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Mark Knights
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Trust and Distrust
Corruption in Office in Britain and its

Empire, 1600–1850
‘Mr. William Fittock, Mayor of St Mawes, in Cornwall, An[no] 1741 . . . being the fourth
time of his Serving that Office & never betray’d his Trust but refus’d Extraordinary
Bribes’ [BM Prints and Drawings, 1873,0712.686]. A rare positive image of an official
praised for being not corrupt.
Trust and Distrust

Corruption in Office in Britain and
its Empire, 1600–1850
M A R K K N IG H T S
1
1
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‘Mr. William Fittock, Mayor of St Mawes, in Cornwall, An[no] 1741 . . . being the fourth
time of his Serving that Office & never betray’d his Trust but refus’d Extraordinary
Bribes’ [BM Prints and Drawings, 1873,0712.686]. A rare positive image of an official
praised for being not corrupt.
Preface
‘Corruption is the Cancer of the Body politick.’¹

‘Without influence, which you call corruption, men will not be induced to
support government, though they generally approve of its measures’.²
‘We are become as remarkable for Corruption, as we were formerly for our
public Spirit . . . there never was such a Sink of Corruption as this Island.’³
‘Can any man, in his Senses, affirm, that, as things are now circumstanced in
this Country, it is possible to exterminate Corruption?’⁴
‘He that puts on a publick Gown, must put off a private Person’.⁵
There is currently no overview of the relationship between corruption and office

for the pre-modern period, or one that integrates domestic with the imperial
debates, and this book attempts to fill the gap. It explores corruption in office in
Britain and its empire over a ‘long early modernity’, running from the Reformation
to Reform, c.1600–c.1850. During that time, the concept of both corruption and
office markedly changed. These shifts will be outlined; but just as important is the
messy, protracted process by which they came about. As the quotations suggest,
corruption in office was much talked about but there was disagreement about
what it was and what, if anything, could be done about it.
The book is a mixture of synthesis of existing scholarship, covering a wide
chronology and spatial reach, together with primary research based on both
manuscript and printed sources, in order to enable greater depth of discussion
on some themes. A surprising amount of material on corruption is available in
print, largely because allegations became the subject of inquiries, courtrooms,
investigations, vindications and refutations that all left a significant paper trail.
Whilst there are some private papers that are illuminating, many of these too have
been published.
One of the risks of writing over a long period and across different spaces is the
loss of particularity and context. Specialists in certain periods and places may
well find the accounts offered here to be unsatisfying for that reason. I have tried
¹ The Craftsman, no. 105, 6 July 1728.

² Henry Gunning, Reminiscences of the University, Town and County of Cambridge, From the
Year 1780, 2 vols. (1854), i. 139. Gunning was recalling the words of the ‘borough-monger’ John
Mortlock who converted Cambridge into a sort of personal fiefdom.
³ The Case of the Opposition Impartially Stated. By a Gentleman of the Inner-Temple (1742), 39.
⁴ Gentleman’s Magazine, xl. 584, Junius to John Wilkes, 7 Sept. 1771.
⁵ Francis Quarles, Wisdom’s Better than Money: or, The whole Art of Knowledge and the Art to Know
Men (1st published 1640 as Enchyridion, 1698), 217. Quarles may have been repeating a colloquial
proverb.
vi 
to compensate for this by occasionally plumbing in depth but I have sought patterns
across time and place that would be impossible through highly detailed case studies.
I nevertheless envisage a companion volume that details some of the rich stories
that have inevitably been squeezed out here for reasons of space.
Because this book covers a large number of times and spaces, each with a con-
siderable secondary literature, and also draws on insights from non-historical
material, footnotes have been kept to a minimum but readers will find much
more guidance in the bibliography. Particular attention is paid there to non-
historical material that might be of interest to historians—this body of material
has largely been excluded from the chapters but the bibliography will show how
some of the book’s thinking is indebted to modern discussions. Although this is a
book for historians, it is also designed to be of interest to social scientists, public
administrators, lawyers, anthropologists, and sociologists, on whose work many
of the sections draw. Both corruption and office are topics that cannot be neatly
defined within a single disciplinary boundary; so any treatment of them should
have a multi-disciplinary framework and have something to say to each of the
cognate fields. Footnotes will nevertheless generally give information about pri-
mary and secondary material directly cited in the text; the bibliography gives a
more expansive treatment for each theme. The exceptions to this approach are
Chapters 3 and 4, which are themselves partly overviews of secondary literature.
Acknowledgements
I owe a special and great debt of thanks to Mark Philp, with whom I have had
many productive and enjoyable conversations. He read many of the chapters,
providing very helpful advice and encouragement, and it has been a great pleasure
to have had him as a colleague. I dedicate the book both to him and to the late
Colin Davis, for conversations about corruption that encouraged me to think of
this as a worthwhile project.
I also thank my friends and family—especially Emma, Sam, and Caitlin, but
also my parents, siblings, and wider kin—for listening to countless tales of cor-
ruption over a lengthy period; they will be relieved in all sorts of ways to see the
book finally in print.
I have presented versions of chapters at a number of conferences and seminars
in Amsterdam, Brighton, Cambridge, Chicago, Keele, London, Los Angeles,
Madrid, Milan, Oxford, Paris, Pavia, Reading, Sheffield, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Venice, Yale and Warwick, where many colleagues have kindly provided much
useful feedback, so thank you to everyone who participated and asked questions.
I am also grateful to Stephen Alford, Andreas Bågenholm, Robert Barrington,
Monika Bauhr, Trevor Burnard, Christian Burset, Emanuela Ceva, Penelope
Corfield, Margot Finn, Aaron Graham, Philip Harling, Lisa Herzog, Daniel
Hulsebosch, Joanna Innes, Ronald Kroeze, Simon Middleton, Steve Pincus, David
Chan Smith, Charles Walton, Callie Wilkinson, and Nick Wilson for answering
questions, reading chapters, providing references, supporting funding applica-
tions, and stimulating discussions. The book was started with the aid of an AHRC
Leadership Fellowship and concluded with the help of a Leverhulme Research
Fellowship, and I am very grateful to both funds for their support. The University
of Warwick also generously covered the costs of the images. Thanks also to Lucy
Sparks and her colleagues at Lear Fitness who worked wonders on the pains
resulting from being too long in front of a PC.
A shorter version of Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Corruption as the Abuse of
Entrusted Power’, in Nicoletta Parisi, Gian Luca Potesta, and Dino Rinoldi (eds.),
Prevenire la Corruzione (Naples, 2018).
I publish an occasional blog about corruption past and present at https://blogs.
warwick.ac.uk/historyofcorruption/
I wrote a report for Transparency International which is free to download at
https://www.transparency.org.uk/publications/old-corruption-what-british-
history-can-tell-us-about-corruption-today/
Conventions and Information
Some spellings have been silently modernised—vv has become w, and v become
u, for example. Contractions in early printed works have also been silently
expanded.
The Text Creation Partnership has now transcribed over 44,000 texts published
before 1700; and a group of corpus linguists at Lancaster have fed these into a
database of almost 1.2 billion words [https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/]. This also has
tools for the analysis of the corpus that take account of the fluctuations in the
quantity of print published at any time, so that a ‘frequency’ can be determined
that is relational to total output. This mitigates any data that automatically show a
rise for any term in the 1640s, for example, when print production suddenly
increased dramatically. I am very grateful to the Lancaster team for granting me
access to the database. We do not have such sensitive data for the eighteenth
century as for the pre-1700 period, since digitised post-1700 printed material
relies on OCR technology which is far less accurate than hand-entered data.
Searches of digitised newspapers from the later eighteenth century onwards can
also offer some useful data. So linguistic analysis has been based on all these
different platforms and tools.
Currency issues are fraught because values changed over time. The following
might be helpful guides. There were about 8 rupees to the pound sterling in 1770
[The True Alarm, 73]. A lakh = 100,000 (usually of rupees); 100 lakh made 1 crore.
A pagoda was a coin made of gold or half-gold, varying in value but worth about
3.5 rupees. To gain an idea of the present-day value of old sterling over time, see
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/
Indian correspondence sometimes uses Presidencies for locations. Fort William
was in Calcutta for the regional governance of Bengal. This was the base of the
Governor-General. Fort St George was in Madras for the regional governance of
southern India. I use pre-modern names for other places. I use ‘East Indiaman’ to
refer to people rather than, as is more usual, to ships.
Where no name is given before a publication, it was anonymous. Names in
square brackets are possible or probable authors. Place of publication in the
footnotes and bibliography is London unless otherwise stated.
Contents
List of Illustrations xiii

List of Abbreviations xv
1. Introduction 1
2. Indian Civil Servants 26
Corruption in Delhi 1829 27
The East India Company, Imperialism, and Corruption 39
3. Conceptualising Office 47
Defining Office 48
The Historiography of Office 59
4. Conceptualising Corruption in Office 67
Personal, Institutional, and Systemic Corruption 68
The Religious and Moral Language of Corruption 74
Classical and Civic Humanist Ideas about Political Corruption 85
The Effect of Changing Ideas about Political Economy 89
The Legal Definitions of Corruption in Office 91
Conclusion102
5. Trust, Standards of Public Office, and Corruption 107
The Evolution of Office as a Trust 109
The Development of Trust, Corruption, and Office 125
Conclusion138
6. Interest and Disinterestedness 144
The Partial Separation of Interests 150
Conflicting Interests in Commercial Office 157
Preventing Conflicts of Interest 162
Political Office and Pecuniary Interests 174
Conclusion180
7. Public Money, Public Accounts, and Accountability 184
The Evolution of a Problem 189
Public Accounting 203
Applying the Principles of Trust 210
Conclusion223
8. Informal Accountability, Distrust, and Speaking Out 228
Sample Cases 233
Patriotism and the Public Good 245
xii Contents
Entrepreneurial Anti-Corruption 253

Conclusion259
9. Freedom of the Press and Anti-Corruption 261
Printed Criticism of Corrupt Officials 269
The Case for the Government 273
Anglo-Indian Debates 280
The Cape 285
Censoring the Stage 289
Using Print to Counter Anti-Corruption 291
Conclusion295
10. The Politics of Anti-Corruption 297
Corruption as a Politicised Discourse 301
The Politics of Impeachment 303
Anti-Corruption as an Emotive Discourse 313
The Politics of Colonial Anti-Corruption 318
Caribbean Politics and Corruption in the Early Eighteenth Century 324
Conclusion337
11. Sale of Office 341
Uncertain Boundaries 347
Waves of Anxiety about Venality 349
Arguments against the Sale of Office 356
Defences of the Sale of Office 360
Army Commissions 367
Conclusion370
12. Gifts and Informal Profits of Office 374
The Ambiguity of Gifts 376
Proscribing Political Presents 381
Gifts in the Imperial Context 392
Extortionate Fees and Gratuities 399
Conclusion408
13. Conclusion 416
Comparative Contexts and Future Research 424
14. Policy Implications 433
Bibliography 437
Index 475
List of Illustrations
Illustrations © Trustees of the British Museum unless otherwise stated.

