Abstract
A variety of historical trends crystallising in the eighteenth century exerted pressure on the degenerative conception of corruption. Key among them was the emergence of the modern state, which was expanding rapidly and becoming more organised during this time. Additional pressures related to demographic changes such as population growth, urbanisation and increased specialisation, all of which undermined the virtue-focused approach. Further, the practical exigencies of security in large-scale societies, and the technological developments that met them, meant that corruption concerns associated with the loss of martial virtue no longer seemed relevant. Finally, the eighteenth century saw decisive changes in forms of rule, specifically the breaking down of the powers of the Crown and a shift in the understanding of where the main site of corrupt — or uncorrupt — activity lay. Corruption reformers were increasingly focused on the eradication of practices and institutions that would now qualify as public office corruption. It was not virtue that would solve the problems of modern, commercialising states and empires, but a solvent economy and codified rules about how a properly functioning modern state should operate.
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Notes
M. Ogborn (2002) ‘Wherein Lay the Late Seventeenth-Century State? Charles Davenant Meets Streynsham Master’, Journal of Historical Sociology 15, 96–101, passim.
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The term ‘patrimonialism’ is Weberian in origin and denotes the organisation of government ‘as a directed extension of the royal household’ (R. Bendix (1960) Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (London: Doubleday and Co.), p. 119, n. 7).
For a luller discussion, see E.W. Cohen (1941) The Growth of the British Civil Service, 1780–1939 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd).
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‘Population growth in Scotland’s five main cities between 1755 and 1775 was three times the national average’ (J.D. Brewer (1989) ‘Conjectural History, Sociology and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Adam Ferguson 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).
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 involving 21 per cent of land in England alone.
E.R. Dodds (1973) The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 17.
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Ferguson, Essay, pp. 63–4. See also Forbes, ‘Introduction’ to Essay, p. xxv. William Robertson also took the view that ‘there can be no Society, where there is no Subordination’ (cited in D. Francesconi (1999) ‘William Robertson on Historical Causation and Unintended Consequences’, Cromohs 4, 8).
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 Economy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Naples’, The Historical Journal 40 (3), 681–2.
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‘Debate of April 13, 1772’ in Parliament of Great Britain (1813) The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. 17 (London: T.C. Hansard), cols 456–7. Along similar lines, Edmund Burke declared that ‘the spirit of an extensive and intricate trading interest pervades the whole, always qualifying and often controlling, every general idea of constitution and government’ (E. Burke (1981) [1769] Observations on a Late State of the Nation in P. Langford (ed.) The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 176, 194).
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.
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E. Burke (1981) ‘Fox’s India Bill, 1 December 1783’ in The Writings and Speeches 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.
S. Muthu (2003) Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 7.
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See ZZ 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).
Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires, pp. 244–5; V. Pavarala (2004) ‘Cultures of Corruption and the Corruption of Culture: The East India Company and the Hastings Impeachment’ in ZZ Kreike and ZZ Jordan (eds) Corrupt Histories, pp. 300–5.
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Buchan, B., Hill, L. (2014). The Historical Vicissitudes of Corruption. In: An Intellectual History of Political Corruption. Political Corruption and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316615_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316615_7
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