'Government by oligarchy and corruption'. Is this a fair description Essay

'Government by oligarchy and corruption'. Is this a fair description of politics under Walpole - Essay Example After the retirement of Lord Townshend, he turned into the only undisputed leader of Cabinet. Although Walpole is charges with turning corruption into a public company with a systematic rottenness, it was under his reign when the country was able to manage the financial crisis in a systematic way. Walpole’s reign continued to 17421. First of all, let us concentrate on the issue of oligarchy and corruption that the political era of Walpole was charged with. Before proceeding further, it is necessary to look at what oligarchy actually refers to. Oligarchy can be described as a government which is governed only by a few. During the mid of seventeenth century, when the parliament won the contest for power with monarch, the lawyer-politicians were very much prominent in the political arena of Great Britain. It can therefore be said that at the start of eighteenth century there existed two great power blocks – politics and the law, and the interesting thing to be noted was that the cartel straddled both. During eighteenth century, England was being reined by the Whig oligarchs. The interesting feature of the government ran by Whig oligarchs was that they started to use the method of an all-encompassing corruption. To be more specific, the politicians used to buy their seats and sell their votes in parliament. The Whigs therefore introduced corruption in parliament, and Walpole, being a Whig, followed this tradition and took it forward to an intense level. Walpole’s era of Whig oligarchy ran from 1721 to 1742. It is found that during the last 10 years of his reign, he paid bribes of around 50,000 pound to newspaper proprietors. In this context, there is one thing worth mentioning. Although, parliamentary corruption took a very bad shape during the period of Walpole, it would not be right to say that corruption finds its origin in this period only. To trace the origin of corruption one needs to look far back. Parliamentary corruption