There are democracies, dictatorships, monarchies, communist states, and more, and then there are corruptocracies, if we may call them that, where blackmail and bribery of high officials goes unpunished, and spreads ever further, until it starts to play a defining role in our governance. Are we there yet? It’s for each of us to decide, but the Wall Street Journal just uncovered stock trading by more than 2,600 federal officials in companies that were lobbying the federal agencies where those officials worked, at the very time those bureaucrats made their investments. Shakespeare would call them modern Cardinal Wolseys. Both the historical Wolsey, and Shakespeare’s Wolsey presented in Henry VIII, traded on the public purse for personal profit. Here’s Wolsey finally being confronted by Henry VIII:

Cardinal Wolsey: I do profess
That for your highness’ good I ever labour’d
More than mine own.”

KING HENRY VIII: “‘Tis nobly spoken:
Take notice, lords, he has a loyal breast,
For you have seen him open’t. Read o’er this.”

(Giving him papers)

“And after, this: and then to breakfast with
What appetite you have.”

(Exit King, frowning upon Wolsey)

Wolsey: “What should this mean?
What sudden anger’s this? how have I reap’d it?
He parted frowning from me, as if ruin
Leap’d from his eyes: so looks the chafed lion
Upon the daring huntsman that has gall’d him;
Then makes him nothing. I must read this paper;
I fear, the story of his anger. ‘Tis so;
This paper has undone me: ’tis the account
Of all that world of wealth I have drawn together
For mine own ends; indeed, to gain the popedom,
And fee my friends in Rome. O negligence!
Fit for a fool to fall by.”

Norfolk: “Hear the king’s pleasure, cardinal: who commands you
To render up the great seal presently
Into our hands; and to confine yourself
To Asher House, my Lord of Winchester’s,
Till you hear further from his highness.”

When will our officials be made to render up their great seals and leave office? Was there more justice in the 1530s than now?