Bribery

“ All you who, though freemen, yet dare to be free,
Spite of tyrants and slaves, come and listen to me;
I sing how Conservative roguery mocks
All your honest intents by a Bribery Box.
⁠Derry down, down,
⁠down, derry down.
Independent and virtuous, you set at defiance
Dictation and bribes; with the strongest reliance
On victory, you went to the charge firm as rocks,
When the enemy set up a Bribery Box. ”

“ The only rivalry was in the spending of money in unrestricted and shameless bribery and corruption. The more modern sense of revolt against the whole principle of bribery was little thought of in those days. There were men, indeed, on both sides of the political field who would never have stooped to offer a bribe if left to the impulses of their own honor and their own conscience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You and I, as men of the world, will agree that if the American people prefer or find it more serviceable to cherish bribery as a federal institution, no one will interfere. The fact that it is ethically wrong is interesting to real philosophers and to the clergy, but bribery will continue to flourish like a bay-tree if it is the sort of thing which the American people like. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now to what an extremity is this unhappy man at your bar driven, when, oppressed by this accumulative load of corruption charged upon him, and seeing his bribery, his prevarication, his fraudulent bonds brought before you, he gives the testimony of this child, who for the greatest part of his time lived three hundred miles from the seat of Mr. Hastings's government! ”

“ If they must soothe a patron's ear,
Not I—I was not born to bear;
All base conditions I refuse,
Nor will I so debase the muse.
Though I ne'er flatter nor defame,
Yet would I fain bring guilt to shame;
And I corruption would expose,
Though all corrupted were my foes.
I no man's property invade,—
Corruption 's an unlawful trade;
So bribery also. Politicians
Should be tied down to such conditions ”

“ PARODY FOR A REFORMED PARLIAMENT. PUNCH. The quality of bribery is deep stained;
It droppeth from a hand behind the door
Into the voter's palm. It is
twice dirty:
It dirts both him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis basest in the basest, and becomes
Low blacklegs more than servants of the Crown.
Those swindlers show the force of venal power,
The attribute to trick and roguery,
Whereby 'tis managed that a bad horse wins:
But bribery is below their knavish "lay."
It is the vilest of dishonest things ”

“ It is natural and necessary for those that have corrupt ends, to make use of means that are corrupt, and to hate all men that are uncorrupt.
I would lay it down as a rule for all nations to consider and observe, that where bribery is practised, 'tis a thousand to one but mischief is intended; and the more bribery, the more mischief. When therefore the people, or their trustees, are bribed, they would do well to consider, that it is not, it cannot be, for their own sakes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been a source of amazement to me that men acquainted with practical life can believe in the suppression of bribery by the ballot, as if bribery in all its Protean forms could ever disappear by means of a single external arrangement. ”

“ Put down bribery and corruption: that is fair. And more especially put down open, shameless, and brutal bribery and corruption, for its very coarseness is, in itself, an additional crime. But no reform is efficacious that does not come from within; and when refined men wage war against vulgar vices, let them look sharply to their own. I do not say, that by taking thought they will be able to do entirely away with the seductive influence of a bow, or a dinner, or a kind action ”

“ The Nonconformists have always had a conscience, which seemed to be peculiarly sensitive upon the question of electoral purity. They are haters of bribes. Should they be accused of being bribed? (Hear, hear.) Reflect for one moment. What is bribery? Bribery is the spirit of simony: it is political simony; it is getting a man to smother conscience for the sake of gain, to keep it conveniently suppressed for days. ”

“ Twenty years ago, for instance, an accusation of bribery brought against some professional politician would have been thought a monstrosity, and, however true, would nearly always have given the political lawyers, his colleagues, occasion for violent repression. To-day the thing has become so much a commonplace that all appeals to the old illusion would fall flat. ”

“ It has been necessary to lay these facts before you, (and I have stated them to your Lordships far short of their reality, partly through my infirmity, and partly on account of the odiousness of the task of going through things that disgrace human nature,) that you may be enabled fully to enter into the dreadful consequences which attend a system of bribery and corruption in a Governor-General. On a transient view, bribery is rather a subject of disgust than horror,—the sordid practice of a venal, mean, and abject mind ”

“ Was the accusation improbable, either on account of the subject-matter{26} or the actor in it? Does such an appointment as that of Munny Begum, in the most barefaced evasion of his orders, appear to your Lordships a matter that contains no just presumptions of guilt, so that, when a charge of bribery comes upon it, you are prepared to reject it, as if the action were so clear and proper that no man could attribute it to an improper motive? And as to the man,—is Mr. Hastings a man against whom a charge of bribery is improbable? ”