Cover. A detail from James Gillray, ‘A Bow to the Throne’ (1788), BM Sat.
7312. The image shows Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India,
in oriental dress, handing money bags to Prime Minister William Pitt
and Lord Chancellor Thurlow. King George III and his wife Charlotte
are shown grasping at money on the floor. Caps of officials are held
out to be filled with money.
Frontispiece.‘Mr. William Fittock’ (1741), BM Prints and Drawings,
1873,0712.686. ii
1.1. A detail from Thomas Rowlandson, ‘A Rough Sketch of the Times as
deleniated [sic] by Sir Francis Burdett’ (1819), BM Sat. 11553. 3
1.2. East India Company gross annual revenues, 1762–1859. Graph based
on John F. Richards, ‘Fiscal States in Mughal and British India’, in
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Patrick K. O’Brien, and Francisco
Comín Comín (eds.), The Rise of Fiscal States: A Global History,
1500–1914 (Oxford, 2012), 410–72, fig. 17 at 419. 12
1.3. The increase of East India Company rule in India, 1765–1857. Courtesy
of the Edinburgh Geographical Institute, from the Imperial Gazetteer
of India (Oxford, 1907). 16
1.4. An EIC official, 1764, probably William Fullerton who became Mayor of
Calcutta in 1757, painted by Dip Chand (detail of VAM IM.33-1912
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London). 18
2.1. A detail from ‘The Shaftesbury Election or the Humours of Punch’ (1775),
BM Sat. 5341. 42
3.1. A detail from ‘The Loaves and the Fishes’ (1783), BM Sat. 6195. 58
4.1. A detail from ‘The Golden Pippin-Pippin Boys on the Branches of State’
(1784), BM Sat. 6251. 70
4.2. ‘The Gaols Committee of the House of Commons’ (c.1729), by
William Hogarth (© National Portrait Gallery). 72
4.3. ‘The “System” that “Works so Well”!!’ (1831), BM Sat. 16610. 74
4.4. A detail from ‘The Grounds’ (1741), BM Sat. 2484. 80
4.5. ‘The Reformers’ Attack on the Old Rotten Tree’ (1831), BM Sat. 16650. 85
4.6. The growing incidence of the use of ‘bribery’ in The Times 1785–1850,
plotted as a percentage of the overall total of issues. 94
6.1. The rapid rise of the language of interest in the seventeenth century,
expressed as frequency in use of the word ‘interest’ per million words
(CQPWeb). 147
xiv   
6.2. ‘The Nabob Rumbled’ (1783), BM Sat. 6169. 167

6.3. ‘THE C-M-RS RELLISH AT GREASY HALL’ (1791), BM Sat. 7885. 177
6.4. James Gillray, ‘The V[ictualling] Committee Framing a Report’
(1782), BM Sat. 6021. 178
6.5. George Cruikshank, ‘The Clerical Magistrate’ (1819), BM Sat. 13303. 182
7.1. ‘The Tree of Taxation’ (1838), BM Print 1868,0808.9530. 186
7.2. ‘The Tenth Report’ (1805), BM Sat. 10384. 220
7.3. ‘John Bull Reading the Extraordinary Red Book’ (1816), owned by author. 224
7.4. ‘Makeing Away with Official Papers for Necessary Purposes’ (1806),
BM Sat. 10382. 226
8.1. A medal of Gwyllym Wardle BM M.5326. 248
8.2. Thomas Rowlandson, ‘A Rough Sketch of the Times as deleniated [sic]
by Sir Francis Burdett’ (1819), BM Sat. 11553. 252
9.1. ‘The Champion of Liberty’ (1810), BM Sat. 11531. 262
9.2. ‘The Festival of the Golden Rump’ (1737), BM Sat. 2327.
Wellcome Collection. 291
10.1. James Gillray, ‘The Political Banditti Assailing the Saviour of India’
(1786), BM Sat. 6955. 300
10.2. Frontispiece of John Wade, The Black Book; or Corruption
Unmasked! (1820), courtesy of University of Warwick Library
Special Collections. 302
10.3. A detail from ‘8th Commandment—Thou Shalt Not—Steele’
(1807), BM Sat. 10743. 312
10.4. A detail from ‘The Acquital’ [sic] (1741), BM 2486. 316
10.5. ‘In Office. Out of Office’ (1784), BM Sat. 6207. 317
11.1. Thomas Rowlandson, ‘The Road to Preferment through
Clarkes Passage’, BM Sat. 11239. 342
11.2. An advertisement from the Oracle and Public Advertiser,
20 January 1798. 346
11.3. ‘Places of Profit’ from The Scots Scourge [c.1763], BM Sat. 4080. 355
11.4. An advertisement from the Morning Post, 8 August 1800. 369
12.1. An election mug of 1761, BM 1959,0402.1 384
12.2. William Hogarth, ‘Election Entertainment’ (1754), BM Sat. 3285. 385
12.3. A detail from ‘Ready Money the Prevailing Candidate’ (1727),
BM Sat. 1798. 386
12.4. ‘The Bow to the Throne’ (1788), BM Sat. 7312. 399
12.5. ‘Rat-Trap’ (1773), BM Sat. 5197. 404
12.6. ‘Lork what a long tail our cat has got’ (1831), BM Sat. 16578. 413
List of Abbreviations
Beinecke Beinecke Library, Yale University

BL British Library
BM British Museum
BM Sat. British Museum Satire
Bodleian Bodleian Library, Oxford
CHJ Cambridge Historical Journal
CJ Commons Journals
CMTA Company of Merchants Trading to Africa
Cobbett’s Parl. Hist. William Cobbett (ed.), Cobbett’s Parliamentary History: From the
Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1703 (36 vols., 1807).
J. Wright edited vols. 13–36
Cornwallis Corresp. Charles Ross (ed.), The Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis
Cornwallis (3 vols., 2nd edn., 1859)
CQPWeb The Corpus Query Processor at the University of Lancaster
CRO Cumbria Record Office
CSPC Calendar of State Papers Colonial
CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic
EHR English Historical Review
EIC East India Company
Hansard T. C. Hansard, The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission
HJ Historical Journal
HoP The History of Parliament website https://www.historyofparlia-
mentonline.org/
IOR India Office Records
JP Justice of the peace
LJ Lords Journals
MS/MSS Manuscript/manuscripts
N&Q Notes and Queries
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NLS National Library of Scotland
NUL Nottingham University Library
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
OED Oxford English Dictionary
P&P Past & Present
Parl. Reg. John Debrett (ed.), Parliamentary Register or History of the
Proceedings and Debates of the House of Lords (77 vols., 1775–1801).
The work was also edited by John Stockdale and John Almon
xvi   
Pepys Diary The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William
Matthews (UCLA, 1983)
PP Parliamentary Papers
RAC Royal Africa Company
SPG Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
State Trials William Cobbett (ed.), Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials
(33 vols., 1809). Later volumes were edited by Thomas Howell and
David Jardine
TNA The National Archives
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
Wraxall, Memoirs The Historical and Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William
Wraxall, 1772–1784, ed. Henry B. Wheatley (5 vols., 1884)
1
Introduction
‘There is no Man so improper to be employed in Business, as he who

is in any degree capable of Corruption.’¹
In 1600 corruption was primarily seen in religious terms, meaning original sin or
sinful behaviour. It did have other connotations: for example, political corruption
meant the decay of the polity, largely as the result of a lack of individual and soci-
etal virtue that made the state vulnerable to the corrupting influences of luxury,
ambition, and vested interests. Corruption of the judiciary, through bribery, was
also a concern, as was the corruption of discourse and the corruption of sexual
morality.² These meanings did not entirely fade and some, such as sexual corrup-
tion, persisted; but over time some newer strands of meaning became important.
By 1850 corruption tended to mean financial and political corruption, embezzle-
ment or abuse of public funds, venality, the abuse of office for private gain, breach
of trust. Corruption had acquired a more specific sense, closely related to office.
The concept and purpose of office also shifted, so that we might even talk of the
‘invention of public office’. Over the period under consideration, office evolved
from being something that was considered a piece of property with extensive per-
sonal privileges to something that was public with very restricted and defined
forms of enrichment. This important reconceptualisation reflected the rise of ‘the
public’ as well as of the state as a conceptual entity with agency and identity. The
shift away from thinking of office as personal property meant that it was not
the officer’s to sell; that it should be rewarded formally by a salary; that the officer
should not receive gifts; that it was a public trust; that the officer should be
accountable to the state or corporation or public; and that conflicts of interest
between the individual holder and the public or employing institution should be
avoided. Over a long period of time a change is discernible, producing not so
much an impersonal, bureaucratic state as a ‘jealous’ state that had gradually
appropriated the rights and privileges once associated with individual officers.
This is therefore a study of moving targets: corruption and office were both
evolving as concepts and practices. Neither ‘corruption’ nor ‘office’ were
¹ The Spectator, 28 Aug. 1712. This chapter is deliberately lightly footnoted, but please see the bibli-
ography for relevant material.
² There was also corruption of the body or natural material, which provided a metaphor for other
types of corruption.
Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire, 1600–1850. Mark Knights, Oxford University Press.
© Mark Knights 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198796244.003.0001
   
