Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published some seventy-five years ago in The New Lanka, October 1950 edition. Its reflections on governance, morality, and the responsibilities of leadership remain strikingly relevant today.
Though corruption is often a crime, few associate crime and corruption as different aspects of the same social evil. Crime is thought of as a reprehensible characteristic of the working classes, which a police force is employed to put down. Corruption, at least on a sufficiently grand scale, is a middle-class affair about which people make jokes.
The Colombo Municipal Bribery Commissioner has pointed out that there is no public opinion against bribery and corruption, and he might have extended his observation to other forms of corruption—whether it takes the form of asking a Minister to do a favour, cheating at an examination, or writing a personal letter to a friend in the University to ask him to request the Vice-Chancellor to give “favourable consideration.”
This class distinction is, of course, not limited to Ceylon. Though a motor-car is a more dangerous weapon than a knife, it took England thirty years of persistent propaganda to persuade owner-drivers that dangerous driving was not only criminal but wrong. Embezzlement, provided that it is done by a director and not by a clerk, is still thought of as less reprehensible than larceny.
In Ceylon, the steps taken or proposed to put down crime assume that it is an affair of “the masses”: stop the poor man’s toddy, forbid the carrying of knives, strengthen the uniformed police, organise a mass literacy campaign, bring out the middle classes to preside at anti-crime meetings, and so on. There was even a suggestion to stop racing; but this unfortunately cannot be done without depriving the middle classes of an opportunity for what Veblen called “conspicuous waste.”
My theory is that obedience to law depends in very large measure on the standards of social behaviour of the wealthier classes. I have to use English material because I am familiar with it and because England has tackled the problem. In spite of the deterioration of standards which, as usual, followed the war, Britain is one of the countries where both crime and corruption have been kept at a reasonably low level.
That the characteristic is not what Ceylon would call “racial” is shown by the fact that a hundred and fifty years ago public life in Britain was thoroughly corrupt and crime so widely prevalent that London was the worst city in Europe. If the characteristic is now “racial,” it must be a remarkable demonstration of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, for it must have “gotten into the blood” in three generations.
It may be convenient to define one’s terms. I shall tend to use “middle classes” in the English sense as including what Ceylon would call both the “upper classes” and the “middle classes.” The “upper classes” in the older English sense have disappeared in Britain and never appeared in Ceylon. “The masses” can be used only of Ceylon.
Marx and Engels were a little out of date when they made their classic analyses, for the class system in Britain was changing as they wrote—though no doubt the change was not noticeable in the British Museum. It is convenient to distinguish the “working classes” and “middle classes”—both in the plural—because those terms provide a rough generalisation like “passes” and “failures”; but the line is purely arbitrary, because in Britain there are not two classes but a graduated scale from the worst slums at one end to what remains of the great country houses at the other. There is, in other words, not a class division but a class curve.
Though the situation is changing in Ceylon also, there is still a clear enough division between “the classes” (i.e. the English-educated) and “the masses.” In Britain we simply speak of “the people,” among whom even Ministers, Members of Parliament, Civil Servants, and Vice-Chancellors are counted, whereas in Ceylon such persons obviously do not belong to “the masses.” Thus, in Ceylon today as in Britain before the Reform Act, crime is regarded as an affair of “the masses” and is thoroughly reprehensible, while corruption is an affair of “the classes” and is a bit of a joke.
English social history has been so thoroughly worked over that the rise and fall of corruption can easily be traced. The stern Puritanism of the Commonwealth went to such excess that it produced a reaction at the Restoration. Oliver Cromwell and Samuel Pepys came from the same social group and went to the same University, but Pepys’ method of looking for a job reminds one forcibly of the saying which has been repeated in Ceylon: “What matters is not what you know but whom you know.”
This Restoration corruption was worked into a fine art under Walpole and Pelham, so that the unreformed Constitution of Britain has been called “Old Corruption.” This, too, produced a reaction. The Puritan strain did not die out, though it was to be found mainly among the Quakers. It was reinforced at a higher social level by what may be called the strain of enlightened patriotism, exemplified especially by Chatham, Pitt, Burke, and even Charles James Fox.
At this point, though, it crossed another strain. The corruption of the Church is witnessed by the popular song The Vicar of Bray; but late in the eighteenth century a new religious movement started in Cambridge and moved to Oxford—both middle-class preserves in those days—and split into several strains. At the top its influence is seen in the Clapham Sect, and it led Wilberforce to agitate for the abolition of the Slave Trade and Pitt to begin cleaning up corruption in the Government.
