order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write tous at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series andthe ISBNs quoted above.

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England


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An Intellectual History ofPolitical CorruptionBruce BuchanAustralian Research Council Future Fellow 2010–2014,ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, andSchool of Humanities, Griffith University, Australia

and

Lisa HillProfessor of Politics, University of Adelaide, Australia


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© Bruce Buchan and Lisa Hill 2014

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of thispublication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmittedsave with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licencepermitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publicationmay be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of thiswork in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2014 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companiesand has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978–0–230–30888–6

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.


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Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

1 Conceptions of Political Corruption in Antiquity 9

2 Patronage, Politics and Perishability in Early MedievalPolitical Thought 46

3 From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perils of Public Office inMedieval and Renaissance Political Thought 68

4 Affection, Interest and Office in Early Modernity 99

5 Ideological Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain 125

6 The Historical Vicissitudes of Corruption 155

Conclusion 170

Notes 174

Bibliography 244

Index 278

v


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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank their research assistants, Brendan Drew,Adam Bugeja, Christopher Arblaster and especially Kelly McKinley,for their able assistance in the completion of this monograph. Theyalso thank the Australian Research Council whose generous fundingmade its completion possible. Bruce Buchan’s research for this bookwas supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship(2010–14). He would also like to thank Barry Hindess, John Uhr, HaigPatapan, Mark Philp, Cary J. Nederman, Vasileios Syros, Bettina Kochand Sarah Irving for their comments on early drafts of chapters. Profes-sor Nederman kindly made available a wide selection of his own paperson related themes. Colleagues in the School of Humanities, the ARCCentre for Excellence in Policing and Security at Griffith University andthe Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the Universityof Edinburgh also offered invaluable support. Finally, while it is impossi-ble to encompass a debt so profound in mere words, Kathryn Seymour’slove and support made Bruce’s research possible and the end productworthwhile.

vi


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Introduction

1. Why corruption?

Although corruption has been ‘ubiquitous’ throughout human historyand in all kinds of societies,1 it has not always been a subject of greatinterest. Since the mid-1990s, it has emerged – or perhaps re-emerged –as a major topic of investigation, with inquiry focussed largely on ques-tions about appropriate policy responses to the economic and politicalproblem of corruption.

Anti-corruption commissions or ‘watch dogs’ over the public serviceand elected officials have been an increasingly conspicuous feature ofliberal democratic polities since the late 1980s. At the supranationallevel, anti-corruption conventions were adopted by the European Unionin 1997 and the United Nations in 2003. Contributing to these develop-ments was the work of key international institutions, such as the WorldBank and the International Monetary Fund, whose focus from the late1990s on both ‘anti-corruption’ and ‘good governance’ as requirementsfor economic development culminated in the Governance and Anti-Corruption strategy announced in 2007. Non-government organisationshave also participated in this global resurgence of interest in corruption,notably through the activities, since 1993, of Transparency Internationaland its annual measure of the perceived reach and influence of corrup-tion globally, the Corruption Perceptions Index (from 1995) and theBribe Payers Index (from 1999).

Interest in corruption, its nature, causes, consequences and the rangeof possible responses to it has been the subject of searching scholarlyinterest.2 The resurgence of this interest is partly attributable to thecoeval development, since the mid-1990s, of a broad neo-liberal con-sensus that corruption constitutes an obstacle to domestic and global

1


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2 An Intellectual History of Political Corruption

development, which itself is said to hinge on financial investment innations exhibiting (broadly) liberal and (generally) democratic stan-dards of good governance.3 In this discourse, corruption is treated ‘asa hard, cold empirical fact’ or a ‘specific subset of cases’ rather thanan ambiguous and perhaps elusive concept in political discourse.4 Formany analysts, corruption is a straightforwardly defined phenomenon,consisting in payments ‘illegally made to a public agent with the goal ofobtaining a benefit or avoiding a cost’.5 The pervasive influence of thiskind of definition, and its use in the burgeoning anti-corruption liter-ature – focussed on the promotion of integrity systems or standards ofgovernmental probity and transparency – have been subject to detailedanalysis elsewhere.6 Our aim in this book is not to suggest that corrup-tion has been poorly defined, or that it should be redefined, but thatour understanding of the concept of corruption should pay due con-sideration to the degree of contestation that the term has evoked sinceantiquity.

Despite the scholarly attention corruption has received of late, opin-ion remains divided on fundamental questions of definition, analysisand response. Early studies tended to analyse corruption as a problemof economic development, confining it not only geographically buttemporally as a product of ‘modernisation’.7 Such analyses associatedcorruption, above all, with activities that imposed wasteful economiccosts, by distorting the operations of the market. These costs were usu-ally identified with rent-seeking behaviours, where an individual orgroup seeks to obtain financial advantage in the form of monopoliesor trade concessions, for example.8 Such corrupt activities are said toundermine economic efficiency and distort market forces, inflating thecosts of doing business, which are then passed on to consumers. Corrup-tion thus violates the responsibility of public officials to citizens, therebyweakening public trust. In a number of early studies, however, such asthose of David Bayley and Samuel P. Huntington, corruption was treatedas adaptive and beneficial insofar as it was said to aid the transition frompre-modern to modern market economies by promoting efficiency ingovernment decision-making.9 Yet, most conceive systemic corruptionas both a cause and a symptom of under-development.10

In this view, corruption tends to be exacerbated where high levelsof income inequality fuel particularistic loyalties of public officials tofamily or clan.11 Particularism is more common where economic andpolitical realms have yet to become functionally separated, as theysupposedly have in modern Western states.12 Yet, the idea that cor-ruption is peculiar to developing nations overlooks the ubiquity of


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Introduction 3

corrupt practices built into the very fabric of Western democracies, forexample, through the activities of lobbyists, or corporations that rent-seek while proffering ostensibly neutral policy13 or the collusion ofbanks to manipulate inter-bank lending rates. Nonetheless, it has evenbeen claimed that some forms of corruption have been eradicated inadvanced democratic orders.14

According to Mlada Bukovansky, there has emerged a neo-liberal con-sensus that corruption, defined narrowly as the economically costlysubversion of public office for private gain, can be eradicated by goodgovernance.15 Corruption, on this view, consists in the definable abusesof identifiable agents, whose activities are ‘a symptom that somethinghas gone wrong in the management of the state’.16 For some, thisapproach has ‘de-moralized’ discourse on corruption insofar as the focusis placed on technical issues about the detection, punishment and pre-vention of abuses rather than the moral failings of polities or economiesthat create the conditions for these abuses.17 This critique suggests thatthe now dominant technical and empirical study of corruption shouldbe re-contextualised within older traditions of political thought able to‘rekindle a sense of morality or at least mobilize moral outrage’ aboutcorruption, not simply as the abuse of office, but as a symptom of thewidespread ‘loss of liberty, self-determination, and identity’, or evenpolitical instability.18

This broader conception of corruption lies at the heart of JohnPocock’s influential The Machiavellian Moment. According to Pocock,Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1529) decisively shaped a ‘basicallyAristotelian republican’ ideal of the active citizen by sensing that theindividual pursuit of virtue (virtù) was threatened by corruption (cor-ruzione).19 According to Pocock, Machiavelli’s corruption denotes a‘generalised process of moral decay’, weakening the ‘individual citizen’sautonomy’.20 With its connotations of individual excellence in judge-ment and decisiveness in action, virtù also denoted the collective pursuitof the general good and the health of the republic.21 As we discuss later,Pocock’s interpretation has been contested, especially by those whoargue for a positive valuation of commerce in Machiavelli’s and laterEuropean republican political thought.22

In turning back to the history of Western political thought, our goalin this book is neither to suggest that these older sources hold the keyto modern political problems, nor to rescue from them a universallyacceptable definition of corruption. Rather, we are aiming for somethingmore modest but necessary, namely, to examine the history of the con-cept of corruption not simply as a term considered in and of itself, but,


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as Mark Knights would put it, as a ‘keyword’ in ‘conceptual field[s]’.23

The meaning of corruption, we argue, has always been tied to a range ofother concepts related to the ever-changing patterns of argument withinand between established and emergent political discourses.

By tracing the usages and meanings of corruption within these con-ceptual fields, we confront a variety of challenges about the relationshipbetween concepts and contexts. Those contexts can include everythingfrom the author’s biography, through to the influence of prevailingpolitical forces, existing institutions, material and sociological forces,popular culture and received intellectual traditions. We have thereforesought a contextual understanding of the various articulations of cor-ruption that incorporates historical scholarship on a range of relatedpractices and ideas, such as, for example, the peculiarities of Classi-cal and Medieval gift exchange or the customary expectations of EarlyModern public officers.

At all times, however, we attend to understandings of corruption thatwere articulated by a range of thinkers (and actors) in printed texts.Inevitably, this restricts our study to sources that perhaps only recordpartial views or elite perspectives. Ours, however, is neither an exhaus-tive study of the history of corrupt practices nor of corruption in popularculture or even in legal frameworks, although we attempt to integratethis material where possible. Rather, the objective is to identify the pos-sible meanings invested in the term ‘corruption’ (and related terms), byfocussing on how the invocation of corruption appears within the widerstructure of political theoretical argument. In this way, we aim to pro-vide a survey of the variable contours of meaning invested in the term,from antiquity through to the end of the eighteenth century.

We do not claim to identify a more or less continuous tradition ofdiscourse on corruption, nor do we argue for a ‘canonical’ selection ofkey texts and thinkers. Rather, we advocate a new appreciation of therole of corruption in Western political theoretical argument. This role isnot restricted to locating a set of straightforward definitions proposedby different thinkers at different times. Indeed, as Reinhart Koselleckhas suggested, the power of political concepts derives from the his-torical variability or even ‘plenitude of meaning’ invested in their useand re-interpretation across the ages.24 We attempt not only to recoversome of the range of this variability of meaning, but also to high-light that, within that range, corruption can still denote a quite specificset of problematic actions, abuses or misdemeanours. What emergesfrom our story is a concept that has played a very significant, thoughoften underestimated, role in political discourse through the centuries.


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Introduction 5

Corruption is a concept with an ambiguous quality, whose wide con-tours of meaning could readily be expanded or contracted: it did notalways apply to the particularity of the abuse of public office, but oftenconnoted more nebulous fears of moral decay, spiritual degeneration orphysical death.

Throughout Western history, corruption appeared in political tractsand treatises as a label or epithet used to denounce, to criticise, todemonise or to castigate. The term ‘corruption’ has been used in abewildering variety of contexts, from narrowly defined condemnationsof specific misdemeanours, such as bribery or simony (the buying ofchurch offices and spiritual services), through to epic charges of col-lective moral decay or apocalyptic fears of political degeneration andcollapse. Despite – or perhaps because of – this array of usage, the termhas attracted few serious or sustained treatments of its history and mean-ing, unlike the many concepts with which it was often paired, if only incontrast or opposition, such as justice, liberty, probity, limited govern-ment, equality or rule of law. And yet, corruption has had an enduringpresence as a term used to define the boundaries of these concepts andto recommend them as aspirational values or standards. In this sense,corruption has played an important and often unrecognised part in thearticulation of Western political ideas. It is this dual quality of corrup-tion, as a clearly defined but still nebulous charge, that our book aimsto investigate. We begin here, with a brief introduction of the strangelyambivalent qualities that corruption continues to connote.

2. What is corruption?

There is considerable ambiguity attached to the concept of corruption.On the one hand, it is supposed to refer to a relatively discrete setof misdemeanours, if not readily observable (because of their secretivenature) then at least definable by statute. On the other hand, the termcarries a moral weight that almost defies definition. Corruption in thissense is not simply a misdemeanour, or an offence defined by statute,but a moral flaw or a failure of character. Corruption, most importantly,is more than simply a wrong, a crime or an error of judgement becauseit also embodies a dynamic quality. Corruption implies a loss, decayor degeneracy. It shapes, for the worse, the individuals, corporations oreven the whole polity complicit in or tainted by it. The term corruptionmay thus be said to have two rather different connotations. The firstis that with which we are most familiar in modern social-scientific dis-course, namely, as a misdemeanour in (typically) public office, usually


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involving the misuse of office for private (typically pecuniary) gain. Thesecond connotation of corruption encompasses a more dynamic processof decay or degeneration of the moral and political character of individ-uals, corporations, governments or states. We show that the history ofthe idea of political corruption has been characterised by a series of oscil-lations between these two broad but entwined understandings, each ofwhich held a wide variety of imputations.

What we here call the different ‘connotations’ of political corrup-tion are not readily separable. Indeed, part of what gives the term itspeculiar force as a charge or condemnation is that the corrupt misde-meanour (such as bribery or graft) and the corrupt individual (whethera businessperson, politician, or petty official) are both tarnished to somedegree with the mark of moral or political degeneracy. The relationshipbetween these two connotations is, however, far from clear. The major-ity of recent scholarly and governmental interest in corruption seeks totreat corruption more or less exclusively as a particular kind of misde-meanour in public office. Thus, in contemporary neo-liberal economicthought, a primary aim of governments is to secure the requirementsfor a healthy domestic economy underpinned by foreign investment,and among these requirements is the elimination of ‘corruption’.25 Cor-ruption here denotes forms of behaviour that subvert the separation ofgovernment and economy and impose wasteful costs.26

This social-scientific view of corruption is well entrenched in therecent Anglo-American social-scientific literature where the term is mostoften used to describe those activities such as bribery (or other privateinducements offered to determine public decisions), in which publicofficials violate rules or laws for their own personal advantage, whetherfinancial or otherwise.27 On this view, corruption is a technical, more-or-less static phenomenon determined by the violation of codified rulesand laws and clearly defined standards of good governance.28

This rather narrow construction of corruption has been criticised forobscuring the normative elements of the concept. Critics charge that‘narrow’ social-scientific definitions fail to appreciate that corruptionis a ‘contagious’ phenomenon involving ‘duplicity’ that ‘reduces lev-els of morality and trust’, ‘tempts others’ and is ‘difficult to resist’.29

This critical approach also has value in highlighting how perceptions ofcorruption depend on some conception of what it is that has been cor-rupted, and hence entertains a particular vision of the boundaries thatare supposed to have been kept secure from violation.30 As Mark Philphas suggested, identifying political corruption assumes an ideal image ofwhat an uncorrupted politics might be.31 Rather than being a self-evident


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Introduction 7

category of conduct, corruption is a concept whose parameters are setby an implicitly normative vision of what the political realm shouldbe, and how it relates to adjacent economic or social realms. In argu-ing so, critics such as Philp suggest that we need to see corruption, notsimply as a one-dimensional phenomenon (a set of proscribed actions,for example), but as a concept inextricably entwined with moral andpolitical theoretical argument. With this in mind, the term ‘corruption’carries an additional weight because of what its appearance heralds forthe moral development of selves, corporations and polities. To considercorruption in this way is to capture an important historical – but nowrarely articulated – understanding of corruption as a process of moraldecay, degeneration or ‘despoiling of the moral character’ of a person orpolity.32

2.1. Public office and degenerative corruption

This book is a study of the divergent understandings and connota-tions of political corruption in Classical, Medieval and Early ModernEuropean political thought. We use the term ‘political’ in the widestsense, as relating to affairs of the polity more generally through tomatters affecting the proper management and conduct of its variousinstitutions, including the legislature, electoral system, judiciary, exec-utive (including the Crown), bureaucracy, police, defence institutions,imperial organisation and until recently, the established church. Ourinquiry terminates at the end of the eighteenth century, by which timethe term had become more closely aligned with the rationalities of emer-gent liberal democratic governance and political economy. While werange across European thought, our focus ultimately narrows on Britishthought in the eighteenth century mainly because of Britain’s earlyachievement of comparatively high levels of democratic, bureaucraticand economic development in which struggles over ‘corruption’ playeda key role.33

We argue throughout that corruption was broadly understood in twodifferent, though not necessarily exclusive, ways. In the first, whichwe will label the ‘degenerative’ conception, corruption was associatedwith moral and – especially – spiritual decay. But as we will also argue,it was regularly applied in political argument as well. In the secondbroad discourse, which we will call ‘public office corruption’, corrup-tion was understood as an abuse of public office for private gain.Despite its obviously narrow and contemporary relevance, we show inChapter 1 that this understanding of corruption was firmly embeddedin Classical Greek and Roman sources and continued to find expression


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throughout the history of Western political, historical and philosophicalthought.

Both public office and degenerative corruption could be used todenote separate sources and consequences of corruption. In the first,corruption might simply arise from the greed of public officials, whosemisdemeanours need have no significant effects if properly detectedand punished. In the second, however, corruption might be linked tofears of wholesale degeneracy caused by the idleness, luxury or sin-fulness of the young, of women, of the rich, of foreigners or of theentire populace, whose self-evident or slyly lurking dissipation threat-ened to overturn good law and order, proper government and evenwhole empires. As we show in Chapter 2, linking these two apparentlydivergent understandings of corruption was a posited correspondencebetween the macrocosm and the microcosm, which inseparably con-nected the divinely ordained structure of the cosmos and the order ofnature with the structure of society and the bodies of individuals. In dis-course about government, this correspondence was expressed in termsof the metaphor of the body politic that, for many thinkers, expresseda profound truth about the connections between the political, naturaland cosmological orders.34

As a consequence, the prospect of corruption carried real significance.Judgements about the decay of learning, of virtue, of the arts, of thechurch or of political bodies not only pre-supposed a falling away from aformerly superior state, but also carried within them an implication thatsuch corruptions were symptoms of – or would lead to – the actual phys-ical decay or death of communities, institutions, nations or people.35

Throughout the Early Modern period, as we show in Chapters 3 and 4,‘corruption’ continued to denote both decay and the abuse of publicoffice, but by the later eighteenth century, these two meanings becamemore clearly detached.

In this book we show, among other things, that these two looselyconnected, but nevertheless distinct, conceptions existed in parallel forcenturies, with the degenerative conception apparently remaining dom-inant, to lesser and greater degrees, for most of that time. It was not untilthe mid-to-late eighteenth century that the public office conceptionbegan to displace the degenerative conception. We explore the charac-ter of this changing relationship in the eighteenth century in Chapters 5and 6, and offer an explanation for some of the major ideological andhistorical drivers behind the decline of the degenerative conception andthe emergent dominance of the public office conception of corruptionthat persists to the present day.


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1Conceptions of PoliticalCorruption in Antiquity

1. Introduction

It is a commonplace of the literature on corruption that modern usage ofthe term – denoting the use of public office for private (pecuniary) gain –has substantially changed from Ancient Greek, Roman and Medievalusages. The Ancient Greeks and Romans certainly talked about the prob-lems of bribery or buying judicial decisions, activities we would nothesitate to describe as acts of corruption, but they were often framedby concerns about moral corruption, something largely missing fromlate modern and contemporary discourse. Corruption for us representsa form of conduct, such as bribery, in which an individual or group actsin such a way as to exploit public office for personal gain.1 Corruptionmay also be applied to a whole regime or polity in which the principlesof public office are systematically distorted to favour particular groups orfactions. The connotation of moral degeneracy is certainly a feature oran implication of contemporary understandings of corruption, thoughit tends to be overshadowed by concerns about market distortion orlack of governmental probity and transparency. For the Ancient Greeksand Romans, however, the understanding of corruption also imbibednotions of utter destruction, perversion, decay or ruin.2 This imagerybecame even more striking when overlaid by Judeo-Christian associa-tions between corruption and death, and by the pervasive influence ofthe metaphor of the body politic, as will be shown in the followingchapters.

The ancient Greeks imbued ‘corruption’ with a variety of meanings.Corruption almost always referred to a loss of physical form, integrityor moral virtue.3 However, there is substantial conceptual distance, say,between Aristophanes’ focus on the corruption of words in the context

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of the need for purity of language, attacks on Socrates as corruptingthe young and Polybius’ description of corruption as the natural pro-cess by which one system of government changes into another.4 In thischapter, we focus specifically on political corruption as it was understoodin antiquity, mainly in ancient Athens and Rome where we find the bestdocumented cases of this phenomenon; however, evidence relating toother settings is also used where available and appropriate.

Although most classical thinkers associated corruption with nega-tive change and moral decay, there were really two broad discourses ofcorruption in antiquity. The first (which we refer to as ‘degenerativecorruption’ and is sometimes thought of as an exclusively classical pre-occupation) conceived corruption in moralistic terms as a loss of virtuein the polity, a generalised condition afflicting political elites and citi-zens indiscriminately and contagiously. It focused less on the actions ofindividuals than on the loss of virtue and the general moral health ofthe body politic. The stability of the polity and the imperative to protectit from decay was a major theme within this discourse, and there wasa general view that corruption was hard to avoid and even inevitable.Seneca, for example, partly attributed the decline of the Roman Empireto the malevolence of the natural order, which allows nothing to stay atthe peak of its development. ‘Nothing’, he wrote, ‘is durable, whetherfor an individual or for a society’.5 According to Marcus Aurelius, ‘allthat Nature has comprised in the Universe must inevitably perish’,6

while the doctrine of palingenesis (the periodic destruction and re-creation of the world) is fundamental to Stoic theory.7 Similarly, withinthe Christian Biblical tradition, there is foretold a final conflagrationengulfing and ‘devour[ing]’ a ‘corrupted . . . earth’ and its inhabitants.8

Later, more secular thinkers like Machiavelli continued to insist that the‘inevitability of corruption’ was ‘the one great observable fact in humanaffairs’.9

This pessimistic, eschatological type of historiography persisted untilthe eighteenth century when the progressivist view of history beganto take hold (to be discussed further in Chapter 5). However, in theinterim, the assumption of the inevitability of degenerative corruptionwas a conceptual staple of political, historical and religious writing, andit certainly dominated classical approaches to corruption. Fears of polit-ical decrepitude are to be found in the works of such ancient writersas Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Thucydides, Tacitus, Epictetus and Seneca.In these accounts, corruption was the cause and the effect of aggressiveEmpire-building, hedonism (especially indulgence in luxury), materialinequality and civic professionalisation, especially of military functions.


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Conceptions of Political Corruption in Antiquity 11

Successful Empires would be eternally subject to the cycles of greatnessand decline; imperial greatness was achieved by virtue but decline ingreatness was inevitably brought about by the decadence that greatnessbrings.

For many antique thinkers, the end point of corruption was tyrannyand the loss of liberty. According to Ronald Wilson, this is why theancient Greeks and Romans turned to republicanism, believing as theydid that ‘it could resist corruption and ensure liberty better than monar-chy could’.10 Cicero (106–43 BCE), for example, perceived that the keyproblem with Rome was that Sulla’s, Caesar’s and Antony’s autocraticregimes had suppressed public life and, therefore, undermined the virtuethat should have safeguarded against its decline.11 Cicero saw theseautocrats as corrupt enemies of liberty, with the best way of saving therepublic a revitalisation of the Senate.12

In identifying two broad discourses of corruption, we argue that theywere generally conceived as part of the same phenomenon, with spe-cific acts of public office corruption often framed as either symptomsof, or contributors to, the more generalised condition of degenerativecorruption. Therefore, factors thought to cause degenerative corruption,namely luxury, imperial overextension, wealth inequalities and profes-sionalisation of civic functions, tended to be linked to instances of legal-istic, abuse-of-office corruption. Prosperity, for example, was thought tolead to ‘effeminacy’,13 an inattention to the public sphere and an aggra-vation of the wealth inequalities that gave rise to instability, but it alsoamplified the scale and occasions for bribery and embezzlement. Sim-ilarly, overextension not only diverts citizens from the common civicscene, but it also makes it easier for a whole range of corrupt activitiesto take place. For example, the problem of embezzlement or ‘peculation’was exacerbated by distance and the scale of Rome’s Empire.14

The dynamics between public office and degenerative corruptioncould work in both directions, so that public office corruption couldexacerbate degenerative corruption: for example, Aristotle saw pecula-tion of public money as a potential source of constitutional instabilityand so devised an elaborate, financially transparent system whereby ‘thetransfer of . . . revenue’ was to be made in public at ‘a general assemblyof the citizens, and duplicates of the accounts deposited with the dif-ferent brotherhoods, companies, and tribes’.15 In one of the best-knownexamples of the relationship between degenerative and public office cor-ruption, Tacitus explains how Augustus secured his autocratic regimeand the general enervation of the polity by means of bribery and patron-age. In order to ‘suppor[t] . . . his despotism’, he ‘raised to the pontificate


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and curule ædileship Claudius Marcellus, his sister’s son’, honouringother ill-qualified intimates and relations with consulships and ‘impe-rial titles’.16 As a further means by which to ‘concentrat[e] in himselfthe functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws’, Augustusseduced ‘the soldiers with gifts . . . the populace with cheap corn . . . [and]the sweets of repose’ and the nobles with ‘wealth and promotion’, all ofwhich Tacitus likens to a kind of enslavement.17

Despite the close connection between the two understandings of cor-ruption, for the sake of organisation and clarity, we will approach eachdiscourse separately, focusing both on their distinctive features andthen, later, on their relationship. We also devote considerable attentionto showing that the narrower discourse of public office corruption wasfar from monolithic or universally observed for reasons that are exploredbelow. We begin by canvassing the thought of Aristotle, perhaps themost important theorist of degenerative corruption, whose ideas wouldreverberate throughout the intellectual history of the concept.

2. Aristotle and corruption of the body politic

Metaphorical representations of groups of people or whole polities asconstituting a ‘body’ have ancient roots. They obtained their force fromnaturalistic accounts of the origins of human association and politicallife (and hence of all aspirations to a life of virtue) in Greek and Romanthought. In Aristotle’s (384–22 BCE) account, human society originatedin the natural order of rule, of humans over beasts, of the soul overthe body, of men over women and of masters over slaves.18 This naturalstructure of moral, social and political order was often framed in termsof organic or biological metaphors and analogies, whereby the order ofhuman society conformed to or mirrored the order of nature.

One of the most significant and influential of these analogies wasthe image of human society as a ‘body’, in which the different classesformed the organs or ‘members’ whose unity, interconnection andmutual reliance reinforced the presumed need for social harmony. Thiswas the lesson implicit in Aesop’s (620–560 BCE) fable ‘The Belly andthe Members’ (or ‘The Stomach and the Body’). In this fable, the failureof all the ‘parts of the human body’ to ‘function in unison’, and thediscord arising from the fact that each maintained its ‘own opinion’,led the various ‘members’ to ‘revolt’ against the ‘belly’ for ‘just enjoy-ing the delights that were brought’ to it by all the rest.19 The fabledconcordance of polity and body, and the association between the lazyand greedy stomach and corruption, was to recur throughout Western


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intellectual history, along with the association between corruption andchange.

Classical Greek notions of corruption often referred to the process andeffects of change.20 In Aristotle’s physics, for example, all earthly bodieswere in a constant process of change. Change may be measured in thegrowth or reduction of a body, but most importantly, it may also affectthe very substance of a body, determining its ‘coming-to-be’ (or gener-ation) and ‘passing-away’ (or corruption).21 Here, corruption (phthora)denoted the destruction or ruin of something.22 In Aristotle’s politicalthought also, corruption and change were closely linked.

Aristotle’s political thought was coloured by the overriding impor-tance of political stability23 and the need to preserve the politicalcommunity by balancing the ever-present tension between the rich andthe poor. Since simple forms of rule were unstable, the political ‘mean’he endorsed was a mixed constitution in which neither democracy, normonarchy, nor aristocracy alone prevailed; rather, the finished form or‘polity’ borrowed and combined elements of each. While such a com-munity could be described as imperfect, it had the greatest chance ofpreservation and longevity and, therefore, of staving off the horrorsof political dissolution.24 In framing his political thought in this way,Aristotle spoke of two main kinds of political corruption.

The first type was a kind of moral corruption that had political conse-quences. This consisted in the distortion of personal judgement by thepassions, which was bad enough in an individual, but if that individualwere also a ruler, ‘his’ corruption would pervade the polis. As a conse-quence, in matters of judgement and rulership, it is better to rely on themany than on the few, much less a single ruler, for ‘the many are moreincorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of waterwhich is less easily corrupted than a little’.25

The second kind of political corruption to which Aristotle referred wasavarice in magistrates or public officials. In this vein, Aristotle famouslywarned of the danger of ‘insolence and avarice’ in ‘creating revolu-tions’ in the polis. This happens when magistrates ‘conspire against oneanother and also against the constitution from which they derive theirpower, making their gains either at the expense of individuals or of thepublic’.26 For this reason, Aristotle argued that the polis ‘should be soadministered and so regulated by law that its magistrates cannot possi-bly make money’.27 Private gain at public expense was a major source ofirritation to the people in democracies, as was the aristocratic idea thatthe people have no place in rulership. On the other hand, aristocratsdespised being ruled by the people, while the people themselves really


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only desired ‘leisure for their private business’. Aristotle’s felicitous solu-tion was that aristocracy and democracy could only be combined whenthere was ‘no possibility of making money out of the offices’. If this werethe case, the poor among the people would not want public office. Sim-ilarly, although such a constitution combined the democratic insistencethat public offices were open to all, as a matter of course, it ensuredthat only wealthy aristocrats, ‘who do not want money from the publictreasury’, would actually hold them.28

For Aristotle, then, the political problem of corruption was intimatelyentwined with his expressed preference for mixed regimes that were notreliant on the personal will of a single ruler or the collective will of asingle group or faction. It was in this vein that he spoke of the necessityto manage the different parts of the polis in order to guard against the‘disproportionate increase in any [single] part’ of it:

For as a body is made up of many members, and every part ought togrow in proportion so that symmetry may be preserved, but it losesits nature if the foot is four cubits long and the rest of the body twospans; and should the abnormal increase be one of quality as well asof quantity, it may even take the form of another animal.29

While this kind of analogy could well be used to argue against the pre-ponderance of the rich, or the domination of a single tyrant, Aristotle infact used it to buttress his antipathy towards the untrammelled rule ofthe people, especially the poor. This antipathy was expressed in warn-ings that democracy was especially prone to corruption. In The AthenianConstitution, for example, Aristotle criticised Pericles for making the con-stitution more democratic, in part, by introducing paid jury service. Thisgave rise to ‘judicial corruption’ through bribery (doron) and a deterio-ration of the courts because it ensured that ‘ordinary people rather thanthe better sort’ were picked for jury duty.30 Similarly, Aristotle arguedthat the Lacedaemonian (Spartan) constitution was ‘defective’ in open-ing the highest office (the Ephorate) to all the people, ‘and so the officeis apt to fall into the hands of very poor men, who, being badly off, areopen to bribes’.31 Such rulers will ‘ruin the state’ because they seek theirown profit rather than the common good. The disproportionate pursuitof one’s own (or one’s faction’s) profit leads, not only to an asymmetryin the political body, but also to the perversion of rulership.

For Aristotle, then, the political problem of corruption was notdefined solely as private misuse of public funds, though he recog-nised this as a problem, but the larger problem of how to prevent the


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‘corruption’ of the polity itself. This corruption was understood as aprocess of destabilisation, degradation and a perversion of rule, poten-tially culminating in the utter destruction of the polity. Yet, Aristotle’snotion of corruption remains ambiguous insofar as it was unable todefine the threshold at which a polity passes from wholesomeness tocorruption. At the level of the individual confronting corrupting temp-tations, much hinged on the proper use of judgement and the ability tohit the virtuous mean (of temperance or generosity), thus avoiding thevicious excess of prodigality or greed. Aristotle’s reliance on the innercultivation of virtue as a barrier to corruption is inherently difficult totranslate into a political program to prevent or end corruption of thepolity. This fact partly drove the eventual development of a narrower,legalistic account of corruption.

3. Parallel discourses of corruption: Degenerative andpublic office corruption

Albert O. Hirschman once suggested that, until the eighteenth century,corruption ‘stood for deterioration in the quality of government nomatter for what reason’, and that it was only from the seventeenth cen-tury that ‘the monetary meaning [public office] drove the nonmonetaryone [degenerative] out almost completely’.32 John Kleinig and WilliamHeffernan argue that for Plato and Aristotle, ‘the primary focus is ona larger and more intrusive notion of generation or decay’.33 Speakingfor Aristotle, Arlene Saxonhouse has argued that ‘the corruption of theregime . . . is its change in form, not a violation of the public interestin and of itself’.34 Peter Bratsis challenges the assumption that there is‘an unbroken line in the concept of corruption’ (understood as abuse ofoffice) and that it is a ‘concept common to nearly all political forms andhistorical epochs’; the ‘ancient understanding of corruption’ he suggests‘is far removed from the modern one’. On this account, antique Greekauthors held no such conception because they did not have any specificterms for bribery as it is later used.35 We are somewhat sceptical of thesekinds of claims and argue here (as well as throughout this study) thatboth degenerative and public office conceptions characterised discourseon political corruption until comparatively recently.

3.1. The language of corruption

Did the ancients lack the requisite language to speak of corruption as it isnow understood? It is true that there are several words in ancient Greekthat conflate or fail to distinguish between gifts and bribes (including


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doron, lemma, chresmasi peithein).36 In Attic Greek, the word for gifts isdõra, which is also the standard word for ‘bribe’,37 and the most com-monly used term for receiving bribes is dorodokein, which also means‘to receive a gift’.38 Although dorodokia is not the only word used forbribery,39 it is the most frequent and the most readily applied to politi-cal bribery. Surprisingly, for many authors, these terms were neutral andnot necessarily laden with the same moral connotations that a modernreader might bring to them.40 However, note that when Demosthenescalls for an end to dõrodokia, he does mean it pejoratively,41 suggestingthat the issue is more complicated that it at first appears.

It should also be acknowledged that there is another ancient Greekword for bribery that does distinguish gifts from bribes: diaphtherein.42

According to Bratsis, diaphtherein does not mean bribery or corruptionin the modern sense. Rather, he says, it denotes a corruption of themind by which the ability of individuals to make sound judgementsis diminished. In the process of taking a bribe, the citizen has surren-dered free will and has, therefore, lost the ability to exercise judgementas an autonomous member of the polity.43 Diaphtherein is a process thatdestroys the independent judgement of a person,44 leading to his or hercorruption, but the important point is that the corruption of judgementleads a person to abuse her public role for private gain. Accordingly,as Plato indicates, a person whose independence cannot be destroyedcannot be bribed, and is therefore adiaphthorõs. Similarly, Demosthenestells us that an agent who is adiaphthorõs is ‘uncorrupted’ by promisesor prospects of gain.45 For such a person, there is no ‘inducement’ thatcould ‘suborn’ or ‘betray the just claims and the true interests’ of ‘his’country. Instead, ‘he’ administers his public duties ‘in all purity andrighteousness’.46 Diaphtherein causes agents ‘to behave, feel or think inways which impair their performance of their roles in the community’.47

At this point, we begin to see the political and legal significance ofdiaptherein, namely, as something that is likely to induce a public offi-cer to abuse the trust the public has placed in ‘him’ for the sake ofprivate gain.

Diaphtheirein has been described as a decidedly pejorative and‘surprisingly powerful word’ that literally means ‘to destroy’. AlthoughF.D. Harvey notes that it is not immediately clear how bribery anddestruction have come to be conflated here,48 what we are undoubt-edly looking at is an example of a convergence of the public office anddegenerative conceptions of corruption. As Demosthenes tells us, theone who takes bribes has surrendered his free will, and ‘has sold him-self once for all’.49 Just as the (unreconstructed) Athenian describes a


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woman who has allowed herself to be seduced as ‘diaphtheiresthai’, sotoo are those who have been seduced by bribes. Both have compromisedtheir independent judgement and both, as a consequence, have been‘befouled’ or made impure.

Of further significance here is the fact that the Romans did havea specific term for electoral bribery: ambitus. Ambitus connotes anoverdeveloped desire for political glory and literally translates as ‘ille-gal canvassing for office, bribery, striving after popularity or effect’ (wewill say more on this topic presently). We should also take note ofthe invocation of the term corrumpere (‘to corrupt’), which was specif-ically associated in Roman legal terminology with the subversion ofjudicial decisions through bribery or the forgery of documents.50 Ciceroused this term (and its derivatives) in relation to Oppianicus’ bribingof judges and jurors to decide in his favour.51 He stipulated that votesor judicial decisions must be ‘uncorrupted’ (incorruptum), and that pun-ishments should be meted out to those who ‘corrupt’ (corruperit) judges‘by money’ or some other ‘bribe’, as well as to those ‘who corrupt’ (cor-rumpit) a judge through ‘oratory’.52 This term drew strength from its usein another context, that of sexual corruption, as in the phrase ‘to cor-rupt a virgin’.53 Therefore, we know of at least three terms in the Greekand Roman lexicons that denoted corruption as abuse of public officefor personal advantage: diaphtherein, ambitus and corrumpere.

Finally, it should be noted that bribery is not the only form of politi-cal corruption associated with the abuse of public office for private gain.As will be shown, the ancients also worried about other forms of corrup-tion, including extortion, patronage and embezzlement. This may beunsurprising, but what is noteworthy about their concern is the sophis-tication of debates around the topic. The volume and style of discourseon the subject vividly point to a ubiquitous and finely honed apprecia-tion of public office corruption. This is not to suggest, however, that thepublic office conception was universally honoured.

3.2. Corruption and the public/private distinction

It has been argued that ‘political corruption is an exclusively modernphenomenon made possible only after the rise of the public/private splitand the concept of interests’.54 There is, however, considerable evidenceto the contrary.55 Abuse of public office for private gain was perceived asa major problem in both Greece and Rome.56 Athens, for example, had alarge bureaucracy, with vast opportunities for abuse. After it became thecapital, Aristotle estimated that it had around 20,000 city employees.57

Indeed, Barry Strauss has noted that ‘no part of the classical period of


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Athenian history is poor in evidence of bribery and embezzlement’.58

In Greece, public office corruption was recognised as a crime and pun-ished severely, specifically when it was judged contrary to the publicinterest. Demosthenes reports on the law whereby if one:

. . . accepts a bribe from another, or himself offers it to another, or cor-rupts anyone by promises, to the detriment of the people in general,or of any individual citizen, by any means or device whatsoever, heshall be disfranchised together with his children, and his propertyshall be confiscated.59

Accordingly, public office corruption was a significant preoccupation forwriters in ancient Greece and Rome. The ancient Athenians consistentlyevince unease about any intrusion of personal economic motives intothe public performance of offices.60 Plato complained of public officialswho are ‘bribe-takers and money-lovers’, while Aristotle cautions that ‘atyrant . . . has no regard to any public interest, except as conducive to hisprivate ends’ of ‘pleasure’ and ‘riches’, as opposed to the public motivefor ‘honour’.61 Indeed, the only ‘true forms of government’ are thosethat ‘govern with a view to the common interest’ while those that ruleonly in the ‘private interest’ are ‘perversions’.62

Later, in Rome, we have the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (55–135 CE)addressing a literary audience of Rome’s elite. He paints a lurid pictureof systemic corruption that is thoroughly entrenched and normalised:‘[o]ne man gets up at early dawn and looks for someone of the house-hold of Caesar to salute, someone to whom he may make a pleasantspeech, to whom he may send a present . . . how he may gratify one per-son by maliciously disparaging another’.63 Epictetus then speaks directlyto his hypothetical reader, confronting ‘him’ with a series of blunt ques-tions: ‘how did you come to be a judge? Whose hand did you kiss . . . ?In front of whose bedroom door did you sleep? To whom did you sendpresents’?64

According to Cicero, ‘the chief thing in all public administration andpublic service is to avoid even the slightest suspicion of self-seeking’.65

Public officials are bound ‘to keep the good of the people so clearlyin view that, regardless of their own interests, they will make theirevery action conform to that’.66 Further, ‘[e]xploiting the state for selfishprofit is not only immoral: it is criminal, infamous’.67 With a sim-ilar sensitivity to the public/private distinction, the Athenian oratorDemosthenes (384–22 BCE) rails against the use of ‘mercenary soldiers’who barter ‘all the interests of the State, and their own as well, for a


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paltry profit’.68 We find an even better example in a speech given in324–3 BCE by the Athenian lawyer/politician Hypereides (c. 390–22BCE) at the state prosecution of Demosthenes. In a digression on thetypes of political corruption that might be prosecuted successfully,Hypereides cites the case of Aristomachos, a president of the wrestlingacademy who was convicted and fined for private use of a publicresource. The banal and relatively trivial nature of his ‘crime’ underlineshow sensitive ancient Athenians were to the private/public distinction.Apparently, Aristomachos ‘transferred a pick from the wrestling schoolinto his own garden, nearby, and used it there’.69 Hypereides’ impli-cation that the guilty verdict was entirely appropriate suggests a veryfine – perhaps even over-developed – appreciation of public office cor-ruption. Therefore, it seems clear that ancient Greeks and Romans notonly had a clear sense of political corruption as abuse of public officefor private gain, but also had begun to develop a dedicated vocab-ulary for the purposes of identifying and ameliorating this form ofcorruption.

The next section deals with perceived causes of corruption. For thesake of organisation, we divide the discussion into two parts. The firstdeals with degenerative corruption; the second with public office cor-ruption. Nevertheless, we attend to the relationship between both formsand, in the process, seek to throw light on why the attitude to publicoffice corruption in antiquity was not monolithic, consistent or univer-sally honoured. The fact that the ancients were capable of identifyingforms of corruption that would not be out of place in a twenty-first cen-tury discussion of the topic belies the fact that there was a great dealof moral ambiguity at play in the theory and practice of public officecorruption. We explore possible sources of this ambiguity below.

4. ‘Degenerative corruption’

In the following discussion, we explore the peculiar character of thedegenerative conception of corruption, underlining how far removedit was from contemporary understandings of corruption. The discoursearound degenerative corruption typically represented the polity as anorganic, integrated entity that was vulnerable to disease-like degradationfrom a number of sources, including hedonism, effeminisation, wealthinequalities, professionalisation of martial functions, commercialism,economic development and a turning away from agrarianism andaggressive military expansion. Moral corruption was most destructiveif it infected the military and political classes.


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4.1. Luxury and ‘effeminacy’

For classical thinkers, luxurious living was a major source of generalised,degenerative corruption. The view that prosperity, and the luxury itbrought with it, dissipated moral character and destroyed social soli-darity was prevalent as early as the fifth century BCE, and with this viewcame the concomitant belief that virtue could be recovered via a returnto primitive conditions.70 Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE), for example, inveighedagainst the pursuit of gratification beyond our natural needs,71 sug-gesting that ‘avarice and luxury split human beings up and got themto abandon partnership for plunder’.72 Epictetus also admonished hisreaders that needs should be constrained by the modest demands ofthe body.73 Underlining that despotism is the end point of the corruptpolity, Tacitus (56–117 CE) wrote of the ‘craving for luxury and idle-ness’ and ‘loathing [for] discipline and toil’ that spoiled Roman troopsand allowed tyranny to flourish.74 The Roman historian Livy (59 BCE–17 CE) attributed Rome’s former greatness to the simple living standardsof his forebears, declaring that, in the past, ‘poverty with us went handin hand with contentment’. Concomitantly, he traced Rome’s decline tohedonism: ‘wealth has made us greedy and self-indulgence has broughtus, through every form of sensual excess, to be . . . in love with deathboth individual and collective’.75 Few were exempt from this charge:Cicero singles out Scipio Africanus as exceptional in being ‘uncorruptedby greed’ (fuerit abstinens), hence his reputation for ‘incorruptibility’(abstinentiae).76

Lycurgus, Solon, Cato and Augustus had all attempted to curb the softliving of their compatriots. Solon restricted the size of personal estates,forbade extravagant funerals and placed limitations on the amount ofgold jewellery women could wear in ancient Athens.77 The Lex Oppia,a sumptuary law passed in Rome in 215 BC, restricted the amount ofmulti-coloured clothing and gold jewellery a woman could wear andforbade the use of carriages in towns.78 Cicero decreed that ‘[t]hey whodirect the affairs of state, can win the good-will of the masses by no othermeans more easily than by self-restraint and self-denial’ (abstinentia etcontinentia).79 Along these lines, in his attempt to restore the old virtuesto Rome, Augustus set the example – in public at least – with his modestlifestyle and simple personal attire.80

Most authorities held up the simple agrarian life of the independentlandowner as their ideal. Cincinnatus and Manius Curius, who workedtheir own small farms, were the best-known Roman exemplars of thisvirtuous ideal.81 Cincinnatus, a patrician and former statesman, was


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found tilling his own fields when he was unexpectedly called uponto serve Rome as dictator during a period of military crisis. Once theenemy had been repelled and the crisis averted, Cincinnatus imme-diately resigned and returned to his plough after only 15 days inoffice.82

Indulgence in luxuries and a concern with the private sphere alonehad gendered implications for classical thinkers, for degeneration wasclosely associated with the feminisation of men and a consequent lossof martial and civic vigour. Martial, the Emperor Domitian, and his con-temporaries Tacitus and Juvenal, all linked the moral decline of Romansociety with a perceived ‘female degeneracy’.83 ‘Avarice’, Sallust (86–34BCE) wrote, ‘renders the most manly body and soul effeminate’. On thelatter’s view, the rot first set in when Sulla led his conquering armyinto Asia and ‘allowed it a luxury and license foreign to the mannersof our forefathers’. Soon, ‘those charming and voluptuous lands hadeasily demoralized the warlike spirit of his soldiers’.84

The reference to Asia in this context is significant: starting with Homer(c.800–c.701 BCE) and infusing most of ancient Greek and Roman lit-erature is the theme of the corrupting threat of the decadent East.Herodotus wrote that ‘[s]oft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits ofthe earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil’.85 TheEast was embodied in Persia, a prosperous, soft-living Empire ruled bykings. By contrast, Greece was relatively impoverished and the landinhospitable and infertile, but the Greeks were at least hardy andtherefore, partly because of this, free citizens. This East–West opposi-tion re-emerged as a popular trope of eighteenth-century corruptiondiscourse, as we shall see in later chapters.

In any case, there are more direct political consequences of luxury,‘effeminacy and avarice’ that underline how degenerative corruptionis linked to public office corruption. Lovers of luxury must, of neces-sity, be lovers of money and are therefore more susceptible to publicoffice corruption.86 As Aeschines suggested, one important quality nec-essary to qualify as a true ‘friend of the people’ is that a public official‘ought to be temperate and self-restrained in his daily life, lest to supporthis wanton extravagance he take bribes against the people’.87 Polybius(200–118 BCE) argued that the debauchery of the sons of statesmen‘transformed an aristocracy into an oligarchy’.88 Fondness for moneyshould, therefore, be a disqualification for public office. Even the legaland professional pursuit of money was suspect because it could leadto conflicts of interest among those who held public office. Spartan citi-zens were prohibited from participation in trade89 and banking, while in


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Athens, these professions were reserved for resident aliens.90 In Rome, ‘alaw was passed that prohibited senators from investing in overseas tradeor taking government contracts’.91

4.2. Mercenaries

Another factor commonly associated with the ‘effeminisation’ and cor-ruption of the polity is the professionalisation of martial functions, thatis, the substitution of citizen militias with professional or mercenarysoldiers. Foreign mercenaries were regarded as particularly unreliablecompared to citizen soldiers. Polybius, for example, endorsed citizenarmies because the technical and tactical superiority of professionalsoldiers could never compensate for lack of motivation and courage.Because citizen armies are always ‘fighting for their country and theirchildren, [they] can never weaken in the fury of their struggle’.92 Citizensoldiers have other motives that ensure their reliability: according toAristotle ‘true Courage’ is ‘the citizen’s courage’. ‘Citizen troops’ will‘endure dangers’ in order to evade the crushing ‘reproach attachingto cowardice’ and to win ‘the honours awarded to bravery’.93 In thePhilippic, Demosthenes insists that ‘expeditions’ must be composed of‘citizens’ because, historically, when ‘exclusively mercenary forces’ havebeen used, ‘the power of . . . enemies’ increases ‘beyond bounds’. Merce-naries only ‘cast a casual glance at the war for which Athens has hiredthem’ and are quick to jump ship at the first sign that they might notbe paid.94

Mercenaries are dangerous, difficult to control and, of course, expen-sive. Because they owed no loyalty to any city they happened to bedefending, drastic measures were often taken to avoid irritating them.Aristotle reports that, when unable to pay the wages of the ‘large num-ber of mercenary troops in their city’, the people of Chalcedon ‘arrested’passing ships and extracted money from them. Similarly, at Cyzicus,when ‘civil strife’ broke out, in order to pay outstanding wages tomercenaries, the oligarchs were ‘placed under arrest’ and released intoexile only after the payment of an exorbitant ransom.95 Citizen troopswere also seen as security against the ascension of military tyrants.It was sometimes said, for example, that Rome eventually succumbedto military dictatorship because of its use of standing armies whereas inSparta, everyone was a soldier: since the army was the state, it posed nothreat.96

The idea that citizen soldiers preserved virtue was bound up inclassical ideals of civic amateurism, economic austerity, indepen-dence and personal virtue, as exemplified, for example, in the case


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of Cincinnatus. Similarly, in a dialogue between Lamachus andDicaeopolis, Aristophanes has the former (a general) accuse the latter(a foot soldier) of being nothing more than a ‘beggar’. Underlininghis lack of personal ambition and high-minded indifference to wealth,Dicaeopolis replies indignantly: ‘Who am I? A good citizen, not ambi-tious; a soldier, who has fought well since the outbreak of the war,whereas you are but a vile mercenary’.97

4.3. Imperialism

For many classical writers, imperialism was a source of weakness, notstrength, and was associated with the moral and physical enervationbrought on by luxury and prosperity. The Greek historian Polybius andall his disciples, particularly Machiavelli and Montesquieu, argued thatunending lust for power and gratification engenders moral corruption.98

However, the most important pioneer of this idea was Thucydides (c.460–c. 395 BCE), who attributed the desire for conquest to the vice ofhubris, a characteristic of wealthy states that drives them to expand inexcess of need and beyond reason. Hubris is a consequence of overcon-fidence gained through past successes; therefore, large and prosperousnations were more likely to tip into decline.

In his critique of Athenian imperialism, Thucydides wrote that impe-rialism is unavoidably attended with injustice and inconvenience. Thedistraction of colonies leads to the neglect of domestic concerns;provinces are subject to pillaging on the part of soldiers and exorbi-tant taxes on the part of governing states.99 Rapacious Empires harbourthe source of their own inevitable destruction: a tendency to tyranni-cal rule by force and subsequent social unrest.100 Similarly, Plato saw amajor source of corruption in the prosecution of wars not required bydefence or justice but waged simply to satisfy the lust for ‘military power,honour, glory and material gain’.101 Polybius believed that all successfulstates inevitably fell from glory because citizens became enervated bythe wealth and extravagant living that were the spoils of conquest.102

In a similar vein, Plutarch opined that Sparta was corrupted in thefourth century when ‘gold and silver flowed’ into it in the wake ofthe Peloponnesian War. Though virtuous himself, Lysander neverthe-less ‘filled his country with the love of riches and with luxury’, thereby‘subverting the laws of Lycurgus’.103 For the Roman historian Sallust(86–c. 35 BCE), his was an age of corruption and decline, in which thegreed and luxurious living of Sulla’s ex-soldiers cost them their ‘warlikespirit’, martial vigour and virtue. Comfortably settled in the colonies,they enriched themselves by plundering ‘private houses, public places’


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and even sacred shrines, indulging themselves in luxuries stolen fromthe locals.104 Sallust sees the corruption of the military as the deathknell for Roman virtue; indeed, it was a common belief in antiquitythat a peoples’ corruption is complete once the military has becomeinfected.

Prior to Rome’s greatness, waxes Sallust with unabashed nostalgia,‘good morals were cultivated at home and in the field’ and ‘justice andprobity prevailed’. Citizens were ‘loyal’, frugal, bold in times of warand just in times of peace.105 However, when Rome ‘had grown great’through its own efforts as well as through the ‘forced’ subjugation of‘mighty people’, the population grew spoiled and no longer able to ‘bearhardship and dangers, anxiety and adversity’. Now, ‘leisure and wealth’became the people’s ‘burden and . . . curse’ as ‘lust for money’ and power‘grew upon them’. In turn, ‘avarice destroyed honour, integrity, and allother noble qualities’ and ‘taught in their place insolence, cruelty’ anda propensity ‘to neglect the gods, [and] set a price on everything’. Even-tually, ‘corruption spread throughout the populace like a deadly plague’(likening corruption to a contagious disease is a common theme in bothGreek and Roman literature). The Roman ‘state was changed and a gov-ernment second to none in equity and excellence became cruel andintolerable’.106 Poverty now came to be ‘considered a disgrace’ insteadof a sign of virtue and ‘riches, luxury and greed, united with insolence,took possession’ of Rome’s ‘young manhood’.107

The corrupting effect of military imperialism had become even moreof an issue by the fourth century, when the Roman historian AmmianusMarcellinus (c. 325–c. 391 CE) discoursed on the increased opportuni-ties that empire provided for corruption, understood here in both thenarrower and broader senses. Commenting on increasing disturbancesunder Constantius II, he wrote that the latter ‘fattened’ his friends‘with the marrow of the provinces . . . without consideration for justiceor right’, thereby fomenting ‘internal revolt’. These expanding oppor-tunities for the abuse of public office, particularly in the provinces, ledto the enrichment and therefore vitiation of the governing classes athome.108 Each new generation of Rome’s leadership would become moredegenerate, thereby exposing the constitution to collapse.

Imperialism also meant over-extension and in the over-extendedstate, virtue was hard to maintain. Many ancient republicans believedthat some environments were incompatible with the good health andsurvival of republics. For Greek and Roman republicans, full libertycould not be enjoyed in any unit larger than the city-state becausecitizens could not represent themselves directly. Their ideal was direct


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democracy, which was only possible in territories of small extent.109

In addition, the larger the state, the more likely there were to be wealthinequalities.

Coastal or ‘maritime cities’ (such as Carthage and Corinth), whichsurvived largely by sea-going trade were, Cicero observed, notoriouslysubject to corruption and ‘degeneration of morals’.110 Due to theirdependence on maritime trade, such polities were ‘exposed to strangelanguages and customs, and import[ed] foreign ways as well as for-eign merchandise’; they therefore found it difficult to maintain their‘ancestral institutions’. The people spent prolonged periods abroad,‘tempted . . . by soaring hopes and dreams’ and a craven ‘lust for traf-ficking’ that caused them ‘to abandon agriculture and the pursuitof arms’.111 Here, Cicero reiterates a common theme of Roman anti-corruption literature; namely, the superiority of the simple agrarianexistence over commerce and the belief that ‘farming is the nursery ofgood arms, as commerce can never be’.112

Whether or not this kind of atavistic argument holds water, Rome’sdecline does, in fact, seem to have correlated with an imperial escala-tion. With the spread of its Empire, Rome was no longer able to exert theeffective ties of obedience that had previously made it strong. In its ‘bet-ter centuries’, it had been able to enforce law effectively, construct publicworks and wage war with great efficiency because ‘a generally acceptedcode of obligations pervaded both its public and private relations’. How-ever, over time, ‘both public and private power came to be treated as asource of profit’, the results of which were ‘seriously dysfunctional’.113

Despite an increase in the size of the bureaucracy and the decline ofamateurism in martial functions, the extent of the Empire not onlymade it difficult to maintain uniform standards of governance and pro-bity, but also opened up myriad opportunities for extortion and othersins against the public.

4.4. Wealth inequalities

For many classical thinkers, economic and social inequalities were inim-ical to liberty and stable republics. Plato (c.427–c.347 BCE) criticisedextremes of wealth brought on by the mindless worship of materialwealth, arguing that it would lead to abuse, corruption and the eventualoverthrow of the state by the indigent poor.114 Linking the generalisedmoral conception of degenerative corruption to the narrow, legal impli-cations of public office corruption, Demosthenes refers to the conflictaroused by the ability of the rich to flout the law: ‘Where the rich areconcerned’, he says, ‘the rest of us have no share in our just and equal


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rights . . . the rich have witnesses and counsel in readiness, all primedagainst us: but as you see, my witnesses are some of them unwillingeven to bear testament to the truth’.115

Aristotle decreed that the best states were dominated by a large middleclass; this reduced class rivalry and therefore promoted order and liberty.By contrast, a state characterised by wealth polarisation was riven withconflict and prone to tyranny. Wealth discrepancies restricted freedomand suppressed virtue because the wealthy would become preoccupiedwith materialism and money-making, while the poor would lack thewherewithal to defend either their own liberty or that of the republic.116

Aristotle and the ancient republicans believed that citizens should becapable of both ruling and being ruled. The rich, spoiled by luxury andhabits of indiscipline, ‘are neither willing nor able to submit to author-ity’, while the poor are ‘too degraded’ to rule responsibly. ‘[T]he oneclass cannot obey, and can only rule despotically; the other knows nothow to command and must be ruled like slaves. Thus arises a city, not offreemen, but of masters and slaves’.117 A large middle class is conduciveto liberty because its members are capable of both ruling and beingruled.118 Middle class citizens, Aristotle explains, are the ‘most secure ina state, for they do not, like the poor, covet their neighbours’ goods; nordo others covet theirs, as the poor covet the goods of the rich . . . they nei-ther plot against others, nor are themselves plotted against’. The middleclasses are also less prone to ‘faction’, thereby ensuring political stability.The most fortunate states are those where wealth is evenly distributed,for when ‘some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise’either ‘an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy’, both of which tendtowards tyranny and violence.119

It is reported that Lycurgus (c. 820–730 BCE), the legendary law-giverof Sparta, sought to forestall class conflict by distributing a plot of land(cleros) to each citizen to ensure economic independence.120 He alsooutlawed ‘all needless and superfluous arts’, withdrew gold and silvermoney as forms of currency, replacing it with iron money, and orderedthat all meals be taken communally so that only certain prescribedfoods could be consumed. This prevented the wealthy from taking ‘theirmeals at home, reclining on costly couches at costly tables’.121 Similarly,the Athenian statesman Solon (c. 638–558 BCE) sought to achieve eco-nomic democracy with legislation that cancelled debts and limited theamount of land a person could own. He also prohibited the enslavementof citizens unable to repay debts. As a nation of mainly middle-classlandowners, the Athenian republic thereby managed to remain stablethroughout the fourth and fifth centuries.122


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The same theme emerges in Roman literature. Sallust sees Rome’s mil-itary success – especially after the defeat of Carthage – as exacerbatingclass conflict. Rome’s success urged the nobles to exploit their powerin the search for further power and wealth:123 ‘[a]ffairs at home and inthe field were managed according to the will of a few men, in whosehands were the treasury, the provinces, public offices, glory and tri-umphs’. The rest of the people ‘were burdened with military service andpoverty’ while ‘the generals divided the spoils of war with a few friends’.Soon, ‘civil dissension’ (namely the seditions) arose ‘like an upheaval ofthe earth’.124 Both Florus and Lucan attribute the seditions – from theGracchi to Livius Drusus – to the wealth of Rome on the one hand, andthe inequalities that persisted and were even exacerbated by it, on theother.125

As has been mentioned, Aristotle offered a number of structural expla-nations for the decline of constitutions, chief of which is lack of balanceor ‘symmetry’ in the constitution, hence his famous advocacy of mixedgovernment as well as the redistribution of power and wealth. Mostclassical republicans held that absolute power corrupts absolutely; theyrejected total forms of rule and demanded that their republics, eitherthrough a democratic or mixed constitution, delegate at least somepower to the citizenry.126

5. Public office corruption

In this section, we show how well-developed was the conception ofpublic office corruption in antiquity by examining its treatment in dis-course, law and practice. However, at the same time, we also attempt tomap and comprehend the fractures, tensions and contradictions in theclassical attitude to public office corruption that prevented it from beingeither monolithic or universally honoured. In other words, we attemptto make sense of the mixed messages about public office corruption thatseem to be communicated in antique literature.

5.1. Electoral corruption

For Polybius (200–118 BCE), the Carthaginians had a barbaric attitudeto corruption compared to Rome, whose ‘laws and customs’ concerning‘money transactions’ were obviously ‘superior’. In Carthage, ‘no activ-ity which results in a profit is seen as a cause for reproach’, whereas tothe Romans ‘nothing is more disgraceful than to receive bribes or toseek gain by improper means’. This is demonstrated by the fact that,while among the Carthaginians electoral ‘bribery is openly practiced’,


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‘at Rome it is a capital offence’.127 The Greeks were just as bad accord-ing to Polybius: ‘For since by this time bribery and the notion that noone should do anything gratis were very prevalent in Greece’ whereas inRome, although not as good as in ‘earlier times’, most Roman officialscould be trusted to resist bribes.128 This assessment seems to have beenrather optimistic.

In fact, compared to Athens, ambitus, or electoral bribery (the nounambito connotes the pursuit of public office and acclaim, usually toexcess),129 was a far worse problem for the Roman Republic and is a ubiq-uitous source of complaint in the literature and records of the period.For example, it is reported that Julius Caesar won the office of PontifexMaximus through bribery, while Cato is said to have bought the electionof his daughter’s husband, Bibulus.130 Lucan, commenting on the rivalrybetween Pompey and Caesar, lamented that electoral politics in Romehad degenerated to the point where ‘office was snatched by bribery’ andthe people’s ‘support’ was up ‘for auction’.131 Ambitus was even given aspecial role by some authors in precipitating the civil war.132 In a letterto Lucilius, Seneca paints a sordid picture of the hustings, rhetoricallyasking how anyone could:

. . . call it enjoyable, when the tribes are called together and the candi-dates are making offerings in their favourite temples – some of thempromising money gifts and others doing business by means of anagent, or wearing down their hands with the kisses of those to whomthey will refuse the least finger-touch after being elected?133

Electoral bribery, like most other forms of corruption, seems to havebeen fairly normalised.134 In fact, it was such big business that it evengave rise to its own profession: distributors of bribes called divisores. Nev-ertheless, there was much moralising and handwringing on the subject:Cicero emphasised the importance of laws to prevent the ‘buying ofvotes’,135 and the sumptuary laws introduced from 182 onwards had thedual purpose of both reducing virtue-sapping luxury as well as limitingthe amount that political elites could spend on gifts and entertainmentfor the purposes of drumming up electoral support.136

Ambitus was so bad in Rome that many welcomed the demise of therepublic, simply because it meant the end of elections. In the year 376,Q. Aurelius Symmachus wrote with relief of the ‘blessings of our age’:

[T]he hideous voting tablet, the crooked distribution of the seatingplaces in the theatre among the clients, the venal run. All of these


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are no more! The elections are transacted between the senate and theemperors: equals elect equals, and the final decision rests with thesuperiors.137

The end of the republic was not, of course, the end of corruption, merelythe beginning of a new era in the story of Roman corruption. Now, theclientela became even more important to Roman politics and patron-age and clientage became ‘the mainspring of Roman public life’.138 ThePrincipate of Augustus saw a particularly rapid escalation of the devel-opment of the system of personal clientage.139 This problem becameworse over time. By the fourth century AD, the number of civil servantshad escalated considerably, and it is estimated that between 30,000 and35,000 were employed in the civil service, compared to only a few hun-dred at the end of the second century. They tended to be concentratedin certain areas, however, leaving vacuums in others that were filledby patronage. These vacuums (which were not, of course the exclusivesites of patronage), coupled with the sheer numbers of state officials,expanded opportunities for abuse in a system where it was extremelydifficult to exert proper control.140 This situation gave rise to specificforms of abuse that contemporaries understood as types of public officecorruption.

5.2. Extortion

Reports of extortion were very common in classical literature. In 54 BCE,Aemilius Scaurus was indicted for extortions he had committed whilegovernor of Sardinia and Corsica.141 Underlining that the exploitationof subject peoples should not be an assumed perk of occupation, Johnthe Baptist, in Luke 3, admonishes Roman tax collectors to ‘[c]ollect nomore than is appointed you’, and instructs a group of Roman soldiersto ‘be content with your wages’ and refrain from extorting money fromthe population ‘by violence or false accusation’.142

Extortion on the part of occupying soldiers was a problem in theRoman provinces in all periods and dominions of the Principate,143 andcomplaints about demands made on civilian populations have beenrecorded throughout Asia Minor, North Africa, Syria, Thrace, Moesia,Germany, Britain and Egypt.144 Away from the centre of Rome and offin the Provinces, governors had almost free rein to do as they pleased.Roman soldiers had myriad opportunities for extortion among nativepopulations: they collected and enforced taxation, occupied clericalpositions on the staff of provincial governors and were assigned to sup-ply the legions. As law enforcers, soldiers sold their willingness to turn


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a blind eye to misdeeds.145 The power of the military in this respectbecame greater as the Empire became more violent and punitive towardsits citizens: more than ever, civilian populations eager to escape tortureand the death penalty could be exploited.146 Roman soldiers travellingthrough Roman dominions also made demands upon the local popula-tions for accommodation, provisions and transportation.147 In a speechdating from CE 391–2, Libianus asks the Emperor Theodosius to enforcethe laws against army officers who have extorted money from inhab-itants of the colonies who, in turn, used the military protection tooppress their neighbours.148 Such problems seem to have been worsein the late stages of the Principate.149

According to the fourth-century Roman historian AmmianusMarcellinus, Claudius Petronius Probus (358–390) – who was Proconsulof Africa and thereafter Praetorian Prefect, in turn, of Illyricum, Gauland Italy – gained most of his wealth and power from ‘illegal exactionsfrom the local population’.150 In order to curry favour at Rome, Probusalso ruthlessly over-taxed the provincials on tribute for the Emperor.151

Ammianus reports the disastrous effects in dramatic detail:

Finally, the burden of the tributes and the repeated increase in taxescompelled some of the most distinguished families, hounded by theirfear of the worst, to leave their country; others, crushed by the sever-ity of the dunning tax-collectors, having nothing to give, becamepermanent inmates of the prisons; and some of these, now weary oflife and light, died by the noose as a welcome release.152

Despite this damning critique, the long and successful career of Probusis proof that corruption paid. The fact that Probus still had a good rep-utation in Rome at the time of his death indicates that corruption wasmore of a political necessity than an impediment.153

5.3. Patronage

Patronage and nepotism were the norm rather than the exception inAthenian and Roman public life. Roman literature and legal records arefull of high ideals about how elites should rule, but the fact of the matterwas that Roman politicians had to achieve their ambitions via networks,patronage, wealth, status, military glory and oratory; hence, a crucialfactor in their success was their ability to curry favour with others in thegoverning class.154 In fact, few could afford to stand aside from the webof patronage.155 In a conversation cooked up by the historian Xenophon(c. 430–354 BCE) between Socrates and Glaucon, Socrates tells Glaucon


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that there is ‘no more honourable ambition in the world’ than politics,but then immediately proceeds to inform his young friend that the bestthing about holding public office, apart from bringing glory to himselfand his state, is that it will enable him to ‘get whatever [he] want[s]’.Furthermore, he will now ‘have the means of helping [his] friends’.156

One of the factors complicating our understanding of what exactlyRoman public officials owed to their public was the notion of gratia,which meant something like a favour for which one expresses grati-tude. Gratia could thus encompass gifts, donations and hospitality givenin the context of a relationship between a socially dominant patronand his or her clients. Gratia obviously involved reciprocation andcould include the influence or favouritism that a client could bring tobear in civil and legal affairs through his relationship with a powerfulpatron.157 The widespread and routine practice of patronage in AncientRome was a minefield of subtle and not-so-subtle understandings andgratia and patronage were not always seen as corrupt or corrupting.Some, for example, might castigate the corruption consequent on themonopolisation of gratia by the Emperors, and yet lament the pass-ing of more ‘widespread’ gratia among the leading noble families of theRepublic.158

In the second century CE, the Consul and orator Marcus CorneliusFronto (100–170), who had a reputation for high-mindedness, wrote aletter to his colleague, the judge Claudius Severus, which typified howthings worked in Rome. Fronto begins by disingenuously insisting thathe has no wish ‘to undermine the fairness of the judge or to lead himaside from giving true judgment’, but then proceeds to offer a pottedhistory of the ‘long established’ custom of ‘bringing forward’ characterwitnesses in legal cases, hence his warm recommendation of ‘a mostintimate friend’ who is ‘shortly to plead his case before you’. Somewhatdefensively, Fronto then asks rhetorically ‘[w]herefore this [historical]preface?’ on the time-honoured custom he is obviously so uneasy aboutinvoking himself. His answer: ‘[t]hat you may not think that I have hadbut scant regard for your dignity and authority’. Despite his obvioussense of embarrassment in asking Severus to put his hand on the scalesfor his client, Fronto nevertheless ‘earnestly’ asks Severus ‘to give thisvery dear friend of mine a favourable hearing’.159

These passages are salutary in highlighting the conflicts around atti-tudes to patronage, particularly the tension between the law and highmoral rhetoric, on the one hand, and customary practice, on the other.It underlines that even famously upright figures like Fronto were pre-pared to pervert the course of justice in the belief that it was sanctified


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by custom. Yet, we are also struck by the degree of moral uncertaintythat vexes Fronto’s request; as a Stoic man of learning, he would havebeen well aware of where his moral duty lay. Impartiality is, after all,the test of moral maturity in the Stoic agent.160 Perhaps he also under-stood that such interference had a disproportionately bad effect onthe legal standing of the poor. As Ammianus Marcellinus would laterwrite, ‘unprincipled men inflict injuries because the laws are not validagainst all classes. A transgressor who belongs to the wealthy class is notpunished for his injustice, while a poor man, who doesn’t understandbusiness, pays the legal penalty – that is, if he doesn’t die before thehearing’.161

Ammianus indicates that Probus got away with his system of extor-tion in the provinces for so long by exploiting the widespread systemof patronage that existed in the late Empire.162 Probus was ‘generousand ready to advance his friends, but sometimes a cruel schemer, work-ing harm by his deadly jealousies’. He enjoyed ‘great power so longas he lived’, not only because of ‘his constant resumption’ of publicoffices and the vast amounts of money he gave away, but because hewas also willing to turn a blind eye to the indiscretions of his friends,often because they were committed for his benefit.163

Yet, we have an alternative perspective on Probus’ penchant for help-ing out his friends that might explain his persistent success and which,more importantly, underscores the degree of moral uncertainty aroundpatronage. Claudian, in his poem celebrating the joint consulship ofProbus’ sons in 395, reflects euphemistically, not on Probus’ corruption,but on his generosity and unselfishness, even as he acknowledges thatProbus lived in the lap of luxury while receiving a steady stream ofclients into his home. Note the twisted logic as Claudian rationalisesProbus’ patronage as a preventative of his own moral corruption:

Though his life was surrounded with luxury he knew how to pre-serve his uprightness uncorrupted. He did not hide his wealth in darkcellars nor condemn his riches to the nether gloom, but in showersmore abundant than rain would ever enrich countless numbers ofmen. The thick cloud of his generosity was ever big with gifts, fulland overflowing with clients was his mansion, and thereinto therepoured a stream of paupers to issue forth again rich men.164

Despite how things actually operated, Cicero tells us that the duties ofpublic officials are very clear: ‘Those who propose to take charge of theaffairs of government’ should remember Plato’s rule that one is bound


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‘to care for the welfare of the whole body politic and not . . . the interestsof some one party to betray the rest’. To do otherwise is to ‘introduceinto the civil service a dangerous element: dissension and party strife’.165

In response to those who defend patronage and nepotism as virtuous(after all, aren’t we supposed to help our friends and family?), Ciceronotes that there ‘are many’ who in pursuit of ‘eminence and glory . . . robone to enrich another’. Yet, these people should think again if they‘expect to be thought generous towards their friends’ just because ‘theyput them in the way of getting rich’: ‘[s]uch conduct’ is ‘so remote frommoral duty that nothing can be more completely opposed to duty’.166

Cicero indicates that, although the Romans often characterised theirpatron–client relationships as amicitia (‘friendship’), they should notbe regarded as such because of their instrumental, unstable and usu-ally temporary character. In fact, amicitia and instrumental friendshipare fundamentally incompatible since true friendship is imperilledwhen those involved ‘come into competition for public office’. Amongthe governing elites, there is ‘no greater plague affecting friendshipsthan . . . the race for public honour and glory, on account of whichthe greatest enmities may arise between those who were the best offriends’.167 Despite Cicero’s apparent certainty, the evidence on attitudesto patronage in antiquity was contradictory and the question of whetherit was an acceptable institution was by no means settled.

5.4. Bribery

In Greece, dõra were routinely offered and accepted. Thucydides notes,for example, that among the Odrysian Thracians, ‘it was quite impos-sible to get anything done unless one first produced a present’.168

Aristotle decreed that ‘wealthy citizens’ be prevented from ‘undertak-ing expensive and useless public services, such as the giving of cho-ruses’ and ‘torch-races’ presumably because such activities smacked ofcorruption.169 Bribery was considered to be the worst and most ubiqui-tous form of corruption at both Athens and Rome. What is noteworthyis that, in both settings, the remedies were usually institutional, rule-oriented and legalistic, designed with the knave principle in mind ratherthan with a naïve desire to restore virtue, as per degenerative corruptionunderstandings.

Some were more disapproving than others, and it would be heroic toassume that ‘all Athenians shared precisely the same beliefs about themorality of dõrodokia’.170 In any case, evidence from Greek law courtspeeches as well as comic drama sources indicates that accusations ofbribery were common. Bribes could decide ‘matters of war and peace,


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the movement of armies, the destruction of cities’ and, due to the preva-lence of corrupt embassies, the fate of whole nations. Bribes ‘couldwin an alliance . . . could cause the retreat or diversion of armies andfleets . . . raise a siege or procure a surrender’.171 As far back as the fifthand fourth centuries BCE, there are numerous references to treasonousmilitary capitulation brought about through bribery.172 For example, theSpartan King Pleistoanax was believed to have retreated from his inva-sion of Attica after being bribed,173 while Hypereides (390–322 BCE)attributes all of Philip II of Macedon’s success to bribery.174 That onecould bribe even the oracles is reflected in four recorded cases wherethe Delphic oracle was subjected to improper pressure.175 For exam-ple, Pleistoanax and his brother Aristocles paid the priestess at Delphito produce inauspicious oracles for the Spartan delegations.176 Homerconfirms the Greek prejudice that the gods can be propitiated throughgifts and prayers.177 The idea that everyone had a price, even the gods,was a cultural commonplace in Athens; therefore it should come asno surprise that the Greeks also thought it acceptable to offer andreceive bribes to those mortals who had the power to improve theirfortunes.178

Although bribery seems to have suffused every aspect of Greek life, itis almost impossible to determine the full extent of political corruption,and to separate real corruption from accusations levelled at politicalopponents for strategic purposes.179 But if the literary sources are to betrusted, few Athenian politicians were immune to bribery: according toF.D. Harvey,180 only five incorruptible figures are mentioned in all theliterature: Aristeides, Ephialtes, Perikles, Lykourgos and Phokian. To thislist, we can add the name of Lysander who, according to Plutarch,181

‘was never mastered’ or ‘corrupted by money’ or gifts. The fact that sofew were deemed incorruptible indicates, at the very least, that briberywas the norm rather than the exception in Athens. In fact, it has beenestimated that for the period 430–322 BCE, between 6 to 10 per centof major public officials were brought to trial on accusations of bribery,and around half of them were probably convicted.182

Judicial corruption seems to have been commonplace at Athens,where money ‘induced men to start, or prevent or drop legal action’and where speakers, witnesses and jurors could all be bribed.183 The‘Old Oligarch’184 reports that citizens in the Athenian provinces couldavoid having to wait for extended periods to have their cases triedin Athens if they were prepared to grease the palms of the relevantofficials.185 The corruption of juries was particularly ubiquitous andthe Athenians went to considerable lengths to curb the problem. They


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employed complicated procedures to empanel juries,186 and jurors wereprevented from knowing which case they would be hearing until theyactually arrived at court.187 The number of jurors was also remarkablylarge – perhaps absurdly so – in order to overcome the problem of graft:if the case involved a sum of less than 1,000 drachmas, 201 jurors wouldhear the case; if more, 401.188 On particularly important cases, theremight be between 500 and 2,500 jurors. Such large numbers made itdifficult to bribe juries; even so, it still occurred.189

Bribery was taken seriously at Athens and much was done toavert it, sometimes with success.190 Penalties were generally stiff whenapplied and ranged from minor sanctions, such as confiscating thebribe, through to a large fine, termination of public office and evenexecution.191 Magistrates at Athens worked long hours for low pay, aserious inducement to corruption; however, their accounts were strictlyaudited (by no less than ten accountants) and anyone found guilty ofembezzling public funds had to pay a fine worth ten times the amountappropriated. The same formula was also used for those found to haveaccepted bribes.192 It is said that when a jury found Pericles guilty ofstealing five talents of public money he was required to pay 50 talentsinto the treasury,193 while archons convicted of taking dõra had to erecta golden statue by way of restitution. Such penalties could ruin even cit-izens of considerable means: Demosthenes, for example, went into exilebecause he was unable to pay his fine.194

Judicial corruption also posed serious problems at Rome: Cicerowarned of the danger of distortions in the application of law. Truelaw he described as ‘that which influence (gratia) cannot bend, norpower (potentia) break, nor wealth corrupt (adulterari pecunia posi)’.195

In a famous series of speeches made by Cicero in 70 BCE during the cor-ruption and extortion trial of Gaius Verres (former governor of Sicily),Cicero averred that it was ‘the common talk of every one, not onlyat Rome, but among foreign nations also, that in the courts of law asthey exist at present, no wealthy man, however guilty . . . can possibly beconvicted’.196

The richer Rome grew, and the more extensive her Empire, the greaterthe problem of bribery seemed to become. By the late republic, it wasinstitutionalised and the sums required had become enormous. Therewere even organised associations – many of them based on tribes –set up for extortion and intimidation. The long-term political conse-quences of this kind of corruption had become noticeable by the 60sand 50s BCE, when the massive borrowing needed for bribes createdfinancial and political instability and a subsequent loss of faith in the


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constitution. This, in turn, is said to have contributed to the civil war.197

By the time of the Principate, it was considered so serious a problemthat in the year 55 M. Crassus sponsored the lex Licinia de sodaliciis,which proscribed organised bribery clubs and provided powers to prose-cute and punish individual members.198 Similarly, the lex Calpurnia of 67stipulated a penalty of expulsion from the Senate and perpetual exclu-sion from the honores (subsequent laws stipulated a penalty of exile frombetween ten years and life).199 In 81 BCE, the dictator Sulla instituted alaw that penalised bribery with a maximum penalty of a ten-year exclu-sion from public office. A further law (the Lex Cicia de donis) of 204proscribed the receipt of gifts from patrons.200

6. Complications in attitudes to and conceptions ofcorruption

6.1. Catapolitical bribery

One factor that might have contributed to a high level of tolerancefor routine, low-level corruption in Greece was the existence of whathas been labelled ‘catapolitical bribery’.201 Jack Cargill suggests that,although classical thinkers did not regularly conceive gift-giving as aform of corrupting bribery, it could be considered so when judged con-trary to the public interest, as when gifts are given to facilitate treason.202

Claire Taylor adopts a similar line: ‘the Athenian public seems to haveaccepted this situation so long as the politicians did not betray the inter-ests of the city’.203 Bribery was one thing, but bribery that hurt theinterests of the polis was quite another.

