REMUNERATION EX-POST-FACTO In the preceding chapter it was stated, that in accordance with the principle of utility, the costly matter of reward ought only to be employed in the production of service; and that, in accordance with that principle, a reward can only consist of a portion of the matter of reward, employed as a motive for the production of service.This would seem to exclude everything which can be called liberality---every act by which a reward may be bestowed upon any service to which it has not been promised beforehand.
Such may appear the consequence at first sight.
A reward, it may be said, ought only to be bestowed upon the performance of the service to which it has been promised; since it is only where it has been foreseen, that it can have operated as a motive.Why then bestow it upon a service, how useful and important soever, to which it has not been promised? The service you would have been willing to purchase, at the expense of a certain reward, has been happily rendered without any engagement on your part to bear the expense.Why, therefore, should any reward be bestowed? why pretend to employ reward in the production of an effect which has been produced without it? Is not this a useless employment of reward?---is not this an expenditure in pure waste?
Certainly such an expense cannot be justified as a means of producing an effect, which has by the supposition already been produced; but it may be justified as serving to give birth to other effects of a like nature, as likely to cause future services to be rendered, which will agree with those that are past---at least in this, that they are services.
A reward which thus follows the service may be styled an ex post facto , or unpromised reward.The Society of Arts has recognised and employed this distinction.A reward bestowed in fulfilment of a promise, upon the performance of a specified service, is called a premium.A reward bestowed without previous promise, is called a bounty.
To make it a rule never to grant a reward which has not been promised, is to tie up the hands of true liberality, and to renounce all chance of receiving any new kind of service.There is only one supposition which can justify this parsimony: it is, that every service has been foreseen and endowed beforehand.Whether legislation will ever attain this perfection, I pretend not to know.It has not attained it as yet; and till it be attained, sovereigns may reckon liberality amongst the number of their virtues.
Rewards which in this manner are the fruits of liberality, possess a great advantage over those which are awarded in virtue of a promise.These, confined to one object, operate only upon the individual service specified.The genial influence of the others extends over the whole theatre of meritorious actions.These are useful in determining researches to a particular point; the others present an irritation to extend them to everything which the human mind can grasp.These are like the water which the hand of a gardener directs to a particular flower; the others are like the dew which is distilled over the whole surface of the earth.
