The very nature of the reward may sometimes render it necessary to depart from the system of competition.It is not every office that can be offered to every one disposed to undertake it.Ought the education of a prince to be offered to him who writes the best treatise upon that education? No: such an office requires qualities and virtues, and particularly a knowledge of the world which might not be possessed by the philosopher who had resolved the problem.
Ought the office of master of the mint to be offered to any one who produces the best die? No: this important duty requires a probity, an exactness, a habit of regularity, which has no connexion with manual skill.This is a reason, and the only reason, for not offering such offices to all the world; but it is no reason for not attaching to this service another reward, to which all the world might aspire.
Some services, which are not directly susceptible of open competition, are so indirectly; that is, by making the competition consist in the performance of some preliminary service, the execution of which may serve as a test of a man's ability to perform the principal service.This is what is done in the case of extensive architectural works, when artists are invited to give in their plans and their models:
this is all that the nature of the service allows of.[2]
When,some years ago, it was designed to erect in the neighbourhood of London, at the public expense, a Penitentiary House, the mode of unlimited competition was adopted, in order to obtain plans for it.The superintendents received sixty-five plans, from among which they had the opportunity of making a selection, instead of the one which they would have received, had the system of favouritism been pursued.If, without reward, a plan superior to the best of those thus obtained has since been devised, it must be attributed to the share which chance has in every new invention: the offer of a reward may accelerate the development of new ideas, without enabling an individual to complete the arrangement of his plans at a given moment.
When the British parliament offered a reward of £ 20,000 for the discovery of a mode of finding the longitude, they were not guilty of the absurdity of confining the competition to the professors of natural philosophy and astronomy at Oxford and Cambridge.To resolve the problem of the best system of legislation, is more important and more difficult.Why, in mixed governments, has it been hitherto confined to the members of the legislative body, and in monarchies, to the chancellor?
The determining reason is abundantly clear: Those who were in possession of the power---those to whom it belongs to propose this problem, are ashamed to make a public avowal of their own incapacity to solve it; they carefully avoid all acknowledgments of their own incapacity or indolence; they are willing that their labours should be rendered as little burdensome as possible, by following the ordinary routine, and not that they should be increased by the exhibition of the necessity of reform.In a word, they desire not to be advised, but to be obeyed.While subject to the influence of such circumstances, it can be considered no matter of surprise that they should, as far as possible have made the science of legislation an exclusive monopoly.
The interests of human nature cry aloud against this contemptible jealousy.
The problem of the best system of laws ought to be proposed to the whole world: it belongs to the whole world to solve it.
Frederic the Great twice attempted to make a general reform in the laws of his kingdom: both times he applied to a single chancellor.The first of them, too contented with himself to suspect he could stand in need of assistance from others, produced a work the most insignificant of any which had appeared.The second, M.Von Carmer, after having completed his labours, acted very differently, and much better:
before it received the authority of a law, he presented it to the public, with an invitation to learned men to communicate to him their observations upon it; seconding his invitations by the offer of rewards.It is with regret that I am constrained to ask why did not he, who had in this respect thus far surpassed all his predecessors, act still more nobly? Why only ask for criticism upon a given work?---why not ask for the work itself?
Why limit the invitation to Germans alone, as though there were no genius out of Germany?---why limit the reward to a sum below the price of those snuff-boxes which are presented to a foreign minister, for the service he performs in departing when he is recalled.The richest diamond in bis master's crown would not have been too great a reward for him who should thus have given to all the others a new and before-unknown splendour.
On different occasions, public spirited individuals and societies have endeavoured to supply, from their slender resources, the neglect of governments, and have offered larger rewards than the chancellor of the Great Frederic.That which they could not offer and which it did not depend upon them to offer, was the reward which the minds best adapted for the accomplishment of such an undertaking would esteem above every other---I mean, the assurance that their labours would be judged by those who could give them authority---who could make them useful.
In conclusion, I do not say, that with regard to certain services, sufficient reasons may not be found for altogether excluding competition, but that in every such case these reasons ought to be ready to be rendered, otherwise it ought to be lawful to conclude that they do not exist.
