Shady deals & rigged elections: the changing face of corruption
HistoryExtra podcast
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The Politics of Government in the Early Eighteenth Century
In the early eighteenth century, sir robert walpole was often blamed for creating the system of corruption. He used treasury money to bribe voters to return a guaranteed majority in parliament and then to do what he liked with that majority. But from his critic's point of view, who included figures like jonathan swift, the satirist whose gulliver's travels you could see as a bit of an indictment of the walpolean era. So i think it it depended who you were. For those who were able to create and manipulate the systems of corruption, they worked extremely well and they were extremely enduring. I don't think anti corruption ever is a something which ends. It's a sort
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