Amongst the many things G. K. Chesterton criticised about contemporary England in his What's Wrong with the World (1910) was the notion that a politician should be rich to be incorruptible. He wrote, "Our national claim to political incorruptibility is [...] based on the theory that wealthy men in assured positions will have no temptation to financial trickery. [...] The English statesman is bribed not to be bribed. He is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so that he may never afterwards be found with the silver spoons in his pocket."
In other countries I've noticed this concept too, albeit not necessarily with people born filthy rich, but likewise with people who became so. Every few years or so somebody enters politics with the professed goal of eliminating corruption, claiming that he can be trusted to be impervious to its lure because he's already made his pile. And one hears prospective voters parroting the mantra: "I tell you man, [unlike the rest of them] he's so rich already he doesn't need any more".
I don't say there are none who mean it. But I can't recollect a single case of somebody who, when considering what good to do for his fellow mortals with his wealth, chose politics, rather than donating to a charity, building a school or a museum, funding some medical research, or doing another such thing in which the above-mentioned temptation was scarcely present. And I wonder why those prospective voters forget the old proverb, "the more you get, the more you want".
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