Inthe spirit of weber Corruption” is a shorthand for a major feature of the British state during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: namely, the use of patronage, emoluments, sinecures and perquisites by the state to bribe, remunerate or honour. It is clear from Rubinstein’s work, as well as contemporary evidence, graphically detailed inJohn Wade’s celebrated Black Books of the 1820s and 1830s,^^ that the judiciary and the legal profession were major beneficiaries of the Old Corruption. The Lord Chancellor’s powers of patronage were immense. And a large part of that patronage - offices, pensions, etc., - was available at a price. The transformation of Lord Eldon froma man of fairly lowly origin to one who, after twenty-seven years on the Woolsack, had become one of the richest men in Britain, is well known. The perquisites of office played a major role in “... enabling lawyers to found families in the aristocratic style. The emoluments of the Chancellorship in unreformed days, which Eldon held with a gap of one year from1801 to 1827, were reckoned at £35,000 a year, and in addition the Chancellor had immense legal, educational and ecclesiastical patronage in his gift, the larger part of which at least was saleable. The means by which this coal factor’s son (i.e. Lord Eldon) amassed landed estate which by 1873 had a rentroll of over £28,000, are thus readily apparent. But it was not just the Lord Chancellor. The law was a rich provider of rewards or lucrative offices without any duties. According to Wade, writing in 1832, “... the Courts of Justice present the most rank and unweeded garden of lucrative offices without employment, or of which the employment is executed by a deputy.Wade mentions such offices as the Chief Justiceship in Eyre and the LordJustice-General in Scotland, “held for many years by persons not brought up even to the profession of the law. Only from 1850 onwards did the income of lawyers and judges decline as Old Corruption was cut back. In short, “the routes by which ... [some senior lawyers and judges] acquired their fortunes appearfs] to be strikingly and in some cases grotesquely pre-modern ...” in the Weberian sense; that is, “glaringly at variance with the historian’s common perceptions of wealth-making in Britain during the period of industrialization. This irrationality affected the courts in other ways. In his famous six-hour speech of 1828 on the abuses of the judiciary. Lord Brougham observed that For example, see J. Wade (ed.). The Extraordinary Black Book (London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1832). Wade’s Black Books are discussed by Rubinstein, op. cit. p. 60 n. 7 and, generally, pp. 60-3 and p. 74. FMLThompson, English Landed Society in the 19th Century (London: Routledge, 1963), p. Wade, op. cit p. 485, cited in Rubinstein op. cit., p. 74. J. Wade, The Black Book or. Corruption Unmasked (London: Effingham Wilson, 1826), p. 6, cited by Rubinstein, op cit., p. 74. Rubinstein, op. cit., p. 56. 239 ”89 ”91 ”92 55.
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