In England, we have not in this respect been more successful; that is to say, more skillful.Laws have been enacted against the non-residence of the clergy---laws badly contrived, and consequently useless.Punishment bas been denounced, and a fine imposed, which being invariable in amount, has sometimes been greater and sometimes less than the advantage to be derived from the offence.For want of a public prosecutor in this, as in so many other cases, it has been necessary to rely upon such casual informers as may be allured by a portion of the fine.The love of gain has seldom proved a motive sufficiently strong to induce an endeavour to obtain this reward; whose value, not to mention the expenses of pursuit, is destroyed by infamy.Till this motive be reinforced by personal animosity, which bursts the bonds of infamy, these laws are powerless.
Such cases, which may occur once or twice in the course of ten years throughout the whole kingdom, are neither sufficiently frequent, nor well known, to operate as examples.The offence remains undiminished:
the useless punishment constitutes only an additional evil; whilst such laws and such methods, powerless among friends, serve only to bring enemies into contact.Whenever it is desirable that a clergyman should live in the midst of his parishioners---that is to say, when they are amicable---the law is a dead letter: its power is exerted only when they are irreconcilable enemies; that is, in the only cases wherein its utility is problematical, and it were to be wished that its execution would admit of an exception.
His return into his parish is a triumph for his enemies, and a humiliation for himself.
Had the salaries paid to the professors in the universities been interwoven with their services, it might have been the custom for some of these pretended labourers to have laboured for their hire; and to be a professor, might have meant something more than having a title, a salary, and nothing to teach.
A salary paid day by day has an advantage beyond that of insuring assiduity of attendance;---it even renders a service agreeable, which with an annual salary will be regarded as purely burthensome.When reward, instead of being bestowed in a lump, follows each successive portion of labour, the idea of labour becomes associated with pleasure instead of pain.In England, husbandmen, like other labourers, are paid in hard money by the week, and their labour is cheerfully and well performed.in some parts of the continent, husbandmen are still paid as they were formerly in England, by houses and pieces of land given once for all; and the labour is said to be performed with all the slovenliness and reluctance of slavery.
Rule II.Emoluments ought in such manner to be attached to office, as to produce the greatest possible degree of excellence in the service rendered.
Thus far the subject has only been considered as applicable to insuring attendance in cases where assiduity of attendance appears to suffice for insuring the performance of all other duties.There follow some cases, in which it appears possible to apply the same principle either in the prevention of abuse, or in insuring an extraordinary degree of perfection in the employment of the powers which belong to certain stations.
Instead of appointing a fixed salary, invariably of the same amount as the emolument of the superintendent or superintendents of a prison, a poor-house, an asylum for orphans, or any kind of hospital whose inhabitants depend upon the care of one or a small number of individuals, whatever may be the difference in the degree of attention displayed, or the degree of perfection with which the service is performed,---it would be well to make the emolument of such persons in some measure depend upon the care with which their duties have been performed, as evidenced by their success.In a penitentiary, or other prison, that the prisoners might be insured from all negligence or ill-treatment, tending directly or indirectly to shorten their lives, make a calculation of the average number of deaths among the prisoners in the particular prison, compared with the number of persons confined there.Allow the superintendent each year a certain sum for each per.son of this number, upon condition, that for every prisoner who dies, an equal sum is to be withheld from the amount of his emoluments.It is clear, that having a net profit upon the lives of all whom be preserves, there is scarcely any necessity for any other precaution against ill-treatment, or negligence tending to shorten life.
