Corruption

There has been much talk in recent weeks of the presence of corruption in British politics. The Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet appear to be relaxed about accepting gifts from wealthy donors. Keir Starmar is said to have accepted £76,000 worth of gifts since 2019 including £16,200 of work clothing from the Labour peer Waheed Alli, as well as corporate hospitality at Arsenal and Taylor Swift concert tickets. (For an in-depth assessment see Peter Geoghegan, 'Labour and the Lobbyists', London Review of Books, 15 August 2024, pp. 10-12).

Image of the Prime Minister’s official residence at 10 Downing Street, taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, such gifts are nothing new, and the perks Labour ministers have accepted pale into insignificance alongside Boris Johnson's Caribbean holiday on the island of Mustique, courtesy of the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse David Ross, and the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat that was paid for by Lord Brownlow. The idea that being in government brings perks way beyond the imagination of most working people seems to be widely accepted, at least among politicians themselves.

However, there is an issue about the gap that this creates between the Government and those it governs and represents. Another concern is the fact that the gift-givers might expect something in return - such as a blue light escort through the capital or favourable deals and contracts.

Corruption is not a new problem in Britain. As long ago as 1701, a pamphlet was published entitled: The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late House of Commons. Its author claimed that the government had fallen into decay and observed that even those candidates who before being elected had insisted that they would be 'True-Representatives of the People' - once in office 'have done nothing worthy of the Name of Englishmen' (The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late House of Commons. London, 1701).

While what was meant by corruption in the eighteenth century was not necessarily the same as what is meant by it now, understanding how the term was used then and why it was a cause for concern, might illuminate the issues under debate today.

Image depicting Aristotle. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, concern about the problem of corruption was grounded in the understanding that the British constitution required that the three elements of the system - Crown, Lords, and Commons - needed to be balanced with and against each other, so as to ensure that the whole would operate in the interests of the public good. The notion of balance in government was based on ancient ideas: Aristotle's assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the rule of the one, the few, and the many; and Polybius's suggestion that a mixed government comprising all three could secure the advantages of each without their disadvantages. This understanding of mixed or balanced government - and of the English parliamentary system as an embodiment of it - was voiced by many on the parliamentarian side during the mid-seventeenth-century Civil Wars. More interesting is the fact that in 1642 it was used by the writers of His Majesties Answer to the Nineteen Proposition to counter the demands made of the King in those Propositions:

There being three kinds of government among men (absolute monarchy, aristocracy,

and democracy), and all these having their particular conveniences and

inconveniences, the experience and wisdom of your ancestors has so moulded this

out of a mixture of these as to give this kingdom (as far as human prudence can

provide) the conveniences of all three, without the inconveniences of any one, as

long as the balance hangs even between the three states (His Majesties Answer to the

Nineteen Proposition, London, 1642).

The pamphlet went on to argue that the demands being made by Parliament in The Nineteen Propositions - such as the requirement that all officers and counsellors be approved by Parliament - if adopted, would disrupt the balance by shifting power from the King to the Commons.

For opposition writers in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was not the Crown that was at risk from the Commons, but rather the Commons that was at risk from the Crown. As the author of The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late House of Commons noted:

It hath been a common and known Practice for this Forty Years last past; for Men of

Confidence and ready Elocution, if they could but procure an Election in some little

Mercenary Burrough, and so get into the House, presently to set themselves to

oppose the King and the Court, that they might be bought off by some good

Gratuity; Pension, or Place (The Corruption and Impiety, p. 2).

‘James Murray’, by Pollard, 1770s. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D32123. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

In order to control Parliament, the monarch and ministers would offer money, pensions or positions to elected MPs. From 1706 the term 'placemen' began to be used to denote those implicated in this practice. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a 'placeman' is: 'A person who is appointed (or aspires) to a position, esp. in government service, for personal profit and as a reward for political support; a yes-man.' Placemen remained an issue throughout the eighteenth century. In 1774 the Newcastle minister and political activist James Murray spoke, via a thinly veiled reference to the Biblical state of Moab, of representatives selling out to the crown for 'places, pensions, and perquisites' so that the institution that was supposed to represent and protect the people's interests and liberties became a means of enslaving them. The system of places introduced was 'only to be enjoyed by the friends of the court, or such as wished well to its interests'. By this means, those appointed by the nation 'to guard their liberties in parliament, were corrupted, and sold their constituents for a place under, or a pension from the government.' (James Murray, New Sermons to Asses. Philadelphia, 1774, p. 9).

