"All those men have their price"
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A politician’s cynicism, sharpened into a single blade: “All those men have their price.” Walpole isn’t merely describing bribery; he’s asserting a theory of human nature calibrated for power. The line works because it’s both an accusation and a strategy memo. If everyone is purchasable, then opposition is not principled, just underfunded.
Context matters. Walpole, often tagged as Britain’s first prime minister, operated in an 18th-century system where patronage wasn’t a scandalous exception but the engine of governance: offices, pensions, contracts, and favors circulated to secure votes and loyalty. In that world, “price” is deliberately elastic. It can mean cash, yes, but also a title, an appointment for a cousin, a lucrative monopoly, social access, insulation from prosecution. By refusing to specify, Walpole makes corruption sound like a universal market with many currencies.
The subtext is an ugly confidence: morality is negotiable, and politics is the art of finding the number. It flatters the speaker’s own competence, too. To say everyone has a price is to imply you know how to pay it, and that you’re above the naïveté of people who talk about virtue while counting votes.
Rhetorically, the line is ice-cold because it’s totalizing. “All those men” erases exceptions, dismisses integrity as posturing, and reframes dissent as a procurement problem. It’s the kind of sentence that survives because it keeps reappearing in modern democracies whenever lobbying, revolving doors, or “access” fees blur the boundary between persuasion and purchase. Walpole’s genius is not insight but brutal clarity: systems that monetize loyalty will eventually teach people to think in prices.
Context matters. Walpole, often tagged as Britain’s first prime minister, operated in an 18th-century system where patronage wasn’t a scandalous exception but the engine of governance: offices, pensions, contracts, and favors circulated to secure votes and loyalty. In that world, “price” is deliberately elastic. It can mean cash, yes, but also a title, an appointment for a cousin, a lucrative monopoly, social access, insulation from prosecution. By refusing to specify, Walpole makes corruption sound like a universal market with many currencies.
The subtext is an ugly confidence: morality is negotiable, and politics is the art of finding the number. It flatters the speaker’s own competence, too. To say everyone has a price is to imply you know how to pay it, and that you’re above the naïveté of people who talk about virtue while counting votes.
Rhetorically, the line is ice-cold because it’s totalizing. “All those men” erases exceptions, dismisses integrity as posturing, and reframes dissent as a procurement problem. It’s the kind of sentence that survives because it keeps reappearing in modern democracies whenever lobbying, revolving doors, or “access” fees blur the boundary between persuasion and purchase. Walpole’s genius is not insight but brutal clarity: systems that monetize loyalty will eventually teach people to think in prices.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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