and so on throughout the whole list of social organisations. To ingratiate himself with wealthy or influential parishioners, for example, a minister may suppress convictions which his duty to God and religion requires him to express. A large proportion of the cases of divorce, marital infidelity, and childless unions, reflect the operation of corrupt influences upon our family life. In the struggle for endowments and bequests colleges and universities have at times forgotten some of their high ideals. If corrupt motives play a smaller part in the social organisations just mentioned than in politics or business it is perhaps not so much due to the finer fibre of churchmen, professors, and the like, as to the subjection of the more grossly gainful to other motives in clerical, educational, and similar circles.

While the possibility of corruption is thus seen to be extremely broad, our present concern is chiefly with political corruption. To adjust the definition hazarded above to cover the latter case alone it is necessary only to qualify the word duty" by the phrase "to the state." Further discussion of the various terms of the definition, thus amended, would seem advisable.

I. To begin with, corruption is intentional. The political duty involved is perceived, but it is neglected or misperformed for reasons narrower than those which the state intends. Failure to

meet a recognised duty is not necessarily corrupt; it may be due to simple inefficiency. The corrupt official must know the better and choose the worse; the inefficient official does not know any better. In either case the external circumstances may appear to be closely similar, and the immediate results may be equally harmful. No doubt what is often denounced in the United States as corruption is mere official stupidity, particularly in those spheres of administration still filled by amateurs and dominated by the "rotation of office" theory. Thus a purchasing official unfamiliar with his duties may prove the source of large profits to unscrupulous dealers. So far as the official himself is concerned no private advantage may be sought or gained, but the public interest suffers just the same. In another case the official understands the situation thoroughly and takes advantage of it by compelling the dealers to divide with him the amount by which the government is being defrauded, or he may go into business with the aid of office boys or relatives and sell to himself as purchasing agent. The latter are clear cases of bribery and auto-corruption respectively, but so far as immediate results are concerned the state is no worse off than with the official who was merely ignorant or careless. To one not in full possession of the underlying facts all three cases may appear very similar.

Successful corruption, however, tends to become

insatiable, and in the long run the state may suffer far more from it and from the spread of the bad moral example which it involves than it can easily suffer from simple inefficiency. On the other hand inefficiency also may spread by imitation, although perhaps more slowly, since it is not immediately profitable, until the whole service of government is weakened. Moreover inefficiency may develop by a very natural process into thoroughgoing corruption. If not too stupid, the incapable official may come to see the advantages which others are deriving from his incapacity and may endeavour to participate in them. Because of his failure to obtain promotion so rapidly as his more efficient fellow-servants, he may be peculiarly liable to the temptation to get on by crooked courses. Practically, therefore, inefficiency and corruption are apt to be very closely connected-a fact which civil service reformers have long recognised. It would also seem that the two are very closely connected in their essential nature, and only a very qualified assent can be given to the doctrine that inefficiency, as commonly understood, is morally blameless. To be so considered the incapable person must be entirely unaware of his inability to measure up to the full requirement of duty. In any other event he is consciously and intentionally ministering to a personal interest, be it love of ease or desire to retain an income which he does not earn, to the neglect of the public duties with which he is in

trusted. Now, according to the definition presented above, this attitude is unquestionably corrupt. It is, however, so common on the part of both officeholders and citizens that its corruptness is seldom recognised.

II. Political duty must exist or there is no possibility of being corruptly unfaithful to it. This statement may seem a truism, but the logical consequences to be drawn from it are of major importance. Among other things it follows that the more widely political duties are diffused the more widespread are the possibilities of corruption. A government which does not rest upon popular suffrage may be a very bad sort of government in many ways, but it will not suffer from vote-buying. To carry this thought out fully let us assume an absolute despotism in which the arbitrary will of the ruler is the sole source of power.1 In such a case it is manifestly impossible to speak of corruption. By hypothesis the despot owes no duty to the state or to his subjects. Philosophers who defend absolute government naturally lay great stress on the monarch's duty to God, but this argument may be read out of court on the basis of Mencius's dictum that Heaven is merely a silent

1Mr. Seeley has shown, of course, that no actual despotism, so-called, really conforms to this conception, but for purposes of argument, at least, the assumption may be permitted to stand.

partner in the state. The case is not materially altered when responsibility under natural law is insisted upon instead of to the Deity. Now since an absolute despot is bound to no tangible duty, he cannot be corrupt in any way. If in the conduct of his government he takes account of nothing but the grossest of his physical lusts he is nevertheless not unfaithful to the principles on which that government rests. Viewed from a higher conception of the state his rule may be unspeakably bad, but the accusation of corruption does not and cannot hold against it.

Conversely corruption necessarily finds its richest field in highly organised political communities which have developed most fully the idea of duty and which have intrusted its performance to the largest number of officials and citizens. The modern movement toward democracy and responsible government, beneficent as its results in general have been, has unquestionably opened up greater opportunities for evil of this sort than were ever dreamed of in the ancient and mediæval world. Economic evolution has co-operated with political evolution in the process. There is a direct and well-recognised relationship between popular institutions and the growth of wealth. It is no mere coincidence that those countries which have the most liberal governments are also to-day the richest countries of the world. With their growth in wealth, particularly where wealth is distributed