When Aeschines attacks Demosthenes with the accusation that ‘hemade enormous profits out of politics’ and paid his ‘expenses’ with‘Persian gold’, the crux of the problem is that Demosthenes ‘supplie[d]his wants, not from his private income, but from [Athens’] perils’.204

Hypereides makes a similar point: ‘Whether someone took money yousee, is not as grave an issue as whether he took it from an impropersource’. ‘[P]rivate individuals’ who take gold are not ‘criminals in thesame way as’ those who have duties to the public, such as ‘speakers andthe generals’.205 Taking ‘bribes against’ one’s ‘country’s interests’ crim-inally ‘jeopardize[s]’ the ‘prosperity’ and ‘safety of the polis’.206 Withthe boot on the other foot now, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines oftaking bribes from Philip of Macedon; by being in ‘the pay of their ene-mies’, Aeschines has seriously compromised the interests of the stateand his ‘fellow citizens’.207 Hypereides insists that it is quite accept-able to enjoy some perks from public office and, further, that it is


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understandable that the courts might turn a blind eye in such circum-stances. But ‘[t]here is just one proviso: what they take must be in, notagainst, [the state’s] interests’.208 In this case, Hypereides is referring to acase of embezzlement from the state involving vast sums in which theaccused [Demosthenes and Demades] have, by their actions, ‘threatenedthe very body politic’. Hypereides declares that he is not particularlyinterested in cases of non-catapolitical corruption; in fact, he ‘has neverin [his] life . . . prosecuted a private individual’ but only ‘very powerfulfigure[s] in public life, like “speakers” and “Generals” who “are in aposition to harm the polis”’.209 This latter and higher order of briberyhas been labelled ‘catapolitical’ corruption.

The main point to be taken here is that some took a consequen-tialist rather than a deontological view of corruption, whereby briberywas only a crime if its consequences injured the public interest.210 Andyet, the claim that some bribery is catapolitical and other instances notseems to be based on an unstable distinction since, arguably, all cor-ruption ultimately runs counter to the interests of the state and itscitizens. Whether the corruption entails colluding with the enemy toimperil the very survival of the state, or whether it is a more diffuse,systemic problem – made up of many small acts perpetrated by manyindividuals, which in the long run lead to a dysfunctional civil service,political instability and economic decline – both end up being effec-tively catapolitical. Some antique authors seemed to understand this andwere, therefore, less inclined to make allowances. For example, Aristotletells us that ‘insolence and avarice’ play a role ‘creating revolutions’because ‘grasping’ magistrates ‘conspire . . . against . . . the constitutionfrom which they derive their power, making their gains either at theexpense of individuals or of the public’.211 The fact that the wealthycould manipulate the justice system was, for Cicero, ‘pernicious tothe republic’.212 Ammianus appreciates that extortion in the provincescauses mass emigration, while judicial corruption disadvantages thepoor.213 Meanwhile, Lucan calculates that the outrageous cost of elec-toral bribery ‘destroyed the state’ because it led to unconscionable levelsof debt, soaring interest rates and eventually catastrophic civil war.214

Nevertheless, there is some evidence that catapolitical bribery wasconsidered in a special class. The most pejorative adjective in Greekis aischron, which translates as ‘shameful’. It is a word that is oftenpaired with acts of bribery but significantly, this adjective is most oftenused in relation to the commission of catapolitical bribery.215 WhenDemosthenes enjoins the Athenians to purify the city of dõrodokia, itis catapolitical bribery that he finds so repugnant. Indeed, fines and


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other such lenient penalties are out of the question in such cases: those‘who have sold themselves to Philip must be abhorred and cudgelled todeath’.216 Perhaps the most extreme reaction to catapolitical dõrodokia isrelated by Herodotus in the story of Lycides, a member of the Boule, whoargued provocatively in 479 that Athens should come to terms with thePersians. Lycides was promptly set upon by bystanders and members ofthe council and stoned to death. His wife and children soon suffered thesame fate at the hands of the Athenian women.217 It is unclear whetherLycides had actually taken a bribe, but the point here is that there appearto have been no such summary and brutal reprisals for the receipt of dorafor other motives.

Further evidence that catapolitical bribery might have occupied a spe-cial place – at least as far back as the fourth century BCE – is found inthe institution of an Athenian law reported by Hypereides: the nomoseisangeltikos.218 This law targeted orators, presumably because of theirspecial role in political life and their ability to sway public opinion. Thelaw specifies the penalty of impeachment for any orator who ‘betraysa city or . . . an army or fleet; or says things . . . not in the best interestsof the Athenian people and takes money for doing so’. In the caseof such serious crimes, ‘there should be no procedural delay whatso-ever’ in the meting out of justice.219 For the ancient Romans, oratorywas a performative practice oriented towards moving an audience bysupposedly exemplifying logical argument, verbal style and bodily con-trol as outward displays of the orator’s virtue and good judgement.220

But the speaker’s art was also seen as a potential means of subvertingindependent judgement and could, therefore, be corrupting.

6.2. Political amateurism, low wages and slavery

Another factor that undoubtedly encouraged public office corruption inboth Athens and Rome was political amateurism. This is ironic, con-sidering that political and civic amateurism were generally posited assafeguards against degenerative corruption. In Greece, after 411 BCE,most magistrates were not paid for their services and the temptationto augment one’s income must have been high.221 Nor were politicianspaid salaries; some, like members of the Boule, might have received asmall state income (mithos) and their expenses were paid by the statewhen they travelled on embassies. Because pay was low to nonexistent,politicians had to be independently wealthy. They had considerableexpenses, one of which involved the gathering of information to remainproperly informed. For example, Xenophon has Socrates tell the newlyminted politician Glaucon that in order ‘to win fame and admiration


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in public life, try to get a thorough knowledge of what you proposeto do’. He then proceeds to tax Glaucon’s patience with an exhaus-tive list of the things he will need to know about the social, politicaland economic conditions of his region in order to govern effectively.222

A politician also needed money for entertaining and to pay subordinatesand bailiffs to run his business or farm while he worked for the State.Therefore, it is hardly surprising that some accepted gifts to supplementtheir incomes.223 For example, Aeschines attacked Demosthenes withthe accusation that ‘he made enormous profits out of politics’ withoutever laying out any of his own money for expenses, which were paid for,dodgily, with Persian gold.224

In Rome, similar and additional conditions on the ground provideduncongenial conditions for proper observance of the letter of the law.For example, during Cicero’s time there existed corporations of minorbureaucrats called decuriae, who performed menial tasks for magistratessuch as account-keeping, making announcements and delivering mes-sages. Their pay (between 300 and 1,200 sesterces per year) was roughlyequivalent to that of a ditch-digger’s pay and, therefore, the commonexpectation was that the income of a decuriae would be supplementedby perquisites (commoda). There was great competition for these posi-tions, and they were bought and sold at high prices. The documentaryevidence indicates that decuriae could do well and many even becamewealthy, something that could not have occurred unless the commodawere lucrative. It is also worth bearing in mind that many decuriae wereformer slaves, and it was common practice for slaves to ask for andreceive tips from anyone who entered the house of the master, fromtradesmen through to his rich friends. Having achieved their freedom(often bought with tips), the decuriae continued to take tips in theirpost-slavery lives with no sense of impropriety.225 In fact, tipping wascarried on in all respectable Roman homes as well as in public, ensuringthat the line between generosity and bribery was continually blurred.

6.3. Bribes or gifts?

Despite all the legal strictures and high-minded moralising aboutbribery, the distinction between a gift and a bribe seems to havebeen very unstable in the classical period. In this murky atmosphere,even men of honour could make an honest mistake: take the caseof Julius Bassus, a former governor charged by the Senate with hav-ing ‘naively and unguardedly accepted things from the provincials asa friend of theirs’. His accusers described these tributes as ‘thefts andplunder’ whereas Bassus himself referred to them as ‘gifts’. Tellingly,


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Bassus had never attempted to conceal his so-called ‘crimes’ and hadeven mentioned them to the emperor. Similarly, Verres did not thinkit a problem that his clerk took kickbacks to the tune of 4 per centsince it was Verres himself who entered these figures into his officialaccounts.226

It pays to bear in mind that it is often the case that a society will beentertaining more than one definition of a corruption simultaneously.John T. Noonan posits the average at around four: that of high moral-ity, that of the written law, that of the law as it is enforced and thatof common practice. In Rome and Athens, it is often hard to discernwhich standard is being used when dealing with any particular case ofbribery,227 and the evidence suggests that all four were often operating atthe same time. In Greece, it has been noted that in the majority of cases,public opinion was more forgiving than the formal laws, stiff penaltiesand the rhetoric of lawyers and philosophers would suggest.228 As Taylornotes, making profit from political office was ‘to some extent accept-able . . . if not entirely approved of’.229 For example, many accepted thatstrategoi (elected generals) could legitimately accrue wealth through thespoils of war, while speakers (rhetores) were expected to augment theirincome through speech-writing.230 As Hypereides suggested in his pros-ecution of Demosthenes, although the courts ‘willingly’ allow strategoiand speakers ‘great scope for profit-making’ (perquisites), it is not, in fact‘the laws that have allowed them to do this; your mildness and generos-ity have’.231 In other words, the law says one thing, custom another; butthe law in practice gives way to custom most of the time. For example,Xenophon defends his acceptance of gifts from the Thracian Suethesby referring to ancient customs of hospitality and gratitude: ‘All men,I think, regard it as right to show goodwill to him from whom one hasreceived gifts’.232 In a similar vein, the moralistic Cicero, who usuallybusied himself with lecturing others on their moral failings, invokestime-honoured custom to justify the treating of ‘friends’ and tribal con-specifics with dinners and ‘spectacles’. Was there ever a time, he inquiresrhetorically, when it could be considered wrong to give ‘a place in thecircus and in the forum to one’s friends, and to the men of one’s owntribe?’ Whether we choose to call this custom ‘ambition or liberality’,he continues complacently, it is by no means dishonourable.233

6.4. Gifting and tradition

However, if dora are both gifts and bribes, it makes sense to see briberyas an overhang of the institutionalised social practice of gift-exchange,with its more benign connotations of mutual obligation, solidarity and


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interdependence.234 Gifts in Athens were part of the social fabric, ‘a fun-damental link in the chain of civilised behaviour’.235 The influence ofHomer in constructing this fabric through gift-giving has been surmisedby more than one scholar. For Strauss, ‘the exchange of gifts is the basicorganizing mechanism of economic and social relations’ in Homericthought.236 A social ritual that appears with great regularity in Homer(especially in the Odyssey, where there is a good deal of travelling) is thecustom of heaping valuable gifts upon guests and hosts alike.237 Thesegifts were not given for their own sakes: they were designed to gen-erate solidarity and to create the expectation of reciprocation at somefuture time.238 This is, after all, what gift-giving is all about, as MarcelMauss argued in his now-seminal work on the subject. For Mauss, thereis no such thing as a free gift because gifting is all about reciprocity andsolidarity.239

But we should not underestimate Homer’s influence in the same waythat we would not underestimate the teachings of the Bible, becauseHomeric poetry was close to a sacred text for the Athenians.240 Everywell-educated Greek citizen was well-acquainted with Homer, includinghis teaching that one did not go to a royal court without taking a valu-able gift.241 One must give, but as Homer also wrote, ‘it is not well torefuse a gift’.242 Further grist to this mill consists in the fact that Plato,in order to maintain the integrity of the guardians and keep them fromdeveloping a fondness for money and a habit of taking bribes, recom-mended censorship of material where this kind of thing takes place.243

The guardians ‘shall not be told that “gifts reverend kings persuade” ’,244

and they certainly shall not be led to believe, as Homer had taught,that even the Gods can be bribed and turned ‘from their will’ through‘perfumes . . . devotions’ and burnt ‘offering[s]’.245 Homer is mentionedspecifically by Plato in this context.246 Homer does, in fact, confirmthe Greek prejudice that the gods can be propitiated through gifts andprayers247 when he has a priest appeal to Apollo to ‘ “[p]ay the Danaansback – your arrows for my tears!” ’ Apollo hears the prayer and answersit by striding down from Mount Olympus, ‘storming at heart with hisbow and hooded quiver’.248

Perhaps this places too much blame at Homer’s feet; after all, gift-giving with the expectation of reciprocation is a more or less culturaluniversal evincing the basic principle that ‘gift cycles engage per-sons in permanent commitments’.249 The Greeks would have doubtlessengaged in bribery with or without Homer, just as the Romans obviouslydid.250 Classical Greek and Roman societies were extremely segmentedand disunified, based on mutually exclusive clan arrangements, where


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generous, particularistic gift-giving within in-groups was the norm, andgifting to out-groups a security necessity.251

The ambiguities of gift and patronage relations, however, should notblind us to what many contemporaries considered corruption to be.There is a good deal of certainty about what corruption consists in whenwe look at the histories and legal records of the period; nonetheless, itwas also true that the gift played a central role in social, political andeconomic relations. Custom quite frequently conflicted with the lawand was often used as a justification for flouting it.

Another complicating and confusing factor here is that, even in theliterary sources that communicate a high morality about corruption,there are still conflicting viewpoints, not only between authors, but alsobetween statements made by the same author. Hypereides may be surethat taking a pick home from work to use in one’s own garden consti-tutes an abuse of office, yet Xenophon seems just as certain that there isnothing wrong in Glaucon exploiting his newly conferred public officeto ‘get what [he] wants’ and enrich his friends. Cicero endorsed lawsto prevent vote-buying yet also defended the lavish treating of politicalallies, claiming it was sanctified by custom.

It seems that in Rome and its extensive dominions, the line betweenright and wrong varied according to the circles in which one moved,leading Ramsay MacMullen to posit the prevalence of ‘ethical systemsin the plural’; the differences only becoming apparent ‘by the travellerwho passed from one to the other, in his innocence like any tourist orbusinessman abroad asking if one tips in this country, and how muchand for what’.252 There appeared to be several competing ethical systemsco-existing, although at times, these ethical systems became entangled.It would be unthinkable, for example, that any contemporary judgewould hear the following case adjudicated by Paul in the third centuryCE. In it, the litigant wishes to know whether he would be allowed tosue a colleague he has bribed to pervert a court decision should the col-league fail to bring about the desired result.253 Even though Paul deniesthe litigant’s hypothetical suit, the fact that it was brought in the firstplace is telling. Similarly, Cicero reports on a curious law instituted inthe year 61 CE whereby ‘any person promising money to a tribe shallnot be punishable provided he does not pay it; but if he does, he shallbe liable for HS 3,000 to every tribe for this life’.254 In other words, thosewho promise bribes in exchange for favours will not be punished so longas they renege on the deal. Both cases underline the co-existence andconfusing enmeshment of parallel moralities around corruption: thoseof law in theory, law in practice, necessity and custom.


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The fact is that ancient Rome ‘was a genial, oily, present-giving world’where the line between good manners and attempting to gain someadvantage was hard to draw, even though one was a form of cour-tesy while the other might be legislated against.255 In his attempt tofind a balance between observance of the law and simple good man-ners, Ulpian is quoted in Justinian’s Digest for the general rule that ‘aproconsul need not entirely refrain from “guest gifts”, but only “setsome limit” and to be careful not “to exceed the limit in graspingfashion” ’. Ulpian tells us that (Septimus) Severus and the emperorAntoninus (Caracalla) provided helpful guidelines on the receipt ofxenia (hospitality tribute) when they wrote that their position could besummed up with the ‘old saying . . . oute pante, outa pantote, oute parapanton [not all, nor always, nor from all]’. After all, ‘it is too uncivil toaccept from nobody, but contemptible to take from every quarter, andgrasping, to accept everything’. Ulpian interprets this to mean that pub-lic officials should refrain from accepting or buying ‘anything beyondthe day’s subsistence’; however, this does not apply to little ‘guest-gifts’,which are acceptable but should not ‘be carried to the point of a sizeabledonation’.256

7. Conclusion

Rome – and to a lesser extent, Athens – may have been a pioneerof modern bureaucracy and governance, but they could not lay claimto the kind of ethic of public administration we are familiar with inindustrialised democracies today, one that emphasises a firm distinctionbetween public and private interests. Even if such an ethic were devel-oped, neither polity had the wherewithal to communicate and enforce itthroughout their Empires and in the face of numerous sociological andcultural impediments. In the later Roman Empire, particularly, manywere employed in the administration of the state but few compared tothe proportion of citizens in modern developed societies. Much of whatwe consider to be the requisite apparatus of a modern state simply didnot exist: there was no regular police force to enforce the law; no organ-ised system of legal representation, despite the existence of innumerablelaws that could be broken; no banking system; and what state educationdid exist was reserved for the benefit of the elite.257 Furthermore, codifi-cation of positive law was still a long way off: after all, Justinian’s Digestwas not compiled until the sixth century CE.258 Despite the ambitionsof Athens and Rome, neither were ever proper mass societies; local-ism continued to compete with federalism while tribes and extended


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families were still a major form of social and political organisation.259

The demanding and usually inescapable norms of personalism regulat-ing these archaic social structures conflicted directly with the normsof disinterested impartiality embodied in both the high anti-corruptionliterature and positive laws designed to curb corruption.

Public office corruption was not, perhaps, the dominant corruptiondiscourse in antiquity but it certainly existed and was well-defined. Theidea of public office corruption could not gain sufficient purchase inantiquity for a variety of reasons: the practice of law did not alwayscoincide with the letter of law so that custom made allowances thatwere routinely exploited; the requisite social, economic and politicalstructures were lacking; and the moral atmosphere was muddied bythe persistence of tipping and gifting norms. This atmosphere was ren-dered all the more opaque by a perception (by the public and evensome courts) that only one form of corruption (the catapolitical) wasegregious. Both Rome and Athens were cultures based on slavery, andthe norms of clientage, particularism, nepotism, reciprocity and hos-pitality still persisted even as Athens, and especially Rome, grew inwealth, breadth, stature and sophistication. Finally, political and legalamateurism was antithetical to large, progressive states with imperial-istic ambitions and was, therefore, a major impediment to the controlof corruption. Without proper salaries, exploitation of public office forfinancial advantage was a natural temptation for many, a necessity forsome and even an assumed right for others. Hence, what some haveperceived as an absence of a conception of public office corruption isperhaps best understood as a discrepancy between principle and lawon the one hand, and custom, opportunity, necessity and incompletedevelopment and codification, on the other.

Thus, despite their affinity at the level of diagnosis and causation, thedegenerative conception of corruption sometimes interfered with thepublic office remedies for corruption. Many of the ideals of the republi-can discourse around the subject – such as economic austerity, the stateas a self-sufficient and exclusive corporation of citizens, agrarianism andpolitical amateurism – were, as Ronald Wilson points out, ‘incompati-ble with the progress of civilization, including the growth of states inwealth, power and glory’. To reject progress would be to consign them-selves to ‘weakness, poverty and ultimate foreign domination’.260 Bothpolitical amateurism and the idea of the self-sufficient city-state were‘incompatible with the social forces of modernization set in motionby the rise of commercialism, changes in warfare, and imperialism’.Rome’s seemingly endless military campaigns and the maintenance


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and protection of its Empire and trade routes demanded more stableregimes, more organised bureaucracies and more military professional-ism than ‘the amateurish constitutions of the ancient republics’ couldaccommodate.261 The public office conception of corruption was partlya response to change and expansion, but it was constrained by its rivaldiscourse. Therefore, it is likely that some of the confusion and ambigu-ity thrown up by the documentary evidence on public office corruptionis a product of attempts to comprehend and negotiate this reality(we see the same tensions re-emerge in eighteenth-century debatesabout corruption in the context of British modernisation and expan-sion, especially in relation to imperialism). It gives us some clue as towhy the virtue-focused conception of degenerative corruption eventu-ally had to give way to its more narrowly conceived counterpart: publicoffice corruption. Nevertheless, the latter would remain subordinate tothe degenerative conception for centuries to come.


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2Patronage, Politics andPerishability in Early MedievalPolitical Thought

1. Introduction

Ancient Greeks and Romans were accustomed to the problems arisingfrom the abuse of public office for private gain, but the term ‘corruption’also denoted moral perversion and decay. These latter meanings wereinformed by prevalent assumptions about correspondences between theorder of nature and the orderliness of societies and polities.1 Accordingto Cicero, for example, nature compelled social and political associa-tion because humans naturally desired company.2 Natural sources ofmoral, social and political order were often framed by organic or bio-logical metaphors and analogies in which the order of human societyconfirmed a natural order or structure.3

One of the most significant and influential of these analogies wasthe image of human society as a ‘body’, in which the different classesformed the organs or ‘members’ whose unity, interconnection andmutual reliance reinforced the presumed need for social harmony. Thislesson was implicit in Aesop’s (620–560 BCE) ‘Fable of the Belly and theMembers’, in which the various ‘members’ or organs:

. . . realized that the work done by the stomach was no small matter,and that the food he consumed was no more than what he gave backto all the parts of the body in the form of blood which allows us toflourish and thrive.4

The political implications of the fable were clearly demonstrated inLivy’s (59 BCE–17 CE) history of early Rome, in which MeneniusAgrippa’s success in quelling seditious troops in 494–3 BCE wasattributed to his oratorical recitation of Aesop’s ‘fable of the revolt of the

46


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Early Medieval Political Thought 47

body’s members . . . pointing out its resemblance’ to the soldiers’ gripes‘against the governing class’.5

We argue here that corporeal metaphors for political bodies inMedieval Christian thought privileged notions of corruption as morally,spiritually and physically degenerative. Historians have long argued thatnaturalistic, organic or corporeal preconceptions of the polity in classi-cal and Medieval thought precluded a conception of public office or‘politics’ as a distinct field of activity, characterised by its own normsof disinterested conduct.6 In this sense, holistic notions of the politywere unable to sustain clear concepts of political corruption (as theundue intrusion of ‘private’ concerns into the fulfilment of ‘public’office).7 We argue, however, that Medieval writers did have a livelyawareness of the spiritual, moral and political dangers of prevalentforms of corruption (such as bribery, simony and venality), but theseproblems were not traced to politics as such, but to sinful humannature. The lack of a clearly defined concept of political corruptionin Medieval political thought was at least partly attributable to theprevalence of Biblical representations of corrupt activities as signs ofspiritual and physical decay, debility, disease or death. That the spiri-tual connotation of degenerative corruption remained a key feature ofMedieval political thought was in part due to the uniquely powerfulplace of the Roman Catholic Church; not only did it control the spir-itual ‘keys to salvation’, but it was also able to ‘threaten those whomight work against its pastoral function’ and its institutional status‘with being deprived’ of salvation.8 The decline of a literate urban cul-ture in much of Western Europe, following the collapse of the RomanEmpire in the fifth century (CE), resulted in a shrinkage of learned publicdiscourse, creating the conditions for the Church’s control of learn-ing and its promotion of the idea of a degraded physical world andFallen human nature. These factors contributed to the predominanceof notions of degenerative corruption over public office corruption.9

It was not that public office corruption was no longer recognised,but that it tended now to be seen as an epiphenomenon of a deeperand more significant degenerative corruption at the root of humannature.

2. The body of corruption

Throughout the Classical and Medieval periods, corporeal metaphorsoperated in part as explanatory devices, literary or rhetorical tropesdesigned to explain and persuade. The explanatory power of metaphor


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hinged on the organic, spiritual or cosmological correspondence themetaphor expressed. As Marjorie Nicolson pointed out, Medieval andEarly Modern metaphors and analogies were not merely literary flour-ishes, rather, they expressed a real ‘truth inscribed by God in the natureof things’.10 There was great variety in the expression of body politi-cal metaphors, but a common element was that different social groupsformed the organs or ‘members’, whose unity, interconnection andmutual reliance reinforced the presumed need for political hierarchyunder the ‘head’, or social harmony between the interdependent ‘mem-bers’ or organs and limbs of the body.11 Although the parameters of themetaphor changed over time, ‘the vision remain[ed] . . . one of a singleentity defined by a divinely-given common end, yet made up of distinctparts with distinct roles – roles that must not be confused if the wholeis to function properly’.12 In early Christian and later Medieval thought,‘harmonic’ views of the community of the faithful were overlaid bymore ‘hierarchical’ claims about the need to defend the communityfrom heretical ‘pollution’, if necessary by ‘amputating’ unsound ‘limbs’from the ‘body’ of the Church.13

Ernst Kantorowicz observed some time ago that the Medieval RomanCatholic Church attempted to portray itself as the inheritor of – and asbeing founded upon – the mystical and eternal body of Christ (corpusChristi), making it a corpus mysticum or corpus ecclesiae mysticum (mys-tical body) in its own right. This notion had no Biblical precedentsbut appeared to derive from comparatively modern (seventh-centuryCarolingian) notions about the consecrated host mystically embodyingChrist’s actual or physical body (corpus verum, corpus naturale or cor-pus Christi) made present in the Eucharist.14 The idea of a collectiveembodiment in which the ‘body’ of believers was said to participatein Christ’s ‘mystical body’ echoed the Apostle Paul’s (c. 5–67 CE) letterto the Corinthians.15 Possibly authored sometime between 53 and 57CE, Paul’s message in I Corinthians 12: 12–27 was that all humans wereunited by the ‘one Spirit’ of Christ and formed ‘one body’ with ‘manymembers’.16 In a manner reminiscent of Aesop’s fable, Paul claimed inI Cor 12: 23–5 that the body and members had been formed by Godinto a whole that could not be reduced to, nor divorced from, any sin-gle member. The Pauline image of the corporate body had parallels withthe Stoic notion of the universal body of humanity, but was distinc-tive in identifying the corporate body of believers with the ‘body ofChrist’.17

The significance of this image of mystical collective embodiment inChrist for the understanding of corruption lay in Paul’s doctrine of


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resurrection and eternal life (aphtharsia). According to Paul, Christ’s mes-sage was of the eternal possibility of salvation from the taint of sin, andfrom the perishable and corruptible (phthartos) body.18 Here, corruptiondenoted not only the perishability of the body, but its utter destruction(phtheiró). Against this prospect, Paul’s message in the words of I Cor 15:52–4 was one of salvation:

[I]n a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Forthe trumpet shall sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable(aphtharsian), and we will be changed.

For this perishable (phtharton) body must put on imperishability, andthis mortal body must put on immortality.

When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mor-tal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will befulfilled:

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’.19

Here, Paul seemed to invoke a notion of degenerative corruptionderived from Aristotelian physics, coupled with an association ofcorruption with instantaneous change. Unlike Aristotle, however, Paultook the view that ‘corruption’ was ‘an evil power which affects allcreation . . . as a result of Adam’s sin . . . [that] corruption came into theworld through sin’.20

Paul’s vision of corruptible and perishable flesh conquered by incor-ruptible and imperishable spirit was a distinctive and ecstatic affir-mation of the idea of salvation and resurrection through Christ. Histerminology, however, built upon a variety of well-established meaningsthat appeared in both Old and New Testament contexts. These mean-ings of corruption applied to the physical, fallen human body and builton earlier Judeo-Christian references to the corruption of the transientand perishable goods of this world.21 What gave degenerative corruptionsuch force was the repeated contrast of ‘corruptible’ (phthartos) things to‘incorruptible’ (aphthartos) qualities.22 Paul used the examples of ‘futile’and ‘perishable’ ‘silver and gold’, as well as the awarding of wreathsof withered leaves to victors in the Greek games to highlight the tran-sience and corruptible (phthartos) nature of all earthly goods in contrastto the ‘enduring word of God’.23 The use of opposition was striking alsoin describing the condition of utter ‘corruption’ (diaphthora), especiallyof the dead human body contrasted to the uncorrupted body of theresurrected Christ.24


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The term phthora was commonly used in the Bible as a noun to refer toa process of decay or perishing, especially of the flesh. The gratificationof desire, the condition of the human body in the grave, the situation ofthose who fell under perverse or immoral teachers and even the entireworld of biological creation were all said to be in a process of decayand ‘corruption’ (phthora).25 This process could be spoken of almostmetaphorically, where the rich were warned that their ‘riches have rot-ted’ (sepo) and their clothes were ‘moth-eaten’, a reference that echoedthe warning in Luke that the faithful prepare for themselves ‘purses’to hold their ‘unfailing treasure’ (of salvation) against the ‘moth’ thatdestroys utterly (diaphtheiro).26 Such metaphorical references denotedsomething like the act of destroying or corrupting, of having ‘corrupted’others due to the ill effects of perverse teaching or of being depraved,blemished, tarnished or destroyed by lust and license.27 The act of cor-rupting could be active, as in Revelations 19:2, where God judged,condemned and punished Babylon, ‘the great whore’ who ‘corrupted(phtheiro) the earth with her fornication’. At other moments, corruptionindicated a passive living in bond to worthless desire, as in Ephesians4:22, where the faithful were warned to revoke their ‘former way of life’as ‘corrupt and deluded by its lusts’.28

Biblical references to corruption, as in 2 Cor 2:17, built on Old Testa-ment precedents in representing it as a spiritual problem of sin, leadingto perversion and decay tainting every sphere of human action, includ-ing politics. In the description of godly government in Deuteronomy,for example, it was said that judges ought to be appointed who coulddeliver ‘just decisions’, mirroring the justice of God before whom thepeople were summoned as to a court.29 The advice to these judges wasclear: ‘you must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; andyou must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise andsubverts the cause of those who are in the right’.30 These words echoedthose of Exodus 23:6, in which those who ‘pervert’ ‘justice’ by discrim-inating against the ‘poor’, killing the ‘innocent’ or accepting ‘bribes’were exposed to a higher judgement and punishment. 2 Peter alsocondemned the lust that made ‘slaves’ out of those mastered by theirdesires, leading to the ‘corruption’ (phthora) of succumbing to covetous-ness or greed, making money by deception or adulterating the word ofGod.31 In each of these references, corruption in public office was treatedas a sign of pervasive degenerative corruption traceable to sin.

By the time Christianity began to suffuse the Roman Empire inthe first and second centuries CE, a very considerable and venerable


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framework of Roman laws against public office corruption was inexistence.32 As we saw in the previous chapter, these laws had attemptedto proscribe bribery of judges, extortion by provincial governors orwidespread electoral fraud by means of fines or other penalties.Corruption was a problem in law in that it hindered the administra-tion of justice and undermined the identification of the emperor as thepillar of justice throughout the Empire. The Bible, however, gave expres-sion to a different conception of corruption, hinging on the problem ofsin. This degenerative corruption was the inevitable fate of all humanbeings, a consequence of our fallen and corrupted nature. Degenerativecorruption was inherent in our embodiment, for the physical decay ofthe body was the necessary step to the resurrection of the soul, and,at the last judgement, to the triumph over corruption when the ‘deadshall be raised incorruptible’.33 While corruption could denote specificproblems in the administration of government, the delivery of justicein courts or the dealings of the marketplace, this corruption was tracedto something deeper – a force of death and destruction rooted in sinfulhuman nature. The outlines of this understanding of corruption weremost clearly drawn by St Augustine, who also traced the implications ofthis spiritual corruption in political life.

3. ‘Corruption at the Root’: St Augustine34

St Augustine (354–430 CE) has usually been portrayed as advocatingrepressive secular authority in the inevitably corrupt ‘earthly city’ inorder to accomplish ‘rule over the passions of the multitude’.35 Thenecessity for repressive political authority lay in original sin, whichAugustine described as the ‘corrupt root’ (velut radice corrupta) of humannature shackling us ‘with the chain of death’.36 While Augustine sawevidence of sin in the violence and disorder of his own times, hewas also aware of the tension between the need for coercive author-ity to keep the peace and punish malefactors, and the aspirationtowards Christian forgiveness and mercy. For Robert Markus, the ten-sion in Augustine’s thought originates in the confrontation betweenthe ‘polis-centred’ commitment in Greek thought, based on an idealof citizen engagement in the task of creating a rightly ordered polis,and the Judeo-Christian inheritance premised on the idea of subjec-tion to ‘the one ultimately acceptable’, divinely ordained ‘form ofsocial existence’, from which all earthly social and political institu-tions were ‘radically alienated’.37 In Western Europe, this tension was


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partly resolved by emergent ideas of Christian kingship in the fourthand fifth centuries (CE), centring on the person of the ruler as theembodiment of ‘both social and supernatural order’ and guarantor of‘the welfare of the people, the fecundity of the soil, the maintenance ofpeace through external warfare and internal good governance’.38 Badrulership, on the other hand, ‘was the perversion of divine order’, a‘wilful destruction of the consensual partnership that made governancework’.39 For Augustine, however, the inevitability of human corrup-tion, traced to The Fall, meant that human beings remained subjectsof a divine order from which their earthly lives had been sundered,thus requiring submission to coercive political authority to allow anydegree of peace and social order to be achieved.40 Nonetheless, at leastone later Medieval commentator, Sir John Fortescue (c. 1395–c. 1477),considered Augustine’s ideal polity an ‘acephalous’ or headless ‘body’, adangerous perversion he attributed to Augustine’s misplaced reliance onCicero.41

Augustine followed Cicero’s definition of the central virtue of a com-monwealth as justice, the commitment to the common good and togiving each person their due.42 However, Augustine’s notion of jus-tice was distinct from Cicero’s in his insistence that it required self-sacrifice, mirroring the sacrifice of Christ and the actions of righteousChristians.43 While vague approximations of this kind of justice werepossible in human polities (the ‘earthly city’ or civitas terrena), Augustineargued that perfect justice was realisable only in communion with Godand the saints, and in the complete submission to divine order obtain-able only in the heavenly city or city of God (civitas Dei). Here, ‘thewhole redeemed community’ was offered to God as a sacrifice ‘throughthe great Priest [Christ] who offered himself in his suffering for us –so that we might be the body (corpus) of so great a Head (capitis)’.44

Augustine spoke of the ‘body’ of the ‘redeemed community’ in thecity of God by analogy with strong hierarchical overtones. The humanbody was conceptualised as a ‘tool’ or ‘servant’ entirely ‘subordinate’to the soul. It followed, then, that for Augustine, the pursuit of jus-tice, even in the compromised earthly city, must involve sacrifice to thedivine because this constituted the supreme good for all humankind.45

For this reason, Augustine criticised Cicero’s pagan conception of jus-tice as deficient. Although Cicero was able to identify justice with theconsensual pursuit of the common interest of the community, he wasunable to appreciate that such a community nonetheless necessarilylacked justice in the absence of sacrifice to God and the pursuit ofredemption.46


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As Augustine saw it, pagan justice was, at best, a shadow of true justice.There could be no true community without justice, but no justice exceptin and under God:

[W]hen it serves God, the soul rules the body rightly; and, in the soulitself, when the reason is subject to God as its Lord, it rightly governsthe desires . . . if the soul does not serve God it cannot by any meansgovern the body justly, nor can human reason govern the vices. Andif there is no justice in such a man, then it is beyond doubt thatthere is no justice in a collection of men consisting of persons ofthis kind.47

The earthly city may aspire to the ideal of perfect divine justice, but canonly ever dully reflect it. He conceded that even pagans could consti-tute commonwealths ‘bound together by a common agreement’ (as werethe cities of Rome, Athens, Egypt and even Babylon).48 In the absenceof sacrifice to God, however, pagan cities were prone to immorality,‘bloody seditions’ and civil wars that ‘ruptured or corrupted’ (corru-perit) the ‘bond of concord’ in their precarious commonwealths.49 Thisview presented a two-fold problem of corruption. The first problemwas that ungodly, and therefore unjust, rulership (whether of a tyrant,aristocratic faction or mob) ‘corrupts the rest of the body politic andinfects relations among human beings’.50 The second problem wasthat the condition of injustice meant that, sooner or later, the wholecommonwealth would ‘disintegrate . . . through corruption’ and thereby‘entirely cease . . . to be’.51

This two-fold problem of corruption raised the particular difficulty ofhow to deal with the variety of corrupt and corrupting actions besettingthe earthly city, with many of which Augustine was personally familiarin his role as Bishop of Hippo. In this role, Augustine was responsibleinter alia for the administration of Church courts and appointments toChurch offices. Augustine operated in a world of slippery distinctionsbetween legitimate patronage and illegitimate corruption. The universalcurrency of patronage was the exchange of gifts and services ‘emulatedthroughout the social hierarchy’ creating ‘obligations’ central, not onlyto secular or political machinations, but also to advancement within theChurch.52

Public office corruption was rife among Christian and non-Christianofficials of the late Roman Empire in the fourth to sixth centuries (CE).53

This corruption consisted of routine rent-seeking behaviour among aspi-rants to and incumbents of public and spiritual offices (Church and


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Empire representing the main avenues for social advancement).54 Legalstipulations against venality, extortion and bribery in the fifth-century(CE) Theodosian Code not only testify to the existence of this corruption,but also to the prevalence of Classical ideas of corruption as a perver-sion of judgement and will.55 In the ornate rhetorical style of imperialinstructions or Formulae, for example, public officials were enjoined to‘avoid taking bribes’ that ‘pervert your will’ and engage in ‘no deeds ofdarkness which the day need blush for’.56 In these and other pronounce-ments, Classical notions of corruption as the misuse of public officewere defined above all as political problems, especially as an obstacleto civilitas.

Civilitas was an ideology of social harmony hinging on the emperor’sability to provide justice through reliable and legitimate laws regulat-ing the ethnic, social and fiscal distinctions of late Roman society, andpreventing corruption in the form of improper manipulations of prop-erty qualifications to claim underserved social status or wrongful taxexemptions.57 Although laws and imperial edicts might condemn cor-ruption in the name of civilitas or justice, the emperors also neededa reliable source of revenue, which encouraged them to turn a blindeye (to say the least) to venal practices. This corruption took place in asocial context, where the exchange of gifts in order to build and cementpatronage networks was ubiquitous, and in which the gift exchange, thepatronage relationship and even the display of wealth could be investedwith an aura of sacredness.58

Contemporary critiques of the spiralling costs of public services, ram-pant sale of offices and bishoprics, unchecked bribery, exploitationof the poor and lax regulation led Ramsay MacMullen to concludethat ‘corruption was rather the rule than the exception’.59 Above all,MacMullen claimed, St Augustine was a seasoned operator in this sys-tem of rampant public office corruption, and that he both ‘understood’and ‘approved’ of it.60 Augustine did appear to condone this corruptionwhen, for instance, he referred to the standard practice of lowly courtofficials demanding payment (which could be in the form of bribesor of semi-official fees) from litigants to speed up the administrationof justice.61 Augustine said that these payments could be demandedfrom both sides of a case ‘without impropriety’ so long as the sum was‘within acceptable and usual limits’. Litigants were entitled to demand‘repayment’ if an ‘excessive and dishonest’ amount had been ‘exacted’.Augustine seemed resigned to a level of endemic corruption inextricablefrom the normal functioning of court processes. ‘For many roles neces-sary to human activity’, Augustine reflected, were ‘filled by people who


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were attracted or held by benefits of this sort’. He advocated a harderline, however, against the unjust imposition of fees or bribes by judgesor witnesses.62 Judges must ‘avoid judging corruptly’, Augustine laterwarned, not only because this perverts justice but because the corruptjudge ‘perish[es]’ in their ‘soul’.63 Such provisions were an acknowledge-ment that routine gift-giving to win favour and to mobilise patronageoperated largely within and alongside the law.64 Informing Augustine’spragmatism was the recognition that the domain of law was itself com-promised. The corruption of public officers was but a reflection of thevitium or blemish of original sin exerting a degenerative ‘corruption andcrippling effect’ on ‘human nature’ that could not be prevented, butonly palliated by mere laws.65

As Augustine saw it, this spiritual corruption had direct political con-sequences. Most notably, in Book II of Civitas Dei, Augustine recountedthe reasons why pagan Rome descended into chaos. Here, Augustine’sconcern was that fallible human nature ensured moral depravity, espe-cially under the malign influence of pagan worship. Pagan worshipwas an unremitting scene of ‘cruel and wicked things’, in which‘wickedly cruel or cruelly wicked’ (vel turpiter crudele vel crudelitur turpe)rites involved debauchery, violence or immodest behaviour embod-ied and sanctified in the often scandalous lives of the pagan godsthemselves.66 The decadence of pagan worship ensured the ‘corrup-tion of the Roman government’.67 Augustine relied heavily on Sallustto paint a picture of the late Roman Empire as one of ‘utter moraldepravity’, in which worship of the pagan gods (‘vicious demons’)exercised a ‘corrupting influence’ on whatever was worthy in paganmorality and philosophy.68 For Augustine, the lurid ‘corruption (cor-rumperentur) of morals’ that became rampant in the late RomanEmpire led to wholesale depravity among all classes of the people,so that Rome was literally overwhelmed to the point of its owndestruction;69 hence, Augustine’s condemnation of the ‘idleness’ of theweak under the ‘patronage’ of the strong, the corruption of the ‘young’by ‘luxury and greed’ (luxu atque avaritia corrupta), ‘perverted delights’and ‘material satisfactions’, ‘sumptuous feasts’ and ‘cruel and wickedpleasure’.70

Augustine saw Roman political corruption as a behavioural emblem ofdegenerative corruption, of the physical, corporeal decay that inheredin all who lived in the absence or denial of God and salvation.71 ‘Liv-ing in this wretched life, in these dying bodies’ meant, for Augustine,that all humans were ‘weighed down by the burden of their corruptibleflesh’ that only God’s gift of grace (gratia) could redeem.72 Augustine’s


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invocation of the term notwithstanding, gratia encompassed a varietyof meanings at the time, not all of them holy:

Gratia in common parlance stood for judicial corruption in thecourts, for official hanky-panky of all kinds in public life; for the irra-tional, unpredictable or capricious as contrasted to the rational, thedependable and the intelligible in human relationships.73

For Augustine, however, the divine gift of gratia was the only sure escapefrom the degenerative corruption of the human and political body.Augustine drew out the lesson by the curious tale of Vulcan’s monstrousson Cacus (a derivation of the Greek kakos, meaning wicked or evil),which he used as a metaphor for the pagan body politic.74 In so usingthis tale, we can appreciate Markus’ earlier observation that Augustine’spolitical thought was premised on the opposition between the classicalheritage based on the life of virtue within one’s polis, and the Christianinheritance premised on a salvation obtainable only beyond this life.

According to Augustine, Cacus’ dilemma was that he ‘desired to be atpeace with his own body’ and ‘govern . . . his members’, but his ‘mortalnature rebelled against him when it needed anything, and stirred up thesedition of hunger’.75 Cacus sought to control the rebellion of hungerand other desires through brutal self-repression, by devouring his rebel-lious limbs. As a metaphor for the pagan polity, Cacus illustrated itsfundamental contradiction. Desiring peace but mistakenly seeking itthrough conquest, Cacus was condemned to an eternal cycle of brutalwar and political self-mutilation. The pagan polity could never achievethe ‘tranquillity’ of the divinely ordered ‘heavenly peace’ that would beobtained only in a ‘perfectly ordered and perfectly harmonious fellow-ship in the enjoyment of God, and of one another in God’.76 Only whensoul and reason ‘serve God’ do they ‘govern . . . the body and the vicesrighteously’, thus averting ‘the corrupting influence (corrumpentibus) ofmost vicious demons’ over both the individual human body and thebody politic.77

Having said that, Augustine concurred with Cicero’s judgement that‘ . . . the death of a whole city . . . ’, even one as corrupted as paganRome, was a disaster.78 Augustine had earlier taken issue with Cicero’spagan definition of the commonwealth as a body united by the pursuitof justice and the common good under a justly ordered government(whether a monarchy, aristocracy or democracy). A major failing ofthis definition, according to Augustine, was that any pagan common-wealth was eternally prone to misgovernment, where, for example,


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monarchy descended into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy or democ-racy into mob rule. According to Cicero, Augustine asserted, when suchmisgovernment occurred, the commonwealth could not be describedas ‘flawed’, ‘defective’ or ‘corrupt’ (vitiosam) because it merely ‘ceasesto be’.79 Augustine seemed to be saying here that Cicero’s account of thecommonwealth was too lax. Cicero’s commonwealth was incapable ofcorruption because any deviation would not be perceived as decay, butas a simple transition from a just regime into an unjust one. In con-trast, Augustine clung to the idea that corruption in political life in theearthly city was a sign of an underlying and inevitable degenerative spir-itual corruption. For him, the vicissitudes of political life were not to bespoken of as reversals or transitions, or even of disappointments. Theywere the inescapable political manifestations or veritable signs of theinevitable triumph in all human affairs of sin, escape from which layonly in divine gratia and access to salvation in the city of God.

4. Medieval patronage and corruption

Only gradually did Medieval political thinkers begin to articulate anotion of public office corruption as distinct from degenerative corrup-tion, and a key to this seems to have been the transformation of thepatronal gift economy from about the mid-eleventh century CE.80 As wehave seen, the gift (donum) was the medium of patronage relationshipsin the late and post-Roman worlds. Gifts were celebrated as a means ofboth worldly insurance (by keeping wealthy patrons on side in case ofneed) and spiritual devotion. As the thirteenth-century authors of theRomance of the Rose so eloquently put it, ‘In sum, both gods and men arecaptured by gifts’.81 Nonetheless, for all their ubiquity, historians lacka clear and complete picture of the meanings inherent in gifts and giftexchanges.

Early work on the history of the gift in Medieval Europe was shaped bythe anthropological work of Marcel Mauss and Bronislaw Malinowski,for whom ‘gifting’ was characterised by reciprocal exchanges, gift-for-gift or gift-for-service, in which the presentation of the gift createda bond of obligation, sometimes of spiritual significance.82 Historianshave argued that Medieval economic history can be divided into an earlyperiod (from about the fifth to around the dawn of the eleventh centuryCE), in which a ‘gift economy’ prevailed characterised by exchanges ofgifts without an agreed standard of value, creating bonds of obligationby generating prestige, status or honour. A later period (after 1000 CE)was marked by the gradual predominance of a commercial or ‘profit


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economy’ based on exchanges of goods for money in which profit, notsocial obligation, was the purpose of the exchange.83 The ‘give-and-take’system of exchange, prior to the eleventh century, prioritised gifts ofland to cement social and religious ties in communities dominated bypersonal relations of power, obligation and entitlement.84

Recent research now points to the great variety of early and lateMedieval gift exchanges, in many of which the gift had only a sym-bolic or spiritual value, and in which normative distinctions appearedto have been made between different kinds of gifts.85 Munus and munera,for example, were the terms used to designate gifts, especially in reli-gious writings from the eighth to the eleventh century. Munera were notintended to be reciprocal because they marked ‘an extremely unequalpower relationship’, as in the offering of tribute to a political superioror even to God.86 Importantly, the moral worth of munera was said todepend not on the value of the gift, but on the moral qualities of thedonor and specifically their intention, that is, the humility, innocenceor purity of heart with which they gave.87 Seen in this light, muneracould be offered and accepted (as when the humble penitent offeredhis or her tears or sighs as gifts to God), but could just as easily beoffered and ignored or refused (when the dissimulating sinner offeredinsincere prayers as a gift). Neither offering nor acceptance, however,was necessarily linked with reciprocation of a counter-gift, but tendedto be linked with the reward (remuneratio) of salvation on the Day ofJudgement.88

In the secular world of political and economic relationships,exchanges of gifts – not always reciprocal – were used as one ‘strategy’employed by powerful warlords and monarchs in the early Medievalperiod to ‘recruit retainers’ by donating estates and protection inexchange for loyalty and military service.89 In this context, the giftappeared as a marker of political relationships of prestige, obedienceand service. Lords were expected to show generosity and liberality andeschew avarice in granting fiefs or estates to retainers who providedservice and loyalty.90 In principle, gifts were expected to be freely andjoyously given. But this ideal often clashed with the harsher economicrealities necessitating supposedly ‘bad’ gifts, given sparingly, or as a lastresort, because they were the only gifts a lord of limited means couldoffer.91 Medieval patronage networks were, therefore, characterised bycomplex relations of obligation in which generosity and service, loyaltyand devotion were linked by a wide variety of gifts given in differentways for different reasons, and often with very ambiguous expectationsof reciprocity. The ambiguities of the gift and of giving went beyond


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simple distinctions between good and bad gifts and were a perpetualsubject for negotiation.92

Although normative distinctions between good and bad gifts hadalways been made, it appears that from the ninth century, beneficium(favour or good deed) and donum became the terms most commonlyused to designate appropriate gifts that were openly given as a mark of,or in return for, good service, while munus and munera were increas-ingly used to refer to excessive gifts, often secretly given, to obtain achurch or secular office.93 Though the word ‘bribe’ was not applied tosuch ‘gifts’, contemporaries were in little doubt about what these ‘gifts’were.94 The concern over the distinction between donum and munus wasnot focussed on secular relations, but seems to have been raised moreoften in relation to the Roman Catholic Church, probably the mostsophisticated, powerful and wealthy institution in Medieval Europe.

With the rise of monasticism in Western Europe from the fourth cen-tury, religious houses became some of the chief recipients of gift-giving,usually in the form of endowments of land from predominantly royaland aristocratic clients. These endowments came to be seen from aboutthe middle of the fifth century (CE) as exemplary acts of Christiancharity.95 This routine ‘system of exchange’ ‘provided a common lan-guage’ of devotion and of social and political ingratiation; a languagethat expressed not only a sacred relationship (between donors and Godor the saints), but also a more secular relationship between the donor,who offered gifts or service (servitium), and local power elites and landholders.96 In this way, monasteries became not only centres of spiritualauthority and learning, but often considerable land-holding enterprisesdominating regional economies, and a source of personnel and acumenfor secular rulers.

From the mid-eleventh to the thirteenth century, however, Europeansocieties were gradually transformed by what Jacques Le Goff termedan ‘economic and social revolution’ in Western Europe.97 This period ofpopulation growth and urban expansion, increasing economic produc-tivity and the intensification of a division of labour, fostered the rise ofmore prosperous urban elites, artisans and court officials.98 In the pro-cess, secular political authorities were able to consolidate, and the piv-otal role of monasteries as bulwarks of royal power gradually declined.In response, the gift economy widened, as new and lower-status donorsentered the secular and spiritual patronage system seeking their ownadvancement. The calamity of the Black Death (1347–51) exerted fur-ther pressures on the system, fuelling a desperate personal piety, whilealso facilitating the increasing importance of law in guaranteeing title to


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vacant lands and consolidating the precarious social status of an emer-gent middle class.99 Donations made to monasteries in this period weregradually transformed from simple endowments to religious houses intodisplays of the donor’s ‘personal devotion’, in funeral monuments orperpetual masses that were carefully stipulated in legal arrangementsdefining the present function and future use of the gift.100

These transformations were reflected, not only in the gradual rise oflegalistic definitions of the conditions of the gift economy, but alsoin an increasing awareness of the conditions pertaining to impropergifts. Gifts to, and the conspicuous display of wealth by, monastic estab-lishments prior to the eleventh century were not necessarily perceivedas corrupt or corrupting, but represented instead a display of wealth‘untainted by sin’ symbolising ‘the spiritual proficiency’ of that estab-lishment’s ‘monks and its benefactors’.101 Historians suggest, however,that the eleventh century witnessed a ‘ “moral panic” about simony’in the Roman Catholic Church, as observers increasingly regarded therampant sale of spiritual offices as suspect.102 Concerns were voicedabout the corruption of the Church by sins of cupidity (cupiditas)and avarice (avaritia), which manifested in the sale and purchase ofChurch offices and in the exchange of gifts and services in the hopeor expectation of being awarded office.103 Ownership of things (propri-etas or dominium) was defended by the Church, but was also identifiedas sinful and avaricious when ownership was driven by the inordi-nate love of money and wealth for its own sake, or to satisfy one’sown greed.104 Avarice was condemned not only as a spiritual fail-ing, but a moral one, in which the insatiable and greedy love of selfand of private gain (ingratitudo) replaced the appropriate and deferen-tial thankfulness (gratitudo) one was expected to show in all patron-age relationships, including in one’s relationship with the ultimatepatron, God.105

In the secular realm, from the eleventh century, a correspondingconcern emerged that gifts, bribes, offices or services could be improp-erly given, especially to sway judicial opinion.106 Law codes were oftenloosely based on pre-existing Roman models, and thus perpetuatedclassical understandings of corruption as clandestine bribery (pecuniacorrumpere or munus), undue influence or favouritism (gratia), or misuseof power (potentia).107 Corruption was not neatly defined, however, andas in the mid-seventh century Visigothic Code, the idea of the corrup-tion of public office and officers (especially by the extortionate demandfor gifts by princes) was coupled with less clearly defined warningsabout spiritual corruption due to avarice.108 Nonetheless, many lawsechoed a pragmatism that though ‘productive of evil’, bribery may be


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less pernicious where both parties to a court case paid bribes evenly, orwhere justice could not be served except by means of a gift to officials.109

For Hoeflich, the contemporary attention given to corruption of judgesindicated the centrality of law to perceptions of social order. ‘Law’, hewrote, was thought to be ‘crucial to life’, and the provision of a fair appli-cation of law was increasingly thought vital to the attainment of civilitas,in which the order of society hinged on ‘royal office, right judging, andthe will of God’.110 Corruption thus represented a perversion of justice,and thereby of the divine order underpinning it. While the spiritual con-notations of this view were unchallenged, an increasingly secular notionof public office corruption was gradually emerging in Western thought.

5. John’s metaphorical corruption

Judicial corruption was a familiar complaint throughout the Medievalperiod. Judges who corruptly ‘offer justice for sale’, as John of Salisbury(1115/20–80 CE) put it, were guilty of being mastered by their avari-cious desires and subverting both their sacred tasks of serving justiceand their dutiful obligations to their prince.111 Salisbury’s description ofthe sale of justice highlights his importance as a transitional thinker. Hisunderstanding of the problems of corruption straddled an Augustiniannotion of spiritual corruption and a notion of public office corruptioncaused by the particular deficiencies of political structures and polit-ical actors. While his language was redolent with the lurid Medievalimagery of degenerative corruption as a disgusting and perverted pref-erence for disorder, death and decay over godliness and virtue, a publicoffice conception of corruption was also apparent:

. . . he is more evil who markets his duty to his king and queen,to whom he owes fealty, like merchandise in a doorway, and thusunfaithfully sells his lord into slavery. For indeed every magistrateis the servant of justice. . . . is he not sordid who pollutes his con-science and has sold not so much justice as his very soul – all for theacceptance of the promise of filth? The teacher of the gentiles dis-paraged riches, honours and all the varied furnishings of the worldas excrement, in order that he might earn Christ alone, reasoningthat everything which contributes to the loss of salvation adds tothe heap of sordid things. . . . whatever thwarts man’s cleanliness issordid . . . For this reason, among all the ancients, even though theywere ignorant of the truth of salvation, it was counted among theforms of sordid behaviour if one did for a price that which ought tobe free on the basis of the obligations of office.112


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For Salisbury, judges occupied an important position in a moral hier-archy of princes, ministers, magistrates and judges who all fulfilled adivinely ordained role in the pursuit of justice and salvation. In dis-pensing justice, judges translated both the will of their lord and the willof God on earth. Invoking the authority of Plato and Cicero, Salisburyargued that ‘civil life should imitate nature . . . the best guide to liv-ing . . . [o]therwise, life is duly called not merely uncivil, but rather bestialand brute’.113

One of the most significant and influential of the correspondencesbetween nature and political life was the image of human society asa ‘body’, in which the different social groups formed the organs or‘members’ whose unity, interconnection and mutual reliance reinforcedthe presumed need for social harmony.114 The metaphor of the human‘body’ had two levels of meaning in Medieval thought. On the onehand, the human body was held to reflect, albeit imperfectly, the veryimage of God. On the other, the human body was also the site of cor-ruption, forever prone to sin and born to mortality, the only hope ofescape from which lay in salvation of the soul.115

Salisbury’s employment of the metaphor illustrates these features.According to him, the Church occupied the ‘soul in the body’ underwhich the ruler or ‘head’ of the body politic governed; the senate orsenior council of state was like the ‘heart’; courtiers to and advisors ofthe ruler were the ‘flanks’ or muscular legs that supported the bodypolitic; the functions of the ‘eyes, ears and tongue’ of the body wereperformed by the ruler’s judges and provincial governors who dispensedjustice; public officials and soldiers were like the body’s ‘hands’; whilethe humble ‘feet’ corresponded to the labouring peasantry.116 Salisbury’simagery here was hierarchical, but he made use of the Pauline conces-sion that even the lowly feet were crucial to the body, without which thebody would crawl ‘shamefully, uselessly and offensively on its hands orelse . . . [be] moved with the assistance of brute animals’. For this reason,the humble ‘feet’ were especially deserving of the ruler’s ‘shelter andsupport’.

Most importantly for present purposes, Salisbury’s body politic madespecial mention of the treasury and the need to regulate it:

Treasurers and record-keepers . . . resemble the shape of the stom-ach and intestines; these, if they accumulate with great avidityand tenaciously preserve their accumulation, engender innumerableand incurable diseases so that their infection threatens to ruin thewhole body.117


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Salisbury seemed to gesture here to the common Medieval presumptionthat the intestines, bowels and viscera were the seat of both physical andspiritual impurity.118 His political message was more subtle. Importantly,Salisbury identified finance as crucial (for nourishment of the body) butdangerous if not properly regulated (causing disease and infection).119

Salisbury’s reasoning was explicitly Aesopian. Indeed, Aesop’s fable ofthe ‘Belly and the Members’ was placed by Salisbury into the mouthof the English Pope (and Salisbury’s one-time master) Adrian IV (c.1100–59), who used it to claim that the ‘vices of the powerful’, eventhe accumulation of wealth, should be ‘tolerated’ so long as they con-tribute to ‘public safety’.120 Adrian’s point, as Salisbury represented it,was that rulers were in an analogous position to the stomach of thebody politic and must accrue wealth in order to pay for soldiers andmagistrates. In Adrian’s tale, the stomach was ever ‘at rest’ while theother members laboured; moreover, ‘the stomach alone devours andconsumes everything’ and by its nature was ‘voracious and covetousof unsuitable things’. Without the ‘nourishment’ that such voracitybrought, however, the body politic and its individual members wouldwaste away.

Salisbury quoted Adrian’s paraphrasing of Aesop approvingly, butelsewhere made it clear that his acceptance of the lesson had condi-tions. Importantly, he argued that princes must accrue wealth withoutbeing captured by avarice. They must show ‘contempt towards money’and accrue it as a public rather than a private good.121 He also arguedthat ‘treasurers and record keepers and counts of privy affairs’ must bepaid properly to perform their necessary function in the ‘body of therepublic’.122 Above all, Salisbury counselled, such officers must not beallowed to pursue their own avarice, even though the treasury dependson the avid accruing of public wealth. While John was prepared to (con-ditionally) defend this latter form of avarice for public gain, avarice forprivate gain was condemned in familiar terms. John even likened theavaricious (in the words of Ecclesiasticus 10.9–10) to a man so dementedas to sell ‘his own entrails’.123 Though redolent of spiritual corruptionleading to death and decay, John here separated the fear of a pervasiveand ineradicable degenerative corruption (due to sin) from public officecorruption, a problem whose solution lay in political structure:

. . . nature, that most diligent parent, has shielded the entrails bymeans of the rib cage of the chest and solidified ribs and the enclo-sure of the outer skin, so that they may be safer against all externalviolence. Nature supplies that which is necessary for them, since they


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are not at any time exposed to the external world without loss totheir health. Likewise, it is necessary in the republic to preserve thisdesign of nature’s fabrication and to supply from public funds for theprovision of the necessities of life.

This quotation represented a revision of the Aesopian metaphor insofaras the stomach and entrails were to be both ‘protected’ and restrained.Salisbury’s point was thus not only that the stomach and entrailswere vital to the health of the body politic, but also that their activ-ities must be protected and held in, as it were, or kept within tightboundaries.

While Salisbury’s use of the metaphor of the body politic, and espe-cially his likening of officers of the revenue to intestines, seems toecho the (literally) visceral Medieval association of corruption with spir-itual impurity and bodily death and decay, a closer reading suggests, asCary Nederman has observed, that Salisbury’s political thought lacked ‘arigidly supernatural tone’.124 In fact, John of Salisbury spoke of corrup-tion in such a way as to suggest that his understanding of it straddledthe Biblical problem of spiritual and physical death and decay, and thepolitical problem of the wrongful use of wealth to subvert Church andsecular institutions.125 Many of his references to corruption were cou-pled with warnings about the sin of avarice, which was to be avoidedboth for its own sake and because avarice threatened to corrupt the bodypolitic.126 Where money, naked ambition or mere flattery were routes tohonour and power, then no office would be ‘free of charge; no gen-eral or judge, no commander or courtly official, not even a herald orhuckster’ would be ‘appointed except for a price’.127 While Salisburythought it expedient for the ruler to be wealthy, he argued that theruler must consider his own wealth as the people’s.128 He also stipu-lated, perhaps echoing Justinian’s Digest, that no one ‘who governs isto accept a present or gift, except of food or drink’, stipulating thatone ought not to refuse gifts entirely but to exercise moderation.129

John’s reasoning here was that it would require ‘an inhuman strengthto accept from no one; but to accept indiscriminately is most vile;and for all things, most avaricious’. Salisbury gave voice to a widelyshared European conviction that acceptable gifts for rulers, magistratesand judges included ‘perishable’ or consumable items, or as Groebnerreports, things that could either be worn, or eaten ‘with the hands’ andin neither case could be politely refused.130 Echoing Ulpian’s advice inJustinian’s Digest, Salisbury wrote that anything in the way of moneyor property must not ‘take on the character of remuneration’. Like


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Augustine before him, Salisbury seemed resigned to the ubiquity ofworldly corruption. Buying and selling offices, he reflected, ‘are tolerablein secular affairs’ so long as matters of ‘public concern are not corrupted’(non corumpat).131

What exactly were matters of ‘public concern’? Clearly, one importantconcern in John’s view was that the Church, the soul of the body politic,should remain free of corruption. Salisbury was explicit in denouncingsimony, collusion, the ‘covert shower of gold’ and ‘presents’ (muneris) toobtain advancement, and the use of church wealth by office holders asif they were a ‘corrupt merchant’.132 These concerns certainly pertainedto public office corruption, but Salisbury linked them to sin. Avarice,along with ambition, became the means by which a miscreant ruler orchurchman ‘plunders, destroys, kills and corrupts’ their flock.133 Avariceand ambition were merely secondary sins, however, both originating inthe cardinal sin of pride. In making this clear, Salisbury invoked Biblicalconnotations of degenerative corruption leading to death and physi-cal decay. Salisbury inveighed in Augustinian terms against the chiefsin of pride, or self-love, which made all humanity ‘corrupt’. Pride,Salisbury argued, was the ‘root of all the evils that feed mortality’;a ‘poisonous vice’ or ‘virus of mortification’ capable of ‘infecting thevital organs’ of the body politic.134 Those infected with pride turnedaway from God and towards transient and perishable desire, sensuality,money or earthly power; all ‘things . . . corruptible and false’.135 In thisvein, Salisbury opposed the avaricious ‘love of money’ to the godly ‘loveof incorruptibility’.136

This striking invocation of degenerative corruption aside, Salisbury’sreferences to corruption throughout the Policraticus overwhelminglyfocussed on the abuses of secular or spiritual offices. On a num-ber of occasions, Salisbury insisted on the tension between piety andcommerce. True piety could not be found in those who made a livingby trade. Where ‘money talks’, Salisbury wrote, ‘truth is blind, piety iscrippled’ and honour given to men whose morals were ‘corrupt’ andwere in turn ‘corrupted by bribes’.137 The idea that piety, virtue and jus-tice would be perverted by corruption and that secular honour andriches were regularly bestowed by the corrupt on the corrupted wasalso a characteristic theme. In the ‘kingdom of money’, justice wasalways for sale; judges could be bought by ‘presents’ (munere) or ‘love’,and an ‘uncorrupted’ judge remained a rarity. Indeed, Salisbury warnedthat any ‘faithful judge’ ran the risk that in spurning all offers, hewould be considered by all parties to have been ‘bribed’ already (praecor-ruptus).138 This remained the dominant form of corruption in the


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Policraticus, namely the practices of bribery and venal sale of office alongwith the consequent distortions of office they caused within the bodypolitic.

6. Conclusion

The distinctiveness of Salisbury’s attitude to corruption may be traced tohis close interest in the spiritual implications of the economic transfor-mation and increasing prosperity witnessed in Western Europe duringhis lifetime.139 Some sense of the novelty of Salisbury’s thought can begrasped by reflecting that St Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) later tendednot to speak of the particular dangers of corruption in political matters,preferring instead to lament the pernicious effects of avarice.140 Avariceindicated both a sin against God and a failure of moral judgement, aninclination towards excess. As we have seen, Salisbury paid close atten-tion to the sin of avarice in private and public life, but in speaking ofcorruption in the polity, he showed a willingness to consider it as notsolely reducible to sinful avarice, but as a political problem for whichpolitical solutions might be available. In this sense, John of Salisbury’scorruption may be said to have straddled Biblical and Augustinian con-notations of corruption as death and decay rooted in original sin, anda more secular notion of corruption as the distortion of office by theinordinate love of private gain.

Ultimately, these two forms of corruption remained linked by themetaphor of the body politic. This metaphor could be invoked todenounce corrupt practices (such as bribery and simony) as a ‘disease’ ordeformity that threatened to disorder or disfigure the body politic, mostnotably in Aquinas’ depiction of the evils of tyranny – when the rulerbecame a ‘slave to avarice’.141 The disproportionate power and will of thetyrant was an evil analogous to the ‘ugliness’ of a body whose memberswere not ‘harmoniously disposed one to another’.142 Aquinas’ image ofa corrupt and disordered body politic echoed Augustine’s and Salisbury’sunderstanding that sinful pride or avarice corrupted the scheme ofdivinely ordained rule. This scheme was discernible in the macrocosm,where God governed the universe by his single and omniscient will;in the political community where all subjects should be bound by thegovernment of a single lawful authority; and within the microcosm,where the body of man was subject to the single and unifying directionof reason.143 In such a scheme, corruption of public office denoted nomere abuse. Rather, it was a sign of the disintegration or degeneration


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emanating from sinful and unredeemed human nature.144 Hence, publicoffice corruption remained closely connected to degenerative corrup-tion. As we shall see in the following chapter, however, the effortto identify the causes and consequences of public office corruptiongathered pace in the centuries that followed.


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3From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perilsof Public Office in Medieval andRenaissance Political Thought

1. Introduction

The predominance of an Augustinian account of degenerative cor-ruption in learned Medieval discourse traced corrupt, corrupting orcorrupted phenomena to the corruption of human nature after TheFall. This does not mean that contemporaries were unable to addressforms of public office corruption, whether in the form of simoniacalpurchase of Church offices or the use of gifts to curry judicial favour.Nonetheless, the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church inWestern Europe ensured that the Augustinian connotation of the spiri-tual and physical decay of the human body powerfully shaped Medievaldiscourse on corruption, such that instances of public office corrup-tion were interpreted as the inevitable consequence of the corruptionof human nature.1

Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, increasingagricultural production in Europe fuelled population expansion, thegrowth of cities and the development of networks of trade and com-mercial prosperity, all of which led thinkers such as John of Salisburyto reflect on how these new economic realities could be accommo-dated within the conventional framework of Christian political thought.Salisbury accomplished this by means of the familiar metaphor of thebody politic. As Valentin Groebner has argued, body political metaphorscontinued to echo across Europe in representations of the armless andeyeless female figure of Justitia, or the handless representation of pub-lic officials and judges in fifteenth-century German discourse. Their‘incorruptibility’ was ensured by having no hands to corruptly receivegifts, nor eyes to be tempted into corrupt partiality.2 For all its literary,rhetorical and visual appeal, however, Medieval corporeal metaphors

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Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought 69

incorporated a fundamental ‘ambivalence’ in the dangerous implication‘of dissection or disintegration of this “one” or whole body’, an ‘ambiva-lence’ that was ‘inherent in the use of the metaphor itself; it literallycreated those monsters that represented disorder, tyranny, and “falsegovernment” ’.3 One such ‘monster’ was the prospect of a political bodyinfected with the decay of corruption. While this fearful prospect con-tinued to haunt Western political thought in the wake of the socialchanges wrought by the commercial ‘revolution’ in twelfth-centuryEurope, later Medieval political thinkers began to exhibit new waysof speaking of corruption that were not solely traced to sinful humannature. Corruption could instead be associated with particular kinds ofpolity for which it was considered an especial problem. More impor-tantly, corruption could be identified with particular kinds of activitytending towards the specifically political (rather than spiritual) problemsof disunity and instability.

2. Hellish corruption

The terms of public office in Medieval Europe were not always clearlydefined, and often allowed for private purchase and sale and the per-sonal acceptance of fees or gifts.4 As we saw in the previous chapter, bothAugustine and John of Salisbury asserted that the offensiveness of buy-ing office or bribing court officials depended on their excess, whetherthe action in question exceeded the normally allowable limits constitut-ing an abuse. For Augustine in particular, the abuse was a consequenceof sin (avarice or cupidity). Condemning such abuses in spiritual termsdid little to clarify where exactly the offence lay, whether against Godand the divine order of nature, against the Church, its canon laws andits spiritual purpose, against secular laws and the kings or republics whomade them, or possibly against the whole body politic? The answer maywell have been that the offence was committed against each and allof these, and we can get some sense of that in Dante Alighieri’s (c.1265–1321) masterpiece of Medieval Tuscan poetry and cosmography,The Divine Comedy (composed between 1300 and 1321).

It is both ironic and significant that the Commedia was written overa period of years after 1302, when Dante had been sent into exilefrom Florence on charges of having corruptly taken bribes.5 In the firstbook of the Commedia, the Inferno, where Dante described his descent(with the guidance of the spirit of Virgil) through the successive cir-cles of Hell, he devoted special attention to the penultimate eighth,and therefore one of the lowest circles, where the spirits of the more


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heinous of sinners were punished. The eighth was the circle of fraud,and it was divided into ten ditches wherein the ten different categoriesof fraudsters (including seducers, flatterers, simoniacs, scandal-mongers,hypocrites and thieves) were punished.6 Simony and flattery had longbeen associated with the corruption of church and government, but ofall the fraudsters here, Dante lavished most attention on the punish-ment of the ‘barrators’ (barattier). ‘Barratry’ or ‘graft’ was the vernacularterm for those who engaged in venal or corrupt activities in public office,and it was the charge for which Dante himself had been indicted andexiled in 1302.7

The barrators lurked in a ditch of black, sticky pitch, tormented bydemons for having committed ‘corruption in public office’ by graft orbribery.8 Among the ‘barrators’ he identified in Hell, Dante includedboth Fra Gomìta (a notoriously corrupt Pisan official) and MichelZanche (a district governor in Sardinia known for his extortion ofbribes). Their punishment, as did the punishments in all the circlesof Hell, corresponded to the nature of the offences committed in life.9

The dark pitch in which the spirits boiled represented the secrecy oftheir corruption, the stickiness of the pitch called to mind the coinsthey grasped with sticky fingers.10 The punishment of the barrators’fraud in the depths of Hell obviously denoted their guilt, not only ofcriminal greed but also of sinful avarice and cupidity ‘that corruptsman’s special faculty of reason’.11 The spiritual and moral perversionof their fraud was further underscored by Dante’s lurid depiction ofthe demons tormenting the barrators and the ribald flatulence of thechief demon, Malacoda, once again linking corruption with visceraldisgust.12

Beyond the spiritual and moral offensiveness of the barrators, JoanFerrante has pointed to Dante’s effort to portray them as having commit-ted a grave political offence as well. Their fraud was not only an offenceagainst God and reason, but also a fraudulent betrayal of public trustand a treasonous betrayal of their own polities.13 The problem of fraud,as Dante presented it, was that it ‘gnaws every conscience’ and was prac-tised not only against ‘one who trusts’ the fraudulent, but also againstthe whole city.14 In other words, the fraudster not only cons the gullible,but in office, cons the whole city without anyone being the wiser. Thecontempt the barrators showed toward their victims and their cities wasmatched by the carelessness with which their souls were hooked andskewered by the tormenting demons. In fact, the sordid deceptions andbetrayals the barrators practised in life were endlessly repeated in Hell.Both demons and tormented souls were trapped in an eternal and futilecontest to outwit the others, resulting only in ensuring that all became


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mired in the sticky pitch of corruption. The barrators were thus pun-ished not only for what they had done, but also by what they had done.This was underscored by their placement in the hellish city of Dis, occu-pying the sixth to ninth circles.15 Dis was a city that would have beenrecognisable to Dante’s medieval readers and listeners; it had walls andtowers, bridges and gates, but, like the city in Lorenzetti’s ‘Allegory ofBad Government’, it was disordered, tumbled, broken, dark and fetid.Dis was a corrupt city and its laws seemed arbitrary, the very reverse ofa virtuous city where the citizens were united in the godly quest for thecommon good. In Dis, there was no common concert, but a cacophonyof sinful pride, lust and greed resulting in endless suffering.16 In thiscorrupt city, the barrators represented one of the worst of offences bysubverting justice, debasing the dignity of their office and impugningthe honour of their city for their own profit. Thus, for all the overtonesof spiritual and moral condemnation in the Inferno, Dante also made itclear that barratry was a political offence, a corruption of governmentand of the noble aspirations of political life.

For Dante, the odium of barratry attached at least as much to itssinfulness as to the betrayal of civic trust, perversion of justice anddebasement of virtue. For Dante, political corruption was odious, butit seemed still to be a problem in rather than of politics. The real prob-lem lay in the sinfulness of human nature, and its correction (at least interms of the Comedia) lay in the sanction of Divine retribution. AmongDante’s near contemporaries, however, were those who did seem to sug-gest that the problem of political corruption originated, not only in thetwisted nature of human beings, but also in particular kinds of polityand government.

