The staggering corruption of government in the United States prompted me to look again at what Sir Lewis Namier, the great English historian said about corruption in England in the eighteenth century.  It was Namier who rewrote the history of that time by looking at how the whole machinery of government was run on what they called patronage and we call corruption.

Here are some citations from his writing.  What strikes me about the Trump family is how brazen they all are and how tamely acquiescent their victims are – and the people are the victims.  Namier was talking about bribery while Trump specialises in enrichment – but the same moral or ethical considerations apply.  And at least in Australia, I think the same legal consequences follow.

The proper attitude for right-minded Members was one of considered support to the Government in the due performance of its task…But if it was proper for the well-affected Member to co-operate with the Government, so long as his conscience permitted, attendance on the business of the nation was work worthy of its hire, and the unavoidable expenditure in securing a seat deserved sympathetic consideration.  …. Bribery, to be really effective, has to be widespread and open…

Trade was not despised in eighteenth-century England – it was acknowledged to be the great concern of the nation; and money was honoured, the mystic common denominator of all values, the universal repository of as yet undetermined possibilities…. A man’s status in English society has always depended primarily on his own consciousness; for the English are not a methodical or logical nation – they perceive and accept facts without anxiously inquiring into their reasons or meaning.  (England in the Age, etc., 2^nd Ed, 1961); ‘…. Fox would probably have found it easier to account for his fears than for the money…

On Charles Townshend: He did not change or mellow; nor did he learn by experience; there was something ageless about him; never young, he remained immature to the end…Conscious superiority over other men freely flaunted, a capacity for seeing things from every angle displayed with vanity, and the absence of any deeper feelings of attachment left Townshend, as Chase Price put it, ‘entirely unhinged’.

I have put emphasis on the extent of the moral collapse.

The work of Namier generally led me to say.

The English aristocracy survived, almost alone in Europe.  They had been able to reach an accommodation with the Commons in shaping the English constitution, and they reached an accommodation with business and money in shaping British trade.  This triumph of the English aristocracy is unique in all Europe, and the failure of English historians to notice it, let alone celebrate it, is a sad reflection upon the provincialism and specialization of too much of English historical writing. 

Namier saw it plainly, but he was from out of town.  Maitland frequently stressed the need for a comparative outlook, and was deeply interested in German history.  French historians such as Marc Bloch and Georges Lefebvre laced their analyses of the history of France and Europe with comparisons with what was happening across the Channel, and their work was so much more illuminating as a result. 

But English historians do not often return that serve.  How often do you read in English history how the French law of derogation precluded the French lords from engaging in trade?  For example, under the heading La Noblesse et L’Argent, (The Nobility and Money), Georges Lefebvre remarked that ‘the French lords envied the English lords who became rich on mixing with the bourgeoisie and who, thanks to their Parliament, formed the ministry and government of the nation.’

The English lack of interest in Europe has borne fruit, and is currently celebrating a kind of mordant vindication, but the mind-set may also be at risk of being described as insular – definitively insular – with all the darkening and proud exclusion that that state of mind entails.

Sadly, the United States as it stands is a very different beast.