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[cixl. 205]
1822 Feb. 18 Copied
Official Economy /Constitutional Law - Official Establishment/
Means of ascertaining /obtaining/ by an instrument the maximum of aptitude on the part of the functionary and the minimum of pecuniary burthen to the people 1. For offices requiring pecuniary trustworthiness without extra intellectual or active aptitude, 1. power of depredation minimized: thus quantity of public money at command, and plenitude of command over it minimized: fidejussors as near as may be to the maximum of the amount at command. 2. For Offices requiring extra talent or say appropriate active aptitude Public exhibition, with Do Examination in so far as applicable.
Mode of ascertaining the minimum of official emolument necessary thence of expence:
Emolument a fixt salary: thereupon sale by auction of the Office: tenable either for a term of years, or rather for life subject to displacement for misconduct specified and proved add perhaps in some instances, for aggregate inaptitude in the judgment of certain persons, but in this case not without reimbursement of the purchase money. Call this the Economical Auction
Objections to the Economical Auction. 1. Exclusion of the unopulent classes: 2. extension of venality. 3 extra probability of misconduct in the shape of depredation, for want of pecuniary responsibility, and by reason of the sharpness of the aptitude for crime in a proportion encreasing with the degree of indigence
Objection 1. Exclusion of the unopulent: thence violation of the principle of Equality.
Answer
1. From the rejection of this preservative against misrule, evil to the greatest number, great: viz. [...?] of contribution and the matter of wealth raised by it expended in waste, and thence operating as matter of corruptive influence: swelled pro tanto the amount of the mass of the matter of patronage. Mass of pecuniary emolument saleable say &1,000,000 a year: saving £200,000 To reject this instrument is to impose £200,000 a year on opulent and unopulent, for the purpose of turning and the profit-seeking industry of the unopulent from other channels into this.
2. The bar opposed to the unopulent is not an insuperable one, like the bar opposed under some governments by want of nobility. By raising himself to a degree of opulence adequate to the purchase of the office, the most unopulent man may acquire it.
3. The rejection of this instrument of frugality would exclude the use of a main security for, and thence instrument of, appropriate aptitude; namely relish for the business: the less the emolument, in other words the more a man gives for the office the greater the relish - to him who gives nothing for it it may be an object of disgust: of disgust not surmountable but by the extreme of indigence.
4. The access proposed to be left to the unopulent will not secure their entrance or render it so probable to them as to the more opulent, the greater the opulence the greater the means of access to patrons who of course belong to the opulent class.
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Title: [[cvi. 312] 1823 Jany 24[?]]Description: [cvi. 312] 1823 Jany 24[?] Economy as to Office J.B. to Ternaux Inserenda - proposed but discarded The less a man will take with it or the more he will give for it, the greater is his relish for it and the greater his relish for it, the greater the probability of his being fit for it. If the income the functionary has, is not sufficient to enable him to make a decent appearance in it, he will have recourse to mischievous expedients, it has been said, for the augmentation of it. Likely enough and if he thinks /in his expectation/ he can escape /evade/ punishment, so he will be his income ever so enormous, and the more enormous his income, the more easily will it be for him to escape punishment. The more ample and influential will be the circle of his adherents and protectors. To know whether in addition to the necessary pay, any over pay is attached to an office, note the pay attached to an office of the same functions among the lowest-paid that are to be seen any where: for example in another part of your own country or in any foreign country, whose Institutions have grown out of yours, such as the Anglo American United States, not that even in that seat of comparatively good economy the maximum of good economy has in any of the States been reached. To reach it, attaching or not attaching to each office an income regarded as constituting a maintenance to the functionary invested with it, put up to auction the office with its power and emolument, and knock it down to the best bidder. Bondsmen in so far as pecuniary trustworthiness, and Public Examinations in so far as appropriate intellectual aptitude are requisite for the Office are here supposed.
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Title: [1818 Novr. 24 Official Economy.]Description: 1818 Novr. 24 Official Economy. Ch. Expence minimized Patriotic Auction. ? Objection - Poor excluded. 1. If by the exclusion thus unavoidably howsoever unintentionally put upon Competitors whose pecuniry means fall below the proposed Mark, the probability of adequate aptitude in the shape either of appropriate intellectual aptitude or in that of appropriate active talent were excluded /to a certain degree diminished/, here indeed would be an objection the force of which would require to be weighed. But by the supposition no such diminution has place. For by the supposition pecuniary trustworthiness in the character of a security of appropriate probity is of the three branches of appropriate probity the only one for the securing of which any particular provision requires to be made: of the two other branches respectively no greater measure is required than such as with an equally well-grounded confidence /assurance/ may be looked for in the one rank in the scale of affluence as in the other:- in the rank whose station is below the rank in question as in the rank whose station is above it.
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