For the one-time Bishop of Lisieux, Nicholas Oresme (c.1320–82), thedangers of political fraud were associated not only quite convention-ally with tyranny, but also, and somewhat less conventionally, with thetyrant’s manipulation of coinage. Currency, he argued, represented apublic good in that it underwrote the property of subjects and the pros-perity of the nation. For a ruler to manipulate currency by altering itsweight or value was a veritable corruption of the body politic, makingit an example of tyranny.17 Oresme’s concept of tyranny was similar inoutline to Aquinas’. The tyrant, Oresme argued, ‘loves and pursues’ hisor her ‘own good more than the common advantage’ of the subjects.18

Oresme, however, was distinctive in his insistence that tyrannous rulecould not last, largely due to the tyrant’s engrossing wealth by corruptmeans. The tyrannous ruler who accrued wealth and power became akind of ‘monster, like a man whose head is so large and heavy that therest of his body is too weak to support it’.19


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Oresme invoked the authority of Aristotle and the Bible to arguethat the longevity of the body politic required that rulers respect theproperty of subjects, avoid undue concentration of power and, aboveall, resist the dishonourable, unjust, fraudulent and ultimately deadlydebasement of currency. ‘God forbid’, Oresme concluded, ‘that the freehearts of Frenchmen should’ be enslaved to such a tyranny that canonly originate in ‘evil-minded’ (‘intencione corrupti’) advisors ‘ready tocounsel any fraud or tyranny’ that would bring the ‘realm to ruin’.20

Oresme’s references to corruption, albeit brief, were distinctive in thatthey were primarily focussed on the problem of a particular form ofpolitical action, namely, the tyrannous manipulation of the currency.

Oresme’s concerns were matched in England. In the context of theHundred Years’ War (1337–1453), royal finances came under increas-ing pressure as ever-larger revenues were needed to raise and maintainarmies on an almost year-round basis.21 In England, particularly, feu-dal service proved insufficient to meet military needs, but raising taxeswith which to pay more troops required the consent of parliament. TheCrown thus relied on the exploitation of its customary rights, such asthe practice of ‘purveyance’, which involved the confiscation or com-pulsory purchase of goods at fixed prices, ostensibly to support theitinerant Court on its tours of the kingdom.22 Among the complaintsgenerated by the use of this device were those articulated in the SpeculumRegis Edwardi III (The Mirror of King Edward III) by William of Pagula(died 1332).

As a scholar and parish priest, William was able to articulate thegrievances of local townsfolk and farmers upon whom purveyance fellmost heavily. The Speculum has been read as a key text charting therise of a late Medieval political economy favouring the free exchangeof goods and money in the market place.23 Among the ‘evils’ of pur-veyance, William castigated the many hardships caused to the commonpeople by what amounted to ‘robbery’ of crops and other goods, theloss of labour, deprivation of liberty and the rank extortion of bribes tofacilitate redress of grievances.24 But he also couched his attacks in thefamiliar terms of denouncing the sinful abrogation of justice and denialof charity, even warning his king about the danger of degenerativecorruption and death:

O Lord, my King, how I wish that you were wise and would under-stand, and would discern your end. You should be wise, namely,you should consider whence you came, and you should under-stand, namely, in what state and danger you are, and you should


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discern your end, namely, what sort of death you will have. Considerthis salvific warning, not in haste, but rather with zeal and delib-eration. . . . Therefore, the Lord wishes that you should know yourpresent fleeting life, subject to many miseries and vanity, pollutedby the filth of sins, corrupted by desire, and shortly to come to anend. . . . you should understand your entrance into this pitiful world,your feeble progress, and horrible exit . . . at which your wretched soulis going to be taken, fearing and trembling, from your corruptiblelittle body.25

The concerns of both William of Pagula and Nicholas Oresme werefocussed on the dire effects of financial impropriety committed by rulersand their corrupt and all-too-corruptible courtiers. While the economicand political effects of this corruption were obvious, corruption retaineda dual nature – being both a spiritual and a political problem. Formany, the spiritual concerns were uppermost, for, as Walter of Milemeteexplained in 1327, corruption arose from the ‘insatiable appetite andinterminable desire’ of avarice among the ‘devotees of vice’ who clusterabout the king and court.26 The courtier was ‘always grasping’, the ‘bellyof these people is covetous and avaricious’; they ‘cling to gifts and theacquisition of money’ and are ‘never sated, because the more they pos-sess, the more they desire’. Such concerns over corruption were framednot only by familiar spiritual warnings about sin and precarious salva-tion, but also by the ‘mirror for princes’ genre, instructing and warningthe ruler to amend injustices. A distinctive warning in this ‘mirror forprinces’ literature, which drew on both classical and biblical sources, wasthat those corrupted by avarice and cupidity were bad subjects. Here, atleast, was a notion of public office corruption in which greed under-mined impartial justice, personal honour or loyalty to the ruler.27 Thisnotion also informed Dante’s depiction of the barrators’ betrayal of theirpolities and debasement of trust.

The articulation of public office corruption in these texts underscoresthe broader significance of the economic changes taking place in Europeat this time. By the mid-fourteenth century, parts of Western Europehad experienced a relatively rapid economic transformation, whichincreased the significance of the money economy and the supply ofcoin, both of which undermined and gradually replaced the traditionalpayment of rural rents with produce and services, enabling the growthof demand for trade in luxury goods.28 These developments were dra-matically reinforced by the calamitous Black Death of 1347–51 and thestimulus this gave to the payment of rents and wages in money. The


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increasing importance of money, coupled with the shortage of labour,exacerbated tensions in the traditional economy. These tensions encour-aged the development of central ‘state’ authorities able to regulateproperty and ownership and resolve disputes by means of enforce-able statutes. Statutes were more effectively administered and regulatedby bureaucracies whose offices were funded through higher levels oftaxation.29 In this context of economic development, social tension,state formation and professionalisation, ‘sharper distinctions’ emergedbetween ‘licit and illicit giving and receiving’, which heightened theincompatibility between the patronal gift economy and the equitableadministration of justice according to law by the courts.30 WilliamJordan has even spoken of the development of central, royal author-ity in Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as proceedingby means of ‘anti-corruption campaign[s]’ of increasing oversight andsupervision of the courts, the use of salaries to control public offi-cials and the appointment of austere and less corruptible royal advisorsdrawn from the Franciscan and Dominican monastic orders.31

It is important not to overstate these changes, as central politicalauthorities throughout the Medieval period worked through a net-work of ‘political nuclei’ (including the Church, estates, guilds and cityauthorities) in which the powers of regional offices were often exercisedby local elites, facilitating multiple avenues for corruption.32 That verylocalism, however, meant that the operations of government and lawwere also apparent to local communities and thus often vulnerable tocomplaint and petitions for justice, especially in times of war, when taxcollections and collectors were regularly associated with corruption incourt cases and written treatises.33 This corruption was often said toconsist in the extortionate exaction of taxes, the dishonest retentionof collected taxes for private use and the secretive and collusive dealsmade to exempt some from heavy tax penalties in exchange for giftsor bribes. Although there was little consistency in usage in this period,secret payments (munera, briberia) in exchange for official favour (in theform of appointment to office, a favourable legal decision or exemptionfrom taxes) were increasingly seen as forms of fraud and a corruptionof the polity traced not only to the bribed, but to the briber as well.34

The association of corruption with secret payments was also overlaidby a tendency to identify the coterie of ‘effeminate, flattering, and cor-rupt officials’ surrounding the ruler as the source of corruption in thepolity.35

Discussions of corruption in the ‘mirror for princes’ literature tendedto fall back on standard remedies for political corruption. This usually


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involved exhorting the Prince to show greater spiritual devotion and todevote himself in turn to a more rigorous application of justice. As Johnof Salisbury had described it, the prince as the ‘head’ of the ‘body politic’must act like a physician and ‘cure an affliction [of the body politic]with palliatives and gentle medicines’ or, if need be, by ‘harsher cures’involving the application of ‘fire and iron’.36 The gruesome vividnessof this metaphorical self-surgery called forth a Christian admiration forthe torments of the martyrs, whose deaths were perceived as a healing‘cauterization’ of the body of the Church:

[W]ho is so strong as to amputate a part of his body without pain?He [the Prince] grieves, therefore, when he is asked for the requiredpunishment of the guilty, yet he executes it with a reluctant righthand. . . . and in tormenting the parts of the body of which he is thehead, he serves the law mournfully and with groans.37

Metaphors of political self-surgery were not uncommon in Medievalpolitical thought, but they were complicated by the question of whichpower, secular or spiritual, or which figure, King or Pope, could over-see that surgical authority.38 At issue here was whether a secular ruler’spower was absolute (potestas absoluta) and, therefore, at least equalto and independent from the power of the Pope, or whether Papalclaims to an ampler and amplified power (plenitudo potestatis) took prece-dence over the secular power of mere monarchs.39 This was not simplya question about separation of church and state. The resolutions tothese questions in Medieval political thought were framed by argumentsabout the proper relationship between bodies politic and bodies mysti-cal within an assumed divine order of rule.40 Ernst Kantorowicz arguedthat papal sponsorship of the idea of the Church as a corpus mysticumChristi in the early fourteenth century rested on the presumed ‘realpresence of Christ in the sacrament’.41 This presence itself implied theduality of Christ’s own body natural and body mystical, which enabledPapal claims that the Church alone had unique access to Christ’s body.This claim was used, as Tierney explained, to consolidate absolute Papalauthority over all matters of secular and church government.42 Suchclaims were far from being universally accepted, but the articulation ofcritical counter-claims stretched the biological limits of the ‘head’ and‘body/members’ metaphor.43

In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the issue of Papalauthority became enmeshed in the series of disputes over the Franciscanrecommendation of the poverty of Christ and the Apostles as the ideal to


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which Christians should devote themselves.44 At issue here, simply put,was whether the Franciscans, the Church or the Pope should or couldclaim ownership of things (proprietas) and the exclusive right of control-ling (dominium), using, disposing of or gaining beneficial or profitableuse from things.45 For Pope John XXII (1249–1316), the Franciscan rec-ommendation of Apostolic poverty struck at the heart of what he sawas the Church’s legitimate claim of proprietas and dominium, and therebyat the foundation of his own power (potestas) over the Church’s assets,establishments and religious orders, and through that, over Churchdoctrine and the prerogative to excommunicate secular rulers.46 Dis-puting this controversial claim was a key aim of one of the mostsignificant works of late Medieval political thought, Marsilius of Padua’s(c.1275–c. 1342) Defensor Pacis. In pursuing that aim, Marsilius articu-lated an understanding of political corruption in which spiritual fears ofdegeneration were overshadowed by political concerns about the natureof public office.

3. Marsilius diagnoses corruption

Much has been written about whether Marsilius of Padua articulatedan early separation-of-powers thesis, whereby the supreme politicalauthority emanating from the people (or from its ‘prevailing part’) wassubdivided and vested in different offices and officers.47 Marsilius, how-ever, did not argue consistently for one form of government over others.Rather, his argument was that governments could be distinguishedaccording to whether or not they promoted and protected a sufficientlife for their subjects in terms of secure, orderly and, above all, peacefulcivil associations. Because this was a common good, the laws that pro-tected and enshrined it must be made by the people as a whole or the‘prevailing part’,48 rather than by a single ruler or an oligarchic few whowere more likely to rule by ‘fraud, or violence’, resulting in all kindsof ‘inconveniences’ in civil life.49 Fraud and violence could only resultin ‘iniquitous laws . . . intolerable slavery, oppression and misery for thecitizens, which ultimately results in the dissolution of the polity’.50

If this was not quite a doctrine of a separation of powers, or even aseparation of church and state, Marsilius’ political thought did rest on acrucial delineation between spiritual and political authority by locatingthem in different jurisdictions.51 This jurisdictional delineation was notunprecedented; Dante had argued for a different kind of clarification inhis De Monarchia earlier in the fourteenth century. According to Dante,the powers of pope and prince were derived from God, yet remained


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distinct because of the unique position of humans in the scheme ofcreation. Humans were continually tempted by the ‘corruptible’ thingsof this world, yet more properly oriented towards the ‘incorruptible’attainments of salvation. Hence, attaining salvation required that ‘ourcorrupted nature’ receive correction from both the Church (as it per-tained to our spiritual salvation) and secular governments (concernedwith maintaining peace and good order) as ‘remedies for the infirmityof sin’.52

Marsilius’ position was based on the idea that the natural passions ofhumans gave rise to the variety of arts, trades and institutions whosepurpose was to fulfil human needs. By means of these, other ‘arts andvirtues were discovered’, which allowed humans to modify or ‘temper’their original passions.53 Of these discoveries, one of the more importantwas ‘government’, the purpose of which was to moderate the excessesto which humans were led by their ‘transitive’ and appetitive desires,leading to much ‘inconvenience or injury’ among human communi-ties. The inference to which Marsilius was keen to respond was thatif secular government and law existed merely to curb human vice, itsrole should be ‘subordinate’ to the spiritual authority of the Church,which aimed at the higher end of perfecting human souls. Marsiliusrejected this argument on the grounds that the ‘jurisdiction’ of the‘ruler of souls’ related only to the perfection of souls, and not to thecoercive authority of secular rulers.54 Marsilius here mounted an argu-ment about separate jurisdictions, and the location of political poweras an exclusive right (dominium) of the secular ruler alone.55 In doingso, his thought illustrated divergent tendencies in the articulation ofnotions of political corruption. On the one hand, Marsilius’ employ-ment of corporeal metaphors, combined with his pronounced medicaland diagnostic approach, meant that political corruption was still associ-ated with Biblical connotations of death and decay. On the other hand,by mounting an argument for placing spiritual and political authoritiesin distinct jurisdictions, Marsilius’ political thought made it possible tothink of political corruption in different terms. Corruption could denotethe unwarranted intrusion of, or interference between jurisdictions, andspecifically the inappropriate exercise, manipulation or distortion ofpublic office for narrow factional ends.

In Marsilius’ Aristotelian scheme of ‘tempered’ and ‘flawed’ polities,the well-tempered were those where good rulership was able to preservethe common good and secure an orderly and peaceful civil union, whilethe flawed were those in which public authority was under the sway ofthose unwilling to protect the common good, and thus prone to faction,


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schism and civil strife.56 Marsilius employed an explicitly medical termi-nology in sharpening this distinction, probably echoing the influence ofhis early medical schooling.57 Consistent with that training, Marsiliusadopted Aristotle’s biological scheme, arguing that political and ani-mal bodies originated when the ‘more noble’ heart was first formed andimparted its ‘natural virtue or power’ and ‘heat’ to the forming body.58

The primary, noble and active qualities of the heart all indicated thatMarsilius saw this organ as analogous to the ruling part of the polity.The laws and the power to execute them were likened to the heat that,according to Galenic medical theory, animated the heart. The citizenbody, however, was spoken of as the soul from which the body acquiredits purpose and function.59 One of the ruler’s functions was to determineappropriate office holders and functionaries of the polity, within whichMarsilio included the church and the clergy.60 The ruler thus had chargeof preserving the symmetry and proportion of the body by imposingpunishments that were ‘like a kind of medicine for a crime’. In thisway, the ‘appropriately-ordered city’ (convenienter ordinata) was likenedto a ‘well-formed animal’ (bene formato).61 ‘Well-formed’ and ‘appropri-ate’ here not only denoted both symmetry and due proportion, but alsoincluded the proper position of its members and their ability to ‘performthe operations appropriate to it’ without having their proper function‘corrupted’, perverted or distorted.62

This medical and metaphorical prescription of order and symmetrywas given more concrete form when Marsilius considered the ‘mys-tical body of the church’ (corpus ecclesie misticum), which he arguedhad grown, through its own corruption, into a ‘deformed monster’.63

According to Marsilius, the Church ‘body’ had become badly formed,disproportionate and disordered because papal power had been usedby successive popes to bypass the supervising role of intermediarychurch councils and secular offices.64 Marsilius, in effect, depicted thecorruption of the Church as a function of Papal claims to ‘plenitudeof power’ over and above all other Church and secular authorities.65

While Marsilius did envisage the possibility of the ‘corruption of thecity’ or polity, he overwhelmingly associated this corruption with thebad government that resulted when the Church pursued and exercisedplenitude of power.66

3.1. The corruptions of Papal plenitude of power

Having established that the aim of well-formed secular polities was toensure conditions for the good life, Marsilius argued that the rulers ofthese polities should govern according to law and consonant with the


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will of the citizen body, and may even be ‘corrected’ by law and inaccord with the will of the law-making part of the polity (‘the legis-lator’), when necessary.67 Marsilius deemed such correction necessaryto prevent civil outrage and discord and to circumvent the develop-ment of tyranny.68 By advocating the hedging of political power in thisway, Marsilius accomplished two significant things. First, he separatedthe operation of appropriate, limitable and correctible political power,focussed on ensuring the common goods of security and civic unity,from the arrogant and divisive papal claim of a superior power that waspotentially unlimited. Second, he was enabled thereby to identify papalassumptions of plenitude of power over secular jurisdictions as a seri-ous political corruption, resulting in the fracturing of civil polities andthe build-up of factions, disunion and discord, rendering Italy aboveall weak, divided and unable to defend itself.69 These moves were alsosignificant, as we shall see below, in enabling Marsilius to speak of cor-ruption not simply as decay, or even as a consequence of sin. Rather,Marsilius was able to deploy an understanding of corruption as a polit-ical problem consisting of the abuse of public office for private gain oraggrandisement.

One of Marsilius’ chief concerns was that a mighty church claimingand exercising plenitude of power created divisions within the politicalworld, leading to faction, dissension and conflict. But his concerns wentbeyond the distribution of power between church and secular author-ities, encompassing also a critique of the ways in which power withinthe church was distributed and used. It was in this sense that Marsiliuswrote of the ‘corrupt methods’ or ‘improprieties’ regularly employedin distributing church offices.70 These ‘improprieties’ included the buy-ing of church office (simony) and the distribution of offices to curryfavour, each of which resulted in inappropriate appointments given tothe ‘ignorant, the criminal, children, unidentified persons and thosewho are either detestable or manifest idiots’. Marsilius’ point here wasnot simply that those least fit to fulfil holy office were appointed, butalso that the church’s ambition to secure worldly power, above andbeyond that of any secular polity, including the Holy Roman Emperor(in whose interest Marsilius wrote), led to the ‘corruption of ecclesiasti-cal government’.71 The Church’s corruption consisted in the secrecy andimpunity with which its highest officers were able to act, so contrary tothe collective deliberation that was supposed to decide disputes amongthe Apostles.72 Secrecy and impunity, by contrast, favoured disreputablemethods of advancement and, ultimately, the promotion of those whowere ‘morally corrupt or ignorant’.73


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Marsilius’ criticisms of the Church were so strident that they havetended to overshadow the significance of his discussions of corruption.In effect, Marsilius shifted the charge of corruption from an exclu-sive or prior focus on the spiritual problem of decay, and refocusedattention on the secular realm where it represented a ‘civil inconve-nience’, caused not simply by sin, but by ‘corrupt’ priests who ‘corrupt’the morals of their flocks. Marsilius considered this corruption a farworse danger than that of a ‘corrupt prince’, whose degeneracy diedwith him. Priestly corruption, by contrast, resulted in ‘eternal death’for those corrupted.74 But priestly corruption also resulted in impor-tant civil disturbances when priests ‘corrupt . . . the life and moralsof both sexes (especially the female)’.75 Following Aristotle, Marsiliusconsidered women ‘almost half of a household’, the basic unit of awell-tempered polity; hence, the debauchery of perverse and corruptedpriests undermined the very foundation of good order.76 For this rea-son, Marsilius argued that princes rather than priests should have thepower to appoint civil functionaries. Even bishops should be shorn oftheir power to appoint teachers and name new saints, because ‘a corruptbishop could use this power as support for pronouncing some personssaints, in order by their sayings or writings to shore up his own corruptopinions’.77

Corrupt Church officials constituted a secular political problembecause they were public officials and part of the body politic. Theyalso endangered the mystical unity of the faithful because they ‘infectedand . . . corrupted the entire mystical body of Christ’ (Christi corpus omnemisticum infecerunt . . . corruperunt).78 The essence of the spiritual prob-lem consequent on church corruption was that corrupted churchmen,peddling corrupted teachings, absolved all kinds of crimes and vio-lence committed to aid their own corrupt ends, and for which theperpetrators were not forced to repent, placing them in peril of eternaldamnation.79 As bad as this spiritual problem was, however, Marsiliusseemed more focussed on the expressly political problems caused whencorrupt Church officials appointed other avaricious and criminal (crimi-nosum) officials and ‘men . . . of corrupt mind’ (homines mente corruptos),whose perversity would expose not only the Church but ‘all realms andall polities . . . to the danger of dissolution’.80 For Marsilius, then, thepolitical problem of corruption was focussed on the multiple ways thata corrupt Church had ‘corrupted’ (corruptis) the morals of the faithfuland disrupted legitimate secular polities, leading to what Bettina Kochhas described as ‘the unjust appropriation of rulership by bishops andpriests’, resulting in civil strife.81


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Marsilius’s discussion of church corruption has a number of inter-esting implications for our discussion of political corruption. To beginwith, Marsilius implies that there were distinct spheres of authority andcorresponding jurisdictions, and that the transgression of the bound-aries separating them represented a kind of corruption. As Marsiliusput it, the penitential and redeeming message of Christ was best con-veyed by an ‘abject’ church following Christ and the Apostles in thepath of humility, whereas the coercive power of princes required aworldly status: ‘On account of this, Christ – who always arranged every-thing in the best way – willed that the offices of those who are princesand priests should not be joined in the same individual, but ratherseparated’.82

Corruption, then, represented not simply a disorder or disease, but adisruption of the structure and equilibrium of the well-ordered, tem-perate state. Marsilius’ references to corruption further implied thatcorruption involved a particular kind of transgression, namely, the con-trol of public authority by inappropriate persons. Such misrule wasto be avoided because it threatened to subvert the peace and goodorder of the state, leading to factions and civil strife and undermin-ing the advantages that flow from it, including the private pursuit ofwealth and sufficiency.83 While money-making for its own sake hadoften been considered ‘corrupt’ or ‘corrupting’ in Medieval thought,Nederman reminds us that Medieval thinkers were well-engaged withanalyses of private and national wealth ‘as a pursuit worthy in itself’.84

For all the novelty in his discussion of corruption, Marsilius was entirelyconventional in highlighting the sinful wickedness of self-interest, of‘evil’ avarice and cupidity in the Church. As Groebner has pointedout, the association of corruption with self-interested greed and avaricewas commonly represented in later Medieval discourse in terms ofbutchery and slaughter of the body politic by the self-interested, whoconsume and sell the ‘flesh and blood’ of the people.85 Although thestatus of the ‘evil practices’ of avarice and cupidity and their rela-tionship with corruption underwent a significant change in the laterMedieval period, the association of corruption with political disunityand even factionalism, so apparent in Marsilius’ thought, continued tofind expression.

4. Avarice, corruption and civic humanism

Concerns over avarice were widely voiced throughout the Medievalperiod, often linked to denunciations of lending money at interest


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(usury), conspicuous consumption of luxury items and the selling ofchurch offices (simony).86 But recent scholarship has also emphasisedhow readily Medieval thinkers adapted to the emergence of strongercommercial and market forces, leading some scholars to speak of the riseof economic nationalism and economic humanism from the late twelfthcentury.87 Economic nationalists argued that wealth and wealth cre-ation were important in order to secure a peaceful, orderly and powerfulrealm. Sir John Fortescue, for example, argued that the king of Englandshould be wealthy because only then would he be able to keep a decentestate, pay wages to his followers and avoid the ‘extreme means of get-ting goods’ through the deliberate ‘perversion of justice’ by imposing‘rigour’ or showing ‘favour’ inappropriately.88 Fortescue also lauded thecomparative wealth and prosperity of the commons of England, com-pared to the penury of the French commoners, as the ‘fruit’ of Englishroyal government within the law.89

Economic humanism, on the other hand, consisted in arguments forvirtuous money-making, often by extolling the virtues of merchants andthe contribution that wealth and the wealthy made to the greatness,amenity and beauty of the city.90 Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) madethis claim to the lord of Padua, urging him to ‘pay attention to thedecorum of the city so that the eyes have their share of the commonjoy, the citizens are proud of and revel in the improved aspect of thecity, and strangers feel that they are not entering a mere village but areal city’.91 Petrarch’s proposals for public works and civic infrastruc-ture were to be accomplished ‘without reducing the communal treasuryor your own private wealth’, and by respecting the ‘private property’of the citizens.92 Invoking the authority of Aristotle and the exampleof the greatest of Rome’s emperors, Petrarch counselled moderation intaxation and vigilance over tax collectors and greedy ‘courtiers’, com-menting that ‘it is better for riches to be held and enjoyed by many’, and‘more useful for private citizens to earn money from their own indus-try . . . ’ than for rulers and their tax collectors to amass this wealth forthemselves.93

It has long been held that this kind of argument marked a major turn-ing point, from the earlier Medieval mistrust of wealth, wealth-creationand merchants, towards a more worldly, positive appraisal of conspicu-ous consumption as a demonstration of social status, princely power orjust canny domestic investment, during the Renaissance period in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries.94 Hans Baron long ago spoke about the‘severe’ neo-Stoic ‘ideals of poverty’ and contemplative withdrawal fromcivic affairs in the ‘late Middle Ages’, being ‘drowned’ ‘by the voices of


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the citizens who were at home in the world of active life and earthlygoods’ in Renaissance Venice and Florence.95 Baron insisted that theAristotelian celebration of wealth as an instrument of virtue was thedefining characteristic of Florentine civic humanism.96

Baron employed the term ‘civic humanism’ to describe a traditionof thought that developed in Italy, and especially in Florence, in thelate fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Baron’s civic humanismencompassed a broadly Aristotelian and Ciceronian account of the ‘val-ues inherent in the vita activa et politica’ (such as personal independence,courage, a commitment to civic duty and engagement in public judge-ment) framed by an interpretation of history that affirmed the virtues ofrepublican government, namely, the political independence, liberty andglory of one’s city.97 In the archetypal example of this genre, LeonardoBruni’s (1370–1444) Laudatio Florentinae Urbis (Panegyric to the City ofFlorence) of 1403–04, Florence was portrayed as the noble embodimentof Roman republican virtue, not ‘contaminated by sloth and cowardice’,and sustaining a ‘hatred’ for the ‘corrupters of Rome’.98 In Bruni’s exag-gerated prose, the city even managed to avoid succumbing to both‘private’ and ‘public’ crimes.99 Private crimes were those committedby individual wrong-doers, while public crimes were those resultingfrom the acquiescence of the city to the vicious will of the majority.In the latter case, Bruni made the incredible claim that ‘in Florence ithas always happened that the majority view has been identical withthe best citizens’, and that castigating the entire city for the ‘privatecrimes’ of the ‘few’ would be ‘just as fallacious as reproving the law-abiding . . . . Romans because of the corruption of Verres’. Similar claimswere made by other humanists extolling the virtues of their cities, suchas Marin Sanudo’s (1466–1536) Laus Urbis Venetae praising the Venetiansfor ensuring penalties were meted out to all wrongdoers, including hold-ing tax and customs collectors liable for any public revenues stolen fromtheir offices.100

According to Jurdjevic, the ‘civic humanist’ tradition had from itsinception a vital ‘economic aspect’, in which the acquisition of ‘wealthand worldly goods’ was ‘praised’ as a necessary foundation ‘for activevirtue’, and that in essence, Florentine civic humanism was the ‘ideol-ogy of an ascendant merchant elite’.101 Among the exemplars of this pos-itive appraisal of wealth creation was Poggio Bracciolini’s (1380–1459)dialogue ‘On Avarice’. Poggio’s interlocutors exchange a number ofarguments for and against avarice that coalesce around the conven-tional denunciation of avarice as an especially harmful vice (worse thanlust), and of the avaricious as monstrous, both physically deformed and


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morally perverse.102 In the early part of the dialogue, Poggio launched aspirited defence of avarice on the grounds that lust, not avarice, ‘weak-ens and corrupts both body and soul’.103 Here, corruption (by lust) wasspecifically associated with the process of physical and spiritual ener-vation, but this process of degradation had a number of qualities thatPoggio returned to throughout the text. First, lustful corruption waslinked to the weakening of manly strength and virtue, leading to ‘effem-inate, and cowardly’ conduct. Second, this corruption ‘harms’ the mindand impairs the ability to reason and make judgements.104 Avarice, bycontrast, sharpened the mind to devise a steady means of acquisition; italso underwrote reason and judgement, for avarice required temperancelest it lead to an irrational and all-consuming greed.105 Above all, avaricewas useful and beneficial to the whole polity, as ‘[m]oney is necessary asthe sinews that maintain the state’.106

Interestingly, Machiavelli later voiced a retort to this argument inhis Florentine Histories, where he pointedly denounced the favouritismand rapacity of the Medici on the grounds that ‘the avarice of citi-zens is much more harmful to peoples than the rapacity of enemies’.For while the latter may eventually come to an end, the former neverdoes.107 Poggio, on the other hand, followed Cicero in arguing thatcitizen avarice was relatively harmless, while princely (and Church)avarice was dangerous not only because it corrupted rulers, but alsobecause by being corrupt, they had the capacity to corrupt others.108

To be sure, Poggio also expressed fears that the citizen body may be‘corrupted by gold’;109 yet, despite this conventional note, his dialoguewas distinctive in at least considering the possibility that avarice maybe separated from corruption, and that the former need not inevitablylead to the latter.110 The novelty of this proposition in contemporaryhumanist discourse sat in awkward contrast to the recurrent humanisttheme that republics must cultivate virtue and fear corruption, whichtended to be understood in terms of the decay or degeneration ofthe polity due to the loss of individual and collective commitment tothe common good. Such a loss was often equated with the disunityand strife that came of incessant faction, often caused by immod-erate pursuit of selfish vices, such as pride or greed, which led topolitical aggrandisement or the amassing of inordinate private wealthat public expense.111 This idealisation was sometimes difficult to rec-oncile with the realities of republican politics, as the case of Veniceillustrates.

Venetian humanists tended to portray theirs as an immortal, corpo-ratist and hierarchical republic supported by a social order embodying


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virtues of unanimitas, or as Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542) put it, ‘thepreservation of civill concorde and agreement’.112 Indeed, Machiavellisaw Venice in this light, though in rather less positive terms, as a hier-archical republic committed to preserving the status of the patricianruling class and, thus, focussed on social unity and order.113 DonaldQueller has argued that Venetian political practice was regularly atvariance with Venetian humanist ideology of an incorruptible, eternalrepublic, though others have suggested that Venetians held a slightlymore nuanced view of the relationship between republican virtues andcorruption and the ineradicability of the latter.114

Historians of the maritime republic have lavished considerable atten-tion on the peculiarly Venetian institutionalisation of corruption withinthe ‘necessary evil’ of broglio.115 Broglio referred to the very publiclydisplayed, often noisy and tumultuous (but also regularly hushed andwhispered) jockeying and canvassing among the patrician elite for elec-tion to public office. The term derived from the public promenadeand political exchange between the patricians outside the ducal palace,which, from at least the fourteenth century, became a standard, ifunruly, political practice:

The broglio presented politics as it was: the jostling for position, thepursuit of ambition, the dispensation of favours, the petitioning forlargesse. . . . [It] spilled into the Rialto, the piazza, the basilica, and theDucal Palace . . . in the courtyard of the palace and on the stairwaysto the council halls. They [the patricians] chanted the names of theirfavourites, whispered entreaties and threats, made deals, exchangedmoney – and placed bets on the election results. . . . If admonished toremain silent, they signalled to one another whom they supported oropposed.116

Broglio became a synonym for political corruption in all its forms, fromcovert bribery and graft to jockeying for position and power, oftenby directly flouting the laws and regulations designed to prevent it.117

Broglio ‘was woven into the Venetian social fabric’ and could occur atany time, place or occasion.118 Despite the regularity and publicity ofbroglio, the Venetian republic adopted a series of laws and regulationsand a byzantine system of election to office designed, not simply to pre-vent corruption but, as Contarini euphemistically described it, to ensurethat ‘every one’ among the ruling elite may ‘bee sweetned alike withparticipation of the honours and commodities of the commonwealth,without more exclusion of one more then another’.119 Contarini here


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perhaps hinted that Venice’s stability depended on a roughly even accessto the status and perks of office among the patrician class. He, of course,did not describe this as corruption, which was understood to encompass‘a range of activities from soliciting votes to outright fraud’, blurring the‘ideally distant’ poles of ‘personal considerations of advantage or pres-tige’ and the dutiful performance of public office.120 This ideal distancewas further undermined by the ‘Venetian system of granting grazie’(or grace) to petitioners of the state, a special favour or dispensationthat amounted to state-funded patronage.121 This institutionalisation ofpolitical corruption has been identified as one of the reasons for therelative political and social stability of the Venetian republic and itscomparative lack of violent feuds. ‘Broglio was the oil that made themachinery of state function so smoothly for so long’, Finlay wrote, ‘thatit seemed that Venice’, a ‘state luminous with corruption’ could also be‘a shining example of political wisdom and public virtue’.122

If Venetian republicans accepted a degree of political corruption inpractice as a means to contain violence and maintain order and peace inthe Republic, there was also an official discourse centred on the effort toeradicate corruption. Venetian authorities had long been acutely awareof the need to regulate broglio, and to ensure the integrity of publicoffices by a series of laws requiring the presentation of public accounts,the return of unspent government funds and the prevention of mul-tiple incumbencies in offices.123 These laws were frequently subvertedor simply ignored, as patricians continued to make use of bribery andflagrant electoral manipulation.124 So acute had this problem becomeby the late fifteenth and the dawn of the sixteenth century that con-temporaries reflected that they were witnessing ‘broglio in culmine’ or‘corruption at its height’.125 It would seem that corruption intensi-fied in this period as incomes from sea-borne and land-based tradebegan to decline. This motivated a rapid increase in the number ofpatrician families looking for sources of income in the form of salariesor sinecures from public office, which in turn stimulated the multi-plication of public offices (never able to satisfy demand), especiallyin the years 1450–1520.126 One of the factors exacerbating corruptionin the early years of the sixteenth century was the pressing need toincrease state revenues to finance recurrent war against the encroach-ing Ottomans.127 This need prompted widespread sale of offices, andin the case of the Procurators of St Mark, responsible inter alia for thedistribution of state charity, led to the expectation that their appoint-ment depended on making ‘a large “voluntary” contribution in readycash to government funds’ when needed, while even ‘lesser offices’ were


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awarded on the basis of ‘competing offers of loans and gifts in cash’ tothe public revenue.128

The unsettling possibility that Venetian broglio seemed to suggest, butwhich very few civic humanist thinkers seemed willing to admit, wasthat endemic corruption could be an almost inevitable concomitant ofrepublican politics. One thinker who did admit this was Aurelio LippoBrandolini (c.1454–97). His dialogue, Republics and Kingdoms Compared(c.1490–94), pictured the Hungarian kingdom under the governance ofhis patron, King Matthias Corvinus (1443–90), as less prone to being‘corrupted’ (corrumpi) than republics under collective governments.129

Among the reasons he adduced to support the argument was that themany governors in republics each had familial and other client–patronnetworks that could only be sustained by raiding the public purse,whereas monarchs had comparatively fewer networks to sustain andtheir own private sources of wealth to sustain them.130 The familiarnotion of corruption as an infectious disease was deployed to con-tend that many governors were more exposed to being ‘defiled andcorrupted’ by the contagion of ‘mental sickness’ (succumbing to vice),than one exalted and more socially isolated ruler.131 Echoing Plato’sfear of corruption through maritime trade and Cicero’s characterisa-tion of corrupted Carthage, Brandolini associated corruption in Hungarywith effeminacy and the weakening of traditional and simple virtuesand national character by free foreign trade and inordinate wealth cre-ation, which dissipated traditional, austere, hardy and parsimoniousvirtue.132

Brandolini’s account of virtue endangered by a creeping corruptionwas a very familiar one in the context of civic humanist discourse. Hismore unusual portrayal of monarchies as less corruptible than republicscontrasted with Niccolò Machiavelli’s analysis of virtue and corruption.In Machiavelli’s analysis, we will argue, lay a complicated and multi-dimensional understanding of corruption that profoundly challengedtwo central assumptions in established Medieval discourse on corrup-tion. These were the Augustinian assumption that all worldly politicalactivity was ultimately in a state of perpetual decay and corruption,and the Salisburian assumption that only the rightly (divinely) orderedpolitical body could contain corruption. In Machiavelli’s thought, cor-ruption was ineradicable but containable (at least for a time), but inneither case was corruption treated as a sign of spiritual death anddecay. Nor did Machiavelli consider divine solutions to corruption.Rather, his approach called for means altogether more practical, if alsomore brutal.


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5. Machiavelli’s corruption

In Niccolò Machiavelli’s (1469–1529) frequent but scattered referencesto corruption throughout his political writings, we can detect the com-bination of two important themes that, while certainly present inMedieval discourse on corruption, had not been linked in quite thesame way. The first of these themes was the concern that Marsiliusidentified, that corruption constituted a form of political divisionand instability associated with factions and factionalism. The secondtheme, more closely aligned with Classical degenerative discourse (andwith Brandolini’s and Poggio’s arguments), was that corruption con-sisted in the perversion of judgement.133 According to J.G.A. Pocock,Machiavelli’s political thought centred on his account of the possibilitiesfor virtue (virtù) in a world characterised by uncertain fortune (fortuna)and the ever-present possibility of corruption (corruzione).134 Pocockdescribed Machiavellian corruption as a ‘generalised process of moraldecay’ that undermined the ‘individual citizen’s autonomy’.135 Despitethe ubiquitous threats of corruption Machiavelli appeared to identify,Pocock’s view was that the perennial likelihood of irreversible corrup-tion was also tied to the potential for fostering its mercurial opposite,virtù. Denoting both individual excellence in judgement and decisive-ness in action, virtù was an animate vitality on which the virtuoso wasable to draw in adapting to changing circumstances, doing what wasrequired to master fortuna and maintain one’s estate. Viewed in thislight, virtù has often been associated with the willingness of princes tolie, dissemble and murder when necessary, but the term was also asso-ciated with the collective pursuit of the health of the republic throughcommitment to the general good.136 Most importantly, Machiavelli drewon the classical argument we reviewed in our first chapter, by identi-fying a citizens’ militia as the vital mechanism by which to forestallcorruption and train individual citizens in both the virtues of war (dis-cipline, courage, fortitude) and the virtues of political stability (loyalty,obedience and love of homeland).

Pocock’s interpretation has been enormously influential, but con-troversy persists over the degree to which Machiavelli and his laterinterpreters associated corruption with commerce.137 Pocock contendsthat a Machiavellian, or neo-Machiavellian, account of the causes ofpolitical greatness and decline was taken up by a range of Englishpolitical thinkers in the seventeenth century, in order to sustain anagrarian and anti-commercial republicanism that decisively shaped theintellectuals of the American War of Independence.138 At the heart


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of this claim was a republican ‘narrative of virtue and corruption’,according to which the overthrow of tyrants led to a flourishing ofrepublican virtue and liberty, the acquisition of empire, and therebyto inevitable corruption and decline.139 Pocock maintained that thisnarrative of virtue and corruption was shared and deployed by a suc-cession of European political thinkers and historians, from LeonardoBruni in the early fifteenth, to William Robertson in the late eighteenthcentury, and though not in direct ‘opposition to commerce’, the nar-rative highlighted concerns that wealth eroded virtue and encouragedcorruption.140

Pocock’s critics, however, argue that Machiavelli did not champion ananti-commercial civic humanism, but insisted rather on the ‘vital andsymbiotic’ or ‘mutually supportive’ relationship between commercialwealth and republican virtue and liberty.141 Significantly, Machiavellidid not seem unduly concerned about the potential for corruption fromthe mismanagement or even the privatisation of public debt. Florence,like other Italian cities, had its own institution (known as the Montedi pieta or Monte) for providing charitable loans supposedly withoutinterest. By the late 1490s, the Monte was borrowing money in its ownright, and it rapidly became a rich source for patronage and ‘corrup-tion in all its forms’, from false accounting to embezzlement of publicfunds and naked bribery of city officials.142 Machiavelli did refer to theMonte as a source of popular resentment (because of its payment ofinterest to creditors), but not of corruption.143 More telling, however,were his comments on Genoa and its famous and powerful bank ofSan Giorgio. Machiavelli heaped praise on this bank, first establishedin 1407 as an association of creditors financing Genoa’s disastrous Warof Chioggia (1379–81) against Venice.144 The debt was to be repaid bygiving the bank a share of Genoa’s lucrative customs, but in courseof time, the bank itself took over substantial parts of Genoa’s govern-ment and empire. Machiavelli clearly saw the bank as a major source ofstrength in the mercantile republic, speaking of its ‘ordered . . . mode ofgovernment’.145 Genoa’s unusual achievement, he wrote, was to com-bine ‘civil life and corrupt life, justice and license’ in one republic.His reference to ‘corrupt life’ pointed directly to the weakness and fac-tionalism of the civil administration of Genoa, while the Bank was forhim a source of the republic’s strength by remaining united and sta-ble. These comments have been interpreted as Machiavelli’s acceptanceof inevitable corruption that the Genoese wisely kept contained withintheir political and financial institutions.146 At the very least, they sug-gest to us that Machiavelli’s understanding of political corruption was


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not limited to the potential for private financial interests to dominatepublic office. Rather, the political weakness and instability of corrup-tion were linked in his mind to the animate nature of both virtù and thepolity itself.

5.1. The humors of faction

Machiavelli often employed organic or biological notions of politiessubject to infirmities or diseases (such as the ‘poison’ of corruption),but amenable to medical treatment.147 Established medical and cos-mological discourse was dominated by Galenic theories of bodily (and‘bodily political’) health, consisting in the maintenance of a politicalbalance between the four ‘humors’ (umori) to prevent ‘corruption’ andrestore or renew the polity.148 Machiavelli spoke of political humors thatcorresponded to the appetitive motivations of competing social group-ings, most notably, the ‘humoric struggle’ or dynamic tension betweenthe common people (popolo) and nobility (grandi) that helped makeRome great.149

Political humors within these two social groupings could be diverse.In the Florentine Histories, for instance, Machiavelli referred to a dis-parate faction of noblemen arranged against Piero de Medici in 1466,who were ‘moved by diverse causes’ (diverse cagioni), ranging from self-interest and a desire for power to high-minded principle.150 Machiavellithen went on to describe their confederation and their effect on theRepublic in these terms: ‘With such diversity of humors (umori), theseconspirators nonetheless announced publicly one identical cause’. ForMachiavelli, ‘these humors’ were constantly ‘boiling . . . in the city’,sometimes not only coalescing around common causes but also feed-ing incessant ‘civil discords’. The essential point, as Parel has observed,was that Machiavelli’s political umori imbibed the Galenic medical con-notation that the health of the body containing these humors restedon a balance among them; otherwise, the biological or political bodywould ‘become diseased or “corrupted”, or moribund’.151 In this sense,Machiavelli may be said to have represented the political art of read-ing and responding to umori in the polity as one of ‘satisfying . . . naturalnecessity, not moral choice’, thus balancing all the humors rather thaneradicating any of them.152

In the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli argued that the greatness ofRome and the weakness of Florence could both be traced to the con-stant struggle between the ‘diversity of humors’, especially those ofthe ‘nobles’ who desired ‘command’, and the ‘commons’ who wanted


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liberty.153 In the Roman Republic, this division was a dynamic tensionresolved by ‘argument’ and ‘law’, but in Florence, it resulted merelyin ‘combat’ and ‘exile’. The problem was that in Florence, the peoplesought to control government entirely themselves, thereby dominat-ing the nobility; whereas in Rome, both people and nobles acceptedthey each had a share in government without either dominating.154 As aresult, the opposing forces in the Florentine Republic fostered narrowviews of their own self-interest with which they sought to control gov-ernment. Consequently, the Florentines suborned the law to narrowsectional interests, weakening the city through internecine struggles,‘banishments and bloodshed’, dulling the citizens into a complacentenjoyment of their own factional power in preference to the diligentand active pursuit of the power of Florence. In Rome, however, thestruggle between nobles and people sharpened their ‘warlike spirit’, theirvirtù, which was directed not to the aggrandisement of their own groupor faction, but to the common good, namely, the aggrandisement ofRome itself.

All polities, Machiavelli argued, were brought by ‘necessity’ (necessità)to defend themselves from outside aggression, were moved by the con-stant ‘motion’ that meant that things ‘cannot stay steady’ and ‘musteither rise or fall’, and so every polity must be prepared to conquerits enemies.155 Machiavelli’s analysis here echoed the familiar Polybiancycle of greatness and decline. Conquests and imperial greatness werewon by virtue; decline was brought about by the decadence that great-ness brings. Crucially, the danger of corruption was explicitly associatednot only with those who held public office, but also with the entire pop-ulace and the institutions of the republic falling away from their formervirtue.156 Here, public office and degenerative corruption combined, butthe latter was notably shorn of its Christian spiritual significance. Main-taining a healthy polity was a very difficult operation, requiring theactive management of public ‘manners and customs’ and the inculca-tion of virtù. It was in this sense that Machiavelli spoke of the difficultyof re-establishing a mixed constitution in a republic that had becomecorrupted (corrotto).157

In Machiavelli’s eyes, the prevention of corruption was closely associ-ated with military service and training. In his dialogue, The Art of War,Machiavelli used the character of Captain Fabrizio Colonna (arguing forthe military model of ancient Rome) to voice the concern that modernItalians had fallen away from their former hardy, manly and war-likevirtues, and become weak, indolent and effeminate. The standard of


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former virtue was provided by the ‘ancients’, in particular the Romansand Spartans, who endured ‘hardships and inconveniences’ in prefer-ence to ‘ease and indolence’.158 By imitating the ancients, Machiavelliargued, modern Italians might have remained ‘honest and wholesome’but had instead become ‘dishonest and corrupt’. Machiavelli charac-teristically framed this account of corruption, not just as a moral orpolitical problem, but as a temporal problem. It was in this sense thatMachiavelli typically spoke of ‘the corruption of the age’ or the ‘corrupttimes’ in which he lived.159 In ‘corrupt times’, moral degeneration fromindolence, luxury, narrow self-interest or greed predominated, and fewseemed willing or able to ‘deviate in the slightest’ from this decline.160

In the Art of War, corruption was opposed to the willingness to endurehardship, to emulate discipline and to display military virtues (suchas courage and fortitude), which were associated with virtù, a qualityvital to the performance of public office and necessary for staving offdegenerative corruption.161

Virtù has often been represented as the sum of a Prince’s ‘manly’qualities of wily or dishonest cunning and violent ruthlessness in theconstant struggle – often doomed to failure – to master fortuna.162

A fuller appreciation of virtù, however, would have to include otherskills necessary for the performance of public office at all levels, includ-ing the emulation and inculcation of the qualities of a well-disciplinedmilitia – order, endurance, fortitude and courage – among the citizenbody.163 Virtù was thus a quality to be emulated by individual citizensand exhibited in their various civic functions, thereby characterisingthe collective citizen body, which by means of it would be enabledto achieve glory and greatness.164 Virtù was linked with necessita andopposed to the corrupting indolence (ozio) that followed peace andled only to ruin.165 Virtù, though, was ever prone to decay, for justa few soldiers who lacked virtù could ‘sow the seeds of corruption’among the rest.166 The individual and collective qualities of virtù wereopposed, in Machiavelli’s thought, to the individual and collective stateof corruption. Pitkin described this state of corruption as a creeping ‘pri-vatization’ in which citizens became ‘absorbed in their immediate anddirect relationships’, subject to petty factions or blind to all but nar-row self-interests.167 If unchecked, this ‘privatisation’ of citizens wouldresult in the corruption of the entire polity by the predominance ofself and factional interests.168 The link posited here between faction andself-interest raises another dimension of Machiavelli’s references to cor-ruption, his representation of violence as either a symptom of or a curefor corruption.


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5.2. Violence, virtù and corruption

Towards the end of the First Book of The Discourses, Machiavelli spokeof states that were ‘corrupt’ (corroto) because citizens did not surrender aportion of their wealth to the public.169 At first glance, this would appearto be a simple reflection on the injustice of ‘defrauding’ the republicby paying less than one’s share of taxation. He praised the Germans,for instance, whose ‘goodness’, ‘religion’ and respect for the law unitedthem and underlay their voluntary commitment to paying their taxes.Machiavelli contrasted the Germans with the obviously ‘corrupt’ con-dition of Italy. France and Spain, who were also said to ‘retain partof such corruption’, avoided rampant corruption because their kings’‘virtue’ kept the people relatively ‘united’.170 Corruption here denoted acondition of disunity with frequent ‘disorders’. Machiavelli clarified thepoint in outlining the two reasons why he considered the Germans tobe free from corruption. The first reason echoed Platonic scepticism oftrade and the ancient Roman ideal of the self-sufficient and simple agrar-ian economy, which sounded close to Brandolini’s idealised depiction ofthe austere Hungarians. For Machiavelli, the German cities and republicswere content to live on their own produce and carry on little tradeor ‘intercourse’ with more corrupt nations, which in his view wouldbe ‘the beginning of every corruption’.171 The second reason was thatthe German republics prevented any of their citizens from becoming‘gentlemen’, and thus maintained ‘even equality’ between citizens.172

Machiavelli cast ‘gentlemen’ in the role of corrupters-in-chief of therepublic, the bane of Italy; men who were committed to nothing butwealth, splendour, idleness and indulgence, who disdained productivelabour and whose fortified houses and retainers were a permanent threatto law and order.173 Where gentlemen prevailed, as in the Papal States,the Romagna and the Kingdom of Naples, republics could not be estab-lished because ‘so much corrupt matter’ was to be found there thatthe ‘laws’ were ‘not enough to check it’, and only ‘a kingly hand’wielding ‘absolute and excessive power’ could curb the ‘ambition andcorruption’ of gentlemen.174 Machiavelli’s corruption thus denoted thepolitical weakness that was the inevitable result of the disunity andfactional interests coalescing around the divergent ambitions of gen-tlemen. Machiavelli underscored the idea of corruption as politicaldisunity in Book III of the Florentine Histories, where he put a remark-able speech into the mouth of an unnamed representative of the citizensof Florence, ‘moved by love of their country’ to complain to their gov-ernment, the Signory, in 1372.175 Florence, this speaker exhorted, was


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a city ‘infect[ed]’ with the ‘universal corruption’ besetting all Italy. Thiscorruption consisted in governments based on ‘factious division’, result-ing in a citizenry that lacked ‘friendship or fellowship’, faith and trust,because they were plagued by ‘fraud’ and rewarded ‘bad men’ for their‘astuteness’ while despising ‘good men as fools’.

By inserting this and other speeches into his historical narrative,Machiavelli was able to play out the humoric struggle in the republic in adramatic way.176 Elsewhere in the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli spokeof Florence as ‘corrupt’ because it had ‘always lived with parties’ andfactions that ‘corrupted’ good men by suborning them to their factionalinterests.177 Repeatedly in the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli tracedFlorence’s weakness to ‘tumults’ caused by these factions.178 The civichumanist mistrust of factions led some, such as the Venetian patricianDomenico Morosini (1417–1509), to associate corruption, in the form of‘bribery, the selling of lawsuits’ and the ‘depraving of moral standards’,with more popular forms of government that admitted the ‘young andpoor’ to public office. In Morosini’s view, public office ought to remainthe province of the wealthy and established patrician families.179 ForMachiavelli, however, corruption was not a consequence of popular gov-ernment, but of the exclusive desire for mastery in the republic. Hevividly portrayed the civic dangers of this mastery in another speech,put into the mouth of an unnamed craftsman who incited riot andbloodshed during the Ciompi uprising of 1381. In the quest to securepopular power at the expense of the nobles, he declared that ‘their dis-union will . . . give us victory, and their riches, when they have becomeours, will maintain . . . us’.180

If the Machiavellian art of politics consisted in correctly manag-ing the humoric contest between the nobles and the people withinthe city, Machiavelli nonetheless distinguished between ‘harmful’ and‘helpful’ divisions. Harmful were those accompanied by partisanshipand incessant feuds; helpful were those basic oppositions that createdcompetitive tension without becoming hardened into factions. Signifi-cantly, Machiavelli construed harmful factions as the concomitants ofthose who sought greatness by corrupt or ‘private modes by benefittingthis or that other citizen, defending him from the magistrates, help-ing him with money, getting him unmerited honours and ingratiatingoneself with the plebs with games and public gifts’.181 By contrast, thepublic mode of attaining greatness and reputation rested on devotionto public service, on winning battles or on providing sage advice to thecity. The reputation of figures involved in such activities was ‘foundedon a common good, not on a private good’, and by having no needof faction ‘they cannot harm the republic’.182 Hence, for Machiavelli,


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references to corruption were never far removed from the criticism ofnarrow sectional or factional interests, or from analyses of the role ofviolence in the polity – as not only a sign of corruption but also apotential remedy.183

The vigorous humoric contest in republics, between the people andthe nobles, had to be harnessed and turned outward in the quest forempire. The warlike spirit engendered in the citizens by the humoricstruggle and their effective discipline in a strong militia were crucial torepublics acquiring empire and greatness. But while the liberty born ofcivil conflict in the republic delivered these great benefits, the empirethat it also helped to win tempted leaders and citizens to excess anddecadence and, thus, to corruption. Mansfield argues that corruptionwas ‘the necessary consequence of republican virtue and, in a prince, thenecessity of his nature’.184 Machiavelli did trace a line that led from virtùto corruption, but this trajectory reinforced the need for civic vigilance,not cynical despair.185 Ultimately, however, political debility and decaycaused by the loss of virtù could only ever be stalled or possibly reversedfor a time by virtuous statesmen and good laws, but only if the polityhad ‘not become totally corrupt’.186

It is at this point that we return to the relationship between corrup-tion and violence, linked in this case by Machiavelli’s stipulation thatnecessity requires that all polities be prepared for war. Virtù was a qual-ity called forth by necessity, especially in Europe, where the multiplicityof principalities and republics engendered frequent military contestsfavouring the collective emulation of martial virtue. In Asia, by contrast,Machiavelli considered that the relatively small number of polities, thepreponderance of ‘one monarchy’ (China) and the traditional distrust ofvirtù in monarchies each resulted in a general corruption or ‘indolence’and to a reliance on mercenary soldiers.187 Machiavelli remained waryof professional soldiers who waged war only for profit. Mercenaries,he argued, never fight for glory nor are they capable of true virtù.More importantly, the ‘corrupt custom’ of paying soldiers would leadto princes surrounding themselves with professional captains whoselivelihoods depended on a constant state of war, and thus on drainingpublic coffers, ensuring their own ascendancy by tyrannous means.188

Similarly, when strong empires predominated, as Rome did in Europe’spast, contending nations were subdued and peoples were no longerdriven by necessity to display virtù. As a consequence, luxury, lazinessand indolence (ozio) become commonplace, and this rendered people‘effeminate’ (effeminato) and unable to defend themselves by ‘manly’courage and virtù.189 When that happens, as it did when Rome ‘became


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corrupt’ (corrotta), empires ‘similarly corrupt . . . ’ (corrotto) and weakenthose peoples subject to them.190

For Machiavelli, then, the problem of corruption was not simply apersonal moral failing, nor was it a sign or symptom of sinfulness ormoral degeneracy. To be sure, Machiavelli’s understanding of corrup-tion imbibed connotations of moral and political decay, the loss of virtùand the triumph of greed and avarice.191 But Machiavelli’s corruptionalso had a temporal or historical dimension insofar as it denoted acondition that polities may exhibit as a consequence of specific polit-ical conditions. Among these conditions, the geo-political situation wasimportant. Corruption was an especial danger to smaller polities sub-ject to mighty empires, but was perhaps less of a threat among roughlybalanced polities in direct competition with one another. Machiavellialso inscribed a geographical element in his understanding of corrup-tion, associating it especially with the luxury and supineness of Asiain contrast to the relative vigour of Europe. Above all else, corruptiondenoted a political problem with systemic implications that broughtforth or required violence.

6. Conclusion

If Machiavelli’s political thought was characterised by paranoia aboutcorruption, it was a paranoia that did not manifest in a single con-cept. Rather, corruption continued to denote a range of phenomena,many of them familiar from earlier Medieval thought. Nonetheless, histhought exemplified some of the different possibilities envisaged in lateMedieval and Renaissance thought, in which corruption could be seenas constituting a predominantly political rather than a spiritual prob-lem. The political problem of corruption could still be represented interms of decay, but this decay was by no means as clear-cut as the ear-lier Medieval discourse on the spiritual problem of corruption suggested.In other words, political corruption was not just a matter of the triumphof human sin over godly virtues, leading the sinner directly to the pitsof Hell and the political body to the very brink of death. Rather, politicalcorruption was a complex problem that might elicit a degree of ambiva-lence in its analysis. Corruption might still be seen as a political evil,but one that might be worse in some polities (in Brandolini’s republics,for example) than others. Corruption might also be seen, as historiansof Renaissance Venice have argued, as having some potential benefits,or might just be seen, as Machiavelli saw it, as an ineradicable problemrequiring adept, and if necessary, brutal management.


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Whatever the ambiguities and nuances, corruption was rarely if everwelcomed. Diligent lip service had to be paid to the evils of corruption.Characteristically, Machiavelli’s approach to the treatment of corruptionwas shaped by his engagement with classical Roman sources. The luridimagery in Cicero’s speeches or the histories of Tacitus and Suetonius –not to mention Livy’s nostalgia for Rome’s past glories – coupled withMachiavelli’s own disillusioning political experience, inspired a typi-cally brutal attitude to corruption. Republics, he argued, were compositebodies able to maintain themselves, but ultimately mortal.192 In time,even the best republics would be corrupted by the gradual drift awayfrom their simple virtues, unanimous commitment to justice or originalprinciples. Consequently, the capacity for republics to maintain them-selves depended on their ability to renew, restore or renovate themselvesperiodically by forcing the citizens to return to those original princi-ples. Restorative events might erupt from outside, or they might bepurposely built into the design of the republic. In both cases, renewalwas prompted by corruption and carried out by violence, whether in theform of war, execution, murder or some other form of political death.Renewal from outside was accomplished by invasion or war, leading tothe renunciation of luxury and idleness and inspiring patriotism, civicunity and political vigour. Renewal from inside might be accomplishedwhen, by means of good laws or the actions of virtuous citizens, corruptcitizens were executed in cases of exemplary severity every ten years orso, inspiring both fear of and respect for the law. Both these sourcesof renewal were said to curb ‘the ambition and the insolence of men’who inspired corruption. The extreme measures for political renewalcalled forth by rampant ‘corruption’ were deemed necessary in orderfor a polity to avoid destruction, but they would not be effective if thepolity had already become too ‘corrupt’.193

Machiavelli’s advocacy of decisive political violence challenged theestablished view of Medieval discourse on corruption, that politics mustbe guided by virtue and love.194 It also served to challenge another keyassumption in Medieval thought, that the polity itself constituted anembodied community. The life of the embodied community might bespoken of as more or less vigorous or healthy; its office bearers mightbe admitted to rise and fall and even pass away, but the essence ofthe embodied polity was thought to be perpetual. The embodied polity,Machiavelli suggested, may not only be subject to debility and disease,but also to the constant flux of humors whose rise and fall must be care-fully judged or accurately diagnosed, in order to avert corruption andrenew or restore the polity, by violent means if necessary. Although, as


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we have seen, the diagnosis of corruption and prescription of violencewere not unprecedented within the terms of the ancient metaphor,Machiavelli suggested that the ruler capable of diagnosis and cure actedon the body politic rather than sharing in its embodiment.

The decline of the ancient metaphor of the body politic can be inter-preted in light of the rise of this more modern claim to a lethal sovereignpower over individual bodies.195 As we have argued in this chapter,an important contributor to this development was the re-emergenceof notions of corruption that were distinct from the spiritual conno-tations of degenerative corruption, consisting in the triumph of sinfulhuman nature, of rampant avarice or cupidity culminating in moraland physical decay and death. Though often framed by the parametersof the Christian equation of corruption with spiritual and even phys-ical decay, a range of more explicitly political, rather than spiritual,concerns gradually emerged in late Medieval discourse on corruption.Elements of a distinctly political understanding could be identified inDante’s denunciation of the dishonourable fraud of barratry, and inMarsilius’ and Machiavelli’s (admittedly very different) associations ofcorruption with political faction and disunity, as well as in the human-ists’ concerns about corruption as the distortion of judgement. In theseways, the broad contours of a concept of political corruption graduallyemerged in European political thought. These contours were still wideand capacious, often far from neatly drawn, and they hinted at, ratherthan developed, what was to become a key feature of later understand-ings of corruption: the systematic intrusion of private interests into theperformance of public office.


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4Affection, Interest and Officein Early Modernity

1. Introduction

Conceptualising corruption as a process of degeneration enabled twobroad forms of usage in Medieval and Early Modern discourse. First,corruption could be used to describe the process of moral or physicaldecay of animate beings, possibly even including the degeneration ofthe earth and the cosmos itself. Second, corruption might also be used todescribe the terminus of this process of decay, the state of death or utterdestruction to which the process of decay inevitably led. Complicatingthis categorisation was that both of these usages could also be appliedin descriptions of the moral vitiation of a person or a whole com-munity, and the political debility or decline of nations and empires.1

A further complication was that the moral and political connotations ofdegenerative corruption were often linked to widespread acts of pub-lic office corruption, that is, the abuse of public (secular or Church)offices. The apparently divergent understandings of degenerative andpublic office corruption were also connected by prevailing assumptionsabout the correspondences between the divine structure of the cosmos,the hierarchies of nature, the rightly ordered society and the well-proportioned body of a human being. As Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)put it, ‘in the little frame of man’s body there is a representation ofUniversall, and (by allusion) a kind of participation of all the partsthereof’.2

A concomitant of this assumed network of correspondences was thatthe appearance of corruption within that network heralded the very realpossibility of the moral and physical decay or death of communities,institutions, nations or people.3 This fear was perhaps nowhere moreclearly expressed in Early Modern literature than in the claim that the

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world itself, and everything upon it, was in terminal moral, spiritualand physical decline. Sir Walter Raleigh made this claim by invoking theOvidian myth of a ‘Golden Age’ after the Biblical flood, when ‘Ambitionand Covetousnesse being then but greene . . . and effects whereof were asyet but potential’, had given way to a general ‘defection and falling awayfrom God’ among humankind.4 For Godfrey Goodman (1582–1656), theprocess of universal corruption pointed to the ultimate dissolution ofall humankind and the earth itself.5 In George Hakewill’s (1578/9–1649)more optimistic response, fears about diffuse degenerative corruptionwere directly connected to denunciations of more precise (and hencepotentially limitable) problems, such as bribery, covetousness and greedcorrupting institutions. Here, public office corruption was spoken ofas a ‘pollution’ or ‘disease’ ‘like a leprosie diffusing itselfe from thehead into all the bodie’ of the Church or the Roman Empire.6 ForTrajano Boccalini (1556–1613) also, corruption could refer to both the‘corrupt age’ in which he lived, and the specific misdemeanours bywhich magistrates ‘engross . . . commodities’ and ‘detestable gaines’ bypractising ‘sale of Offices’ and taking ‘bribes . . . sinisterly . . . without wit-nesse’, all of which ‘like the tainting spots of corrupted Oile . . . couldnever bee washt away with the purest sope of innocence’.7 Such sen-timents reveal a conceptual variability, which we will argue here wascharacteristic of Early Modern thought. Thus, notions of corruption asmoral, spiritual or physical decay often framed, and sometimes over-shadowed, notions of corruption as a misuse of public office (whetherby a prince, a priest or a judge) to extort excessive fees or ‘gifts’. Whilewe might see such wrongdoing as a straightforward case of public officecorruption, subtle distinctions were made by contemporaries betweenthe ‘accepted convention’ of giving gifts for services, which were ineffect ‘informal fee[s]’, and paying what we would term bribes designedto ‘corrupt an official’ to ‘subvert the public interest for private gain’.8

Contemporary references to the corruption exhibited oscillated betweenbroad and narrow, degenerative and public office corruption, aided notonly by arcane assumptions about microcosmic and macrocosmic cor-respondences, but also by the more prosaic practices of gifting andpatronage.

This conceptual oscillation was further enabled by the quite vari-able vocabulary available to thinkers of the time. In Florio’s 1598Italian/English dictionary, for example, ‘Corrotione’ and ‘corrotto’ weredefined respectively as ‘a corruption, a putrefaction, a bribing’ and‘corrupted, rotten, putrefied, bribed. Also mourning or sorrowing forthe dead’.9 Note that Florio’s definitions encompassed physical decay


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Affection, Interest and Office in Early Modernity 101

as well as the more narrow application to bribery. Randle Cotgrave’sFrench/English dictionary of 1611 went further; for him, ‘corrompre’meant ‘to corrupt, rot putrefie, taint; marre, spill, spoyle; deprave, infect,viciate; invert, pervert, mislead; also to bribe; suborne, or win, by gifts’.10

Here, there were possibly five different connotations, including thephysical decay of rotting, the disfigurement or loss by spill or ‘spoyle’,vitiation by infection, leading into error and finally, the use of bribes.

Within this variable range of definitions, corruption became some-thing of a ‘humanist obsession’ among Early Modern writers, who usedit to castigate the deliberate derogation of public duties, emphasisingthereby the importance of office-holding in the period.11 We wouldsearch in vain for a clear delineation of public and private realms inEarly Modern Europe, finding, as Natalie Mears has argued, that a varietyof public realms were inscribed with different, and sometimes compet-ing, claims based on the status, locality or nature of the office.12 Onesource of integration here was the articulation of common expectationswithin humanist discourse about conduct in office, which emphasisedthe imperative to avoid corruption.

Humanist concerns over public office corruption derived from a greatvariety of classical authorities, but it was generally ‘understood to beany kind of self-seeking behaviour, particularly the pursuit of individ-ual profit at the expense of the common good’.13 According to JohnSalmon, Cicero and Tacitus became standard humanist sources on cor-ruption because ‘Cicero seemed an appropriate source for the definitionof tyranny and Tacitus for its illustration’.14 David Womersley also sug-gests that the increasing interest in Tacitus marks the development ofan Early Modern ‘political grammar’, in which classical examples oftyranny and corruption served, not merely as illustrations of ‘moraltransgressions’ but of ‘political failures: failures of judgement, nerve, andwill’.15 In this analysis, Tacitean corruption – and this denoted the dan-ger not only of rampant self-interest but also of flattery and flatterers insustaining tyrannous rule – became one element in an emergent polit-ical discourse focussed on explaining political action by purely humanmotivations, ranging from low interest to high aspirations to virtue.16

We have argued in previous chapters, however, that the humanistfocus on the corruption of virtue and its political consequences wasmatched by far less expansive uses of the term ‘corruption’ to denotethe range of misdemeanours of those entrusted with spiritual or secularauthority. Indeed, Linda Levy Peck has suggested that expansive notionsof corruption as bodily or moral decay, as well as those more narrowlytargeted on misdemeanours in public office, were ‘shared elements of a


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common language on corruption’ that emerged, above all in Early Mod-ern England, from a blending of classical humanist with indigenouslegal understandings of the term focussed on castigating the ‘corrupt-ing’ patronage of the Crown.17 Ronald Asch also points out that theemergence of corruption as a more clearly defined crime in Continen-tal European thought resulted from efforts to find a ‘consensual’ wayto bring the sovereign to book, one that broke free of the languageof the ‘body politic’ that left few options for re-thinking the place ofthe sovereign ‘head’ in relation to the other members of the ‘body’(short of absolute domination or complete decapitation).18 Re-castingthat relationship required a language able to separate the monarch’s pri-vate person more clearly from his or her persona as the embodiment ofthe ‘body politic’. In this context of political contest, the definition ofthe proper duties of public office assumed real importance.19

In this chapter, we will argue that Early Modern, and especiallyBritish, discourse on corruption came to focus ever more closely onthe operations of self-interest, and when applied to critiques of publicoffice, discourse on corruption became entwined with the vexed issue ofthe relationship between private and public realms. The invocation ofcorruption, we argue, imbibed understandings of the role and dutiesof public office that slowly came to be expressed in mechanistic orcontractual terms in preference to the familiar organic trope of the‘body politic’. The emergence of understandings of corruption moretightly focussed on inappropriate self-interest and the abuse of pub-lic office is, we suggest, a conceptual indicator of both the continuingrelevance of classical sources and the shift away from the organologicalassumptions that underlay classical and Medieval visions of the bodypolitic.

2. Reforming corruption

In Albert Hirschman’s classic study The Passions and the Interests (1977),the concept of interest was said to emerge and rise to prominencein Western thought in the wake of the disastrous wars of religionin France in the sixteenth century. Here, centrist politicians soughtto buttress the calculated pursuit of a unifying national interest inopposition to the violence and factionalism engendered by passionatereligious conviction, or the aristocratic desire for glory.20 In Hirschman’snarrative, wealth accumulation by honest labour came to be seen as‘peaceful and inoffensive’, in comparison to warfare and the ‘pas-sionate pastimes and savage exploits of the aristocracy’, and thus


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became the bedrock of ‘industriousness and assiduity . . . frugality, punc-tuality, and . . . probity’.21 Hirschman’s persuasive analysis nonethelessoverplays the pacific nature of interest in Early Modern thought, andunderplays the degree to which interest prompted anxieties about socialdivision and potential violence within the body politic. A particularsource of such anxieties was the notion that the separable interests ofsovereigns and subjects not only rent the image of a united body politic,but that by means of these interests the body itself could be sunderedby corruption.22

The metaphor of the body politic always incorporated a spatial sep-aration between sovereigns (as the head or heart) and subjects (as thevarious members, limbs or organs), which to some degree also entaileda functional separation. Nonetheless, the overriding import of themetaphor was that it implied a mutual interdependence that left princesat the mercy of rebuke from the ‘members’, or at risk of ‘infection’,‘contagion’ or perhaps even of amputation or decapitation altogether.23

The tension inherent in the metaphor between bodily integrity and themultiple organs or members was exacerbated by religious division andconflict throughout the sixteenth century.24 What these divisions por-tended was that the various members of the body politic might havetheir own interests that were not only at variance with the interests ofother members, but also possibly incommensurate with dutiful obedi-ence to the interests of the ruler. These challenges prompted thinkerssuch as Thomas Starkey (c. 1495–1538) to lament that the ‘spirytuallebodye’ of the English church had been ‘dissevered and in sondrye partesdevyded and rent’.25

The Protestant Reformation underscored the perception in Europethat the body politic was endangered by potentially irremediable divi-sions between its members. Having once been defined by its harmoniousor hierarchical integrity, European bodies politic now housed a diversityof clashing interests. This perception, crystallised in the ferment of reli-gious division and persecution, had a profound effect on contemporaryunderstandings of corruption. The Protestant reformers emerged fromthe traditions of humanist scholarship in Europe that had flourishedwith the development of ‘urban cultures’ receptive to the humanistemphasis on the civilising role of virtue.26 This approach was cou-pled with warnings about corruption as the ever-ready threat to beremoved by reforming both polity and Church.27 Although the human-ists’ concerns about virtue, corruption and reform were not sectarian,they helped to fuel the Protestant reformers’ zeal to overturn a RomanCatholic Church they identified as riddled with corruption.28


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According to Natalie Zemon Davis, the Reformation itself can beunderstood as a ‘quarrel about gifts’ and their spiritual significance.29

For the reformers, the Catholic emphasis on good works, often throughdonations to the Church, was simply a corrupt attempt to ‘oblige’ Godto bestow divine grace. Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) ‘95 Theses’, thedocument conventionally identified as initiating the Protestant Refor-mation, set the tone by denouncing the Church’s abrogation of thepenitential message of the Gospels in selling ‘remission’ of sins throughIndulgences. The Church’s supposed claim that by buying an Indul-gence, ‘the soul rushes out of purgatory immediately when the moneyjingles, after it is tossed into the chest’, directly contradicted Luther’smessage of salvation through the divine gift of grace alone.30 Moneyexacted from ‘hawkers of indulgences’ only fed ‘greed and gain’, whereasin Luther’s view, the Church should be dependent entirely on ‘the willof God’.31

For the reformers, the spiritual corruption of Church doctrine gaverise to all the petty corruptions, simony and venality of the Catholicclergy. Jean Calvin (1509–64), for example, deplored the ‘present corrup-tion of the Church’, by which he meant its debasement by ‘filthy lucre’,avarice, greed and luxury that all distorted the word of God, as well asthe spiritual ‘disease’ of sacraments ‘vitiated and polluted’ by idolatry,the merest ceremony or the superstitious quest for saintly patronage.32

The Swiss Protestant reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) saw thecorruption of the Roman Catholic Church as a reflection of its endemicspiritual corruption, evident in its ‘economy of the salvation of souls’ bygood deeds or the donation of gifts to the Church.33 ‘Whoever forgivessome sins for the sake of money’, Zwingli declaimed, ‘is an apostle ofSimon and a companion of Bileam and the Devil’s own messenger’.34

In contrast to the supposedly eternally ‘circular’ movement of giftsand patronage represented in the image of the Three Graces (where onegives, another gratefully receives and the third passes the gift onward),the reformers instituted a new model whereby the only true gift (grace)flowed ‘downward’ (from god) through the faithful, whose services toothers were ‘sacrifice[s]’ not to be returned but passed ever onward‘through time’.35 In this view, salvation was a divine gift that couldnot be won, much less bought. This attitude also informed repudiationsof the routine operation of patronage by gift exchange in political life,and among the hierarchies of the new Protestant churches, against bothof which more radical reformers (much to the horror of conservativereformers, such as Luther himself) sought to establish a new and purifiedorder.36


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Hence, Protestant reformers were not simply concerned by the evidentcorruption of Rome, but the very real corruption embodied in everydaymoral and political life, particularly the debauched morals or luxurioustemptations of social life. Among these, women were regularly identifiedin German and Swiss Protestant reformist rhetoric, Groebner argues, as‘perilous sites of seduction by luxury, dress, and jewellery’.37 ‘[F]emaleextravagance and unchastity’ thus represented an avenue for the influ-ence of ‘dangerous gift[s]’, which were ‘closely tied to the Reformationdoctrines on fornication and marriage’. By means of reflection on thesekinds of corruption, the Swiss reformers marshalled a ‘newly formulatedwork ethic’ against the use of gifts, and against ‘political venality’ anddiscord.

For both Catholics and Protestants alike, the concept of corruptionstraddled degenerative and public office concerns.38 Indeed, both sidesof the confessional divide mobilised Augustinian concerns about thecorruption of human reason, judgement and knowledge after The Fall.39

The Catholic Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), for example, recommendedin his Dialogue Concerning Tyndale that Protestant heretics be cast outof the holy ‘body’ of the Church like ‘a dead hand’ ‘cut off for fearof corruption of the remnant’ of the body.40 The Protestant reformerJean Calvin invoked St Augustine and the Biblical imagery of decayand deformity in speaking of the ‘inherited corruption’ of ‘originalsin’.41 This ‘contagion of sin’ derived, in Calvin’s uncompromising lan-guage, from the ‘impure seed’ of human generation, and thus all are‘born infected’, ‘vitiated’, ‘soiled and spotted in God’s sight’.42 Linkingcorruption with both moral and physical decay had obvious Biblicalprecedents, but this connotation of corruption could also be applied forexpressly political purposes, as it was by Calvin’s disciple John Knox(1514–72).