Not long after, the newly established 'Society for Constitutional Information' noted that the public had been repeatedly warned about the venality of their representatives and called for various changes aimed at expelling 'minions of a court from the temple of public freedom' and restoring 'parliaments to their original purity and people to their rights'. (A Second Address to the Public from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1782, pp. 9-10). The arguments of the Society on this point were again grounded in their understanding of the balance of the constitution and the importance of the three elements - King, Lords and Commons - remaining independent of each other: 'The moment that either the Crown, the Lords, or the Commons lose their independence, in that moment our Constitution is violated, our Government is overturned, and our Liberty is endangered.' (An Address to the public, from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).

The kind of corruption at issue today is, of course, different from that condemned by James Murray and the Society for Constitutional Information. For those interested in the complexity and history of the concept I recommend Mark Knights’s book Trust and Distrust: Corruption in office in Britain and its Empire (Oxford, 2021). Today there are many sources of corruption, but the bottom line is the dominance of private interests, including those of the rich and the powerful, over the public interest or the common good.

Waking up the 90 percent

I began writing this blogpost on 2nd May, having just returned home after voting in the local council elections. The turnout for local elections is never high. The national figure this time was just 32%, so 68% of eligible citizens chose not to exercise their democratic right, even in this most basic sense. In thinking about these elections, and voter apathy, I was reminded of this provocative poster

Waking up the 90% was the underlying aim of the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI). In an Address to the Public published in 1782 the Society expressed its concern that a small number of individuals were effectively disenfranchising their constituents (A Second Address to the Public from the Society for Constitutional Information, London, 1782, p. 9). In this context, the Society claimed to have undertaken the task of 'rousing their countrymen to the defence of their hereditary rights'

Convinced, that those who wish to enslave mankind will always attempt to divert

their attention from the danger which threatens their liberty, till the mortal wound

has been received, they present an antidote to the poisons which have been so

industriously diffused. (Second Address, p. 13).

That antidote was very simple. All it required was the diffusion of political information so as to revive in the minds of the British public 'knowledge of their lost rights' (Address to the public from the Society for Constitutional Information, London, 1780, p. 2). In particular, the SCI wanted to alert the public to the fact that the balance of the British constitution was under threat. The three elements of the constitution - King, Lords, and Commons - were supposed to be in balance, but this required them to be independent of each other. Yet what was increasingly happening, according to reformers, was that the independence of the Commons was being threatened by encroachment from both the King and the House of Lords. This was achieved by various means, including the existence of rotten boroughs and the restriction of the franchise - both of which often gave members of the aristocracy undue influence over the election of MPs. By reviving knowledge among citizens of their lost rights, the Society hoped to restore 'Freedom and Independency to that branch of the legislature that originates from, represents, and is answerable to them' (Address to the public, p. 2). I focused in a previous blogpost on the key elements of the reform agenda. This post will instead explore some of the methods adopted by the SCI to wake up the 90%.

Capel Loft by William Ridley. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D5102. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Central to their approach was the reprinting of tracts analysing the British constitution and setting out the case for reform. In the second meeting of the Society, which was held on 2 May 1780, a resolution dictated details of the font, page size, and paper quality to be used in the tracts reprinted by the Society, and another required the printer to produce for the next meeting a specimen page with an estimate of the cost of printing 1,000 copies (The National Archives (TNA), TS 11/1133). Ten days later it was resolved 'unanimously' that Capel Lofft was to be requested 'to compile a Tract or Tracts, consisting of Extracts' from the works of various authors:

as may clearly define, or describe in few Words the English Constitution; and

particularly what relates to the Rights of the Commons to an equal and complete

Representation in Parliament; to their Independency as the Third Estate of the

Realm; to the Powers delegated to their Representatives, and the Limitations of the

same; and to the Abuses of those Powers.

These principles - and the authors who were explicitly named at that meeting - were reflected in the works that were identified at subsequent meetings as suitable for publication by the Society. In the first two years of the SCI's existence approximately 30 tracts were singled out for printing (with many others being entered into the books of the society). Those identified for printing included: the Society's own publications (such as their two Addresses to the People); works by members such as Major John Cartwright and Dr Joseph Towers; letters, speeches and reports central to the reform campaign; but also older texts identified as relevant to the cause such as John Trenchard's 'The History of Standing Armies' and Bishop Poynet's 'Treatise on Politick Power'.