With reinforcement from other sources it led on the one hand to Peel and Gladstone, who between them finished Pitt’s job, and on the other hand to Shaftesbury, who insisted on Parliament paying some attention to the condition of the factory workers. A second strain produced the Oxford Movement and the revival of Roman Catholicism under Cardinal Newman.
Though both Anglo-Catholicism and Roman Catholicism were (in England) middle-class movements, the followers went into the slums. An even more important strain created the Methodist Movement, which was essentially middle-class but which spread rapidly among the working classes, especially of the West and of the North, where it joined with the relics of Puritanism to create that remarkable political phenomenon, the Nonconformist Conscience. Gladstone as a man was the product of the Oxford Movement and the heir of the Clapham Sect; but as a politician he was the mouthpiece of the Nonconformist Conscience.
Nor must it be forgotten that the public schools were being cleansed. Arnold of Rugby was the most prominent of the great headmasters, and his connection with Oxford Evangelicalism is abundantly plain. But he was only one of a class of great men whose memorial is the “old school tie” of today; and though the sceptics have done their best to debunk that article of apparel, it is noticeable that even the red-brick secondary schools and the primary schools have followed the tradition.
Important though these religious movements were, there were others. Young Jeremy Bentham attended lectures at Oxford and came to the conclusion, like many intelligent young men, that professors often talk nonsense. His influence and the influence of his disciples spread far, for even Ceylon had Benthamites in Colebrooke and Cameron. Bentham probably made as many mistakes as “our author” Blackstone, but there was very little dirt in the stables when the Benthamites had done their job.
Nor must one forget Tom Paine and the atheists, Francis Place and the Charter, Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League, Carlile and the freedom of the press. Never was there such an efficient collection of brooms. By the time Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer, the public service had almost acquired its present reputation for rigid integrity, and Gladstone finished the job.
The clearing up of electoral corruption took rather longer. The Parliament of 1841, which brought Peel into power, was known as the “Bribery Parliament.” Peel had the courage to defy his majority and break his party, thus bringing the strength of character of the Peelites to lead the Nonconformist Conscience. Even in the ’fifties, though, Dod’s Parliamentary Companion indicated who had “influence” in what constituencies.
The draftsman of the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1853 obviously knew all the tricks—personation, bribery, treating, undue influence, abduction, flags, streamers, favours, hired transport, paid canvassers, hired committee rooms, and all the rest. Dickens’ famous description of the election at Eatanswill was only a caricature of the typical election of the ’forties. Each election, though, tended to be a little cleaner than the last. If I remember rightly, there has not been an election petition since 1931 and not a successful one since 1910.
What is significant from our present point of view is that corruption was tending to diminish before the problem of crime was seriously tackled. Pitt and Burke had begun to reform the administration before the crime wave had reached its peak, which was after Waterloo. Not until Bentham began writing was it discovered that fundamentally the fault lay not in the people who were expected to obey the laws but in the people who made them.
Fielding began to reform the administration of the courts before the reform of the laws was seriously attacked and before crime began to diminish. The explanation, in an English context, is very obvious. If the master was a rogue, would not the servants be rogues? If the secretary took his commission, would not the clerks cook the accounts? If the clerks cooked the accounts, would not the labourers do a bit of pilfering? If the squire evaded the poor rate, would not the tenants take a pheasant or two? If the rector took his tithes and let the curate do the work, would the parishioners obey the Ten Commandments?
Corruption, in other words, ran down the social scale and became crime. When honesty started in at the top, it tended to come out at the bottom. Crime began to disappear when corruption began to disappear.
The difficulty is that crime is thought of in its negative aspect. It is not a question of stopping “the masses” from disobeying the laws; it is a question of persuading “the people” to obey social conventions. Bribery is limited in England not because there are few people willing to bribe or to be bribed, but because there are many honest men. What is more, they are honest men with a sense of social responsibility, so that they are apt to pick up the telephone and call “Whitehall 1212 or any police station”—as the B.B.C. announcement always puts it.
The policemen are “wonderful” because they have the great mass of the population behind them, ready to give assistance against any potential law-breaker. The law cannot be enforced unless it is obeyed; the law will not be obeyed unless the accepted conventions of civilised society are observed; and the conventions will not be observed by those who are “underprivileged” unless they are observed by those who are “over-privileged.”
