From the beginnings of European …show more content…
Royal governors and corporate placemen used their official positions to enrich themselves in every possible way. Many of them considered this a privilege of their offices. The growing discontent with British rule in the eighteenth century contributed to the later American definition of conflict of interest, while the idea of natural rights contributed to the notion of a public interest and welfare. Land, a large source of wealth in the colonies, contributed to schemes and speculation and bribery of both local and royal politicians. Legal and illegal struggles over land added to the colonial desire for independence. Later, of course, this struggle would be expressed as honest graft (inside information about future land use), bribing over zoning ordinations, and tax abatement, a legal but highly unethical policy. Officials were not the only ones to skirt the law in the American colonies. Colonial merchants and rebels, in their opposition to the Acts of Trade and Navigation, ignored tariff duties and mercantile