As well as printing copies of entire tracts and distributing them for free, the Society also selected extracts from key texts to be printed in London newspapers such as the General Advertiser. During the year 1782, at least 23 extracts were selected by the Society for this treatment. Some of these were among those already identified for printing - such as Jeremiah Batley's 'Letter addressed to the people of England &c.' And Mr Bennett's 'Letter to the people of Great Britain', but others - including extracts from James Burgh's Political Disquisitions, Lord Bolingbroke's Dissertation on Parties, and Marchamont Nedham's The Excellency of a Free State - were not. During 1782 The General Advertiser included a regular column reporting SCI business which usually provided an extract from the minutes along with the text selected for inclusion. As time went on, the pages of that publication also became the location for debates concerning the decisions and activities of the Society, for example over its controversial resolution 'on money for ship building' from September 1782.

In addition to covering the costs of printing and attending to the distribution of texts, members of the SCI were also alert to the formats that were most likely to be accessible to members of the general public. In August 1781 the Society asked its members:

to consider of an Address to the Commonalty by way of Dialogue, or in some other

familiar and interesting Form showing how deeply and universally they are

concerned in the Question of equal Representation and new Parliaments every

Session. (TNA: TS 11/1133, 66, 3 August 1781).

Sir William Jones by James Heath, after Sir Joshua Reynolds. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D36735. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

It is not clear whether it was explicitly designed as a response to this request, but William Jones's Dialogue on the Principles of Government Between a Scholar and a Peasant, was seized upon by the Society for this end. On 26 July 1782 the Society ordered 'That Mr Jones's dialogue be entered into the Books of this Society' and on 9 August that it be 'printed in the publick papers' (TNA: TS 11/1133, 98, 100). The full text duly appeared in The General Advertiser on 15 August. The title page acknowledged Jones's membership of the Society (he had been elected an honorary member in March 1782 and regularly attended meetings between 10 May and March 1783) and the Society continued to support both Jones and his brother-in-law William Shipley, the Dean of St Asaph after he was prosecuted for disseminating the work in Wales.

One aspect of dialogue form is that it invites the audience into the narrative, thereby encouraging active engagement over passive reading. The premise behind this dialogue is the circulation of a reform petition that the peasant is reluctant to sign, admitting: 'It is better for us peasants to mind our husbandry, and leave what we cannot comprehend to the King and Parliament.' (William Jones, The Principles of Government; in a dialogue between a Scholar and a Peasant. London, 1782, p. 3). Over the next five pages the scholar succeeds in demonstrating to the peasant that he does have the understanding to engage with the issues surrounding reform. Central to this act of persuasion is the parallel that is drawn between the village friendly society - of which the peasant is a member - and a free state. The peasant already understands what is required for the friendly society to run effectively - including having clear rules to which everyone agrees; removing officers who betray the trust of members; and dealing with offenders who threaten the good of the society, with force if necessary. The scholar explains: 'That a free state is only a more numerous and more powerful club' and as a result the peasant realises that he has 'been a politician all my life without perceiving it' and therefore has all the knowledge required to sign the petition (Jones, The Principles of Government, p. 8). While the approach might seem patronising, the advantage of adopting dialogue form in this context is that readers could be convinced alongside the peasant, while reformers could use the specific arguments deployed by the scholar to persuade others - thereby spreading the desire for reform.

There is not space here to explore in detail the controversy that Jones's pamphlet prompted, but it is worth noting that the concern it aroused was largely due to the audience at which it was directed. In response to the high sheriff of Flintshire's verdict that it was a 'seditious, treasonable, and diabolical' work, the advertisement to a subsequent edition declared that in that case 'Lord Somers' 'was an incendiary' and Locke 'a traitor', the difference, of course, being that these works were not generally read by ordinary people. Shipley's circulation of the work in Wales (which included translating it into Welsh) was a deliberate attempt to broaden its audience. In the end the attempt by the authorities to contain it backfired, since the prosecution and trial drew attention to the work. The SCI reprinted not just the text itself, but also the court proceedings (TNA: TS 11/961) and both were presented as an 'interlude' to be performed at fairs and markets - thereby making it accessible even to those who were illiterate (Michael J. Franklin, 'Jones, Sir William (1746-1794), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Dialogue is not a common format for political literature today, yet we do have a recent example of a television dramatisation provoking political action, in the case of 'Mr Bates vs The Post Office'. Perhaps those wanting to reverse modern day voter apathy in the forthcoming General Election would do well to follow the SCI's example and to think not just about the content of manifesto promises, but also about how to present them in an engaging fashion to the electorate.