Obvious as this answer may seem, it is not the true one. The service, and the only service, with respect to which a salary can operate as a motive, is either the simple instantaneous service of taking upon one the office, or the permanent service of continuing to stand invested with it. If there were no other motive, the service would not be rendered. It must be either of the nature of reward or punishment. That the zeal displayed in discharging the duties of an office should not be in proportion to the salary, will now no longer appear strange.
Experience is reconciled to theory.
This subject will receive elucidation, if we substitute punishment for reward, and conider what tendency such a motive would have to give birth to any service, if connected with it in the same manner as a salary is an exed to an office. A salary is not a reward for any individual service of the number of those which are raddered in consequence of a man's acceptance of the office to which the salary is annexed. Of no one whatever. These motives are presented to him by his station, but they are not presented to him by his salary. With this exception, it may equally be said, that in both cases, for any other than the instantaneous act of taking upon him the burtben of the station for that quarter, be has no reward, nor any motive but what operates in the way of punishment.