If this is so, reform must begin at the top, as it did in England. Chatham had such a sense of responsibility that, though a dying man, he came to the House of Lords to defend the Americans. Pitt resigned because the King prevented him from carrying out his promise to enfranchise the Irish Catholics. Burke lost his seat at Bristol because he would not seek privileges for his constituents. Charles James Fox sustained all the war hysteria because he thought himself right. Peel was turned out because he would not let the Irish starve in order to keep up the profits of the landlords who supported him. Gladstone accepted defeat rather than give up Home Rule.
They may all have been wrong, but they were all honest men—or, to use a phrase which unfortunately went out of use because it carried sinister implications, “men of honour.” Their heroic actions, though, are less important than their normal behaviour. They all helped to clean up “Old Corruption” and in the process they, and many lesser men, made Britain a comparatively law-abiding country.
There is plenty of crime and some corruption; but nobody can sit in police courts, as I have done week by week, without realising that the criminals are the exception and the honest witnesses the rule.
If there is a close connection between crime and corruption in England, there is probably a similar connection in Ceylon, for though social conventions differ, human nature does not. If there is too much crime in Ceylon, and if English experience is any guide, the essential aim should be to reform social conventions not only among “the masses” but also, and indeed above all, among “the classes.”
Nor does it seem possible to deny that social conventions are defective. For the manner in which some elections have been conducted, one has only to read the judgments of election tribunals. In the past few years there have been three Bribery Commissions, each of which found proved cases, and the last of which reported that “in recent years bribery and corruption have become so widespread and common in every walk of life that most people have begun to treat them as inherent in present-day society.”
That Commission found, in addition to matters within its terms of reference, that grants from the Mayor’s Fund were sometimes obtained by getting members to sponsor them, that members interviewed officials on behalf of persons who wished to obtain concessions, and that witnesses suppressed information because they did not wish to incur the displeasure of members.
There have been cases of “leakages” of examination papers; and, what was most significant, there appears to be no public opinion against those who might be willing to use pirated copies. Every examining authority knows that the candidates have to be assumed to be dishonest and that it must impose rigid precautions to prevent “leakages,” personation, the use of smuggled notes, and plain copying.
“Leakages” of information from Government Departments are so common that nobody takes notice of them; and if Heads of Departments take precautions, other officials are said to be “muzzled.” Even when it is made plain that no “favours” are granted to anyone, attempts are made to secure them as if there were nobody who could not be “influenced.”
These are not allegations but facts for which chapter and verse can be given. Allegations are much more common. What is more, those allegations are sometimes made falsely, with motives which are obviously corrupt. Again, documentary evidence can be quoted.
What is even more significant is that when an allegation was made casually, as if it were a matter of common repute, that “many Ceylon students are dishonest,” some of the comments were intended to be jokes and others to be caustic. “Boys will be boys” is true enough, and it is also true that if their elders joke about dishonesty, boys will be dishonest. If dishonesty is “not cricket,” there will be little dishonesty.
Allowing for differences of geography and time, the comparison with the atmosphere in which “Old Corruption” was at work is significant. One gets exactly the same impression from Pepys at one end and Creevey, or even Labouchere, at the other. The same cynicism appears among the newspaper commentators as “Labby” put into Truth. Even while “Labby” was writing, however, the relics of “Old Corruption” were disappearing. Victorianism, with all its extravagances, had a rigid moral code—often too rigid by reaction from “Old Corruption.”
If English experience is any guide, the reform of social conventions ought to begin among the politicians—not because they are more important than other people, but because they receive more publicity. Cambridge could have produced many Pitts, and Oxford could have produced many Peels and Gladstones, but it happens that Pitt was the son of the great Chatham, while Peel and Gladstone were induced to enter public life.
The improvement of social conventions among the politicians is even more important now that the franchise has been widened. It is sometimes easier to “influence” votes—to use the euphemism popular in England a century ago—than to deserve them; and if the temptation to use “influence” is not resisted, the fact that it is used becomes propaganda for corruption of all kinds, having no connection with politics at all.
In this connection one point needs special emphasis. It is quite untrue that in democratic theory the Member of Parliament “represents” his constituents’ interests and that his task is to secure advantages for them at the public expense. He is elected by a majority of them, or even by a minority of them, because his views on public policy, or the views of his party, are acceptable to those who vote for him.
He is expected to assist in the decision of matters relating to the welfare of the country, not to secure roads, bridges, tanks, schools, hospitals, or wireless sets for his constituents. Burke long ago laid down the correct doctrine. True, he lost his seat, but his statue now stands in the centre of the city which rejected him.