unchanging universals: they had to be forged, shaped, and remoulded to suit

evolving circumstances and demands. Their disputed definition and ambiguous
meaning over time and place is at the heart of this study. And their evolution
was intertwined and interlinked: corruption became closely identified with abuse
of office and the shifting ideas about office helped to define what constituted
corruption. Moreover, if corruption and office evolved alongside each other, their
co-development was also shaped by changes in the state and empire, and the
redrawing of the boundary between public and private. Given these interconnec-
tions, it is inevitable that the story will be a complex and at times messy one rather
than a linear narrative of progress towards the birth of modern bureaucracy. This
introduction sets out how we might tell that story, seeking to frame, and to some
extent summarise, the discussion of the following chapters with an overview of
some of the moving parts.
Modern notions of corruption as the abuse of office suggest that it is a practice
that can be eradicated using the right tools. Corruption, in this sense, is a ‘thing’
that can be identified and then removed. But corruption was not always seen as a
clearly defined ‘thing’ and its meaning changed over time and space. In 1600,
many saw profiting from the public money in their hands as a legitimate form of
reward for their services, and the sale of office remained widespread, if increas-
ingly controversial, until the early nineteenth century. What some saw as bribes or
conspiratorial networks, others saw as gifts and patronage. Indeed, what seems to
us now to be corrupt behaviour was often defended at the time as legitimate.³ This
means that corruption was a construct as much as a ‘thing’. That is to say, the word
‘corruption’ was invoked because it was a term that carried great political, moral,
social, and cultural weight but it was a container or signifier that could describe a
variety of behaviours and what was meant by it varied according to time, place,
and purpose. Moreover, the variables that helped to compose it—the nature of
office or of gifts or of the state or of the company, and the meaning of ‘public’ and
‘private’, ‘friends’, ‘patrons’, ‘disinterestedness’, ‘trust’, and ‘accountability’—also
changed over time. The historian is interested in how and why ‘corruption’ and
these other terms were used; the ways in which their meanings evolved, together
with the implications of that evolution; as well as the shifting ‘complex’ of con-
stituent parts that helped to formulate ‘corruption’. ‘Corruption’ was like a hydra:
it had many heads connected to a common body but it was also an imaginary and
protean monster whose composition could shift.⁴ Alternatively, it could be
³ Mark Knights, ‘Explaining Away Corruption in Pre-Modern Britain’, Social Philosophy & Policy
35:2 (2019), 94–117.
⁴ ‘The Champion of the People’ (1784) depicted Charles James Fox cutting off ‘Corruption’ from a
hydra that has other heads labelled ‘Tyranny’, ‘Despotism’, ‘Oppression’, ‘Secret Influence’,
‘Dependency’, and ‘Assumed Prerogative’. For other images associating a hydra and corruption, see
‘Britannia Excisa’ (1733); ‘The Champion of Oakhampton, Attacking the Hydra of Gloucester Place’
(1809); ‘The Champions of Reform Destroying the Monster of Corruption’ (1831). The idea that ‘cor-
ruption’ was variously constructed through different configurations is very usefully explored in
 
Fig. 1.1 A detail from Thomas Rowlandson, ‘A Rough Sketch of the Times as
deleniated [sic] by Sir Francis Burdett’ (1819), BM Sat. 11553. See Fig. 8.2 for the full
version. The ‘Monster of Corruption’ is a composite creation, having a large ‘Eye to
Interest’, ‘Legs of Luxury’, ‘Hands of Extortion’, and personal characteristics such as
‘A Mouth of Guile’ and a ‘Cringing Soul’. The monster’s head also has anti-Semitic
features.
depicted, as in Fig. 1.1, as a monstrous body composed of many different

associated parts.
If ‘corruption’ was in part a construct, it was the result of historically contin-
gent factors rather than fixed universal values. It is true that abusing the power of
office to extract money for personal use or seeking unfair or excessive private
gain, to the detriment of the public, was widely condemned behaviour across
time and space. But ‘abuse’, ‘fairness’, ‘excess’, ‘private’, and ‘public’ were not fixed
values. A ‘fee’ for a service was routine in a society that offered very low salaries; it
became reprehensible when the demand was deemed to be too high and was
oppressively extracted. The moral line was a matter of interpretation. Sir John
Shore resisted ‘much scope for corruption’ as a revenue collector in India: ‘if I had
Michael Johnston’s Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power and Democracy (Cambridge, 2005). See
bibliography for analysis of Johnston’s important contribution.
   
been half the knave every one is supposed by the patriots of England to be’, he
wrote in 1784, ‘I might have secured [£]40,000 or 50,000 per annum for the last
four years’.⁵ Shore was a religious man guided by his conscience; but how were
others to judge the moral line? What constituted ‘excessive private gain’ varied
according to time and place, in the same way as a ‘just profit’ or ‘sufficient’ fortune
(what contemporaries such as Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, called
a ‘competency’⁶) varied according to time and place. In India in the mid-eighteenth
century, at the height of gains there, Harry Verelst thought £25,000–30,000 ‘sufficient
to set down with myself and also to serve my friends’ but others there thought
even more was necessary: George Vansittart put his own wants in 1774 at £50,000
and advised his nephew in 1786 to get £60,000.⁷ But these returns were much
higher than in Britain where Adam Smith thought 8 or 10 per cent a good profit;
indeed it was this disparity that made East Indian fortunes so glaring.
Remuneration was, for much of this period, a mixture of the formal and semi-
formal. Salaries in the state and companies were low, compensated for by fees,
perquisites, ‘favours’, and in the East India Company (EIC), from the late seven-
teenth century, permission to engage in private trade. There was a logic to such
accumulation since there was almost no system of pension for old age, so that
officers had to accumulate sufficient sums to provide for life out of post. Such a
system had the advantage for the state and companies that it kept operating costs
very low and hence also reduced the tax burden.⁸ But it also meant that the divid-
ing line between licit and illicit remuneration was blurred and increased the
temptation to maximise the informal revenue for the officeholder. The earl of
Sandwich told his client, Samuel Pepys, at the outset of his career in 1660 ‘that it
was not the salary of any place that did make a man rich, but the opportunities
of getting money while he is in the place’.⁹ One experienced customs official noted
in 1782 that a tidewaiter in the Customs earned so little that his ‘place wont
maintain a man, so he is forct to be a rogue against his will or he and his family
will starve’.¹⁰
Over time there was an increase in salaries for both state and company officers,
with an associated shift away from the informal rewards of the old system. Reform
⁵ Charles Shore, Lord Teignmouth (ed.), Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of John, Lord
Teignmouth, 2 vols. (1843), i. 75.
⁶ Arthur Aspinall, Cornwallis in Bengal: The Administrative and Judicial Reforms of Lord Cornwallis
in Bengal (Manchester, 1931), 38.
⁷ Peter Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (1976),
216–217.
⁸ Joel Hurstfield, The Queen’s Wards: Wardship and Marriage under Elizabeth (1958), 345–349.
Aylmer rightly doubted whether this was the result of an intentional policy and noted that the infor-
mal system was a form of indirect taxation [Aylmer, ‘Office Holding’, 234].
⁹ Pepys Diary, 16 Aug. 1660.
¹⁰ Arthur Lyon Cross, Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests, the Sheriffs and
Smuggling: Selected from the Shelburne Manuscripts in the William L. Clements Library (New York,
1928), 250.
 
along this line was suggested in the 1780s, both in Britain and in India, where
Lord Cornwallis found that low salaries were a ‘false economy’ and encouraged
corruption.¹¹ This trend was further fostered by Utilitarians. Jeremy Bentham laid
out the maxim: ‘Integrity is more easily preserved in public offices in which there
are no fees, than in those where they are allowed. A lawful right often serves as a
pretext for extortion.’¹² Indeed, one of his ‘rules’ was that
In employments which expose the public functionary to peculiar temptations,

the emoluments ought to be sufficient to preserve him from corruption . . . A sal-
ary proportionate to the wants of the functionary operates as a kind of moral
antiseptic, or preservative. It fortifies a man's probity against the influence of
sinister and seductive motives.¹³
Alongside these ideas was greater attention to superannuation and pension

schemes.¹⁴ The Fee Commissioners in 1786 recommended that every officer who
retired on account of age or infirmity should have ‘A decent provision made for
his future subsistence’ and in the first half of the nineteenth century progress was
made with instituting retirement schemes.¹⁵ But although gathering pace in the
early nineteenth century, the very real and important shift from informal to for-
mal remuneration was a protracted process. Fees were only phased out for
Exchequer officials in 1847–8. For much of the period covered by this book, for-
mal and informal remuneration often overlapped.
The boundary between illicit and licit acts was shaped by a host of contextual
factors: religious and legal tradition; the nature of social and cultural practices
such as friendship and patronage; the nature of economic development and atti-
tudes towards private interest as an economic driver; the conventions surround-
ing office holding at local and national level; the functions of representative
institutions, and so on. As a result, a history of the abuse of office will also neces-
sarily also be a history of how these contextual factors changed over time and
hence also of the state, religious culture, the market, and social conventions.
Corruption is thus a register of the societal strains associated with changing insti-
tutions, practices, mindsets, ideologies, and external pressures. The perception of
extensive corruption may tell us less about the absolute quantity of corrupt activ-
ity than about the mixture and nature of challenges to accepted values and ways
of doing things. Corruption may not always have been the most pressing concern
in relation to office—but it unfailingly offers insights into tensions and strains
operating in the polity.
¹¹ Aspinall, Cornwallis, 35–36.

¹² Jeremy Bentham, The Rationale of Reward (1825), bk. 2, ch. 2.
¹³ Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 7: Rule V.
¹⁴ C. G. Lewin, Pensions and Insurance before 1800: A Social History (East Linton, 2003).
¹⁵ 1786 report, PP 1806, ix. 14.
   
