MATTER OF REWARD---SOURCES Between the four objects---delinquency, punishment, expenditure, and reward, there is an intimate connexion.He who knows through the nature and possible modifications of any one, knows thoroughly the nature and possible modifications of all the rest.Why so? Because they are all of them but so many modifications of good and evil---of the instruments or causes of pain and pleasure, considered in a particular point of view.
Whatever mischief being produced contrary to the will of the legislator, takes the name of an offence, the same when produced in pursuance of that will (so it be with a direct intention on his part that the party shall be a sufferer by it) takes the name of punishment.Reward is to good, what punishment is to evil: reward on one part supposes expenditure on the other:
whatever is received by one party on the footing of reward, is expended by some other:---when a view, then, is given of the several possible modifications of offence, a view is at the same time given in reality, if not in name, of the several possible modifications of reward.
This may at first sight appear a paradox; but as the absence of good is comparatively an evil, so the absence of evil is comparatively a good: the notion, therefore, of evil, and of all sorts of evil, is included in the notion of reward.
The several modifications of the matter of reward may be comprised under four heads:---1.The matter of wealth; 2.Honour; 3.Power; 4.Exemptions.In respect of the employment of the direct mode for affording pleasure, it belongs not properly to political, but to domestic government or education.
1.The matter of wealth.--- Money , or money's worth , is by much the most common stuff of which rewards are made; and in general the most suitable of which they can be made: why it is so will appear hereafter.
2.Honour.---Honour may be made out of any stuff.In some cases, it is produced by the bearing a particular title not hereditary,---as the name of the office a man holds.In other cases, it is hereditary, and places the individuals bearing it in a distinct rank, superior to that of the other classes,---as in the case of the nobility.
In other cases, it is unaccompanied with any distinguishing denomination, or any particular title,---as in the case of medals, or public thanks conferred after any great victory, in the name of the king and parliament.
A graduated scale of ranks , especially when its gradations are determined by merit, and depend upon actual service, is an excellent institution.It creates a new source of happiness, by means of a tax upon honour, almost imperceptible to those by whom it is paid:
it augments the sum of human enjoyment; it increases the power of government, by clothing its authority with benignity; it opens new sources for the exercise of hope, the most precious of all possessions; and it nourishes emulation, the most powerful of all incentives to virtuous actions.Such a graduated scale of ranks has at all times been in use in the military branch of the public service.But in this case, the principal object is not honour but power:---superiority in rank is invariably accompanied by superiority in command.The honour which accompanies the power is but an accidental appendage.
Catherine II.extended the application of his arrangement to the civil service.She distributed all the public officers in the civil department into distinct and even numerical classes, corresponding with the distribution of rank in the army:---secretaries, judges, musicians, academicians, all the civil functionaries, being advanced by steps, a perpetual state of emulation and of hope stimulated their labours throughout the whole course of their career.It was an invention in politics, which matches the most ingenious discovery n art that the present century has witnessed.
At one stroke, without violence or injustice, hereditary nobility was deprived of the greater part of its injurious prerogatives.The foremost in rank and wealth began his career at the lowest step: his ascent through each gradation depending upon the appointment of the sovereign, if without merit, he was left behind, while men of the most obscure birth took precedence of him.This engine was the more powerful, from the gentleness with which it operated---the simple non-collation of reward performing the office of punishment.
Another advantage gained by the transference of the denominations of the military ranks into the civil service is, that the respect borne by the military to the civil functionaries is thus in no small degree increased.It is an ingenious artifice for conquering the barbarous and absurd contempt for civil functions which prevails in all military governments.The assimilation of ranks naturally leads to the assimilation of respect.From the time that this arrangement was made, the nobility were seen eagerly to engage in offices, which before they had regarded with disdain.
Orders of knighthood appear like floating fragments detached from some such regular system of honorary rewards.
In some states, an order of knighthood bas been established under the title of `` The Order of Merit ''.It might be supposed that this order had been established as a jest, by way of satire upon all other orders.Not so, however: whatever ridicule there maybe, falls exclusively upon those who are members of this order: of all orders it is the least distinguished; the nobility are not candidates for admission---they consider it derogatory to their birth.It is the reward---it may be purchased by, service.
