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The radical critique of "Old Corruption" and the beginnings of public service reform in late eighteenth-century Scotland: The Edinburgh sasine office as a case study
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The radical critique of "Old Corruption" and the beginnings of public service reform in late eighteenth-century Scotland: The Edinburgh sasine office as a case study

M. Durey
International Review of Scottish Studies, Vol.16, pp.33-55
1990
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Abstract

Although in recent years historians have redirected attention to the questions of patronage and influence in eighteenth-century Britain - some examining patronage as "corruption", others viewing it in terms of parliamentary government and political parties, and yet others beginning to study its sociological ramifications - some problems still remain relatively unexplored. For example, why did so many radicals persist in focussing their critiques on "Old Corruption", even as late as the 1830s, when, according to some Marxist historians, "objectively" they ought to have been generating class-conscious critical theory? Obviously the sheer longevity of patronage society, which extended far into the nineteenth century, must be part of the answer. Nevertheless, very little is known of how and in what ways people outside the charmed circle of patronage responded to its presence and influence.

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