JB/023/133/002

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among those whom you look upon as best able and at the same
time not unwilling, to let you know? And be the man who he
may, who so well able to as he himself to let you know what he
is willing to do?

Then again what on this occasion, if pay is to be given, is the
way to know, out of a number of men what is the least that a man
can be had to serve for? I answer, on this occasion the same
way that on any other occasion you would take for knowing
the least for which any man will consent to do anything, what
ever it is, that you want to have done. To all whom you expect to
find desirous of doing it if paid, you make known what it is,
and that you will give it to be done by him who will do it for
least pay. Each thereupon gives in his terms: and thus you have
competition: and in this you have the means by which are settled
the prices of commodities in general, and of service in all shapes
in which it is purchased by individuals, cases of fraud and compulsion
excepted: and where the price offered by each competitor
is known to every other and means are afforded them of bidding
one over another as long as they respectively please, this competition
is stiled auction.

Any why then in the case of public service is not the exchange
– a few extraordinary and narrow exceptions excepted – made
between pay and service in those same ways in which it is made
in the case of private services? I answer – for this plain reason
– in the historical sense, observe, not in the moral sense
of the word reason – namely, because, whereas in the case of
private service it is the interest of him who bespeaks the service
to make the pay as low as he can, it is in the case of public
service it is his interest to make the pay as high as he can.

And what is it that makes him thus to make the pay as high as
he can? What but that the pockets which on each occasion it goes
into is either his own or that of somebody he would have otherwise
have to provide for out of his own pocket or somebody
who (he thinks) will some time or other on that account
render him service in some shape or other, to some amount
or other or somebody for whom he has a particular kindness,
more than he has for the public at large.

"Competition! Auction! Oh rare you!" (says somebody). "And
so you would choose a head man for the State as you in the same
way that you would a man for blacking your shoes?" Thus,
or the word theory, the word doctrinaire, or a sneer, or a horse-laugh –
one or other of these answers, or some other alike of kin to reason,
is what you may expect to receive from any one whose interest
it is, for example in any of the above ways, that the pay shall be
as high as possible.

"And so", says somebody again, "you would absolutely give the
place to him who would engage to do the business of it cheapest,
or to do it for nothing, or even to give money for the purpose of
getting it? of getting it, and for what purpose? for the purpose
of getting for and by betraying the trust more money than he gave
for it: And this is what your strict economy and your fine theory comes to?"

Identifier: | JB/023/133/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 23.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	023	Main Headings	lord brougham displayed
Folio number	133	Info in main headings field
Image	002	Titles
Category	copy/fair copy sheet	Number of Pages	2
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	e2 f2 / e9 f9
Penner		Watermarks	street & co 1830
Marginals		Paper Producer	antonio alcala galiano
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1830
Notes public		ID Number	8004
Box Contents