The definition of corruption at any time and place was determined by those
who had a vision of what an uncorrupt polity might look like. ‘Anti-corruption’
thus shaped ‘corruption’. Their interaction was also intrinsic to the evolution of
the state and corporation. Abuse of office was like grit in an oyster, at once ‘dam-
aging’ but also having a creative and innovative effect. The perception of corrup-
tion in office fostered reforms that often extended the reach of the state; but as the
state grew, it also opened up new scope for abuses of office, leading to further
attempts at reform. Calls for retrenchment included anti-corruption measures
that sought to make the state more efficient and more legitimate. Corruption and
anti-corruption are, then, two sides of the same coin: iterative opposites locked in
a dynamic process of interaction. So when examining allegations of corruption in
office we need to ask why they were made (in terms of motivation, timing, and
function), who benefited from them, and with what result. As James Scott put it,
‘one must ask of corruption the same questions one asks of any other political
process: who gets what, when and how?’¹⁶ Anti-corruption has to be analysed just
as much as the alleged corruption. Anti-corruption was political, serving a num-
ber of purposes at individual, group, and state level. The accusation of corruption
was one that could delegitimise, undermine, or even destroy a rival; it could
engender a sense of moral superiority and feed outrage; it could be used by par-
tisans to gain advantage; and it could strengthen and legitimise the market, state,
or imperial project. Anti-corruption was an inherently politicised process, often
driven by partisan rivalries and diverging ideologies, even if, ironically, one of its
consequences was the ideal of an impartial civil servant.
The shifting concept of corruption, the birth of public office, the development
of the state and empire, and the redrawing of public and private were all contested
processes. Differing visions, ideals, and practices were offered by individuals,
groups, and institutions. These contests were intensified by processes of moral
reform and fiscal retrenchment (especially after war), as well as processes of scan-
dal and popular pressure, creating a national debate that helped to delineate the
boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in office. Moments of crisis
thus offer insights into shifting norms and processes; but the battle between con-
tending versions of corruption, office, the state, the corporation, and the public or
private was an ongoing one.
There were some key features of both corruption and office that endured across
time and space. Corrupt acts were nearly always seen as breaches of a moral code
(sometimes, though not always, embedded in law) to the damage of the public or
of an institution. But there was disagreement about what breached acceptable
boundaries. Although corruption implied a moral crime, in many instances those
¹⁶ James C. Scott, ‘The Analysis of Corruption in Developing Nations’, Comparative Studies in

Society and History 11:2 (1969), 340.
 
alleged to be corrupt argued they were doing what others did, or what custom
allowed, or what was justifiable because they sought to combine their own gain
with that of the state or corporation for which they worked. Contemporaries dif-
fered about what constituted a breach or abuse; what the moral code was or
should be; what discretionary powers an officer enjoyed; who the public was,
what role it should play, and how far individual interests could advance the public
good; as well as who empowered officers, and on what basis and with what
powers. Those disagreements loom large in the following pages, involving the
officials themselves but also the state, corporations, and the wider public. Yet it
was through the contests over what constituted corrupt behaviour in an officer
that these concepts changed meaning. Modern anti-corruption policy has tended
to seek universal solutions to impose, top-down, on corrupt countries; but the
British story suggests that solutions were worked out in the national context
through a prolonged engagement between the state, corporations, citizens, and
officers. That engagement took place within the departments of the state, within
corporations, in the public sphere, in artistic culture, in the courtrooms, in
churches, in imperial contexts, and indeed almost anywhere where concepts of
public duty and public ethics played a part.
The definition of both corruption and office was greatly influenced by the
notion of trust—and its inverse, distrust. Trust, as the fiduciary concept of
entrusting power to an agent, became a key way of thinking about office, from the
mid-seventeenth century onwards. It moved from being a legal tool applicable to
private estate law to one applied to public office holding, a shift that was largely
the result of ideological battles in the 1640s and 1650s which had an enduring
legacy both at home and in the empire. When an officer was entrusted with cer-
tain duties and powers, he was expected to perform well, in the interests of the
entruster and the public. Thinking of office as a legal trust helped to develop
ideals of integrity, disinterestedness, and accountability. The fiduciary trust was
different to a contract, which specified exactly how an agent was to perform; a
trust carried discretionary powers to act in the best interests of the entruster or
beneficiary. Trust in officers, that they would perform their duty wholly in the
interest of the entrusting power, was thus an important commodity. Some of the
trustworthiness of an officer stemmed from the institution in which he operated;
but some of it was more personal, resting on the relationship between the agent
and the entruster and on the integrity of the agent. Entrusted power, with its level
of discretionary action and reliance on an agent who almost certainly had his
own interests, was always open to abuse at both the institutional and personal
level. Whilst the trust implied a confidence that abuse of the entrusted power
would not happen, it could not guarantee this. Moreover, although social, inter-
personal trust between officers and the wider world was often consolidated by
practices of friendship, gift giving, and patronage, these were highly vulnerable to
allegations of corruption.
   
An element of distrust was necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the

trust. But this distrust had to be embedded at institutional level to avoid personal-
ising and undermining the trust between principal and agent. Thus small meas-
ures of distrust became central to emerging ideas of accountability, to policing
conflicts of interest, to prohibitions on venality, to institutional checks and bal-
ances, and to curbs on instrumental gifting. Scandals were also manifestations of
distrust and cumulatively created constraints on malfeasance. But whilst a little
distrust increased trust, too much distrust undermined it, leading to vicious
cycles in which distrust could become a destructive feedback loop: distrust pro-
voked closer scrutiny and regulation which, when breached, created further dis-
trust. Maintaining the balance between trust and distrust was central to
government and its legitimacy, but the processes of change meant this required
constant recalibration.
The following chapters unpack some of the key attributes of this trust/distrust
dichotomy. A central feature of the fiduciary trust was an obligation to act self-
lessly in the interest of the entruster and beneficiary, an obligation that focused
attention on conflicts of interest, self-interests, and disinterestedness. The trust
was also something from which a profit ought not to be made by the trustee, a
concept that helped to render sale of office problematic. Trust also required
accounting (a clear record of how the trust had been executed) and accountability
(the holding of trustees to account for how they behaved). This fostered notions
of formal accountability, through audit and national accounting mechanisms, for
how public money was spent, as well as informal, public accountability, especially
through the press which was often used to expose and pursue corruption. This
triggered a domestic and imperial debate about the freedom of the press in rela-
tion to the criticism of officials. Distrust also played a major part in the politics of
anti-corruption, which was particularly acute in imperial contexts.
I use a broad definition of office. Modern discussion about corruption in office
tends to revolve around the issue of bribery of state or public officials. Yet in the
pre-modern period ‘office’ was not limited solely to those authorised by the state
but was applied to all sorts of other roles. Even friends, for example, did ‘good
office’ to each other when they helped each other and there were many offices that
straddled the divide between what was public and private. The modern distinc-
tion between public and private office, which makes little enough sense today in
relation to out-sourced government, makes even less in the pre-modern context.
There was no clear dividing line between public and private office in pre-modern
Britain, as the state relied on private contractors (which it paid) to supply goods
and services, and on private individuals (whom it often did not pay) to do its
work, as well as paying many state officials a small wage that they were expected
to supplement by direct private payments in the form of fees, gratuities, and per-
quisites. Private investors came together in joint-stock companies, such as the
EIC, that had public, legislative backing and in turn exercised state-like functions
 
of administering justice and fighting wars. The South Sea Company is another
example of private subscribers forming a corporation (with officers) that sought
to absorb the national debt in return for advancing huge amounts of money to the
Treasury.¹⁷
Other hybrid institutions included the Bank of England, founded in 1694,
which pooled private investments in order to loan to the government; and work-
houses and debtors’ prisons, which housed the poor and public offenders on
behalf of the state but banked their labour and drew fees from inmates.¹⁸ Even
apparently public departments, such as the Exchequer and courts of law, operated
on a system of semi-private fees payable to the individual officer. And the ‘private’
in turn had public functions. The early seventeenth-century divine William
Gouge, even as he insisted on the subordination of women within the household,
thought that the latter was nevertheless ‘a little commonwealth’ and hence a con-
scientious performance of household duties ‘may be accounted publicke worke’
and that those who were diligent in their ‘private callings . . . shall be as well
accepted of the Lord as if they had publike offices’.¹⁹ The boundary between ‘pub-
lic’ and ‘private’ office was thus permeable and in evolution over the early modern
period; and this was necessarily so, since the categories of public and private were
also in evolution and interdependent rather than being static and independent of
each other. In addition, the distinction between political and administrative office
was also blurred: political office gave control over many administrative ones;
Parliament and corporations exercised many state-like functions; and adminis-
trative functions were often highly political. The pre-modern state was thus a
hybrid, combining the public and the private, the formal and the informal.
Indeed, the idea of a neat separation of the state and the private sector came
closest to existing for only a short period in the late nineteenth century. In the
period under study, no one was advocating the creation of a large bureaucracy—
quite the reverse: retrenchment of administrative posts was frequently desired
and implemented, often by those who feared the corrupting influence of the
patronage such posts gave the Crown and ministry. It is also true that the state
was in a sense created through the tension between private and public interests.
The impartial, functionary, sovereign state with uncorrupt politicians and uncor-
rupt administrators was not suddenly born into existence. It had a long gestation
through conflicts over the extent to which private interests could legitimately
penetrate and control public interests and resources. Private individuals and
groups appealed to the concept of the public and to the umpire of the state to gain
¹⁷ In 1720, outbidding the Bank of England, the EIC proposed to convert 60 per cent of national
debt into shares in return for £7.5 million.
¹⁸ R. A. Houston, ‘Fraud in the Scottish Linen Industry: Edinburgh’s Charity Workhouse, 1745–58’,
Archives 21:91 (1994), 43–56. This details allegations against William Henderson, the clerk, who sys-
tematically defrauded employers, extorted from employees, and embezzled money.
¹⁹ William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (1622), 18–19.
   
advantage over each other, and in doing so they inevitably fostered and legitimised
both the public and the state. Anti-corruption’s redefinition of the private and the
public was part of a process of state and corporation formation. Early modern
historians have reconceptualised the state as one in which personal relations were
of fundamental importance in the construction of authority (and the same could
be said of the early modern corporation); but the challenge is to explain how this
personalised state and corporation became less personalised whilst still success-
fully yoking the private to the public.
Public and private were, like corruption and anti-corruption, mutually consti-
tutive. ‘Is not the publique involved in the private, and the private in the pub-
lique?’ asked Edward Misselden in 1623.²⁰ Yet there was an emerging distinction
between what constituted the public realm and what counted as a legitimate pri-
vate interest. The boundary between public and private was extremely blurred in
1600, reflecting a lack of clarity about the difference between a gift and a bribe,
about the legitimacy of a self-interest, and about the rules for private use of public
money. As a result of a series of scandals and public deliberations about them
over the next 250 years, the line between what was licit and illicit became sharper.
The public emerged as a category in its own right, with expectations about how
tax revenues were handled, about its capacity to scrutinise officials and the obliga-
tions that officials owed it. At the purist, moralistic, and republican end of the
scale, the public was always to be put before the private, which therefore ought to
be constrained and subordinated. At the pragmatic or liberal end of the scale,
private interest was, by the eighteenth century, recognised as a potentially pro-
ductive driver of the public interest and should be as little curtailed as possible.²¹
Much of the debate about corruption and abuse of office occurred in a grey zone
between these end-points of the spectrum. The debate was particularly relevant to
institutions that sought to reconcile public and private interests such as the cor-
poration: whether town councils or international trading bodies, these hybrid
bodies represented themselves as achieving the common profit or common weal
of their members. Office was based on a tension: on the one hand office was self-
regarding, because it was a route to money, status, and/or power, and on the other
it was public-regarding, offering a service of benefit to the corporation, commu-
nity, and/or monarch or state.
A vigorous debate occurred at the levels of both political philosophy and
everyday practice about the justifiability of self-interest. While many see the pur-
suit of private interest as fundamental to a modern economy, and group interest
as a legitimate basis for voting, the pre-modern period took neither of these for
granted and was inherently suspicious of private interest as a corrupting factor.
²⁰ Edward Misselden, The Circle of Commerce (1623), 17.

