Escape from such confusion can hardly come from the accepted formulas of the dictionaries. Their descriptions or periphrases of corruption are in general much too broad for use in exact discussion. Bribery, indeed, is defined with sufficient sharpness by the Century Dictionary as
“a gift or gratuity bestowed for the purpose of influencing the action or conduct of the receiver; especially money or any valuable consideration given or promised for the betrayal of a trust or the corrupt performance of an allotted duty, as to a fiduciary agent, a judge, legislator or other public officer, a witness, a voter, etc.”
Corruption, however, is by no means synonymous with bribery. The latter is narrower, more direct, less subtle. There can be no bribe-taker without a bribe-giver, but corruption can and frequently does exist even when there are no personal tempters or guilty confederates. A legislator may be approached by a person interested in a certain corporation and may be promised a definite reward for his favourable vote on a measure clearly harmful to the public interest but calculated to benefit the corporation concerned. If the bargain be consummated it is unquestionably a case of bribery, and the action involved is also corrupt. But, if current reports are to be believed, it sometimes happens that legislators, acting wholly on their own initiative and regardless of their duty to the state, vote favourably or unfavourably on pending bills, endeavouring at the same time to profit financially by their action, or by their knowledge of the resultant action of the body to which they belong, by speculation in the open market. In the latter instance they have not been approached by a personal tempter, and the brokers whom they employ to buy or sell may be ignorant of the motives or even of the identity of their patrons. Clearly this is not bribery, but equally clearly it is corrupt. The distinction is perhaps sufficiently important to justify the coinage of the term “auto-corruption” to cover cases of the latter sort.[15] Corruption in the widest sense of the term would then include both bribery and auto-corruption, and may be defined as the intentional misperformance or neglect of a recognised duty, or the unwarranted exercise of power,[16] with the motive of gaining some advantage more or less directly personal.
It will be observed that none of the terms of the foregoing definition necessarily confines corruption to the field of politics. This is intentional. Corruption is quite as possible elsewhere as in the state. That it has so frequently been discussed as peculiarly political is by no means proof that government is subject to it in a greater degree than other social organisations. One might rather conclude that the earlier discovery and more vigorous denunciation of corruption as a political evil showed greater purgative virtue in the state than in other spheres of human activity. For surely the day is gone by when the clamour of reformers was all for a “business administration” of public affairs. Since that era business has had to look sharply to its own morals—in insurance, in public utilities, in railroads, in corporate finance, and elsewhere. Revelations in these fields have made it plain that much of the impetus to wrong-doing in the political sphere comes originally from business interests. This is not to be taken as in any sense exculpating the public officials concerned; it simply indicates the guilt of the business man as particeps criminis with the politician. Moreover business can and does suffer from forms of corruption which are peculiar to itself and which in no way involve political turpitude. Such offences range all the way from the sale by a clerk of business secrets to a rival concern, and the receipt of presents or gratuitous entertainment from wholesalers by the buyers for retail firms, up to the juggling of financial reports by directors, the mismanagement of physical property by insiders who wish to buy out small stockholders, and the investment of insurance or other trust funds to the private advantage of managerial officers.
Besides business and politics, other spheres of social activity are subject to corrupt influences. Indeed wherever and whenever there is duty to be shirked or improperly performed for motives of more or less immediate advantage evil of this sort may enter in. This is the case with the church, the family, with educational associations, clubs, 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 intrusted. 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.