Bribery: “seldom, and not properly, used in a good sense”

With bribery in the news, Boston 1775 reader Byron DeLear asked about how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution understood the term.

The U.S. Constitution provides:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The term “treason” is defined elsewhere in the Constitution, and “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was deliberately unspecific.

To understand “Bribery” we can look at eighteenth-century usage. Here’s the section of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary devoted to the word and its immediate cognates.