1,500_l._ a
year each. It will not be difficult to calculate the value of this fall
of lives to the public, when we shall have obtained a just account of
the present income of those places; and we shall obtain that account
with great facility, if the present possessors are not alarmed with any
apprehension of danger to their freehold office.

I know, too, that it will be demanded of me, how it comes, that, since I
admit these offices to be no better than pensions, I chose, after the
principle of law had been satisfied, to retain them at all. To this,
Sir, I answer, that, conceiving it to be a fundamental part of the
Constitution of this country, and of the reason of state in every
country, that there must be means of rewarding public service, those
means will be incomplete, and indeed wholly insufficient for that
purpose, if there should be no further reward for that service than the
daily wages it receives during the pleasure of the crown.

Whoever seriously considers the excellent argument of Lord Somers, in
the Bankers' Case, will see he bottoms himself upon the very same maxim
which I do; and one of his principal grounds of doctrine for the
alienability of the domain in England,[41] contrary to the maxim of the
law in France, he lays in the constitutional policy of furnishing a
permanent reward to public service, of making that reward the origin of
families, and the foundation of wealth as well as of honors. It is,
indeed, the only genuine, unadulterated origin of nobility. It is a
great principle in government, a principle at the very foundation of the
whole structure. The other judges who held the same doctrine went beyond
Lord Somers with regard to the remedy which they thought was given by
law against the crown upon the grant of pensions. Indeed, no man knows,
when he cuts off the incitements to a virtuous ambition, and the just
rewards of public service, what infinite mischief he may do his country
through all generations. Such saving to the public may prove the worst
mode of robbing it. The crown, which has in its hands the trust of the
daily pay for national service, ought to have in its hands also the
means for the repose of public labor and the fixed settlement of
acknowledged merit. There is a time when the weather-beaten, vessels of
the state ought to come into harbor. They must at length have a retreat
from the malice of rivals, from the perfidy of political friends, and
the inconstancy of the people.