PARLIAMENT AND SOME ROOTS OF WHISTLE BLOWING DURING THE NINE YEARS WAR*

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1469-5103|57|2|397-420

ISSN: 0018-246x

Source: The Historical Journal, Vol.57, Iss.2, 2014-05, pp. : 397-420

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Abstract

This article argues that the failed campaign of one former clerk against corruption in the Royal Navy's sick and wounded service during the Nine Years War sheds light on some roots of modern whistle blowing. During the 1690s, England's parliament took important steps towards becoming an organ of inquiry into the workings of all government departments. Parliament's desire for information that could assist it to check Leviathan's actions, coupled with the end of pre-publication censorship in 1695, encouraged the advent of pamphleteering aimed at showing how to improve or correct abuses within the administrative structure and practices of the expanding fiscal-military state. It was from this stream of informative petitioning directed at the Commons and the Lords that informants such as Samuel Baston, as well as George Everett, William Hodges, and Robert Crosfeild, tried to call time on either systematic injustices or particular irregularities within the naval service for what they claimed was the public interest. What they and others called ‘discovering’ governmental malfeasance should be seen as early examples of blowing the whistle on wrongdoing.