Sale of Office
The chapter charts a shift in attitudes to the sale of office, from the Jacobean period, when it seems to have been relatively commonplace, to the early nineteenth century, when the practice was formally banned for most offices (except those in the army). This reflected a shift away from the idea of office as personal property towards office as a public duty, and away from the idea of office as generating informal, personal profit beyond the public, formal remuneration decided by the state or corporation. But the shift was a protracted and messy one, with an ongoing contest between different ways of thinking about venality. For some it was a pragmatic issue, often related to customary norms, that did not imperil the morality or the smooth running of the state; for others, it represented an immoral pursuit of self-interest and avarice that posed a dangerous threat to the polity.