“ After he has been thus soundly beaten, the offender arises, and, kneeling before the presiding magistrate, thanks him for his kind correction. But bribery will soften the blows, or it is not unfrequent for a substitute to be allowed, and many a poor fellow, for the sake of a little money, will kneel down and receive the punishment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He is not only a practitioner of bribery, but a professor, a doctor upon the subject. His opinion is, that he might take presents or bribes to himself; he considers the penal clause which the Company attached to their prohibition, and by which all such bribes are constructively declared to be theirs, in order to recover them out of his hands, as a license to receive bribes, to extort money; and he goes with the very{328} prohibition in his hand, the very means by which he was to be restrained, to exercise an unlimited bribery, peculation, and extortion over the unhappy natives of the country. ”

“ BRIBERY AND ACCEPTANCE OF BRIBES. Any person who shall, directly or indirectly, offer, give, or promise, any money or thing of value, testimonial, privilege or personal advantage, to any executive or judicial officer or member of the Legislature to influence him in the performance of any of his public or official duties, shall be guilty of bribery, and be punished in such manner as shall be provided by law. ”

“ Now, when I show the consequence of his bribery, the presumptions that arise from his own bribes, his attention to secure others from the punishment of theirs, and, when ordered to carry on a suit, his discharging it,—when we see all this, can we avoid judging and forming our opinions upon two grand points: first, that no man would proceed in that universal patronage of guilt, unless he was guilty himself ”

“ When there are many like minded with himself—when, as a consequence, offices come to be filled by political adventurers, and opinion is swayed by demagogues—when bribery vitiates the administration of the law and makes fraudulent state transactions habitual; heavy penalties fall on the community at large, and among others on those who have thus done everything for self and nothing for society. ”

“ The public offence of bribery may be defined as the offering or giving of payment in some shape or form that it may be a motive in the performance of functions for which the proper motive ought to be a conscientious sense of duty. When this is superseded by the sordid impulses created by the bribe, a person is said to be corrupted, and thus corruption is a term sometimes held equivalent to bribery. The offence may be divided into two great classes—the one where a person invested with power is induced by payment to use it unjustly ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the case of bribery, my lords, the person accused has the privilege, if he be innocent, of prosecuting his accuser for perjury, and is therefore in less danger of being harassed by a false indictment. ”

“ The law on every point is most lax in the States, for bribery and corruption are acknowledged on every side to be the rule, and cases promising no profit are passed over. Still I must add the above was an exceptional case, I having always found the express-men act up to their bargains. ”

“ It is the demoralization of all sound political action and life. I know whereof I speak. In the North, bribery in elections and intimidation are fatal to public morality. The legislature elected by bribery is a bribable body. ”

“ In fact, if the officers would regard the law and the orders more than bribery, 50 per cent of the transactions in various lines of business would be impossible, especially for the Christians. It is the opinion of the writer that bribery, though detrimental to the interests of the central government, is the only good thing in the whole machinery of the corrupt rule. ”

“ Their hearts are in their pockets, uncle, and I am afraid that after all our reluctance to believe that our Congressmen can be improperly influenced, we will have to submit—with shame and sorrow—and accept the fact that bribery has been at work, successfully. ”

“ Corruption and bribery cannot have been particularly easy. Nor, again, could anything like intimidation be well practised. The fact, too, that rich and poor were brought together to discharge an important public function, would have a salutary effect. ”

“ No money, however, being passed from hand to hand, the fathers of these said lads would look with horror on such cases of bribery as have given renown and infamy to Sudbury and St Alban's.
All men think all men sinners but themselves. ”

“ But, my Lords, when the vices of low, sordid, and illiberal minds infect that high situation,—when theft, bribery, and peculation, attended with fraud, prevarication, falsehood, misrepresentation, and forgery—when all these follow in one train,—when these vices, which gender and spawn in dirt, and are nursed in dunghills, come and pollute with their slime that throne which ought to be a seat of dignity and purity, the evil is much greater ”

“ I had a proof of the truth of what he said of bribery within half an hour, for I was bathed, my hurts dressed, and I was clothed in new, clean and comfortable garments and served with abundant eatable food and good wine. ”

“ That cases in which bribes are taken do occur, we make no doubt; it would be assuming too much in favour of human nature to infer the contrary; but, under the system of publicity that prevails, it would not be easy for this crime to extend very far without its being exposed. It is greatly to the credit of the vast judicial corps of the States, that bribery is an offence which does not appear to be even suspected at all ”

“ This spirit of bribery, false swearing and peculation we find prevailing, among some of the most prominent members of the national Congress, who, these investigations have shown, are not above the acceptance of paltry bribes for the use or abuse of their high delegated authority; we find it in many of our state legislatures, particularly when a United States senator is to be elected or the interest of a railroad company, a corporation, or a wealthy private individual is to be subserved by forcing or retarding legislation ”

“ A thousand considerations like these blind them to the absence of merit and character on the part of the candidate, and lay them open to that extrinsic influence which, according to the meaning of the law, is bribery and corruption. As for the man who takes his bribe, for the sake of convenience, in the direct, portable, and exchangeable form of a sovereign, he lays it out in any pleasure or distinction he, on his part, has a fancy for. If he is a dissolute person, he spends it in the public-house; if he is a proper-behaved husband, he gives his wife a new gown ”