In his famously intemperate attack on the reign of the Catholic QueenMary (1542–87) in Scotland, Knox spoke of the ‘monstiferous empire ofwomen’ as ‘repugnant to the ordre of nature’.43 Knox considered thisorder of nature, by which he meant the universal natural and politicalsubordination of women to men, to be so self-evident that all men, eventhose whose natures have been ‘corrupted’, were bound to confess it.44

Here corruption denoted the sway of false opinion or belief. Believingthat women have a rightful claim to rule, he argued, was just such a falsebelief. The ‘authoritie of a woman is a corrupted fountein’, he wrote, and‘frome a corrupt and venomed fountein can spring no holsome water’.45

A.N. McLaren observes that the succession of Elizabeth I (1533–1603)as the Protestant Queen of England raised a range of concerns about


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the effects of a female ‘head’ of state. This inversion of traditional gen-der roles could be seen, as Knox certainly saw it, as a corruption, butas Philip Hicks also points out, Early Modern political thought pro-vided avenues for representing politically influential women as virtuousopponents of corruption.46

A more explicit reference to public office corruption was made inGeorge Buchanan’s (1506–82) critical history of the reign of Mary,Queen of Scots, whom he characterised as the product of an education‘in the most corrupt of courts’ (France), and as the architect of tyrannyin Scotland by achieving the ‘slavery of others’, by bribery, to her ‘everywhim’.47 Buchanan’s reference to corruption here had a Tacitean flavourin its association with the nefarious bribery by which tyrannies wereestablished. As Johnson later put it, Tacitus ‘sheweth the miseres of atorne and declining state’, where ‘Princes rather delighted in the vicesof their Subjectes’ and were able to manipulate the overweening ambi-tion of aspirants to public office, and use corrupt and self-seeking officers‘like spunges, which after they had beene wet with the spoiles and extor-tions, were crushed . . . that their long gathered wealth might returne tothe Princes coffers’.48 Uniting Knox’s organological and Buchanan’s andJohnson’s Tacitean references to corruption was a focus on the abuse ofpublic office.

For many Early Modern writers, however, the chief problem theyidentified was religious disunity and political disobedience, problemsthat were still often discussed metaphorically as an ‘illness’, ‘poison’ or‘disease’ to which polities might succumb.49 These references echoedwell-established conventional tropes. In Edmund Dudley’s (1462–1510)Tree of Commonwealth, for instance, the disease of corruption was envis-aged within an alternative organic metaphor, that of the state as atree whose ‘roots’ (concord, justice and peace) needed to be securedin order to produce ‘fruits’ (tranquillity, prosperity and dignity).50

In Dudley’s analysis, simoniacal corruption originated in the ‘Beastlyappetite’ of covetousness, and the ‘venemeous core’ of the fruit ofprosperity, ‘vaine delectacion’ eroding godly virtue. This elegant con-ventional rhetoric clouded a murkier reality. As President of Henry VII’s(1457–1509) Council between 1506 and 1509, Dudley earned a repu-tation for corruption by the rigour and inventiveness with which heextorted monies (for himself and his monarch) from the King’s subjects.As Francis Bacon (1561–1626) later described him, when Bacon himselfwas but recently disgraced after impeachment for corruption, Dudleywas especially skilled as ‘one that could put hateful business into goodlanguage’.51


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Dudley’s Tree of Commonwealth nonetheless gave voice to what AlanCromartie described as a utopian aspiration towards a united common-wealth, where all were ‘members of one body mystical of our saviourChrist’.52 The aspiration to a unified and integrated polity in sixteenth-century England reflected growing unease over religious and economicdivision within the polity and an anxious awareness of the potentiallycorrupting influence of diverse interests.53 For Starkey, the ‘healthy’order of the body would be reflected in its good proportion and beauty;likewise, the ill health and disease of the body politic would show as‘deformity’.54 As Quentin Skinner points out, Starkey’s castigation oframpant self-interest illustrated a broader theme, that the ‘lack of con-cern for the public good was widely recognised as the most corrupt andcorrupting feature of the age’.55 In this way, Starkey responded to widelyshared anxieties about the separation of interests in the body politicby turning towards an expressly political critique of corruption as aconsequence of undue self-interest.

2.1. Starkey’s political corruption

John Hale argued that Starkey’s Dialogue Between Pole and Lupset, withits detailed diagnosis of the diseases of the ‘body politic’, was at oncean affirmation of the ancient assumption of organic correspondence,while also challenging it by pointing to the diversity of interests withinthe political body.56 Starkey’s references to corruption reveal the persis-tence of older notions of natural and body political correspondencesalongside more focussed references to corruption as the distortion ofpolitical and moral judgement by self-interests. Starkey’s references tocorruption occur in the context of reflections on judgement and opin-ion and their political consequences,57 where he observes that ‘mannesreason . . . is for the mooste parte too blynded with corruption, thatseldom it seeth the clere truthe withoute affection’.58 The ‘affection’,particularity or self-interest Starkey denounces here was not only the‘corrupte affection’ for wealth or power, but also the spiritual danger ofarrogance and pride leading to ‘corrupte jugementes’.59 Laws were the‘meanys to bring man to the perfection of the cyvyle lyfe’, and withoutthem humans ‘wylbe corrupt’ or ‘soone oppressyd & corrupt’ by unre-strained self-interests and affections.60 In such a case, the ‘over muchregard of pryvat & partycular wele’ would ‘destroyth the commyn’ orpublic good.61 Starkey suggested that two kinds of problems result frominordinate self-interest. The first was a moral problem, when inordinateaffection and self-interest result in ‘corrupt jugement’.62 The second wasa political problem, and this results when ‘they wych have rule, corrupt


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with ambycyon envy or malice or any lyke affecte, loke only to theyrowne singular wele plesure & profyt’, and turn ‘gud ordur . . . in to hyetyrannye’.63

There are two slightly different connotations of corruption invokedhere, and the designation of one as ‘moral’ and the other as ‘political’requires some further explanation, for in a certain sense, both of themconstitute political problems. The difference lies, perhaps, in the activityof corruption by identifiable agents, and the more passive corruption ofright judgement by inordinate self-interest.64 Starkey was certainly con-cerned by active political corruption, but spent far more time bewailingpassive political corruption. Active political corruption may be said tooccur when rulers govern tyrannously according to their own affectionsand whims. It was for this reason that he recommended a division ofpower between the sovereign and his councils, for if supreme author-ity were to be vested in one or the other and that ‘parte chaunce to becorrupt with affectys’, then tyranny will result.65 Royal councils musttherefore be appointed, and once appointed, the council must ensurethat the prince does not ‘corrupt hys counseyl appoyntyd to him’, northat they become ‘corrupte by feare or affectyon’ but ever seek the ‘com-myn weale’.66 This corruption denoted an active subversion of highoffice, but could also connote a more passive form of corruption, whencounsellors give in to their own base interests.

The passive corruption Starkey was most concerned about, however,was the corruption of judgement by affection and self-interest. This cor-ruption can ‘over runnyth hole natyonys & pepul, utterly destroyth alcyvyle lyfe & polytke rule, for ther can rayne no gud pollycy wher juge-ment of the pepul ys corrupt by false opynyon’.67 By speaking of ‘falseopinion’, Starkey adverted to the danger that ‘corrupt jugement’, wherepeople ‘only regardyth’ their own ‘plesure & profyt’ without regard tothe commonwealth, will become ‘commynly approvyd’ among the peo-ple, by whom he meant those gentlemen and free men of propertycharged with public office.68 When this occurs, the whole society fallsinto error as ‘vayne false & corrupt opynyon’ overshadows the commongood, and children will be ‘brought up in corrupt opynyon’, by whichthe people become ‘much corrupt with idulnes & slothe’.69

3. Patronage and corruption

It would be unwarranted to conclude from a reading of Starkey that con-temporaries uniformly identified corruption with the undue influenceof private interests in public life, for overwhelmingly, the standard of


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good public conduct lay in the activation of private conscience ratherthan in the application of known rules of office.70 Complicating the roleof conscience in public life was not only the vague language of office,but also the ubiquitous practice of patronage through the exchangeof gifts and favours. The exchange of gifts between patron and clientoften cemented close personal ties of ‘loyalty, affection, respect andesteem . . . service, and . . . protection’.71 Robert Harding suggests that thepractitioners and beneficiaries of the often subtle game of seeking andreceiving patronage may have been just as keen to protect it from corrup-tion, as its critics were to construe it as corruption.72 Patronage, in otherwords, might not be construed as corrupt or corrupting. Corruptionmight be identified with the illegitimate buying of favour, as opposedto honourably earning favour by literary or artistic merit or by the pro-vision of some necessary service. Where one sat in relation to this issuemay have depended in large measure on how one understood the natureof gifts and their exchange.

Regulating the exchange of gifts in this period were a surprising rangeof norms that historians have categorised as examples of ‘Christiancharity’, for which the donor could expect no material return, or as‘noble liberality’, ‘friendship’, ‘hospitality’ and ‘neighbourly generosity’,where the value of the gift and its appropriate uses were regulated byClassical teachings (notably Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca) on the distinc-tion between vicious avarice, virtuous liberality and wasteful prodigality.These norms were supposed to guide judgements about whether to winfriends by virtue or simply to buy them, to whom gifts should be givenand from whom friendship sought in a deeply hierarchical society.73

Importantly, gifts were often to be publicly given, for instance, at Easteror other times of the year when distributions of food or clothing to thepoor were expected of the wealthy. Gifts were also public when givenas part-payment of rent, or when expected by family members from adaughter’s suitor.74

More apposite for present purposes, the open and public exchange ofgifts (whether in the form of food, clothing, falcons, horses, householditems or simple hospitality) was the well-established medium for mobil-ising patronage, generating bonds of obligation.75 The norms regulatingthe proper relationship between patron and client in Early ModernEurope were extremely fluid, and did not always entail the completeand grateful submission of the latter to the sovereign munificence of theformer. Noblewomen, for example, have been characterised as ‘thresh-old patrons’ whose favour was sought as an entrée into further andmore lucrative courtly networks of patronage. These female patrons


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were often vulnerable to whispered claims questioning their chastityput about the court by disgruntled clients, while clients often had tovie with one another to win a female patron’s favour, a subtle game car-ried on at ‘the level of flattery, favouritism, and innuendo’.76 Giving wasoften expected, but not necessarily immediately or at a commensuratevalue. A client may have given and humbly have hoped for favour, or apatron may have given and expected loyal service, but in both cases, thereturn hinged on the generation of gratitude by generosity rather thanan exchange, as in a sale, on the basis of an agreed value.77

3.1. Patronage and office

Alongside the acceptance of networks of patronage, however, manyEarly Modern Europeans attached great importance to the duties asso-ciated with public office and office-holding. Recent scholarship in thehistory of British political thought, in particular, has emphasised thatthere was an increasing awareness among Early Modern office-holdersthat they were not passive ‘subjects’ of their monarchical sovereigns, butactive participants in a hierarchically structured but locally organisedrealm.78 In this context, performance in office was subject to competingnorms. On the one hand, appointment to office could proceed through(perfectly legal) sale of the position, or could be obtained throughpatronage by petitioning for appointment, either directly or throughan intermediary, by promising gifts or payments.79 On the other hand,a premium was also placed on the fulfilment of office in line with widelyaccepted standards of public and private virtue.80 As Joel Hurstfieldnoted of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury (1563–1612), a public officermay have become personally wealthy by holding multiple offices andcharging any number of fees, while also diligently and earnestly labour-ing to regulate state finances and curb royal extravagance.81 At timesconfusingly, the virtues of public life encompassed both the honourableexertion and disinterested fulfilment of office and liberality in givingand receiving favour.82 Part of the confusion lies, as Conal Condrenobserves, in the variety of virtues, rights, liberties and expectationsbound up with the ‘distinct and contingent moral persona[e]’ that EarlyModern office-holders inhabited.83 The personae of loving husband ordiligent father were as essential to one’s performance in the privateoffices of the household as they were to the performance of public officesas a magistrate or judge. In this case, the private persona and privateoffice were connected, though ‘subordinate’, to the public persona andpublic office. Hence, no clear demarcation was possible between the ‘dis-tinctive’ and ‘legitimate’ claims and responsibilities of each.84 For this


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reason, patrons could be publicly expected both to receive graciouslyand give generously as a demonstration of their private virtue and afulfilment of their public responsibility. Clients who were successful ingaining the favour of great patrons were themselves publicly courtedbecause they ‘had the opportunity to broker suits for others’; clearly,‘the ability to reap benefits for clients was one way of demonstratingand maintaining prestige’.85

Brokering suits, or petitions, for advancement might be done by con-trolling direct personal access to decision makers or by acting as theconduit through which those suits were presented. One such broker, SirMichael Hickes (1543–1612), served as secretary to Elizabeth I’s chan-cellor, Lord Burghley (1520–98). Hickes was regularly approached bypetitioners of all social ranks to advance their suits in exchange for giftsor other gratuities, the latter of which were typically regarded as per-fectly allowable payments in exchange for service.86 Relations betweenpatrons and clients were thus complicated by networked connections,often linking a client with more than one patron through the person ofone or more brokers whose services could be directly paid for up front,or euphemistically promised on delivery of the outcome they wanted.Brokers could act as both middle-men on their own account, ped-dling influence and access for money, and as clients dependent on thepatronage of others. Each stage of this network of connections entaileddifferent levels of dependence and degrees of obligation.87 Indeed, asJanie Cole suggests, ‘patronage bonds were often so ingrained that thedifference between friendship and clientelism, or kinship and patronageties, was often blurred’.88

3.2. From gift to bribe

This blurring of personal relations and public responsibilities should notblind us to the ability of contemporaries to navigate the distinction.89

One way they did so was by means of age-old distinctions betweengood and bad gifts. Bad gifts could be those so evocatively describedby Davis as ‘gifts gone wrong’, namely, those gifts in which the givingor the receipt did not conform to conventional expectations of gen-erosity, grace and liberality, but which were given to mask enmity, orcaused resentment when generosity was not returned.90 Another typeof bad gift was that given to win official favour, not by the custom-ary giving of gifts to one’s patron, but by the typically secret gift ofmoney (though not exclusively) in exchange for service. In England,the word for this was ‘briberie’ or ‘bribery’, which according to GeoffreyElton was a term rarely used in the sixteenth century, even though


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the buying of favour by ‘corruption’ was a stock-in-trade of diplomaticpractice at the time.91 By the early seventeenth century, ‘bribery’ wasclearly understood as a secret payment of money or gifts to public offi-cers, whether judges, churchmen, lawyers or scholars. It was by briberythat rulers were ‘corrupted, Justice perverted . . . [and] the whole state ofgovernment disjointed and disordered’.92

In France, however, the same term did not carry connotations ofpublic corruption and a ‘bribe’ meant merely a ‘morsel of bread’.93

Nevertheless, in France, expectations of public officials in the sixteenthcentury were subject to change. The traditional allowance of consum-able gifts to judges was banned in France by statutes in 1561 and 1579.94

The sensibility behind such efforts to stamp out, or at least to regulate,certain kinds of gifts testifies to contemporary interest in defining appro-priate standards for those in public office. Thus, for example, England’sKing Henry VIII (1491–1547) was said to have instructed Thomas More,his Lord Chancellor, to ‘uprightly administer indifferent justice to thepeople, without corruption or affection’.95 The expectation of an unbi-ased and indifferent discharge of public office went hand-in-hand withfrequent denunciations of the corrupt ‘extortion’ of fees for the provi-sion of public service.96 Consider Bacon’s description of Henry VII’s chieffinanciers, Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson (died 1510). Accordingto Bacon, one of Dudley’s and Empson’s favoured sources of ‘extortion’was to regulate the tenure of land from the Crown on the basis of‘false’ title searches. This enabled them to extort all manner of furtherfees and charges to expedite ‘divers pretexts and delays’ for the bene-ficiaries of their fraudulent titles, or to prevent the ‘invention’ and useof them in the first place.97 The concern of some was that systematiccorruption was hidden by this legal chicanery or by the use of decep-tive and elegant euphemisms. Just this kind of concern was voiced byJohn Ponet (c. 1514–56), for whom the good ruler seeks ‘the wealtheof those he ruleth’, whereas the ‘evil’ ruler ‘spoyleth the people oftheir goodes’ by ‘making his ministers to take’ them ‘under the nameof loanes, benevolences, contribuciones, and suche like gaye payntedwordes’.98

As Ponet indicated here, the systematic corruption of rulers and mag-istrates could easily be hidden by a clever use of words. It was also thecase, however, that there were multiple possible usages of the term ‘cor-ruption’ at this time. In a notable early case of electoral bribery in 1571,for instance, Thomas Long was chastised to repay his corruptly gottengains to the Queen, but only served time in the pillory for his ‘lewd andslanderous’ and ‘sedyciouse words’ wishing ‘that the Queene sholde be


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dedd’.99 Indeed, the danger of treason could itself be described, as it wasin 1601, as consisting in ‘how many hearts it hath corrupted’.100 The‘corruption of hearts’ spoke to two dominant images of corruption –the image of disease and contagion, and the image of a body politicprone to moral and physical decay. These images remained pervasivethroughout the Early Modern period, though even where the image ofthe body politic was elaborately laid out, corruption need have no asso-ciation with the metaphor at all and simply be used to refer to judgeswho ‘have much offended in corruption and bribery’.101 Indeed, theexpression of corporeal correspondences between physical and politicalbodies increasingly took on the flavour of a commonplace truism ratherthan an explanatory tool. In his De Republica Anglorum, for instance, thehumanist scholar and sometime English diplomat, Sir Thomas Smith(1513–77), portrayed the English monarch in familiar terms as ‘the life,the head, and the authoritie of all thinges that be done in the realmeof England’.102 The bulk of his text, however, was concerned with delin-eating and specifying the relative powers of, and mutual relationshipsbetween, the different classes of subjects and the various institutionsand offices of state. Smith’s text thus pointed towards a rather differentapproach to public office, one in which ‘specifying the extent, entail-ments and interactions of offices and what might be done in theirdefence against what sort of abuse’ helped to frame the understandingof corruption.103

4. Abusing public office

In an era when appointment to office lay in the gift of monarchsand their more powerful subjects, and when holding office was oftenthought to entitle the incumbent to view (all or part of) the proceedsof office as private income, there were obvious incentives for whattoday would be termed a corrupt use of office.104 In George Cavendish’s(1494–c. 1562) account of the rise of Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530) to theChancellorship under King Henry VIII, it was Wolsey’s performance inthe office of ‘Almonsyer’ or Almoner, whose task (ironically) was to dis-tribute money to the poor, which brought him not only ‘high favour’but also crucially, ‘all the suit’ of receiving petitions to the king. Withthe suits ‘came presents, gifts, and rewards so plentifully that (I daresay) he lacked nothing that might either please his fancy or enrich hiscoffers’.105 Typically, public officers in this period earned their wages ina variety of ways. Many received a regular though meagre salary thatthe officer was entitled to top up by ‘irregular’, though not necessarily


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illegal, payments. These might include charging fees for past or futureservice, gratuities to speed up the service, the receipt of gifts from grate-ful clients as well as those who hoped for a favourable outcome andfinally, the receipt of rewards from royal patrons grateful for the officer’sloyal service.106

Severe economic pressures added further weight to the incentive touse public office as a source of private income. Such pressures came inthe form of inflation in the wake of the ‘currency manipulations’, theissue of more coin and the consequent debasement of the currency, tomeet Henry VIII’s war expenses in the 1540s.107 The effects of inflationwere felt throughout Britain through to Elizabeth’s recoinage in 1561,which removed the debased coin still in circulation, but significantinflation was experienced throughout the rest of the century, probablydriven by population increases and shortages of supply, especially ofbasic staples.108 These economic problems placed severe strains on royalpatronage, effectively ending Henry VIII’s use of royal estates to supplyoffices, leases and annuities to clients, and prompting Elizabeth I andher ministers to grant monopolies to their clients or ‘favourites’.109 Thissystem of farming of licenses to favourites led to the exploitation ofmonopolies not only under Elizabeth but her Stuart successors JamesI (1566–1625) and Charles I (1600–49).110 Monopolies or ‘privileges’were a particular cause of concern to contemporaries, who reflected that‘the interest of a whole Realm, or common cause of manie’ should takeprecedence over ‘the private favour of anie one’ empowered by ‘inordi-nate licenses’ which authorised but did not legitimate ‘racking [rents]. . . imbezeling . . . [and] taking bribes for matter of justice, grace, request,supplication or what soever sute els’.111 According to William Harrison(1534–93), the cause of inflation lay in the distortions or corruptions ofprices by royal monopolies or ‘privileges’, by which ‘the greatest com-modities are brought into the hands of few, who embase, corrupt andyet raise the prices of things at their own pleasures’.112

Thomas Wilson’s (1524–81) response to these economic strains wasto reflect on the practice of usury, or lending money at interest, whichhe portrayed as the great social solvent eroding not only status but alsovirtue, leading in turn to political unrest.113 In his dramatic dialogue onthe topic, he has the character of the ‘Preacher’ cast usury as an ‘unclean’and ‘unsaciable’ (insatiable) sin of avarice linked to bribery. Notably,the Preacher spoke of usury by invoking the Biblical metaphor of ‘themoth’ (Luke 12: 32–4), in which corruption denotes the transience andperishability of hoarded wealth (worldly goods decay or perish as ifconsumed by a ‘moth’ that eats away at treasured possessions).114 The


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Biblical foundations for Wilson’s analysis lent it an obvious appeal, butothers were coming to think of corruption in rather different terms.

4.1. Corruption of the common weal

Thomas Smith’s dialogue, The Common Weal of this Realm of England,reflected on the rising costs of foreign goods and labour, which benefit-ted merchants in London while raising the imposts on the gentry, whoselands became more expensive to farm and therefore less able to supporta lifestyle of leisure and consumption. This, in turn, led to a loss of rev-enue for the Crown.115 Among Smith’s chief concerns, however, was thatthese tensions threatened to weaken the realm by undermining the abil-ity of citizens and subjects to perform their respective offices. Above all,rising costs led directly to the need for young gentlemen to learn a tradeor seek a career in the law, disdaining a complete university education.The result was that ‘this Realme within a shorte space wilbe made asemptie of . . . pollytyque men, and consequently barbarous’, becomingthereby prey to other nations.116 For indeed, the ‘soverayngtie’ of the‘wiser sorte’ over the ‘rude and unlearned’ depends on education, andby this means, a nation may become ‘pollitique and civill’ and ‘maister’less civil nations.

Smith’s dialogue was couched in conventional references to the‘goode virtues’ that are ‘grafted in us naturally, whose affectes be todoe goode to others’ and to display the ‘Image of god in man’.117

But while virtue clothed the rhetoric, Smith’s analysis suggested morepragmatic causes of complaint, such as costly terms of trade favour-ing foreign traders, or the enclosure of pasture.118 The solution to thesemanifold tensions and complaints lay, rather obviously, in wise gov-ernment. Smith’s argument was no mere truism, for it suggested a new,dynamic art of good government consisting in the prudent managementof human avarice and covetousness, for ‘profit or advauncement nour-ishethe everie facultie’.119 The art of good government lay in mediatingbetween the interrelated but independent sectors of society engaged intheir separate pursuit of profit, by compelling the vicious with pun-ishment, while encouraging the virtuous with ‘rewardes and price’.120

According to Wood, Smith was among the ‘first’ thinkers to articulate avision of government as ‘the arbiter and manager’ of self and commoninterests, ensuring that a ‘harmony of interests’ prevailed.121

Crucial to that aim was the regulation of coin and currency. It wasin this context that Smith came closest to an explicit denunciationof public office corruption when he castigated the ‘coyners’, who like‘Alcmistes’ promise gain but deliver loss, and ‘the most gaynes cleavethe


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by their owne fingers’.122 While Smith’s humanism encompassed a posi-tive revaluation of (properly regulated) private interest, it also retained aclassical fear of the inevitable destruction wrought by the overweeninggreed unlocked by prosperity. Smith expressed this fear in the contextof a fairly conventional reflection on the course of moral corruptionbrought about, in this case, by unrestrained consumption of luxuryitems by ‘servinge’ men.123 Such ‘excesses’ characterised Rome ‘a litlebefore the declination of the empire’ and were an ‘occasion of the decaietherof’. Lack of ‘restrainte’ led to ‘insolencie’ and pride in all quarters,and from this sprang ‘devision, and throughe devision, utter desola-cion of the common wealthe’. Smith worried that Rome’s fate awaitedEngland, for like Rome, the inordinate wealth of London has encour-aged decadence; where once gentlemen rode about with a ‘hevie swordeand bucler’ [a shield] or ‘goode speares’, now they carry ‘daunsingeswords’ and appear ‘more like ladies, or gentlewomen, then men; allwhich Delicasies makes oure men cleane effeminate, and without stre-ingthe’. Smith’s imagery amplified the idea of degenerative corruption,but his analysis suggested that its causes (as well as its possible solution)lay squarely in the realm of government. Treating corruption as a polit-ical phenomenon, rather than a force of inevitable moral or spiritualdecay, was also characteristic of an emergent Early Modern literature onthe corruption of public, especially judicial, offices.

4.2. Towards public office corruption

Judicial corruption had been a familiar complaint since Medieval times,consisting not only in the bribery of court officials at all levels, butalso in the undue partiality of judges.124 ‘Partialitie in a Judge’ and theacceptance of a ‘bribe’, Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634)argued, ‘is a Turpitude, which doth soyle and stayne’ the ‘Puritie of Jus-tice’ forever.125 Though focussed on a specific office, judicial corruptionwas feared, in part, because it could lead to generalised political corrup-tion, for ‘injustice of Judges’ may well be the chief agent that ‘infecteththe Common wealth’.126 Outside of Britain, the systematic sale of officehad become a routine revenue-raising strategy of French monarchs inthe sixteenth century. But it was unsustainable: as Jean Bodin (1530–96)observed, this form of corruption was a treason against the public thatthreatened to destroy not only justice, but the polity itself:

. . . financial pressure sometimes forces the monarch to set aside goodlaws to relieve his necessity. But once one has opened the doorto such a practice, it is almost impossible to halt the decline . . . .


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For it is unquestionable that those who put honours, offices, andbenefices up for sale, thereby sell the most precious thing in thisworld, and that is justice. They sell the commonwealth, they sell theblood of its subjects, they sell the laws . . . [and] open the door to rob-bery, extortion, avarice, injustice . . . in short, every sort of vice andcorruption.127

Humanist fears that corruption was a constant temptation to thosein office – whether sovereigns or judges – were not only fuelled byTacitean pessimism, but also matched by more hopeful argumentsthat corruption could be held at bay by the proper administration ofjustice.128 In this vein, the Elizabethan authority on law and judicialoffice, ‘good and honest’ William Lambarde (1536–1601), reflected onthe perils of partiality.129 In his The Just Lawyer, His Conscionable Com-plaint, Lambarde reflected on the multiple sources of judicial partiality,including the ‘whispering Informer’ whose aim was to ‘allure’ the judgefrom ‘Indifferencie’ to ‘corrupt partiality’; his own servants or ‘Menials’;and friends or ‘favourites’ of the judge.130 Lambarde here voiced theCiceronian complaint that corruption may result from persuasion andfrom those skilled enough in oratory to press their suit subtly, a form ofcorruption that judges had to anticipate and resist.

It has become an almost conventional wisdom that Early ModernEngland knew no settled division between public and private realms,and that consequently, the notion that corruption consisted in the vio-lation of the boundaries between them was alien to the period.131 Morerecent work has suggested that while the boundaries separating publicand private were not uniformly defined, it was nonetheless clear enoughthat an undue reference to private interests in the performance of publicoffice, especially judicial office, constituted corruption.132 This under-standing informed John Downame’s (1571–1652) view that bribery wasan offence against ‘both private & publike’ when it wasted the privateresources of ‘mens families’, and when public ‘magistracie and authori-tie’ were ‘corrupted with rewards’ that ‘pervert judgement’.133 On thesegrounds, Downame argued, all bribery and corruption was harmful tothe public. There could be no such thing as harmless or victimlesscorruption.134

Lambarde more explicitly delineated what he thought were thedifferent sorts of corruption afflicting both ‘publicke’ and ‘pri-vate men’. ‘Publicke’ men were those like judges and magistrates,whose ‘misdemeanours . . . fraud . . . [or] Corruptions’ consisted in their‘Covetousnesse . . . Friendship, or Hatred’ swaying the ‘Suits that depend


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before them’.135 Private men, by contrast, were a ‘meaner sort’ whosepetty misdemeanours usually involved laying traps ‘ . . . for the taking,intangling, and snaring of silly and simple folks’, commonly referred toat the time as ‘coney-catching’.136 Consequently, the problem of corrup-tion may be said to have had two different connotations for both publicand private figures. As it manifested in public figures, an unrestrainedpartiality led to the corruption of law by overthrowing ‘Integritie andJustice’. As it manifested in private figures, the self-interested pursuit ofgain or revenge by some subjects at the expense of others was a perpet-ual source of petty ‘Perjurie’ or ‘Bribery’, by which means the ‘Corruption’of public men might be effected. What Lambarde appeared to suggestwas that corruption (through partiality) of public men (those who heldpublic office), and especially judges, was the more significant problem,for it led to the corruption of the law itself, and it was by law that thepotential corruptions caused by private men were to be curbed.

As the Puritan preacher, Thomas Scot, put it to the jury at Bury StEdmonds in 1631, ‘partiality’, ‘favour’ and ‘bribes’ were all ways ofperverting impartial justice by private feeling or profit:

. . . I beseech you remember, that publick places afford not means ofpleasuring private friends, but follow that memorable example ofCleon, who being called to the government of the Commonwealth,assembled all his intimate friends, and disclaimed all inward amitywith them. And most truly saith Tully [Cicero], He deprives himself ofthe office of a friend, who takes upon him the person of a Judge.137

Scot’s invocation of the authority of Cicero, alongside his Biblical ref-erences to the evils of bribery (in Exodus, Deuteronomy and 2 Peterin particular), suggests that there was a ‘near universal discourse’ cen-tring on the evils or dangers of corruption that drew from a variety ofsources, including classical, humanist and Biblical authorities, to definethe appropriate duties of office.138

These duties were further defined in prominent cases before thecourts, such as the 1621 impeachment for corruption of the Lord Chan-cellor, Sir Francis Bacon. Here, corruption was linked with bribery inwhat appears to be a consistently narrow, ‘public office’ implication.Much evidence was heard of payments given to Bacon’s brokers forfavourable decisions in Chancery; although the payments were taken,favourable decisions were not always forthcoming.139 Sir Francis’ initialdefence pointed to the potential extenuation of bribery depending on‘the time or manner of the gift’, referring thereby to the fact that the


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bribes he took were offered and taken after he had made his decisions.140

Bacon distinguished between gifts given to pervert justice, which hedenied ever taking; gifts given after a case before the courts was endedbut before the matter was entirely resolved, to which he admitted someguilt; and gifts given after the whole matter was ended, which hencecould not be corrupt. Yet as Hurstfield has argued, the expectation ofa gift before, during or after a case is bound to distort judgement andtherefore all three of Bacon’s examples of gift-giving are examples ofcorruption.141 In any case, such a vague extenuation was never likelyto be deemed sufficient, and he eventually admitted his guilt on thegrounds that he ‘was never noted for an avaricious man’ and that thecharges (all 23 of them) were mostly old misdemeanours that had notbeen continued.

It has been argued that the ‘rhetoric of corruption, which connectedvenal practices with the decay of the state’, provided a ready languageof political opposition in Stuart Britain in attacks on the corruption ofroyal favourites, or the corruptions entailed in royal monopolies.142 Thatsaid, claims and counter-claims of corruption could be heard on bothsides of the contest between King Charles I and his Parliament through-out the 1640s.143 Degrading corporeal imagery of rulership was famouslyinvoked in mockery of the infamous ‘Rump’ Parliament that was leftover after Cromwell’s purging in 1648 of those members hostile to theprojected trial of King Charles. Satirists such as the anonymous authorof Mercurius Alethes, however, invoked narrow public office corruptionin pillorying the Army-controlled Rump for preferring its ‘own privategood and interests before the publike good of the Commonwealth’, and‘because Charity begins at home’, they ‘desire[d] still to continue underthe command of Major General Self’.144

5. The decay of corruption

As King Charles stood before the executioner’s axe, he reflected thatthe ‘Liberty and Freedom’ of the people ‘consists in having of Govern-ment’, but ‘not for having [a] share in government . . . [for a] subject anda soveraign are clean different things’.145 Interestingly, Charles madeno claim to the time-worn rhetoric of ‘body political’ integrity. It musthave seemed to some in the crowd on that day that kingship died withCharles upon the scaffold.146 The story of Charles’ execution has beenused to underscore the transition to a newer political discourse basedon contractual understandings of sovereignty, leading directly to thedecline in the use of the metaphor of the body politic.147 The rise of


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contractual understandings of political power hint at this decline, butso too do purely functionalist descriptions of political office, such as thegreat English jurist John Selden’s (1584–1654) description of a king as ‘athing men have made for their own sake, for quietness’ sake, just as ina family one man is appointed to buy the meat’.148 Indeed, there was aprofound shift in political discourse in this period, but its impact on theuse of body political metaphors and for the understanding of corruptionin particular is complicated.

For John Milton (1608–74), corruption could still denote both physi-cal and moral bodily political decay, but he also, unusually, mixed bodypolitical with contractual political imagery. In one case, he depictedthe ‘members’ of the political body resolving their Aesopian dispute bymeans of an almost Parliamentary and constitutional arrangement ofoffices.149 Corruption here represented less a danger of moral or physicaldecay, than a danger to the structure and function of the state, especiallyto the operation of the law. The Interregnum (1649–60) was a periodof intense interest in legal reform, and in many of the tracts from theperiod concerns about corruption were prominent.150 A common com-plaint was that laws were made to serve powerful self-interests ratherthan the public interest. As Thomas Faldo put it, the welfare of the peo-ple consisted ‘not in their peculiar or Selfe-Good, but in their Relativesubordination of their Selfe-Good to the Good of the whole’.151 Indeed,Faldo implied not only a separation of self and common interests, butalso a separation of political from economic realms was required. Thereform of the law was essential, he maintained, because otherwise ‘Tradewould not be policed by the Common-wealth, but the Common-wealthby Trade’.152

John Warr also criticised what he saw as the creeping corruption of thelaws – the true purpose of which ‘was to bridle Princes, not the People’ –because they were ‘being put upon the rack of self and worldly interest’by ‘great men’.153 Warr’s was not simply a complaint about self-interest,but a certain kind and degree of self-interest. Some interests, he argued,were ‘grounded on weaknesse’ and formed the true foundation of thelaw, such as the interest of the weak to be protected from the ravages ofthe strong.154 Other interests, however, were grounded ‘upon corruption’,and such he argued was the ‘interest of Lawyers’ who have become a‘body’ with a ‘distinct interest’. The nature of, and the problem with,this interest he specified in the following way:

I take this to be a main difference between lawfull and corrupt inter-ests, just interests are the servants of all . . . . But corrupt interests feare a


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change, and use all wiles to establish themselves, that so their fall maybe great, and their ruin as chargeable to the world as it can; for suchinterests care for none but themselves.155

What he meant by this was not only that corrupt interests were self-serving, but that unlike just interests, which existed only so long as thepeople’s interest (the common good) was served, corrupt interests werecontinuous and accrued greater power and influence. This continuitybecame inimical to the people’s interest not only because it ensured thatlong-lived, corrupt interests dominated short-lived, just interests, butbecause the entrenchment of the former would make the inevitable andjust reckoning all the more tumultuous.

Warr was not alone in identifying ‘corrupt interests’ as necessarilyopposed to the ‘Fundamental Lawes and Liberties of the people’, norwas he alone in maintaining that injustices had ‘crept into the laws ofEngland by the corruption of men’.156 The ‘corruption of men’ couldcover a multitude of sins, including the corruption caused by self-interest, or by the inconstant and desirous nature of human beings, butit could also refer more simply to the buying or bribing of local officersto obtain favourable legal decisions.157

In the work of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), an understanding ofcorruption as the buying of judicial opinion was coupled with strikinginvocations of self-interest, of the desirous nature of human beings andof a highly unusual corporeal metaphor. In his earlier formulation of theargument that mutual insecurity caused by unrestrained desirous andself-interested human nature required the establishment of sovereignpower, Hobbes described the contractual union of subjects who agree toestablish this sovereignty as ‘a BODY POLITIC or civil society . . . whichmay be defined to be a multitude of men, united as one person by a com-mon power, for their common peace, defence, and benefit’.158 Hobbes’use of the term, however, bore only a tenuous resemblance to the older,more elaborate Medieval concept of a body politic. Hobbes’ later for-mulation of the metaphor deliberately lacked any organic substance atall, construing the ‘body politic’ as an ‘artificiall’ person.159 Notably, theidea of corruption as decay did not feature heavily in Hobbes’ work.Rather, he focused on a more narrowly defined concept of public officecorruption.160

Hobbes’ focus on public office corruption was clearly at oddswith the more expansive concerns about – as well as the ambigu-ous imagery and metaphors for describing – degenerative corruption.Hobbes was certainly familiar with these more expansive concerns and


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the conventional degenerative imagery. In his role as tutor to theyoung William Cavendish (c. 1590–1628) (later Earl of Devonshire),Hobbes probably oversaw Cavendish’s three tracts published in theHorae Subsecivae in 1620.161 In the ‘Discourse of Rome’ in particular,the vibrant public spiritedness of the Ancient Romans, celebrated intheir monuments and statuary, was contrasted to the corruption ofthose who bought affection or distorted justice.162 In another tract, lawswere invested with the ‘Physic’ capacity to keep the ‘fountain of justice’free ‘from corruption, infection, or danger’ by ‘prescribing rules’ and‘ascribing Antidotes for fear of infection’.163

Hobbes’ much later discussions of corruption in Leviathan indicate thepersistence of the imagery and metaphors of degenerative corruption(as a disease or decay), even while his analysis focussed on corruption asan abuse of public, especially legal, office. For Hobbes, the law was to beunderstood as the pronouncement of the sovereign, and the purpose ofsovereign power was to secure the lives and property of the members ofthe commonwealth. Consequently, in his view, the Leviathan’s law wasthe mechanism of protection and security. Laws were the ‘Command’ ofthe ‘Persona Civitatis, the Person of the Commonwealth’, or sovereign.164

Security was thus the ultimate public good, and it stretched as far as thelaw applied. Hence, for Hobbes, it was absolutely essential that ‘corrup-tion either of Judges or Witnesses’ to render ‘false judgements’ mustbe avoided.165 For Hobbes, then, corruption in cases of judicial appli-cation of the law was not only tantamount to the vicious subversionof sovereign power, but to the secretive violation of public security.If judges were ‘corrupted by gifts, influence or even pity’, it would leadto such a loss of mutual trust and order that ‘the commonwealth itselfis dissolved, and each man recovers his right to protect himself at hisown discretion’.166 In his emphasis on the centrality of law and securityto the public good, Hobbes thus signalled the growing importance ofpublic office corruption over other forms of corruption such as moraldecay or physical degeneration.

As a new political settlement in England was forged in the latterhalf of the seventeenth century, corruption concerns appeared in theefforts to define the role of commercial interests and their relation tothe distribution of power. In this context, older humanist notions ofcorruption as moral decay vied with more narrow conceptions focussedon misdemeanours in public office. James Harrington (1611–77), forinstance, described ‘the plastic art of government’ as consisting in thetask of ‘interweaving the militia’ throughout the Commonwealth.167


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Corruption referred to the process of change, in both political insti-tutions and public manners, which followed from alterations to thebalance between the forces of property in the republic. While stolid landownership buttressed the pursuit of virtue, Harrington and those whofollowed him later in the century and into the next worried about theeffects of flighty and intangible commercial capital, and the potentialit created for the ‘corruption’ of the Commonwealth by funding thearbitrary rule of the Crown.

Some have claimed that Harrington’s account of corruption was‘value-neutral’ insofar as corruption simply meant ‘change’ in the polit-ical balance of forces and did not necessarily involve chaos and decay.168

Such an interpretation is difficult to square with Harrington’s argumentthat a popular commonwealth ‘bringeth the government from a moreprivate unto a more public interest’, whereas in oligarchies and monar-chies, private interests (such as luxury) prevailed.169 For a republicanlike Algernon Sidney (1622–83), the problem of corruption consisted inthe dynamic relationship between the ruler(s), the law and the virtue ofthose who administered the law:

[F]aults in the law introduce all manners of corruption into theadministration of it. They who corrupted the law for corrupt endswill certainly make a corrupt use of its corruption. The effect of thisis that the king does what he pleases, and the courtiers and lawyersget what they please. . . . if there be a great defect in the law, it leavesan easy entrance for corruption in the administration . . . . Again, ifthere be corruption in him or them who administer the law, he orthey will corrupt the laws, as the depraved will darkens and corruptsthe understanding.170

Sidney’s language was redolent with Medieval imagery of decay. Cor-ruption was a ‘plague’ that, ‘if suffered to continue’, rendered ‘the bodythat was strong, healthy, and beautiful’ a ‘carcass full of ulcers andpacrid sores’. In the later Discourses, and in response to Robert Filmer’s(1588–1653) notorious defence of monarchical rule, Sidney consideredthat the chief danger of corruption lay in the sovereign becoming cor-rupt and corrupting the rest of the community.171 While Sidney’s earlierimagery of corruption employed the biological metaphors of disease anddecay, his Discourses coupled this with a strong focus on corruption as aproblem of private interests dominating in the public administration ofthe law.172


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6. Conclusion

By the end of the seventeenth century, English discourse on corruptionwas coming to focus more on problems of interest in the administrationof justice, the application of law or the fulfilment of public office. Whilestriking corporeal imagery like that invoked by Sidney could still befound, substantive discussion of corruption tended to be framed interms of concrete problems of government rather than as signs or symp-toms of decay. As Edward Forsett (1553–1630) put it, the ‘corruptionof manners’ could be corrected by ‘wholesome lawes’ and the skilful‘application of Physicke’ to the body politic.173

In this context, much hinged on the idea of corruption as a distor-tion of human understanding. Thus, Sidney’s argument that a ‘depravedwill . . . corrupts the understanding’ relied on the idea that a true under-standing, at least within the terms of republican discourse, wouldnecessarily illustrate the concurrence of the national with the popu-lar, or people’s, interest. He castigated absolute monarchies because the‘inclinations of the monarch’ or the ‘impulse of ministers, favourites,wives or whores’ would ‘govern all things according to their own pas-sions or interests’, whereas in popular governments, magistrates ‘canhave no interest distinct from that of the publick’.174 Thus, also, WilliamTemple’s (1628–99) encomium to the Dutch republic praised their politybecause, inter alia, it effectively ‘united’ decision-makers in ‘one com-mon bond of Interest’ to promote the ‘Publick Good’ and suppress ‘allprivate Passions or Interests’.175 This argument rested on a significantshift in the conceptualisation of the polity, away from organologi-cal correspondences and towards contractual mechanisms intended toenshrine common interests. Concerns remained, however, about twopossible sources of corruption. One source was the possibility that thedepravity of corrupted magistrates and councillors exercising their owninterest would supplant the people’s and the nation’s interest. The other,more fundamental concern was that the judgement of individual sub-jects was still corruptible and that they might fail to perceive theirown, and their nation’s, interests correctly. It is to these concerns aboutenduring corruption to which we turn in the following chapter.


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5Ideological Change inEighteenth-Century Britain

1. Introduction

Early Modern discourse incorporated a wide variety of concepts ofcorruption, ranging from the distortion of judgement and the abuseof office due to personal gain, gift giving or bribery, through to gener-alised fears of physical or moral decay.1 We argue in this chapter that thevolume of discourse about corruption reached a peak in Britain in theeighteenth century, and that much of this discourse came to focus moretightly on public office corruption. Although the idea that public officecorruption might be a symptom of a more general, degenerative formof corruption was still very much alive, complaints about public officecorruption became louder and more common. As a consequence, under-standings of corruption underwent significant refinement, and alongwith them, understandings of what a properly functioning polity shouldlook like.

For some, eighteenth-century English politics was ‘a racket, run byparticular groups within the ruling classes largely for their own benefit’.2

As W.D. Rubinstein notes, it was generally the case that ‘[r]ewards didnot accord with effort or duty; promotion did not occur according tomerit or seniority . . . the highest and most lucrative places had the fewestduties, and often, the least raison d’etre . . . and their holders no objec-tive qualifications for holding them’. Further, ‘succession to responsibleoffice was often determined by hereditary succession to that office or byopen sale’.3 In the first half of the century, particularly, many in Britainstill considered public office corruption acceptable, and custom was reg-ularly invoked as a defence for the exploitation of office. Although fewwent as far as Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) in endorsing the ben-eficial effects of the ‘slipp’ry . . . Perquisite’ in public office, England’s

125


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powerful and celebrated commander-in-chief, John Churchill, Duke ofMarlborough (1650–1722), could defend – without any hint of embar-rassment – his extraction of a ‘premium’ on the supply of bread to histroops.4 Surely, he reasoned, this was an ‘allowable perquisite’ that ‘noeman in his place would have refused to accept’.5

Eighteenth-century reformers were, however, alert to the problemsof public office corruption, which they often associated with arbitrarypower and the control of state institutions by party factions.6 Reformerssought greater Parliamentary independence, the regularisation of elec-toral boundaries, suffrage reform and the general eradication of ‘OldCorruption’, a term later coined to denote an English state implicatedin such practices as the purchase of boroughs, ‘treating’ of loyal vot-ers and the extension to political cronies of government sinecures,reversions, ‘pensions, government contracts, and church preferments’.7

According to Ian Ross ‘the maintenance of legally-constituted electoralrolls’ did not exist in England until after 1832, while the Court of Ses-sion lacked an effective review jurisdiction over electoral matters. As aconsequence, and in the absence of adequate legal controls, ‘corruptionflourished’.8

Corruption infected every part of government, right down toAldermen and Common Councilmen, who were accused, in a pam-phlet of 1738, of practising ‘the wicked Arts of Deceit, Misrepresentationand Falsehood’.9 No public office, from town councils, the military, thecourts to the established Church, was exempt from reform efforts.10

Although judicial corruption appeared to be rife, accepting paymentfrom litigants was increasingly considered an act of public office cor-ruption. One reform proposal at the time suggested that judges shouldbe paid ‘a handsome salary...to be above corruption’.11 In a persistentcampaign of publicity, Robert Crosfeild raised concerns about endemiccorruption in other areas of public administration (specifically, theadministration of the Navy Board, the Commissioners of the Sick andWounded sailors, the Commissioners of Accounts and the Post Office),forming part of a broader network of corruption, stretching to the heartof British government.12 Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the character ofparliament at this time, reform efforts were not always successful. Theill-fated Place Bills of 1692, which were designed to prevent MPs fromcollecting taxes and taking ‘lucrative posts in the Customs and Excise’,are one such example.13 Between 1701 and 1711, other bills aiming tocurb bribery and reform electoral administration were also defeated.14

Public debt and government profligacy also attracted critical atten-tion during this period. The ongoing project of militaristic expansion


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Ideological Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain 127

led to an increasingly large public debt and, with it, rising taxes andan exacerbation of the system of patronage.15 This contributed to theperception of a vitiated and bloated state at odds with the interestsof its public.16 As Pocock observed, British government was generallyperceived as ‘parasitical’, profligate and existing only to ‘shamelessly’serve and enrich a narrow elite.17 For Isaac Kramnick corruption inthe eighteenth century had increasingly Lockean, rather than classical,republican overtones. In Britain’s new commercial society, corruptionhad less to do with moral degeneracy than with merit and productivity:

A corrupt man . . . was idle, profligate, unproductive, and lacking intalent and merit. A corrupt system was one in which drones heldimportant public-offices, one in which patronage insured the ruleof the unproductive . . . [here was] a new public language that sawgovernment as a reserve for privileged parasites.18

If perceptions of public office corruption were sharpening, what drovethese changes and what were their ideological underpinnings?

2. The politics of corruption

The development of Britain’s market economy transformed the natureof government and with it, conceptions of political corruption. Thiswould require new boundaries insulating trade and commerce againstundue government interference, while also preventing unscrupuloustraders from attempting, as Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731) put it, to ‘cor-rupt and procure’ political power.19 This gave rise to new conceptionsof the polity premised on the management of interests and the exten-sion of commerce and trade. Although these ‘new’ conceptions didnot necessarily replace older metaphors of the body politic, they madethe application of older metaphors seem increasingly anachronistic.20

Indeed, Mandeville’s humorous likening of the state to a ‘Bowl of Punch’showed how ‘very low’ the metaphor had fallen.21 In effect, the stabil-ity of the polity came to be seen as an artefact of governmental design,decoupled from citizen virtue. As a consequence, the stable polity wasincreasingly defined in terms of meeting the requirements for a flour-ishing market and solvent state. Questions of state solvency and theproper management of state finances, especially in times of war, hadlong been a matter of dispute in European politics.22 In the wake ofthe Restoration of the Monarchy in Britain in 1660, charges of cor-ruption were made in greater force by both disaffected royalists and


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disappointed republicans suspicious of the increases in state revenue tofund controversial foreign wars.23

By the early eighteenth century, British political divisions betweenWhigs and Tories were overlaid by Court and Country interests thatoften united Whig and Tory in Court administrations or Countryoppositions.24 The Court interest favoured raising state revenue by themanagement of credit and debt, not only to fund foreign war and main-tain a standing army, but also to enhance the Crown’s financial reserves,which were to be used through the distribution of patronage and places.The Country interest coalesced around opposition to several issues: thewidespread use of Crown patronage, the enhanced independence of theCrown through a standing army and the increase of state revenues bylarge borrowings. In this complicated context, ‘material interest’ was atleast as influential as any party interest or ideology in making corrup-tion the ever-adaptable tool to allow Whigs and Tories to weld together,or attack, workable parliamentary majorities.25 While the mechanics ofparliamentary corruption (through the distribution of sinecures, placesand pensions) were well known, critics could invoke the fear of cor-ruption in attacking diverse targets, not only Crown patronage but alsorisky finance, exorbitant public spending or a Constitutional imbalancebetween Crown, Parliament and people.26

The charge of corruption was regularly invoked in the context ofpolitical divisions and manoeuvring among elite groupings vying forpower.27 Fears over corruption were also frequently raised about therise and influence of parties and factions. These concerns focused onpolitical groupings having interests in power and office separate fromthe common or national interest, reinforced by the apparent cynicismwith which one-time Whigs and Tories manoeuvred themselves fromopposition to government.28

2.1. The corruption of court and country

Voicing concern over the corruption of state was a ready tool in polit-ical rhetoric across the eighteenth century. As H.T. Dickinson presentsit, the language of corruption was readily adapted by exponents of whathe called the ‘Country ideology’, whose rhetoric focussed on the cor-ruption of Parliament and people fostered by the ‘Crown’.29 Accordingto John Pocock, a ‘Court’ ideology (that is, the ideology of the king’sministers) arose in opposition to the civic humanist or classical repub-lican ‘Country’ ideology in the course of the late seventeenth-centurydebates concerning public credit.30 It served to defend the Court’s influ-ence on Parliament, borne of its new machinery for acquiring capital,


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against Country criticisms that the constitution was becoming unbal-anced, that the virtuous and patriotic landed interest was losing powerand that a professional army posed a threat to Parliament and Englishliberties.31 Above all, the Country faction lamented the turning awayfrom public life in pursuit of selfish interests. Court ideology may becharacterised by its acceptance of public credit, its political pragmatism,its denial of the proposition that the integrity of the state depends onthe active preservation of virtue and its hospitable attitude towardsluxury. The Court interest was not the exclusive preserve of the con-servative Tories; the so-called Court Whigs saw people as fundamentallyself-regarding, but were inclined to characterize this tendency in nat-uralistic rather than moralistic terms.32 They were increasingly willingto countenance the notion that blindly self-regarding actions tended toadvance, or could be channelled in directions beneficial to, the generalinterest.33

Country ideology veered towards the degenerative conception of cor-ruption and held that the political integrity of a state depended on thevirtue of its people. Virtue meant the capacity to assert one’s freedom aswell as the disposition to act in the interest of the state as a whole. Beingvirtuous also meant being independent, which in turn meant possessingland. Newly emerging forms of finance, particularly public credit, werepotentially corrupting because they created relations of dependenceamong citizens and between citizens and government.34 But corruptionhere did not only denote citizen dependence: it could also cover a multi-tude of sins, ranging from threats to civic virtue from speculative capitalmanipulated by the Crown, to an over-mighty executive supported by astanding army, the encroachment of Court patronage onto parliamen-tary independence or simple bribery and electoral maladministration.35

All of these phenomena came under the general heading of ‘a Devia-tion from our Duty to the Public, upon private Motives’, not only in thequest for ‘Money, or Place, or Favour’, but in any officer who ‘prefers hisAnger, or his Ambition, or his Hopes . . . to his Duty to the Public’, for he‘is as corrupt as he who postpones the Public to Gain’.36

According to Pocock, this discourse of corruption was shaped by con-cerns that the rise of ‘new’ forms of wealth, promoted by WilliamIII after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to finance his European wars,was undermining the tangible, solid, virtuous and intergenerationalstake in the realm that land ownership was thought to provide.37

For Pocock, these concerns reflected a broadly Machiavellian narra-tive of virtue and corruption according to which Roman liberty wascorrupted, and the Empire destroyed, by the displacement of an active,


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armed and land-holding citizenry by mercenary forces.38 English repub-licans in the late seventeenth century, Pocock argued, followed JamesHarrington’s Machiavellian analysis that the constitutional upheavalsof the mid-century had unbalanced the distribution of property withinEngland, delivering power into the hands of the least virtuous amongthe people (the landless poor) through the army, at the expense ofthe ‘virtuous’ land-owning gentry. From 1688, this latter sector faceda new threat in the form of speculative capital.39 This analysis was putto work in eighteenth-century British (and Dutch) republican thoughtto draw attention to the corruption of citizen virtue by speculative‘stock jobbing’ that further fuelled the system of courtly patronage.40

In Britain, the narrative of virtue and corruption was used by Countrypartisans to highlight the emergence of a ‘monied’ interest and its dom-inance over ‘landed’ and ‘trading’ interests, leading inevitably to thedisplacement of notions of tangible and virtuous property ownershipwith speculative, fantastical and corrupting credit.

Pocock’s analysis has been criticised by a variety of scholars whohave questioned the ubiquity of concerns over commercial corruptionat that time, or who have referred to contemporary sources that repre-sented commerce, credit and even speculative capital as virtuous andhonourable rather than corrupting.41 Others have pointed to multi-ple sources – not just classical or Machiavellian – of concerns overcorruption.42 Indeed, John Brewer has argued that charges of corruptionwere part of standard British political rhetoric, able to serve as an indict-ment of whatever current administration was in office – Whig or Tory –for their ‘illegitimate’ buying of influence, while accusers could go aboutthe business of buying their own, apparently justifiable influence.43

As a slogan, corruption was regularly used to invoke the spectreof arbitrary power.44 The tyrannical and arbitrary exercise of exec-utive power by the Crown and the use of bribery or patronage toensure a quiescent parliament were perceived as twin abuses, undermin-ing the comforting conviction that eighteenth-century Britons enjoyedunparalleled freedom under their constitutional order.45 In this sense,concerns over public office corruption were typically, not about thecorruption of judges (as we saw in the previous chapter), but the corrup-tion of parliamentary representatives or legislators. As Andrew Fletcher(1655–1716) described it:

. . . corruption is more or less dangerous in proportion to the sta-tions in which corrupt men are placed. When a private man receivesany advantage to betray a trust, one or a few persons may suffer;


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if a judge be corrupted, the oppression is extended to greater num-bers: but when legislators are bribed . . . then it is that we must expectinjustice to be established by a law, and all those consequenceswhich will inevitably follow . . . standing armies, oppressive taxes,slavery . . . 46

2.2. Of office and officers

Among Fletcher’s greatest fears was that routine corruption throughoutsociety would lead to the erosion of trust in its leading institution, theParliament. Thus, Fletcher warned that the corruption and ‘infection ofbad manners’ (notably in the rage for gaming for high stakes) would leadeven elected representatives to ‘artfully betray the nation . . . contrary totheir known duty, and the important trust reposed in them’.47 The solu-tion to corruption was thought to lie, as Anthony Ashley Cooper, LordShaftesbury (1671–1713), argued, in the instinctive moral sense of anidealised public figure, the ‘Man of thorow Good-Breeding’:

A Plum is no Temptation to him. He likes and loves himself too well,to change Hearts with one of those corrupt Miscreants, who amongst‘em gave that name to a round Sum of Mony gain’d by Rapine andPlunder of the Commonwealth.48

In this sense, the concern about public office corruption went hand-in-hand with concerns about degenerative moral corruption, or thewidespread decay of virtue and the falling-away from standards ofdecent behaviour.49

According to Robert Crosfeild, however, this approach missed thepoint. The problem was that corruption was systemic and structural:the entire process of government was taken over by self-seekers, whosecorruption was aided and protected from scrutiny by the corruption ofthose in higher office.50 As he described it in a pamphlet of 1701, thefailure to hold corrupt officers to account undermined every institutionof the polity and exerted a contagious effect. Corruption:

. . . Condemns the Law, Condemns the Innocent, Corrupts the Moralsand manners of Men, and in effect, Destroys all Property, by leavingthe whole Body of the People at the Mercy of Publick Ministers; whobeing out of the reach of the ordinary Course of Law, will never dothe People justice, till they are made to know the sanction, weight,and force of the Law; the generality of mankind, especially PublickMinisters, being wholly govern’d by Example.51


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Impeachment before the Houses of Parliament had been the favouredmeans to bring corrupt high officers to account. It had been used toprosecute Sir Francis Bacon, among others, and in the 1690s, was againemployed against Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds (1632–1712), formerLord Treasurer and then Lord President of the Privy Council, who wascharged with having received a bribe of 5,000 guineas from the EastIndia Company.52 This unsuccessful impeachment was notable only forthe Duke’s defence that accepting and giving bribes was an accustomedway of doing political business in Britain, and that his own conduct wasentirely consonant with that practice.53

In 1725, in the wake of the infamous South Sea Bubble, ThomasParker, Earl of Macclesfield (1666–1732) and Lord Chancellor ofEngland, failed in his attempt to mount a similar defence. Macclesfieldwas impeached on 21 charges and was found guilty unanimously. In anatmosphere of fevered public attention to scandalous South Sea cor-ruption, Macclesfield’s now-familiar defence – that it was customarypractice to use public funds for private gain – and that he never madeas much money by it as he might have done, simply failed to wash.54

His self-justification had distinct, though no doubt unintentional,Mandevillean echoes. The idea that flagrant corruption was a customarymode of government was celebrated in Mandeville’s cheeky suggestionin ‘The Grumbling Hive’ that government corruption, though ‘knavish’,kept ‘some thousands’ in salary’, and that a more virtuous and lessprofligate government would end in mass poverty.55 But Mandeville’sreasoning was far from universally accepted; as one petition to theHouse of Commons made clear, the appeal to custom was no longeran acceptable defence for corruption and abuse of public office:

. . . it is not to be question’d, That whoever receives Money for anyPublick Place, such Person does but receive a publick Bribe, whichonly Custom, and perhaps too common Connivance justifies. Fornever any Man, came to any Office by Money, but he was forcedto exercise his Authority wickedly and unjustly. He that buys mustsell, or he loses by the Bargain, Which makes the publick Offices ofLondon, like Briars, to which sheep repairing for shelter, lose a Lock.56

Fears of systemic corruption in Britain came to focus on the person ofRobert Walpole (1676–1720), the infamous ‘Prime Minister’ who chartedhis rise to power amid the financial wreckage of the South Sea Bub-ble in 1720. Walpole was accused of manipulating speculative financethrough the Bank of England to fund a faction of compliant placemen


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in Parliament and around the Court.57 Speculative finance, or ‘jobbing’,involved rampant self-interest and an intangible (potentially untaxable)property, and undermined traditional virtues and social orders basedon stolid (and hence virtuous) land-holding and industrious mercan-tile trade.58 As described in the anti-Walpole Cato’s Letters, corruptioninvolved the deliberate undermining of Britain’s delicate constitutionalbalance among the monarchy, the aristocracy and the people dedi-cated to the common interest of each of those sectors. That commoninterest was the preservation of the ancient liberties of British subjects(such as freedom of conscience and freedom to own and hold prop-erty), the encouragement of trade and commerce and the consolidationand amplification of British sea power. Above all, however, this concep-tion of government was one in which the private interests of particulargroups or individuals could not prevail over the common interest of thenation.59 As the authors of Cato’s Letters, John Trenchard (1662–1723)and Thomas Gordon (1692–1750) put it, ‘Thrice happy is that People,where the constitution is so poised and tempered, and the Administra-tion so disposed and divided into proper Channels, that the Passionsand Infirmities of the Prince, cannot enter into the Measures of hisGovernment’.60

Those finely balanced dispositions and divisions could be overcomeby corruption. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), in his Free Holder’s Plea,decried the creeping ‘Interest’ of the East India Company, and otherspeculative interests, into Parliament by the purchase of boroughsand the promulgation of ‘private Interests and parties’ at the expenseof the ‘Welfare of the Nation’.61 There was an implied conjunctionbetween private moral corruption and the public corruption of state.In this sense, as Shaftesbury claimed, when the generous sentiments of‘publick Spirit’, ‘common Affection’, and a commitment to the ‘PublickGood’ are undermined by the ‘Corruption’ of those who ‘have learnt toadmire . . . Power as Sacred . . . [and] are debauch’d as much in their Reli-gion, as in their Morals’ by the ‘corrupting Sweets’ of arbitrary rule, thestate itself will rapidly descend into ruin.62

Gaming was a particular illustration of the link between private moraland public political corruption, one that alluded not simply to gam-bling but to risky investment in speculative schemes. By risking solidwealth on mere chance, hazarding reputation and the current and futurewell-being of his family on a throw, the gamer was ‘an Encourager andExample of the most destructive Corruption’. As if the gamer’s privatecorruption was not bad enough, if the gamer were a public official hisprofligacy would lead to great hazards, if not the bankruptcy of state:


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‘A law-maker and a Gamester, is a Character big with Absurdity andDanger’.63

These words doubtless referred to Robert Walpole, whose critics pic-tured him as the architect of an elaborate system of corruption ingovernment and of national character.64 In reality, Walpole was less anarchitect than an inheritor of a system that he raised to a higher pitch.65

Beyond his Parliamentary power base, Walpole was also identified byhis critics as the chief string-puller behind a farrago of dubious, if notfraudulent, speculative and trading interests that fuelled the massive‘bubble’ of public investment in the South Sea Company, ending in ruinfor many when the bubble burst in August and September 1720. TheCompany’s strategy had been to buy increasing portions of the nationaldebt by exchanging shares for privately held annuities, while promisingfinancial returns far in excess of its capacity to deliver. To secure thisstrategy, the Company liberally distributed shares to parliamentarians,members of the Ministry and courtiers who were able to pocket largeprofits as the value of the shares rose. Prior to the bubble bursting, thethen Paymaster of the Forces, Robert Walpole, had been avidly trading in(and cannily divesting himself of) Company shares while also buying upgovernment annuities.66 In the wake of the financial collapse, Walpoleused his position to ‘screen’ fellow members of the cabinet from disgracewhile engineering his own rise to the Prime Ministership.67 Accordingto Trenchard and Gordon, Walpole’s strategy was to prop up the SouthSea Company with Bank of England and East India Company stock, andto shape them all into ‘one Interest’, a ‘potent Conspiracy against thewhole Kingdom’.68

Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751), was not only one ofWalpole’s most assiduous critics, he was, as Goldsmith describes it,the primary figure who legitimated Parliamentary opposition and evenobstruction of Walpole’s government.69 Writing for The Craftsman, ananti-Walpole journal edited by Nicholas Amhurst (1697–1742) (knownby his nom de plume Caleb D’Anvers),70 Bolingbroke mercilessly attackedWalpole as the master-mind of a vast system of bribes, bought votes,boroughs and favours, and liberally distributed pensions, patronage,lucrative places and sinecures to MPs.71 All of this activity drew on pub-lic funds to suborn and undermine the independence of both Houses ofParliament, behaviour which was the very opposite of a good ministerwho diligently regarded the ‘Revenue of an Office’ as ‘publick Money’to be carefully accounted for.72

At times, Bolingbroke linked a degenerative conception of corruptionwith a public office one: the corruption of state can only succeed if


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the nation itself is already corrupt, for a ‘profligate Minister’, with the‘Means of Corruption in his Power’ to ‘buy the Votes of the People withthe Money of the People’, can only bring such corruption ‘into Fash-ion’ if ‘the Luxury and Prostitution of the Age enabled Him’ to do so.73

Luxury, in particular, he described as ‘the surest Instrument of arbitraryPower’ when used by ‘the Statesman formed for Ruin and Destruction’,who knows how to ‘disguise the fatal Hook [of corruption] with Baitsof Pleasure’.74 But Bolingbroke’s target was not just the corrupt mannersof the populace, but the specific corruption of parliament by particularmen. By corrupting parliament, not only was the trust reposed in it bythe public subverted, but the door opened to arbitrary power and theeffective dissolution of the constitution itself:

Parliaments are the true Guardians of Liberty . . . This is the principalArticle of that great and noble Trust, which the collective Body of thePeople of Britain reposes in the Representative. . . . By the Corruptionof Parliament, and the absolute Influence of a King, or his Minister,on the two Houses, we return into that State, to deliver and secureus from which Parliaments were instituted, and are really governedby the arbitrary Will of one Man. Our whole Constitution is at oncedissolved.75

But for Trenchard and Gordon, the great problem of arbitrary rule wasnot that it established the tyranny of one will over all, but throughthe ruler’s delegation of power it established a petty tyranny of ‘a thou-sand’ or a ‘multiplication of monarchs’, each of them exercising powercorruptly, in their own narrow self-interest.76 Bolingbroke’s panaceato corruption was embodied rather simplistically in the person of his‘Patriot King’, an idealised British monarch who ruled diligently withinaccepted limitations on the Crown’s executive power. The ‘Patriot King’was enlivened by a patriotic attachment to the common good of preserv-ing English liberties by disdaining dishonourable corruption, tyrannicalabuse of power, idle luxury and vain flattery.77

A less idealistic response was to defuse the charge of governmentcorruption under Walpole by acknowledging the ubiquity and inerad-icability of political corruption.78 Perhaps the most consistent advocateof this view was William Arnall (died 1736), editor of one of the pro-government journals, The Free Briton.79 Arnall did not dispute thatcorruption often entailed ‘bad Effects’ on society, but argued thatsince ‘Corruption has universally prevailed’ in all human communi-ties, attempts to eradicate it, or to govern without it on the assumption


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that all humans were equally virtuous, would prove a ruinous pol-icy. Corruption, Arnall maintained, was simply a fact of life beyondthe power of any government to remove. Indeed, the ‘strength andprevalence’ of some ‘publick Corruptions’, no matter how ‘shamefuland pernicious they may be . . . must yet be suffer’d to remain’ lest theattempt to eradicate them prove more harmful.80 Citing the politicallydivisive attempts of the Gracchi to introduce reforms to Roman landownership and Brutus’ ill-fated attempt to restore the Roman repub-lic by assassinating Caesar, Arnall argued that where corruption wasentrenched, or the people ‘utterly sunk in Degeneracy and Vice’, all suchattempts were destined to end not only in failure but also in discord,conflict and bloodshed.81

Even Trenchard and Gordan were forced to admit that self-interest wasthe oil of the wheels of politics, noting that every self-confessed ‘patriot’who professes ‘to have in view only the publick good’, in reality lives bythe principle that ‘’tis worth no man’s time to serve a party, unless he cannow and then get good jobs by it’.82 Because of the ‘constant and certainfund of corruption and malignity in human nature’, legal means had tobe found to ensure that public officials only looked ‘upon themselves asCreatures of the Publick, as Machines erected . . . for Publick Emolumentand Safety’.83 But as Woodfine suggests, ‘incorrupt government’ was sim-ply ‘impossible’ in a political context, where advancement could only beobtained through patronage and buying influence or places.84 Corrup-tion was not so much to be fought as managed until such time as therules of the game had been radically revised.

Satirists had long poked fun at the very idea of disinterested pub-lic service. When Charles Davenant (1656–1714) satirised the Whigs’declining ‘Interest’ out of office, one of his protagonists described inter-est as that ‘certain Glue . . . which knits the Joints’ of government, whileanother recalled that ‘[i]t has been always our Maxim, That Men areBorn for Themselves, and not for Others’.85 The problem of public office,as even Gordon had to admit, was not that self-interest should be elim-inated, because this was impossible; rather, some way had to be foundto prevent it from distorting or obscuring the proper perception of thecommon, public or national interest.86 What Davenant and Trenchardand Gordon seem to have been groping towards was a conception ofpublic office in which the self-interest of the office holder, when rightlyconsidered, would be the same as the public’s and the nation’s interest.87

Historically, independence, and therefore immunity from corruption,was perceived to lie in the possession of land, but newer historical devel-opments made this idea seem less viable. Solutions more in tune with


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social and economic realities would soon present themselves in thethought of those we refer to as the ‘new realists’. These were thinkerswho conceived of sociological and economic solutions by which gov-ernment corruption could be ameliorated and self-interest productivelychannelled.

3. The rise of public office corruption

In 1727, The Craftsman published a seven-point checklist by meansof which the reader could ‘distinguish between a bad Reign and acorrupt Administration’.88 The marks of a corrupt administration were:(1) concealment of public information; (2) the use of ‘unwarrantableMethods to influence the Members or impair the Freedom’ of ‘Senatesor popular Assemblies’; (3) ‘a general Encouragement of Luxury, and aprevailing Fondness for effeminate, costly or libertine Entertainments’;(4) alarming the people with hints of ‘Plots, Rebellions or Invasions’ tojustify the expense of maintaining a large army in peacetime, ‘underPretence of defending the State; but in Truth only to support selfishMinisters in the Execution of their unwarrantable Schemes’; (5) tak-ing measures to ‘abridge publick Liberty’, or violating the legal rightsof subjects by ‘forging or suborning Evidence, packing Juries, corrupt-ing the learned Fathers of the Law, and other vile Practices of the sameKind’; (6) the monopolising of public offices and honours by ‘one Man,Family or Tribe’, and the staffing of offices with ‘worthless Wretchesand Tools’ when such offices ‘ought to be equally distributed and justlybestowed, for the Encouragement of Virtue and Merit’; and (7) blamingthe monarch for the failings of the administration.89

Most of these manifestations of political corruption would befamiliar to the modern reader. One might, with confidence, characterisea present-day administration as corrupt if it systematically concealedpublic accounts, practised nepotism and used its power to subvert popu-lar assemblies or legal processes. However, a few items in The Craftsman’slist – including fear of standing armies, luxury and effeminacy – wouldnot strike a modern reader, unfamiliar with the conceptual history ofthe term, as instances of corruption. The reason is that the eighteenthcentury witnessed a marked conceptual narrowing of corruption drivenby sweeping historical changes and corresponding shifts in British polit-ical ideology. One of the most important of these ideological shiftswas the emergence of a ‘new realism’ pioneered by Bernard Mandevillebut developed and refined by thinkers like David Hume (1711–76) andAdam Smith (1723–90).90 The ‘new realists’ aimed to take the pessimistic


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moralising out of corruption debates in favour of confronting andideologically accommodating the material and economic realities ofcommercial life. This new discourse rejected the endist eschatologies ofclassical and medieval corruption discourses and focused on the pos-itive aspects of luxury, interest and commercial progress, phenomenaregularly and hitherto condemned as symptoms of degenerative cor-ruption. The charge of degenerative corruption was increasingly outof step with new and influential forms of finance, commercial expan-sion and consumer culture, as well as the complexities of emergingbureaucratic states in mass commercial societies. These historical devel-opments did not, of course, occur in isolation from the ideologicaldebates, but in many ways drove them. We will turn to these mate-rial developments and their implications in the following chapter. Forthe time being, we focus on key ideological changes, the first of whichwas the significant moderation of classical republican claims aboutcorruption.

3.1. Moderating corruption

Many late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century thinkers contin-ued to treat political corruption as a problem of virtue. Thus, AlgernonSidney (1622–83) offered explicit support for ‘Machiavelli . . . [who] findsvirtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preser-vation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted peopleto set up a good government . . . [and] I think no wise man has evercontradicted him’.91 Like so many other classically minded thinkers,Bolingbroke linked virtue and corruption in making direct parallelsbetween Britain and another prosperous empire that had fallen intosteep decline: Rome.92 The latter, he opined, ‘maintained her grandeur,whilst she preserved her virtue’, but this virtue was inevitably eroded‘when luxury grew up to favour corruption, and corruption to nourishluxury’.93 It is almost impossible, he wrote, ‘to bring men, from stronghabits of corruption, to prefer honor to profit, and liberty to luxury’.94

The problem was that selfishness and personal interest invariably over-ruled the exercise of public virtue. Thus, Charles Davenant excoriatedthe ‘self-interest’ that ‘[e]very one is upon’ to ‘scrape for himself, with-out any regard to his Country, each cheating, raking, and plunderingwhat he can’.95

Such attitudes were by no means uncontested, even by those suchas Thomas Gordon who, despite his earlier association of private andpublic vice, by the 1740s, reflected more pragmatically that there was


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no necessary connection between personal moral and public politicalcorruption:

. . . there is a great Analogy between private Morals and the Moralsof a State; and, consequently, between public and private Corrup-tion; yet, they are far from being universally the same; since some-times the Public is helped, and even saved, by encouraging privateActs of Dishonesty; such as bribing secret or public Enemies withMoney . . . If this be a great Breach upon private Conscience, and pri-vate Morals, to encourage Perjury and Falsehood, it would be a greaterBreach of public Conscience and Morals, to risque the State, or anygreat public Advantage, for want of it . . . 96

Gordon’s admission that corruption had its uses, to ensure public safetyor to defend the state, was in part based on the fear that systematicallyrooting out corruption might replace one evil (corruption) by a worseone (tyranny).97 In this sense, Gordon could construe corruption as auseful tool of politics, weakening the conventional opposition betweenvirtue and corruption.

The opposition between virtue and corruption was also temperedin the writings of both Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) and EdwardGibbon (1739–94), who used language redolent with classical over-tones but did not entirely accept classical critiques of luxury, com-merce and interest because neither shared in an unqualified con-demnation of market society. Edward Gibbon’s explanation for thedecline of the Western empire, in his History of the Decline andFall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), was soaked in civic human-ist rhetoric. The empire decayed because it was stretched too thin,because it grew despotic, because it came to rely on a professionalarmy and because peace and dependence eroded civic virtue.98 Gib-bon bemoaned ‘the increase of luxury’ that accompanied progress,asserting that the polity might be ‘corrupted by prosperity’.99 Such‘decay’ was ‘ripened’ further by ‘the extent of conquest’.100 Fergusonhad offered the same aetiology of Roman decline, identifying hubris,overweening self-interest, imperialistic expansion and standing armiesas major contributors to the loss of virtue.101 He also stressed, through-out his work, the pitfalls of prosperity and the ‘prodigality, licen-tiousness and brutal sensuality’ that riches engender, railing againstthe indulgence of ‘a sickly and effeminate fancy’.102 Drawing explic-itly on the ancient opposition between Stoicism and Epicureanism,


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Ferguson suggested that Epicureanism was the cause of the corrup-tion of Rome – and by implication Britain – due to its apparentembrace of hedonism, godlessness and withdrawal into the privatesphere.103

Rehearsing the familiar classical and neo-classical theme of the con-tagion of Asian decadence that was still a staple of eighteenth-centurydiscourse, Gibbon suggested that the Roman Empire succumbed to bar-barian invasions because of a loss of civic virtue among its citizens.104

Romans, he believed, had become lazy, weak and unable to mount amilitary defence, to the point that Rome was ‘humbled beneath theeffeminate luxury of Oriental despotism’.105 Like Ferguson, Gibbon laythe bulk of the blame at the feet of the ruling classes, ‘the rich and lux-urious nobles’, who accepted their ‘disgraceful exemption from militaryservice’ and ‘cheerfully resigned the more dangerous cares of empire tothe rough hands of peasants and soldiers’ in order to stay at home and‘indulg[e] in their baths . . . theatres, and . . . villas’.106

In the end, however – as we show below– both Ferguson and Gib-bon were equivocal about luxury and prosperity and sided with realistslike Smith and Hume on the benefits of commercialism and progress.Both attempted to combine civic-humanist concerns with more mod-ern commercial ones, believing ultimately that the posited oppositionbetween private wealth and public virtue was a false one, and that‘[h]uman society has great obligations to both’.107 A more profoundchallenge to the degenerative conception of corruption, however, camefrom the increasingly mainstream embrace of progress that embodieda more morally neutral, social scientific interest in its effects. This newperspective led to a radical rethinking of the effects on virtue of luxury,interest, specialisation and commercial prosperity.

