Comment by mike_hearn
1 day ago
You're asserting a lot of things that aren't in the article. If you want to argue Victorian-era MPs were all motivated by corruption then go ahead but you'll need to cite strong evidence for that, because the general consensus was that MPs of that time were not particularly corrupt. As the article says, they didn't even spend much time on lawmaking at all, so there wasn't a lot of legislation to abuse.
The pre-Victorian system was known as the "Old Corruption" (capitalized), so while it was less so there was still quite a high baseline.
https://historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/old-corrup...
It's not asserting corruption. they were the voluntary caretakers of a system designed to ensure their prosperity and they provided their time and energy so that the system would continue to do so.
The system was already set-up to their maximum benefit. Their corruption was in making sure nothing changed, no matter the clamoring of the vast majority.