²¹ Bernard de Mandeville argued in The Fable of the Bees, which was repeatedly revised in the first
decades of the eighteenth century, that private vices were public benefits.
 
The influence of religious teachings, which stressed the abnegation of the self, and
classical influences, which stressed ideals of putting the public good above all
other considerations, shaped a mentality that was distrustful of self-interest. Yet
growing commercial success at home and abroad was increasingly at odds with
this, and merchants and traders argued that self-interest was not only compatible
with the public interest but also essential to promote it. This viewpoint was
famously codified by Adam Smith in 1776 but it was prevalent long before then.
The legitimisation of private interest therefore posed a significant challenge to
older ways of thinking and also needed new regulatory frameworks if it was not
to become untrammelled greed at the expense of others. Yet the new economic
thinking also undermined the state and corporate structures that offered such
regulation, placing more stress on a need for a personal ethics or national ‘charac-
ter’ that restrained abuse of office.
An important part of the debate about public and private concerned personal
morality. Was abuse of office the result of moral failings of an individual, in which
case the remedy needed to be limited to his removal and the reform of personal
character? Or was it the result of institutional or even systemic societal failings, in
which case institutional, structural, and societal reform was necessary? This book
suggests that these questions pose something of a false choice, since personal,
institutional, and systemic measures were all necessary to reform office. Of these,
institutional reform was the easier both to chart and to put into practice, whereas
ensuring that officers implemented the rules and regulations, or worked within
the institutional limitations, was harder because it required a personal set of val-
ues to guide behaviour and often involved wider socio-cultural norms that
changed slowly. In the pre-modern world, such values were shaped by religious
culture, a tradition of civic humanism, oaths, professional bodies, and institu-
tional cultures; but they were also the results of reflections on the history of earl-
ier polities and of debate about scandals. So reflecting on our past and thinking
through the dilemmas posed by the challenges facing pre-modern officers may in
itself be a useful mechanism today to advance integrity in office.²²
The book considers domestic and imperial office alongside each other because
they were intertwined: domestic attitudes and practices shaped colonial ones, but
in turn, colonial attitudes and practices shaped domestic ones or exposed ten-
sions and ambiguities in the national character. The domestic and imperial ‘state’
took shape out of a monarchical polity, a process that required officers to carve
out new roles in politics and administration, and begin a process of a gradual
(if very incomplete) separation of the powers of its officers into political, execu-
tive, and judicial spheres. In 1600 the ‘state’ was a relatively novel concept and its
early history was one of a participatory, dispersed form of authority in which
²² See, for example, my ‘Was Samuel Pepys Corrupt’?, downloadable at https://www.transparency.

org.uk/publications/was-samuel-pepys-corrupt/.
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both upper and lower radial nervules uniting with the posterior branch of
the subcostal. It has been treated as a moth by several entomologists.
Aurivillius considers that it is certainly a butterfly; but as the
metamorphoses are unknown, we cannot yet form a final opinion as to
this curious form. The extraordinary Peruvian Insect, Styx infernalis, is
also placed in this family by Staudinger; it is a small, pale Insect, almost
white, and with imperfect scales; a little recalling a Satyrid. It appears to
be synthetic to Pieridae and Erycinidae.
Fig. 180—Pupation of the Orange-tip butterfly, Euchloe cardamines. A,

The completed pupa; B, the larva, with its girdle, prepared for the
change.
The caterpillars of Pieridae are perhaps the least remarkable or

attractive of all butterfly-caterpillars; their skins are as a rule bare, or
covered only with fine, short down or hair; their prevalent colour is
green, more or less speckled with black and yellow, and they are
destitute of any prominent peculiarities of external structure. Pupation is
accomplished by the larva fixing itself to some solid body by the
posterior extremity, with the head upwards (or the position may be
horizontal), and then placing a girdle round the middle of the body. The
pupa never hangs down freely as it does in Nymphalidae. It has been
ascertained by experiment that if the girdle round the larva be cut, the
pupation can nevertheless be accomplished by a considerable
proportion of larvae. Some of the pupae are of very peculiar form, as is
the case in the Orange-tip (Fig. 180, A) and Brimstone butterflies. The
Orange-tip butterfly passes nine or ten months of each year as a pupa,
which is variable in colour; perhaps to some extent in conformity with its
surroundings. The North American E. genutia has a similar life-history,
but the larva leaves its Cruciferous food-plant, wanders to an oak tree,
and there turns to a pupa, resembling in colour the bark of the tree.
Fig. 181—Newly-hatched larva of Euchloe cardamines. A, The larva in
profile; B, one segment more magnified, showing the liquid-bearing
setae; C, one of the setae still more magnified, and without liquid.
It is not unusual for caterpillars to change their habits and appearance

in a definite manner in the course of the larval life. The caterpillar of
Euchloe cardamines exhibits a larval metamorphosis of a well-marked
character. The young larva (Fig. 181) is armed with peculiar setae,
furcate at the tip, each of which bears a tiny ball of fluid. In this stage
the caterpillar makes scarcely any movement. In the middle of the
caterpillar's life a new vestiture appears after an ecdysis; numerous fine
hairs are present, and the fluid-bearing spines nearly disappear, being
reduced to a single series of spines of a comparatively small size on
each side of the upper middle region of the body (Fig. 182). The colour
is also a good deal changed, and concomitantly there is a much greater
voracity and restlessness.
Fig. 182—Larva of Euchloe cardamines in middle life. A, the larva in

profile; B, one segment more magnified.
Fam. 5. Papilionidae.—All the legs well developed. Claws large,

simple, without empodium. Front tibiae with a pad. The metanotum
free, conspicuously exposed between mesonotum and abdomen. This
series of butterflies includes some of the most magnificent of the
members of the Insect world. It is considered by some authorities to be
the highest family of butterflies; and in one very important feature—
sexual differentiation—it certainly is entitled to the rank. There are
about 700 recorded species, the larger portion of which are included in
the genus Papilio. The great variety of form has led to this genus being
divided; the attempts have, however, been partial, with the exception of
an arrangement made by Felder, who adopted 75 sections, and a
recent consideration of the subject by Haase, who arranges Felder's
sections into three sub-genera. Many of the sections have received
names, and are treated by some authors as genera, so that an
unfortunate diversity exists as to the names used for these much-
admired Insects. The genus is distributed all over the world, but is
perhaps nowhere more numerous in species than in South America.
Fig. 183—Ornithoptera (Schoenbergia) paradisea, male. New Guinea. ×

1. (Colours, velvet-black, golden-yellow and green.)
Wallace informs us that the great majority of the species of the Amazon
valley frequent the shady groves of the virgin forest. In many cases the
sexes are extremely different in appearance and habits, and are but
rarely found together in one spot. The genus Ornithoptera is closely
allied to Papilio, and contains some of the most remarkable of
butterflies, the homes of the species being the islands of the Malay
Archipelago, and outlying groups of islands, there being a smaller
number of species in the neighbouring continents. The females are of
great size, and are so excessively different from their consorts of the
other sex, as to arouse in the student a feeling of surprise, and a strong
desire to fathom the mysteries involved.
Fig. 184—Ornithoptera (Schoenbergia) paradisea, female. × 1. (The wings, on the
right side, detached, showing the under surface. Colours, black, white, and gray.)
It would be difficult to surpass the effective coloration of the males in

many of the species of Ornithoptera; they are, too, very diverse in this
respect; O. brookiana is of an intense black colour, with a band of
angular green marks extending the whole length of its wings, while
behind the head there is a broad collar of crimson colour. Perhaps the
most remarkable of all is the O. paradisea, recently discovered in New
Guinea; in this species the sexual disparity reaches its maximum. The
female (Fig. 184) is a large, sombre creature of black, white and grey
colours, but the male (Fig. 183) is brilliant with gold and green, and is
made additionally remarkable by a long tail of unusual form on each
hind wing.
We may anticipate that these extraordinary cases of sexual total

dissimilarity in appearance are accompanied by equally remarkable
habits and physiological phenomena. In the case of O. brookiana the
female is extremely rare, so that the collector, Künstler, could only
obtain fifteen females to a thousand males. According to Mr. Skertchly,
instead of the crowd of males being eager to compete for the females,
the reverse is the case; the female diligently woos the male, who
exhibits a reluctance to coupling. This observer apparently considered
that the "emerald feathers" of the male are a guide or incitement to the
female.[229]
In Africa Ornithoptera is to a certain extent represented by two

extremely remarkable forms, Papilio zalmoxis and P. (Drurya)
antimachus. There are about a dozen other genera of Papilionidae;
most of them contain but few species. Parnassius, however, is rich in
species inhabiting the mountains and elevated plateaus of the northern
hemisphere in both the Old and New Worlds; it is remarkable for the
small amount of scales on the wings, and for the numerous variations
of the species. The female possesses a peculiar pouch at the end of
the body; although only formed during the process of coupling, it has a
special and characteristic form in most of the species. The curious
Indian genus Leptocircus has parts of the front wings transparent, while
the hind pair form long tails. This genus is of interest in that it is said to
connect Papilionidae to some extent with Hesperiidae. The larvae of
this family are remarkable on account of a curious process on the
thoracic segment called an "osmeterium." It is usually retracted, but at
the will of the caterpillar can be everted in the form of a long furcate or
Y-shaped process; there is a gland in the osmeterium, and as a result a
strong odour is emitted when the exstulpation occurs.
The pupation of Papilionidae is similar to that of Pieridae, the pupa

being placed with the head upwards, fixed by the tail, and girt round the
middle. A very curious diversity of pupation occurs in the genus Thais,
in which the pupa is attached by the tail as usual, and—which is quite
exceptional—also by a thread placed at the top of the head. Scudder
thinks there is also a girdle round the middle, but Dr. Chapman inclines
to the view that the thread attaching the head is really the median girdle
slipped upwards. The pupation of Parnassius is exceptional, inasmuch
as, like Satyrides, it is terrestrial, in a slight construction of silk.
Fam. 6. Hesperiidae (Skippers).—Six perfect legs: metanotum not

