Parliamentary backing transformed a shaky private venture into an enormous corruption scheme

Evidence

The secret of the company’s success lies in the fact that its several public loans were invariably backed by Parliament. The building of the Canal was generally regarded as a public and national service rather than as a private enterprise. When the company went bankrupt, therefore, it was the foreign policy of the republic that really suffered the blow. Only after a few years did it become clear that even more important was the ruination of some half-million middle-class Frenchmen. … In order to win sanction for the new loans he had been obliged to bribe the press, half of Parliament, and all of the higher officials. This, however, had called for the employment of middlemen and these in turn had commanded exorbitant commissions. Thus, the very thing which had originally inspired public confidence in the enterprise, namely, Parliament’s backing of the loans, proved in the end the factor which converted a not too sound private business into a colossal racket. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows how the corruption scandal’s aftermath — the search for scapegoats — feeds directly into the antisemitism that the Dreyfus Affair then crystallizes. — connects to: A corrupt county charter bill served as the currency of a legislative vote trade — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 880