4. The new realism: Luxury and corruption

One reverberation of classical sensibilities in mid-eighteenth-centuryBritish thought was a reassertion of the virtue-sapping consequencesof standing armies and the dissipating effects of commercialism, pros-perity, luxury and conspicuous consumption.108 John Brown’s Estimateof the Manners and Principles of the Times (1757) typified this responseto Britain’s foreign and domestic problems at mid-century, blaming thecommercial classes for their love of interest and luxury as well as theCourt officers who encouraged them.109 The Estimate was a relentlessattack on the rise of selfishness, luxury and ‘false Delicacy in all’ areasof life, leading to an ‘Excess of Effeminacy’ and a vast panorama of


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national corruption.110 The book was a product of Brown’s plan to anal-yse the connection between the institutions of states and the vigour ofnational manners throughout the progress of nations, from ‘savage’ lifeto the height of ‘civilized’ existence, and eventually to ‘corrupt’ nationaldecline. This plan was focussed by the commencement of the SevenYears’ War (1754–61) when Britain, in 1754 and 1755, seemed to reelfrom one disaster to the next. What else could explain this plummettowards national disgrace, Brown suggested, than the enervating effectsof endemic national corruption?111

Many believed that luxury might unbalance the constitution byenfeebling the political energies of the people and undermining theireconomic self-sufficiency, leaving them incapable of resisting theirrulers. The Craftsman alluded to these possibilities when it warned that,as luxury:

. . . tends to enervate the Mind, and divert it from all Thought or Con-sideration, which does not relate to the sensual Appetite (by whichMeans evil Ministers have an Opportunity of doing what they please,without Observation or Controul), so the Expence, which attends it,renders those few, who see thro’ the Design, Slaves and Dependantson the Will of great Men, for the Support of themselves and theirFamilies.112

But attitudes towards luxury (and commercial prosperity in general)were beginning to change, and with them, conceptions of what corrup-tion really consisted in.113 Bernard Mandeville seems to have been thefirst thinker to seriously challenge this attitude. He was a transitionalfigure insofar as he accepted some of the premises of the degenerativeconception of corruption, while simultaneously mounting a seriouschallenge to it. Mandeville never denied that luxury was a vice, nordid he deny that luxury was a temptation to corruption. Nevertheless,one of his central aims in Part I of The Fable of the Bees was to refutethe argument that the vice of luxury was harmful to society, that it‘increase[d] Avarice and Rapine’, caused ‘Offices of the greatest Trust’to be ‘bought and sold’ and ‘effeminate[d] and enervate[d] the People’,making them ‘an easy Prey to the first Invaders’.114 While he agreed thatluxury encouraged avarice and made politicians more susceptible to cor-ruption, he denied that political corruption was as fatal as commonlyasserted; in fact, it inadvertently promoted industry and prosperity.115

Further, any intolerable aspects of this dynamic could be overcomeby prudent statecraft: the arts of government, properly applied, could


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‘never fail of making [a nation] flourish in spight of all the other Pow-ers upon Earth’.116 Concerning the proposition that the consumption ofluxuries ‘effeminates’ and enervates, Mandeville wrote that one couldget just as drunk on stale beer as on burgundy, and just as dissipatedpatronising cheap prostitutes as expensive ones: ‘As long as Men havethe same Appetites, the same Vices will remain . . . The cheapest and mostslovenly way of indulging our Passions, does as much Mischief to aMan’s Constitution, as the most elegant and expensive’.117

Throughout The Fable, Mandeville stressed the beneficial conse-quences of luxury and of the human appetites and psychologicaldispositions that make luxury desirable.118 Adopting a detached and nat-uralistic perspective, he conceived the desire for luxury as merely onemanifestation of a set of psychological propensities that, through a slow,blind evolutionary process, had driven humanity from primitive originsto polite, commercial civilisation.119 Mandeville’s evolutionary analysisof society posed a straightforward challenge to civic humanists who haddenounced luxury as a species of political corruption, on the groundsthat it undermined the constitution and martial virtue of a common-wealth. Such ‘corruption’ was not merely a symptom of the progress ofcivilisation, but part of the explanation for it.

Mandeville’s reduction of conventional morality to characteristics ofhuman psychology and culture laid bare the emptiness of explainingsocial phenomena in terms of virtue and vice. His evolutionary expla-nation of society also dispensed with the need for legislators of extraor-dinary virtue and foresight. Constitutional and legal systems weredeveloped and perfected over the course of many generations throughthe accumulated contributions of numerous administrators of ordinaryabilities.120 Governors ought to be virtuous, but where the machineryof government was sound, states might function well enough whengoverned by persons ‘of middling Capacity and Reputation’.121

The direct impact of Mandeville’s original paradox – that private vicesyield public benefits – may be measured by the profuse denunciationsof his contemporaries of the 1723 edition of the Fable.122 He certainlyhad an impact on those who were inclined to regard the shibbolethsof civic humanism with scepticism, figures whom Duncan Forbes hascalled ‘sceptical’ or ‘scientific Whigs’.123 David Hume and Adam Smithwere two such thinkers. While they joined their contemporaries in crit-icising the Fable, their criticisms masked a considerable sympathy withMandeville, and doubtless an intellectual debt to him. But they took hisappraisal of luxury further by arguing that Mandeville was wrong to ‘talkof a vice, which is in general beneficial to society’, which Hume took


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to be a virtual contradiction in terms.124 Similarly, Smith agreed thatvanity-inspired luxury consumption had a positive effect on progressand civilisation, disputing, with Hume, Mandeville’s characterisationof such consumption as vicious. Mandeville’s great error was to treat‘as gross luxury and sensuality’ anything that fell ‘short of the mostascetic abstinence, so that there is vice even in the use of a clean shirt,or of a convenient habitation’.125 Ridiculing the ‘popular ascetic doc-trines . . . which placed virtue in the entire extirpation and annihilationof all our passions’, Smith insisted that so long as a person can consumethem ‘without any inconveniency’, it is ‘certain that luxury, sensuality,and ostentation are public benefits’, for they encourage the vital ‘arts ofrefinement’ upon which progress and prosperity rely.126

Significantly, the term ‘luxury’ was more or less pejorative during thisperiod; therefore, Smith was careful to stipulate that his use of the termwas not intended ‘to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon thetemperate use’ of it.127 Hume reasoned that ‘[i]n a nation’ with ‘nodemand for . . . superfluities, men sink into indolence, lose all enjoymentof life, and are useless to the public, which cannot maintain or supportits fleets and armies from the industry of such slothful members’.128

Smith argued along similar lines that if luxuries were necessary forgrowth and full employment, encouraged innovation, stimulated thecirculation of money and commodities and even encouraged populationgrowth, how could they be condemned as corrupting?129

Smith and Hume were joined in their defence of luxury by classi-cally oriented thinkers such as Ferguson and Gibbon. Gibbon defendedluxury on the grounds that trade in luxuries redistributed wealth fromlandowners to poor artisans, thereby stimulating industry.130 The conse-quences of domestically produced luxury could therefore ‘never becomepernicious’.131 Elsewhere, Gibbon suggested that commerce, industryand specialisation all helped to forestall the mental enervation thatwas one aspect of the corruption of virtue; they also served to supporta polite aristocracy with the leisure to participate in intellectual andpolitical life, both public goods.132

In similar tones, Ferguson argued that luxury was the innocent andinevitable result of a positive process of development, the creative by-product of work.133 So long as luxury was not ‘preferred’ to ‘duty’,‘friends...country or . . . mankind’, polished nations should be able toenjoy, simultaneously, wealth, security and power on the one hand,and virtue on the other.134 Economic expansion was to be welcomed,since it signified a prudent and well-governed society characterisedby ‘the security of property, and a regular administration of justice’,


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which were ‘the appurtenances of public virtue’.135 Ferguson agreed withGibbon that commercial activity could stave off corruption-inducingenervation: ‘[T]he habit of regular industry’ was a ‘great preservativeof...innocence’.136 Specifically, participation in commercial life encour-aged a host of secondary virtues, including frugality, sobriety, punctual-ity, fortitude, ingenuity, faithfulness, enterprise and industry.137 Wealthwas itself innocent, especially when obtained by hard work and theexercise of the commercial virtues; only its improper acquisition anduse precipitated corruption.138 Where once corruption had been readilyassociated with harmful self-interests unleashed by commerce, the newrealism pointed in a different direction.

4.1. The rise of political economy and domestication of interest

The idea of interest as a source of corruption was still a popular theme inseventeenth-century political discourse. In focussing on the campaignsfor moral reform in the 1690s, for example, many British MPs of the‘Country Persuasion’ were animated by ‘a horror of irreligion and vice’,which required vigorous ‘crusades against the corruption’ of both ‘moralstandards in society’ and ‘political institutions’.139 For these MPs, theconcept of corruption was understood in ‘narrow, simplistic terms, asfailures of personal morality’, leading inevitably to what Henry Neville(1620–94) called ‘politique debauch, which is a neglect of all things thatconcern the publick welfare, and a setting up of our own private inter-est against it’.140 Attitudes to interest, however, were in flux throughoutthis period, and gradually, the assumption that all humans were nat-urally driven by the calculation of their own self-interest became anaxiom of British political discourse.141 As Richard Haines put it in 1678,‘Interest is a thing that governs all people in the World, both goodand bad’.142

According to Stephen Holmes, the socially beneficial aspect of self-interest resided precisely in its recommendation (especially by thethinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment) as an antidote to the ‘violentand subrational emotions’ of human beings.143 On this view, self-interestwas conceptualised as an essentially peaceful mental discipline basedon instrumental or ‘strategic rationality’, in contrast to the violenceand instinctiveness of emotions and passions.144 In recommending it,Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, such as Smith and Hume, reconcep-tualised social order by substituting the virtues associated with rationalself-interest (probity, thrift or sociability, for instance) for those (suchas valour or national pride) that had reinforced a less peaceful (and lessdemocratic) social order. As personal interest came to be seen less as


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a vice and more as a morally indifferent fact of life requiring nothingmore than prudent management, so the understanding of the natureand causes of corruption underwent a transformation. Adam Smithwas perhaps the most influential defender of interest in his realist fac-ulty psychology. Contrary to the Christian and classical accounts, anorderly society was not held together by the other-regarding virtues,but was bound by the more prosaic mechanisms of contracts and ‘asense of its utility’. In the absence of benevolence, the human uni-verse could ‘still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good officesaccording to an agreed evaluation’.145 Smith saw himself as a pragma-tist who understood that an increasingly mass, market society could notbe sustained by other-regarding virtues and a denial of bodily needs.A person could not meet ‘his’ multifarious needs via beneficence orcompassion but:

. . . will be more likely to prevail if he can interest [others’] self-lovein his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage todo for him what he requires of them . . . Give me that which I want,and you shall have this which you want . . . it is in this manner thatwe obtain from one another the far greater part of those good officeswhich we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of thebutcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but fromtheir regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to theirhumanity but to their self-love . . . Nobody but a beggar chooses todepend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.146

It was not virtue but mutual interest (constrained by positive justice)that made the modern commercial economy function smoothly. Inter-est was not so much vicious as an adaptive, morally neutral survivalmechanism that was both natural and beneficial. Smith not only reha-bilitated concerns of the body, but also rehabilitated the closely relatedurge of worldly pride, which, as we saw in Chapter 2, was a major sourceof corruption for medieval thinkers. On this account, those infectedwith pride rejected God in favour of sensuality, money and earthlypower. But Smith took the morality out of worldly pride, emphasis-ing its adaptiveness. Prideful self-interest (‘spirit’ or ‘ambition’) wasnot only natural; an absence of it was a constitutional and psycho-logical defect. Anyone who failed to pursue worldly success and ‘theobjects of self-interest’ demonstrated a cavalier disregard for his/herown ‘rank’ and reputation. Whether the ‘prince’ indifferent ‘about con-quering or defending a province’, or the gentleman who disdained to


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‘exert himself to gain an estate’, each was described contemptuously as a‘mean-spirited’ person of ‘dull regularity’ to be contrasted unfavourablywith the spirited ‘man of enterprise’.147 Dismissing those ‘whining andmelancholy moralists’ who were ‘continually reproaching us for ourhappiness’, Smith applauded the pragmatic virtues of the industrious,consumerist and economically productive commercial agent.148 It wasnot the self-denying ascetic but s/he who exercised the ‘passion’ of‘ambition’ was really and ‘always admired in the world’.149

The quest for worldly success was not only a highly competitivebusiness, but was also beneficial so long as people played fair andrefrained from harm.150 A society left to regulate itself by virtue alonewas untenable, not only because it would leave people’s basic needsunmet but because it would be riven with conflict and mutual injury.151

It was therefore justice, not virtue, that ultimately made social lifepossible between self-interested competitors. The ‘offices’ and ‘actionsrequired by’ such classical virtues as ‘charity. . .generosity . . . gratitude. . . friendship . . . humanity, hospitality’ were too ‘vague and indeter-minate’, and entailed too many ‘exceptions and . . . modifications’ tousefully guide our behaviour. Justice, on the other hand, was a ‘virtueof which the general rules determine with the greatest exactness everyexternal action which it requires’.152

For Smith, it no longer made sense to think of the polity as anintimate community of other-regarding citizens, and appealing tovirtue would not make a strong, functioning society in which peoplerefrained from mutual harm. Rather, in increasingly extended societiesof strangers, interest constrained by predictable, rational rules and exactjustice was the best means of ensuring human flourishing. Neither couldvirtue deliver the freedom from despotic rule so valued by new real-ists and civic humanists alike. As Smith decreed, ‘upon the impartialadministration of justice depends the liberty of every individual, thesense which he has of his own security’.153 Although Smith bestowedconventional praise on the exercise of higher, other-regarding virtues,his political and economic theory depended ultimately on the practicaland more attainable forms of virtue that could and should be exercisedby every actor in market society. Smith’s modest ideal was a characterwho could be relied upon, at the very least, to be negatively virtu-ous, industrious, ‘bustling’, self-governing, enterprising, civilised andpolite.154 S/he is self-interested but this interest is always confined byrules, and this is what will preserve society from corruption.

Informing the naturalistic psychology that fed into this new way ofconceiving interest was another ideological development crucial to the


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predominance of public office corruption, namely, the articulation ofthe new progressivist historiography.

4.2. The new historiography

By the late eighteenth century, the eschatology and cyclical his-toriographies characteristic of Classical and Medieval thought werebecoming less fashionable. This turn towards the idea of progressrepresented a significant shift in how corruption would now be under-stood. Adam Smith, for example, posited a ‘natural progress of thingstowards improvement’ despite human errors and perverse policy andinstitutions.155 Like Ferguson, he proposed a stadial theory of history inwhich humanity progressed inevitably through four sequential stagesof development, from hunting through to pastoral, agricultural andfinally commercial society.156 The stadial thesis represented a ‘naturalcourse’,157 and, in the absence of interference or obstructions, the fourstages will ‘naturally succeed’ one another.158 Further, at a more funda-mental level, the whole universe is an organic, self-righting unit able torestore to itself its own ‘health and vigour’.159

Even those with more overtly classical sympathies took a similarlyoptimistic, progressivist line where commercial societies were con-cerned. According to Gibbon, although human progress had been ‘irreg-ular and various’, in the long view, the ‘human species’ was destined forprogress and ‘perfection’, and we may ‘safely . . . presum[e] that no peo-ple . . . will relapse into their original barbarism’. Gibbon concluded thatwe could ‘acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of theworld has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the real hap-piness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race’.160

Ferguson agreed: human progress was asymptotic, a process of ‘contin-ual increments of knowledge and thought’ and ‘continual accessions’ ofskills, habits, arts, powers and moral ‘discernment’. Obviously, humanhistory has shown itself to be subject to ‘vicissitude’ and ‘interruption’,but it inevitably reverted to its natural, progressive tendency.161

On this account, and contrary to moralistic and degenerativeapproaches to corruption, commercial activity – based on the naturaldrive of self-interest – enhanced new kinds of virtue and brought orderand stability. Commercial societies were more orderly and just thantheir ‘rude and barbarous’ predecessors, due to the diffusion of ‘pro-bity and punctuality’ that ‘always accompan[ies]’ the development ofcommerce. Further, commercial societies were characterised by higherlevels of social capital and trust; the more commercial a nation, the morewould its people be ‘faithfull to their word’. Smith attributed this in


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part to more ordered security, justice and policing, but he also deemedit ‘reducible to self interest, that general principle which regulates theactions of every man’.162 Hume, Smith noted with approval, had alsoidentified the connection between progress in ‘commerce and manu-factures’ and the introduction of order and ‘good government’, andthe liberty and security of individuals’.163 Hume thought that ‘progressin the arts’ was ‘favourable to liberty, and had a natural tendency topreserve, if not produce a free government’. This was partly becausecommerce drew ‘authority and consideration to that middling rank ofmen, who are the best and firmest basis of public liberty’.164 Hume fol-lowed Aristotle in arguing that a large middle class of ‘tradesmen andmerchants’ preserved liberty because its members refused to ‘submitto slavery’ but also had no desire to ‘tyranniz[e] over others’. Rather,they only ‘covet equal law’ to ‘secure their property and preserve themfrom monarchical, as well as aristocratical tyranny’. In fact, Humeattributed the gathering influence of the ‘lower house’ of Parliamentto the ‘encrease of commerce’.165

In their attitude to luxury – and commerce in general – these‘realist’ thinkers drew upon the doux commerce thesis popularised byMontesquieu. On this view, economic development was not an inletto degenerative corruption. Rather, it had a positive, softening effect onthe manners of a people and was responsible for the pacification of con-flict between states and conspecifics.166 Montesquieu wrote that ‘it is analmost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is com-merce; and everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores’.167 ForHume, wherever commerce is well established, ‘[p]rofound ignoranceis totally banished, and men enjoy the privilege of rational creatures,to think as well as to act, to cultivate the pleasures of the mind aswell as those of the body’.168 The more opulent and refined a civilisa-tion, the more industrious, knowledgeable and humane was the cultureand the less ‘excess[ive]’, licentious and self-indulgent its individualmembers.169 In other words, commerce, with all its effeminising tenden-cies, enhanced rather than corrupted virtue, albeit a modern, civilisedvirtue.

For such thinkers, there was no portent of impending palingene-sis, no cycle of decline and renewal and no pessimistic eschatology.The Christian doctrines of the Fall and an ultimate judgement daywere replaced by a moderate Deism (with its theodicy and denial ofsin), a progressivist historiography and a naturalistic faculty psychol-ogy in which interest and the self-regarding drives were, at worst,morally indifferent and at best, socially and economically adaptive.


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The new realists believed that the world, through economic develop-ment and the free play of our natural drives, was advancing towardsa brighter future. Modern economies would prove to be different fromantique ones insofar as they were capable of exponential progress. Thewidespread consumption of worldly pleasures did not signify the sin-fulness of a society doomed for a final conflagration, and there was tobe no inevitable cycle of decadence, corruption and decline. Rather, itreflected a healthy, secure, flourishing state destined for exponentialimprovement.170 Hume argued that historians misguidedly attributedthe decline of Rome to luxury and refinement, when the corruptionof Rome ‘really proceeded from an ill modelled government, and theunlimited extent of conquests’. After all, ‘[re]finement on the pleasuresand conveniences of life has no natural tendency to beget venality andcorruption’.171

Despite his conventional, classically oriented aetiology of politicalcorruption – and his initial misgivings about the enervating effects ofluxury – Ferguson held ultimately to a progressivist historiography andthis moderated his moral attitude to luxury and commercial progressin general.172 The perpetual development, production and consumptionof luxuries were unavoidable because as progressive animals, humanswere constantly accruing advances in accommodations and comforts.173

There was to be no return to some imagined halcyon age of agrarianvirtue, as per the classical account.174 The condemnation of luxury as thetrigger of imminent corruption was nothing more than the hackneyedcatch-cry of the ‘casuist’.175 Directly confronting the unworldliness andasceticism of Christian dogma – but without denying the immortalityof the soul – Ferguson (a sincere Deist) insisted that it was ‘not by anymeans necessary, that men should forego the happiness of their presentstate, in order to obtain that of a future one’.176

The new patterns of consumption were not just symptoms of com-mercial progress: they were causes of it and played a vital role in positivesocial change. To begin with, luxury goods were the unlikely cause ofclass reorganisation that led to positive social and economic change.In his History of England, Hume argued that the stimulus to commercefrom Columbus’ voyages to the New World in 1492 helped to bringabout a ‘general revolution’ in Europe by encouraging the ‘enlarge-ment of commerce’. This facilitated new industries and new learning,and caused both the rise of people of ‘inferior rank’ who invested innew opportunities, and the decline of the great nobility, whose wealthwas further ‘dissipated’ in the ‘expensive pleasures’ of the emergentconsumer economy.177


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Both Smith and Hume cited the proliferation of luxury goods as a keycause of the welcome demise of feudalism and the rise of the new ‘ageof freedom and civilisation’.178 With the development of exchange andmanufacturing, it became possible for the feudal barons to acquire lux-ury commodities, whereas under a purely feudal system, wealth couldonly be deployed in the maintenance of retainers for the purposesof either military security or hospitality. The availability of luxuriesallowed the wealth of the barons to be dispersed in other ways andfor the labour power of the now independent serfs to be employedproductively. Gradually and without intending it, the barons destroyedtheir own power base. This most important ‘revolution’ led, in turn, tothe growth of a new class of burghers (the ‘merchants and artificers’)whose material and moral influence brought about greater liberty and amore even distribution of power.179 Once the great mass of tenants hadattained their independence, feudal proprietors ‘were no longer capableof interrupting the regular execution of justice’.180 The nobility’s ‘tastefor elegant luxury’ thus disabled resistance to the sovereign from ‘thegreat noblemen’; this, in turn, ‘promoted the execution of the laws, andextended the authority of the courts of justice’.181

On this new account, were luxury, private property and the methodsof commercialism to be abolished, acquisitiveness, the driving force ofcommerce, would be undermined, and polished society – not to men-tion progress itself – would falter. The conspicuous consumption of thewealthy inspired the labours of the poor, secure in the knowledge thatthey would some day enjoy the fruits of their labours in the manner oftheir ‘social superiors’. The vital engine of commercialism, self-interest,was thereby secured.182 Since the insatiability of human needs was a keygalvaniser of progress, any attempt to adopt a Stoic limitation-of-needstype of strategy would be inadvisable, if not disastrous. The ‘list of arti-cles’ attracting our ‘attention’, Ferguson argued, was not restricted bynature to those of ‘subsistence or safety’, as the Stoics had argued. Our‘views extend to decoration and ornament, as well as to use and con-venience’, and all these wants are ‘original’.183 Luxury is a function ofnatural progress and our naturally insatiable needs have utility becausethey generate progress and prosperity.

For Smith, Ferguson, Gibbon and Hume, then, interest, luxury andcommercial prosperity were natural, basically innocent and a majorcause of positive social change. Their departure from the civic human-ist or classical republican account of luxury thus went a step beyondMandeville’s, for Mandeville had at least agreed with the civic human-ists that luxury was vicious. Their more publicly acceptable defence of


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luxury was just one aspect of a broader political economy that attemptedto leave pessimistic moralising behind, in favour of confronting thematerial and economic realities of commercial life. Interest was notvicious, so long as it was exercised properly; the specialisation that led tostanding armies was both natural and unavoidable (see Chapter 6); andluxury goods were a natural consequence of specialisation and equallynatural vanity, glossed by Smith as the human need for recognition.184

4.3. Preventing corruption: The political economy approach

The degenerative account of corruption no longer seemed so relevant tomass, commercial societies of increasingly prosperous, distant and inde-pendent economic producers. Adam Smith felt this more keenly thananyone, and his thought is an attempt to delineate a more appropriateapproach to guaranteeing the strength and security of modern orders.A return to the alleged halcyon age of small-scale, agrarian virtue wasnot an option; rather, institutional and economic solutions had to befound for managing large and fast-expanding economies and to securethem from the kind of public office corruption he now considered morepressing.

As both state and market activity expanded and separated, Smithsought to rethink and clarify the relationship of these two spheres inhis political economy. A key aim was to quarantine the private fromthe public realm in order to liberate the market and individual actorsso that they could, at last, work properly or ‘naturally’. In the process,Smith did not show much interest in the typical anxieties of classicalrepublicans or Christian moralisers. There was no defence of classicalvirtue and very little interest in the mechanics of an ideal constitution.Corruption did not arise from political apathy, hedonism, selfishnessor an inattention to the public sphere as per classical accounts. Rather,it was a product of maladaptive political and economic arrangements:sluggish, paternalistic, particularistic, dependency-generating forms ofgovernance and control; heavy taxation; a debt-ridden economy; anda state captured by religious and sectional interests at the expense ofindividual consumers. Smith promoted a progressive, expanding andsolvent commercial polity of independent, self-regarding producers andconsumers. The natural corollary of this universe was a distant, disinter-ested and restrained form of government. In order for market agents toact effectively, the system of ‘natural liberty’ must be allowed to emergeand function.

Smith thought that, underlying the complex of seemingly arbitrarysocial arrangements and artificially imposed institutional constraints on


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human behaviour, there was a system of natural and spontaneous eco-nomic relations which, when allowed, would self-equilibrate.185 Whenmaladaptive ‘systems either of preference or of restraint’ have been erad-icated, ‘the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itselfof its own accord’.186 We now think of this as ‘the free market’, a realm inwhich, according to Smith, each person is by nature the best judge of herown interest and should be left unhindered to pursue it in her own way.Once this happens, agents are inadvertently able to secure not only theirown best advantage, but that of society as well. As Smith famously putit, each individual is ‘led by an invisible hand to promote an end whichwas no part of his intention’, namely the general welfare and prosper-ity of the nation.187 People have a ‘natural right’ to ‘free commerce’ andto enjoy their ‘liberty free from infringement’; therefore, interferencein the market is both a corruption of natural social laws and a viola-tion of the personal rights of individuals.188 England’s poor laws, as wellas its corporation laws, were the most pernicious constraint on suchfreedoms and were detrimental to both individual and public welfare.Especially destructive were the poor laws because they disproportion-ately disadvantaged the poor.189 Similarly, the laws of apprenticeshipwere egregious, not only because they operated as an impediment tothe mobility of labour, but also because of their tendency to discourageindustry and commercial effort.190

Smith seems to have been reaching towards a metatheory of pub-lic office corruption in his political economy. He saw such corruptionas a problem largely created by archaic social forms and an over-intrusive, clique-ridden state, therefore, his solution was the small,night-watchman state, and a universe dominated by private commerce,not public politics. The system of natural liberty allowed only threeproper duties of government, which were: first, to protect society fromthe invasion of other societies; second, to establish and administer a sys-tem of justice; and finally, to provide essential public works.191 Beyondthese, the system of ‘natural liberty’ should be left to operate.192 ForSmith, corruption was a problem of neither virtue nor vice (classicallyor theologically understood), but a function of either legally sanctionedand engineered market distortions, or an absence of regular, impar-tial justice. Such obstructions were not only extremely ‘hurtful to thenatural state of commerce’, but were often obtained via corrupt (thatis, non-free market) means, namely through patronage, electoral (andrelated) forms of bribery.193 For example, monopolies existed becausethey were officially sanctioned. Judicial corruption arose not becausejudges were immoral, but because the norms of behaviour pertaining to


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court fees, ‘gifts’ and payments were ‘arbitrary and uncertain’; becausethe fees paid to ‘attorneys and clerks’ were unregulated, the latter natu-rally succumb to the ‘temptation’ to rent seek, in this case ‘to multiplywords beyond all necessity’.194 The irregularity and ‘uncertainty of tax-ation encourages the insolence’ and ‘corruption’ of tax collectors,195

while ‘negligency and corruption’ within universities was rife becauseof oligopolies and the absence of regularly constituted inspections or‘[v]isitations’.196

Smith appreciated the sociological dimension of corruption andrecognised its norm- and class-bound character; he noted that it wasnot a significant problem among people in the ‘middling and inferiorstations of life’, where the ‘road to virtue and that to fortune’ was gener-ally one and the same. Such people were generally not above the law andwere therefore less inclined to break it. Further, their success was usu-ally dependent not on birth or wealth, but on their own ‘real and solidprofessional abilities’ as well as the ‘favour and good opinion of theirneighbours and equals’, something that could not be obtained ‘withouta tolerably regular conduct’.197 Those who were either above the law, orin a position to manipulate it to serve their own ends, were responsiblefor most of the corruption Smith decried. The future lay in a large middleclass as both the solution to, and ongoing preventative of, public officecorruption. The expansion of the ‘middling’ commercial class was bothan engine and indicator of material progress, partly because it alonepossessed the requisite virtues for an uncorrupt modern economy. Thisindustrious, self-governing and enterprising class of people have devel-oped and internalised the cool, instrumental, practical and, therefore,highly desirable virtues of prudence, justice, propriety, self-command,frugality, sobriety, vigilance, circumspection, temperance, constancy,firmness, punctuality, faithfulness, probity, enterprise and industry thatSmith favoured over classical, warm virtues like beneficence, valour andgroup loyalty,198 the latter of which were fast becoming less relevant tothe smooth functioning of mass commercial societies. A large commer-cial class was both the engine and a sign of material progress and thebest means for keeping it healthy, solvent, free and expanding. Humeagreed: this industrious class should be valued and encouraged for itwas ‘an order of men, so useful’ and yet ‘so little dangerous’.199

5. Conclusion

The new realists of British political discourse introduced a constella-tion of ideas that undermined the degenerative notion of corruption.


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They reduced the range of activities to which the term ‘political corrup-tion’ could be evaluatively applied by showing the advantages of thosesocial phenomena that were commonly supposed to indicate a ‘corrup-tion of manners’, and by simultaneously shrinking the political sphereso that such activities could no longer be a political concern. If luxuryand self-interestedness were harmless or even beneficial, and if they didnot reduce a state’s martial vigour, why call them corrupt? And if theintegrity of the state did not depend on the civic virtue of its people,what was the political significance of social vice?

If the charge of degenerative corruption began to lose its force, thecontours of public office corruption were beginning to sharpen. Defend-ing the perks of office on the grounds of custom no longer seemedto wash with either the public or intellectual elites. Some, like Smith,went so far as to characterise corruption as unnatural, hence his sug-gestion that corruption could be ameliorated by the ‘natural’ marketand a diminution in the breadth and activities of the state, which was,after all, the main site of corruption. Political solutions must be replacedby naturalistic and social-scientific ones that embraced and harnessedour innate self-regarding drives and allowed spontaneous economic andsocial systems to operate properly. Specifically, the system of natural lib-erty should be suffered to prevail, and over-wieldy government shouldbe displaced by spontaneous civil society and a small state that evincedthe values of probity, transparency and impartiality. Such a state existedonly to protect the autonomy of self-governing agents, to secure peo-ple in their commercial endeavours and to protect private property.This would allow the labouring and commercial classes to prosper bytheir own honest efforts, unburdened by archaic social arrangementsand a self-seeking, parasitical state that seemed to be riddled with dis-tortions. Regardless of whether Smith was correct in his diagnosis ofthe problem, along with eighteenth-century figures like Mandeville,Hume, Ferguson and Gibbon, he helped to consolidate a public officeconception of corruption more attuned to the emerging demands ofcommercial, liberal-democratic orders.


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6The Historical Vicissitudes ofCorruption

1. Introduction

A variety of historical trends crystallising in the eighteenth centuryexerted pressure on the degenerative conception of corruption. Keyamong them was the emergence of the modern state, which was expand-ing rapidly and becoming more organised during this time. Additionalpressures related to demographic changes such as population growth,urbanisation and increased specialisation, all of which undermined thevirtue-focused approach. Further, the practical exigencies of security inlarge-scale societies, and the technological developments that met them,meant that corruption concerns associated with the loss of martial virtueno longer seemed relevant. Finally, the eighteenth century saw decisivechanges in forms of rule, specifically the breaking down of the powersof the Crown and a shift in the understanding of where the main site ofcorrupt – or uncorrupt – activity lay. Corruption reformers were increas-ingly focused on the eradication of practices and institutions that wouldnow qualify as public office corruption. It was not virtue that wouldsolve the problems of modern, commercialising states and empires, buta solvent economy and codified rules about how a properly functioningmodern state should operate.

2. The emergence of the modern state

In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were manychanges that effectively ‘put muscle on the bones of the British bodypolitic, increasing its endurance, strength, and reach’.1 In order tofinance its war efforts in the eighteenth century, the English state haddeveloped an uncharacteristically efficient and professional system of

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tax gathering.2 Indeed, the birth of the modern state has been posited asa direct consequence of the need for a more efficient taxation system.3

Britain was fast becoming what John Brewer has described as a ‘fiscal-military state’, whereby regressive tax increases, the use of nationaldebt on a vast scale and the growth of the institutions of publicadministration allowed the realm to ‘shoulder an ever-more ponder-ous burden of military commitments’.4 The eighteenth-century Britishstate has been characterised primarily as a ‘war machine’ designed tomeet the considerable financial and administrative demands of globalwarfare, particularly against France (1792–1815). For example, whereasin 1797 Britain employed 16,267 public officers, by the time thewars ended in 1815, just 18 years later, this figure had ballooned to24,598.5

But the aggressive tax regime ‘necessitated by decades of practicallycontinuous warfare’ had become extremely unpopular with the public,prompting reform efforts to establish a more effective, professional andless wasteful public service.6 Practices such as the granting of sinecureswere scrutinised, and new norms of professionalism and a disinterestedpublic service, buttressed by the gradual development of administrativemechanisms, including prime ministerial and cabinet government andCommons select committees, meant that the English state slowly movedaway from ‘patrimonialism’7 towards a more modern, rational, bureau-cratic structure.8 This new framework was effected by those very agentsthat Smith lauded in his political economy and who he had predictedwould deliver Britain from corruption: middling ‘men of business’ ratherthan aristocrats and the landed gentry.9

In spite of the rise of fiscal conservatism, the modernisation of theBritish state was also reflected in an expansion of publicly funded mate-rial infrastructure and increasing administrative organisation.10 By thelate eighteenth century, British executive government was ‘becomingmore coherent and more ambitious, more tightly organised, deployinggreater resources and functioning more as a centre of initiative across awide range of policy fields’.11 With the expansion and increasing organi-sation of public institutions, the line between private market and publicstate affairs began to sharpen. This, in turn, hastened the emergence ofnew understandings of the relationship between private interests andpublic duties. For example, in 1782, the Commissioners for Examiningthe Public Accounts issued the following clarification that served as botha guide and an admonishment: ‘The Officer is a Trust for the Public . . . heis bound to husband the Public money with as much Frugality as if itwere his own . . . [but] . . . he ought not to be permitted . . . to carve out forhimself an interest in the Execution of a public Trust’.12


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The Historical Vicissitudes of Corruption 157

Although the scope of government was widening, it was simultane-ously becoming leaner and more efficient, in line with Adam Smith’sprescriptions. The fiscal-military state that emerged as a consequenceof the French Wars was gradually transformed into the profession-alised, efficiency-focused, laissez-faire state of the mid-Victorian era,whose fiscal conservatism was reflected in efforts to reduce revenue andspending.13

3. The declining power of the crown and the ‘Real’ site ofcorruption

Another factor undermining the degenerative notion of corruption wasthe growing realisation that one vicious person could not be heldresponsible for the vices of an entire commonwealth. Ironically, in theirefforts to protect the monarch from taking the blame for the sins of ‘his’ministers, Country Party ideology was instrumental in narrowing thedefinition of corruption.

The corruption debates in which the Country Party participatedbecame particularly fierce and ubiquitous during Sir Robert Walpole’speriod of incumbency (ca. 1721–42), when corruption was perceived tobe at its height and the system of career advancement through patron-age and clientage was especially egregious.14 In a character study ofWalpole published in 1777, he was portrayed as ‘the first Minister thattaught corruption systematically. Corruption was ashamed and helddown her head, till he gave her courage, and taught her to stare theworld in the face’.15 At a time when liberal sensibilities about merit, freecompetition, impartiality and fairness were emerging and taking hold,the systemic manipulations of the Walpole regime gave further impetusto the narrowing and refinement of understandings of corruption.

Significantly, this was a period in which the power relationshipbetween the Crown and Parliament in Britain shifted in favour ofParliament.16 Historically, monarchs were particularly exposed to thecharge of corruption within the terms of the language of the bodypolitic. As we have seen in previous chapters, on this view, the sovereignwas both a physical entity and an embodiment of the political commu-nity: its symbolic ‘head’.17 Thus, when corruption occurred anywherewithin this integrated, organic system, it was a contagious threat,particularly when, as Sidney suggested, it began ‘in the head’, fromwhence it ‘must necessarily diffuse itself into the members of thecommonwealth’.18

Because the constitutional ascendancy of Parliament in the eigh-teenth century was still relatively new, there seems to have been a degree


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of ambiguity about the Monarch’s real powers and responsibilities. Cast-ing ‘the odium’ of unpopular policies ‘upon their royal Master, andmaking him the author and promoter of them’19 was, for writers of TheCraftsman, a grossly dishonest evasion of governmental responsibility,itself a form of political corruption. In this way, the British monarchgradually came to be quarantined from the taint of governmental cor-ruption (though the monarch might still attract criticism for morallycorrupt conduct). For John Trenchard (1662–1723), the King could dono wrong because he did not, in fact, rule:

The laws are chosen and recommended to him by his Parliament;and afterwards executed by his judges, and other ministers of justice:His great seal is kept by his chancellor: His naval power is under thedirection of his high admiral: And all acts of state and discretion arepresumed to be done by the advice of his council.20

In combating the evils of corrupt ‘oligarchy’ and ‘party’ rule, Countryideology managed to detach monarchy from the taint of corruptionwhile also defending the constitution as the foundation of Britain’svirtuous polity.21

Robert Walpole’s eventual fall from power, in February of 1742,appears to have been a turning point, marking a noticeable shift in theurgency and currency of discourse on corruption in British politics. Notonly did the efforts to bring charges of corruption against him fail, butthe rhetorical charge itself seemed to lose much of its force.22 With thefall of Walpole and his rapid retirement from public life, the ‘patriotic’Tacitean and Ciceronian discourse of corruption lost its most prominenttarget.23 In addition, the charge of corruption had lost much of its pur-chase because the term itself had been devalued by the frequency of itsinvocation. Not only had corruption become the common parlance ofpolitical disaffection among the partisans of all sides, but many werecoming to a more politically detached and wearied acceptance that, nomatter how great or how flawed, one person could not be responsiblefor all the corruption in the realm, nor could a single great legislator or‘Patriot King’ eradicate it.24

4. Standing armies and security

Another serious challenge to the degenerative conception of corruptionwas specialisation in martial functions, necessitated by changing techni-cal and economic conditions. On the classical republican account, the


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corruption of a state often meant a change in its constitution from agood to a deviant form.25 This might occur through the development ofa power imbalance within a state; therefore, a strong professional armycould enervate the political energies of the Roman public or corruptBritain by, among other things, giving too much power to the ‘Court’.26

Further, standing armies were seen as a direct threat to the civic virtuethat was conceived to underpin the unspoiled state. Finally, citizen mili-tias were considered to be more effective militarily. Both Polybius andMachiavelli endorsed citizen militias on the grounds that they providedbetter security from external threat because the technical and tacticalsuperiority of standing armies could never compensate for their lack ofcourage.

The Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher was a particularly vigorousagitator against professional armies and considered them a menace toliberty. Governments that maintain ‘standing mercenary forces . . . intime of peace’ inevitably degenerate ‘from monarchies to tyrannies’.Where a people are ‘unarmed’, they have no means of resistance againstthe government that controls the army: ‘all governments are tyranni-cal, which have not in their constitution a sufficient security againstthe arbitrary power of the prince’.27 Despite his grudging approval ofthe benefits of commercial progress, Adam Ferguson was a vehementcritic of professional armies, perceiving the separation of ‘the arts ofpolicy and war, [as] an attempt to dismember the human character’.28

He also endorsed the Polybian observation that the union of Rome’smilitary and civil functions was its chief strength.29 Ferguson dispar-aged mercenaries for their unreliability, disloyalty, insubordination andlack of energy, suggesting that their venality would contagiously infectthe civic spirit of the general population and leave it ineffectual, timidand ‘effeminate’.30 On Ferguson’s account, British society had degen-erated into ‘a Nation of Manufacturers, [in] which each is confined toa particular branch and sunk into the Habits and Peculiarities of hisTrade’. Specialisation in martial functions gave Britain ‘men . . . who maybe pillaged, insulted, and trod upon by the enemies of their country’.31

Ironically, the merchant made rich by specialisation ‘has every virtue,except the force to defend his acquisitions’.32

However, progress was on the side of standing armies. They were, asAdam Smith pointed out, another part of the inevitable specialisationstory. Smith took a keen interest in the positive effects of specialisa-tion on productivity, and he attributed to it almost all the progressand prosperity of the commercial age.33 Specialisation was a naturaleffect of progress and was even a natural or innate human tendency.34


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It not only promoted productivity and wealth, but also removed a trou-blesome obstruction to the development of commerce and civilisationitself: the security problem. ‘A standing army’, Smith wrote, ‘establishes,with an irresistible force, the law of the sovereign through the remotestprovinces of the empire, and maintains some degree of regular govern-ment in countries which could not otherwise admit of any’.35 A properlyconstituted system of justice supported by regular armies affords ‘toindustry, the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerablesecurity that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labour’.36 Standing armiesalso provide superior protection from external threat37 and afford ‘opu-lent and civilized’ nations a considerable military advantage over the‘poor and barbarous’.38 Commercial nations with professional armiestherefore enjoy a superior capacity to protect the expansion of tradeand commerce.39 This is partly because developing economies cannotafford the massive loss of productive labour that citizen militias requirein times of war.

Smith never denied that standing armies threatened civic virtue, buthe concluded that this was acceptable given that specialisation wasthe inevitable process by which British prosperity and security wereenhanced.40 Civic virtue was no longer necessary for security; neitherwas it an important characteristic of commercial agents who did bet-ter with cooler, commercial virtues and a formalised system of justiceto regulate their behaviour. Whether or not standing armies madethem more effeminate, they certainly made people more secure, orderly,law-abiding and pacific; all virtues from a commercial perspective andcertainly good enough for Smith. In the end, even Ferguson had to agreewith Smith that the cooler, secondary commercial virtues had their placeand played a key role in staving off public office corruption. In a similarway, Edward Gibbon, who excoriated the effeminising effects of mar-tial specialisation, nevertheless concluded that Europe was now securefrom the cyclical process of growth, decline and fall, due to advances inmilitary technology that would forever keep barbarian hordes at bay.41

5. Mass society and social inequality

In Chapter 1, we argued that an important source of corruption in clas-sical accounts of imperial decline was systemic inequality. But for Smithand Ferguson, polarised wealth and status were not in themselves cor-rupt and corrupting. This did not, however, mean that either condonedthe extreme poverty of certain classes: quite the opposite.


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Eighteenth-century Britain saw the advent of considerable socialand industrial change. Mechanisation and specialisation of labour ledto increased productivity, the development of workshops and manu-factories within burgeoning cities, a rapidly rising population and asharpening division between employers of wage labour on the onehand, and workers on the other.42 Corresponding enclosures of agricul-tural land, and the removal of longstanding rights to common landsand resources in the late eighteenth century led to the further concen-tration of urban populations.43 The classical ideal of the simple agrarianlife of independence was fast becoming illusory. It was in this contextthat Smith and Ferguson reconsidered the issue of social inequality inrelation to corruption.

Rather than threatening the commercial state, Smith believed thatrank distinctions and wealth inequalities were a natural product ofmodernity due to equally natural developments in the accumulation,maintenance and legal regulation of private property.44 They were avital ingredient of economic growth and provided indispensable sup-port to social stability, ‘peace and order’ in advanced and increasinglymass societies.45 Further, the conspicuous consumption of the rich pro-vided a vital engine of productivity within commercial economies sinceit motivated the poor and ‘middling’ classes to labour in the hope ofbeing able to someday imitate the consumption patterns of their social‘superiors’.46

Ferguson’s attitude here is particularly noteworthy because of hisclassical prejudices. In common with Aristotle and Montesquieu, he per-sonally believed that it was in the small- to moderate-scale city-statethat people flourished best as civic animals.47 In the end, however, hewas forced to agree with Smith that the small-scale, intimate and rel-atively undifferentiated society of virtuous souls was not the future.Although Hume, Smith and Ferguson criticised class exploitation andlauded the prosperity and stability-inducing effects of a large middleclass, they nevertheless saw social stratification as necessary.48 Indeed,Ferguson argued that ‘subordination’ or ‘rank distinctions’ are not onlyquite natural,49 but also vital to the functioning of commercial societiesand the maintenance of social order.50 For Hume, modern economieswould remain stable in the face of wealth inequality because thrivingcommerce enhanced social cohesion: it aided the public by increasingthe wealth of society and the power of the state, and thereby enabledthe different ‘orders of men, such as the nobles and people’, to achievea unity of interest.51 Rising prosperity, commerce and the question of


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diversity or unity of interest, however, were inseparable from debatesover Britain’s Empire.

6. Smith on imperial expansion

Historians of the British Empire have long argued that after the SevenYears’ War (1754–61), the nature of the empire began to shift away fromterritorial expansion by conquest, towards a focus on inter- and intra-colonial trade, fuelling the commercial supremacy of Britain.52 Thisso-called ‘second empire’, as distinct from the ‘first empire’ (roughly1580–1763), came to be seen more as a network of commercial advan-tage to Britain and its colonies based on the supposedly peaceful pursuitof profit (as opposed to the ‘Black Legend’ of Spanish imperial cru-elty and corruption).53 But as Britain rose to global power in thelater 1750s, some challenged the view that imperial expansion was inthe national interest, suggesting that it could be, in fact, a source ofcorruption.

There were those who continued to see empire as a problem ofdegenerative corruption, a collective moral failure related to a supposedcycle of imperial greatness and decline. For example, Gibbon wrote thatthe ‘decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoder-ate greatness’.54 Others were more sensitive to the relationship betweenempire and public office corruption and were alert to the fact that,as Britain’s empire and economy grew, so did the opportunities andscope for this form of abuse. Such fears motivated the articulation ofa more modern, proto-liberal conception as an activity that crossed theboundary between private interests and public responsibilities.

Adam Smith and Edmund Burke (1729–97) were particularly vehe-ment critics of the corruptions occasioned by empire, and the significantdiscursive shift in eighteenth-century conceptions of corruption waseffected, in part at least, by their respective critiques of British imperial-ism. Smith and Burke were friends and mutual admirers ‘of many years’standing55 and, as Ian Ross has noted, ‘[t]here were significant intellec-tual affinities between the two men’. Indeed, Smith declared that Burkewas the ‘only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactlyas I do, without any previous communications having passed betweenus’.56 Burke reciprocated wholeheartedly and is reported to have ‘talkedin very high terms of [Smith]’, praising ‘the clearness and depth of hisunderstanding, his profound and extensive learning, and the vast acces-sion that had accrued to British literature and philosophy from theseexertions’.57


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Along with Ferguson and Montesquieu, Smith disapproved of empirebut his reasons were very different to theirs. He agreed that empireoriginated with and was perpetuated by hubris, and that it was a surepath to national (that is, British) ruin; not because of its effect onvirtue so much as its disastrous consequences for both the domes-tic and global economies, its impracticality, and its implications forBritish sovereignty, good governance and the all-important distinctionsbetween public and private, state and economy. Smith’s conceptionof imperialistically induced corruption represented a sharp concep-tual break with the classical republican tradition; in fact, it signpoststhe exclusively public office conception that we are familiar withtoday.

For Smith, colonialism brought problems of centralisation andremoteness. The vast distances that separated colonies from the ‘mothercountry’ made their proper governance difficult, if not impossible. Theseproblems were exacerbated by the number, diversity and ‘dispersed situ-ation’ of the various colonies. Furthermore, ‘the unavoidable ignoranceof administration’ about local mores and customs inevitably led to thecommission of innumerable ‘offences’ and ‘blunders’.58

Aside from these practical considerations, Smith’s most trenchant crit-icism of empire was closely bound up in his critique of mercantilismand its monopolistic practices.59 Imperial mercantilism evinced manymaladaptive evils: it caused a ‘malallocation of resources’; discouragedinvestment; induced ‘profligacy and prodigality among the favouredmerchants’ and provoked wars and, therefore, unconscionable levels ofpublic debt. 60 It was not just the day-to-day administration of thesecolonies that bothered Smith: in fact, ‘[t]his constant expence [sic] intime of peace, though very great, is insignificant in comparison withwhat the defence of the colonies has cost us in time of war’.61 This,in turn, led to an increasingly large public debt and with it, risingtaxes and an exacerbation of the system of patronage, all of which con-tributed to the thoroughgoing corruption of the British state.62 Further,the monopoly of trade of the ‘mother country’ that went hand in handwith British imperialism acted as a ‘clog’ that ‘cramp[ed]’ and depressedthe ‘the enjoyments and industry of all . . . nations’.63 In order to ensureproductivity, progress and plenty for all, there should be no limitationson the extent of the market because this limits the natural growth of thedivision of labour (labour being the source of all wealth and value).64

Since empire went hand in hand with mercantilism, the benefits offree trade could not be unleashed and corruption would thus becomeineradicable.


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According to Smith’s critique, mercantilism enabled merchants tobetter their condition in a manner that did not contribute to thenation’s economic welfare. As a result of the dispensation of monopolygrants and the arbitrary bestowal of ‘extraordinary privileges’ and‘restraints’ upon different sectors of industry by government, the indi-vidual was able to enrich him/herself without simultaneously enrichingthe nation.65 Monopolies were both a cause and symptom of corruptionbecause they could only come into existence via corrupt, non-marketmeans: specifically, ‘stockholders of the competing Old and New EastIndia companies’ bid ‘for the votes of small and corrupt boroughs inorder to secure the controlling interest in Parliament’ that they couldthen use to eliminate any rivals for lucrative East Indies trade.66

Smith was a stern critic of the EIC’s privileged position67, which ledto a situation whereby consumers not only ‘paid’ in the long run forthe company’s ‘extraordinary profits’ by their unjust exclusion frommarkets; they also paid for ‘all the extraordinary waste which thefraud and abuse, inseparable from the management of the affairs ofso great a company, must necessarily have occasioned’.68 Perhaps themost serious consequence of this dynamic was its effect on food secu-rity: Smith lamented that the company was powerful enough to imposesuch ‘improper regulations’ and ‘injudicious restraints’ as to induce anartificial ‘famine’.69

Another objection to the EIC lay in its peculiar legal status and irregu-lar manner of operation whereby the line between the public and privaterealms was perpetually blurred. Lord Clive of Bengal noted in a Parlia-mentary debate of 1772 that ‘[b]y progressive steps the Company havebecome sovereigns of that empire’, trading ‘not only as merchants, butas sovereigns’ as well.70 John Burgoyne told the English Parliament in1772 that the East India Company had become a ‘chaos where everyelement and principle of government, and charters, and firmauns,71 andthe rights of conquests, and the rights of subjects, and the different func-tions and interests of merchants, and statesmen, and lawyers, and kings,are huddled together into one promiscuous tumult and confusion’.72

Smith agreed that the EIC’s servants now acted as both sovereignsand traders, two utterly incompatible roles.73 As ‘sovereigns’ of their‘Indian dominions’, it was in their interest to make imports as ‘cheapas possible’ and Indian exports ‘as dear as possible’, but in their roleas ‘merchants’, their interest was ‘directly opposite’.74 This intolera-ble tension made the EIC ‘bad sovereigns’ and ‘equally bad traders’,who were all the while ‘obliged to beg the extraordinary assistanceof government in order to avoid immediate bankruptcy’.75 Although


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Smith reassured his reader that as a profession, merchants are ‘nodoubt extremely respectable’, he insisted that they made far from suit-able sovereigns, not only because of the obvious conflicts of interest,but also because merchants nowhere command ‘that sort of authoritywhich naturally over-awes the people, and without force commandstheir willing obedience’. Accordingly, mercantile rule was invariablyand ‘necessarily military and despotical’.76 The problem was not oneof individual-level corruption to be solved by rooting out a few badapples: it was systemic. Smith made clear that by his protracted diatribeagainst the company he meant not ‘to throw any odious imputationupon the general character of the servants of the East India company,and much less upon that of any particular persons’. Rather, it ‘is thesystem of government, the situation in which they are placed, thatI mean to censure’. The individuals concerned merely ‘acted as theirsituation naturally directed’, as anyone in the same position wouldhave done.77 Since these arrangements were legally sanctioned, the cor-ruption could only be corrected at an institutional level, though themeans to do so proved elusive.78 Smith strongly advocated, in the shortterm, tight parliamentary control over the EIC and in the long term,the dismantling of mercantilism and the complete emancipation of thecolonies.79

7. Burke and East India Company corruption

When Edmund Burke initially addressed himself to the problem of cor-ruption, it was to the familiar targets later identified as key elements inthe system of ‘Old Corruption’, namely, the trade in parliamentary influ-ence for sinecures and places funded out of Crown revenues.80 Burke cuthis parliamentary teeth in debates over the government of the Americancolonies, but by the 1770s, he had begun to take a more active interestin Indian affairs and in the activities of the EIC. Burke’s interest cul-minated in his very active involvement as one of the parliamentarymanagers of the campaign to impeach Warren Hastings (1732–1818),the former EIC Governor-General of Bengal. This campaign began in1786 and terminated in Hastings’ acquittal in 1794.81

Burke was spurred on by increasing public awareness that the EIChad become too deeply embroiled in debt, mired in ever more costlyconquests in India and hamstrung by poor regulation of its Indianagents, who seemed wholly engaged in their own internal rivalries. Butworst of all, it enjoyed and abused ‘without limit’ its ‘despotic pow-ers . . . in Europe and Asia’.82 From 1781, Burke was fully engaged in the


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Parliamentary Select Committee investigating the economic exploita-tion of Bengal and the oppression of Indian subjects, through whichhe came to the conviction that the EIC’s government of its Indiandominions was based on a tyrannous system of bribery and corruption.

Throughout the impeachment, Burke pictured Hastings, not simplyas the fulcrum on which the EIC’s system of corruption turned, but as amoral monster who represented, among other things, the dereliction ofBritain’s duty to govern India responsibly.83 The key to the prosecutionof Hastings was Burke’s attempt to reveal what he thought to be theformer’s ‘corrupt, habitual, evil intention’.84

Burke’s charges of corruption against Hastings were that he estab-lished a government in India ‘founded in bribery and corruption andthat his administration was one continuous scene of peculation’.85

Burke and Fox (1749–1806) noted that the taking of bribes as a ‘source ofrevenue’ was in flagrant breach of Lord North’s Regulating Act of 1773.86

Hastings’ defence, which formally began on 2 June 1791, passed off thecharge of bribery with the tired and familiar refrain that such behaviourwas sanctified by local custom. The receipt of ‘entertainments’ and‘presents’ by ‘visitors’ was ‘usual in the country, and it is impossible forany person to read any oriental history without knowing that the cus-tom has prevailed all over the EAST, from the most ancient times to thepresent’.87 For Adam Smith, this justification was defective: the antiq-uity of giving and receiving presents was hardly the point. In Europe’sbarbarous past, Smith had earlier pointed out, the giving of gifts wasa simple ‘acknowledgement of authority and submission’, whereas inmodern Europe, ‘to receive a present is a sign of dependence and infe-riority, as it brings the receiver under an obligation to the donor’.88

In other words, in ‘civilised’ Europe, the receipt of gifts by public officialswas corruption pure and simple.

According to Hastings’ defence, the EIC could only function effec-tively according to the established customs and practices of India,and much hinged here on his defence that India was accustomed toa mode of government that Montesquieu had identified as ‘orientaldespotism’.89 Burke rejected the argument.90 Hastings’ defence rested ona spurious ‘geographical morality’, as if Hastings’ and the EIC’s ‘actionsin Asia’ did not ‘bear the same moral qualities as the same actions wouldbear in Europe’.91 The government of India should be adapted as far aspossible to local traditions and customs, but this did not entail the self-serving assumption that such an adaptation necessitated the exerciseof arbitrary powers. Rather, the British government in India ought toevince the same universal principles of the ‘law of nature and nations’


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that European governments sought to honour among themselves.92

Burke came to see the EIC, as Smith had earlier, as an organisation whosechief interest in maximising profits led it to carry on in direct conflictwith the British Constitution.93

Yet unlike Smith, Burke was no ‘Enlightenment anti-imperialist’,but rather a reformer of the imperial system.94 The template forBurke’s campaign was Cicero’s prosecution of Verres, the former RomanGovernor of Sicily.95 Like Cicero before him, Burke portrayed imperialrule as a ‘great superintending trust’ that ought to be conducted accord-ing to the law of nations by holding its functionaries and representatives(especially the EIC) to strict account.96 The corrupt activities of the EICundercut the trust reposed in public office by the British parliament, bythe Board and share-holders of the EIC and by the wider British public,to whom Burke appealed in the name of Britain’s national and imperialhonour.

By elevating profits over all other considerations, the EIC not onlyexploited India, but also engaged in all kinds of subversions: substitut-ing rulers with those regarded as more pliable, bank-rolling greedy localrulers and then using debt as a means of control, conquering wholenations who dared to oppose the EIC’s interests and judicially dispos-ing of troublesome local officials when they began to expose the extentof EIC corruption.97 Burke also alleged many other abuses committedby EIC functionaries, who, in their ignorance and desire for a quick for-tune, wreaked havoc on Indian society.98 Burke’s concerns here mirroredSmith’s very closely. Like Smith, Burke saw the protection of privateproperty as a foundation for social and economic life and a key taskof government that the EIC in India (and the Jacobins, later, in France)failed to uphold.99 By extorting monies from local rulers, engaging intheft of Indian property or manipulating loans and debt as instrumentsof government, the EIC abrogated its profound duty to respect privateproperty, as well as the laws that secured it.

The great problem of EIC corruption was that the Company was aproduct of the ‘improved state of Europe’, with its highly developed‘arts . . . laws . . . [and] military discipline’, and these qualities, as well asthe decline of Asia, had allowed it to conquer and to assume the powersof sovereignty for the purpose of trade. This was, to Burke’s mind, aninversion of the natural or proper sequence of commercial imperialism:

. . . in all other Countries, a political body that acts as a Common-wealth is first settled, and trade follows as a necessary consequenceof the protection obtained by political power. But there [in India]


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the affair was reversed. The constitution of the Company began incommerce and ended in Empire . . . [becoming] that thing which wassupposed by the Roman Law so unsuitable, the same power was aTrader, the same power was a Lord.100

As a result of this reversal, the EIC had become ‘a State in disguise of aMerchant, a great public office in disguise of a Countinghouse’.101

In presenting their final findings on the impeachment, the Lords weredivided on the issue of gifts, bribes and corruption. The Lord Chancellor,Loughborough (1733–1805), vainly attempted to save the government’sface by seeking the Lords’ approval for Hastings’ conviction on theArticles of Charge, but Lord Thurlow (1731–1806) was supported bythe majority of the Lords in arguing for Hastings’ acquittal. Interest-ingly, however, even Thurlow, whose hostility to the managers of theimpeachment was evident, couched his objection in such a way as toindicate that Burke’s characterisation of the dangers of corruption hadbeen effective:

He [Thurlow] freely admitted also that he disliked Presents; whenoffered as benevolences from persons of inferior stations to Princes[as Hastings was in India, for] . . . they merited the name of extor-tion: when tendered as Presents, they generally meant corrup-tion. . . . No distance of time, no public service, no Parliamentaryappointments, ought to screen a man from punishment, who,charged with the government of an empire, has taken bribes forofficial appointments.102

On the crucial Sixth Article, which directly charged Hastings withpersonal corruption, the Lords once again resumed their debate onthe meaning of corruption. Loughborough thought Hastings guiltyof ‘excessive carelessness and inattention’ in receiving ‘presents’, buthe stopped short of calling this corruption. His reasoning was thatthe giving of gifts was wrong, regardless of the terms of the Act, onthe grounds that they had been given by a dependent to a superior.Thurlow, however, rejected this reasoning, which he argued made the‘relative situation of the donor and donee’ – and not the favour actu-ally granted by the donee to the donor – the offence.103 In Thurlow’sestimation, the managers had only succeeded in showing that Hastingshad received presents, not that he had granted favour in return. Receiv-ing gifts was not in itself evidence of corruption.104 On this reasoning,even Lord Bacon would have been acquitted in 1621. The final tussle


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over the definition of corruption indicates that for all Burke’s rhetoricabout degenerative corruption, the matter of the impeachment hungon substantiating much narrower public office corruption.

The Hastings impeachment has continued to fascinate scholars inter-ested in the history of corruption and in the future of efforts to combatit. Some have even argued that Burke’s ‘moralistic’ condemnation ofcorruption offers a model for future anti-corruption campaigns.105 Cer-tainly, Burke’s arguments throughout the impeachment added impetusto the prevalence of the concept of public office corruption, by fuellingthe British public’s distaste for the widespread abuse of public offices, ingeneral, and by functionaries of the EIC, in particular.106

8. Conclusion

Eighteenth-century Britain was the scene of the most consequentialchanges to the way political corruption was conceived. In particular,it witnessed the virtual demise of degenerative conception in favour ofthe public office approach. We have argued that the degenerative (‘civichumanist’, classical republican and Christian) model was increasinglyunable to accommodate the realities of material progress and prosper-ity, the rehabilitation of the self-regarding drives, the changing balanceof power between Crown and parliament, expanding trade and empire,demographic change and the emergence of mass society, the exigenciesof security and the problems created by an increasingly bureaucra-tised and centralised state. Corruption could no longer be seen as aninevitable consequence of prosperity, a diffuse condition infecting theentire polity or a problem of virtue to be remedied by a return to moreprimitive conditions or the instalment of a great legislator or ‘Patriotking’. Rather, it was increasingly a matter of rules, boundaries, probity,integrity and appropriate organisation.


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Conclusion

In this book, we have sought to chart some of the predominantconceptualisations of the term ‘corruption’ from the classical period tothe end of the eighteenth century. As others have noted before us,1

the meaning of the term ‘corruption’ is one of the most contestedin the history of Western political thought. Scholars have sometimesdistinguished between broad ‘classical’ definitions, emphasising dan-gers to the polity of any behaviours that weakened political virtue(of both rulers and subjects), and more restricted ‘modern’ definitionsthat emerged in the eighteenth century and focussed on specific activ-ities that threatened to subvert the integrity of public office (mostnotably through bribery, patronage and electoral fraud). By contrast, wehave shown that the conceptual history of corruption was marked, formuch of its history, not so much by a discursive shift towards morerestrictive definitions, but by a continual oscillation between narrow,public office corruption and more expansive, degenerative corruption.Our contention has been that corruption was always a capacious termincorporating a range of discursive possibilities, right up until the endof the eighteenth century, when it finally became narrowed and refined,most notably in British and Anglophone discourse (and practice) ofthe eighteenth century. This period saw the most significant changesto the way political corruption was conceived. Notions of degenerativecorruption were increasingly unable to accommodate the realities ofmaterial progress, commercial prosperity, the changing balance of powerbetween Crown and parliament, expanding trade and empire, demo-graphic change and an increasingly bureaucratised and centralised state.Alongside and in response to these developments, the ‘new realists’and others introduced a constellation of ideas that convincingly under-mined the degenerative notion of corruption. Most importantly, they

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Conclusion 171

reduced the range of activities to which the term ‘political corruption’could be applied by showing the advantages of those social phenomenathat were commonly supposed to indicate moral or spiritual corruption.

For much of its history, employment of the term ‘corruption’ carrieda number of connotations; sometimes, it was invoked as a lament onthe decadence of the times or the moral decay of whole polities, whileat other times, it pointed to specific dangers associated with bribery,simony or sale of office. Importantly, for most of its long history, neitherthe restrictive public office nor the expansive degenerative conceptionsof corruption were regarded as mutually exclusive. The narrow, ‘publicoffice’ charge of bribery could, for example, be regarded as a symptomor – if widespread and unchecked – a cause of the wider decay of pub-lic virtue or political stability. Only comparatively recently (in Britainat around the mid-eighteenth century) did the two conceptions start tobecome separated and by the end of the century, the public office con-ception had overtaken and effectively displaced the degenerative one.As the charge of degenerative corruption lost its force, the contours ofpublic office corruption sharpened.

For Edmund Burke, the structure and integrity of Britain’s govern-ment and public institutions should be an example to the world; theseinstitutions had to be unimpeachable, even if they were located in thefarthest reaches of the Empire. The Empire was increasingly perceived asthe mechanism for amplifying British virtues and British trade globally,2

and many eighteenth-century Britons liked to think of their Empire asan embodiment, not only of their own national strength and vigour,but also of the interests of civilisation itself.3 For the most part, Burkewas confident that, properly regulated, Britain’s government was indeedabove reproach:

If there is any one thing which distinguishes this Nation eminentlyabove another, it is that its Offices at home, both Judicial and inthe State, are so managed that there is less suspicion of pecuniarycorruption attached to them than to any similar Offices in any partof the Globe or that have existed in any time. So that he who wouldset up upon these principles a system of corruption and attempt tojustify it upon utility, that man is staining not only the nature andcharacter of office, but that which is the peculiar glory of the officialand judicial character of this Country.4

Yet Burke’s idealised image of a British state free from the taint ofpublic office corruption was still far from a reality. Certainly, great


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progress had been made in rationalising and modernising Britain’s civilservice and, indeed, the whole structure of government, especially dur-ing the period c.1780–c.1850, commonly referred to as the ‘Age ofReform’. By 1830, there was no meaningful vestige of Crown patron-age left5 and sinecure posts had been abolished.6 Meanwhile, the reformefforts of Burke and others were either bearing fruit or would eventu-ally do so: a bill sponsored by Burke and William Pitt (‘the Younger’)(1759–1806) prohibiting government contractors from sitting in Parlia-ment was passed in the 1780s, while the Northcote-Trevelyan Report onthe Civil Service, submitted to Parliament in February 1854, containedreforms that had originally been proposed by Burke, Pitt and Fox inthe 1780s. Such recommendations would end patronage appointmentsand require civil servants to establish merit via examinations.7,8 Otherimprovements included the Great Reform Act of 1832 that sought elec-toral reform in order to provide representation to the new industrialcentres.

In the meantime, there was still much for corruption reformers tocomplain about. Foremost among these reformers were figures like JohnWade (1788–1875), Francis Place (1771–1854) and William Cobbett(1763–1835). The latter’s Weekly Political Register, founded in 1802,represented a protracted diatribe against every aspect of public officecorruption, while the celebrated Black Books, edited by Wade and firstpublished in 1816, also highlighted systematic political corruption.9

Corruption that had been practised and normalised for centuries wasproving difficult to root out, even in the face of industrialisation, sig-nificant social change and the presence of a critical and alert public.There remained many spheres in which custom and authority fromprevious epochs persisted, such as in the Church of England, whichcontinued to enjoy unusual and unregulated powers,10 and the Par-liament, reform of which – especially the Lords – was a considerableway off.

However, the real and irreversible change had already occurred in thenormative realm. Observers and reformers now had a clearer sense ofwhat they were looking to rectify and why. The idea that the modernstate and its apparatus should strictly separate the public interest fromprivate advantage; that it should adhere to rational criteria of appoint-ment and promotion; and that its offices should serve some actualpurpose had become broadly accepted values.11 Critics of corruptionnow had the moral and political lexicons to press their claims and it wasno longer possible to confuse matters by appealing to time-honouredcustom or the privileges of station. Nor could standing armies, factions


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Conclusion 173

and individual ‘bad apples’ be blamed for any problems within thesystem, while few laboured under the hope that a solution lay in virtue,Patriot Kings, or a return to a simpler way of life. Rather, corruptioncame to be seen as something to be tackled systemically, via profession-alism, rationalistic procedures, codified rules and a solvent state, whoseactivities regulated and supported – but were clearly divorced from – themarket.


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Notes

Introduction

1. S.M. Lipset and G.S. Lenz (2000) ‘Corruption, Culture, and Markets’ inL.E. Harrison and S.P. Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values ShapeHuman Progress (New York: Basic Books), pp. 112–24.

2. See, most recently, O. Fiona Yap (2013) ‘When do Citizens Demand Pun-ishment of Corruption’, Australian Journal of Political Science 48 (1), 57–70;M. Barcham, B. Hindess and P. Larmour (eds) (2012) Corruption: Expandingthe Focus (Canberra: ANU Press), pp. 97–112.

3. J.R. Wedel (2012) ‘Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity’, AnnualReview of Law and Social Science 8, 463. Daniel Treisman correlates lowerlevels of corruption with Protestantism, with former British rule and with‘more developed economies’ (D. Treisman (2000) ‘The Causes of Corrup-tion: A Cross-National Study’, Journal of Public Economics 76, 399–457).

4. U. von Alemann (2004) ‘The Unknown Depths of Political Theory: TheCase for a Multidimensional Concept of Corruption’, Crime, Law andSocial Change 42, 33; M. Philp (2007) Political Conduct (Harvard: HarvardUniversity Press), p. 104.

5. S.R. Ackerman (1999) Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, andReform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 9.

6. M. Bukovansky (2006) ‘The Hollowness of Anti-corruption Discourse’,Review of International Political Economy 13 (2), 181–209.

7. See, for example, J.S. Nye (1967) ‘Corruption and Political Development:A Cost-benefit Analysis’, American Political Science Review 16, 417–27;R. Klitgaard (1988) Controlling Corruption (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress), p. 10.

8. Wedel, ‘Rethinking Corruption’, 456–7, 463–4.9. S.P. Huntington (1968/2006) Political Order in Changing Societies (New

Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 59–64; and D.H. Bayley (1966) ‘TheEffects of Corruption in a Developing Nation’, The Western Political Quarterly19 (4), 719–32, especially 727–30.

10. See, for example, P. Mauro (1988) ‘Corruption: Causes, Consequences andAgenda for Further Research’, Finance and Development 35 (1), 12; Treisman,‘The Causes of Corruption’, passim.

11. S.M. Lipset and G.S. Lenz (2000) ‘Corruption, Culture, and Markets’ inL.E. Harrison and S.P. Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values ShapeHuman Progress (New York: Basic Books), pp. 112–24.

12. See, for example, M. Génaux (2002) ‘Early Modern Corruption in Englishand French Fields of Vision’ in A.J. Heidenheimer and M. Johnston(eds) Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, 3rd edn (New Brunswick:Transaction Publishers), pp. 107–22.

13. Wedel, ‘Rethinking Corruption’, 476–90.

174


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Notes 175

14. Wallis concedes, however, that lower level ‘venal corruption’, in the form ofbribery among politicians and public officials, continues (J.J. Wallis (2006)‘The Concept of Systematic Corruption in American History’ in E.L. Glaeserand C. Goldin (eds) Corruption and Reform: Lessons From America’s EconomicHistory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 25, 55–6).

15. Bukovansky, ‘The Hollowness’, 194–200.16. Ackerman, Corruption and Government, p. 9.17. B. Smith (2008) ‘Edmund Burke, the Warren Hastings Trial, and the Moral

Dimension of Corruption’, Polity 40 (1), 75.18. Ibid., 91; Bukovansky, ‘The Hollowness’, 202; and Wallis, ‘Systematic

Corruption’, pp. 25–35.19. J.G.A. Pocock (1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought

and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press),pp. 114, 177, 316.

20. Ibid., p. 202.21. Ibid., pp. 211–12.22. Some of these issues are discussed in our later chapters. For an overview,

see J. Soll (2010) ‘J.G.A. Pocock’s Atlantic Republican Thesis Revisited: TheCase of John Adams’s Tacitism’, Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study ofKnowledge, Politics, and the Arts 2 (1), 21–37.

23. M. Knights (2010) ‘Towards a Social and Cultural History of Keywords andConcepts by the Early Modern Research Group’, History of Political Thought31 (3), 428.

24. R. Koselleck (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, K. Tribe(trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 85. See also N. Olsen(2011) History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck(New York: Berghahn), p. 172.

25. See, for example, International Monetary Fund (1997) Good Governance: TheIMF’s Role (Washington: IMF).

26. S. Dearden (2003) ‘The Challenge to Corruption and the InternationalBusiness Environment’ in J.B. Kidd and F.-J. Richter (eds) Corruption andGovernance in Asia (Houndmills: Palgrave), pp. 27–42.

27. See, for example: Nye, ‘Corruption and Political Development’; Ackerman,Corruption and Government, p. 205; and C. Nicholls, T. Daniel, M. Polaineand J. Hatchard (2006) Corruption and Misuse of Public Office (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press).

28. See, for instance, F. Anechiarico (2009) ‘The Ethical Pothole: Tolerable Cor-ruption?’ The Public Manager 38 (3), 43; J.D. Collins, K. Uhlenbruck andP. Rodriguez (2009) ‘Why Firms Engage in Corruption: A Top ManagementPerspective’, Journal of Business Ethics 87, 102; H.H. Werlin (2007) ‘Corrup-tion and Democracy: Is Lord Acton Right?’ The Journal of Social, Political andEconomic Studies 32 (2), 368.

29. G.M. Hodgson and S. Jiang (2007) ‘The Economics of Corruption andthe Corruption of Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective’, Journal ofEconomic Issues 41 (4), 1043, 1047.

30. S. Miller, P. Roberts and E. Spence (2005) Corruption and Anti-Corruption:An Applied Philosophical Approach (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall), p. 4.

31. M. Philp (1997) ‘Defining Political Corruption’, Political Studies 45 (3),436–62.


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176 Notes

32. Miller et al., Corruption, p. 5.33. This focus does, of course, leave gaps in terms of mapping the development

of corruption ideas in America, for example. Attempting to tell this part ofthe story in full here lies beyond the scope of the present study.

34. P. Burke (1976) ‘Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Brunito Gibbon’, Daedalus 105 (3), 144.

35. See, for example, J. Lipsius (1594) Two Bookes of Constancie, J. Stradling(trans.) (London: Printed by R. Johnes), Bk I, Ch. XVI, pp. 37–41;G. Williamson (1935) ‘Mutability, Decay, and Seventeenth-Century Melan-choly’, ELH 2 (2), 147.

1 Conceptions of Political Corruption in Antiquity

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines political corruption as ‘[p]erversionor destruction of integrity in the discharge of public duties by briberyor favour’. While this conception emphasises the perversion of integrity,J.S. Nye’s definition focuses more on the actions themselves. Here, corrup-tion is defined as ‘behaviour which deviates from the normal duties of apublic role because of private-regarding . . . pecuniary or status gains . . . thisincludes such behaviour as bribery . . . nepotism . . . and misappropriation’(J.S. Nye (2009) ‘Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-BenefitAnalysis’ in A.J. Heidenheimer and M. Johnston (eds) Political Corruption:Concepts and Contexts (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers), p. 281).

2. J.P. Euben (1978) ‘On Political Corruption’, The Antioch Review 36 (1), 110.3. A. Saxonhouse (2004) ‘Corruption and Justice: The View from Ancient

Athens’ in J. Kleinig and W. Hefferman (eds) Corruption: Public and Private(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 30–1.

4. Saxonhouse, ‘Corruption and Justice’, pp. 30–47; Wallis, ‘Systematic Cor-ruption’, p. 8.

5. Seneca (1969) Letters from a Stoic, R. Campbell (selected, trans. and intro.)(London: Penguin), Letter 91, p. 179.

6. Marcus Aurelius (1916) The Meditations (The Communings with Himself ofMarcus Aurelius Antoninus) C.R. Haines (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press), 10.7.

7. Marcus Aurelius referred to ‘the great cyclic renewals of creation’ in Medita-tions, 11.1. See also Epictetus (1989) The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, theManual, and Fragments, two vols, W.A. Oldfather (trans.) (London: HarvardUniversity Press), 2.1.17–24; 3.8.2–7. See also Cicero (1988) De Re Publica;De Legibus, C.W. Keyes (trans.) (London: William Heinemann Ltd), 6. 21.

8. The Holy Bible, Authorised King James Version (1952) (London: Collins’Cleartype Press), Revelation: 19.2, 20.9–15.

9. W. Mullen (1976) ‘Republics for Expansion’, Arion: A Journal of Humanitiesand the Classics New Series 3 (3), 324.

10. R.C. Wilson (1989) Ancient Republicanism: Its Struggle for Liberty againstCorruption (New York: Peter Lang), p. 1.

11. Cicero (1971) Selected Works, R. Baldick, C.A. Jones and B. Radice (eds)(Great Britain: Penguin), Ch. 4: ‘A Practical Code of Behaviour’; passim andcommentary, p. 158.