free, largely covered by the mesonotum. A pad on the front tibia. Claws
short and thick; empodium present. Although this family has been
comparatively neglected by entomologists, upwards of 2000 species
and more than 200 genera are known, and it is not improbable that it
may prove to be as extensive as Nymphalidae. We have already said
that Hesperiidae is generally admitted to be the most distinct of the
butterfly groups. It has been thought by some taxonomists to be allied
to Papilionidae, but this is a mistake. It is undoubtedly more nearly
allied to Heterocera, and when the classification of Lepidoptera is more
advanced, so that the various natural groups placed in that sub-Order
are satisfactorily distinguished, it is probable that Hesperiidae will be
altogether separated from Rhopalocera. We have already mentioned
that E. Reuter considers the Hesperiidae to be phylogenetically
unconnected with Rhopalocera proper; but though quite ready to admit
that he will probably prove correct in this, we think Lepidopterists will
not be willing to recognise the family as a sub-Order equivalent in value
to all Heterocera.
The body is shorter and thicker than it is in most butterflies, and is

pointed at the tip rather than knobbed or bent downwards; the wings
are less ample; the antennae are not truly knobbed, but are thicker
before the actual tip, which is itself pointed and more or less bent
backwards, so that the antennae are somewhat hook-shaped.
In habits as well as structure the family is markedly distinct from

butterflies; the pupation is peculiar, and the name Skipper has been
applied to the perfect Insects, because so many of them indulge in a
brief, jerky flight, instead of the prolonged aerial courses characteristic
of the higher butterflies.
There is great difference among the members of the family, and some
of them possess a very high development of the powers of locomotion,
with a correspondingly perfect structure of the thoracic region, so that,
after inspection of these parts, we can quite believe Wallace's
statement that the larger and strong-bodied kinds are remarkable for
the excessive rapidity of their flight, which, indeed, he was inclined to
consider surpassed that of any other Insects. "The eye cannot follow
them as they dart past; and the air, forcibly divided, gives out a deep
sound louder than that produced by the humming-bird itself. If power of
wing and rapidity of flight could place them in that rank, they should be
considered the most highly organised of butterflies." It was probably to
the genera Pyrrhopyge, Erycides, etc., that Mr. Wallace alluded in the
above remarks. Although the Hesperiidae are not as a rule beautifully
coloured, yet many of these higher forms are most tastefully
ornamented; parts of the wings, wing-fringes, and even the bodies
being set with bright but agreeable colours. We mention these facts
because it is a fashion to attribute a lowly organisation to the family, and
to place it as ancestral to other butterflies. Some of them have
crepuscular habits, but this is also the case with a variety of other
Rhopalocera in the tropics.
In their early stages the Skippers—so far as at present known—depart

considerably from the majority of butterflies, inasmuch as they possess
in both the larval and pupal instars habits of concealment and
retirement. The caterpillars have the body nearly bare, thicker in the
middle, the head free, and more or less notched above. They make
much greater use of silk than other butterfly-larvae do, and draw
together leaves to form caves for concealment, and even make webs
and galleries. Thus the habits are almost those of the Tortricid moths.
Fig. 185—Pupation of Badamia exclamationis. (After Dudgeon. J. Bombay

Soc. x. 1895, p. 144). A, One side of the leaf-cradle, the other
(nearest to the observer) being broken away; B, transverse section
of entire cradle, a, The pupa; b, fastenings of perpendicular threads
round pupa; c, cross thread retaining the leaf in cradle form; d,
margins of the leaf; e, midrib of leaf.
Pupation takes place under similar conditions; and it is interesting to

find that Chapman considers that the pupa in several points of structure
resembles that of the small moths. Not only does the larva draw
together leaves or stalks to make a shelter for the pupa, but it
frequently also forms a rudimentary cocoon. These arrangements are,
however, very variable, and the accounts that have been given indicate
that even the same species may exhibit some amount of variation in its
pupation. Scudder considers that, in the North American Skippers, the
cremaster is attached to a single Y-like thread. In other cases there is a
silk pad on the leaf for the cremaster to hook on. An interesting account
given by Mr. Dudgeon of the pupation of a common Indian Skipper,
Badamia exclamationis, shows that this Insect exercises considerable
ingenuity in the structure of the puparium, and also that the
arrangements it adopts facilitate one of the acts of pupation most
difficult for such pupae as suspend themselves, viz. the hooking the
cremasters on to the pad above them. Badamia uses a rolled-up leaf
(Fig. 185); the edges of the leaf are fastened together by silk at d; from
this spot there descends a thread which, when it reaches the pupa, a,
forks so as to form an inverted Y, and is fastened to the leaf on either
side; the two sides of the leaf are kept together by a cross thread, cc.
Mr. Dudgeon was fortunate enough to observe the act of pupation, and
saw that "although the anal prolegs of the larva were attached to a tuft
or pad of silk in the usual way, and remained so until nearly the whole
skin had been shuffled off, yet when the last segment had to be taken
out, the pupa drew it entirely away from the skin and lifted it over the
empty skin, and by a series of contortions similar to those made by an
Insect in depositing an egg, it soon re-attached its anal segment or
cremaster to the web, throwing away the cast-off skin by wriggling its
body about."
Series II. Heterocera. Moths.
Although Rhopalocera—if exclusion be made of the Hesperiidae—is

probably a natural group, yet this is not the case with Heterocera. The
only definition that can be given of Heterocera is the practical one that
all Lepidoptera that are not butterflies are Heterocera. Numerous
divisions of the Heterocera have been long current, but their limits have
become more and more uncertain, so that at the present time no
divisions of greater value than the family command a recognition at all
general. This is not really a matter of reproach, for it arises from the
desire to recognise only groups that are capable of satisfactory
definition.
Several attempts have recently been made to form a rough forecast of

the future classification of moths. Professor Comstock, struck by some
peculiarities presented by the Hepialidae, Micropterygidae (and
Eriocephalidae), recently proposed to separate them from all other
Lepidoptera as a sub-order Jugatae. Comstock's discrimination in
making this separation met with general approval. The character on
which the group Jugatae is based is, however, comparatively trivial, and
its possession is not sufficient, as pointed out by Packard,[230] to justify
the close association of Hepialidae and Micropterygidae, which, in
certain important respects, are the most dissimilar of moths. The
characters possessed by the two families in common may be
summarised by saying that the wings and wing-bearing segments
remain in a low stage of development. In nearly all other characters the
two families are widely different. Packard has therefore, while accepting
Comstock's separation of the families in question, proposed a different
combination. He considers that Eriocephalidae should be separated
from all others as "Protolepidoptera" or "Lepidoptera Laciniata," while
the whole of the other Lepidoptera, comprised under the term
"Lepidoptera Haustellata," are divided into Palaeolepidoptera
(consisting only of Micropterygidae) and Neolepidoptera, comprising all
Lepidoptera (inclusive of Hepialidae) except the Eriocephalidae and
Micropterygidae. The question is rendered more difficult by the very
close relations that exist between Micropterygidae and a sub-Order,
Trichoptera, of Neuroptera. Dr. Chapman, by a sketch of the
classification of pupae,[231] and Dyar, by one on larval stages,[232] have
made contributions to the subject; but the knowledge of early stages
and metamorphosis is so very imperfect that the last two memoirs can
be considered only as preliminary sketches; as indeed seem to have
been the wishes of the authors themselves.
Simultaneously with the works above alluded to, Mr. Meyrick has
given[233] a new classification of the Order. We allude, in other pages,
to various points in Mr. Meyrick's classification, which is made to appear
more revolutionary than it really is, in consequence of the radical
changes in nomenclature combined with it.
As regards the various aggregates of families that are widely known in

literature by the names Bombyces, Sphinges, Noctuae, Geometres,
Pyrales, we need only remark that they are still regarded as to some
extent natural. Their various limits being the subject of discussion and
at present undecided, the groups are made to appear more uncertain
than is really the case. The group that has to suffer the greatest
changes is the old Bombyces. This series comprises the great majority
of those moths that have diurnal habits. In it there were also included
several groups of moths the larvae of which feed in trunks of trees or in
the stems of plants, such as Cossidae, that will doubtless prove to have
but little connection with the forms with which they were formerly
associated. These groups with aberrant habits are those that give rise
to the greatest difficulties of the taxonomist.
The following key to the families of Heterocera is taken from Sir G. F.

