I will even go so far as to affirm, that, if men were willing to serve in such situations without salary, they ought not to be permitted to do it.  Ordinary service must be secured by the motives to ordinary integrity.  I do not hesitate to say that that state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption.  An honorable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess.  For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other; and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.  This is true in all the parts of administration, as well as in the whole.  If any individual were to decline his appointments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition over unpretending service; it might breed invidious comparisons; it might tend to destroy whatever little unity and agreement may be found among ministers.  And, after all, when an ambitious man had run down his competitors by a fallacious show of disinterestedness, and fixed himself in power by that means, what security is there that he would not change his course, and claim as an indemnity ten times more than he has given up?

This rule, like every other, may admit its exceptions.  When a great man has some one great object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads, and, if his fortune permits it, to hold himself out as a splendid example.  I am told that something of this kind is now doing in a country near us.  But this is for a short race, the training for a heat or two, and not the proper preparation for the regular stages of a methodical journey.  I am speaking of establishments, and not of men.

It may be expected, Sir, that, when I am giving my reasons why I limit myself in the reduction of employments, or of their profits, I should say something of those which seem of eminent inutility in the state:  I mean the number of officers who, by their places, are attendant on the person of the king.  Considering the commonwealth merely as such, and considering those officers only as relative to the direct purposes of the state, I admit that they are of no use at all.  But there are many things in the constitution of establishments, which appear of little value on the first view, which in a secondary and oblique manner produce very material advantages.  It was on full consideration that I determined not to lessen any of the offices of honor about the crown, in their number or their emoluments.  These emoluments, except in one or two cases, do not much more than answer the charge of attendance.  Men of condition naturally love to be about a court; and women of condition love it much more.  But there is in all regular attendance so much of constraint, that, if it wore a mere charge, without any compensation, you would soon have the court deserted by all the nobility of the kingdom.