Anyone who thinks it will be easy to get the torrent of cash out of the government will find this interesting. The Economist's year end issue has a short essay on the East India Company and the following paragraph is from that essay. Remember this was the 18th Century.
"The Company created a powerful East India lobby in Parliament, a caucus of MPs who had either directly or indirectly profited from its business and who constituted, in Edmund Burke's opinion, one of the most united and formidable forces in British politics. It also made regular gifts to the Court: 'All who could help or hurt at Court', wrote Lord Macaulay, 'ministers, mistresses, priests, were kept in good humor by presents of shawls and silks, bird's nests and attar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas'."
Sound familiar?
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