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Notes 177

12. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, p. 26.13. Within classical discourses, the charge of ‘effeminacy’ was highly pejora-

tive; ‘womanliness’ or ‘unmanliness’ was equated with enervation, volup-tuousness, decadence and narcissism. The military ideals upon whichantique cultures were founded embodied a deep and abiding anxiety thatthe supposed passivity and softness of women (and homosexuals) couldalso infect (heterosexual) men, leading to loss of virility and martial virtue.

14. An edict issued by Vergilius Capito in Roman Egypt, December CE 48, wasintended to curb the problem of the making of ‘false entries’ or the listingof fictitious expenses in the accounting of soldiers and functionaries trav-elling through Rome’s dominions. Anyone caught claiming travel moneyagainst the public account for unauthorised or fabricated spending wasliable to receive a tenfold penalty (N. Lewis (1954) ‘On Official Corruptionin Roman Egypt: The Edict of Vergilius Capito’, Proceedings of the AmericanPhilosophical Society 98 (2), 153). It is interesting to note here that, priorto the Roman occupation, extortion and embezzlement were consideredfar less serious crimes in Greece than bribery. Hypereides tells us that ‘forthe misuse of public money the laws prescribed single fines, whereas thosewho take bribes must repay what they owe tenfold’ (Hypereides (2000)‘State Prosecution of Demosthenes, After Report, for Receiving Bribes’ inD. Whitehead (intro., trans. and commentary) (ed.) Hypereides: The ForensicSpeeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 24).

15. Aristotle (1988) The Politics, S. Everson (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press), V.viii. 1308b–9a. In Politics VI.v.1320a, Aristotle also refersto the ‘corrupt practices of the courts, things which have before nowoverthrown many democracies’.

16. Tacitus (1942) The Annals in Complete Works of Tacitus, A.J. Church andW.J. Brodribb (trans.) (New York: Random House Inc.), 1.3.

17. Tacitus, Annals, 1.2.18. Aristotle, Politics, I.v.1254b–1255a; and III.iv–v.1277b–1278b.19. Aesop (2002) ‘Fable 66: The Stomach and the Body’ in Aesop’s Fables,

L. Gibbs (trans.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press).20. J.P. Euben (1989) ‘Corruption’ in T. Ball, J. Farr and R.L. Hanson (eds) Polit-

ical Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress).

21. Aristotle (1930) ‘De Generatione et Corruptione, H.H. Joachim (trans.)’ inW. Ross (ed.) The Works of Aristotle, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 317.

22. S. Waterlow (1982) Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotle’s Physics (Oxford:Oxford University Press), p. 240.

23. Even to the extent of proffering advice to tyrants on how best to preservetheir rule (Waterlow, Nature, pp. 93–4, pp. 136–40).

24. Aristotle, Politics, IV, iv, 1291a–1291b.25. Ibid., III.xv.1286a.26. Ibid., V.iii.1302b.27. Ibid., V.viii.1308b.28. Ibid., V.viii.1309a.29. Ibid., V.iii.1302b.30. Aristotle (1984) The Athenian Constitution, P.J. Rhodes (trans., intro.)

(Harmondsworth: Penguin), 27, 3–5, p. 71.


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178 Notes

31. Aristotle, Politics, II.ix.1270b.32. A.O. Hirschman (1977) The Passions and the Interests (New Jersey: Princeton

University Press), p. 40, n.Q.33. J. Kleinig and W.C. Heffernan (2004) ‘The Corruptibility of Corruption’ in

W.C. Heffernan and J. Kleinig (eds) Public and Private Corruption (Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield), p. 5.

34. Saxonhouse, ‘Corruption and Justice’, p. 40.35. P. Bratsis (2003) ‘The Construction of Corruption, or Rules of Separa-

tion and Illusions of Purity in Bourgeois Societies’, Social Text 21 (4),11–13.

36. Philp, ‘Defining Political Corruption’, 442; Bratsis, ‘Construction of Corrup-tion’, 11–12. Also L.G. Mitchell (1997) Greeks Bearing Gifts: The Public Use ofPrivate Relationships in the Greek World, 435–323 BC (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press), p. 182.

37. F.D. Harvey (1985) ‘Dona Ferentes: Some Aspects of Bribery in GreekPolitics’, History of Political Thought 6 (1–2), 105.

38. See, for example, Plato (1995) The Republic, A.D. Lindsay (trans.) (London:Everyman), 359B–60D.

39. Chremata ‘money’ and mithos ‘reward’ or ‘pay’ are also used. Dekazein –‘tenning’– is commonly used for bribery of juries (see Harvey, ‘DonaFerentes’).

40. C. Taylor (2001) ‘Bribery in Athenian Politics Part 1: Accusations, Allega-tions and Slander’, Greece and Rome (Second Series) 48 (1), 53.

41. Demosthenes (1926) ‘On the Chersonese’ in Demosthenes, C.A. Vinceand J.H. Vince (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 8.61(hereafter Demosthenes (a)).

42. Philp, ‘Political Corruption’, 442; Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 76–117.43. Bratsis, ‘Construction of Corruption’, 12.44. The term diaphtheirein appears less frequently in earlier sources, prompting

Harvey to speculate that it was a word used more in spoken Greek andmight even have been a colloquialism, but by the time of Theopopos andAristotle, it had gained formal acceptance (Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 87).

45. K.J. Dover (1989) Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress), p. 48.

46. Demosthenes, ‘On the Crown’, Demosthenes (a), xviii, 298.47. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, p. 48.48. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 86–7.49. Demosthenes, ‘On the False Embassy’, Demosthenes (a), 19.118.50. A. Berger (1953) Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia: The

American Philosophical Society), p. 417.51. See the Latin translation of Cicero’s ‘Against Verres’ in M. Tullius Cicero

(1917) M. Tvlli Ciceronis Orationes, A. Clark (trans.) and W. Peterson (ed.)(Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1.1.29.

52. Cicero, Laws, V.vi.ix.11.53. J.T. Noonan (1984) Bribes (New York/London: Macmillan), p. 38. Also see,

for example, Cicero (1903) ‘The Speech of M.T. Cicero in Defence of AulusCluentius Habitus’ in The Orations of M. Tullius Cicero, Vol. 2, C.D. Yonge(trans.) (London: George Bell & Sons), 5.13.

54. Bratsis, ‘Construction of Corruption’, 12–14.


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Notes 179

55. We agree with Mark Philp that ‘there is ample evidence that the Greekscould recognize both the concept of a public trust, and the use of gifts tosubvert the ends of this trust’ (‘Political Corruption’, 442).

56. Bratsis does not deny that bribery was a major problem in antiquity – quitethe contrary – but he questions whether it constituted political corruptionas it is now understood for the ancients.

57. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 24. This proportion was ‘greater than thatof any city in the United States’ today (K. Guinagh (1934) ‘Graft in AncientAthens’, The Classical Journal 30 (3), 171).

58. B.S. Strauss (1985) ‘The Cultural Significance of Bribery and Embezzlementin Athenian Politics: The Evidence of the Period 403–386 BC’, The AncientWorld 11 (3–4), 67.

59. Demosthenes (1939) ‘Against Meidias’ in Demosthenes, A.T. Murray (trans.)(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 21.113.

60. Strauss, ‘Cultural Significance of Bribery’, 73.61. Plato, Republic, 390d.62. Aristotle, Politics, III.vii.1279a.63. Epictetus, Discourses, 4.6.31.64. Ibid., 3.7.31.65. Cicero (1990) De Officiis, W. Miller (trans.) (London: Harvard University

Press), II.75.66. Ibid., I.xxv.85.67. Ibid., II.77.68. ‘Answer to Philip’s Letter’, Demosthenes (a), 11.18.69. Hypereides, ‘Demosthenes’, 24–6.70. M. Reesor (1951) The Political Theory of the Old and Middle Stoa (New York:

J.J. Augustin), p. 16.71. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 114.10, 216.72. Ibid., Letter 90.37, 173.73. Epictetus (1991) Enchiridion, G. Long (trans.) (New York: Prometheus

Books), 39, 37–8.74. Tacitus, Annals, 6.1 and 1.16.75. Livy (1971) The Early History of Rome, A. de Selincourt (trans.) (London:

Penguin), I.i, 34.76. Cicero, De Officiis, II.76, 94; also 250, 252.77. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, 141.78. A. Burford (1972) Craftsmen in Greek and Roman Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press), pp. 145–6. Cato reinstated and extended these laws afterthey had been revoked. See F.R. Cowell (1948) Cicero and the Roman Republic(London: Pitman and Sons), p. 214.

79. Cicero, De Officiis, II.77.80. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, pp. 141–2. However, Cicero condoned

wealth accumulation when it was innocently gained, for this kind of wealth‘harms no one’ (De Officiis, I.25). His chief warning related to the danger of‘avarice’ (avaritiae) overshadowing ‘public administration or public duty’(De Officiis, II.75).

81. A. Wallace-Hadrill (1989) ‘Patronage in Roman Society: From Republic toEmpire’ in A. Wallace-Hadrill (ed.) Patronage in Ancient Society (London:Routledge), pp. 142–3.


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180 Notes

82. Ibid., p. 24.83. Pomeroy notes that ‘Theopompus and Livy stressed the luxuriousness of

Etruscan women as a factor aggravating the degeneracy of Etruria; Juvenalharped on the rottenness of Roman women as symptomatic of a sick soci-ety’ (S.B. Pomeroy (1975) Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women inClassical Antiquity (London: Pimlico), p. 212).

84. Sallust (1921) The War with Catiline in Sallust, J.C. Rolfe (trans.) (London:William Heinemann Ltd), XI.1–5.

85. Herodotus (1862) The History of Herodotus, 4 vols, G. Rawlinson (trans.)(London: John Murray), 9.122.3 (hereafter Histories).

86. Cicero, De Officiis, II.77.87. Aeschines (1919) Speeches by Aeschines, C.D. Adams (trans.) (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd), 3.170.88. Polybius (1979) The Rise of the Roman Empire, I. Scott-Kilvert (trans.)

(London: Penguin), 6.8., 308. For further discussion, see also P. Springborg(1992) Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (Texas: University ofTexas Press), p. 66.

89. Xenophon wrote that ‘in Sparta Lycurgus forbade freeman to have anyconnection with matters of gain; whatever procures freedom to cities heenjoined them to consider as their only occupation’ (Xenophon (1832)On the Lacedaemonian Republic, VII, in The Whole Works of Xenophon,A. Cooper, Spellman, Smith, Fielding et al. (trans.) (London: Jones & Co.),p. 709).

90. A.H.M. Jones (1957) Athenian Democracy (New York: Praeger), p. 10.91. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, p. 145.92. Polybius, Roman Empire, 6.52. Identically, Machiavelli later argued that ‘the

reason why mercenary troops are useless’ is that ‘they have no cause tostand firm when attacked, apart from the small pay which you give them’;therefore, the only way to keep the state intact is ‘to arm oneself with one’sown subjects’ (N. Machiavelli (1998) The Discourses, B. Crick (intro., ed.)(Suffolk: Penguin), I.43, p. 218).

93. Aristotle (1934) ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19,H. Rackham (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London:William Heinemann Ltd), 3.8.

94. Demosthenes, ‘Philippic I’, Demosthenes (a), 4.24.95. Aristotle (1935) ‘Economics’ in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 18,

G.C. Armstrong (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press;London: William Heinemann Ltd), 2.1347b.

96. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, p. 11297. Aristophanes (192?) [1912] ‘The Acharnians’ in The Eleven Comedies

(New York: Horace Liveright), 572.98. Springborg, Western Republicanism, p. 63.99. Livy, History, pp. 70, 77–80, 98, 309, 350, 360, 391, 405.

100. J. de Romilly (1979) Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, P. Thody (trans.)(New York: Arno Press), pp. 315–19.

101. J. Presler (1997) ‘Plato’s Solution to the Problems of Political Corrup-tion’ in L. Kaplan and F. Lawrence (eds) Philosophical Perspectives on Powerand Domination: Theories and Practices (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 107–13,p. 108. ‘


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Notes 181

102. Polybius, Roman Empire, VI, 57.103. Plutarch (1914) ‘Lycurgus’ in The Parallel Lives, Vol. 1, B. Perrin (trans.)

(Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press), 30.i.104. Sallust, Catiline, 11.6.105. Ibid., 9.3.106. Ibid., 10.1–6.107. Ibid., 12.1–2.108. Ammianus Marcellinus (1963) Ammianus Marcellinus, Vol. 1, J.C. Rolfe

(trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), XVI.viii:11–13, 239.109. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, 4, 29.110. Cicero, De Re Publica, II. Iv, 7–9 in De Re Publica; De Legibus.111. C. Edwards (1993) The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press), p. 82.112. N. Wood (1988) Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of

California Press), p. 117.113. R. MacMullen (1988) Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven and

London: Yale University Press), pp. ix–x.114. Presler, ‘Plato’s Solution’, p. 103.115. Demosthenes, ‘Against Meidias’, 21.112.cf.103; see also Strauss, ‘Cultural

Significance of Bribery’, 73.116. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, p. 4.117. Aristotle, Politics, IV.xi.1295b.118. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, p. 123.119. Aristotle, Politics, IV.xi.1295b and 1296a.120. However, economic inequality eventually caught up with Sparta because

Spartans found the means to enlarge their estates either through marriageor bribery: see H. Mitchell (1952) Sparta (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), p. 222. By the early fourth century, ‘Sparta became noted for itscorruption’ and its economic polarisation (Wilson, Ancient Republicanism,pp. 138–9).

121. Plutarch, ‘Lycurgus’, 8–10.122. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, pp. 126–9.123. Sallust, Catiline, X.1–3, X; Sallust (1921) The War with Jugurtha in Sallust,

XLI, 5.124. Ibid., XLI, 6–10.125. A. Lintott (1990) ‘Electoral Bribery in the Roman Republic’, Journal of Roman

Studies 80, 2–3.126. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, pp. 2–3.127. Polybius, Roman Empire, 6.56.4. Polybius’ testimony here may not be com-

pletely reliable since it is unclear if there was ever a law that had thanaticpenalties (J. Linderski (1985) ‘Buying the Vote: Electoral Corruption in theLate Republic’, The Ancient World 11 (1), 91).

128. Polybius (1962) Histories, Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (trans.) (New York:Macmillan), pp. XVIII, 33–5.

129. Lintott, ‘Electoral Bribery’, 1.130. R. Syme (1960) The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press),

pp. 25, 34.131. Lucan (1957) The Civil War, J.D. Duff (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press), pp. I.17.


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182 Notes

132. Florus argued that electoral corruption ‘inspired Marius and Sulla to dreamof excessive power’ while, for Lucan, the enormous costs entailed causedthe men it bankrupted to seek to recover their losses by civil war (Lucan,Civil War, I.17; Lintott, ‘Electoral Bribery’, 2–3).

133. Seneca (1917) ‘Letter 118’ in Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Moralesad Lucilium), Vol. 3, R.M. Gummere (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press).

134. Lintott, ‘Electoral Bribery’, 2–3.135. While nevertheless conceding the difficulty of doing so (Cicero, Laws,

III.xvii.39–49).136. The first of these was the Lex Orchia of 182, followed by other laws like the

Lex Fannia of 161 and the Lex Antia of 68 (Lintott, ‘Electoral Bribery’, 5–6).137. Symmachus, Or. 4.7 cited in Linderski, ‘Buying the Vote’, 87.138. G.E.M. de Ste Croix (1954) ‘Suffragium: From Vote to Patronage’, The British

Journal of Sociology 5 (1), 40.139. Syme, ‘The Working of Patronage’ in The Roman Revolution, pp. 369–88.140. A. Cameron (1993) The Later Roman Empire, AD 284–430 (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press), p. 107.141. Linderski, ‘Buying the Vote’, 90.142. Luke 3:12–14.143. MacMullen, Corruption, p. 131.144. Lewis, ‘On Official Corruption’, 153.145. MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 131–48; Taylor, ‘Bribery’, 53–66.146. MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 140–3.147. Lewis, ‘On Official Corruption’, 153.148. Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, p. 107.149. Ibid.150. M.B. McCoy (1985) ‘Corruption in the Western Empire: the Career of Sextus

Petronius Probus’, The Ancient World 11 (1), 102; Ammianus, Ammianus,XXVII.11.1, 73.

151. McCoy, ‘Corruption in the Western Empire’, 103–4.152. Ammianus, Ammianus, XXX, V.6; also XXX.v.10.153. McCoy, ‘Corruption in the Western Empire’, 105–6.154. J.G.F. Powell (1990) ‘Laelius de Amicitia: Introduction’ in Cicero, On Friend-

ship & The Dream of Scipio (Laelius de Amicitia & Somnium Scipionis),J.G.F. Powell (ed., intro. and trans.) (Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips),pp. 21–2.

155. See Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought, p. 170.156. Xenophon (1923) ‘Memorabilia’ in E.C. Marchant (ed.) Xenophon in Seven

Volumes, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London:William Heinemann Ltd), 3.6.2.

157. R.P. Saller (1982) Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press), pp. 12–9.

158. D. Braund (1989) ‘Function and Dysfunction: Personal Patronage inRoman Imperialism’ in A. Wallace-Hadrill (ed.) Patronage in Ancient Society,pp. 149–50.

159. Fronto (1919) ‘Letter to Claudius Severus’ in C. Haines (ed., trans.) The Cor-respondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto (London: William Heinemann Ltd;New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons), 1–3.


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Notes 183

160. See L. Hill (2000) ‘The Two Republicae of the Roman Stoics: Can aCosmopolite be a Patriot?’ Citizenship Studies 4 (1), 65–79.

161. Ammianus cited in de Ste Croix, ‘Suffragium’, 44.162. McCoy, ‘Corruption in the Western Empire’, 102; Ammianus, Ammianus,

XXVII.11.1, 73.163. Ammianus, Ammianus, XXVII.xi.2–4, 75.164. Claudian (1922) ‘Panegyric on the Consulship of Probinus and Olybrius by

Claudian’ in Claudian, Vol. 1, M. Platnauer (trans.) (London and New York:Loeb), Prob. 42–7.

165. Cicero, De Officiis, I.xxv.85.166. Ibid., I.xiv.43.167. Cicero, On Friendship, X.34.168. Thucydides (1972) History of the Peloponnesian War, R. Warner (trans.),

M.I. Finley (intro., notes) (London: Penguin), 2.97.3–4.169. Aristotle, Politics, V.viii.1309a.170. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 109171. Ibid., 89–90, 108.172. J. Cargill (1985) ‘Demosthenes, Aeschines and the Crop of Traitors’, The

Ancient World 11 (3–4), 76–7.173. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 2.21; 5.16.174. ‘Philip became the great man he did by’ bribing influential people

in ‘the Peloponnese and Thessaly and the rest of Greece’ (Hypereides,‘Demosthenes’, pp. 365–71, 15).

175. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 89–90.176. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 5.16.177. Homer (1991) Iliad, R. Fagles (trans.) and B. Knox (intro., notes)

(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin), 1.20–60.178. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 89–90, 108.179. Taylor, ‘Bribery’, 56, 62.180. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 98.181. Plutarch (1916) The Parallel Lives, Vol. IV, B. Perrin (trans.) (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press), Lys. 2.6, 238–9.182. K. Conover (2011) ‘Thinking through Political Corruption: The View

from Athens’, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1998296, p. 18. Nevertheless,Harvey (‘Dona Ferentes’, 96–7) urges caution in making conclusions basedon the available evidence given the small proportion of verdicts known tous, coupled with the litigiousness of the Athenian people. Finally, guiltyverdicts were not necessarily reliable proof of actual guilt.

183. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 89.184. ‘An unidentified author of aristocratic sympathies’ who commonly went by

this name (Guinagh, ‘Graft’, 168).185. Ibid., 168.186. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 53.187. Guinagh, ‘Graft’, 169. Although we use terms like ‘juries’ and ‘justices’, it

should be noted that these were not legal cases in the modern sense ofthe term. Juries tended towards a mob mentality and ‘certainly did notknow fine points of law’. Litigants represented themselves, there was nocross-questioning and there was no judge to explain the law to the jury(Ibid., 170).


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184 Notes

188. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 53.189. Guinagh, ‘Graft’, 169.190. Taylor, ‘Bribery’, 56.191. Demosthenes, ‘Against Meidias’, 21.113; Strauss, ‘Cultural Significance of

Bribery’, 71. See also Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 95.192. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 54; Hypereides, ‘Demosthenes’, 23.193. Guinagh, ‘Graft’, 172.194. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 94.195. Cicero (1927) ‘Speech in Defence of Aulius Caecina’(Pro Caecina), in Cicero

in Twenty-Eight Volumes, IX Pro Lege Manilia, Pro Caecina, Pro Cluentio, ProRabirio Perduellionis, H.G. Hodge (trans.) (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress), XXVI, section 73.

196. Cicero, ‘Against Verres’ in Orations, 1.1.1.197. Lintott, ‘Electoral Bribery’, 15.198. Ibid.199. Linderski, ‘Buying the Vote’, 92.200. Lintott, ‘Electoral Bribery’, 4, 7.201. ‘Cata’ is the Latin and English form of a Greek preposition, used as a prefix

to denote ‘under’, ‘against’, ‘contrary’ or ‘opposed to’ (Ibid., 64).202. Mitchell, Greeks Bearing Gifts, pp. 182–3; Cargill, ‘Crop of Traitors’, 75–85.203. Taylor, ‘Bribery’, 64.204. Aeschines, Speeches, 3.173.205. Hypereides, ‘Demosthenes’, 24–6.206. Ibid., 34–9.207. Demosthenes, ‘On the Crown’, 18.131.208. Hypereides, ‘Demosthenes’, 24–5.209. Hypereides, ‘Defence of Euxenippos Against an Impeachment’ in The

Forensic Speeches, 27–9.210. Strauss, ‘Cultural Significance of Bribery’, 72.211. Aristotle, Politics, V.iii.1302b.212. Cicero, ‘Against Verres’, 1.1.1.213. Ammianus, Ammianus, XXX.V.6; XXX.v.10.214. Ambitus ‘destroyed the State; licence came devouring usury and interest

that looks greedily to the day of payment; credit was shattered, and manyfound their profit in war’ (Lucan, Civil War, I.17).

215. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 109.216. Demosthenes, ‘On the Chersonese’, 8.61.217. Herodotus, Histories, 9.5.218. In fact, Harvey categorises this as a law designed to address catapolitical

offences (Dona Ferentes’, 111)219. Hypereides, ‘Euxenippos’, 7–8.220. J. Connolly (2007) The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in

Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 134–5. Oratoryencompassed the studied crafting of public utterance in line with acceptedrhetorical standards, in which the aim was to persuade audiences not sim-ply by ‘logos’ (or the construction of rational argument), but by emotiveploys, such as invocations of ‘ethos’ (or the character of the speaker), and‘pathos’ (or the use of exaggerated and emotive language). Cicero’s fourspeeches on the Catiline conspiracy are among the best-known examples


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Notes 185

of all three appeals. See Cicero (1969) ‘Against Lucius Sergius Catilina’ inCicero: Selected Political Speeches, M. Grant (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Pen-guin), Speech I, pp. 82–3; Speech III, pp. 112–16; Speech II, pp. 106–8;Speech IV, p. 137.

221. Taylor, ‘Bribery’, 57.222. Xenophon, ‘Memorabilia’, 3.6.18. See also Cicero, Laws, III.xviii.41.223. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 103.224. Aeschines, Speeches, 3.173.225. MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 124–5.226. Ibid., pp. 126–8.227. Noonan, Bribes, p. xii.228. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 103.229. Taylor, ‘Bribery’, 57.230. Ibid., 61.231. Hypereides, ‘Demosthenes’, 24–5.232. Xenophon, ‘Anabasis’ in Xenophon, Vol. 4, 7.7.46233. Cicero, ‘Pro Murena’, Orations, 71–2.234. For the importance of reciprocity in Athens, see A. Missiou (1998) ‘Recip-

rocal Generosity in the Foreign Affairs of Fifth-Century Athens and Sparta’in C. Gill, N. Postelthwaite and R. Seaford (eds) Reciprocity in Ancient Greece(Oxford: Oxford University Press).

235. Strauss, ‘Cultural Significance of Bribery’, 72.236. Ibid.237. In Homer the term ‘gift’ covered ‘a great variety of actions and transactions

which later became differentiated and acquitted their own appellations.There were payments for services rendered, desired or anticipated; whatwe would call fees, rewards, prizes and sometimes bribes . . . . Then therewere taxes and other dues to lords and kings, amends with a penal over-tone . . . and even ordinary loans’ and ‘gifts of wooing’. Indeed the ‘wholeof what we call foreign relations and diplomacy, in their peaceful manifes-tations, was conducted by gift-exchange’ (M.I. Finley (1979) The World ofOdysseus (New York: Penguin), p. 66).

238. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 105.239. M. Douglas (1990) ‘Forward’ in M. Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for

Exchange in Archaic Societies, W.D. Halls (trans.) (London: Routledge), p. vii.240. Strauss, ‘Cultural Significance of Bribery’, 72.241. Harvey, ‘Dona Ferentes’, 105.242. Homer (1919) The Odyssey, in two vols, A.T. Murray (trans.) (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd), 18.285.243. Plato, Republic, 390d–e.244. Ibid., 390d–e, 70.245. Ibid., 264 d–e.246. Ibid., 391a.247. Homer, Iliad, 1.20–60.248. Ibid., 1.43–9.249. Douglas, ‘Forward’, p. ix.250. Although admittedly, Homer was also an important literary source for

ancient Romans. Livius Andronicus translated the Odyssey into Latin in the3rd century BCE (B. Graziosi (2007) ‘The Ancient Reception of Homer’ in


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186 Notes

L. Hardwick and C. Stray (eds) A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford:Wiley-Blackwell), p. 35).

251. It is well-documented in the anthropological literature that the law ofhospitality was extended in exaggerated ways to strangers to stave offaggression and was not usually a matter of choice (see, for example, Mauss,The Gift, p. 81).

252. MacMullen, Corruption, p. 128.253. Justinian (1985) The Digest of Justinian, Vol. 1, A. Watson (ed., trans.)

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 12.5.3.254. Cicero (1999) ‘Letter 16.13’ in Letters to Atticus, Vol. 1, D.R. Shackleton

Bailey (ed., trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).255. Macmullen, Corruption, p. 126.256. Justinian, Digest, 1.16.63.257. Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, p. 106.258. This Digest, also known as the Pandects, was a compendium of Roman Law

that Justinian I ordered to be compiled in the period AD 530–33.259. See, for example, A. Gouldner (1965) Enter Plato (New York: HarperCollins),

p. 12. In fact, the Roman electoral system was built around the tribe andinvolved a group voting system in which the voting unit was the tribus(tribe or ward). There were 35 tribes in the Roman state, 4 urban and 31rural (Enter Plato, p. 50).

260. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, pp. 205–6.261. Ibid., p. 106

2 Patronage, Politics and Perishability in Early MedievalPolitical Thought

1. Euben, ‘On Political Corruption’, p. 110.2. Cicero (1999) On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, J.E.G. Zetzel (ed.)

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), I, 39a and 41, p. 18.3. According to Innes, classical rhetoricians used metaphor (and analogy) as

a form of literary ‘ornamentation’ or as a ‘poetic device’ based on readilyapparent ‘likenesses’ to communicate clear meaning. Allegory, on the otherhand, denoted a ‘sustained metaphor’ often communicating a ‘hiddenmeaning’ (D. Innes (2003) ‘Metaphor, Simile, and Allegory as Ornaments ofStyle’ in G.R. Boys-Stones (ed.) Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition:Ancient Thought and Modern Revisions (Oxford: Oxford University Press),pp. 12–13, 19).

4. Aesop, ‘The Stomach and the Body’.5. Livy, History of Rome, 2.33, p. 147.6. See, for example, K.W. Swart (2002) ‘The Sale of Public Offices’ in

A.J. Heidenheimer and M. Johnston (eds) Political Corruption: Concepts andContexts, 3rd edn (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers), pp. 96–7.

7. This issue is canvassed in Génaux, ‘Early Modern Corruption’, pp. 107–8;also J.-C. Waquet (1991) Corruption: Ethics and Power in Florence, 1600–1770,L. McCall (trans.) (Cambridge: Polity), pp. 10–14.

8. R. Fossier (2010) The Axe and the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages,L.G. Cochrane (trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 271.


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Notes 187

9. Ibid., p. 272.10. M. Nicolson (1960) The Breaking of the Circle: Studies in the Effects of the

‘New Science’ on Seventeenth-Century Poetry, revised edn (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press), p. 126.

11. C.J. Nederman (2004) ‘Body Politics: The Diversification of OrganicMetaphors in the Later Middle Ages’, Pensiero Politico Medievale 2, 61.The diverse uses of this metaphor have also been treated in: J.H. Burns(1988) The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 455–6; P. Archambault(1967) ‘The Metaphor of the “Body” in Renaissance Political Litera-ture’, Bibliotheque D’Humanism et Renaissance XXIX, 21–53; B. Tierney(1968) Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the MedievalCanonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press), p. 12.

12. F.C. Bauerschmidt (1999) Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic ofChrist (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), p. 15; E. Lewis (1938)‘Organic Tendencies in Medieval Political Thought’, American PoliticalScience Review 32, 862–3.

13. On the uses of the metaphor and on the persecution of heretics in theLate Roman period, see L.S.B. MacCoull (2006) ‘Menas and Thomas: Noteson the Dialogus de sciential politica’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 46,306–7; C. Humfress (2008) ‘Citizens and Heretics: Late Roman Lawyers onChristian Heresy’ in E. Iricinshi and H.M. Zellentin (eds) Heresy and Iden-tity in Late Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), pp. 129–33. As Humfressalso points out, those accused of heresy before Roman courts were oftentempted to use ‘fraudulent schemes’ (buying judicial favour) to protecttheir property from forfeit (p. 139). On later Medieval applications ofthe metaphor, see D. Baraz (2003) Medieval Cruelty: Changing Perceptions,Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Ithaca: Cornell University Press),pp. 17–18.

14. E. Kantorowicz (1957) The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval PoliticalTheology (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 195–6.

15. Paul’s vision was not necessarily ‘metaphorical’, in that his image ofbelievers joining in ‘one spirit’ did not entail ‘disembodiment’ but theaccomplishment of an actual unity of ‘body, soul and spirit’ (M. Edwards(2003) ‘Origen on Christ, Tropology, and Exegesis’ in G.R. Boys-Stones (ed.)Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition: Ancient Thought and ModernRevisions (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 242).

16. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2007) 3rd edn, M.D. Coogan (ed.) (Oxford:Oxford University Press), p. 285.

17. D.A. DeSilva (1995) ‘Paul and the Stoa: A Comparison’, Journal of theEvangelical Theological Society 38 (4), 555.

18. For the identification and definition of these terms, see: J. Strong (1984)The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville: ThomasNelson) (hereafter Strong’s Concordance); W.E. Vine (1984) Vine’s ExpositoryDictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Nashville: Thomas Nelson)for the following terms: phtheiró, phthartos, phthora, pp. 857–8; kataph-theiró, p. 420; sepo, p. 749; aphtharsia, aphthartos and aphthoria, p. 125.See also W. Bauer (1957) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and


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188 Notes

Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd edn, W.F. Arndt and F.W. Gingrich(trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 20, 742–4. Strong iden-tifies phtheiró (5351) as to wither, ruin, spoil, defile or destroy; phthartos(5349) indicates perishable, while phthora (5356) connotes ruin, corrup-tion, destroy or perish (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary of the NewTestament, p. 75).

19. While this modern edition of the Bible uses the terms ‘perishable’ and‘imperishable’, earlier editions, such as Wycliffe’s 1395 English Bible usedthe terms ‘corrupcioun’, ‘corruptible’ and ‘uncorrupcioun’; the ClementineVulgate used ‘incorrupti’, ‘corruptibile’ and ‘incorruptionem’. The Douay-Rheims and King James versions of the Bible also used the terms ‘corruption’and ‘incorruption’.

20. R.J. Sider (1975) ‘The Pauline Conception of the Resurrection Body inI Corinthians XV. 35–54’, New Testament Studies 21 (3), 433.

21. See, for example, Gen 6:11–12; Hebrew Bible 19. The Clementine Vulgateused the terms ‘corrupta’ and ‘corruptam’. On the meanings of theseterms, see G.W. Bromiley (1985) Theological Dictionary of the New Testa-ment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing), pp. 1259–61. Strong listed avariety of Hebrew terms denoting corruption, including shâchath (7843),indicating to decay, spoil, mar, cast off, batter or corrupt (for example, Gen6:11–12; Deut 4:16, 25, 9:12, 31:29, 32:5; Ezek 20:44, 23:11) and shachath(7845), meaning a pit, a grave, a ditch, destruction (see Job 17:14); alsochâbal (2254), meaning both to wind or bind and to pervert, to bring forth,to deal corruptly and to writhe in pain (see Job 17:1) (Strong’s Concordance,Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, pp. 36, 115).

22. I Cor 9:25, 15:52–54; I Peter 1: 4, 18 and 23.23. St Paul visited Corinth during the Isthmian Games held there in spring,

51 CE. According to Broneer, it was the practice at that time for victorsto be awarded a withered wreath of ‘wild celery’ that Paul may well havedeliberately chosen to ‘emphasise the contrast’ between corruption andincorruption (O. Broneer (1971), ‘Paul and the Pagan Cults at Isthmia’, TheHarvard Theological Review 64 (2–3), 186).

24. Acts 2: 27, 31, 13:34–7. Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary, lists themeaning of diaphthora (1312) as decay or corruption (p. 23).

25. Rom 8:21; I Cor 15:42, 50; Gal 6:8; 2 Pet 1:4, 2:12.26. James 5:2; Luke 12:32–4. Other metaphors included Matthew and Luke’s

warning that the corrupt (sapros) tree would bring forth corrupt fruit (Matt7:17–18, 12:33; Luke 6:43). According to Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictio-nary, sepo (4595) indicated to putrefy, to perish or to be corrupted, whileDiaphtheiro (1311) meant to rot, ruin or pervert utterly, to destroy or to per-ish (pp. 65, 23). Diaphtheiro also connoted the condition of those who hadbeen utterly corrupted by teachers (in I Tim 6:5, p. NT 355), as well as theships that were ‘destroyed’ when the second angel blew its trumpet (in Rev8:9, p. 432).

27. I Cor 3:17, 15:33; 2 Cor 7:2; 2 Peter 2:10–16. The sense of being cor-rupted here connoted destruction or defilement. The strong implicationwas that such defilement constituted active destruction, as in Peter 2:12,where ‘irrational animals’ who ‘slander what they do not understand’ will‘be destroyed’.


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Notes 189

28. Those of ‘corrupt (kataphtheiro) mind and counterfeit faith’ were similarlycondemned in 2 Tim 3:8. Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary, lists themeanings of kataphtheiro (2704) as: to spoil entirely, to destroy, deprave,corrupt or utterly perish (p. 41).

29. Bribery was also condemned in the Covenant made with Moses in Ex 23:8.There are subsequent condemnations of bribery, often in relation to judgesand princes, at Deut 10:17, I Sam 8:3 and 12:3, Job 15:34, Prov 15:27,Isa 33:15, Amos 5:12 and Mic 3:11. The term ‘bribes’ used in this mod-ern edition can be compared with the use of the term ‘yiftis’ or ‘gifts’ inthe Wycliffe and King James Bibles, and the Latin term ‘munera’ in theClementine Bible, which could denote the giving of gifts, service or office.Strong’s Concordance, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, lists the Hebrewterms shachad (7810) meaning donation, gift or reward, hence not nec-essarily denoting venality; and kôpher (3724) not only meaning to cover,or a coating, but also denoting a ransom, satisfaction or sum of money(pp. 57, 114).

30. Deut 16:18. See also Prov 6.35, Hebrew Bible, where wrathful husbands aresaid to accept no ‘bribe’ as compensation for adultery.

31. 2 Peter 2:19; 2 Peter 2:3, 14–15.32. For example, the Lex Calpurnia, which established a court to curb the extor-

tions of provincial governors, was decreed in 149 BCE, while the Lex AliciaCalpurnia, which aimed to exclude those guilty of electoral corruption frompublic office, was established in 67 BCE.

33. The apparent lack of physical corruption in the remains of the saints, forexample, was interpreted as a sign of their holiness, of their having tri-umphed over death and corruption and that their ‘spirits’ were ‘living withGod’ (St Augustine (1980) The City of God Against the Pagans, H. Bettenson(trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin), 22.10, p. 1048 (subsequently: City ofGod (1980)).

34. Ibid., Bk XIII, Ch. 14, p. 523.35. B.T. Heiner (2009) ‘Reinhabiting the Body Politic: Habit and the Roots of

the Human’, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 20 (2–3), 74.See also H.A. Deane (1963) The Political and Social Ideas of St Augustine(New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 172–220. For Hardt and Negri,all invocations of the body politic are, at base, attempts to rationalise thenecessity for sovereignty over the multitude (M. Hardt and A. Negri (2004)Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 329–30).

36. The English translation used here is: St Augustine (1998) The City of Godagainst the Pagans, R.W. Dyson (trans., ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press), Bk XIII, Ch. 14, p. 556 (subsequently: City of God (1998)).The Latin text used here is: St Augustine (1966) The City of God againstthe Pagans, Vol. IV, P. Levine (trans.) (London: William Heinemann),p. 180 (hereafter City of God (1966)). Interestingly, Levine here translates‘velut radice corrupta’ as ‘diseased root’, by which humans were ‘willinglycorrupted (depravatus)’ and condemned to engender ‘corrupt (depravatos)offspring’ (subsequent references to City of God will include book number,chapter number and pages).

37. R.A. Markus (1970) Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology ofSt Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 73–4.


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38. J.M.H. Smith (2005) Europe after Rome; A New Cultural History 500–1000(Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 246; Markus, Saeculum, p. 85.

39. Ibid., p. 248.40. E. Pagels (1988) Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early

Christianity (New York: Vintage Books), p. 97.41. J. Fortescue (1997) [1468–71] In Praise of the Laws of England in On the Laws

and Governance of England, S. Lockwood (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press), p. 20. The republican implications of Augustine’s politicalthought are discussed in J. van Heyking (1999) ‘A Headless Body Politic?:Augustine’s Understanding of a Populus and its Representation’, History ofPolitical Thought XX (4), 549–74.

42. Deane, Ideas of St Augustine, pp. 119–21.43. R.W. Dyson (2005) St Augustine of Hippo: The Christian Transformation of

Political Philosophy (London: Continuum), pp. 66–7.44. City of God (1998) 10.6, p. 400; City of God (1966) Vol. III, p. 276.45. It was in this sense that Augustine took issue with the Pelagians, who

appear to have argued that humans could escape the taint of sin andcorruption through their own free will. See, for example, H.A. Wolfson(1959) ‘Philosophical Implications of the Pelagian Controversy’, Proceed-ings of the American Philosophical Society 103 (4), 554–62; P.I. Kaufman(1990) ‘Augustine, Evil and Donatism: Sin and Sanctity before the PelagianControversy’, Theological Studies 51, 115–26.

46. von Heyking, ‘A Headless Body Politic?’, 558.47. City of God (1998) 19.21, pp. 951–2. Augustine makes the point that justice

is opposed to the fraudulent sale of land, as much as it is against the devi-ation of men and women from God. The relevant Biblical passage behindthis observation would appear to be Acts 5 where the fraudulent sale ofland for private gain was said to constitute lying ‘unto God’. I would like tothank Jillian Beard for drawing this connection to my attention.

48. City of God (1998) 19.24, p. 960; von Heyking, ‘A Headless Body Politic?’,560–1. Augustine refers to the partial civil peace of pagan common-wealths as ‘the peace of Babylon’, which is ‘advantageous’ (in that it isbetter than outright discord and war) and ‘not to be despised’ (19.26,p. 962).

49. City of God (1998) 19.24, p. 960; City of God (1966) Vol. VI, p. 232.50. von Heyking, ‘A Headless Body Politic?’, 559.51. The first quotation here is taken from: von Heyking, ‘A Headless Body

Politic?’, 566. The second quotation and the posing of this two-foldproblem of corruption can be found in City of God (1998) 2.21, p. 78.

52. According to Kevin Uhalde, bishops like Augustine recognised the perva-sive corruption of the courts throughout the late empire. In conveningtheir own Episcopal courts, emphasis was placed on the necessity for bish-ops to exercise the ‘power of discernment’ in making judgements; a powervariously described as dioratikon, diakrisis or discretion (K. Uhalde (2007)Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press), pp. 52–3, 66–7, 135–7).

53. MacMullen, Corruption, p. 153.54. M. Innes (2007) Introduction to Early Medieval Western Europe, 300–900: The

Sword, the Plough and the Book (London: Routledge), pp. 145–6.


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Notes 191

55. See, for example, ‘King Athalaric to Pope John II’ (532 CE) in The Let-ters of Cassiodorus: Being a Condensed Translation of the Variae Epistolae ofMagnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, H. Frowde (ed.) (1886) (London),p. 399. Also see Constantine’s edicts of 331 CE against venality andbribery in C. Pharr (1952) The Theodosian Code (London: Oxford UniversityPress), 1.16.6–7 (331). On routine judicial corruption in the late RomanEmpire, see C. Humfress (2006) ‘Poverty and Roman Law’ in R. Osborneand M. Atkins (eds) Poverty in the Roman World (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press), pp. 183–203. On the toleration of corruption by theEmperors Justinian and Constantine, see H.M. Gwatkin and J.P. Whitney(eds) (1913) The Cambridge Medieval History (New York: Macmillan),pp. 35, 68.

56. Letters of Cassiodorus, pp. 299, 319, 326. See also the instructions ofCassiodorus to the emperor’s provincial governors (p. 488).

57. See, for example, ‘The Edict of Athalaric’, in Letters of Cassiodorus, pp. 401–5.Also see Innes, Early Medieval Western Europe, pp. 148–9.

58. Smith, Europe after Rome, pp. 213–14.59. MacMullen, Corruption, p. 196. For a less bleak interpretation, see

C. Wickham (2005) Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and theMediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 63–4.

60. R. MacMullen (1990) Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary(Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 152–3. See this claim con-tested in P.I. Kaufman (2009) ‘Augustine and Corruption’, History of PoliticalThought XXX, 51.

61. Augustine (2001) ‘Letter 153: Augustine to Macedonius’ [413–14] inE.M. Atkins and R.J. Dodaro (eds) Augustine: Political Writings (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press), p. 86. The following quotations are takenfrom this page.

62. Ibid., p. 85. The following quotations are taken from this page.63. Augustine, ‘Sermon 13: On the Words of the Psalm 2.10’ [418], Political

Writings, pp. 123–4. Augustine does not explicitly criticise those who seek tobecome judges by offering bribes. He resigns himself to the expectation thatonly by means of bribes can able and qualified individuals be appointedto roles where they can ‘be of assistance in human affairs’, thus ‘buying’their ‘way into being of help’. (Augustine, ‘Letter 153’, p. 87). The followingquotations are taken from this page.

64. Kaufman, ‘Augustine and Corruption’, 56; C. Humfress (2006) ‘Crackingthe Codex: Late Roman Legal Practice in Context’, Bulletin of the Institute ofClassical Studies 49, 251–64.

65. S.J. Duffy (1988) ‘Our Hearts of Darkness: Original Sin Revisited’, TheologicalStudies 49, 603.

66. City of God (1998) 2.7, p. 58; City of God (1966) Vol. I, p. 164.67. City of God (1966) Vol. I, p. 208.68. Ibid., 19.25, p. 861. Augustine notably praised Plato among ancient

philosophers for trying to ‘prevent the corruption (corrumperentur) ofhuman society by vices of the mind’ (Ibid., Vol. I, Bk II.xv, p. 192). Also,Markus, Saeculum, pp. 56–9.

69. City of God (1998) 2.20, pp. 75–6; 2.15, p. 68; 2.18, pp. 71–3; and 2.20,p. 75–6. The following quotations are taken from these pages.


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70. City of God (1966) Vol. I, p. 206. Augustine’s use of the phrase ‘luxu atqueavaritia corrupta’ appears in a long quotation from Sallust’s History.

71. J.P. Burns (1988) ‘Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil’, The Journalof Religious Ethics 16 (1), 11, 15.

72. Augustine, ‘Letter 155, Augustine to Macedonius’, in Political Writings,p. 90. Galloway argues that Augustine did not use the term gratia as Ciceroused it, to denote ‘human obligation’ (A. Galloway (1994) ‘The Making ofa Social Ethic in Late Medieval England: From Gratitudo to “Kyndenesse” ’,Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (3), 369)).

73. J.N.L. Myers (1960) ‘Pelagius and the End of Roman Rule in Britain’, TheJournal of Roman Studies 50 (1–2), 26. For a slightly different interpreta-tion of the debate over gratia, see W. Liebeschuetz (1963) ‘Did the PelagianMovement Have Social Aims?’ Historia 12, 235–6.

74. von Heyking, J. (2001) Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World(Columbia: University of Missouri Press), pp. 128–129. The theologicalimplication of Augustine’s use of metaphor, and in particular, his referenceto Adam as the corporate body of all humanity, is explored by E. Pagels(1985) ‘The Politics of Paradise: Augustine’s Exegesis of Genesis 1–3 Ver-sus that of John Chrysostom’, Harvard Theological Review 78 (1–2), 79–80.See also City of God (1980) 13.3, pp. 512–13.

75. City of God (1998) 19.12, p. 935.76. Ibid., 19.17, p. 947. Invoking St Paul’s imagery, Augustine described this

condition as a triumph over death where ‘there will be no animal body to“press down the soul by its corruption” (corrumpitur), but a spiritual bodystanding in need of nothing: a body subject in every part to the will’. Ibid.,19.17, p. 947; City of God (1966) Vol. VI, p. 198.

77. City of God (1998), 19.25, p. 961; St Augustine, City of God (1966), vol. VI,p. 234. City of God (1998) 2.21, p. 78; City of God (1966) Vol. I, pp. 220–1;City of God (1980) p. 73.

78. City of God (1998) 22.6, p. 1118. Translation of this passage is contested.In the recent Cambridge University Press translation used here, Dysonmaintains that Augustine pictures the death of individuals as a possibleescape from punishment, but the death of a city ‘is always a punish-ment’ to its inhabitants. In the Penguin edition, Henry Bettenson interpretsAugustine as saying that while death is often an escape from ‘pain’ forindividuals, and hence not always a ‘disaster’, ‘the death of a whole com-munity is always a disaster’ (City of God (1980) 22.6, p. 1032). In the Levinetranslation, however, Augustine is interpreted as arguing that death ‘is apunishment not for individuals, but for the state as a whole, for it com-monly frees individuals from punishment’ (City of God (1966) Vol. VII,p. 203.)

79. City of God (1998) 2.21, p. 78; City of God (1966) Vol. I, pp. 220–1; Cityof God (1980) p. 73. Levine translates vitiosam as ‘defective’, but the terms‘flawed’ and ‘corrupt’ are preferred in the Dyson Cambridge University Presstranslation and the Bettenson Penguin translation, respectively.

80. A.-J. Bijsterveld (2001) ‘The Medieval Gift as Agent of Social Bonding andPolitical Power: A Comparative Approach’, p. 131 and T. Reuter (2001)‘Gifts and Simony’ both in E. Cohen and M.B. de Jong (eds) MedievalTransformations: Texts, Power and Gifts in Context (Leiden: Brill), p. 165.


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81. G. de Lorris and J. de Meun (1995) [c. 1230–35; 1275] The Romance of theRose, 3rd edn, C. Dahlberg (trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press),p. 153.

82. M. Mauss (2002) [1922] The Gift: Forms and Reason for Exchange in ArchaicSocieties, W.D. Halls (trans.) (London: Routledge Classics), pp. 48–53.In his observations on the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski designated non-reciprocal gifts, typically given by parents to children, as ‘pure gifts’, butargued these were an exceptional category. He asserted that the needto give gifts, to receive and to share them was a universal feature ofthe economic complexity and social structure of all ‘archaic’ societies(B. Malinowski (2002) [1922] Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Accountof Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian NewGuinea (London: Routledge), pp. 134–42). See also G. Duby (1974) The EarlyGrowth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh tothe Twelfth Century, H.B. Clarke (trans.) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press),pp. 56–7

83. L.K. Little (1978) Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe(Ithaca: Cornell University Press), pp. 3–17.

84. Bijsterveld, ‘The Medieval Gift’, p. 131. More recent research, however, hasemphasised the difficulty of applying anthropological theories of giftingto Medieval history. Historians have also suggested that the gift economywas not undermined or superseded by but incorporated within an emer-gent commercial economy (P. Buc (1997) ‘Conversion of Objects’, Viator 28,99–143). Also see the essays recently collected in W. Davies and P. Fouracre(2010) (eds) The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press).

85. F. Curta (2006) ‘Carolingian Gift Giving’, Speculum 81, 678–9.86. B. Jussen (2003) ‘Religious Discourses of the Gift in the Middle Ages: Seman-

tic Evidences (Second to Twelfth Centuries)’ in G. Algazi, V. Groebnerand B. Jussen (eds) Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange(Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht), p. 178.

87. Ibid., pp. 176–90.88. A.-J. Bijsterveld (2007) Do ut Des: Gift Giving, Memoria and Conflict Man-

agement in the Medieval Low Countries (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren),p. 42.

89. Curta, ‘Carolingian Gift Giving’, pp. 685–7.90. S.D. White (2003) ‘Service for Fiefs or Fiefs for Service? The Politics of

Reciprocity’ in Negotiating the Gift, pp. 73–4.91. Ibid., pp. 84–5.92. White gives the example of William of Malmsbury, who employed

Cicero’s distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘prodigal’ giving to castigatethose lords who gave ‘inconsiderately’ and exhausted their wealth (Ibid.,p. 94).

93. Curta, ‘Carolingian Gift Giving’, pp. 690–1. According to Fouracre, therole of beneficium was entrenched in law in the Theodosian Code, whereit denoted a ‘special favour’ granted by the emperor to speed court cases ormake exemptions from taxation. With the consolidation of land tenure inearly feudal Europe in the seventh century, beneficium was extended to theleasing of land on easy terms, especially by monastic landlords, as an act


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of ‘goodwill’ and of profit. By the twelfth century, beneficia, in the form ofland or the livings attached to Church offices, lay in the gift of secular andecclesiastical authorities. Granting them could be subject to tortuous nego-tiation and underhanded deal-making to obtain the necessary licence orpermission, such that obtaining beneficia could be seen as outright simony(P. Fouracre (2010) ‘The Use of the Term Beneficium in Frankish Sources:A Society Based on Favours?’ in Davies and Fouracre (eds) The Languages ofGift, pp. 65–6, 70, 72, 84–5).

94. Bijsterveld, Du et Des, pp. 140–1.95. Fouracre, ‘Beneficium’, p. 70.96. Reuter, ‘Gifts and Simony’, p. 159; see also S.D. White (2001) ‘The Politics

of Exchange: Gifts, Fiefs and Feudalism’ in Medieval Transformations: Texts,Power and Gifts in Context, pp. 169–88; and Galloway, ‘Making of a SocialEthic’, pp. 365–83.

97. J. Le Goff (1980) Time, Culture and Work in the Middle Ages, A. Goldhammer(trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 62.

98. D. Wood (2002) Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press), pp. 116–19; Le Goff, Time, Culture and Work,pp. 119–20.

99. J. Aberth (2002) From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War,Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge), pp. 41–7,214–38; A. Dunn (2004) The Peasants’ Revolt: England’s Failed Revolution of1381 (Stroud, UK: Tempus), pp. 83–4.

100. Bijsterveld, ‘The Medieval Gift’, p. 150.101. D. Janes (1998) God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press), pp. 91–3, 154–5; Bijsterveld, ‘The Medieval Gift’, p. 137.Also see C.W. Bynum (2007) Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice inLate Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press), pp. 141–2.

102. Reuter, ‘Gifts and Simony’, p. 160.103. Ibid., p. 161. Much later, the English reformer John Wyclif (c. 1330–84)

described simony as the receipt of gifts of money ‘from the hand’, or‘favour[s] or dishonest compact[s]’ delivered ‘from the tongue’. In all cases,simony was heretical because it amounted to the selling of divine favourthat would not only ‘destroy God’s plan’ but also disturb the ‘civil peace’(J. Wyclif (1992) [1375–82] On Simony, T. McVeigh (trans.) (New York:Fordham University Press), pp. 29, 31, 35). Simony was often associatedwith secretive sexual impropriety, see J.F. Plummer (1983) ‘Hooly ChirchesBlood: Simony and Patrimony in Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale” ’, The ChaucerReview 18 (1), 50–1.

104. V. Mäkinen (2001) Property Rights in the Late Medieval Discussion onFranciscan Poverty (Leuven: Peeters), pp. 86–9; Fossier, The Axe and the Oath,p. 284.

105. J. Coleman (1988) ‘Property and Poverty’ in J.H. Burns (ed.) The CambridgeHistory of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–1450 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press), p. 624; see also Wood, Medieval Economic Thought,pp. 53–4. Galloway argues that ‘gratitudo’ was the sentiment expressed bythe English term ‘kyndenesse’ in the later Medieval period (Galloway, ‘TheMaking of a Social Ethic’, 369–71).


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106. V. Groebner (2001) ‘Accountancies and Arcana: Registering the Gift inLate Medieval Cities’ in Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power and Gifts inContext, p. 223.

107. Fossier, The Axe and the Oath, pp. 266–7; M.H. Hoeflich (1984) ‘Regulationof Judicial Misconduct from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages’, Lawand History Review 79, 81–2. The shady or extortionate financial practicesof surgeons regularly attracted criticism and ridicule, though this did notbring those practices to an end (C. Rawcliffe (1988) ‘The Profits of Practice:The Wealth and Status of Medical Men in Later Medieval England’, SocialHistory of Medicine, 1(1), 61–78). On official awareness of and responsesto ‘corruption’ in late Medieval Britain, see M. Rubin (2005) The HollowCrown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages (London: Penguin), pp. 98,119, 197.

108. For more on extortion by princes, see The Visigothic Code (Forum judicum)(1910) S.P. Scott (ed., trans.) (Boston: Boston Book Co.), Bk II, Title I, Law V.

109. R.H. Helmholz (2001) ‘Money and Judges in the Law of the MedievalChurch’, University of Chicago Law School Roundtable 309, 320–1.

110. Hoeflich, ‘Judicial Misconduct’, 81, 104.111. John of Salisbury (1990) [1154–59] Policraticus: of the Frivolities of Courtiers

and the Footprints of Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),p. 93 (hereafter Policraticus).

112. Ibid., pp. 94–5. Salisbury did not only attack selling justice for money, butalso for ‘services and works that were not otherwise owed’.

113. Ibid., p. 127.114. O. Gierke (1958) [1900] Political Theories of the Middle Age, F.W. Maitland

(trans.) (Boston: Beacon Press), p. 8; Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies,p. 199; A.D. Harvey (1999) ‘The Body Politic: Anatomy of a Metaphor’,Contemporary Review 275 (1603), 85–93.

115. M. Bayless (2012) Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture: The Devil in the Latrine(New York: Routledge), pp. 72–3, 117–18; J. Kraye (1988) ‘Moral Philosophy’in C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds) The CambridgeHistory of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),pp. 310–11. Takashi Shogimen has also explored the usefulness of themetaphor in exercises of political ‘anatomy’, political ‘diagnostics’, andpolitical ‘medication’ (T. Shogimen (2008) ‘Treating the Body Politic: TheMedical Metaphor of Political Rule in Late Medieval Europe and TokugawaJapan’, The Review of Politics 70, 80). On the idea of death and decay andits relationship with metaphors of the body politic, see P. Binski (1996)Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press),pp. 134–8.

116. On the various members or parts of the body politic, see Policraticus,pp. 69–95.

117. Ibid., p. 67.118. Bayless, Sin and Filth, pp. 26, 122–39.119. Compare the importance of wealth creation to the health of the body

politic in John of Salisbury with Christine de Pizan’s (c. 1364–1434) sim-ilar use of the metaphor. (C. de Pizan (1994) [1404–07] The Book of theBody Politic, K.L. Forhan (trans. and ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), pp. 103–4).


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196 Notes

120. Policraticus – the quotations in this sentence occur at p. 131, Aesop’s fableat pp. 135–6.

121. Ibid., p. 40. Here and wherever else possible, the Latin phraseologyis taken from I. Saresberiensis, Policraticus I–IV (1993) K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (ed.) (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), p. 247 (hereafter PolicraticusI–IV); Keats-Rohan’s modern edition of the Policraticus unfortunatelyonly includes Books I–IV. Latin terms and phrases from later booksare taken from the 1909 edition, in two volumes, edited by ClemensC.I. Webb. Although Keats-Rohan is deeply suspicious, to say the least,of the authenticity of Webb’s sources (see his introduction, pp. xvii–xxxix), nonetheless, Webb’s is still the most readily available completeLatin edition (I. Saresberiensis (1965) [1909] Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopiCarnotensis Policratici, 2 vols, C.C.I. Webb (ed.) (Frankfurt: Minerva; Oxford:Clarendon), hereafter Policratici).

122. Policraticus, pp. 84–5. This and the following quotes are from these pages.123. Simoniacs were also said to have consumed or devoured the body of

Christ (embodied in the church). Similarly, in medieval Bruges, corrupttown councillors were charged with ‘devouring the body’ of the city. SeePlummer, ‘Hooly Chirches’, 53; and A. Brown (2011) Civic Ceremony andReligion in Medieval Bruges c. 1300–1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), pp. 33–4.

124. C.J. Nederman (2002) ‘The Virtues of Necessity: Labor, Money and Corrup-tion in John of Salisbury’s Thought’, Viator 33, 67.

125. Nederman, ‘The Virtues of Necessity’, 62–4.126. For John’s warnings on avarice, see Policraticus, pp. 39–40.127. Ibid., p. 164.128. Ibid., p. 40.129. Ibid., p. 97. See also Justinian’s Digest, 1.16.63.130. Ibid., p. 97 (the following quotation from John is also taken from this page);

Groebner, ‘Accountancies and Arcana’, p. 228.131. Policraticus, p. 164; Policratici, Vol. II, § 676b, p. 162.132. Policraticus, p. 165; Policratici, Vol. II, §676d and 677b, pp. 163–4.133. Policraticus, p. 200. Policratici, Vol. II, §784c–d, p. 357.134. Policraticus, p. 17; Policraticus I–IV, p. 177. See also Policratici, Vol. I, §480c,

p. 176.135. Policraticus, p. 18; Policraticus I–IV, p. 178.136. Policraticus, p. 101; Policratici, Vol. I, §587c, p. 367.137. Policraticus, p. 85; Policratici, Vol. I, §563b, p. 323.138. Policraticus, p. 99; Policratici, Vol. I, §586b, p. 364.139. Nederman, ‘The Virtues of Necessity’, p. 67.140. See, for example, Aquinas (1965) De Regimine Judaeorum in Aquinas Selected

Political Writings, A.P. D’Entrèves (ed.), J.G. Dawson (trans.) (Oxford: BasilBlackwell), pp. 89–91; Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Qu. 11, Art. 3, in SelectedPolitical Writings, p. 157; Ibid., Qu. 77, Art. 4, concl., p.171.

141. Aquinas, De Regimine Principum in Selected Political Writings, pp. 17–19.142. Ibid., p. 17. According to John Finnis, Aquinas thought any malefactor a

source of ‘corruption’ in the body politic (J. Finnis (1998) Aquinas: Moral,Political and Legal Theory, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 279–81).

143. Aquinas, De Regimine, p. 67.


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144. For Giles of Rome (c.1243–1316) too, ‘corruption’ was linked to a pro-cess of disintegration, a loss of ‘integrity’ and ‘unity’ both of the privateperson (of the ruler) and of the body politic itself, leading inexorablyto personal and public decay (Giles of Rome (2001) [1277–80] On theRule of Princes in A.S. McGrade, J. Kilcullen and M. Kempshall (eds) TheCambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, Vol. 2: Ethics andPolitical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 211.

3 From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perils of Public Office inMedieval and Renaissance Political Thought

1. Génaux, ‘Early Modern Corruption’, pp. 115–16.2. V. Groebner (2002) Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics

at the End of the Middle Ages, P.E. Selwyn (trans.) (Philadelphia: Uni-versity of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 76–7. The symmetry of metaphorscould be matched also in the punishments demanded for corrupt offi-cials. Those who ‘skinned’ (or fleeced) the poor in office should them-selves be skinned or ‘flayed’, thus making ‘ . . . that which is interior andinvisible . . . visible, . . . peeling back the skin will reveal the true nature oflawbreakers’ (pp. 81–2).

3. Ibid., p. 82.4. Waquet, Corruption, p. 7.5. Noonan, Bribes, pp. 250–6. Dante was charged after the political ascendency

of the ‘Black’ Guelph faction in Florence, over the ‘White’ Guelphs to whichhe belonged.

6. Dante Alighieri (1970) The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Vol. 1: Italian Text andTranslation, C.S. Singleton (trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press),Canto XI, 19–60, pp. 111–13. Here, Dante speaks of fraud as an offencepeculiar to human beings, unknown among other animals.

7. Ibid., Cantos XXI and XXII, pp. 214 and 226, respectively. This definition of‘barratry’ (baratti) is taken from Dante Alighieri (1970) The Divine Comedy:Inferno, Vol. 2: Commentary, C.S. Singleton (trans.) (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press), p. 368. The term ‘bribery’ came into wide use much later,but by the sixteenth century was consistently associated with the crime of‘barratry’. See, for example, these definitions: ‘barratrie’ (Blount: ‘simony’),‘barattiere’ (Florio: ‘a briber, a bribe taker’), ‘baratterie’ (Thomas: ‘the bry-bour’), ‘barrataria’ (Blount: ‘signifying corruption or bribery’), ‘baratteria’(Thomas: ‘bryberie’; Florio: ‘bribing’), ‘barattóre’ (Florio: ‘a corrupt lawyer,one that giveth and taketh bribes’) and ‘barattáre’ (Florio: ‘to bribe’). Ref-erences from: W. Thomas (1550) Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer(London); J. Florio (1611) Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie ofthe Italian and English Tongues (London: Melch. Bradwood); T. Blount (1656)Glossographia: or A Dictionary (London: Tho. Newcomb).

8. Dante, Inferno, Vol. 1, Cantos XXI–XXII, 1–151, pp. 212–33.9. Dante encounters the simoniacs before the barrators, implying once again

the relative gravity of the latter offence. The simoniacs are buried upsidedown in the earth, with their feet and legs above ground and aflame. Justas they ‘pursed’ their coins in life, now they themselves have been ‘pursed’


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198 Notes

in the earth; their punishment was reminiscent of the actual punishmentof assassins in Florence, implying that simoniacs were veritable assassins ofthe Church, the Bride of Christ (Dante, Inferno, Vol. 1, Canto, XIX, 1–133,pp. 192–201; Inferno, Vol. 2, pp. 332–9).

10. C. Kleinhenz (1989) ‘Deceivers Deceived: Devilish Doubletalk in Inferno21–23’, QUADERNI d’italianistica X (1–2), 141.

11. R.H. Lansing (1981) ‘Dante’s Concept of Violence and the Chain of Being’,Dante Studies 99, 69.

12. F. Alfie (2011) ‘Diabolic Flatulence: A Note on Inferno 21: 139’, ForumItalicum 45 (2), 419–23.

13. J. Ferrante (1984) The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy (New Jersey:Princeton University Press), Chapter 3.

14. Dante, Inferno, Vol. 1, Canto XI, 51–54, pp. 112–13.15. On Dis and its organisation, see ibid., Canto XI, 19–75, pp. 111–13.16. Ferrante, Political Vision, p. 199.17. N. Oresme (1956) [c. 1355] De Moneta in The De Moneta of Nicholas Oresme

and English Mint Documents, C. Johnson (trans.) (London: Thomas Nelsonand Sons), p. 20. The term ‘corruptum’ appears in Oresme’s Latin text in aquotation from Cassiodorus; it is translated here as ‘fraud’.

18. Ibid., p. 42.19. Ibid., p. 44.20. Ibid., p. 47. See also C.J. Nederman (2000) ‘Community and the Rise of

Commercial Society: Political Economy and Political Theory in NicholasOresme’s De Moneta’, History of Political Thought 21 (1), 12.

21. I. Krug (2006) ‘Wartime Corruption and Complaints of the English Peas-antry’ in N. Christie and M. Yazigi (eds) Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities:Warfare in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill), pp. 177–80.

22. C.J. Nederman (2001) ‘The Monarch and the Marketplace: Economic Policyand Royal Finance in William of Pagula’s Speculum regis Edwardi III’, Historyof Political Economy 33 (1), 54.

23. Ibid., 56.24. William of Pagula (2002) [1330–35] Speculum Regis Edwardi III in

C.J. Nederman (ed., trans.) Political Thought in Fourteenth-Century England:Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham(Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Turnhout,Belgium: Brepols), Recension A, § 5–6 and 17, pp. 78–9, 88; Recension B,Ch. 2, § 5, pp. 108–9.

25. Ibid., Recension B, Ch. 2, § 2, pp. 106–7. See also Recension A, § 27, p. 93,and Recension B, Ch. 13, §48–49, pp. 134–5.

26. Walter of Milemete (2002) [1327] On the Nobility, Wisdom, and Prudence ofKings in Nederman, Political Thought in Fourteenth-Century England, Ch. 12,p. 47. Nederman explains that next to nothing is known of Walter’sbiographical details (p. 19).

27. See Cary Nederman’s introduction to Walter of Milemete, On the Nobility,Wisdom, and Prudence of Kings, pp. 15–23; and William of Pagula, SpeculumRegis, Recension A, § 10, pp. 82–3.

28. This and the following information in this paragraph is taken fromP. Spufford (2002) Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London:Thames and Hudson), pp. 12–59.


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Notes 199

29. There is a considerable literature on Medieval ‘states’. For example, seeG. Chittolini (1995) ‘The “Private”, the “Public”, the State’, The Journalof Modern History, Supplement: The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–160067, S34–S61. On the growing separation of the monarch’s person from theincreasingly professionalised royal bureaucracy in the thirteenth century,see D. Carter (2004) ‘The English Royal Chancery in the Thirteenth Cen-tury’ in A. Jobson (ed.) English Government in the Thirteenth Century (London:Boydell Press), pp. 49–70.

30. W.C. Jordan (2009) ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Thirteenth-CenturyEurope’, Journal of Medieval History 35, 207.

31. Ibid., 208–17. Unlike the Benedictines, often noted for the wealth andsplendour of their order, the Franciscans and Dominicans, both amongthe newer monastic orders in the thirteenth century, were characterisedby their austerity and suspicion of, if not hostility to worldly wealth.

32. G. Dodd (2011) ‘Corruption in the Fourteenth-Century English State’,International Journal of Public Administration 34 (11), 724; Chittolini, ‘The“Private” ’, S45.

33. Krug, ‘Wartime Corruption’, pp. 180–6; C. Nederman, ‘The Monarch andthe Marketplace’, 51–69.

34. Groebner, Liquid Assets, pp. 64–75. Groebner records the emergence, inlate fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century German and Swiss discourse,of corrupting, secret gifts (miet) as distinct from the regular and legit-imate giving of (often perishable and consumable) gifts (schenk). SeeJordan, ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigns’, 205; Noonan, Bribes, pp. 237–8,266–71.

35. Groebner, Liquid Assets, pp. 83, 86.36. Policraticus, p. 50; Policraticus I–IV, p. 258. On John’s imagery of ‘hierarchi-

cal order’ and its antecedents, see T. Struve (1984) ‘The Importance of theOrganism in the Political Theory of John of Salisbury’ in M. Wilks (ed.) TheWorld of John of Salisbury (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 309, 304–5.

37. Policraticus, p. 50; Baraz, Medieval Cruelty, pp. 17–18. If corruption lay in thetyrannous ‘head’ of the body politic, Shogimen argues that Medieval writerswere prepared to follow Cicero in recommending metaphorical ‘decap-itation’ (Shogimen, ‘Treating the Body Politic’, 88–96). For examples ofmetaphorical ‘decapitation’ and ‘amputation’, see Cicero (1991) On Duties,M.T. Griffin and E.M. Atkins (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),111; Policraticus, pp. 205–9; Dow speaks of Christine de Pizan’s image ofthe ruler, as both the ‘focus and the emblem of the good order of the com-munity’, embodying in his ‘morality’ and his ‘mortality’ the ‘coherenceand frailty of the political community’ (T.L.L. Dow (2005) ‘Christine dePizan and the Body Politic’ in K. Green and C.J. Mews (eds) Healing theBody Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan (Turnhout, Belgium:Brepols), p. 231).

38. W.D. McCready (1973) ‘Papal Plenitudo Potestatis and the Source of Tem-poral Authority in Late Medieval Papal Hierocratic Theory’, Speculum 48(4),656; Tierney, Conciliar Theory, p. 171.

39. J.H. Burns (1992) Lordship, Kingship, and Empire: The Idea of Monarchy, 1400–1525 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 25–6. Also, G. Danbolt (1998) ‘VisualImages of Papal Power: The Legitimation of Papal Power in the Thirteenth


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and Fifteenth Centuries’ in A. Ellenius (ed.) Iconography, Propaganda, andLegitimation (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 155. The term plenitudo potestatishas a complex history and did not always entail absolute papal power untilthe thirteenth century (Tierney, Conciliar Theory, pp. 141–9).

40. J. Canning (1996) A History of Medieval Political Thought 300–1450(London: Routledge), pp. 118–19; Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age,pp. 103–4, 129–34.

41. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 196.42. Tierney, Conciliar Theory, pp. 140–1. Burns also traces other problems in the

metaphor, such as images of the corpus mysticum ‘as an entity subsisting, insome sense, independently of its head’ or of the corpus mysticum as a mori-bund body ‘incapable of activity, perhaps even of existence, without thesupreme authority which belongs exclusively to the king’. (Burns, Lordship,pp. 45–55).

43. See, for instance, William of Ockham’s (c. 1285–1347) image of thetwo-headed Church (1995) [1334–47] A Dialogue, Part III, Tract I, inA Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings, A.S. McGrade andJ. Kilcullen (eds) J. Kilcullen (trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), p. 122.

44. C. Condren (1984) ‘Rhetoric, Historiography and Political Theory: SomeAspects of the Poverty Controversy Reconsidered’, Journal of ReligiousHistory 13, 21–8.

45. Mäkinen, Property Rights, pp. 44–53; F. Maiolo (2007) Medieval Sovereignty:Marsilius of Padua and Bartolus of Saxoferrato (Delft: Eburon AcademicPublishers), pp. 156–8.

46. Mäkinen, Property Rights, pp. 148–53.47. This literature is critically reviewed in V. Syros (2010) ‘Review Article: Lin-

guistic Contextualism and Medieval Political Thought: Quentin Skinner onMarsilius of Padua’, History of Political Thought XXXI (4), 693–5.

48. Marsilius of Padua (2005) The Defender of the Peace, A. Brett (trans., ed.)(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), I, xii, 3, pp. 66–7. The idea of the‘prevailing part’ of the citizen-body (see Brett’s introduction to Marsilius(2005) Defender, pp. xxiii–xiv) refers to that smaller part of the citizen bodythat might be delegated to deliberate on and make laws in accordance withthe customs of particular polities, possibly in consultation with the citizenbody as a whole (Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xvii, 7, p. 340).

49. Ibid., I, xii, 8, p. 71; and I, ix, 8, p. 48. In the following discussion, werely primarily on this 2005 Cambridge English translation. Brett translatesMarsilius’ ‘viciatorum’ as ‘flawed’, but Alan Gewirth had earlier translatedthe same term as ‘diseased’, which seems consistent with Marsilius’ medi-cal terminology. See Marsilius (1956) The Defender of the Peace, A. Gewirth(trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 31, 33. Because of thesevariations in translation, we will supplement Brett’s 2005 Cambridge trans-lation with occasional references to Gewirth’s 1956 Columbia translation,as well as specific Latin terms and phrases taken from the definitive mod-ern Latin edition by Richard Scholz (Marsilius von Padua (1933) DefensorPacis, R. Scholz (trans.) (Hannover: Hansche Buchhandlung), Vol. I, p. 45(hereafter Marsilius, Defensor)).

50. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xii, 7, p. 71.


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51. Ibid., II, xxx, 1, p. 415. A similar interpretation can be found in B. Koch(2012) ‘Marsilius of Padua on Church and State’ in G. Moreno-Riaño andC.J. Nederman (eds) A Companion to Marsilius of Padua (Leiden: Brill),pp. 144–8. We are grateful to Dr Koch for supplying a copy of her paper,and for commenting on an earlier version of this chapter.

52. Dante Alighieri (1996/2007) [1314?] Monarchy, P. Shaw (trans., ed.)(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Bk II, p. 60; Bk III, pp. 71 and91–2.

53. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, v, 4–7, pp. 24–6.54. Ibid., I, xii, 8, p. 71; xv, 2, pp. 88–9; xvii, 11–12, pp. 120–2; xviii, 3,

pp. 124–5; II, xxx, 4, p. 419.55. C.J. Nederman (1995) Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of

Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield),p. 36.

56. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, ix, 5, p. 47, and II, xxviii, 29, p. 519; Marsilius,Defensor, Vol. I, p. 43.

57. Nederman, Community and Consent, pp. 54, 132–33.58. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xv, 5, p. 91; Marsilius (1956) Defender, p. 63.

The following information is drawn from Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xv,5–14, pp. 91–7. On the origin of blood and the role of the heart andits heat in Aristotelian and Galenic medical theories, see W. Ullmann(1946) ‘A Medieval Document on Papal Theories of Government’, EnglishHistorical Review 61(240), 193; R. B. Todd (1977) ‘Galenic MedicalIdeas in the Greek Aristotelian Commentators’, Symbolae Osloenses 52,117–34.

59. The soul itself could be viewed as a microcosm or ‘kingdom’, rightly orderedwhen reason informs the will, badly ordered when the senses dominate thewill (R.J. Teske S.J. (1994) ‘The Will as King over the Powers of the Soul:Uses and Sources of an Image in the Thirteenth Century’, Vivarium 32(1),63, 65).

60. Koch, ‘Marsilius of Padua’, pp. 156–9.61. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xvii, 8, pp. 118–19; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. I,

p. 117. See also Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, ii, 3, p. 12.62. A. Black (1992) Political Thought in Europe 1250–1450 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press), p. 61.63. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xxiv, 11–12, p. 425; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,

p. 459.64. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xxiv, 12–13, p. 426; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,

pp. 460–1; Koch, ‘Marsilius of Padua’, p. 171. Marsilius employed a widerange of metaphors and allegories to attack Church corruption, reflectingand critiquing in some cases the Church’s own use of metaphorical tropesto defend its wealth and privileges (Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xxvi, 2,p. 450).

65. Ibid., I, ixx, 10, p. 133; Marsilius, Defensor, p. 132. Among the errorstraced to ‘plenitude of power’ was the ‘iniquitous and unjust usurpation ofimperial jurisdictions’ leading to conflicts between Pope and Holy RomanEmperor (Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xxv, 20, p. 448).

66. Black, Political Thought, p. 66.67. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, xviii, 4, p. 125.


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68. Moreno-Riaño argues that ‘Marsilius is virtually silent regarding the issueof political tyranny or what one may call corrupted regimes’. He preferredinstead to focus on the corruption caused by the church (G. Moreno-Riaño(2008) ‘Marsilius of Padua’s Forgotten Discourse’, History of Political Thought29 (3), 455).

69. Marsilius (2005) Defender, I, I, 2, pp. 4–5. Also, J. Canning (1999) ‘The Roleof Power in the Political Thought of Marsilius of Padua’, History of PoliticalThought 20 (1), 26.

70. Brett translates ‘inconveniencia’ here as ‘improprieties’, while Gewirthtranslates it as ‘corrupt methods’ (Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xi, 5, p. 246;Marsilius (1956) Defender, pp. 184–5; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. I, p. 260).

71. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xx, 13, p. 374; Marsilius, Defensor, p. 401.72. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xvii, 6, p. 339. As Koch points out, here as else-

where, the example of the Apostles was used to illustrate the goal of ‘refor-matio’, meaning the ‘restoration’ of original principles (Koch, ‘Marsilius ofPadua’, p. 145).

73. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xvii, 11, p. 344; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,p. 366. Gewirth translates ‘perversus more’ as ‘morally vicious’ (Marsilius(1956) Defender, p. 261). Both English terms seem appropriate in pointingto the degrading influence or vitiation Marsilius envisaged here. But ‘cor-rupt’ might be more accurate in that Marsilius spoke of ‘corrupt’ morals or‘corrupted’ teachings as those tainted or degraded by the prior perversionof wicked or vicious priests.

74. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xvii, 12, p. 345; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,pp. 367–8.

75. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xvii, 8, p. 341.76. Ibid., II, xvi, 12, 345.77. Ibid. II, xxi, 15, p. 390; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II, p. 418.78. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xxiv, 2, p. 418; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,

p. 452.79. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xxvi, 13–16, pp. 459–67.80. Ibid., II, xxi, 12, and xxiv, 2, pp. 387, 419–20; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,

pp. 414–15, 453.81. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xxvi, 19, p. 471; Marsilius, Defensor, Vol. II,

p. 517; Koch, ‘Marsilius of Padua’, p. 142.82. Marsilius (2005) Defender, II, xi, 7, p. 247.83. Nederman, ‘Community and Self-Interest’, 402–3, 406–7.84. C.J. Nederman (2000) ‘The Expanding Body Politic: Christine de Pizan and

the Medieval Roots of Political Economy’ in E. Hicks (ed.) Au Champ DesEscriptures: IIIe Colloque International sur Christine de Pizan (Paris: HonoréChampion), p. 2; Nederman, ‘The Monarch and the Marketplace’, 59.

85. Groebner, Liquid Assets, pp. 105–9.86. According to Munro, Medieval ‘theologians and jurists regarded interest

on a loan as a sin not only against charity but also a sin against com-mutative justice and natural law, and thus a mortal sin’. (J.H. Munro(2003) ‘The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution: Usury, Rentes,and Negotiability’, The International History Review 25 (3), 510). See alsoR.W. Southern (1970) Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages(London: Penguin), pp. 281–3, 288–90; Rubin, The Hollow Crown, pp. 197–8.

87. Wood, Medieval Economic Thought, pp. 117–18.


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88. J. Fortescue (1997) [c.1471] The Governance of England in S. Lockwood (ed.)On the Laws and Governance of England (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), p. 93; see also pp. 99–100.

89. Ibid., p. 90.90. Wood, Medieval Economic Thought, pp. 118–20.91. F. Petrarch (1978) [1373] How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State in B.J. Kohl

and R.G. Witt (eds) The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Governmentand Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), p. 53. Writtento and for his then-patron, Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara, Lord of Padua,Petrarch’s contribution to the mirror-for-princes genre warned his prince topursue the holy and virtuous path which he said, in an echo of the Bible,was a ‘wealth’ that ‘moths and rust cannot corrupt’. In pursuing this path,the prince ought to take special care to shun the greedy advice of ‘courtiers’who urge the prince to ‘pillage’ his people (pp. 61–2).

92. Ibid., p. 55.93. Ibid., pp. 59, 63.94. See, for example, P. Hohti (2010) ‘ “Conspicuous” Consumption and Pop-

ular Consumers: Material Culture and Social Status in Sixteenth-CenturySiena’, Renaissance Studies 24 (5), 654–70; T.K. Rabb (2006) The Last Daysof the Renaissance and the March to Modernity (New York: Basic Books),pp. 64–8; J. Brotton (2002) Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road toMichelangelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 46–8, 150–1; L. Jardine(1996) Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan),pp. 327–8. On the complicated Medieval origins of these views in Italy,see L. Martines (2002) Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy(London: Pimlico), pp. 79–86.

95. H. Baron (1938) ‘Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Riseof Humanistic Thought’, Speculum 13 (1), 11, 18.

96. Ibid., 20–36. See also W.J. Connell (2000) ‘The Republican Idea’ inJ. Hankins (ed.) Renaissance Civic Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press), p. 20.

97. See H. Baron [1938] ‘The Memory of Cicero’s Roman Civic Spirit inthe Medieval Centuries and in the Florentine Renaissance’ in H. Baron(1988) In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition fromMedieval to Modern Thought, Vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press),pp. 94–133. See also Baron, ‘Bruni’s Histories as an Expression of ModernThought’ in Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Vol. I, pp. 68–93;and Black, Political Thought, p. 130. Further discussion of ‘civic human-ism’ as an ideology can be found in H. Baron (1966) ‘Leonardo Bruni:“Professional Rhetorician” or “Civic Humanist”?’ Past and Present 36,35. For an early critique, see J. Seigel (1966) ‘ “Civic” Humanism orCiceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni’, Past and Present34, 23–5. On Bruni’s ‘new departure’ in humanist political thought, seeThe Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner,E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds) (1988) (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), pp. 419–22.

98. L. Bruni, Panegyric to the City of Florence [1403–04] in Kohl and Witt (eds)(1978) The Earthly Republic, pp. 151, 154–5. Bruni amplified this connec-tion with Roman virtue in his later History of the Florentine People (2001)[1442] J. Hankins (ed., trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press),


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Vol. 1, Bk 1, 37–39, pp. 49–53. As King illustrates, however, Venetianhumanists were as inclined as those of Florence to associate classical virtueswith their republic (M.L. King (1986) Venetian Humanism in an Age ofPatrician Dominance (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 99, 131–2,137–40).

99. Bruni, Panegyric, p. 158 (the quotes in the following sentences come fromthis page also).

100. M. Sanudo (2004) [1493] Praise of the City of Venice in D. Chambersand B. Pullan (eds) Venice: A Documentary History 1450–1630 (Toronto:Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts, University of Toronto),pp. 18–20.

101. M. Jurdjevic (2001) ‘Virtue, Commerce and the Enduring Florentine Repub-lican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate’,Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (4), 727, 742. On Hans Baron’s appreciationof wealth and wealth creation in the origins of Florentine humanism, seeH. Baron [1939] ‘Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth’, p. 27, and ‘A Soci-ological Interpretation of the Early Florentine Renaissance’ in H. Baron(1988) In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Vol. II, pp. 40–54. Also,C.J. Nederman (2003) ‘Commercial Society and Republican Governmentin the Latin Middle Ages: The Economic Dimensions of Brunetto Latini’sRepublicanism’, Political Theory 31(5), 658–9.

102. P. Bracciolini [1428] ‘On Avarice’, B.J. Kohl and E.B. Welles (trans.) in Kohland Witt (eds) The Earthly Republic, pp. 246, 253–5.

103. Ibid., p. 256. The following points are drawn from this page.104. For the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540), the ossified, dense

and abstract knowledge produced by Medieval scholasticism was itself ina state of corruption resulting from the corruption of human nature bypride, and was an example of the longer process of corruption manifested inhuman history since the Fall. See I. Bejczy (2003) ‘ “Historia praestat omnibusdisciplinis”: Juan Luis Vives on History and Historical Study’, RenaissanceStudies 17 (1), 80–1.

105. Bracciolini, ‘On Avarice’, pp. 264–7.106. Ibid., p. 263. Here, a contrast is provided with Filippo da Rimini’s recom-

mendation of poverty as essential to virtue (M.L. King (1978, 1979, 1980)‘A Study in Venetian Humanism at Mid-Quattrocento: Filippo da Riminiand his Symposium de Paupertate’, Studi Veneziani Nos. 2, 3 and 4, 75–96,141–86, and 27–44).

107. Machiavelli (1988) The Florentine Histories, L.F. Banfield and H.C. Mansfield(trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press), Bk V, Ch. 8, p. 194. Here,Machiavelli spoke through the figure of Rinaldo degli Albizzi who repre-sented a faction of Florentines exiled by the establishment of Cosimo deMedici’s regime, seeking to induce the Duke of Milan to attack Florence.

108. Bracciolini, ‘On Avarice’, p. 271. Poggio criticises the corrupt practices ofthe church on page 273. Nederman reads Poggio as envisaging ‘a sort ofmutuality’ between the ‘avarice present in a state and that present in itsruler’, whereby the avaricious ruler will encourage avarice among citizensin order to supply revenue through taxation (C.J. Nederman (2009) ‘Avariceas Princely Virtue? The Later Medieval Backdrop to Poggio Bracciolini andMachiavelli’ in C.J. Nederman, N. van Deusen and E.A. Matter (eds) Mind


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Notes 205

Matters: Studies of Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual History in Honour ofMarcia Colish (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), p. 260).

109. Bracciolini, ‘On Avarice’, pp. 280–1. In this sense, Nederman is surely rightto suggest that Poggio’s ‘On Avarice’ does not so much mark a radicallymodern turn, but a continuation of moral and economic argument familiarthroughout the Medieval period (Nederman, ‘Avarice as Princely Virtue?’pp. 255–7, 273–4).

110. On the corruption of judgement by greed, see Machiavelli, Florentine His-tories, II, 36, pp. 94–6. Here, Machiavelli spoke of Rinieri di Giotto beingswayed or ‘corrupted’ by the Duke of Calabria.

111. King, Venetian Humanism, pp. 150–7.112. Ibid., pp. 172–92; G. Contarini (1599) [1545] The Commonwealth and

Government of Venice, L. Lewkenor (trans.) (London: John Windet), p. 15.113. N. Machiavelli (1996) [1512–17] Discourses on Livy, H.C. Mansfield and

N. Tarcov (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), Bk I, Ch. 5–6,pp. 20–2.

114. D.E. Queller with F.R. Swietek (1977) Two Studies on Venetian Government(Geneva: Librairie Droz), p. 102; R. Finlay (1980) Politics in RenaissanceVenice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 199–222. Finlayargues that Venetians were able to distinguish, perhaps only in theoreticalterms, between acceptable and open electioneering, what was later termedbroglio honesto, and outright corruption in the form of selling votes, whichbecame so flagrant and well organised in the early 1500s that groups ofpoorer patricians, the so-called ‘Switzers’, who held voting rights for theGreat Council would sell their votes en bloc or extort bribes in exchange forthem. See also M. Jurdjevic (2004) ‘Trust in Renaissance Electoral Politics’,Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (4), 609–10.

115. E. Horodowich (2005) ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Lifeand Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies 19 (1), 41;Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 22. The term itself seemed to derivefrom the name of the piazza del broglio, the orchard beside the Doge’s palacewhere the patrician’s promenade first began.

116. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 27.117. Such practices were, of course, commonplace in Florentine politics as

well. Bruni, in particular, castigated ‘greedy, corrupt magistrates’ (sordesquecorrupti magistratus), the corruption of soldiers who had been ‘bribed’(corruptus pecunia), and the fraud and corruption of lowly public officials(fraude, corruptelae) (Bruni, History of the Florentine People, Vol. I, Bk IV, 40,pp. 380–1; Vol. II, Bk V, 64, pp. 54–5; Bk VIII, 1, pp. 394–5).

118. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 217.119. Contarini, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, p. 34.120. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 197.121. M. O’Connell (2009) Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s

Maritime State (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 97.122. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 221–2. Robert Davis has argued

that Venetian factional feuds certainly did occur alongside the broglio, andoccasionally impinged upon it. The self-promotion of the great patricianfamilies through the broglio, however, served to prevent existing factionsfrom dominating the state (R.C. Davis (1994) The War of the Fists: Popular


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206 Notes

Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice (New York: OxfordUniversity Press), pp. 89–90, 156–7).

123. Queller, Two Studies, pp. 112–32, 134–9, 143–4; examples of such lawsdating back to the fourteenth century can be found on pp. 16–17 and 77–8.

124. Ibid., pp. 114–17.125. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 205; Queller, Two Studies, p. 141.126. Queller, Two Studies, p. 109; Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 204.

Queller notes that this demand for office may have contributed to the limi-tation of tenures in office, which itself encouraged incumbents to make themost out of them in the shortest time (p. 133).

127. Ibid., p. 133. See also the accounts of broglio in these years in Chambers andPullan (eds) Venice: A Documentary History, pp. 77–9.

128. D.S. Chambers (1997) ‘Merit and Money: The Procurators of St Markand Their Commissioni, 1443–1605’, Journal of the Warburg and CourtauldInstitutes 60, 38. Contarini described the Procurators as men who wereappointed on the basis of long records of honest and diligent public service,exemplifying their ‘uncorrupted vertue’ (Contarini, The Commonwealth andGovernment of Venice, p. 122).

129. A.L. Brandolini (2009) [1490–94] Republics and Kingdoms Compared, J.Hankins (ed., trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Bk II, 9,pp. 97–9.

130. Bruni had earlier identified corruption in the avarice of governors whoused their power to prey upon trade in order to profit from commercialtransactions they were supposed to protect and foster (Bruni, History of theFlorentine People, Vol. I, Bk I, 43, p. 57). See also his account of Giano dellaBella’s speech in 1292 against the corruption of the laws in Florence andthe need to restrain the ‘powerful’ who imposed ‘servitude’ on the peopleby force and ‘favoritism’ (Vol. I, Bk IV, 27–33, pp. 361–71). Machiavelli,by contrast, allowed for the possibility that only by extraordinary means,employed by a ‘single, powerful individual’, might corruption be halted.J.M. Najemy (1982) ‘Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of FlorentineHistory’, Renaissance Quarterly 35 (4), 560.

131. Brandolini, Republics and Kingdoms Compared, II, 12 and 17, pp. 101, 107–9.132. Ibid., 21–34, pp. 113–27.133. R. Newhauser (2000) The Early History of Greed. The Sin of Avarice in Early

Medieval Thought and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),pp. 31–41, 116–22. These two themes were clearly part of the widerFlorentine political scene. In their respective diaries, Buonaccorso Pittiand Gregorio Dati, both merchants and office holders in the Republic,attested to the frequency with which the Pope and other rulers sought tomanipulate Florence’s factions by ‘suborn[ing] . . . them with gifts’, officesor payments (Pitti in 1413). They also noted the ‘insatiable appetite’ and‘ambition’ for wealth and glory that tempted them to ‘influence’ electionsand appointment to office (Dati in 1412) (B. Pitti and G. Dati (1967) TwoMemoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and GregorioDati, G. Brucker (ed.), J. Martines (trans.) (Prospect Heights, IL: WavelandPress), pp. 97, 125–6).

134. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 114, 177. Pocock argues thatMachiavelli’s thought was an affirmation of a ‘basically Aristotelian


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Notes 207

republicanism’ (p. 316), for which he attempted to provide a new foun-dation in a new arrangement of political orders (ordini). In The Prince,Machiavelli refers to corruption, albeit fleetingly, as a constant featureof the political world that the wise prince must not only plan forbut also be prepared to manipulate and use. Thus, the prince must beprepared to ‘indulge’ the ‘proclivities’ of those among his ‘necessary’supporters who are ‘corrupt’ (N. Machiavelli (1988) [1532] The Prince,Q. Skinner and R. Price (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),p. 68).

135. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 202.136. Ibid., pp. 211–12. See also F. Gilbert (1951) ‘On Machiavelli’s Idea of

Virtù’, Renaissance News 4 (4), 53–5; N. Wood (1967) ‘Machiavelli’s Con-cept of Virtù Reconsidered’, Political Studies XV (2), 159–72; I. Hannaford(1972) ‘Machiavelli’s Concept of Virtù in The Prince and the DiscoursesReconsidered’, Political Studies XX (2), 185–9.

137. Soll, ‘J.G.A. Pocock’s Atlantic Republican Thesis’, 23–7.138. The key claim here, especially disputed in its application to later American

thought, was that this republican tradition was essentially anti-commercial.See, for instance, J. Appleby (1992) Liberalism and Republicanism in the His-torical Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). For a morebalanced critical assessment of Pocock’s claims, see M. Jacob (2010) ‘Wasthe Eighteenth Century Republican Essentially Anticapitalist?’ Republics ofLetters 2 (1), 12–20.

139. J.G.A. Pocock (2010) ‘The Atlantic Republican Tradition: The Republic ofthe Seven Provinces’, Republics of Letters 2 (1), 9, 4.

140. Ibid., 8. Nederman has recently pointed out that while several criticshave attacked Pocock’s emphasis on commercial ‘corruption’ in FlorentineRenaissance humanism, they have often ‘caricatured’ the Medieval human-ist tradition as ‘anti-materialist’ (C.J. Nederman (2009) Lineages of EuropeanPolitical Thought: Explorations Along the Medieval/Modern Divide From Johnof Salisbury to Hegel (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of AmericaPress) pp. 157–8).

141. Jurdjevic, ‘Virtue, Commerce’, 731, 738. Jurdjevic claims that Machiavellirepeatedly spoke of commercial wealth as necessary to the strength ofany polity, while aristocratic landowning posed the greatest danger torepublican virtue (‘Virtue, Commerce’, 731, 739).

142. Jean-Claude Waquet comes to this conclusion on the basis of his study ofthe Monte in Florence and other Italian cities at a later period (Waquet, Cor-ruption, p. 50). On the early history of the Monte, see C.B. Menning (1989)‘Loans and Favours, Kin and Clients: Cosimo de’ Medici and the Monte diPieta’, The Journal of Modern History 61 (3), 490–3.

143. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, III, 15, p. 126. Menning has also notedMachiavelli’s lack of interest in the Monte (C.B. Menning (1992) ‘TheMonte’s “Monte”: The Early Supporters of Florence’s Monte di Pieta’, TheSixteenth Century Journal 23 (4), 664).

144. The Casa di San Giorgio became the dominant mechanism for managingthe republic’s debts and a precursor of later European banking experi-ments (M. Fratianni (2006) ‘Government Debt, Reputation and Creditors’Protections: The Tale of San Giorgio’, Review of Finance 10, 487–506).


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208 Notes

145. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, VIII, 29, pp. 351–2.146. E. Benner (2009) Machiavelli’s Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press),

pp. 202–3.147. H.F. Pitkin (1984) Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought

of Niccolò Machiavelli (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 273–4;Machiavelli, Discourses, III, 1, pp. 397–8; II, 5. In his Florentine Histories (V, 8,p. 194), Machiavelli spoke of ‘curing’ the ‘body’ of Florence from the great-est ‘disease’ in republics. Employment of corporeal imagery was a familiartrope in Venetian humanism as well; see King, Venetian Humanism, p. 152.

148. A. Parel (1992) The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress), p. 48. In Galenic medical theory, the four humors were black andyellow bile, blood and phlegm. On Galen and the theory of the humors,see R. French (2003) Medicine before Science: The Business of Medicine from theMiddle Ages to the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press),pp. 42–63.

149. D. Germino (1962) ‘Machiavelli’s Thoughts on the Psyche and Society’in A. Parel (ed.) The Political Calculus: Essays on Machiavelli’s Philoso-phy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 67–8. For Machiavelli’sdiscussions of political ‘humors’, see Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. 9.

150. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, Bk VII, Ch. 11–12, pp. 288–9 (the followingquotes are taken from these pages). See also Machiavelli (1962) Opere VII,Istorie Fiorentine, a cura di Franco Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore), p. 470;Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, III, 25, p. 139.

151. A. Parel (1990) ‘Machiavelli’s Use of Umori in The Prince’, QUADERNId’italianistica XI (1), 93.

152. Ibid., p. 98.153. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, III, 1, p. 105.154. Ibid.155. Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 6, pp. 22–3.156. Ibid., I, 17, p. 47. According to Vatter, Machiavellian corruption con-

sisted in neither the indolent populace nor the tyrannical prince, rather,both were products of the corrupting desire to ‘give form’ to (necessarily)‘formless freedom’ in a new ordering of the polity. If this was Machiavelli’sintention, however, it is hard to see why he thought some politicalforms were more resistant to corruption than others were, or why a mili-tia would be at all worthwhile (M.E. Vatter (2000) Between Form andEvent. Machiavelli’s Theory of Political Freedom (Dordrecht: Kluwer AcademicPublishers), pp. 122–3).

157. This dimension of Machiavelli’s use of the term ‘corruption’ was reinforcedby his invocation of the supposed contrast between ‘ancient virtù’ and‘modern corruption’ (Parel, Machiavellian Cosmos, p. 155).

158. N. Machiavelli (1965) [1521] The Art of War, E. Farneworth (trans.)(New York: Da Capo), Bk I, p. 10; II, p. 60; also see the Preface, p. 4. Forthe Italian, see Machiavelli (1961) Opere II, Arte Della Guerra e Scritti PoliticiMinori, a cura di Sergio Bertelli (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore), p. 326. Machiavellialso recounts the story of Fabius Maximus’ accusation that Scipio main-tained lax discipline among his troops, calling him ‘a corrupter of theRoman army’ (Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 60).

159. Machiavelli, Art, I, pp. 11, 20; Machiavelli, Arte Della Guerra, p. 340.


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Notes 209

160. Machiavelli, Art, I, p. 11.161. Ibid., I, pp. 16, 28, 34; VII, pp. 202–5. As Rahe points out, Machiavelli

argued that ancient virtue was sustained in part by the terror of ancientwarfare and the prospect of enslavement after defeat. This terror had beenlargely removed by the softening effect of Christianity, and in this sense,religion is represented as having a corrupting influence (P.A. Rahe (2008)Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the EnglishRepublic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 92. On Machiavelli’sassociation of Christianity and corruption, see also C. Lynch (2010) ‘TheOrdine Nuovo of Machiavelli’s Arte Della Guerra: Reforming Ancient Mat-ter’, History of Political Thought 31 (3), 419. Colish presents a different view,arguing that ‘[g]ood laws no less than good arms depend on religion’,and that ‘Christianity, if properly used, could promote desirable politi-cal and military goals’ (M.L. Colish (1999) ‘Republicanism, Religion, andMachiavelli’s Savonarolan Moment’, Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (4),606–8). Also B. Fontana (1999) ‘Love of Country and Love of God: ThePolitical Uses of Religion in Machiavelli’, Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (4),654–6.

162. C. Zuckert (2010) ‘The Life of Castruccio Castracani: Machiavelli as LiteraryArtist, Historian, Teacher and Philosopher’, History of Political Thought 31(4), 588. On the masculine imagery of virtù, see T. Fitzpatrick (1994/95)‘Liberty, Corruption and Seduction in the Republican Imagination’, Conno-tations 4 (1–2), 47.

163. Machiavelli, Discourses, II, 19, pp. 172–3.164. Machiavelli, Art, III, p. 93. On the individual and collective nature of virtù,

see Q. Skinner (1978) Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renais-sance, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 176; and Wood(1967) ‘Virtù Reconsidered’, 170–2.

165. Wood, ‘Virtù Reconsidered’, 167–9.166. Machiavelli, Art, I, p. 34; VI, p. 169; Machiavelli, Arte Della Guerra, p. 351.

The danger of corruption among the military was especially great when thecommanders sought to corrupt their troops; see Art, I, p. 40.

167. Pitkin, Fortune Is a Woman, p. 48.168. S.M. Shumer (1979) ‘Machiavelli: Republican Politics and Its Corruption’,

Political Theory 7 (1), 10.169. Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 55, pp. 109–13.170. In the following paragraph, Machiavelli derides France, Spain and Italy

as the most corrupt of nations, or, as Mansfield and Tarcov translate it,these ‘nations all together are the corruption of the world’. (Ibid., I, 55,p. 111).

171. In Brandolini’s dialogue, the character of Mattias Corvinus argued that theHungarians were not corrupted by ‘the lust for money’ or foreign goods, butwere content to live simply on their own produce (Brandolini, Republics andKingdoms Compared, II, 26–28, pp. 119–21).

172. According to Hans Baron, Machiavelli defines his notion of corruption as an‘incapacity for a free mode of life’, the onus of which lies on the ‘inequality’of feudal society with its exaltation of gentlemen over all other citizens (H.Baron [1961] ‘Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince’in Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Vol. II, p. 125).


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210 Notes

173. In the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli similarly denounced the feckless andidle youth of Florence, who, led on by the courtiers of the Duke of Milan,indulged in ‘spending beyond bounds on dress, banquets, and other similarabandonments . . . in games and women’ and in appearing ‘splendid’ (VII,28, p. 307). Machiavelli also invoked a sexual connotation of corruption inspeaking of the Duke of Milan as a ‘lecherous and cruel’ man who soughtto ‘corrupt noble women’ and expose them to public humiliation (Ibid., VI,33, p. 313).

174. Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 55, pp. 111–12.175. All this follows from Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, III, 5, pp. 109–12.

Much later, Machiavelli placed another swinging denunciation of corrup-tion in the city into the mouth of Piero de Medici (Ibid., VII, 23, pp. 301–2).Leonardo Bruni had previously employed this method in his History of theFlorentine People (see the reference in note 130 above).

176. The significance of this speech has not, to our knowledge, received muchattention. An exception to this observation is S. Bagge (2007) ‘Actorsand Structures in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine’, Quaderini d’italianisticaXXVIII (2), 60–1.

177. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, IV, 27, p. 175; see also VII, 29, p. 307, whereFlorentines were said to be ‘corrupted by a party’.

178. See, for example, Ibid., II, 3 and 11, pp. 55–6, 63, on tumults between noblefactions; II, 39–42, pp. 100–4, on tumults between nobles and people; andIII, 24–27, pp. 138–43, on tumults caused by both of these tensions. Inter-estingly, in 1401–1402, Buonaccorso Pitti linked endemic factionalism tothe rise to power of ‘two sorts of citizens, youths and upstarts’ (Pitti andDati, Two Memoires of Renaissance Florence, p. 74).

179. D. Morosini (2004) ‘Radical proposals (c. 1500) by an aged patrician’,in D. Chambers and B. Pullan (eds) Venice: A Documentary History 1450–1630 (Toronto: Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts, University ofToronto), p. 70.

180. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, III, 13, pp. 122–4. Bruni had earlierdescribed the incitement of the angry mob and the desire for plunder andrevenge as a source of ‘corruption in the republic’ (Bruni, History of theFlorentine People, Vol. III, Bk IX, 6, p. 9).

181. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, VII, 1, p. 276. Najemy argues that this dis-cussion is used by Machiavelli to frame Cosimo de Medici’s rise to power aspartly based on and produced by corruption (Najemy, ‘Machiavelli and theMedici’, 569–72). According to Ianziti, this image of Medician corruptioncontrasts with Leonardo Bruni’s earlier effort to counter the depiction of theMedici as ‘corrupt money-grubbers’, by ‘presenting . . . [them] as paragonsof civic virtue’ (G. Ianziti (2008) ‘Leonardo Bruni, the Medici, and theFlorentine Histories’, Journal of the History of Ideas 69 (1), 8.

182. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, VII, 1, p. 277.183. B. Fontana (2003) ‘Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli’, History of Political

Thought XXIV (1), 106–8.184. H.C. Mansfield (1996) ‘Introduction’ in Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy,

p. xxxii.185. Machiavelli, Discourses, III, 24, pp. 269–70; Baron, ‘Machiavelli the Repub-

lican Citizen’, p. 148.


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Notes 211

186. Machiavelli, Art, I, p. 12; Machiavelli, Arte Della Guerra, p. 342; M. Jurdjevic(2007) ‘Machiavelli’s Hybrid Republicanism’, English Historical ReviewCXXII (499), 1243–4.

187. Machiavelli, Art, II, pp. 76–81.188. Ibid., I, pp. 19, 23; Machiavelli, Arte Della Guerra, pp. 339, 342.189. H.C. Mansfield (1966) Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press), p. 31. See, for example, Machiavelli, Art, Preface, p. 3; Machiavelli,The Prince, p. 64.

190. Machiavelli, Art, II, pp. 78–9, 81; Machiavelli, Arte Della Guerra, p. 394.Wood suggests a connection here between Machiavelli and Seneca, forwhom otium, or leisurely inactivity and listlessness, was opposed to ‘ener-getic, purposeful conduct’ (N. Wood (1968) ‘Some Common Aspects of theThought of Seneca and Machiavelli’, Renaissance Quarterly 21 (1), 15).

191. In speaking of a ‘loss’ of virtue, it is important to remember that Machiavellienvisaged the possibility that polities or citizenries may be more or lesscorrupt, and that there were different ‘degrees of corruption’ short of theworst possible state of ‘universal corruption’ (Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 18,p. 49).

192. Ibid., III, 1, pp. 209–12.193. In Chapter XVII of The Prince, Machiavelli described the extraordinary and

cruel means used by Cesare Borgia to ensure that ‘order’ was ‘restored’ inthe Romagna (a region Machiavelli elsewhere described as full of ‘corruptmatter’), thereby rendering it ‘peaceful and loyal’ (Machiavelli, The Prince,p. 58; Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 55, pp. 111). Najemy argues that far fromstanding ‘apart from corruption’ as the potential ‘saviour’ of the principal-ity, as he appears in The Prince, the actual prince appears, in light of his laterFlorentine Histories, the merest creature of faction and thus the ‘product andultimate expression’ of political corruption (Najemy, ‘Machiavelli and theMedici’, p. 574).

194. In contrast to this, on the role of love in Machiavelli, see H. Patapan(2006) Machiavelli in Love: The Modern Politics of Love and Fear (Lanham,MD: Lexington Books).

195. As Walzer pointed out, the decline of metaphors and symbols was not onlya story of destruction but also the creation of new metaphors (M. Walzer(1967) ‘On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought’, Political ScienceQuarterly 82 (2), 198).

4 Affection, Interest and Office in Early Modernity

1. Waquet, Corruption, pp. 88–9; Burke, ‘Tradition and Experience’, 138–41;D.C. Allen (1938) ‘The Degeneration of Man and Renaissance Pessimism’,Studies in Philology 35 (2), 222.

2. W. Raleigh (1971) [1614] The History of the World, C.A. Patrides (ed.)(London: Macmillan), Bk I, Ch. 2, § 5, p. 126. Also see T. Forde (1649) LususFortunae: The Play of Fortune: Continually Acted by the Severall Creatures on theStage of the World (London: Printed for R.L.), pp. 20–1.

3. See, for example, G. Buchanan (2006) [1579] A Dialogue on the Lawof Kingship among the Scots, M.S. Smith and R.A. Mason (trans., eds)


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212 Notes

(Edinburgh: Saltire Society), p. 50; Lipsius, Two Bookes of Constancie, Bk I,Ch. XVI, pp. 37–41; Williamson, ‘Seventeenth-Century Melancholy’, 147.

4. Raleigh, History, Bk I, Ch. 9 and 6, § 3 and 2, pp. 160, 147.5. G. Goodman (1616) The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature, Proved by

the Light of our Naturall Reason (London: Felix Kyngston); W. Poole (2010)‘The Evolution of George Hakewill’s Apologie or Declaration of the Power andProvidence of God, 1627–1637: Academic Contexts, and Some New Anglesfrom Manuscripts’, Electronic British Library Journal, 7, 1–32. http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2010articles/pdf/ebljarticle72010.pdf, date accessed 27 August2013.

6. G. Hakewill (1630) An Apologie or Declaration of the Power of God in the Gov-ernment of the World (London: Printed for R. Allott), pp. 355, 359, 363, andthe ‘Epistle Dedicatory’.

7. T. Boccalini (1626) The New-Found Politicke. Disclosing the Secret Natures andDispositions as well of Private Persons as of Statesmen and Courtiers (London:Printed for Francis Williams), pp. 166–70. Buchanan also referred to the‘moral corruption of our times’ (Buchanan, Law of Kingship, p. 88).

8. J. Hurstfield (1967) ‘Political Corruption in Modern England: The Histo-rian’s Problem’, History 52 (174), 26.

9. J. Florio (1598) A Worlde of Wordes, Or Most Copious, and Exact Dictionarie inItalian and English (London: A. Hatfield), p. 88.

10. R. Cotgrave (1611) A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London:Printed by Adam Islip). Two earlier dictionaries used the terms ‘Gasté &corrompu’ and ‘Corrompure & perte’ to mean ‘marred and corrupt’ or ‘cor-ruption’ and ‘loss’. See L.H. (1571) A Dictionarie French and English (London:Imprinted by Henry Bynneman, for Lucas Harrison); C. Hollyband (1593)A Dictionarie French and English (London: Imprinted by T.O. for ThomasWoodcock); also the definitions of ‘Corruptus’ and related words in J. Veron(1584) A Dictionarie in Latine and English (London: Imprinted Rafe Newberieand Henrie Denham).

11. A. Fitzmaurice (2007) ‘American Corruption’ in J.F. McDiarmid (ed.) TheMonarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to PatrickCollinson (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 222.

12. N. Mears (2005) Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 186–208.

13. Fitzmaurice, ‘American Corruption’, pp. 228–9.14. J.H.M. Salmon (1980) ‘Cicero and Tacitus in Sixteenth-Century France’, The

American Historical Review 85 (2), 320.15. D. Womersley (1991) ‘Sir Henry Savile’s Translation of Tacitus and the

Political Interpretation of Elizabethan Texts’, The Review of English StudiesXLII (167), 332, 322.

16. R. Tuck (1993) Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press), p. 41; M. Peltonen (1995) Classical Human-ism and Republicanism in English Political Thought 1570–1640 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press), pp. 124–6.

17. L. Levy Peck (1990) Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England(London: Routledge), pp. 161, 186, 203.

18. R.G. Asch (1999) ‘Corruption and Punishment? The Rise and Fall ofMatthäus Enzlin (1556–1613), Lawyer and Favourite’ in J.H. Elliott and


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Notes 213

L.W.B. Brockliss (eds) The World of the Favourite (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress), pp. 104–5.

19. J.P. Sommerville (2007) ‘English and Roman Liberty in the MonarchicalRepublic of Early Stuart England’ in McDiarmid (ed.) The Monarchical Repub-lic, pp. 207, 215. Also, R. Cust (2007) ‘Reading for Magistracy: The MentalWorld of Sir John Newdigate’ in McDiarmid (ed.) The Monarchical Republic,p. 183; and J.F. McDiarmid (2007) ‘Common Consent, Latinitas, andthe “Monarchical Republic” in Mid-Tudor Humanism’ in The MonarchicalRepublic, pp. 63–5.

20. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, pp. 15–20.21. Ibid., p. 63; A.O. Hirschman (1982) ‘Rival Interpretations of Market Society:

Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?’ Journal of Economic Literature 20 (4), 1464.22. Valentin Groebner records a 1508 invocation of John of Salisbury’s body

politic metaphor in Germany (Groebner, Liquid Assets, p. 89).23. Such imagery was commonplace in diplomatic discourse reporting the

tumults and debilities of foreign states. See, for example, ‘Davison toWalsingham, December 15, 1578’ and ‘Harborne to Walsingham, Septem-ber 15, 1584’ in A.J. Butler (ed.) (1903) Calendar of State Papers, ForeignSeries, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1578–1579 (London: His Majesty’s Sta-tionery Office); and S.C. Lomas (ed.) (1916) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign,1584–1585, pp. 343 and 66.

24. D.G. Hale (1971) The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance EnglishLiterature (The Hague/Paris: Mouton), pp. 53–5.

25. T. Starkey (1973) [1540] Exhortation to Unitie and Obedience (Amsterdam:Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; New York: Da Capo Press), p. 14. Guicciardinialso spoke of the ‘city’ as a ‘body composed of many limbs’ (F. Guicciardini(1994) [1521–4] Dialogue on the Government of Florence, A. Brown (ed.)(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 115).

26. See A. Cowan (2009) ‘Cities, Towns, and New Forms of Culture’ andK. Gouwens (2009) ‘Human Exceptionalism’ both in J.J. Martin (ed.) TheRenaissance World (New York: Routledge).

27. C. Fasolt (2009) ‘Religious Authority and Ecclesiastical Governance’ inMartin (ed.) The Renaissance World, pp. 370–5. According to Haigh, the‘anti-clerical’ indictments of a Catholic clergy sunk in iniquitous corrup-tion were certainly exaggerated (C. Haigh (1983) ‘Anticlericalism and theEnglish Reformation’, History 68 (224), 392), while Frans van Liere con-tends that the Medieval Roman Catholic Church generally maintainedhigher standards of financial probity than most secular courts (F. van Liere(2008) ‘Was the Medieval Church Corrupt?’ in S.J. Harris and B.L. Grigsby(eds) Misconceptions About the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge)pp. 31–4).

28. In the 1559 ‘Instructions for the Council of Trent’ that aimed to reformCatholic practice and doctrine from within, it was asserted that the‘principal troubles in religion have arisen from the abuses which havecrept into the Church by the corruption of discipline and manners . . . ’(J. Stephenson (ed.) (1866) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1561–1562(London: Longmans) p. 626).

29. N.Z. Davis (1995) ‘Gifts and Bribes in Sixteenth Century France’, IredellLecture Delivered at Lancaster University, 14 February 1995, p. 9.


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214 Notes

30. M. Luther (1963) ‘Disputation for the Exposition of the Power ofIndulgences, Published on 31 October 1517 at Wittenberg’ in Luther’s andZwingli’s Propositions for Debate: The Ninety-Five Theses of October 1517 andthe Sixty-Seven Articles of 19 January 1523, C.S. Meyer (trans.) (Leiden: Brill),Number 25.2 [27], p. 7.

31. Ibid., 25.3 [28], p. 9; 25 [50] and 25.1 [51], p. 13.32. J. Calvin (1960) [1536/1559] Institutes of the Christian Religion, J.T. McNeill

(ed.), F.L. Battles (trans.) (Louisville: The Westminster Press), Bk IV, Ch. 5,§18–19, pp. 1100–1. See also J. Calvin (1954) [1543] ‘The Necessity ofReforming the Church. A Humble Exhortation to the Most InvincibleEmperor Charles V’ in Calvin: Theological Treatises, J.K.S. Reid (trans.)(London: SCM Press), pp. 185–91. On English Protestant reformist rhetoricon the corruptions of the Catholic church, see A. MacColl (2004) ‘TheConstruction of England as a Protestant “British” Nation in the SixteenthCentury’, Renaissance Studies 18 (4), 596–8.

33. Groebner, Liquid Assets, p. 153; also G.W. Bernard (1998) ‘Vitality andVulnerability in the Late Medieval Church: Pilgrimage on the Eve of theBreak with Rome’ in J.L. Watts (ed.) The End of the Middle Ages? Englandin the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Sutton Publishing),p. 223.

34. H. Zwingli (1963) ‘The Sixty-seven Articles of 19 January 1523’ in Luther’sand Zwingli’s Propositions for Debate, number 56, p. 49. By referring to‘Simon’, Zwingli meant Simon Magus, who, in Acts 8: 9–24, was said tooffer money to ‘receive the Holy Spirit’ and from whom the term ‘simony’was derived. ‘Bileam’ or ‘Balaam’ was a false Hebrew prophet who corruptedthe Israelites with unclean gifts.

35. Davis, ‘Gifts and Bribes’, p. 11.36. A.B. Zlatar (2011) Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in

Elizabethan England (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 158; B.S. Gregory(2009) ‘Christian Reform and its Discontents’ in Martin (ed.) The Renais-sance World, pp. 598–600.

37. Groebner, Liquid Assets, p. 153. The following quotes are all from this page.38. A. Fix (1987) ‘Radical Reformation and Second Reformation in Holland: The

Intellectual Consequences of the Sixteenth-Century Religious Upheavaland the Coming of the Rational World View’, The Sixteenth Century Journal18 (1), 71–3.

39. P. Harrison (2002) ‘Original Sin and the Problem of Knowledge in EarlyModern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2), 243.

40. T. More (1927) [1529] The Dialogue Concerning Tyndale by Sir Thomas More,facsimile from the collected edition (1557), W.E. Campbell (ed.) (London:Eyre and Spottiswoode), pp. 134–5. Also, Hale, The Body Politic, p. 51.William Tyndale (c. 1492–1536) responded by rejecting More’s corporealmetaphors as just another of the ‘sotle allegories & fasifienge[s]’ perpe-trated by Catholics to obscure the Gospels (W. Tyndale (2000) [1531]An Answer unto Sir Thomas Mores Dialoge, A.M. O’Donnell and J. Wicks(eds) (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press), pp. 77,113, 164).

41. Calvin, Institutes, Bk II, Ch. 1, §5, p. 246.


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Notes 215

42. Ibid., Bk II, Ch. 1, §5–6, p. 248. See, for example, D. Van Drunen (2004)‘The Context of Natural Law: Jean Calvin’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms’,Journal of Church and State 46, 513.

43. J. Knox (1878) [1558] The First Blast of the Trumpet against the MonstrousRegiment of Women, E. Arber (ed.) (London: Southgate), p. 32.

44. Ibid., p. 36. Later in this passage, he also spoke in more strictly Biblicalterms of the ‘corruption and wormes’ of mere physical death and decay.

45. Ibid., p. 48.46. A.N. McLaren (1996) ‘Delineating the Elizabethan Body Politic: Knox,

Aylmer and the Definition of Counsel 1558–88’, History of Political Thought17 (2), 248–52; P. Hicks (2005) ‘The Roman Matron in Britain: Female Polit-ical Influence and the Republican Response, ca. 1750–1800’, The Journal ofModern History 77 (1), 35–69.

47. G. Buchanan (1958) The Tyrannous Reign of Mary Stewart, W.A. Gatherer (ed.,trans.) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 62–3.

48. R. Johnson (1601) Essais, or Rather Imperfect Offers (London: John Windet),pp. 19–20.

49. See, for example, R. Morison (1972) [1539] An Exhortation, facsimile reprint(Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; New York: Da Capo Press), pp. 3–5,16–17; and Sir J. Cheke (1569) [1549] The Hurt of Sedition, How Grievous itis to a Commonwealth (London: Willyam Seres), 62. On the metaphor of‘disease’, see D. Erasmus (1997) [1516] The Education of a Christian Prince,L. Jardine (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 2, 39; alsoJ. Ponet (1556) A Short Treatise of Politik Power (British Library W462573),Ch. VI.

50. E. Dudley (1948) [1509] The Tree of Commonwealth, D.M. Brodie (ed.)(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 25, 28, 77, 94, 79. All thefollowing information in this paragraph is taken from these pages.

51. F. Bacon (1998) [1622] The History of the Reign of King Henry VII, B. Vickers(ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 175.

52. A. Cromartie (2006) The Constitutionalist Revolution. An Essay on the Historyof England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 87. Thissame aspiration was voiced with remarkable clarity in diplomatic corre-spondence from France, in July 1578, where an anonymous author declared‘that there is no foundation on which commonwealths may be more firmlyestablished, even as on a rock, than religion . . . . This holds together as agreat edifice the body of the commonwealth, so that if this be corrupted thecommonwealth must fall’. (‘Representation sent by a Gentleman of Franceto the Estates General and Particular Towns and communities of the LowCountries in the obedience of the Catholic King’ in Butler (ed.) Calendar ofState Papers, Foreign, 1578–1579, p. 109).

53. T. Starkey (1989) [1529–32] A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, T.F. Mayer(ed.) (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society), p. 31. Similar, thoughless laboured, imagery was invoked by Thomas Elyot (1834) [1531] in hisBoke Named the Governour (London: John Hernaman), Bk III, p. 257.

54. The following is taken from Starkey, A Dialogue, pp. 53–6.55. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, p. 222.56. Hale, Body Politic, pp. 61–8.


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216 Notes

57. See, for example, Starkey, Dialogue, pp. 9, 63, 98, 102, 105, 119; also Starkey,An Exhortation, p. 39.

58. Starkey, An Exhortation, p. 5. In a letter to Lord Lisle, then Gover-nor of Calais, Thomas Cromwell urged him to preserve unity amongsthis council by suppressing ‘diversity of opinion’ in matters of religion,ensuring thereby that ‘perfect truth’ is ‘divided from men’s corruptaffections of favour, malice or displeasure’. (T. Cromwell (1981) [1539]‘Cromwell to Lord Lisle, 6 May 1539’ in M.S. Byrne (ed.) The Lisle Letters(Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 453).

59. Starkey, An Exhortation, pp. 17, 31. Corrupt judgements are also denouncedon pages 27 and 28.

60. Starkey, Dialogue, pp. 10–1. Here, Starkey employs another organicmetaphor, that of the garden or ‘gud culture’ needed to stop the ‘wedys’from ‘over grow[ing] the gud corne’. See also Å. Bergvall (1993–4) ‘Reason inEnglish Renaissance Humanism: Starkey, More and Ascham’, Connotations3 (3), 220–1.

61. Starkey, Dialogue, p. 22, also 20–1. Starkey criticises what he persistentlycalls ‘corrupt jugement’ on pages 25, 45 and 55.

62. Ibid., p. 25.63. Ibid., p. 36.64. Starkey does refer to active moral (as opposed to political) corruption when

he denounces the habit of noble gentlemen keeping large retinues of idlefollowers, who he describes as ‘commyn corruptarys of chastyte’ (Ibid.,p. 99).

65. Ibid., p. 120.66. Ibid., pp. 121–2. Starkey earlier denounced those advisors to princes

who ‘procure theyr owne’ advantage by offering false advice and ‘cor-rupt’ the commonwealth with ‘lyke opynyon’ and ‘lyke affecte’ (p. 16).On Starkey’s political proposals, see T.F. Mayer (1985) ‘Faction and Ide-ology: Thomas Starkey’s Dialogue’, The Historical Journal 28 (1), 9. Mayercontends that Starkey was inspired by ‘the constitutional traditions ofthe late middle ages’, while Hadfield argues that Starkey took inspira-tion from the Venetian government (T.F. Mayer (1989) Thomas Starkey andthe Commonweal: Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 156); A. Hadfield (1998) Lit-erature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545–1625(Oxford: Oxford University Press).

67. Starkey, Dialogue, p. 45. In this sense, Starkey again emphasises the frailtyand inconstancy of ‘corrupt jugement’ as ‘vayne & light opynyon’ soon‘corrupt[ed] wyth the contrary persuasyon’ (p. 20).

68. Ibid., pp. 45, 55.69. Ibid., pp. 19, 12, 63.70. Waquet, Corruption, p. 16.71. S. Kettering (1988) ‘Gift-Giving and Patronage in Early Modern France’,

French History 2 (2), 132–3; M. Jansson (2005) ‘Measured Reciprocity:English Ambassadorial Gift Exchange in the 17th and 18th Centuries’,Journal of Early Modern History 9 (3–4), 348–70.

72. R. Harding (1981) ‘Corruption and the Moral Boundaries of Patron-age in the Renaissance’ in G.F. Lytle and S. Orgel (eds) Patronage in


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Notes 217

the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 63. See alsoA. Maczak (1991) ‘Aristocratic Household to Princely Court’ in R.G. Aschand A.M. Birke (eds) Princes, Patronage, and Nobility: The Court at the Begin-ning of the Modern Age c. 1450–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press),pp. 316–17.

73. N.Z. Davis (2000) The Gift in Sixteenth Century France (Madison: Universityof Wisconsin Press), pp. 15, 15–22. Also, I.K. Ben-Amos (2000) ‘Gifts andFavors: Informal Support in Early Modern England’, The Journal of ModernHistory 72 (2), 314–20.

74. Davis, The Gift, pp. 26–8; F. Heal (2008) ‘Food Gifts, the Household and thePolitics of Exchange in Early Modern England’, Past and Present 199, 53–4.

75. G. Elton (1993) ‘How Corrupt was Thomas Cromwell?’ The Historical Journal36 (4), 907; Kettering, ‘Gift-Giving’, 142.

76. L.K. Regan (2005) ‘Ariosto’s Threshold Patron: Isabella d’Este in the OrlandoFurioso’, MLN 120 (1), 62.

77. Davis, The Gift, pp. 44, 64. As Davis notes, the gift economy and the saleeconomy coexisted throughout the Early Modern period, and contempo-raries were adept at negotiating the distinction between patronage andcontract.

78. E.H. Shagan (2007) ‘The Two Republics: Conflicting Views of ParticipatoryLocal Government in Early Tudor England’ in McDiarmid (ed.) TheMonarchical Republic, pp. 20–2; M. Goldie (2001) ‘The UnacknowledgedRepublic: Officeholding in Early Modern England’ in T. Harris (ed.) ThePolitics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850 (New York and Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan), pp. 153–94.

79. A.G.R. Smith (1977) Servant of the Cecils: The Life of Sir Michael Hickes, 1543–1612 (London: Jonathan Cape), pp. 70–2. Gratuities might be offered as away of bolstering the suit of particularly able and qualified candidates, indi-cating that office could not always be won by bribes alone. Swart concludedthat in some cases, corruption served to advance those not of noble birthwho possessed genuine talents and abilities (K.W. Swart (1949) Sale of Officesin the Seventeenth Century (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff), pp. 112–27).

80. B. Barnes (1975) [1606] Four Bookes of Offices (Amsterdam: Theatrum OrbisTerrarum). Barnes’ four books correspond to four virtues: temperance ingoverning the Prince’s treasure, prudence in ruling moderately, justice ingoverning wisely and fortitude in enduring the perils of war.

81. J. Hurstfield (1973) Freedom, Corruption and Government in ElizabethanEngland (London: Jonathan Cape), pp. 187–8.

82. J. Cole (2007) ‘Cultural Clientelism and Brokerage Networks in Early Mod-ern Florence and Rome: New Correspondence between the Barberini andMichelangelo Buonarroti the Younger’, Renaissance Quarterly 60 (3), 740–1.On patronage as liberality, see G. Kipling (1981) ‘Henry VII and the Originsof Tudor Patronage’ in Lytle and Orgel (eds) Patronage in the Renaissance,pp. 118–9. See also Robert Johnson’s Essais (1601) in which he criticisespatrons who reward ‘favorites’ only with ‘kind gestures’ without ‘minister-ing to their wantes’. However, he also maintains that it would be wise forpatrons ‘to bee reserved in giving to those’ who ‘winde themselves intofavour, by working a more worthier [client] into disgrace’ serving their own‘avarice’ and ‘selfseeking contempt of others’. Invoking Cicero, he opined


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that self-seeking adventurers ‘seeme affected to none but to Praetors’ andthus become the willing accomplices of tyrants (Johnson, Essais, pp. 54–6).

83. C. Condren (2009) ‘Public, Private and the Idea of the “Public Sphere” inEarly-Modern England’, Intellectual History Review 19 (1), 21.

84. Ibid., 22, 26. See for example, Richard Brathwaite’s argument that the‘vocation’ of men was both ‘publicke, when imployed in affairs of state’and ‘private, when in domesticke business’ they concern themselves with‘ordering’ the ‘household’. ‘As every man’s house is his Castle’, he contin-ued, ‘so is his family a private Common-wealth, wherein if due governmentbe not observed, nothing but confusion is to be expected’. This task calledfor the application of the same virtues of temperance, obedience and servicethat were required in the discharge of public office (R. Brathwaite (1975)[1630] The English Gentleman, facsimile reprint (Amsterdam: TheatrumOrbis Terrarum), pp. 136, 155–6).

85. C. Perry (2010) ‘Court and Coterie Culture’ in M. Hattaway (ed.) A NewCompanion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, Vol. 2 (Oxford:Wiley-Blackwell), p. 304.

86. Smith, Servant of the Cecils, pp. 56–69. Smith contends that some of thesepayments, especially those for appointment to local offices, were ‘perfectlyproper’ and legally defensible, and that as a consequence ‘it would bequite wrong to brand him [Hickes] as “corrupt” simply for accepting’ them(p. 80). The receipt of suits and the constant press of suitors were routinehazards of office (P.M. Handover (1959) The Second Cecil: The Rise to Power1563–1604 of Sir Robert Cecil later First Earl of Salisbury (London: Eyre andSpottiswoode), p. 128).

87. See, for example, N. Constantinidou (2010) ‘On Patronage, fama andCourt: Early Modern Political Culture’ in Renaissance Studies 24 (4),607–9; M. Feingold (1987) ‘Philanthropy, Pomp and Patronage: Histor-ical Reflections upon the Endowment of Culture’, Daedalus 116 (1),155–78.

88. Cole, ‘Cultural Clientelism’, 738, 748.89. J.S. Block (1998) ‘Political Corruption in Henrician England’ in C. Carlton,

R.L. Woods, M.L. Robertson and J.S. Block (eds) State, Sovereigns and Societyin Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of A.J. Slavin (New York: St Martin’sPress), p. 48.

90. Davis, The Gift, pp. 73–4; Ben-Amos, ‘Gifts and Favors’, pp. 332–3; alsoF. Heal (1996) ‘Reciprocity and Exchange in the Late Medieval Household’in B.A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (eds) Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections ofLiterature and History in Fifteenth Century England (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press), pp. 190–1.

91. Elton, ‘How Corrupt’, 907–8. See ‘Walsingham to Burghley, September 2,1578’ in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1578–1579, pp. 171–2; ‘AudleyDanett to Walsingham, August 13, 1582’, in A.J. Butler (ed.) (1909) Calen-dar of State Papers, Foreign, 1582 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office),p. 246; ‘Advertisements from Germany, June 1587’ in S.C. Lomas (ed.)(1927) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1586–1588 (London: His Majesty’sStationery Office), p. 325; ‘Dr Dale to Sir Thomas Smith and Walsingham,December 8, 1575’, in A.J. Crosby (ed.) (1880) Calendar of State Papers,Foreign, 1575–1577 (London: Longman and Co.), pp. 196–7; ‘Opinion of


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the Prince of Orange upon the reception of the Archduke Matthias, Octo-ber 24, 1577’, in Butler (ed.) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1577–1578,pp. 280–1. Also, ‘Declaration of the proceedings against Emanuel LouisTinoco . . . , March 14, 1594’ and ‘Speech of the Queen, March? 1594’both in M.A.E. Green (ed.) (1867) Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series,Elizabeth 1591–1594 (London: Longmans), pp. 460–2.

92. Kettering, ‘Gift-Giving’, 148. Also J. Downame (1609) Foure Treatises, Tend-ing to Disswade all Christians from foure no less heinous then commonsinnes; namely, the abuses of Swearing, Drunkennesse, Whoredome, and Briberie(London: Felix Kyngston), pp. 207, 209. Despite associating bribery withthe corruption of public office, Downame still considered bribery a ‘sinne’born of ‘covetousnesse’.

93. In Cotgrave’s 1611 Dictionarie, the French word ‘Bribe’ was defined as‘A peece, lumpe, or cantill of bread given unto a begger’. Contempo-rary English usage was already associating ‘bribe’ with corruption as,for example, in the ‘Petition of Edmund Bishop of Norwich, Novem-ber, 1578’ against ‘bribery, extortion, corruption, or other misusing . . . ofjustice’, in M.A.E. Green (ed.) (1871) Calendar of State Papers, DomesticSeries, of the Reign of Elizabeth, Addenda (1566–1579) (London: Longman),p. 552. See also Cotgrave’s 1611 definition of the French ‘Corrompu’ as‘bribed . . . seduced, or suborned, by bribes’. In Percivale’s Spanish EnglishDictionary, ‘Corrompér’ meant ‘to corrupt, to putrefie’, also ‘to bribe’;‘Corrompédor’ meant ‘a corrupter’ and ‘a briber’, while the act of ‘brib-ing’ and the phenomenon of ‘bribery’ were denoted by the words‘Corrompimiénto’ and ‘Corrupción’, respectively (R. Percivale (1623) A Dic-tionary in Spanish and English (London: Imprinted by John Haviland forWilliam Aspley)). By the mid-seventeenth century, the meaning of briberywas firmly embedded in English usage, though corruption was still vari-ously defined. Rider’s Dictionarie defined ‘bribe’ as ‘to corrupt with gifts . . . orto solicite men to give their votes and consents’ and ‘labour for an office bygiving bribes’. To ‘corrupt’, on the other hand, could mean to ‘make stink-ing’, to be ‘corrupted with gifts’, to become ‘putrified, as dead bodies bein the grave’, ‘corrupted with money’, to be ‘corrupt or noisome’ [foul], ormerely ‘wicked’ and ‘full of faults’. To be in a state of ‘corruption’ signified‘rottenesse’, being suborned by ‘bribes or gifts’, an ‘infection’, the active‘corruption of men with money’, or the more passive ‘corruption gath-ered in the bulke of a man’s body’ (F. Holy-Oke (1649) Rider’s Dictionarie,Corrected and Augmented (London: Imprinted by Flex Kingston for ThomasWhitaker)). See also Davis, The Gift, p. 88.

94. As Davis notes, the laws themselves were routinely flaunted (The Gift,pp. 87–8, 90–7). On the relationship between food gifts and bribery, seeHeal, ‘Food Gifts’, 63–4.

95. W. Roper (1962/1990) [1555] The Life of Sir Thomas More in R.S Sylvesterand D.P. Harding (eds) Two Early Tudor Lives: The Life and Death of CardinalWolsey and The Life of Sir Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University Press),p. 219. Roper’s hagiography presents More as having performed his dutiesassiduously, ‘from all corruption of wrong-doing or bribes-taking kept him-self so clear that no man was able therewith once to blemish him’ (p. 231).See also S. Brigden (2000) New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors


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1485–1603 (London: Penguin), p. 166; also J.K. Sawyer (1988) ‘Judicial Cor-ruption and Legal Reform in Early Seventeenth-Century France’, Law andHistory Review 6 (1), 96–7.

96. The identification of what constituted corruption, for contemporaries,might have been heavily dependent on context. Thus, ‘Gratuities . . . weresupposed to be “reasonable”; that is to say, they should not be used topervert the course of justice, to secure the diversion of large sums of pub-lic money into private pockets, or to obtain the advancement of men tooffices for which they were manifestly unfit or for which conspicuouslybetter candidates were available’ (Smith, Servant of the Cecils, p. 80).

97. Bacon, History, p. 176.98. Ponet, A Short Discourse, Ch. VI.99. T.E. Hartley (ed.) (1981) Proceedings of the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, Vol. 1:

1558–1581 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier), pp. 251–3; ‘First Caseof Bribery, 1571’ in J.R. Tanner (1951) Tudor Constitutional DocumentsA.D. 1485–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 526–7.

100. ‘Proclamation of 1601’ in A.F. Kinney (ed.) (1990) Elizabethan Backgrounds:Historical Documents of the Age of Elizabeth I (Hamden, CT: Archon), p. 326.

101. Edward VI (1966) [1551] Discourse on Reform of Abuses in Church and Statein W.K. Jordan (ed.) The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI(London: George Allen and Unwin), p. 164. The metaphor is elaboratedon pages 160–1.

102. T. Smith (1970) [1583] De Republica Anglorum (Menston: The Scholar Press),p. 47. Significantly, when Smith defines the ‘common wealth’, he doesso not by employing the language of a body politic, but by emphasis-ing that it is based on the actions of ‘a multitiude of free men collectedtogether and united by common accord and covenauntes among them-selves, for the conservation of themselves’ (p. 10). Older notions of theorganic unity of the ‘body politic’ still made sense in terms of the legal doc-trine of the ‘body politic’ defined by Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case in 1608,by which the monarch’s private (mortal) person was separated from thepublic (immortal) person of the state. As the preamble to the ‘Lay SubsidyAct’ of 1601 shows, the organic unity of the English ‘body politic’ retainedstrong rhetorical appeal. Here, Parliament referred to itself as her majesty’s‘faithful and obedient subjects’, constituting ‘one Body Politic’ in which‘your Highness is the head and we the members’ (J.H. Thomas (1986) [1836]Lord Coke’s First Institute of the Laws of England, Vol. I (Buffalo, NY: WilliamS. Hein), p. 59; ‘Lay Subsidy Act of 1601’ in Tanner, Tudor ConstitutionalDocuments, p. 612).

103. Davis, The Gift, p. 51. See also C. Condren (2001) ‘The Problem of Audi-ence, Office and the Language of Political Action in Lawson’s Politica andHobbes’s Leviathan’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 26, 301.

104. A.J. Slavin (1966) Politics and Profit: A Study of Sir Ralph Sadler 1507–1547(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 177–8. In Robert Greene’smany satires on petty theft and rampant fraud, England was pictured as acommonwealth of ‘conny catchers’ perpetually deceiving and defraudinghonest and gullible citizens. Interestingly, his satires tended not to includecorrupt public officials in the legion of ‘conny catchers’. In the work ofhis later plagiarist, Anthony Nixon, petty ‘conny catching’ was replaced by


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a concern for the ‘knavish’ corruption of lawyers, the wealthy and by theemulators of ‘fashion’; see R. Greene (1592) The Third and Last part of Conny-Catching. With the new Devised Knavish art of Foole-Taking (London: Printedfor T. Scarlet); R. Greene (1592) The Defence of Conny-Catching (London:Printed by A.I.); A. Nixon (1615) The Scourge of Corruption. Or A CraftyKnave Needs no Broker (London: Henry Gosson and William Holmes). Thisshift of emphasis was recognised by Miller, but he did not place specialemphasis on the place of corruption (E.H. Miller (1954) ‘Another Sourcefor Anthony Nixon’s “The Scourge of Corruption (1615)” ’, HuntingtonLibrary Quarterly 17 (2), 173–6). The satirical image of a commonwealthof corruption (Parnassus) was also employed by Boccalini in 1612; see TheWorks of the Celebrated Trajano Boccalini; Consisting of Panegyricks, Satyrs,and Criticisms, in Advertisements from Parnassus, Vol. 1 (London: R. Smith,1714).

105. G. Cavendish (1962/1990) [1558] The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey inR.S. Sylvester and D.P. Harding (eds) Two Early Tudor Lives, p. 13.

106. S. Adams (1995) ‘The Patronage of the Crown in Elizabethan Politics:the 1590s in Perspective’, in J. Guy (ed.) The Reign of Elizabeth I: Courtand Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),p. 25.

107. R.H. Britnell (1998) ‘The English Economy and the Government, 1450–1550’ in J.L. Watts (ed.) The End of the Middle Ages? pp. 96–7, 104–7; Brigden,New Worlds, pp. 183–4.

108. M.J. Braddick (2000) State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 48–50; D. Loades (2002)The Chronicles of the Tudor Queens (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing),pp. 136–7.

109. Adams, ‘The Patronage of the Crown’, pp. 31–40. Adams speculates that therise of monopolies, ironically, favoured a decline in venality and the con-solidation of an ethos of ‘public service’ (p. 42) in England, in contrastto France. See also L. Levy Peck (1981) ‘Court Patronage and Govern-ment Policy: the Jacobean Dilemma’ in Lytle and Orgel (eds) Patronage inthe Renaissance, pp. 28–42. This is covered in more detail in Peck, CourtPatronage and Corruption, pp. 136–43, 185–6. On the role of favourites, seeL. Levy Peck (1999) ‘Monopolizing Favour: Structures of Power in the EarlySeventeenth-Century English Court’ in Elliott and Brockliss (eds) The Worldof the Favourite, pp. 56–8.

110. On the corruptions caused by ‘favourites’ in the early Stuart period, seeAnthony Nixon’s (1615) rather tedious satire, The Scourge of Corruption.Nixon writes, ‘For most men now in private will defraud/Them, that inpublicke they doe most applaud’. (p. 10). Edward Forset, on the other hand,wrote, in deference to the Stuart monarchy, that royal favourites resem-bled the ‘fantasies of the Soule’ of the body politic that must be freedfrom ‘despitefull envying’ because they provided their royal masters with‘recreating comforts’ (E. Forset (1606) A Comparative Discourse of the BodiesNatural and Politique (London: Printed for John Bill), p. 15).

111. Anon. (1948) [1584] ‘Copie of a Letter Wryten by a Master of Arte ofCambridge, commonly known as Leycesters Common-wealth’ in G. Orwelland R. Reynolds (eds) British Pamphleteers, Vol. 1: From the Sixteenth Century


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to the French Revolution (London: Allan Wingate), pp. 37–8. This tract wassquarely aimed at Elizabeth I’s noted favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl ofLeicester.

112. W. Harrison (1968) [1587] The Description of England, G. Edelen (ed) (Ithaca:Cornell University Press), p. 257.

113. T. Wilson (1584) A Discourse upon Usurie, by waie of Dialogue and Oracions(London: Roger Warde), fols 78–9; also fols 174–5.

114. Ibid., fols 10, 22, 24, 26 and 31. Wilson’s other interlocutors, the Lawyerand the Merchant, each rehearse more nuanced appraisals of the need formoney lending (Wilson, Usurie, fols 39, 45–6, 58).

115. T. Smith (1954) [1581] A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realmof England, E. Lamond (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),pp. 32–6.

116. Ibid., ‘First Dialogue’, p. 22. The following quotation comes from page 23.117. Ibid., ‘First Dialogue’, p. 14.118. Ibid., ‘Second Dialogue’, pp. 47–9.119. Ibid., ‘Second Dialogue’, p. 57. For others, avarice was still imagined as

a force that would ‘corrupt and impair’ all the works and institutions ofhuman kind (Harrison, The Description of England, p. 40).

120. Smith, Discourse, ‘Second Dialogue’, pp. 58–9. Smith even thought thatthe ‘profites and emolumentes’ of the churches should be determined bysecular authorities (Ibid., ‘Third Dialogue’, pp. 141–2).

121. N. Wood (1997) ‘Avarice and Civil Unity: The Contribution of Sir ThomasSmith’, History of Political Thought XVIII (1), pp. 35–6.

122. Smith, Discourse, ‘Third Dialogue’, p. 117.123. Ibid., ‘Second Dialogue’, p. 82. The following quotations in this paragraph

all come from pp. 82–3. Smith goes on to maintain that only by inuring thelabouring poor to simple clothes, hardship and military exercise in peace-time can England retain its strength (p. 84). A similarly Polybian concernabout the moral corruption of Rome was voiced by Robert Johnson: ‘Theirvalour made them quiet, and quiet wealthy: but . . . their wealth effem-inated their valour with idleness, idleness occasioned disorder, disordermade ruine’. (Johnson, Essais, p. 22).

124. W. Prest (1991) ‘Judicial Corruption in Early Modern England’, Past andPresent 133, 74–6.

125. Lord Coke (1607) The Lord Coke His Speech and Charge. With a Discoverieof the Abuses and Corruption of Officers (London: Printed for ChristopherPursett), no pagination. Similarly, Holy-Oke’s Dictionarium EtymologicumLatinum defined ‘Corrumpo’ not only as to spoil something, but also‘to seduce, to withdraw by gifts’, and ‘Corruptêla & corruptio’ carriedconnotations of ‘depraving’ and ‘falsifying’.

126. T. Floyd (1600) Picture of a Perfit Common Wealth, Describing as Well theOffices of Princes and Inferiour Magistrates over Their Subiects (London: SimonStafford).

127. J. Bodin (1955) [1576] Six Books of the Commonwealth, M.J. Tooley (trans.)(Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 164–5.

128. Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption, p. 9; J.G. Harris (1998) Foreign Bodiesand the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 61.


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129. W. Prest (1995) ‘William Lambarde, Elizabethan Law Reform, and EarlyStuart Politics’, Journal of British Studies 34 (4), 465, 468–9. It was ElizabethI who apparently described him as ‘good and honest Lambarde’.

130. W.L. (1631) The Just Lawyer His Conscionable Complaint against Auricularor Private Informing and Soliciting of Judges (London: Printed by GeorgePurslowe), pp. 2–7, 18. According to Prest, this is a heavily edited versionof one of Lambarde’s tracts from 1590 (Prest, ‘William Lambarde’, 474–5).

131. Hurstfield, ‘Political Corruption’, 24–6.132. Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption, p. 161. Prest has argued that this

rather modern-sounding notion of corruption could exist alongside thewidespread acceptance of patron–client relations in the award and perfor-mance of public office (Prest, ‘William Lambarde’, 468–9).

133. Downame, Foure Treatises, pp. 214, 216.134. Ibid., pp. 223, 227.135. W. Lambarde (1635) Archion, or A Commentary Upon the High Courts of Justice

in England (London: Printed for Daniel Frere), pp. 93–5. See also Johnson,Essais, pp. 47–8.

136. Ibid., p. 97. The word ‘coney’ or ‘conny’ meant a rabbit caught for the table.See note 104.

137. T. Scot (1631) God and the King, in a Sermon Preached at the Assizes Holdenat Bury St Edmonds, June 13, 1631 (Cambridge: Printed by ‘the Printers tothe Universitie’), pp. 16–17. Thomas Scott also invoked a separation of ‘pri-vate’ and ‘publique’ persons in the officers of the law: when they ‘doe theirown wills against, and not with the will of the state (that is, the law) thenthey become private persons . . . because they cease to be executors of thelaw’ (T. Scott (1624) Vox Regis in Vox Populi, Vox Dei, Vox Regis, Digitus Dei(London), p. 20).

138. Scot did not restrict himself to expatiating on the danger of allowing friend-ship to sway judgement, but also ‘unbridled affections’, commenting to hisjudicial listeners that ‘when ye robe your bodies, ye should also apparrellyour mindes with calmed affections’. (Scot, God and King, p. 17). WilliamAmes also based on Biblical passages his admonitions against judges receiv-ing ‘bribes’ because it ‘bendeth the inclination of the [judge’s] mind’ bywhich ‘judgement is either corrupted . . . [or] sold’ (W. Ames (1975) [1639]Conscience With the Power and Cases Thereof, facsimile reprint, (Amsterdam:Theatrum Orbis Terrarum), p. 284).

139. Parliament of England and Wales (no date) [1620] A Collection of the Proceed-ings in the House of Commons Against Lord Verulam, Viscount St Albans, LordChancellor of England, for Corruption and Bribery, 3rd ed. (London: Printed forA. More), pp. 5–10. As Sir Robert Philips presented it, ‘If the great Dispenserof the King’s Conscience be corrupt, who can have any courage to pleadbefore him?’ (pp. 11–12). Others cast doubt on the veracity of witnesseswho gave the bribes, but Sir Edward Coke replied ‘you will make Bribery tobe unpunish’d, if he who carrieth the Bribe shall not be a witness’. (p. 16).

140. ‘Impeachment of Lord Chancellor Bacon, 1621’ in J.R. Tanner (1952)Constitutional Documents of the Reign of King James I A.D. 1603–1625with an Historical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),pp. 332–3, 329.

141. Hurstfield, ‘Political Corruption’, p. 22.


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142. Peck, ‘Monopolizing Favour’, pp. 65–6; also R.G. Asch (1991) ‘The Revivalof Monopolies: Court and Patronage during the Personal Rule of CharlesI, 1629–1640’ in Asch and Burke (eds) Princes, Patronage, pp. 358–9, 374–6.For claims and counter claims of ‘corruption’ and bribery, see ‘Sir RobertBannister to . . . ’, J. Bruce (ed.) (1868) Calendar of State Papers, DomesticSeries, Charles I, 1637 (London: Longmans), p. 334; Petition of EndymionPorter and Sir John Millisent, February 1633’, in J. Bruce (ed.) (1862) Cal-endar of State Papers, Domestic, 1631–1633, p. 552; ‘An Ordinance for thebetter raysing and levying of Marinors, Saylors, and others . . . , 3 Febru-ary 1642/3’, in C.H Firth and R.S. Rait (eds) (1911) Acts and Ordinances ofthe Interregnum 1642–1660, Volume 1, 1642–1649, (London: His Majesty’sStationery Office), p. 73.

143. Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption, p. 203. The same point has beenmade about discourse on corruption in Early Modern Germany; see Asch,‘Corruption and Punishment?’ pp. 104–5.

144. Anon. (1953) Mercurius Alethes: or, An Humble Petition of the Corrupt Party,Dissolved at Westminster, April 20. 1653. (London), p. 8. For the implicationsof the King’s execution and the Rump parliament for the discourse of thebody politic, see M.S.R. Jenner (2002) ‘The Roasting of the Rump: Scatologyand the Body Politic in Restoration England’, Past and Present 177, 96–102;T.P. Anderson (2006) Performing Early Modern Trauma from Shakespeare toMilton (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 171–89.

145. ‘King Charls his Speech made upon the Scaffold . . . 1649’ (London: PeterCole, 1649).

146. M. Braddick (2009) God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the EnglishCivil Wars (London: Penguin), pp. 577–80.

147. Hale, Body Politic, pp. 77–9; also P. Burke (1998) ‘The Demise of RoyalMythologies’ in A. Ellenius (ed.) Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitima-tion (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 245, 247. Harris contends that themajor intellectual cause of the decline of the metaphor was the declineof ‘humoral’ theories of disease (Harris, Foreign Bodies, p. 142). Nonethe-less, the metaphor retained something of its traditional prestige, if only asa commonplace. See, for example, the preface to C.G. Cock (1656) England’sCompleat Law-Judge, and Lawyer (London: Printed for Edmund Paxton); and‘Lover of the Laws’ (1659) A Vindication of the Laws of England as They AreNow Established (London: Printed for John Starkey), pp. 1–2.

148. J. Selden (1892) Table-Talk, S.H. Reynolds (ed., intro., notes) (Oxford:Clarendon Press), p. 89.

149. J. Milton (1847) [1641] Reformation in England, and the Causes That HithertoHave Hindered It in The Prose Works of John Milton (Philadelphia: JohnW. Moore), pp. 5–6, 19.

150. See, for instance, Anon. (1650) Proposals Concerning the Chancery. Wherein ItIs Set Forth the Desires of Divers Well-Affected-Persons, for the Regulating of theHigh-Court of Chancery, and the Proceedings There; and Abolishing of SeveralFees, Offices, and Officers, thereunto Belonging (London: Printed by WilliamEllis), p. 2. See also, ‘The Information of Marchmont Nedham respect-ing a [5th Monarchist] meeting held at Blackfriars on Monday evening,19 December 1653’, in M.A.E. Green (ed.) (1879) Calendar of State Papers,Domestic, 1653–1654 (London: Longman and Co), pp. 304–6.


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151. T. Faldo (1649) Reformation of Proceedings at Law. By Way of Petition, Dedi-cated to the Honourable Committee of Parliament, for the Reformation of Courtsof Justice, and Proceedings at Law (Southwarke: Printed by H. Hils), p. 9.

152. Ibid., p. 15. Later in the century, Sir Matthew Hale invoked corruptionto articulate a distinction between the realms of politics and religion,castigating those who ‘corrupt’ the ‘Simplicity and Purity’ of Christianityby . . . upholding Power, Wealth, or Interest (M. Hale (1684) The Judgement ofthe Late Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale, of the Nature of True Religion,the Causes of Its Corruption and the Churches Calamity, by Mens Additions andViolences: with the Desired Cure (London: Printed for B. Simmons), pp. 9, 24).

153. J. Warr (1649) The Corruption and Deficiency of the Lawes of England SoberlyDiscovered . . . (London: Printed for G. Calvert), p. 1–2.

154. This and the following quote from Warr, Corruption, pp. 15–6.155. Ibid., p. 17. ‘The notion of “corrupt interests” as a way of decrying monop-

olies, tithes, and the Royal will was also employed’ in G. Baldwin, S. Turner,P. Travers et al. (1652) The Onely Right Rule for Regulating the Lawes andLiberties of the People of England . . . (London), pp. 1, 7, 10.

156. D.W. (1656) A Perspicuous Compendium of Several Irregularities and Abusesin the Present Practice of the Common Laws of England (London: Printed byT. Lock), p. 2; Baldwin et al., The Onely Right Rule, p. 1.

157. Burke, ‘Tradition and Experience’, pp. 139–43. See, for example, W. Leach(1652) The Bribe-Takers of Jury-Men, Partiall, Dishonest, and Ignorant, Dis-covered and Abolished; and, Honest, Judicious, Able, and Impartiall Restored(London: Printed by E. Coates). Here, Leach complains that local sheriffsand jurors were particularly prone to partiality and corruption from localbusinesses, leading to the perversion of justice.

158. T. Hobbes (1994) [1640] The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, HumanNature, De Corpore Politico, J.C.A. Gaskin (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress), Part I, XIX, p. 107.

159. T. Hobbes (1996) [1651] Leviathan, R. Tuck (ed.) (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), Part I, XVI, 111–14; L. Foisneau (2007) ‘Omnipo-tence, Necessity and Sovereignty: Hobbes and the Absolute and OrdinaryPowers of God and King’ in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’ Leviathan,P. Springborg (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 282.

160. A. Blau (2009) ‘Hobbes on Corruption’, History of Political Thought 30 (4),601. Blau argues that Hobbes was concerned primarily with corrupt mentalstates (612).

161. Authorship of the Horae is disputed. We follow the consensus amongHobbes scholars in attributing them to his pupil, Cavendish. SeeN. Malcolm (2007) Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years War;an Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press),p. 7.

162. T. Hobbes [attrib.] (1995) [1620] ‘A Discourse of Rome’ in N.B. Reynoldsand A.W. Saxonhouse (eds) Three Discourses (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress), p. 81.

