When M.Necker undertook the administration of the finances in France, the total of the acknowledged pensions, without reckoning the secret gratuities, which were very considerable, amounted to twenty-seven millions of livres.In England where the national wealth was not less than in France, the pensions did not amount to the tenth part of this sum.It is thus that the difference between a limited and an absolute monarchy may be exhibited, even in figures.
In Ireland, the king upon his sole authority, in l783, created an order of knighthood; thus profiting by what remained of the fragments of arbitrary power.No blame was imputed to him for establishing this tax upon honour: had he levied a tax upon property, the nation might not have been so tractable.Those who hoped to share in the new treasure were careful not to raise an outcry against its establishment: those at whose expense this treasure was established, did not understand this piece of finesse; they opened their eyes widely but comprehended nothing.The measure could not have been better justified by circumstances.Every day the crown found itself stripped of some prerogative, justly or unjustly the subject of envy; it was therefore high time to avail itself of the small number of those, in the exercise of which it was still tolerated.
Become independent of Great Britain, the honour of the Irish nation seemed to require a decoration of this kind: for what is a kingdom without an order of knighthood?
To enter into the consideration of the details requisite for the establishment of a system of remuneratory procedure, comes not within the present part of our design: a very slight sketch of the leading principles on which it might be grounded, is the utmost that can here be given.The general idea would of course be taken from the system established in penal and civil cases.Between these systems, the most striking difference would, however, arise from the interest and wishes of the agent whose act might be the subject of investigation, with respect to the publicity of the act.In the one case, the consequences of such his act, in case it were proved, being pernicious to him, all his endeavour would be to keep it concealed: in the other, these consequences being beneficial, his endeavour would be to place it in the most conspicuous light imaginable.
In the first case, his endeavours would be to delay the process and if possible make it void: in the latter to expedite it and keep it valid.
The most striking point of coincidence is the occasion there is in both cases for two parties.In the civil branch there can hardly be a deficiency in this respect; there being commonly two individuals whose interests are opposite, and known and felt to be so.But in the penal branch, in one very large division of it, there is naturally no such opposition; I mean in that which concerns offences against the public only.Here, therefore, the law has been obliged to create such an opposition, and has accordingly created it by the establishment of a public prosecutor.In the remuneratory branch of procedure, there is a similar absence of natural opposition, and accordingly the grand desideratum is the appointment of an officer whose business it should be to contest on the part of the public, the title to whatever reward is proposed to be granted in this year.He might be entitled, for shortness, by some such name as that of Contestor-general.Without a prosecutor-general, in the large and important division of cases above mentioned, there would not, unless by accident---I mean when an individual is engaged in the task of prosecution by public spirit, or what is the more natural, by private pique---be any suit instituted, any punishment inflicted.For want of a contestor-general there is not unless by a similar accident any check given to the injustice of unmerited remuneration.Upon the whole, then, the penal and civil branches of procedure, but particularly the penal, may in all cases serve either as the models, or, if the term may be admitted, as the anti-models of the remuneratory branch of procedure.
