ACCOMPANIMENTS TO REMUNERATION.After having exhibited in what manner the matter of wealth is applicable to the purposes of reward, we proceed to show other uses derivable from it for the public service, which are not remuneratory.
The idea of reward will be much clearer when it shall have been distinguished and separated from these accessory uses, which have certain relations with it:---1.Wages necessary for the support of life.---Servants must be fed whilst they are employed, and there are cases in which it is necessary to feed them even before they begin to work.If the wages paid do not exceed what is necessary for this purpose, as is sometimes the case among, the soldiery, and especially if the enrollments are involuntary, such wages, being absolutely necessary, are not reward.
2.The instruction of servants.---Certain kinds of service require advances from government for this object.If this instruction require much time, it is naturally begun at an early age, and is then called education.This employment of the matter of reward is sufficiently distinct from that which regards subsistence, with which, however, it is very frequently combined and confounded.If there be a sufficient number of individuals willing to bear this expense, so much the better; otherwise, it is necessary that government should bear it for them.This has almost everywhere been thought to be the case with respect to the church.It has also generally been considered necessary in new countries, or countries but little advanced in the career of prosperity with respect to the teachers and professors in most branches of science.In the war department, the corps of cadets is a nursery for young officers.The foundations of public schools are nurseries for the church.The greater number, however, of these foundations, are owing rather to the good intentions of individuals, than to the cares of governments.
3.Equipment.---That an individual may be in a condition to render service, be must be furnished with the necessary equipments.The warrior wants his accoutrements---the astronomer his observatory---the chemist his laboratory---the mechanic his machines---the naturalist his collections of natural history---the botanist his garden---the experimental farmer a plot of ground, and funds to enable him to improve it.
4.Indemnity.---When an individual is only indemnified, he is not rewarded: reward properly speaking, only begins when indemnity is complete.Do we wish for services, we ought to recollect that, by the person from whom we seek to obtain them, the inconveniences of every sort which compose the burthen of the service will be put into one scale, the advantages he finds attached to it into the other.To the head of indemnity belongs everything necessary to produce an equilibrium between the two; it is only the scale which is thrown into the scale of advantage which strictly belongs to the head of reward.
5.The assuring responsibility.---In so far as the matter of reward is employed for this purpose, it is employed in laying a foundation for the infliction of punishment.The stock of punishment is in itself inexhaustible; but when the body is withdrawn from the hands of the ministers of justice, corporal punishment cannot be inflicted and all other punishments can be compensated.If a servant possess property of his own, so much the better: if he possess none, and a salary be given to him, he will always have so much to lose; the loss of this salary will be a punishment he will always be liable to undergo whatever may become of him.
The principal use of this employment of the matter of reward, is in the case of offices which place property in the hands of those who fill them.If there be no other means of securing their probity, it would not be bad economy to made their appointments amount in value to but little less than the highest interest they could reap from the largest sum they ever have in their hands.This would be to make them assure against their own dishonesty.The difference between the actual salary and the least salary they could be induced to accept, would constitute the premium.
It is rarely that a distinct sum is appropriated to this purpose: on the one hand, this end is partly effected by surety-ship; and on the other, the sum considered requisite for the purposes of indemnity and reward equals or surpasses what could be proposed to be allowed for it: but this function is not the less distinct from all the rest.
6.A guarantee against temptations.---Money like the most valuable articles of the medical pharmacopœia, may serve either as a poison or an antidote, according as it is applied.
