Note 26 — III CORRUPTION: A PERSISTENT PROBLEM OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE

Herbert Spencer shows “that from propitiatory presents, voluntary and exceptional to begin with but becoming as political power strengthens less voluntary and more general, there eventually grow up universal and involuntary contributions—established tribute; and that with the rise of a currency this passes into taxation” (“Principles of Sociology,” vol. ii, pt. iv, ch. iv, p. 371), and further that “In our own history the case of Bacon exemplifies not a special and late practice, but an old and usual one” (p. 372). Bribe giving may, therefore, be regarded as a lineal descendant of an old practice once regarded as legitimate, but now fallen under the ban. Given a social state in which public dues are open, regular, and fixed in amount, and in which bribery is distinctly reprobated, as contrasted with a social state in which present giving is common and tolerated or defended by public opinion, the higher moral standard of the former would seem beyond question.