Hampson's recent work, Fauna of British India—Moths.[234] It includes
nearly all the families at present recognised among the larger
Lepidoptera; certain families[235] not mentioned in this key are alluded
to in our subsequent remarks on the families:—
Key to the Families of Moths[236]
N.B.—This table is not simply dichotomic; three contrasted categories are used
in the case of the primary divisions, A, B, C, and the secondary divisions, I,
II, III.
A. Fore wing with nervule 5 coming from the middle of the discocellulars, or
nearer 6 than 4 (Categories I, II, III = 1-18).
I. Frenulum rudimentary. .......... Fam. 38. Epicopeiidae, see p. 418.
II. Frenulum absent (Categories 1-8).
1. Proboscis present, legs with spurs (Cat. 2-5).
2. Hind wing with nervule 8 remote from 7 (Cat. 3 and 4).
3. Fore wing with nervule 6 and 7 stalked .......... Fam. 39. Uraniidae,
see p. 419.
4. Fore wing with nervules 6 and 7 not stalked .......... Fam. 5.
Ceratocampidae, see p. 375.
5. Hind wing with nervule 8 nearly touching 7 beyond end of cell ..........
Fam. 4. Brahmaeidae, see p. 374.
6. Proboscis absent, legs without spurs (Cat. 7 and 8).
7. Hind wing with one internal nervure .......... Fam. 3. Saturniidae, see
p. 372.
8. Hind wing with two or three internal nervures .......... Fam. 6.
Bombycidae, see p. 375.
III. Frenulum present (Cat. 9-18).
9. Antennae fusiform [spindle-shaped] .......... Fam. 9. Sphingidae, see
p. 380.
10. Antennae not fusiform (Cat. 11-18).
11. Proboscis absent .......... Fam. 7. Eupterotidae, see p. 376.
12. Proboscis present (Cat. 13-18).
13. Hind wing with nervule 8 curved and almost touching 7 after end of
cell; nervure 1a reaching anal angle .......... Fam. 12.
Cymatophoridae, see p. 386.
14. Hind wing with nervule 8 remote from 7 after end of cell (Cat. 15-
18).
15. Tarsi as short as tibia, hairy; stoutly built moths .......... Fam. 11.
Notodontidae,[237] see p. 383.
16. Tarsi long and naked; slightly built moths (Cat. 17 and 18)
17. Fore wing with nervule 7 remote from 8, and generally stalked
with 6 .......... Fam. 40. Epiplemidae, see p. 420.
18. Fore wing with nervule 7 given off from 8; hind wing with
nervure 1a short or absent .......... Fam. 36. Geometridae, see
p. 411.
B. Fore wing with nervule 5 coming from lower angle of cell or nearer 4 than 6
[see figures 161 and 162, pp. 318, 319] (Categories 19-58).
19. Hind wing with more than 8 nervules (Cat. 20, 21).
20. Proboscis absent, no mandibles nor ligula; size not very small ..........
Fam. 23. Hepialidae, see p. 396.
21. Mandibles, long palpi and ligula present; size very small .......... Fam.
47. Micropterygidae, see p. 435.
22. Hind wing with not more than 8 nervules (Cat. 23-58).
23. Hind wing with nervule 8 remote from 7 after origin of nervules 6 and 7
(Cat. 24-51).
24. Frenulum absent (Cat. 25-29).
25. Hind wing with one internal nervure; nervule 8 with a precostal spur
.......... Fam. 31. Pterothysanidae, see p. 406.
26. Hind wing with two internal nervures (Cat. 27 and 28).
27. Hind wing with a bar between nervules 7 and 8 near the base;
nervure 1a directed to middle of inner margin .......... Fam. 30.
Endromidae, see p. 406.
28. Hind wing with no bar between nervules 7 and 8; nervure 1a
directed to anal angle .......... Fam. 29. Lasiocampidae, see
p. 405.
29. Hind wing with three internal nervures .......... Fam. 21. Arbelidae,
see p. 396.
30. Frenulum present (Cat. 31-51).
31. Hind wing with nervule 8 aborted .......... Fam. 15. Syntomidae,
see p. 388.
32. Hind wing with nervule 8 present (Cat. 33-51).
33. Antennae knobbed .......... Fam. 1. Castniidae, see p. 371.
34. Antennae filiform, or (rarely) dilated a little towards the tip (Cat.
35-51).
35. Fore wing with nervure 1c present (Cat. 36-43).
36. Hind wing with nervule 8 free from the base or connected
with 7 by a bar (Cat. 37-42).
37. Proboscis present .......... Fam. 16. Zygaenidae, see
p. 390.
38. Proboscis absent (Cat. 39-42).
39. Palpi rarely absent; ♀ winged; larvae wood-borers ..........
Fam. 20. Cossidae, see p. 395.
40. Palpi absent; ♀ apterous (Cat. 41, 42).
41. ♀ rarely with legs; ♀ and larvae case-dwellers ..........
Fam. 19. Psychidae, see p. 392.
42. ♀ and larvae free[238] .......... Fam. 18. Heterogynidae,
see p. 392.
43. Hind wing with nervule 8 anastomosing shortly with 7 ..........
Fam. 26. Limacodidae, see. p. 401.
44. Fore wing with nervure 1c absent (Cat. 45-51).
45. Hind wing with nervule 8 rising out of 7 .......... Fam. 34.
Arctiidae, see p. 408.
46. Hind wing with nervule 8 connected with 7 by a bar, or
touching it near middle of cell (Cat. 47, 48).
47. Palpi with the third joint naked and reaching far above
vertex of head; proboscis present .......... Fam. 33.
Hypsidae, see p. 408.
48. Palpi not reaching above vertex of head; proboscis absent
or very minute .......... Fam. 32. Lymantriidae, see p. 406.
49. Hind wing with nervule 8 anastomosing shortly with 7 near
the base; proboscis well developed (Cat. 50, 51).
50. Antennae more or less thick towards tip .......... Fam. 35.
Agaristidae, see p. 410.
51. Antennae filiform .......... Fam. 37. Noctuidae, see p. 414.
52. Hind wing with nervule 8 curved and nearly or quite touching nervure 7,
or anastomosing with it after origin of nervules 6 and 7 (Cat. 53-58).
53. Hind wing with nervure 1c absent (Cat. 54-57).
54. Hind wing with nervule 8 with a precostal spur .......... Fam. 24.
Callidulidae, see p. 400.
55. Hind wing with nervule 8 with no precostal spur (Cat. 56, 57).
56. Hind wing with nervure 1a absent or very short .......... Fam. 25.
Drepanidae, see p. 400.
57. Hind wing with nervure 1a almost or quite reaching anal angle
.......... Fam. 28. Thyrididae, see p. 404.
58. Hind wing with nervure 1c present .......... Fam. 41. Pyralidae, see
p. 420.
C. Fore wing with 4 nervules arising from the cell at almost even distances
apart (Cat. 59-66).
59. Wings not divided into plumes (Cat. 60-63).
60. Hind wing with nervule 8 coincident with 7 .......... Fam. 13. Sesiidae,
see p. 386.
61. Hind wing with nervule 8 free (Cat. 62, 63).
62. Fore wing with nervure 1b simple or with a very minute fork at base
.......... Fam. 14. Tinaegeriidae, see p. 387.
63. Fore wing with nervure 1a forming a large fork with 1b at base ..........
Fam. 45. Tineidae, see p. 428.
64. Wings divided into plumes (Cat. 65, 66).
65. Fore wing divided into at most two, hind wing into three plumes ..........
Fam. 42. Pterophoridae, see p. 426.
66. Fore wing and hind wing each divided into three plumes .......... Fam.
43. Alucitidae (= Orneodidae), see p. 426.
Fam. 1. Castniidae.—The Insects of this family combine to a large

extent the characters of butterflies and moths. The antennae are
knobbed or hooked at the tip, there is a large precostal area to the hind
wing. The nervules of the front wing are complex and anastomose so
as to form one or more accessory cells (Fig. 162). This important, but
not extensive, family consists chiefly of forms found in tropical America
and Australia. The diversity of size, form and appearance is very great,
and it is probable that the members of the family will be separated;
indeed, taxonomists are by no means in agreement as to the limits of
the family. The Castniidae are diurnal Insects, and the North American
genus Megathymus is by many considered to belong to the
Rhopalocera. Euschemon rafflesiae (Fig. 186) is extremely like a large
Skipper with long antennae, but has a well-marked frenulum. The
members of the Australian genus Synemon are much smaller, but they
also look like Skippers. Their habits are very like those of the
Hesperiidae; they flit about in the hot sunshine, and when settling after
their brief flights, the fore wings are spread out at right angles to the
body, so as to display the more gaily coloured hind wings; at night, or in
cloudy weather, the Insect rests on blades of grass with the wings
erect, meeting vertically over the back, like a butterfly. Hecatesia,
another Australian genus, is now usually assigned to Agaristidae; its
members look like moths. The male of H. fenestrata is provided with a
sound-producing organ similar to that of the Agaristid genus Aegocera.
Fig. 186—Euschemon rafflesiae. Australia. (After Doubleday.)
The Castnia of South America are many of them like Nymphalid

butterflies, but exhibit great diversity, and resemble butterflies of several
different divisions of the family.[239]
The species are apparently great, lovers of heat and can tolerate a very
dry atmosphere.[240] The transformations of very few have been
observed; so far as is known the larvae feed in stems; and somewhat
resemble those of Goat-moths or Leopard-moths (Cossidae); the
caterpillar of C. therapon lives in the stems of Brazilian orchids, and as
a consequence has been brought to Europe, and the moth there
disclosed. The pupae are in general structure of the incomplete
character, and have transverse rows of spines, as is the case with other
moths of different families, but having larvae with similar habits.[241]
Castnia eudesmia forms a large cocoon of fragments of vegetable
matter knitted together with silk. These Insects are rare in collections;
they do not ever appear in numbers, and are generally very difficult to
capture.
Fam. 2. Neocastniidae.—The Oriental genus Tascina, formerly placed

in Castniidae has recently been separated by Sir G. Hampson and
associated with Neocastnia nicevillei, from East India, to form this
family. These Insects have the appearance of Nymphalid butterflies.
They differ from Castniidae by the want of a proboscis.
Fam. 3. Saturniidae.—This is a large and varied assemblage of moths;

the larvae construct cocoons; the products of several species being
used as silk. These moths have no frenulum and no proboscis. The
hind wings have a very large shoulder, so that the anterior margin or
costa stretches far forward beneath the front wing, as it does in
butterflies. The antennae of the males are strongly bipectinated and
frequently attain a magnificent development. The family includes some
of the largest and most remarkable forms of the Insect-world,
Coscinocera hercules, inhabiting North Australia, is a huge moth which,
with its expanded wings and the long tails thereof, covers a space of
about 70 square inches. One of the striking features of the family is the
occurrence in numerous forms of remarkable transparent spaces on the
wings; these window-like areas usually occur in the middle of the wing
and form a most remarkable contrast to the rest of the surface, which is
very densely scaled. In Attacus these attain a large size. In other
species, such as the South African Ludia delegorguei, there is a small
letter-like, or symboliform, transparent mark towards the tip of each
front wing. We have at present no clue to the nature or importance of
these remarkable markings. In the genus Automeris, and in other
forms, instead of transparent spaces there are large and staring
ocellate marks or eyes, which are concealed when the Insect is
reposing. In Arceina, Copiopteryx, Eudaemonia and others, the hind
wings are prolonged into very long tails, perhaps exceeding in length
those of any other moths.
Fig. 187—Larva of Attacus atlas, India. A, at end of 1st instar, profile; B,

