William Hazlitt, "On Corporate Bodies":

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor good-will. The principle of prviate or natural conscience is extinguished in each individual (we have no moral sense in the breasts of others), and nothing is considered but how the united efforts of the whole (released from idle scruples) may be best directed to the obtaining of political advantages or privileges to be shared as common spoil. Each member reaps the benefit, and lays the blame, if there is any, upon the rest.

Now the good Mr. Hazlitt (1778-1830) has a slightly different definition of a corporate body, which in his day could refer to any collective association and not just a business as we understand it, but he's still dead on the mark nevertheless. I got turned on to Hazlitt by a cryptic remark in Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City", where the second person protagonist of the novel, an aspiring writer working as a fact-checker at a prestigious New York magazine, is advised by one of the cranky but brilliant old editors to write every morning and "read Hazlitt".

I'm thinking of taking the old man's advice myself.