Such is the nature of extraordinary services, that it is neither practicable nor desirable for them to be performed by a large multitude of persons.If punishment, then, were the means employed to induce men to perform them, it would be necessary to pitch upon some select persons as those on whom to impose the obligation.But of the personal qualifications of individuals, the legislator, as such, can have no knowledge.The case will also be nearly the same, even with the executive magistrate, if the number of the persons under his department be considerable: for antecedently to specific experience in the very line in question, a man's personal qualifications for any such extraordinary task are not to be conjectured a priori , but from an intimate acquaintance---such an acquaintance as it is impossible a man should have with so large number.The consequence is, that among any multitude of persons thus taken at random, the greater number would not perform the task, because they would not be able to perform it.But in this case, by the supposition, they must all be punished: here there would be a vast mass of punishment laid on in waste, and perhaps the end not compassed after all---a mass of punishment imparting beyond comparison more pain than it would cost to provide a sufficient quantity of reward.
On the other hand, let reward be employed and not an atom need be spent in waste; for it may be easily so applied, and it is common so to apply it, as that it shall be bestowed in those instances only in which the end is compassed---in those instances in which not only a benefit is attained, but a benefit more than equivalent to the expense.
By punishment, a great expense would he incurred, and that for the sake of a faint chance of success; by reward, a small expense is incurred, and that not without a certainty of success.
Again, punishment in these cases would not only be less likely to produce the requisite effect, but would have a tendency to prevent it.How little soever the magistrate might be qualified to collect and to judge of appearances of rapacity, for such appearances he would, however, naturally keep some sort of look-out.To exhibit those appearances would therefore be to run a chance of incurring the obligation and the punishment annexed to it.The consequence is obvious: to make sure of not appearing qualified, men would take care not to be so.We are told, that in Siam, when a man has a tree of extraordinary good fruit, it is seized for the king's use.If this be true, we may well imagine that gardening does not make any very extraordinary progress in the neighbourhood of the court of Siam.Nature must do much, for art, we maybe certain, will do nothing.We are told upon better authority, of a time when it was the custom to give commissions to officers to look out for the best singers, and press them into the king's service: unless they were well paid at the same time, which would have rendered the alarm occasioned by pressing needless, one would not give much to hear the music of that day.
That selection, which in cases like these is to impracticable in public, is not equally so in domestic life.To parents and other preceptors, it is by no means impracticable to make use of punishment as a motive.They are enabled to use it, because the intimacy of their acquaintance with their pupils in general enables them to give a pretty good guess at what they are able to perform.It may, perhaps, even be necessary to have recourse to this incentive---before the natural love of ease has been got under by habit, and especially before the auxiliary motive of the love of reputation has taken root, and while the tender intellect has not as yet acquired sufficient expansion and firmness to receive and retain the impressions of distant pleasures.
I say perhaps---for it certainly might be practicable to do with much less of this bitter recipe, than in the present state of education is commonly applied.All apparatus contrived on purpose might at least be spared.Towards providing a sufficient stock of incentives for all purposes, a great deal more might be done than is commonly done, in the way of reward alone: by a little ingenuity in the invention, and a little frugality in the application; by establishing a constant connexion between enjoyment and desert; granting little or nothing but what is purchased; and thus transforming into rewards the whole stock of gratification, or at least so much of it as is requisite.If punishment should still be necessary, mere privations seem to afford in all cases a sufficient store.A complete stock of incentives might thus be formed out of enjoyments alone: punishment, by the suspension of such as are habitual:
reward, by the application of such a occasionally arise.[1]
But even when applied by parents and preceptors, punishment, how well soever it may succeed in raising skill to its ordinary level, will never raise it higher: one of the imperfections of punishment remains still insuperable.Accordingly, in the training of young minds to qualify them for the achievement of extraordinary works of genius, the business is best managed, and indeed in a certain degree is commonly managed, by punishment and rewards together; in such sort, that in the earlier part of man's career, and in the earlier stages of the progress of talent, a mixture of punishments and rewards both shall be employed: and that, by degrees, punishment shall be dropt altogether, and the force employed consist of reward alone.
There remains the case in which reward is proper, because punishment---at least punishment alone---would be unprofitable.
By unprofitable, I mean not inefficacious, but uneconomical, unfrugal---the interest of the whole community together being taken into the account, not forgetting that of the particular member on whom the burthen would be to be imposed, and consequently the punishment, in case of non-performance, to be inflicted.
