This ingenious expedient for exciting emulation is one among the other advantages of a numerous class.In the private plan of education, there are seldom actors in sufficient number for the performance of this comedy.The most favourable opportunities for legislation are those in which the two methods are so combined, that the punishment immediately follows the omission of the duty, and the reward its performance This arrangement presents the idea of absolute perfection.Why? Because to all the force of the punishment is united all the attractiveness and certainty of the reward.
I have said certainty : but this requires to be explained.Denounce a punishment for such or such acts: the only individual who cannot fail to know whether or not he has incurred the punishment, is interested in concealing his having incurred it.On the other hand, offer a reward, and the same individual finds himself interested in producing the necessary proofs for establishing his title to it.Thus a variety of causes contribute to the failure of punishment---the artifices of the person interested, the prejudices against informers, the loss or failure of evidence, the fallibility or mistaken humanity of judges---while to the attainment of reward no such obstacles occur: it operates, then, upon all occasions, with the whole of its force and certainty.
Before a celebrated law, which we owe to Mr.Burke, the lords of the treasury were charged, as they still are, with the payment of the salaries of certain of the public servants.Justice required that all should be paid in the same proportion as funds for that purpose were received.But no law was as yet in force to support this principle.As might naturally be expected, all sorts of preferences had place: they paid their friends first, and it cannot be supposed they forgot themselves.
When the funds set apart to this service were insufficient, the less favoured class suffered.The delays of payment occasioned continual complaints.
How would an ordinary legislator have acted? He would have enacted that every one should be paid in proportion to the receipts; and that his regulations might not be wanting in form, he would have added a direct punishment for its breach, without inquiring if it were easy to be eluded or not.Mr.
Burke acted differently: he arranged the different officers in classes;he prepared a table of preference, in which the order is the inverse of the credit which they might be supposed to possess.The noble lords, with the prime minister at their head, bring up the rear, and are prohibited from touching a single shilling of their pay, till the lowest scullion has received every penny of his.
Had he permitted these great officers to pay themselves, and prescribed his table of preference for the rest, under the penalty of losing a part of their salaries, what embarrassment, what difficulties, what delays!--Who would undertake the odious task of informer? How many pretences of justification would they not have had? Who would hare dared to attack the ministers? In this arrangement of Mr.Burke, till they have fulfilled their duty, they lose the enjoyment of all their salary; they lose it without inquiry and without embarrassment.Thus rendered conditional, their salary becomes in reality the recompence of their regularity in paying the others.
The advantages of this invention may be thus summed up.Their salary, depends upon the performance of the service, is no longer a barren gratification, but a really productive reward.The motive has all the force belonging to punishment: by the suspension of payment, it operates as a fine.It possesses all the certainty of a reward:
the right to receive follows the completion of the service, without any judicial procedure.