4th instar, dorsal view; C, full-grown larva, in repose. (After Poujade.)
The cocoons are exceedingly various, ranging from a slight open

network to a dense elaborate structure arranged as in our Emperor
moth; in this latter case an opening is left by the larva for its exit after it
has become a moth, but by an ingenious, chevaux-de-frise work, this
opening is closed against external enemies, though the structure offers
no resistance at all to the escape of the moth. Fabre has recorded
some observations and experiments which seem to show that the
instinct predominating over the formation of the cocoon is not
cognoscent. The Insect, if interfered with, displays a profound stupidity.
Its method is blind perseverance in the customary.[242] The cocoon of
Saturniidae is more often continuous, i.e. entirely closed. Packard says
that Actias luna effects its escape by cutting through the strong cocoon
with an instrument situate at the base of the front wing. Other species
were examined and were found to possess the instrument; but Packard
is convinced that the majority of the species possessing the instrument
do not use it, but escape by emitting a fluid that softens the cocoon and
enables the moth to push itself through.[243] The cocoons of the
species of Ceranchia have a beautiful appearance, like masses of
filagree-work in silver. The pupa in Ceranchia is very peculiar, being
terminated by a long, spine-like process. In Loepa newara the cocoon
is of a green colour and suspended by a stalk; looking like the pod, or
pitcher, of a plant. The silk of the Saturniidae is usually coarse, and is
known as Tusser or Tussore[244] silk.
The larvae of this family are as remarkable as the imagos, being

furnished with spine-bearing tubercles or warts, or long fleshy
processes; the colours are frequently beautiful. The caterpillar of
Attacus atlas (Fig. 187) is pale olive-green and lavender, and has a
peculiar, conspicuous, red mark on each flank close to the clasper.
About seventy genera and several hundred species are already known
of this interesting family. They are widely distributed on the globe,
though there are but few in Australia. Our only British species, the
Emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia, is by no means rare, and its larva is a
beautiful object; bright green with conspicuous tubercles of a rosy, or
yellow, colour. It affects an unusual variety of food-plants, sloe and
heather being favourites; the writer has found it at Wicken flourishing on
the leaves of the yellow water-lily. Although the Emperor moth is one of
the largest of our native Lepidopterous Insects, it is one of the smallest
of the Saturniidae.
The family Hemileucidae of Packard is included at present in

Saturniidae.
Fam. 4. Brahmaeidae.—The species forming the genus Brahmaea

have been placed in various families, and are now treated by Hampson
as a family apart, distinguished from Saturniidae by the presence of a
proboscis. They are magnificent, large moths, of sombre colours, but
with complex patterns on the wings, looking as if intended as designs
for upholstery. About fifteen species are recognised; the geographical
distribution is remarkable; consisting of a comparatively narrow belt
extending across the Old World from Japan to West Africa, including
Asia Minor and the shores of the Caspian Sea. Little has been recorded
as to the life-histories of these Insects. The larva is said to have the
second and third segments swollen and armed with a pair of lateral
spines projecting forwards. A cocoon is not formed.
Fam. 5. Ceratocampidae.—This is a small family. They are fine moths

peculiar to the New World, and known principally by scattered notices in
the works of North American entomologists. Seven genera and about
sixty species are known. The chief genus is Citheronia. Some of the
larvae are remarkable, being armed with large and complex spines. A
cocoon is not formed.
Fam. 6. Bombycidae.—In entomological literature this name has a

very uncertain meaning, as it has been applied to diverse groups; even
at present the name is frequently used for the Lasiocampidae. We
apply it to the inconsiderable family of true silkworm moths. They are
comparatively small and uninteresting Insects in both the larval and
imaginal instars; but the cocoons formed by the well-known silkworm
are of great value, and some other species form similar structures that
are of more or less value for commercial purposes. The silkworm has
been domesticated for an enormous period, and is consequently now
very widely spread over the earth's surface; opinions differ as to its real
home, some thinking it came originally from Northern China, while
others believe Bengal to have been its native habitat. The silkworm is
properly called Bombyx mori, but perhaps it is as often styled Sericaria
mori. Besides being of so great a value in commerce, this Insect has
become an important object of investigation as to anatomy, physiology
and development. Its domestication has probably been accompanied
by a certain amount of change in habits and instincts, the creature
having apparently lost its appreciation of freedom and its power of
flight; it is also said to be helpless in certain respects when placed on
trees in the larval state; but the importance of these points has been
perhaps somewhat exaggerated.[245]
Although the family Bombycidae is very widely distributed in the warmer

regions of the world, it includes only 15 or 20 genera, and none of them
have many species. The Mustiliidae of some entomologists are
included here. Like the Saturniidae, the Bombycidae are destitute of
proboscis and of frenulum to the wings, but they possess two or three
internal nervures on the hind wing instead of the single one existing in
Saturniidae.
Fam. 7. Eupterotidae (Striphnopterygidae of Aurivillius).—This family

has only recently been separated from Lasiocampidae; its members,
however, possess a frenulum; while none is present in the larger family
mentioned. Its limits are still uncertain, but it includes several extremely
interesting forms. The larvae of the European processionary moth,
Cnethocampa processionea, are social in habits; they sometimes occur
in very large numbers, and march in columns of peculiar form, each
band being headed by a leader in front, and the column gradually
becoming broader. It is thought that the leader spins a thread as he
goes on, and that the lateral leaders of the succeeding files fasten the
threads they spin to that of the first individual, and in this way all are
brought into unison. The hairs of these caterpillars are abundant, and
produce great irritation to the skin and mucous membrane of any one
unlucky enough to come into too close contact with the creatures. This
property is, however, not confined to the hairs of the processionary
moths, but is shared to a greater or less extent by the hairs of various
other caterpillars of this division of Lepidoptera. In some cases the
irritation is believed to be due to the form of the hair or spine, which
may be barbed or otherwise peculiar in form. It is also thought that in
some cases a poisonous liquid is contained in the spine.
The larvae of other forms have the habit of forming dense webs, more
or less baglike, for common habitation by a great number of caterpillars,
and they afterwards spin their cocoons inside these receptacles. This
has been ascertained to occur in the case of several species of the
genus Anaphe, as has been described and illustrated by Dr. Fischer,
[246] Lord Walsingham,[247] and Dr. Holland.[248] The structures are
said to be conspicuous objects on trees in some parts of Africa. The
common dwelling of this kind formed by the caterpillars of Hypsoides
radama in Madagascar is said to be several feet in length; but the
structures of most of the other species are of much smaller size.
The larvae of the South American genus Palustra, though hairy like
other Eupterotid caterpillars, are aquatic in their habits, and swim by
coiling themselves and making movements of extension; the hair on the
back is in the form of dense brushes, but at the sides of the body it is
longer and more remote; when the creatures come to the surface—
which is but rarely—the dorsal brushes are quite dry, while the lateral
hairs are wet. The stigmata are extremely small, and the mode of
respiration is not fully known. It was noticed that when taken out of the
water, and walking in the open air, these caterpillars have but little
power of maintaining their equilibrium. They pupate beneath the water
in a singular manner: a first one having formed its cocoon, others come
successively and add theirs to it so as to form a mass.[249] Another
species of Palustra, P. burmeisteri, Berg,[250] is also believed to breathe
by means of air entangled in its long clothing; it comes to the surface
occasionally, to renew the supply; the hairs of the shorter brushes are
each swollen at the extremity, but whether this may be in connexion
with respiration is not known. This species pupates out of the water,
between the leaves of plants.
Dirphia tarquinia is remarkable on account of the great difference of

colour and appearance in the two sexes. In the Australian genus
Marane the abdomen is densely tufted at the extremity with hair of a
different colour.
Fam. 8. Perophoridae.—The moths of the genus Perophora have for

long been an enigma to systematists, and have been placed as
abnormal members of Psychidae or of Drepanidae, but Packard now
treats them as a distinct family. The larvae display no signs of any
social instincts, but, on the contrary, each one forms a little dwelling for
itself. Some twenty species of Perophora are now known; they inhabit a
large part of the New World, extending from Minnesota to Buenos

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Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office

in Britain and its Empire, 1600-1850

Trust and Distrust

Corruption in Office in Britain and its

Trust and Distrust

‘Corruption is the Cancer of the Body politick.’¹

There is currently no overview of the relationship between corruption and office

¹ The Craftsman, no. 105, 6 July 1728.

Conventions and Information

List of Illustrations xiii

Entrepreneurial Anti-­Corruption 253

Illustrations © Trustees of the British Museum unless otherwise stated.

xiv   

6.2. ‘The Nabob Rumbled’ (1783), BM Sat. 6169. 167

Beinecke Beinecke Library, Yale University

xvi   

‘There is no Man so improper to be employed in Business, as he who

   

unchanging universals: they had to be forged, shaped, and remoulded to suit

depicted, as in Fig. 1.1, as a monstrous body composed of many different

   

In employments which expose the public functionary to peculiar temptations,

Alongside these ideas was greater attention to superannuation and pension

¹¹ Aspinall, Cornwallis, 35–36.

   

¹⁶ James C. Scott, ‘The Analysis of Corruption in Developing Nations’, Comparative Studies in

   

An element of distrust was necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the

   

²⁰ Edward Misselden, The Circle of Commerce (1623), 17.

²² See, for example, my ‘Was Samuel Pepys Corrupt’?, downloadable at https://www.transparency.

Fig. 180—Pupation of the Orange-tip butterfly, Euchloe cardamines. A,

The caterpillars of Pieridae are perhaps the least remarkable or

It is not unusual for caterpillars to change their habits and appearance

Fig. 182—Larva of Euchloe cardamines in middle life. A, the larva in

Fam. 5. Papilionidae.—All the legs well developed. Claws large,

Fig. 183—Ornithoptera (Schoenbergia) paradisea, male. New Guinea. ×

It would be difficult to surpass the effective coloration of the males in

We may anticipate that these extraordinary cases of sexual total

In Africa Ornithoptera is to a certain extent represented by two

The pupation of Papilionidae is similar to that of Pieridae, the pupa

Fam. 6. Hesperiidae (Skippers).—Six perfect legs: metanotum not

The body is shorter and thicker than it is in most butterflies, and is

In habits as well as structure the family is markedly distinct from

In their early stages the Skippers—so far as at present known—depart

Fig. 185—Pupation of Badamia exclamationis. (After Dudgeon. J. Bombay

Pupation takes place under similar conditions; and it is interesting to

Series II. Heterocera. Moths.

Although Rhopalocera—if exclusion be made of the Hesperiidae—is

Several attempts have recently been made to form a rough forecast of

As regards the various aggregates of families that are widely known in

The following key to the families of Heterocera is taken from Sir G. F.

Key to the Families of Moths[236]

Fam. 1. Castniidae.—The Insects of this family combine to a large

The Castnia of South America are many of them like Nymphalid

Fam. 2. Neocastniidae.—The Oriental genus Tascina, formerly placed

Fam. 3. Saturniidae.—This is a large and varied assemblage of moths;

Fig. 187—Larva of Attacus atlas, India. A, at end of 1st instar, profile; B,

The cocoons are exceedingly various, ranging from a slight open

The larvae of this family are as remarkable as the imagos, being

The family Hemileucidae of Packard is included at present in

Fam. 4. Brahmaeidae.—The species forming the genus Brahmaea

Fam. 5. Ceratocampidae.—This is a small family. They are fine moths

List of Illustrations xiii

Entrepreneurial Anti-Corruption 253