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That distraction is the corruption at the core of this book. Call it dependence corruption.6 As I will show in the pages that follow, it is this pattern precisely that weakens our government. It is this pattern that explains that corruption without assuming evil or criminal souls at the helm. It will help us, in other words, understand a pathology that all of us acknowledge (at the level of the institution) without assuming a pathology that few could fairly believe (at the level of the individual).

As an introduction to dependence corruption, consider a link between the idea and an example more directly related to the aim of this book.

Imagine a young democracy, its legislators passionate and eager to serve their new republic. A neighboring king begins to send the legislators gifts. Wine. Women. Or wealth. Soon the legislators have a life that depends, in part at least, upon those gifts. They couldn’t live as comfortably without them, and they slowly come to recognize this. They bend their work to protect their gifts. They develop a sixth sense about how what they do in their work might threaten, or trouble, the foreign king. They avoid such topics. They work instead to keep the foreign king happy, even if that conflicts with the interests of their own people.

Just such a dynamic was the fear that led our Framers to add to our Constitution a strange and favorite clause of mine. As Article I, section 9, clause 8, states,

[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

The motivation for this clause was both contemporary to the Framers and a part of their history. At the time of the founding, the king of France had made it a practice to give expensive gifts to departing ambassadors when they had successfully negotiated a treaty. In 1780 he gave Arthur Lee a portrait of himself set in diamonds and fixed above a gold snuff box. In 1784 he gave Benjamin Franklin a similar portrait, also set in diamonds. The practice was common throughout Europe. During negotiations with Spain, for example, the king of Spain presented John Jay with a horse. Each of these gifts raised a reasonable concern: Would agents of the republic keep their loyalties clear if in the background they had in view these expected gifts from foreign kings? Would the promised or expected gift give them an extra push to close an agreement, even if (ever so slightly) against the interests of their nation?

The same fear was a part of England’s past. The reign of Charles II was stained by the fact that he, and most of his ministers, received payments (“emoluments”) from the French Crown while in exile in France. Many believed the British monarchy thus became dependent upon those emoluments, and hence upon France. Those emoluments were viewed as a form of corruption, even if there was no clear quid pro quo tied to the gifts.7

Likewise with the relationship of the British Crown to ministers in Parliament: The core corruption the Framers wanted to avoid was Parliament’s loss of independence from the Crown because the king had showered members of Parliament with offices and perks that few would have the strength to resist.8 Members were thus pulled to the view of the king, and away from the view of the people they were intended to represent.

In each of these cases, the concern was not just a single episode. It was a practice. The fear was not just that a particular minister might be bribed. It was that many ministers might develop the wrong sensibilities. The fear, in other words, was that a dependency might develop that would draw the institution away from the purpose it was intended to serve: The people. The realm. The commons.

Think about it like this: Imagine a compass, its earnest arrow pointing to the magnetic north. We all have a trusting sense of how this magical device works. When