The Member of Parliament can help to decide whether wireless sets should be provided by the Government and, if there are not enough to go round, the general principles on which they should be distributed. But he is the last person to decide whether a set should go to the Parish of St. George or to that of St. Anne, for he has an axe to grind: he is dependent on votes for re-election, and he is under an almost irresistible temptation to give a set to St. Anne’s if the electors of St. Anne’s are likely to vote for him—even though the people of St. George’s need the set more.
On the moral plane there is no difference between giving a wireless set to St. Anne’s in order to get votes and giving a rupee each to the electors of St. Anne’s. It is a form of bribery, though at the public expense and not at his own.
It is a general principle, which English experience has demonstrated over three hundred years, that politicians should keep their hands out of administration because they ought to know, from the pressures on them, that they cannot be trusted. The extension of the franchise has merely added to a problem which was acute from 1660 to 1832.
Elected members can criticise the Government for defective administration, and responsible Ministers must ensure that their staffs administer fairly, impartially, and intelligently. But a right to criticise administration is not a right to take part in administration, for a politician is by definition a partisan.
The religious movements which had such a potent influence in Britain can hardly be copied in Ceylon, for there are too many religions, and those accepted by most of the population are not propagandist. It is, however, plain that if it were consistent with Buddhism for the Sangha to act as censors of public morals, its influence in two-thirds of the country would be profound.
Even Buddhist and Hindu laymen would be influential if there were enough active leaders without axes to grind, if they kept away from politics, and if they sought reform by a change of social convention and not by a change of law. It is as true now as it was when the remark was made that one cannot make people good by Act of Parliament.
The Nonconformist Conscience had great political influence, but the explanation was not that the Nonconformist leaders became politicians, but that the politicians—like the electors—were influenced by the social ideals of Christianity. There is, of course, always a danger that politicians will get on the bandwagon.
Labby’s remark that he did not mind Gladstone having the ace of trumps up his sleeve but did object to his assuming that God had put it there, though obviously very unfair to the Prime Minister, did at least draw attention to the danger that politicians would “cash in” by affecting a conformity in public which they did not practise in private.
Universities and schools are slower instruments, but their mills grind exceeding small. Oxford and Cambridge played a dominant role in Britain—both as collections of mature scholars who did not hesitate to condemn corruption (once they had reformed themselves), and as collections of younger scholars who went into the world with sound traditions. The public schools played an important part by training their young men to leadership in good citizenship.
It must, of course, be realised that the social conventions of a school or a university—particularly of a day school or a non-residential university—cannot be much in advance of the social conventions of the classes from which their students are drawn. Nor is it wise to develop a body of prigs. Nevertheless, it is not difficult for a school or a university to improve its “tone,” and to improve it rapidly, for the generations succeed each other very quickly, and each ought to be an improvement on its predecessor.
The University of Ceylon is still below the level at which we should like to see it, but there has been a progressive improvement over the past five years, and it should be more rapid once a large part of it gets away from the corrupting influence of Colombo. Most of the better schools, too, have managed to maintain their traditions in spite of the manifold difficulties of the past six years.
It is astonishing how often we in the University find, when we have to recommend a student for a job which implies honesty and sound commonsense, that his personal file tells us of his training in one of the better schools. As the newer schools get established, they should follow the traditions of the older schools.
All this may sound extremely vague, but it is really very precise. It determines the exact function of the politician, the propagandist, the university, and the school. It involves a positive and concerted attack. It will probably be successful in a generation—and certainly in two. If it produces a diminution of corruption, it will simultaneously produce a diminution of crime.
The story that crime and corruption have something to do with the standard of living, which keeps turning up in the newspapers, is a product of self-deception. It is easier to find an excuse for doing nothing than to do something which may be unpopular. It is quite untrue that honesty varies with wealth; on the contrary, it often varies inversely with wealth.
In Britain, while the majority of the middle classes was still corrupt, Methodism began to affect the labourers and the factory workers. It stretched right across England, dominated Wales, and spread into Scotland. It had nothing to do with a rising standard of living. It was essentially a movement of ideas.
Corruption is a middle-class disease, not a product of malnutrition. Nor is it a product of capitalism, for it affects a bureaucracy like that of the Soviet Union much more easily. In business, honesty is usually the best policy; but in a bureaucracy, toadyism is often the best policy—especially if the politicians are corrupt.
The removal of corruption need not await the millennium, nor does it always require the support of a prominent person. A young graduate in another country lived in a city whose government was alleged to be corrupt. He gathered together a number of his friends—all young graduates—and worked out a plan. I knew of it because he wrote to me to ask for advice about certain aspects of English local government.
Some years later he sent me a book, written by himself, which described how that city had been cleaned up. It is, I believe, still a model city.