163. See Hobbes [attrib.], ‘A Discourse Upon the Beginning of Tacitus’, p. 51 andHobbes [attrib.], ‘A Discourse of Laws’, pp. 108–9, both in Three Discourses.Thomas Forde also connected the corruption of the human body to the cor-ruption or dissolution of polities: ‘Kingdoms and Common-wealths must


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needs be subject to the like mutability, and corruption, as the men are ofwhom they are compounded’. While Forde’s was a statement on the univer-sal corruption of all earthly things, a position that Hobbes was to re-statelater in Leviathan, his concern with corruption here implied that corrup-tion (as abuse of office) could be controlled or averted, even if physicalcorruption could not (Forde, Lusus Fortunae, p. 73).

164. Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, XXVI, p. 183.165. Ibid., XXVI, p. 236.166. T. Hobbes (1998) [1641] On the Citizen, R. Tuck and M. Silverthorne (eds)

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Ch. 13, § 17, p. 152.167. J. Harrington (1977) [1656] The Commonwealth of Oceana in J.G.A. Pocock

(ed.) The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press), pp. 161–70, 269–70, 299, 303, 312.

168. J. Barnouw (1986) ‘American Independence: Revolution of the RepublicanIdeal; A Response to Pocock’s Construction of “The Atlantic Republican Tra-dition” ’ in P.J. Korshin (ed.) The American Revolution and Eighteenth-CenturyCulture (New York: AMS Press), p. 63.

169. Harrington, Oceana, p. 202; Rahe, Against Throne and Altar, pp. 329–30.170. A. Sidney (1996) [1664–5] Court Maxims, H.W. Blom, E.H. Mulier and

R. Janse (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 131–3. Thefollowing quotation comes from these pages.

171. A. Sidney (1990) [1681–2] Discourses Concerning Government (Indianapolis:Liberty Classics), pp. 51, 135, 184–5, 229, 252.

172. Ibid., pp. 212–13.173. Forset, A Comparative Discourse, p. 73.174. Sidney, Discourses, pp. 141–2, 185. Onnekink argues that from the 1660s,

even the institution of the royal favourite, so often associated with the cor-ruption of royal patronage, was more or less obsolete (D. Onnekink (2006)‘ “Mynheer Benting now rules over us”: The 1st Earl of Portland and theRe-emergence of the English Favourite, 1689–99’, English Historical ReviewCXXI (492), 693–713.

175. W. Temple (1932) [1673] Observations upon the United Provinces of theNetherlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 66.

5 Ideological Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain

1. See, for example, Bossuet’s references to corruption as a decay ordegeneration, and as flattery and gifts that ‘blind the eyes of the wise’(J.B. Bossuet (1990) [1677–79/1700] Politics Drawn From the Very Wordsof Holy Scripture, P. Riley (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),Bk I, Art. iv, p. 20; and Bk VIII, Art. v, pp. 281–2). In Robert Gould’ssatire (1693), The Corruption of the Times by Mony (London: Printed forM. Wotton), avarice and corruption were linked without any invocationof metaphors of disease or the body politic. Also, Anon. (1660) SpeculumPolitiae, Or, England’s Mirrour: Being a Looking-Glass for the Body Politick ofthis Nation (London: Printed for S.B.). The whole idea of organologicalcorrespondences informing degenerative corruption was satirised by thisRoyalist author who likened the world to a ‘large Tennis-Court of Nature . . . ’


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(p. 2); he lambasted the Parliamentary ‘state physicians’ who left the ‘bodypolitick labouring under a convulsion of errours’ (pp. 11–12).

2. P. Corrigan and D. Sayer (1985) ‘From Theatre to Machine: Old Corruption’in P. Corrigan and D. Sayer (eds) The Great Arch: English State Formation asCultural Revolution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), p. 89.

3. W.D. Rubinstein (1983) ‘The End of “Old Corruption” in Britain1780–1860’, Past and Present 101 (1), 65.

4. B. Mandeville (1924) [1724] The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices,Publick Benefits, Vol. I, F.B. Kaye (commentary) (Oxford: Clarendon Press),p. 22.

5. Undated memo (1710–15?) Blenheim Papers, Vol. CCLXVIII, British LibraryAdditional MSS 61368. See also J.A.W. Gunn (1983) Beyond Liberty andProperty: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press), pp. 194–5.

6. J. Innes (2002) ‘Changing Perceptions of the State in the Late Eighteenthand Early Nineteenth Centuries’, Journal of Historical Sociology 15, 109. JohnLocke was clearly aware of the danger of corruption being used to sub-orn elected representatives to betray their trust (J. Locke (1988) [1690]Two Treatises of Government, P. Laslett (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press), § 222, p. 413). Mark Knights argues that Locke was involvedin campaigns for electoral reform and commented on draft Bills for thatpurpose in 1699 (M. Knights (2011) ‘John Locke and Post-RevolutionaryPolitics: Electoral Reform and the Franchise’, Past and Present 213,72–6).

7. See, for example, W.E.H. Lecky (1878–90) A History of England in the Eigh-teenth Century, 2nd edn (London: Longmans), Vol. I, pp. 366–73, 434–51;E. Hellmuth (1999) ‘Why Does Corruption Matter? Reforms and ReformMovements in Britain and Germany in the Second Half of the EighteenthCentury’ in T.C.W. Blanning and P. Wende (eds) Reform in Great Britainand Germany 1750–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 19–21,22–3; J.A. Phillips (1979) ‘The Structure of Electoral Politics in UnreformedEngland’, The Journal of British Studies 19, 76–100. ‘Reversions’ denoted ‘theright of succession to an office or place of emolument after the death orretirement of a holder’, which allowed office holders to pass on valuablepositions to family members.

8. I.S. Ross (1975) ‘Political Themes in the Correspondence of Adam Smith’,The Scottish Tradition 5, 11.

9. Anon. (1738) City Corruption and Mal-Administration Display’d; Occasion’dby the Ill Management of the Public Money in General: with Some Remarks uponthe Modest Enquiry into the Conduct of the Court Alderman, and Addressed tothe Citizens of London against the ensuing Election for Common-Council Men.By a Citizen (London: Printed for J. Roberts, Warwick Lane), p. 3. See alsoT. Friedman (1980) ‘The Rebuilding of Bishopsgate: A Case of Architectureand Corruption in Eighteenth Century London’, Guildhall Studies in LondonHistory 4, 75–90.

10. See, for example, M. Durey (1987) ‘William Cobbett, Military Corrup-tion and London Radicalism in the Early 1790s’, Proceedings of theAmerican Philosophical Society 131 (4), 348–66; Prest, ‘Judicial Corruption’,67–95; W.T. Gibson (1993) ‘Nepotism, Family, and Merit: The Church of


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England in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Family History 18 (20),179–90.

11. Prest, ‘Judicial Corruption’, 86–91.12. Crosfeild first advertised his interest in the reform of the navy and maritime

trade in his (1693) England’s Glory Reviv’d, Demonstrated in Several Proposi-tions . . . (London). Crosfeild and his campaign have also been explored byM. Knights (2007) ‘Parliament, Print and Corruption in Later Stuart Britain’,Parliamentary History 26 (1), 53–9.

13. P. Seaward (2010) ‘Sleaze, Old Corruption and Parliamentary Reform:An Historical Perspective on the Current Crisis’, The Political Quarterly 81(1), 41.

14. D.W. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, and S. Handley (2002) The History of Parlia-ment: The House of Commons 1690–1715. I: Introductory Survey and Appendices(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 259.

15. Much of the national debt was offset by public credit that was seen toincrease the crown’s patronage powers (J.G.A. Pocock (1972) ‘Virtue andCommerce in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3(1), 119–20). For further discussion of the problems of patronage in theseventeenth century, see Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption.

16. Hellmuth, ‘Why Does Corruption Matter?’, pp. 19–21. See also J. Brewer(1976) Party, Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 249ff. 9.

17. Pocock, ‘Virtue and Commerce’, 119–20.18. I. Kramnick (1990) Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press), p. 194.19. D. Defoe (1979) [1701] ‘The Freeholder’s Plea’ in L.A. Curtis (ed.) The

Versatile Defoe (London: George Prior), p. 258.20. Though sometimes dismissed as a ‘dead metaphor’, the body politic and

the imagery of political health, disease or life-cycles continues to resonatetoday. See, for example, A. Musolff (2004) Metaphor and Political Dis-course: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan), pp. 83–114.

21. Mandeville, Fable, Vol. I, p. 105. This does not mean that the metaphorpassed into complete obsolescence, but its use rarely conveyed anything‘new or interesting’ in political analysis, and the complex correspon-dences between social groups and bodily organs seems to have carriedever less explanatory weight. On the gradual decline of the metaphor ineighteenth-century thought, see P. Ihalainen (2009) ‘Towards an ImmortalPolitical Body: The State Machine in Eighteenth-Century English PoliticalDiscourse’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 5 (1), 4–47.

22. M. Potter (2003) ‘War Finance and Absolutist State Development in EarlyModern Europe: An Examination of French Venality in the SeventeenthCentury’, Journal of Early Modern History 7 (1–2), 120–47.

23. P. Seaward (1988) The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the OldRegime, 1661–1667 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 128–30,244–6.

24. H.T. Dickinson (1977) Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Methuen), pp. 92–118.


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25. I. Kramnick (1994) ‘Corruption in Eighteenth-Century English andAmerican Political Discourse’ in R.K. Matthews (ed.) Virtue, Corruption, andSelf-Interest: Political Values in the Eighteenth Century (Bethlehem, PA: LehighUniversity Press), p. 56.

26. See, for example, A. Ward (1964) ‘The Tory View of Roman History’, Studiesin English Literature: 1500–1900 4 (3), 422–9.

27. M. Lindemann (2012) ‘Dirty Politics or “Harmonie”? Defining Corruptionin Early Modern Amsterdam and Hamburg’, Journal of Social History 45(3), 589; G. Stratmann (2007) ‘Representations of Political Corruption in18th-Century Literature’, Anglia – Zeitschrift fur englische Philologie 125 (3),pp. 484–500.

28. C. Robbins (1958) ‘ “Discordant Parties”: A Study of the Acceptance of Partyby Englishmen’, Political Science Quarterly 73 (4), 519–27.

29. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, pp. 102–3.30. See Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 407, 427.31. Ibid., p. 427ff.32. M.M. Goldsmith (1987) ‘Liberty, Luxury and the Pursuit of Happiness’

in A. Pagden (ed.) The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 225–51, 248 (concerningMandeville); Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 487 (on Court ideology).

33. Ibid.34. See J.G.A. Pocock (1985) Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press), p. 48.35. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, pp. 106–11, 114–15; see also E. Stephens

(1701) The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late Houseof Commons (London).

36. T. Gordon (1744) The Works of Sallust, Translated into English with PoliticalDiscourses upon that Author (London: Printed for R. Ware), p. 93. Bayle alsospoke of anger and flattery as sources of corruption; see P. Bayle (2000)[1697] Dictionnaire Historique et Critique in Political Writings, S. Jenkinson(ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 34, 66.

37. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 402, 466–77.38. Ibid., pp. 361–400. This depiction of tyranny and corruption also owed

much to Tacitus (Soll, ‘Pocock’s Atlantic Republicanism Thesis’, 27–9).39. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 468–72.40. Pocock, ‘The Atlantic Republican Tradition’, 7–9. Levillain traces the similar

uses of Tacitus in Anglo-Dutch republican discourse in the late seven-teenth century (C.-E. Levillain (2005) ‘William III’s Military and PoliticalCareer in Neo-Roman Context, 1672–1702’, The Historical Journal 48 (2),323, 332).

41. Jacob, ‘Eighteenth-Century Republican’, 14–15; J. Smail (2005) ‘Credit,Risk, and Honour in Eighteenth-Century Commerce’, Journal of BritishStudies 44, 445–8; F. De Bruyn (2000) ‘Reading Het groote der dwaasheid:an Emblem Book of the Folly of Speculation in the Bubble Year 1720’,Eighteenth-Century Life 24, 12, 33.

42. T.L. Pangle (1990) The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision ofthe American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University ofChicago Press), p. 30; D. Hayton (1990) ‘Moral Reform and Country Politics


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in the Late Seventeenth-Century House of Commons’, Past and Present 128(1), 48–89.

43. J. Brewer (1989) The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), p. 74. Also Gunn, Beyond Liberty andProperty, p. 14.

44. See, for example, R. Crosfeild (1704) England’s Warning-Piece (London), p. 1.Here, Crosfeild couches his attack on corruption in terms of a declineof ‘vertue’, leading to faction and oppression. Later in the pamphlet hedecries the seeking and vying among parliamentarians for ‘employments’or appointment to sinecures under the guise of public office, and the receiptof pensions from the crown (p. 7).

45. D. Lieberman (2006) ‘The Mixed Constitution and the Common Law’ inM. Goldie and R. Wokler (eds) The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-CenturyPolitical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 317–18. ForLocke, corruption in the form of the temptations of office, such as luxuryand flattery, was the means by which rulers came to see their interests asseparate from the people’s, leading inevitably to arbitrary rule (Locke, TwoTreatises, § 111, p. 343; §138, p. 361).

46. A. Fletcher (1979) ‘The First Discourse’ from Two Discourses ConcerningAffairs of Scotland; written in the year 1698 in D. Daiches (ed.) Fletcher ofSaltoun, Selected Writings (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press), p. 29.

47. A. Fletcher (1979) [1704] An Account of a Conversation Concerning A RightRegulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind in Daiches (ed.)Fletcher of Saltoun, p. 109.

48. A. Shaftesbury (2001) [1737] Sensus Communis; an Essay on the Freedomof Wit and Humour in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,Vol. I (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund), p. 81.

49. This was the view put forward by Charles Davenant in his Essay upon PublicVirtue, which Levillain maintains was probably written in the mid-1690s atthe height of the ‘moral reform’ movement (Levillain, ‘William III’s Militaryand Political Career’, p. 344); J. Innes (2009) Inferior Politics: Social Problemsand Social Policies in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress), pp. 180–1.

50. Knights, ‘Parliament, Print and Corruption’, 59–60; R. Crosfeild (1696)A Dialogue Between a Modern Courtier and an Honest English Gentleman(London), pp. 27–8. As Crosfeild later pointed out, this Dialogue earnedhim six weeks in prison (R. Crosfeild (1701) Corrupt Ministers, the Cause ofPublick Calamities; or, the Interest of the King and his People, One (London),p. 12).

51. Ibid., p. 24.52. Formerly Lord Danby and Marquess of Carmarthen, Osborne was created

Duke of Leeds in 1694. As Lord Danby, Osborne had been impeached forhigh treason in 1678 (E. Vallance (2007) The Glorious Revolution: 1688 –Britain’s Fight for Liberty (London: Abacus), pp. 34–5).

53. England and Wales Parliament (1695) A Collection of the Debates and Pro-ceedings in Parliament, in 1694–1695 Upon the Inquiry into the Late Briberiesand Corrupt Practices (London), Preface, p. iii.

54. As Lord Chancellor, Macclesfield made use of large sums of moneybelonging to suitors in the court of Chancery, apparently investing


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it in South Sea stock. It was accepted practice for such sums to beused by Chancery officers to make loans and earn interest, but notto lose it on speculation. Macclesfield was also accused of sellingChancery offices and accepting large bribes (R.R. Neild (2002) PublicCorruption: The Dark Side of Social Evolution (London: Anthem Press),pp. 111–12).

55. Mandeville, Fable, Vol. I, p. 31.56. J. Whiston (1689?) To the Honourable the Commons of England Assembled

in Parliament. A Short Account of One of the Grand Grievances of the Nation,Humbly Presented by James Whiston (London), p. 2.

57. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 426–7, 452–8.58. J. Trenchard and T. Gordon (1995) ‘No. 84, July 7, 1722’ in R. Hamowy (ed.)

Cato’s Letters; or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious (Indianapolis: LibertyFund), Vol. III, pp. 81–5.

59. J. Black (2000) A System of Ambition? British Foreign Policy 1660–1793(Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing), pp. 126–7.

60. Trenchard and Gordon, ‘No. 14, January 28, 1720’, Cato’s Letters,Vol. I, p. 76.

61. D. Defoe (1701) The Free Holder’s Plea Against Stock-Jobbing Elections ofParliament Men (London), pp. 8, 15–20.

62. Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis, pp. 67–8; Miscellaneous Reflections on the SaidTreatises, and Other Critical Subjects, in Characteristicks, Vol. III, p. 127; andSoliloquy, or Advice to an Author, in Characteristicks, Vol. I, p. 136.

63. Anon. (1719) The Character of an Independent Whig (London: Printed forJ. Roberts), p. 21. The following quotation is also from this page.

64. E. Budgell (1733) A Short History of Prime Ministers in Great Britain (London:Printed by H. Haines), p. 6; T. McGeary (1998) ‘Farinelli in Madrid:Opera, Politics, and the War of Jenkins’ Ear’, The Musical Quarterly 82 (2),395–6.

65. C. Gerrard (1990) ‘The Castle of Indolence and the Opposition to Walpole’,The Review of English Studies 41 (161), 50–1, 58; J.C. Beasley (1981) ‘Portraitsof a Monster: Robert Walpole and Early English Prose Fiction’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 14 (4), 406–31. For contemporary examples of anti-Walpoleliterature, see T. Gordon (1743) Francis, Lord Bacon: Or, the Case of Private andNational Corruption, and Bribery Impartially Consider’d. Addressed to all SouthSea Directors . . . , 7th edn (London: Printed for J. Roberts); Anon. (1743?) TheHistory of Benducar the Great, Prime Minister to Muley Mahomet . . . (London:Printed for C. Davies); A. Hammond (1731?) Iago Display’d (London: Printedfor A. Moore).

66. M. Balen (2002) A Very English Deceit: The Secret History of the South SeaBubble and the First Great Financial Scandal (London: Fourth Estate), p. 91.

67. The South Sea Bubble disaster was preceded by the equally destructiveDarien Scheme disaster that ‘cost Scotland approximately a quarter ofthe country’s liquid capital’ (A. Broadie (2001) The Scottish Enlightenment(Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd), p. 7).

68. Trenchard and Gordon, ‘No. 9, December 31, 1720’ in Cato’s Letters,Vol. I, p. 52.

69. M.M. Goldsmith (1979) ‘Faction Detected: Ideological Consequences ofRobert Walpole’s Decline and Fall’, History 64 (210), 1.


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70. The Craftsman, or The Countryman’s Journal, ‘from 5 December 1726, spear-headed the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole. Backed by Bolingbrokeand William Pulteney, and edited by Nicholas Amhurst . . . the journal’savowed aim was to expose political craft’. Bolingbroke was a principalcontributor (J.A. Downie (2009) ‘The Craftsman, or, The Countryman’s Jour-nal’ in The Oxford Companion to British History, J. Cannon (ed.) (Oxford:Oxford University Press)).

71. H.S.J. Bolingbroke (1841) A Dissertation upon Parties in The Works ofLord Bolingbroke, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart), p. 31. See alsoH.S.J. Bolingbroke (1788) ‘Of the Constitution of Great-Britain’ in A Collec-tion of the Political Tracts by the Author of the Dissertation upon Parties, A NewEdition (London: Printed for T. Cadell), pp. 251–2. This was corruptionthat Nicholas Amhurst, the editor of The Craftsman, reminded his read-ers did not necessarily proceed by means of money, but instead by thesecret arrangement to trade parliamentary support in exchange for favour(N. Amhurst (1731) An Answer to a Late Pamphlet, Intituled, Observations onthe Writings of the Craftsman. Being a Third Letter of Advice to the People ofGreat-Britain and Ireland (London: Printed for R. Francklin), p. 17). ‘Of theConstitution of Great Britain’ first appeared in No. 375 of The Craftsman.Other kinds of favours included the kisses of attractive women in exchangefor votes; see E. Chalus (2005) ‘Kisses for Votes? The Kiss and Corruption inEighteenth-Century English Elections’ in K. Harvey (ed.) The Kiss in History(Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 122–47.

72. Bolingbroke, Dissertation, p. 66. Much later in the Dissertation, he identifiedthe regular augmentation in the civil list as one of the chief means by whichthe Crown was enabled to fund ever more corruption. He also spoke ofcorruption due to increasing taxes, by the multiplying of revenue officersand in the mysterious management of credit by ‘Stockjobbing’ (pp. 227–33).Also, Bolingbroke, ‘On Good and Bad Ministers’ in Political Tracts, p. 209;I. Kramnick (1968) Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in theAge of Walpole (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), p. 276. ‘Good and BadMinisters’ first appeared in No. 154 of The Craftsman.

73. Bolingbroke, Dissertation, p. 64. Elsewhere, Bolingbroke referred to the pos-sibility that the ‘People of Britain’ may ‘become so degenerate and base, as tobe induced by Corruption’ to elect corrupted representatives (p. 212). He alsospoke of the degeneracy of Rome ‘when Luxury grew up to favour Corrup-tion, and Corruption to nourish Luxury’ (p. 213). See also N. Amhurst (1747)Three Letters to the Members of the Present Parliament, with a Discourse on Kingsand Ministers of State (London: Printed for W. Ward), pp. 5, 23.

74. Bolingbroke, ‘On Luxury’ in Political Tracts, pp. 75–6. ‘On Luxury’ firstappeared in No. 29 of The Craftsman, 17 March 1727.

75. Bolingbroke, Dissertation, p. 116. Here, Bolingbroke identifies the internalcorruption of state as a greater threat to national security than foreignwar. See also Bolingbroke, ‘The Freeholder’s Political Catechism’, in PoliticalTracts, pp. 264–8.

76. Trenchard and Gordon, ‘No. 72, April &, 1722’, Cato’s Letters,Vol. III, p. 24.

77. Bolingbroke (1809) [1738–39] The Idea of a Patriot King in The Works ofthe Late Right Honourable Henry St John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, Vol. 4


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Notes 233

(London: printed for J. Johnson, et al.) pp. 246–8, 251–61; Q. Skinner (1974)‘The Principles and Practice of Opposition: The Case of Bolingbroke Ver-sus Walpole’ in N. McKendrick (ed.) Historical Perspectives. Studies in EnglishThought and Society (London: Europa Publications), p. 99.

78. T. Horne (1980) ‘Politics in a Corrupt Society: William Arnall’s Defense ofRobert Walpole’, Journal of the History of Ideas 41 (4), 603–11.

79. See the ‘Preface’ to Mandeville, Fable, p. 7.80. W. Arnall (1727) Clodius and Cicero: with Other Examples and Reasonings,

in Defence of Just Measures against Faction and Obloquy, Suited to the PresentConjuncture (London: Printed for J. Peele), p. 26.

81. Ibid., p. 28.82. Trenchard and Gordon, ‘No. 16, February 11, 1721’, Cato’s Letters,

Vol. I, p. 83.83. Ibid., ‘No. 24, April 8, 1721’, Cato’s Letters, Vol. I, p. 100; and ‘No. 60, Jan-

uary 6, 1722’, Cato’s Letters, Vol. II, p. 125. See also Gordon, Francis, LordBacon, p. 6.

84. P. Woodfine (2004) ‘Tempters or Tempted? The Rhetoric and Practice ofCorruption in Walpolean Politics’ in E. Kreike and W.C. Jordan (eds) CorruptHistories (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press), p. 185.

85. C. D’Avenant (1710) Sir Thomas Double at Court, and in High Preferments . . .

(London: Printed for J. Morphew), pp. 5, 10.86. S. Burtt (1992) Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 33–6, 80–4.87. H.C. Mansfield (1995) ‘Self-Interest Rightly Understood’, Political Theory 23

(1), 48–66.88. The Craftsman, 24 June 1727. This list is discussed in greater detail in

Woodfine, ‘Tempters or Tempted?’ pp. 167–96.89. The Craftsman, 24 June 1727.90. We use the term ‘new realism’ to differentiate it from the realism of the

ancient Epicureans, Machiavelli and Hobbes.91. A. Sidney (1683) Discourses Concerning Government, Ch. 2 (Classical

Liberals).92. S. Burtt (2004) ‘Ideas of Corruption in Eighteenth-Century England’ in

W.C. Heffernan and J. Kleinig (eds) Private and Public Corruption (Lanham,MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), p. 114.

93. Bolingbroke, Dissertation, p. 152.94. Bolingbroke, ‘On the Spirit of Patriotism’ in The Works of Lord Bolingbroke,

Vol. 2.95. C. D’Avenant (1701) Essays Upon I. The Ballance of Power. II. The Right of

Making War, Peace, and Alliances. III. Universal Monarchy (London: Printedfor J. Knapton), p. 5.

96. Gordon, Works of Sallust, p. 91.97. Ibid., pp. 97–8.98. J.G.A. Pocock (1977) ‘Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and the World View of the

Late Enlightenment’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 10 (3), 293.99. E. Gibbon (1994) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

6 vols, D. Womersley (ed.) (London: Penguin), Vol. III, Ch. XXVII, p. 66;Vol. IV, Ch. IIIVII, p. 520.

100. Ibid., Vol. IV, Ch. IIIVIII, p. 487.


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234 Notes

101. A. Ferguson (1996) [1767] An Essay on the History of Civil Society,F. Oz-Salzberger (intro., ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),passim.

102. Ibid., pp. 238–9; J.A. Bernstein (1978) ‘Adam Ferguson and the Idea ofProgress’, Studies in Burke and His Time 19 (2), 113.

103. A. Ferguson (1834) [1783] The History of the Progress and Termination of theRoman Republic (London: Jones and Company), pp. 169–70. Gibbon’s list ofcauses for the decline of Rome was similar, except for one important aspect:godlessness wasn’t the problem but rather the infiltration of Christianteachings that caused Roman degeneracy. Christian pacifism, coupled withthe belief that we should cultivate indifference to worldly existence, madecitizens unwilling to sacrifice for the sake of the empire (Gibbon, Declineand Fall, Vol. IV, Ch. III. viii, pp. 488–9).

104. At the impeachment hearing of the Duke of Leeds, it was noted that‘BRIBERY and CORRUPTION were the chief Causes of the Overthrowof . . . free Governments’, and that the ‘Ruine of the Roman Common-wealth’ was a result of the ‘Corruption with which they were overrun afterthey became Masters of Asia, and the plunder thereof’. (A Collection of theDebates and Proceedings in Parliament, in 1694–1695. Upon the Inquiry into theLate Briberies and Corrupt Practices, Preface, p. iii).

105. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. I, Ch. VI, p. 273.106. Ibid., Vol. I, Ch. X, p. 279.107. Ferguson, Essay, p. 141.108. L. Dickey (1986) ‘Historicising the “Adam Smith Problem”: Conceptual,

Historiographic, and Textual Issues’, The Journal of Modern History 58, 606.109. J. Sekora (1977) Luxury (London: Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 93.110. J. Brown (1757) An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times

(London: Printed for L. Davis and C. Reymers), pp. 29, 36, 39, 46, 73–4,151–3. See also M. Peltonen (2005) ‘Politeness and Whiggism, 1688–1732’,The Historical Journal 48 (2), 409–10.

111. J. Brown (1758) An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners andPrinciples of the Times . . . (London: Printed for L. Davis and C. Reymers),pp. 5–7.

112. The Craftsman, 24 June 1727.113. R. Mason (1998) ‘John Rae and Conspicuous Consumption’ in C. Lee,

D. Mair and O.F. Hamouda (eds) The Economics of John Rae (London:Routledge), p. 95.

114. Mandeville, Fable, I, p. 115.115. See Mandeville, ‘The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn’d Honest’ in Fable,

p. 22 and passim.116. Ibid., I, p. 117.117. Ibid., I, pp. 118–19.118. See Mandeville, Fable, I, Remark M, p. 130 especially.119. For a detailed discussion along these lines, see E.J. Hundert (1994)

The Enlightenment’s Fable: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 49–61; also M. Jack (1989)Corruption and Progress: The Eighteenth-Century Debate (New York: AMSPress), p. 49.

120. Mandeville, Fable, II, pp. 322–3.


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Notes 235

121. Ibid., II, p. 323.122. See Kaye, ‘Introduction to Mandeville’, Fable, I, pp. cxiv ff.123. D. Forbes (1954) ‘ “Scientific” Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar’,

Cambridge Journal 7, 643–70; D. Forbes (1975) ‘Sceptical Whiggism,Commerce and Liberty’ in A.S. Skinner and T. Wilson (eds) Essays on AdamSmith (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 179–201.

124. M. Goldsmith (1988) ‘Regulating Anew the Moral and Political Sentimentsof Mankind: Mandeville and the Scottish Enlightenment’, Journal of the His-tory of Ideas 49 (4), 602; D. Hume (1987) ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ inE.F. Miller (ed.) Essays Moral Political and Literary (Indiana: Liberty Classics),p. 280.

125. A. Smith (1976) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, D.D. Raphael and A.L. MacFie (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), VII.ii.4.11, p. 312 (hereafter TMS).

126. TMS, VII.ii.4.12, p. 313.127. A. Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,

R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), V.ii.k.3,p. 870 (hereafter WN).

128. Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, p. 272.129. TMS, VII.ii.4.12, p.313; WN, I.xi.c.7, pp. 180–2.130. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. II, Ch. I, p. 80. Similar ideas were articulated

by Hume (‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, p. 277); Mandeville, Fable, i, forexample pp. 25, 125, 130.

131. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. II, Ch. I, p. 81.132. J.G.A. Pocock (1976) ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic

Humanist and Philosophical Historian’, Daedalus 105 (3), 160.133. A. Ferguson (1792) Principles of Moral and Political Science: Being Chiefly a

Retrospect of Lectures Delivered in the College of Edinburgh, in Two Volumes(London: Printed for A. Strahan and T. Cadell; Edinburgh: W. Creech), II,pp. 326–7.

134. Ferguson, Essay, pp. 232–4.135. Ferguson, Principles, II, p. 500. Adam Smith expressed similar views (WN, II.

iii. 36, pp. 345–6).136. Ferguson, Principles, II, p. 372; Principles, I, pp. 254–5.137. Ferguson, Essay, pp. 138–9; Ferguson, Principles, II, p. 500, pp. 326–7. Earlier,

Francis Hutcheson had also approved of any commercial activity that wassocially useful, endorsing the institutions of private property, money lend-ing and the division of labour (Goldsmith, ‘Mandeville and the ScottishEnlightenment’, p. 600).

138. A. Ferguson (1978) [1769] Institutes of Moral Philosophy (New York: GarlandPublishing Company), p. 146.

139. Hayton, ‘Moral Reform’, 57.140. Ibid., 83; also H. Neville (1763) [1681] Plato Redivivus or a Dialogue Concern-

ing Government (London: Printed for A. Millar), third dialogue, p. 275.141. J.A.W. Gunn (1968) ‘ “Interest will not Lie”: A Seventeenth-Century

Political Maxim’, Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (4), 551–64. See alsoS. Hollander (1977) ‘Adam Smith and the Self-Interest Axiom’, Journal ofLaw and Economics 20 (1), 133–52.

142. R. Haines (1678) A Model of Government for the Good of the Poor and the Wealthof the Nation (London: Printed for D.M.), p. 5.


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236 Notes

143. S. Holmes (1995) Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 47. See also J. Mansbridge (1990)‘Review: Self-Interest in Political Life’, Political Theory 18 (1), 134.

144. Holmes, Passions and Constraint, p. 56.145. TMS, II.ii.3.1-3.146. WN, I.ii.2.147. TMS, III.6.7, pp. 173–4.148. TMS, III.3.9, p. 140; WN, V.i.e.29, p. 772.149. TMS, III.6.7, p. 173.150. Ibid., II.ii.2.1, p. 83.151. Ibid., II.ii.3.1-3.152. Ibid., III.6.9-10.153. WN, Vi.I.ii, p. 722.154. A. Smith (1978) [1762–3] Lectures on Jurisprudence, R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael

and P.G. Stein (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), (B), 327: 538(hereafter LJ (A) and (B)); LJ(A) v.124.

155. WN, V.i.g.24: 802–3.156. Ferguson’s schema is: ‘savage’, ‘barbarous’ and ‘polished’. See Ferguson,

Essay, pp. 80–105.157. Smith, WN, III.i.8: 380158. Smith, LJ(B), 149–50: 459159. Smith, WN, II. iii. 31: 343160. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. IV, Ch. VIII, pp. 494–6.161. Ferguson, Principles, I, pp. 190–2.162. Smith, TMS, II.6.7.163. WN, II.iv.4164. Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, p. 277.165. Ibid., p. 278166. This was in spite of the fact that Montesquieu ‘believed in the inevitable

tendency of every regime to decline’ (S.R. Krause (2002) ‘The UncertainInevitability of Decline in Montesquieu’, Political Theory 30 (5), 702).

167. C.-L. Montesquieu (1990) The Spirit of the Laws, A.M. Cohler, B.C. Millerand H.M. Stone (trans., eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), XX.i:338.

168. Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, pp. 270–1.169. Ibid., pp. 271–2.170. I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (1983) ‘Needs and Justice in the Wealth of Nations:

An Introductory Essay’ in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Econ-omy in the Scottish Enlightenment, I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (eds) (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press), p. 6. See also WN, I. i.11, pp. 23–4; also I.viii.35, pp. 95–6.

171. Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, p. 276. Hume does stipulate, how-ever, that overindulgence in luxuries, especially beyond one’s means, waspernicious (Ibid., pp. 268–9).

172. For a fuller discussion, see L. Hill (1997) ‘Adam Ferguson and the Paradoxof Progress and Decline’, History of Political Thought 18 (4), 677–706.

173. Ferguson, Essay, p. 232.174. Ibid., pp. 137–8, Ferguson’s emphasis. See also Principles, I, pp. 247–8.175. Ferguson, Essay, pp. 232–4. Also Jack, Corruption and Progress, pp. 144–6.


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Notes 237

176. Ferguson, Principles, I, p. 185.177. Hume, D. (1983) [1778] The History of England From the Invasion of Julius

Caesar to The Revolution in 1688 in Six Volumes, (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics).

178. Ibid., Vol. 2, XXIII, p. 522.179. WN, III.iv.5, pp. 412–14; also WN, III.iv.11–18, pp. 419–22. Gibbon

agreed that luxury consumption, paradoxically, had a levelling effect byencouraging wealth redistribution, however, he qualified this view bycommenting that ‘it might perhaps be more conducive to the virtue,as well as happiness, of mankind, if all possessed the necessaries, andnone the superfluities, of life’ (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. I, Ch. II, 5,p. 63–4).

180. C. Berry (1994) The Idea of Luxury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),pp. 157–8.

181. Hume, History, Vol. 4, Appendix III, p. 246; Hume, History, Vol. 5,‘Appendix to the Reign of James I’, p. 88. See also D. Wootton (1993)‘David Hume “The Historian” ’ in D.F. Norton (ed.) The CambridgeCompanion to David Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),pp. 292–3.

182. Ferguson, Essay, p. 225. See also Ferguson, Principles, II, p. 371.183. Ferguson, Roman Republic, p. 109.184. For a fuller discussion of this point, see L. Hill (2011) ‘Adam Smith on

Thumos and Irrational Economic Man’, European Journal of the History ofEconomic Thought 17 (4), 1–22.

185. TMS, VI.ii.2.17: 234.186. WN, IV.ix.51: 687.187. Ibid., IV.ii.9: 456188. LJ (A), 12–13: 8; LJ (B), 11: 401; LJ (A), i.24: 13.189. WN, I.x.c.44–5: 152.190. Ibid., I.x.c.14–16: 139–140. The laws of settlement are a similar restriction

on mobility (WN, I.x.c. 58–9: 156–7).191. Ibid., IV.ix. 51: 687–8.192. Ibid., IV.ix.51: 687.193. LJ (B), 306–7: 529.194. WN, V.i.b.16:718; V.i.b. 22: 721.195. Ibid., V.ii.b.4: 825–6.196. A. Smith (1987) ‘Letter 143 to William Cullen, 20 September 1774’ in The

Correspondence of Adam Smith, E.C. Mossner and I.S. Ross (eds) (Oxford:Oxford University Press), p. 173.

197. TMS, I.iii.3.5: 63.198. WN, II.iii.36; TMS, VII.ii.3.15 and III.5.8.199. Hume, History, Vol. 2, XIII, p. 71.

6 The Historical Vicissitudes of Corruption

1. Brewer, Sinews of Power, pp. xvii–xxi.2. Hellmuth, ‘Why Does Corruption Matter?’, p. 8. See also Brewer, Sinews of

Power.


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238 Notes

3. M. Ogborn (2002) ‘Wherein Lay the Late Seventeenth-Century State?Charles Davenant Meets Streynsham Master’, Journal of Historical Sociology15, 96–101, passim.

4. Brewer, Sinews of Power, pp. xvii–xxi.5. P. Harling and P. Mandler (1993) ‘From “Fiscal-Military” State to Laissez-

Faire State, 1760–1850’, The Journal of British Studies 32 (1), 47, 53–6.6. Ibid.; Harling and Mandler point out that state minimalism, professional-

ism and efficiency were largely ‘a reaction against the fiscal-military state,rather than an outgrowth of it’ (Ibid., 52–3).

7. The term ‘patrimonialism’ is Weberian in origin and denotes the organ-isation of government ‘as a directed extension of the royal household’(R. Bendix (1960) Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (London: Doubledayand Co.), p. 119, n. 7).

8. For a fuller discussion, see E.W. Cohen (1941) The Growth of the British CivilService, 1780–1939 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd).

9. P.J. Jupp (1990) ‘The Landed Elite and Political Authority in Britain, ca.1760–1850’, Journal of British Studies 29, 55–65.

10. P. Langford (2002) ‘The Management of the Eighteenth-CenturyState: Perceptions and Implications’, Journal of Historical Sociology 15,102–6, 105.

11. Innes, ‘Changing Perceptions of the State’, 112.12. Parliament of Great Britain (1975–6) ‘Seventh Report of the Commis-

sioners for Examining the Public Accounts, June 18, 1782’ in House ofCommons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, 145 vols, S. Lambert (ed.)(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources), 41:430.

13. Harling and Mandler, ‘From “Fiscal-Military” State’, 52–3.14. Woodfine, ‘Tempters or Tempted?’, p. 190.15. T. Davies (1977) [1777] The Characters of George the First, Queen Caroline, Sir

Robert Walpole, Mr Pulteney, Lord Hardwicke, Mr Fox, and Mr Pitt, Reviewd:With Royal and Noble Anecdotes, a Sketch of Lord Chesterfield’s Character(London), p. 18.

16. This shift began in 1689, with the reign of William of Orange, whichmarked the beginning of the transition from the personal rule of the Stuartsto the more Parliament-centred rule of the Hanoverians. For further discus-sion, see A.S. Foord (1947) ‘The Waning of the “Influence of the Crown” ’,English History Review 62, 484–507.

17. See Policraticus, pp. 66–7.18. Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, Ch. 2.19. The Craftsman, No. 51, p. 45.20. Trenchard and Gordon, ‘No. 14, January 28, 1721’, ‘The Unhappy State

Of Despotick Princes, Compared With The Happy Lot Of Such As Rule By SettledLaws . . . ’ in Cato’s Letters.

21. Nevertheless, although they were not more royalist than the king, theycertainly claimed to be ‘more royalist than his supporters’ (Brewer, Party,Ideology and Popular Politics, p. 167).

22. W. Johnson (1994) ‘Benjamin Robins during 1739–1742: “Called to aPublick Employment . . . . A Very Honourable Post” ’, Notes and Records ofthe Royal Society of London 48 (1), 38.


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Notes 239

23. P.N. Miller (1994) Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philoso-phy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),p. 105.

24. Goldsmith, ‘Faction Detected’, 3, 6, 13–19.25. Goldsmith, ‘Liberty, Luxury and the Pursuit of Happiness’, p. 227; on the

prevalence of civic humanism, see p. 232.26. See, for example, Trenchard and Gordon [1755] ‘Against Standing Armies’

in Cato’s Letters. On the Court, see Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment,p. 407.

27. A. Fletcher (1698) A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militia(Edinburgh).

28. Ferguson, Essay, p. 218; D. Forbes (1967) ‘Adam Ferguson and the Ideaof Community’ in D. Young and G.E. Davie (eds) Edinburgh in the Age ofReason: A Commemoration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 45.

29. J.C. Willke (1962) The Historical Thought of Adam Ferguson (Ann Arbor, MI:University Microfilms International), p. 148. The theme of the standingarmy as an instrument of corruption is also present in the writings ofShaftesbury, another of Ferguson’s sources.

30. Ferguson, Essay, pp. 213–20.31. A. Ferguson (1756) Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia

(London: R and J. Dodsley), p. 12.32. Ferguson, Essay, p. 138. See also Ferguson, Principles, I, p. 302 and Essay,

pp. 242–3.33. WN, I.i.10, p. 22.34. Ibid., I, p. 25.35. Ibid., V.i.a.40, p.706.36. Ibid., I.xi.i, p. 256; also I.xi.g, pp. 213–14.37. Ibid., V.i.a.39, p. 705; Ibid., i.a.40, p. 706.38. Ibid., V.ia–b, 44, p. 708.39. Ibid; B. Buchan (2013) ‘Pandours, Partisans, and Petite Guerre: Two Dimen-

sions of Enlightenment Discourse on War’, Intellectual History Review 23(3), 329–47.

40. For a fuller discussion, see L. Hill (2007) ‘Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson andKarl Marx on the Division of Labour’, Journal of Classical Sociology 7(3),339–66.

41. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. IV.iii. pp. 8–9. See also J. Black (1995)‘Empire and Enlightenment in Edward Gibbon’s Treatment of InternationalRelations’, The International History Review 17 (3), 441–8.

42. ‘Population growth in Scotland’s five main cities between 1755 and 1775was three times the national average’ (J.D. Brewer (1989) ‘Conjectural His-tory, Sociology and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: AdamFerguson and the Division of Labour’ in The Making of Scotland: Nation,Culture and Social Change, in D. McCrone, S. Kendrick, and P. Straw (eds)(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 25).

43. These changes became fully realised by the nineteenth century (J. Mahon(1982) ‘Engels and the Question about Cities’, History of European Ideas 3(1), 43–4). In all, there were over 5,000 individual Enclosure Acts involving21 per cent of land in England alone.


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240 Notes

44. LJ (A), 26: 340.45. TMS, VI.ii.1.21: 226; LJ (B), 210, 489.46. TMS, V.i.7–10. For a fuller discussion of this point, see Hill, ‘Adam Smith on

Thumos’, 1–22.47. E.R. Dodds (1973) The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek

Literature and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 17.48. For a fuller discussion, see Hill, ‘Division of Labour’.49. A. Ferguson (1996) ‘Separation of Departments’ in Y. Amoh (intro., ed.)

Collection of Essays (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co.), p. 143.50. Ferguson, Essay, pp. 63–4. See also Forbes, ‘Introduction’ to Essay, p.

xxv. William Robertson also took the view that ‘there can be no Soci-ety, where there is no Subordination’ (cited in D. Francesconi (1999)‘William Robertson on Historical Causation and Unintended Conse-quences’, Cromohs 4, 8).

51. See, for example, Hume, ‘Of Parties in General’, ‘Of Commerce’ and‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, pp. 59, 255–6, 272–3; also J. Robertson(1997) ‘The Enlightenment Above National Context: Political Economyin Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Naples’, The Historical Journal 40 (3),681–2.

52. F. McLynn (2004) 1759, The Year Britain Became Master of the World(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press), p. 388.

53. C.A. Bayly (1989) Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World1780–1830 (London/New York: Longman), pp. 136, 150–2; P.J. Marshall(2005) The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and Americac. 1750–1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 160, 183.

54. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. IV, Ch. IIIVIII, p. 487.55. I.S. Ross (1995) Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press),

pp. 252, 355–8.56. R. Bisset (1800) Life of Burke, 2nd edn (London: George Cawthorn), II,

p. 429. Nevertheless, they differed ‘in their thinking about the poor’, whileSmith ‘could be critical of Burke’s efforts as a legislator’ (Ross, Life of Smith,p. 355).

57. W.C. Dunn (1941) ‘Adam Smith and Edmund Burke: ComplementaryContemporaries’, Southern Economic Journal 7 (3), 341.

58. WN, IV.vii.c, 69–70, p. 619.59. Even though he describes British colonial policy as ‘[t] he best of them all’,

he adds that it ‘is only somewhat less illiberal and oppressive than that ofany of the rest (WN, IV.vii.b.63, p. 590).

60. E.R. Kittrell (1965) ‘The Development of the Theory of Colonizationin English Classical Political Thought’, Southern Economic Journal 31 (3),190.

61. WN, V.iii.92, p. 946.62. Hellmuth, ‘Why Does Corruption Matter?’, pp. 19–21. See also Brewer,

Party, Ideology and Popular Politics, p. 249f63. WN, IV.vii.c.9, p. 59264. Ibid., IV.vii.c.89, p. 630.65. Ibid., IV.iii.c.9, p. 493.66. Curtis, The Versatile Defoe, p. 244.


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Notes 241

67. Smith, ‘Letter 143 to William Cullen, 20 Sept. 1774’ in The Correspondence,p. 174.

68. WN, IV.vii.c.91, p. 63169. Ibid., IV.v.b.6, p. 52770. ‘Debate of March 30, 1772’ in Parliamentary History, Vol. 17, cols 355,

358, cited in E. Rothschild (2004) ‘Global Commerce and the Questionof Sovereignty in the Eighteenth-Century Provinces’, Modern IntellectualHistory 1 (1), 5.

71. ‘In Turkey and some other Oriental countries, a decree or mandate issuedby the sovereign; a royal order or grant; – generally given for special objects,as to a traveller to insure him protection and assistance’ (http://dict.die.net/firmaun/, date accessed 1 December 2012).

72. ‘Debate of April 13, 1772’ in Parliament of Great Britain (1813) The Parlia-mentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. 17(London: T.C. Hansard), cols 456–7. Along similar lines, Edmund Burkedeclared that ‘the spirit of an extensive and intricate trading interest per-vades the whole, always qualifying and often controlling, every generalidea of constitution and government’ (E. Burke (1981) [1769] Observationson a Late State of the Nation in P. Langford (ed.) The Writings and Speeches ofEdmund Burke, Vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 176, 194).

73. WN, V.ii.a.7, p. 819.74. Ibid., IV.vii.c.103, p. 638.75. Ibid., V.ii.a.7, p. 819. The EIC’s dependence upon the British government to

bail it out had had some disastrous consequences, the most infamous beingthe Boston Tea Party (Ross, Life of Smith, p. 261).

76. WN, IV.vii.c, p. 638; see also IV.vii.c, p. 641.77. Ibid., IV.vii.c.c, p. 641. For a fuller discussion, see L. Hill (2006) ‘Adam Smith

and the Theme of Corruption’, Review of Politics 68 (4), 636–62.78. Ross, Life of Smith, p. 251.79. A. Smith [February 1778] ‘Smith’s Thoughts on the State of the Contest

with America’, Correspondence, Appendix B, p. 382.80. Seaward, ‘Sleaze, Old Corruption and Parliamentary Reform’, 42–3;

C.C. O’Brien (1992) The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 115–16.

81. H.V. Bowen (2006) Business of Empire: The East India Company and Impe-rial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 197;P.J. Marshall (1997) ‘Burke and India’ in I. Crowe (ed.) Edmund Burke: hisLife and Legacy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), pp. 39–47; G.H. Can-non (1957) ‘Sir William Jones and Edmund Burke’, Modern Philology 54 (3),165–86.

82. W. Bolts (1772) Considerations on India Affairs; Particularly Respecting thePresent State of Bengal and its Dependencies (London: Printed for J. Almon),p. 212.

83. M. Neocleous (2004) ‘The Monstrous Multitude: Edmund Burke’s PoliticalTeratology’, Contemporary Political Theory 3, 80.

84. E. Burke (1965) [1785] ‘Burke to Phillip Francis, 10 December 1785’ inH. Furber (ed.) The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Vol. V, July 1782–June1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 243.


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242 Notes

85. The History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. Late Governor-General ofBengal, Before the High Court of Parliament in Westminster Hall, On anImpeachment by the Commons of Great-Britain, for High Crimes andMisdemeanours. Containing the Whole of the Proceedings and Debates, in bothHouses of Parliament . . . from February7, 1786, until his Acquittal, April 23,1795 (London: Printed for J. Debrett), Part I, p. 5.

86. The History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Part II, pp. 34–5; and Part VII,p. 116. Also Noonan, Bribes, p. 399.

87. The History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Part IV, p. 91.88. Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence (A), iv. 32–3, p. 212.89. The History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Part VI, pp. 49–70 (especially

his conclusion on 28 May 1793 (the 116th day of the impeachment));F.G. Whelan (1996) Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), pp. 230–60.

90. E. Burke (2000) ‘Speech in Reply, 28 May 1794’ in P.J. Marshall (ed.) Writingsand Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. VII, India: The Hastings Trial 1789–1794(Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 260–5; and The History of the Trial of WarrenHastings, Part I, pp. 4–5, 13.

91. E. Burke (1981) ‘Speech on the Opening of Impeachment, 15, 16,18, 19 February 1788’ in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke,Vol. VI, India: The Launching of the Hastings Impeachment, 1786–1788, ed.P.J. Marshall (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 346.

92. E. Burke (1981) ‘Speech on Rohilla War Charge, 1 June 1786’ in Writingsand Speeches, Vol. VI, p. 109.

93. E. Burke (1981) ‘Fox’s India Bill, 1 December 1783’ in The Writings andSpeeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. V, India: Madras and Bengal 1774–1785,p. 381. On Burke’s use of the Cicero-Verres controversy, see Burke (1965)‘Burke to William Baker, 22 June 1784’ in The Correspondence, Vol. V,p. 155.

94. S. Muthu (2003) Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press), p. 7.

95. D. Stockton (1971) Cicero: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press), pp. 45–8. See Cicero (1959) The Verrine Orations, Vol. 1,C.H.G. Greenwood (trans.) (Cambridge: William Heinemann Ltd), p. 79,I.4§13; p. 193 (26§67); also (I.24§63–§70).

96. Burke, ‘Speech on Opening’, p. 380.97. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires, pp. 244–5; V. Pavarala (2004)

‘Cultures of Corruption and the Corruption of Culture: The East India Com-pany and the Hastings Impeachment’ in Kreike and Jordan (eds) CorruptHistories, pp. 300–5.

98. Burke, ‘Speech on Opening’, p. 41299. Burke (1793) Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: J. Parsons),

pp. 40, 79–84.100. Burke, ‘Speech on Opening’, pp. 282–3.101. Ibid., p. 283.102. The History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Part VIII, pp. 202–3.103. Ibid., pp. 223–7. While the Bishop of Rochester sided with Thurlow’s

construction of corruption, Lord Caernarvon sided with Loughborough.In relation to the subsidiary claim that Hastings had sold public offices


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Notes 243

in breach of statutes 5 and 6 of Edward VI c.16, Thurlow appealed to prece-dent since the time of those statutes, by which limited sale of office was anestablished practice (pp. 227–8).

104. The Bishop of Rochester helpfully brought forward Biblical prece-dents of present-giving as the immemorial ‘custom of the East’, suchthat Hastings could not fail to accept presents offered without givingoffence (The History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Part VIII, pp. 239,257).

105. Smith, ‘Edmund Burke’, 70–94.106. Seaward, ‘Sleaze, Old Corruption and Parliamentary Reform’, 43–4.

Conclusion

1. See, for example, Philp, ‘Defining Political Corruption’, 436–62.2. Bayly, Imperial Meridian, pp. 117–193. K. Wilson (1995) The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in

England 1715–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 186–7.4. Burke, ‘Speech on the Opening of Impeachment’, p. 375.5. Rubinstein, ‘The End of “Old Corruption” ’, 57, 60, 66.6. Sir D.N. Chester (1981) The English Administrative System, 1780–1870

(London/New York: Clarendon Press), pp. 123–40.7. Her Majesty, the Queen, apparently had ‘grave misgivings’ about the

reforms, on the grounds that competitive examination would populatethe public offices with ‘low people without the breeding or feelings ofgentlemen’ (for a fuller discussion, see Hughes, ‘Civil Service Reform’,1–51).

8. Rubinstein, ‘The End of “Old Corruption” ’, 60, 66.9. Ibid., 60; as did numerous radical journals like The Independent Whig and

The Poor Man’s Guardian (P. Harling (1995) ‘Rethinking Old Corruption’,Past and Present 147 (1), 134–5).

10. For example, until 1858, it continued to enjoy a monopoly in the probatingof wills (Rubenstein, ‘End of “Old Corruption” ’, 70).

11. Ibid., 65–6.


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Williamson, G. (1935) ‘Mutability, Decay, and Seventeenth-Century Melancholy’,ELH 2 (2), 121–50.


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Index

acquisitiveness, 73, 83–4, 150adiaphthorõs, 16Adrian IV, 63Aeschines, 21, 36, 39Aesop, 12, 46, 48, 63–4affection, 107–8, 112, 122, 215, 223agrarian virtue, 20–1, 25, 44, 88, 93,

149, 151, 161Agrippa, Menenius, 46ambitus, 17, 28–9, 184

see also corruption, electoralAmhurst, Nicholas, 134, 231–2amicitia, 33Ammianus Marcellinus, 24, 30, 32, 37Antoninus (Caracalla), 43Antony, 11aphtharsia, aphthartos, 49, 187Aquinas, St Thomas, 66, 196Aristeides, 34Aristocles, 34aristocracy, 13–14, 21, 53, 56–7, 59,

102, 133, 143, 148, 156, 183, 207nobility, 12, 27, 31, 90–1, 94–5,

109–10, 140, 149–50, 161, 173,210, 216, 217

Aristomachos, 19Aristophanes, 9, 23Aristotle, 10, 11, 12–15, 17–18, 22,

26–7, 33, 37, 49, 72, 77–8, 80,82–3, 109, 161, 177, 178

armiescitizen armies/militia, 22–3, 88, 92,

95, 122, 159–60, 209mercenaries, 18, 22–3, 95, 130, 159,

180standing/professional, 22, 72, 128,

129–31, 137, 139–40, 143, 151,158–60, 172, 238–9

Arnall, William, 135–6Asia, 21, 29, 95–6, 140, 165, 166, 167,

234

Athens, 17–20, 22, 23, 26, 28, 30,33–8, 40–1, 43–4, 53, 183, 185

Augustine, see St AugustineAugustus, 11–12, 20, 29Aurelius, Marcus, 10, 176avarice, 13, 20–1, 24, 37, 58, 60–1,

63–6, 69, 70, 73, 80–1, 83–4, 96,98, 104, 109, 114, 115, 117, 119,141, 179, 196, 204, 206, 217, 222,226

cupidity, 69, 70, 73, 81, 98greed, 8, 12, 15, 20, 23, 24, 50, 55,

60, 70, 71, 73, 81, 82, 84, 92,96, 100, 104, 116, 167, 184,203, 205

Bacon, Sir Francis, 106, 112, 118–19,132

barratry, barattieri, barrators, 70–1, 73,98, 197

Bassus, Julius, 39–40beneficium, 59, 193–4Bibulus, 28Black Books, The, 172Black Death, 59–60, 73Boccalini, Trajano, 100, 221Bodin, Jean, 116body politic, 8, 10, 12–13, 14, 33, 37,

48, 53, 56, 62–6, 68, 69, 71–2, 75,80, 81, 90, 98, 99, 102–3, 105,107, 113, 119–20, 121, 123–4,127, 155, 157, 189, 195, 196, 199,202, 213, 214, 220, 221, 224, 226,228

Bracciolini, Poggio, 83–4, 88Brandolini, Aurelio Lippo, 87–8, 93,

96, 209bribe, bribery, 5, 6, 9, 11–12, 14–18,

21, 27–8, 33–43, 47, 50–1, 54–5,59, 60–1, 65–6, 69–70, 72, 74, 85,86, 89, 94, 100–1, 106, 111–14,116–19, 125, 126, 129, 130–2,

278


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Index 279

134, 139, 152, 166, 168, 170–1,175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 185,189, 191, 197, 205, 213, 214,217–19, 223, 230, 234

see also venalityBribe Payers Index, 1British fiscal-military state, 156–7, 237broglio, 85–7, 205, 206Brown, John, 140–1Bruni, Leonardo, 83, 89, 203, 205,

206, 210Buchanan, George, 106, 212bureaucracy, 7, 17, 25, 29, 39, 43, 45,

74, 138, 156, 169, 170, 199Burghley, Lord, 111Burgoyne, John, 164Burke, Edmund, 162, 165–9, 171–2,

240–1, 242

Cacus, 56Caesar, Julius, 11, 28Calvin, Jean, 104–5catapolitical bribery, 36–8, 44, 184Cato, 20, 28, 179Cato’s Letters, 133–7Cavendish, George, 113Cavendish, William, 122, 225Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 110Charles I, King, 114, 119church, 7, 8, 99, 222

English, 100, 103, 126, 172Protestant, 104Roman Catholic, 47–8, 53, 59, 60,

62, 64–5, 68–70, 74, 75–82, 84,103–5, 193, 196, 197, 200, 201,204, 213, 214

Churchill, John, Duke ofMarlborough, 126

Cicero, 11, 17, 18, 20, 25, 28, 32–3,35, 37, 39, 40, 42, 46, 52, 56–7,62, 83, 84, 87, 97, 101, 109, 117,118, 158, 167, 179, 184–5, 192,193, 199, 217

Cincinnatus, 20–1, 23City of God, 52, 57civic humanism, 81–7, 89, 94, 97–8,

128, 139–40, 142, 146, 150–1,169, 203, 204, 209, 238

civilitas, 54, 61

Civitas Dei, see City of GodCivitas terrena, see Earthly CityClaudian, 32Clive, Lord, of Bengal, 164Cobbett, William, 172Coke, Sir Edward, 116, 220, 223colonialism, 23, 30, 162–5, 240

see also imperialismcommerce/commercialism, 3, 19, 25,

44, 57–8, 65, 68, 69, 82, 88–9,122–3, 127, 130, 133, 138–54,155, 159–62, 167–8, 193, 206,207, 235

see also tradeconspicuous consumption, 82, 140–3,

149–50, 161Constantius II, 24constitution, 11, 13–14, 24, 27, 36, 37,

45, 91, 120, 128, 129–30, 133,135, 141, 142, 145, 151, 157–8,159, 167, 216, 241

consumerism/consumer culture, 115,116, 138, 146, 149–51

Contarini, Gasparo, 85, 206Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Lord

Shaftesbury, 131, 133, 239corpus mysticum, 48–9, 75, 78, 80, 200corrumpere and related terms, 17, 55,

56, 60, 87, 191, 192, 222see also pecunia corrumpere

corruptiondegenerative, 6, 7–8, 9–12, 15–17,

19–27, 33, 38, 45, 47, 49–51,55–7, 61, 63–7, 68, 72–3, 91–2,98, 99–101, 114–15, 116, 121–3,125, 129, 131, 134–5, 138–41,147–8, 151, 153–4, 162, 169,170–1, 188, 189, 190, 191, 196,199, 214, 226

and development/under-development,1–2, 6

electoral, 17, 27–9, 51, 86, 112, 126,129, 134–5, 152, 170, 182, 189,205, 232, see also ambitus

judicial, 9, 14, 17, 31–2, 34–5, 37,56, 61–2, 65, 68, 116–18, 126,152–3, 167, 187, 191, 206, 225


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280 Index

corruption – continuedmoral, 9, 13, 19, 23–5, 32, 116, 131,

133, 139, 144–51, 158, 166–8,171, 204–5, 209–10, 212, 216,219, 220, 222, see alsodecadence; degeneracy

‘old corruption’, 126, 165and political amateurism, 38–9, 44political, definition, 2–8public office, 5, 7–8, 9, 11–12,

15–19, 21, 25–6, 27–45, 47, 51,53–5, 57, 60–1, 63, 65–7, 68, 73,99–101, 105–7, 115, 116–19,121–4, 125–7, 130–9, 147,151–4, 155, 160, 162, 169,170–3, 217, 219, 225, 227, 229,230, 231–2, 234, 242

spiritual, 51, 54–5, 57, 60–1, 63,103–5, 171, 189, 192, 201, 209,213, 224

Corruption Perceptions Index, 1Corvinus, Matthias, King, 87, 209Cotgrave, Randle, 101, 219Country Party ideology, 128–30, 144,

157–8Court ideology, 128–9, 140, 229Craftsman, The, 134–5, 137, 141, 158,

231–2Crassus, 36Cromwell, Oliver, 119Cromwell, Thomas, 215Crosfeild, Robert, 126, 131, 227, 229,

230Crown, 7, 72, 102, 112, 115, 123,

128–30, 135, 155, 157–8, 165,169, 170, 172, 228, 229, 232

Curius, Manius, 20custom, 4, 25, 27–8, 31–2, 40–3, 44,

72, 91, 95, 111, 125–6, 132, 154,163, 166, 172, 200, 242

Dante, 69–71, 73, 76, 98, 197D’Anvers, Caleb, see Amhurst,

NicholasDarien Scheme, 231Davenant, Charles, 136, 138, 230debt

public/national, 89, 126–7, 128,134, 151, 156, 163, 207, 228

decadence, 11, 21, 55, 91, 95, 116,139–40, 149, 171, 177

decay (moral, physical, death and,etc.), 3, 5–8, 9, 10, 15, 46, 47,50–1, 55, 57, 61, 63–4, 65, 66, 68,69, 77, 79, 80, 84, 87, 88, 92, 95,96, 98, 99–101, 105, 113, 114,116, 119–24, 125, 131, 139–40,171, 188, 195, 196, 214, 226

see also phthoradecline, 10–11, 20–1, 23–5, 27, 37, 47,

88–9, 91–2, 99–100, 116, 138–41,148–9, 160, 162, 167, 229, 233,236

Defoe, Daniel, 127, 133degeneracy, 5–8, 9, 21, 66, 96, 127,

136, 180, 232, 233Demades, 37de Medici, Cosimo, 204, 210de Medici, Piero, 90, 210Demosthenes, 16, 18–19, 22, 25, 35,

36–7, 39–40development

under–, 2economic, 1–2, 7, 19, 59, 68, 73–4,

127, 143, 147–50, 160–1global, 1–2, 7

diaphtherein/diaphtheiro, 16–17, 50,178, 188

diaphthora, 49, 188Domitian, Emperor, 21donum, 57, 59dõra/dõrodokia/doron, 14, 15–16, 33,

35, 37–8, 40doux commerce, 148Downame, John, 117, 218–19Dudley, Edmund, 106–7, 112Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 221

Earthly City, 52–3, 57East India Company (EIC), 132–4,

164–9, 241effeminacy, 11, 19–22, 74, 84, 87, 91,

95, 116, 137, 139–42, 148, 159,160, 177, 222

Egypt, 29, 53, 177elections, 28–9, 85–6, 126, 205, 206Elizabeth I, Queen, 105, 111, 114


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Index 281

embezzlement/peculation, 11, 17–18,35, 37, 89, 166, 177

empire, 10–11, 23, 43, 95–6, 155, 160,170

Athenian, 23, 43–4British, 138, 162–9, 170–1-building, see imperialismand corruption, 23–4, 89, 95–6, 139,

162–9Roman, 11, 23–5, 29–30, 32, 35–6,

43–5, 47, 50–1, 53–5, 95–6, 100,116, 129, 138, 139–40, 190,191, 233

Empson, Richard, 112endism/eschatology, 10, 138, 147, 148Ephialtes, 34Epictetus, 10, 18, 20Epicureanism, 139–40, 233European Union, 1extortion, 17, 25, 29–30, 32, 35–6, 37,

51, 54, 60, 70, 72, 74, 100, 106,112, 117, 167, 168, 177, 189, 195,205, 219

Faldo, Thomas, 120Ferguson, Adam, 139–40, 143–4, 147,

149–50, 154, 159–61, 163, 236,239

Filmer, Robert, 123Fletcher, Andrew, 130–1, 159Florence, 69, 83–4, 89–91, 93–4, 197,

203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209,210

see also Republic, FlorentineFlorio, John, 100, 197Florus, 27, 182Forsett, Edward, 124Fortescue, Sir John, 52, 82fortuna, 88, 92Fox, Charles James, 166, 172Free Briton, The, 135–6French Wars, 156, 157friendship, 23, 31–2, 39–40, 44, 94,

109, 111, 118, 146, 223Fronto, Marcus Cornelius, 31–2gaming, 131, 133–4

Gibbon, Edward, 139–40, 143–4, 147,150, 154, 160, 162, 233, 236

gifts, gift-giving, 12, 15–16, 18, 28, 31,32, 34, 36, 39–44, 53, 54–5,57–61, 64, 68, 69, 73, 74, 87, 94,100–1, 104–5, 109–14, 118–19,122, 125, 153, 166, 168, 179, 185,189, 193, 194, 199, 206, 214, 217,219, 222, 226

see also beneficium, donum, muneris/munere/munus/ munera

Glaucon, 30, 38–9, 42Goodman, Godfrey, 100Gordon, Thomas, 133, 134, 135, 136,

138–9Gracchi, 27, 136graft, 35, 70, 85

see also barratry, barattieri,barrators

gratia, 31, 35, 55–6, 57, 60, 192Great Reform Act of 1832, 172Greece, 9–44, 46, 49, 51, 177,

178, 183

Haines, Richard, 144Hakewill, George, 100Harrington, James, 122–3Harrison, William, 114Hastings, Warren, 165–6, 168–9,

242hedonism, 10, 19–20, 140, 151Henry VIII, King, 112, 113–14Henry VII, King, 106, 112Herodotus, 21, 38Hickes, Sir Michael, 111, 218Hirschman, Albert, 102–3historiography

pessimistic, 10, see also,endism/eschatology

progressive, 147–51Hobbes, Thomas, 121–2, 225Holy Bible, 29, 47, 48–51, 63–6, 72,

73, 77, 100, 105, 114–15, 118,188, 189, 203

Homer, 21, 34, 41, 185–6hubris, 23, 139, 163humanism, 101–2, 103, 113, 116, 118,

122Hume, David, 137, 140, 142–4,

148–50, 153, 154, 235, 236Hypereides, 19, 34, 36–8, 40, 42, 177


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282 Index

impeachment, 38, 132of Duke of Leeds, 132, 230, 234of Earl of Macclesfield, 132of Lord Bacon, 106, 118, 132of William Hastings, 165–6,

168–9imperialism, 7, 10–11, 23–5, 44–5, 89,

91, 95, 139, 162–9, 163, 167see also colonialism

India, 164–8inequality, 2, 10, 11, 19, 25–7, 160–1,

181, 209interest(s), 17, 21, 33, 36–8, 43, 79,

102–3, 107, 114, 120, 124,127–30, 133, 136, 138, 139, 140,144–8, 150, 156, 161–2, 164–5,167, 171

common, mutual, 18, 52, 115, 120,121, 133, 145

Court and Country, 128–31, see alsoCourt ideology, Country partyideology

national, 162public, 15, 16, 18, 33, 36–7, 100,

114, 120, 123, 124, 127, 136,172

self/private/corrupt, 3, 13, 16–19,46, 60, 63, 66, 79, 81, 90–2, 98,100, 101–2, 106–8, 115–24,132–9, 144–8, 150, 152, 154,190, 221, 225, 230

International MonetaryFund, 1

James I, King, 114John the Baptist, 29John of Salisbury, 61–6, 68, 69,

75, 87, 195, 213Johnson, Robert, 106, 217, 222justice, 5, 23–4, 25–6, 31–2, 37, 38,

50–5, 56–7, 61–2, 65, 71–5, 82, 89,93, 97, 106, 112, 114, 116–19,120–4, 131, 143, 145–6, 148, 150,152–3, 160, 190, 195, 202, 217,219, 225

Justinian’s Digest, 43, 64, 196Juvenal, 21, 180

Knox, John, 105–6

Lambarde, William, 117–18, 222Lex Calpurnia, 36, 189Lex Cincia de donis, 36Lex Licinia de sodaliciis, 36liberalism, 1, 2, 7, 154, 157, 162liberty, 3, 5, 11, 24, 25–6, 72, 83, 89,

91, 95, 119, 129, 135, 137, 138,146, 148, 150, 151–2, 154, 159

Libianus, 30Livy, 20, 46, 97, 180Long, Thomas, 112Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 71Loughborough, Lord Chancellor, 168,

242Lucan, 27, 28, 37, 182Lucilius, 28Luther, Martin, 104luxury, 8, 10, 11, 20–1, 23–4, 26, 28,

32, 55, 73, 82, 92, 95, 96, 97, 104,105, 116, 123, 129, 135, 137–43,148–51, 154, 180, 192, 230, 232,236

Lycides, 38Lycurgus, 20, 23, 26, 34, 180Lysander, 23, 34

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 3, 10, 23, 129,130, 138, 159, 180, 204–11

Malinowski, Bronislaw, 57, 193Mandeville, Bernard, 125, 127, 132,

137, 141–3, 150, 154, 229Marsilius of Padua, 76–81, 88, 98, 200,

201, 202martial

professionalization, 19, 22–3, 25specialization, 158–60virtue, 23, 95, 142, 155, 177see also armies

Martial, 21Mary, Queen of Scots, 105–6mass society, 43, 127, 138, 139,

143–4, 145–53, 160–2, 169Mauss, Marcel, 41, 57, 186Medici family, 84mercantilism, 89, 133, 163–5middle class, 26, 148, 153, 156,

161Milton, John, 120


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Index 283

monarchy, 11, 13, 56–7, 58, 75, 87,95, 102, 105–6, 110, 113, 116,119–20, 123–4, 127, 133, 135,148, 157–8, 159, 198, 220, 221

monopoly, 2, 31, 114, 119, 137, 152,163–4, 221, 225, 243

Montesquieu, 23, 148, 161, 163, 166,236

More, Sir Thomas, 105, 112Morosini, Domenico, 94moth metaphor, 50, 114, 117, 203muneris /munere/munus/ munera,

58–60, 65, 74, 189

necessità/necessity, 91, 92, 95Neo-Liberal consensus (on

corruption), 1, 3, 6nepotism, 30, 33, 44, 137, 176Neville, Henry, 144new realists/realism, 137–8, 140–54,

170–1, 233Northcote-Trevelyan Report, 172North, Lord, 166

Oppianicus, 17Oresme, Nicholas, Bishop of Lisieux,

71–3, 198Osborne, Thomas, Duke of Leeds, 132,

230, 234ozio, 92, 95

palingenesis, 10, 148Parker, Thomas, Earl of Macclesfield,

132, 230parliament, 72, 119, 120, 126, 128–35,

148, 157–8, 164–6, 167, 168, 169,170, 172, 220, 224, 226, 229, 232,238

Patriot King, 135, 158, 169, 173patronage, 11–12, 17, 29, 30–3, 42,

53–5, 57–60, 74, 86–7, 89, 100,102, 104, 108–11, 114, 127,128–30, 134, 136, 152, 157, 163,170, 172, 217, 226, 228

pecunia, 35, 60pecunia corrumpere, 205

Pericles, 14, 34, 35Petrarch, Francesco, 82, 203Philip II, King of Macedon, 34, 36, 38

Phokian, 34phthartos, 49, 187–8phtheiró, 49, 50, 187–8phthora, 13, 50, 187–8Pitt, William (‘the Younger’), 172Place, Francis, 172Plato, 10, 15, 16, 18, 23, 25, 32, 41,

62, 87, 93, 191Pleistoanax, King, 34plenitudo potestatis, 75, 78–80, 199, 201Plutarch, 23, 34Pocock, John, 3, 88–9, 127, 128–30,

206–7Poggio, see Bracciolini, Poggiopolitical amateurism, 38–9, 44political economy, 7, 72, 144–7,

151–4, 156–7Polybius, 10, 21–3, 27–8, 91, 159, 181,

222Pompey, 28Ponet, John, 112Pope John XXII, 76pride, 65, 66, 71, 84, 107, 116, 144,

145, 204vanity, 73, 106, 135, 143, 151

private property, 71–2, 74, 82, 150,154, 161, 167, 235

Probus, Claudius Petronius, 30, 32progress, 44, 138, 139–44, 147–53,

159, 163, 169, 170, 172prosperity, 11, 20, 23, 36, 59, 66, 68,

71, 82, 106, 116, 139–41, 143,150, 152, 159–60, 161, 169, 170

public/private distinction, 17–19, 27–45, 47, 63, 98, 100–2, 106–14,115–19, 120, 123–4, 129, 130–3,139, 140, 142, 144, 151, 152, 156,162, 163, 164, 172, 176, 196,198–9, 217, 219, 220, 221, 223

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 99–100Reformation, Protestant, 103–5rent-seeking, 2–3, 53, 153Republic

Florentine, 90–1, 206, 208Genoese, 89Roman, 11, 28–9, 31, 35, 37, 45, 83,

91, 136Venetian, 83–6, 203


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republicanism, 3, 11, 24–7, 44, 83–97,123–4, 127, 128–30, 138, 150,151, 158–9, 163, 169, 190, 206,207, 229

Robertson, William, 89, 239Rome, 9–11, 17–18, 20–5, 27–31, 33,

35, 38–40, 42–4, 46, 53–6, 57, 82,83, 90–1, 95, 97, 105, 116, 122,129, 136, 138, 139–40, 149, 159,162, 177, 180, 185, 186, 187, 191,201, 203, 208, 222, 232, 233

St Augustine, 51–7, 65, 66, 68, 87,190–2

St John, Henry, Lord Bolingbroke,134–5, 231–2

St Paul, 42, 48–9, 62, 187, 188, 192sale of office, 54, 60, 65, 66, 69, 86–7,

100, 110, 116–17, 125, 171, 230,242

Sallust, 21, 23–4, 27, 192Sanudo, Marin, 83Scaurus, Aemilius, 29Scot, Thomas, 118, 223security, 22, 42, 79, 121–2, 143, 146,

148, 150, 151, 155, 158–60, 164,169, 232

Selden, John, 120Seneca, 10, 20, 28, 109, 211Seven Years’ War, 141, 162Severus, Claudius, 31Severus, Septimus, 43Sidney, Algernon, 123–4, 138, 157simony, 5, 47, 60, 65, 66, 70, 79, 82,

104, 106, 171, 194, 196, 197, 214slavery, 12, 26, 38–9, 44, 76, 131, 141,

148, 208Smith, Adam, 137, 140, 142–8, 150–4,

156–7, 159–67, 235, 240Smith, Sir Thomas, 113, 115–16, 220,

222Socrates, 10, 30, 38Solon, 20, 26South Sea Bubble, 132–4, 231Sparta, 14, 21, 22, 23, 26, 34, 92, 180,

181specialization, 140, 143, 151, 155,

158–61Starkey, Thomas, 103, 107–8, 216

state formation, 74, 155–7stock jobbing, 130, 132–4, 230,

232Stoicism, 10, 18, 31–2, 48, 82, 139,

150Suetonius, 97Sulla, 11, 21, 23, 36, 182sumptuary laws, 20, 28, 182Symmachus, Q. Aurelius, 28

Tacitus, 10, 11–12, 20, 21, 97, 101,106, 158, 229

taxation, 23, 29–30, 54, 72, 74, 82, 83,93, 126–7, 131, 133, 151, 153,155–6, 163, 185, 193, 204, 232

Temple, William, 124Theodosian Code, 54, 191, 193Theodosius, Emperor, 30Thucydides, 10, 23, 33Thurlow, Lord, 168, 242tipping, 39, 44trade, 21–2, 25, 45, 65, 68, 73, 86, 87,

93, 115, 120, 127, 133, 143, 160,162, 163–5, 167, 169, 170, 171,206, 227

Transparency International, 1Trenchard, John, 133–6, 158

Ulpian, 43, 64umori/humors, 90, 94–5,

208, 224United Nations, 1

venality, 28, 47, 54, 66, 70, 104,105, 119, 149, 159, 175, 189,191, 221

Venice, 83–7, 89, 94, 96, 204, 205,206, 210

Verres, Gaius, 35, 40, 167,242

virtù, and corruption, 3, 88, 90,91–6, 208, 209, 210

Visigothic Code, 60Vulcan, 56

Wade, John, 172Walpole, Sir Robert, 132–5, 157–8,

231Walter of Milamete, 73


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Warr, John, 120–1Weekly Political Register, 172Whigs, 128–9, 130, 136, 142

and Tories, 128–30William III, 129William of Pagula, 72–3Wilson, Thomas, 114–15, 221Wolsey, Thomas, 113

woman/female, 8, 12, 17, 20, 21, 80,105–6, 109–10, 116, 177, 180,209, 210, 232

World Bank, 1

Xenophon, 30, 38, 40, 42, 180

Zwingli, Huldrych, 104, 214see also Republic, Venetian


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