Red in the face

The dictionary meaning of the word bribe is money or other valuable consideration given or promised with a view to corrupting the behaviour of a person. So, bribe is basically the asking price of a person's character, the cost of having to compromise his conscience. The question is whether a lower-priced thing is less corrupting than a higher-priced thing. How big does the drop of urine need to be to spoil a pale of milk?

Many years ago, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley wrote a book named Bribes published by Macmillan. John T. Noonan Jr. defined in his book that "A bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised." He applied the word bribe to figures as distinguished as Francis Bacon and Thomas Becket, and to a whole array of US Presidents: Monroe, Garfield, Johnson, and Nixon.

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At the dawn of human society, the offering of gifts for reciprocal services was a common sign of good intentions. A roving tribesman offered some bright stone to a stranger simply to show that he meant no violence. The early judges could accept gifts from both sides and still rule justly. Bribing was as innocuous materially as it was spiritually. Sacrifices were offered to divine forces for rain and wind.

Dutch archaeologists had found an administrative centre of the ancient Assyrian empire, 3,400 years old, in which an archive listed the names of "employees accepting bribes". In medieval French bribe meant "a piece of bread". A linguistic game of consequences led it from one sense to another. Gradually, it turned into "a piece of bread given to a beggar", then by further steps the meaning arrived at "theft" or "stealing".

It was in the last sense that the word first appeared in English in the fourteenth century, in the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries. It soon evolved further and the term briber meant a person, who did menacing to get money. In the sixteenth century the meaning flipped completely over. The word briber came to mean a person handing over the money.

Which led King James I to call his citizens to make public accusation if they knew of bribery of his judges. Amongst the first to complain was John Wrenham who charged in 1617 that the learned Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon had accepted bribe and unfairly ruled against him. But when Wrenham failed to prove anything, both his ears were cut off and he was "perpetually imprisoned". Four years later Bacon finally confessed to a whole array of bribes, and Parliament fined him £ 40,000 and sentenced him to the Tower. The King majestically commuted the penalties.

Noonan argued that morality had little relevance to corruption and concluded that bribery was a betrayal of the public trust necessary for society's survival. Perhaps bribery is as old as human instinct, and one of the dangers in making ethical judgements is that the standards keep changing. After all, slavery was once considered morally acceptable and usury was once considered morally reprehensible.

Yet, bribe is condemned in all societies as a corrupting gift. It's looked down upon as ransom for a captive favour, an extortion by the abuse of one's office or authority. It's so much a gift as rape is sex, intimidation is persuasion, and force is freedom. Bribe is basically human decency boiled down to the negotiation table. It puts a price tag on the soul of a man and takes away his dignity.

So, what is wrong with bribery except for the fact that it gives one the reputation that one can be bought for money? Let us say that bribe is a premium one attaches to what one gets paid to do anyway. What is wrong with it, if not for the absurdity of asking for a gift under coercion? Bribe has the ludicrous acerbity of asking for baksheesh at gunpoint.

Is bribe bad then, some kind of a forbidden thing like blasphemy or sodomy? Why have the authors of the American Constitution specified in Article II that the President and "all civil officers" of the U.S. could be impeached for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors"? Why did William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, sternly say, " The taking of bribe or gratuity, should be punished with as severe penalties as the defrauding of the State"?

It's because bribery is obscene, a moral aberration that is comparable to prostitution. It's because bribery puts the duty of a man on auction, because he is ready to sell his virtue for a price, his soul engaged in the immoral trafficking of its own modesty. "God does not take shohadh" proclaims the book of Deuteronomy, shohadh being the Hebrew word for bribe. Man, who is made in the image of God, must also live in the image of God. He violates his own sanctity by accepting bribe, embarrassing his creator in the sanctuary of His own creation.

Bribe creates bad blood because it's cutthroat gift, because it's an antithesis to fellow feeling. Bribe turns man into merchandise, passion into product and conscience into a confectionery. Bribe turns morality into a marketplace where all things are bought and sold. Bribe is bordello of human characters, one of the sordid pillars of corruption, which spawns human miseries.

Lately, a meter-reader was in the news for giving away a hefty sum of money in donation. He has surprised us because his means couldn't justify what he did. It struck us as odd that a man of meagre income could part with so much money. But then his profession has made it obvious, and we all know how he earned it.

In 1939, English writer Edmund Clerihew Bentley quipped in Baseless Biography that when the lordships in the parliament asked Bacon how many bribes he had taken, he had at least the grace to get very red in the face. If the meter-reader has earned so much money, now he has also given some of it in donation. Now that he has given this donation, he is going to get something out of it. And that something perhaps will be a deal to make more money or become more powerful. It's the daisy's chain of success, opportunity growing on opportunity.

Here is one more thing about bribe, which has changed over time. It's not the meter-reader who will get red in the face. He is now big in charity. But the rest of us never made enough to give so much. It is for us to get very red in the face.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.