Bribe

“ On the occasion of an important criminal case he refused successive bribes of 30,000 and 50,000 strings of cash, but his virtue succumbed to an offer of 100,000 strings. He excused this lapse on the ground that 100,000 strings would tempt even the gods, who would resent the refusal of such a bribe by a mere mortal. ”

“ Being a Brahmin, to pay a bribe is a foolish act; to receive one—a necessary circumstance, perhaps. Not being a Brahmin, to offer or accept a bribe is a disgraceful transaction, requiring that both parties shall be made an example of;—the bribe is forfeited to the Brahmins, and the poorer party fined; if the fine exceed his means, the richer party to pay the excess. ”

“ No one has ever thrown a stronger light on the subject of bribery, or more accurately stated the relation between the man who gives and the man who accepts a bribe.
When I was a young man I bought a ten-volume set of orations in order to obtain one speech, and that speech was valuable to me because it contained one sentence. ”

“ I am sure, if you go to law, you do not consider the appeals, degrees of jurisdiction, the intricate proceedings, the knaveries, the cravings of so many ravenous animals that will prey upon you, villainous harpies, promoters, tipstaves, and the like, none of which but will puff away the clearest right in the world for a bribe. ”

“ They will be waged by the rich, either to give sentence against the poor, or to put off the poor man’s cause. This is the noble theft of princes and magistrates. They are bribe-takers. Nowadays they call them gentle rewards. ”

“ They know what degree of corruption will just forfeit an employment, and whether the bribe you receive be sufficient to set you right, and put something in your pocket besides: how much to a penny you may safely cheat the queen, whether forty, fifty, or sixty per cent, according to the station you are in, and the dispositions of the persons in office below and above you. ”

“ Neither is he worthy who bribes a man to vote against his conscience.
F.W.Robertson.
3. To gain by a bribe; of induce as by a bribe.
Bribe, v.i. 1. To commit robbery or theft. [Obs.]
2. To give a bribe to a person; to pervert the judgment or corrupt the action of a person in a position of trust, by some gift or promise.
An attempt to bribe, though unsuccessful, has been holden to be criminal, and the offender may be indicted.
Bouvier.
The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe. ”

“ Here justice is indeed an empty name, the most atrocious criminals escaping unpunished if able to offer a bribe sufficient to tempt the cupidity of those whose duty it is to administer it. Here money is sought after with insatiable avidity by great and small, for its own sake, and not for what it will produce. ”

“ And every judge that takes a bribe and diverts justice, He will not die of old age until his eyes have dimmed, As it says, “And you shall not take a bribe, because a bribe blinds those that can see and understand, etc.” ”

“ And be it further enacted, That any collector or his deputy, who shall directly or indirectly take or receive any bribe, reward or recompense, for conniving, or shall connive at any false entry, application, report, account, or statement, required to be made or rendered by any act relative to internal duties, and shall be convicted thereof, shall forfeit and pay a sum not less than two hundred nor more than two thousand dollars for each offence: and any person giving or offering any bribe, reward, or recompense,Penalty for persons offering a bribe. ”

“ Could anything be, to men of high feeling and sensitive honor, more likely to lead to parties taking the law into their own hands, when they were thus maligned as selling for so paltry a bribe, the cause of the weak, and singing the praises of those Indigo Planters, who, if this preface were anything but a libel, had cast an everlasting stain on the English name. ”

“ Mrs M. A place is no bribe—ask the parson of the parish if a place is a bribe.
May. What is the place?
Mrs M. I don't know what the place is, nor my lord does not know what it is, but it is a great swingeing place.
May. I will have the place first. I won't take a bribe, I will have the place first; liberty and property! I'll have the place first. ”

“ In fact, the latter appears to me to do the most harm, it being worse to corrupt a judge by a speech than by a bribe, inasmuch as no one can corrupt a wise man with a bribe, though it is possible that he may with eloquence.
11. There is a second class of those men who, professing the science of the law, especially the interpretation of conflicting and obsolete statutes, as if they had a bridle placed in their mouths, keep a resolute silence, in which they rather resemble their shadows than themselves. ”

“ Stat., [1] makes it a crime to bribe or offer to bribe 'any officer of the United States,' or 'any person acting for or on behalf of the United States, in any official function, under or by authority of any department or office of the government ”

“ And since the chief plague spot of our state is that it allows the prospect of a bribe to blind it to virtue and worth, be sure that you are fully aware of your own strength, that is, understand that you are the man capable of producing in the minds of your rivals the strongest fear of legal proceeding and legal peril. Let them know that they are watched and scrutinized by you: they will be in terror of your energy, as well as of your influence and power of speech, and above all of the affection of the equestrian order towards you. ”

“ and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office. ”

“ There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make them frightful and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of a great empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people, this is what makes government itself base, contemptible, and odious in the eyes of mankind. ”

“ Yet what effect has this vast amount of swearing, if it be not to make perjury so familiar an offence as to be no longer deemed disgraceful? Not a bribe is taken by a [pg 132] member of Congress, not a contract surreptitiously obtained by a municipal official, not an appointment made to the known detriment of the public on personal or party grounds, without the commission of a crime, in theory transcendentally heinous, in practice constantly condoned and ignored. ”

“ For a corrupt resignation or exchange of a benefice the giver and taker of a bribe forfeit each double the amount of the bribe. Any person corruptly procuring the ordaining of ministers or granting of licenses to preach forfeits £40, and the person so ordained forfeits £10 and for seven years is incapacitated from holding any ecclesiastical benefice or promotion. ”

“ But it will appear in a very different light, when you regard the consideration for which the bribe is given,—namely, that a Governor-General, claiming an arbitrary power in himself, for that consideration delivers up the properties, the liberties, and the lives of an whole people to the arbitrary discretion of any wicked and rapacious person,{139} who will be sure to make good from their blood the purchase he has paid for his power over them. It is possible that a man may pay a bribe merely to redeem himself from some evil. ”

“ Happily such occurrences are rare, and if customs officials are occasionally dishonest it should be remembered that they are no worse than those who encourage them to be so. A bribe, like a bargain, requires two persons for its consummation, and of this twain the officer is but one. ”

“ This man, my lords, has publicly said, that those ought to be afraid of accusations who have only robbed enough for their own support and maintenance; but that he has plundered sufficient to bribe numbers, and that nothing is so high or so holy which money cannot corrupt. ”

“ Bribery is promising or giving a reward to a public officer, to influence his opinion, vote or judgment. A person accepting such bribe, is punishable in the same manner, and forfeits his office, and, in some states, may never hold another public trust. This offense is not in all the states punishable by imprisonment in the state prison. ”

“ If you look at the question calmly and dispassionately, is there not something in degrees of guilt about bribery arising from the source from which the bribery may happen to come? If I want to get into power, and put my hand into my pocket and give out money I am guilty of bribery. It is a wrong act against a sensitive conscience. ”

“ If a public official or an arbitrator receives, demands or promises to receive a bribe, or causes, demands or promises a bribe to be given to a third party, after taking an improper action in the course of performing his/her duties, the punishment specified in the preceding paragraph shall be imposed. ”

“ The ruler and judge ask for a bribe; and the powerful man dictates the evil desire of his soul. Thus they conspire together. 007:004 The best of them is like a brier. The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge. ”

“ V. Just as the advantages sought by corrupt action may shade off from the more to the less material, so also the personal interest involved is susceptible of numerous gradations from egoism to altruism. It may be entirely selfish, as in the case of a bribe credited directly to the bank account of the bribe-taker. It may be extended to include the welfare of relatives—a form of corruption so common as to have acquired a name of its own. ”

“ A person who, by a bribe, has procured a decree in his favour, is by no means likely to come forward of his own accord as an accuser. He is content. He has his quid pro quo. He is not impelled either by interested or by vindictive motives to bring the transaction before the public. ”

“ The moment you bribe a person you acknowledge your dishonesty by paying for his dishonesty, and you may be sure that the bribe habit will grow; the demands of the men accepting the bribe will grow to alarming proportions. ”

“ There was a famous statesman and orator who came to this at last, of whom the typical and characteristic story was told that the holder of a claim against the Government, who dared not approach so great a man with so much as the intimation of a bribe, undertook by argument to interest him in the merit of the case. ”

“ Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one. ”

“ Finally, let it be believed that you will, if you detect it, be hostile not only to those who have accepted a bribe, but to those also who have given it. And, indeed, no one will give anything, if it is made quite clear that nothing is usually obtained from you through those who pretend to be very influential with you. ”

“ If they are to be considered honest because they do not take what is generally known as bribery, let them be so considered, but they are open to subtler influences. In order to gain their ends, they certainly bribe people with honours. ”

“ Millions of money have been spent in bribery and corruption, and who can say—except those whose interest it is to keep the secret—how it went, or to whom? I tell you, men were bought and sold, like sheep, in the pocket-boroughs, and sold themselves to the highest bidder in the counties and boroughs that were open to the contests. A drunken tinker might have ridden to the poll in the carriage of a Duchess, if the time were short and the numbers equal. ”

“ There are crassly venal persons, of course, whose itching palms are held open to receive cash bribes, but after all these are the small and stupid minority of the army of corruptionists. Many who would scorn a direct bribe are, however, quite willing to accept considerations more tactfully offered but almost as purely material in character—shares of stock, railroad passes, salaried positions, etc. ”

“ And I have no doubt that to the average citizen, leading a small, quiet life and dealing with affairs in corner-grocery retail, the stupendous facts of accumulations of wealth and wholesale, far-and-wide purchases of the politicians, the vast system of bribery, with bribes adapted to every taste and conscience, seem impossibilities, romancings of partizanship and envy and sensationalism. ”

“ Their riches consisted not of spoils taken from enemies, but were the base product of their own corruption. They valued nothing but money, and those who could bribe them were sure to be advanced to the highest offices ”

“ Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune; ”

“ The chief of police takes a bribe. The governor of the province also secretly accepts a bribe. Taxes are being collected. In the village, while a cow is sold for payment, the police inspector is bribed by a factory owner, who thus escapes taxes altogether. ”

“ The corruption of the jury by bribery and debauchery dealt a crushing blow to the republic. See what has followed. We have had a consul forced on us, at whom no one except us philosophers can look without a sigh. That is a fatal stroke. Though a senatorial decree has been passed about the bribery of juries, no law has been carried; the Senate has been frightened out of it, and the knights have been estranged. ”

“ GOVERNOR. H'm. Bribes are bribes, whether puppies or anything else.
AMMOS. Oh, no, Anton Antonovich. But if one has a fur overcoat worth five hundred rubles, and one's wife a shawl—
GOVERNOR. [testily] . And supposing greyhound puppies are the only bribes you take? You're an atheist, you never go to church, while I at least am a firm believer and go to church every Sunday. You—oh, I know you. When you begin to talk about the Creation it makes my flesh creep. ”

“ There is no opening for transactions of this sort, nor for any one's power or influence; in fact,—and this gives questions of law a more important and a more holy character,—a judge cannot be corrupted even by a bribe in cases of this sort. 73That very witness of yours who dared to say “that he had been seen to do...” in a case where he could by no possibility know even of what the man was accused—even he would not venture to decide that a dowry was due to a husband which the woman had promised without the consent of her trustee. ”