CHAPTER

CONTRACTS OF LABOUR.

PARTNERSHIP.

I KNOW of nothing upon the subject of partnership that requires explanation, but how the profits are to be divided where one partner contributes money and the other labour, which is a common

case.

Rule. From the stock of the partnership deduct the sum advanced, and divide the remainder between the monied partner and the labouring partner, in the proportion of the interest of the money to the wages of the labour, allowing such a rate of interest as money might be borrowed for upon the same security, and such wages as a journeyman would require for the same labour and trust.

Example. A advances a thousand pounds, but knows nothing of the business; B produces no money, but has been brought up to the business, and undertakes to conduct it. At the end of the year the stock and the effects of the partnership amount to twelve hundred pounds, consequently there are two hundred pounds to be divided. Now, nobody would lend money upon the event of the business succeeding, which is A's security, under six per cent. ; therefore A must be allowed sixty pounds for the interest of his money. B, before he engaged in the partnership, earned thirty pounds a-year in the same employment; his labour, therefore, ought to be valued at thirty pounds: And the two hundred pounds must be divided between the partners in the proportion of sixty to thirty that is, A must recieve one hundred and thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence, and B sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence.

If there be nothing gained, A loses his interest, and B his labour; which is right. If the original stock be diminished, by this rule B loses only his labour, as before, whereas A loses his interest, and part of the principal; for which eventual disadvantage A is compensated, by having the interest of his money computed at six per cent. in the division of the profits, when there is any.

It is true, that the division of the profit is seldom forgotten in the constitution of the partnership, and is therefore commonly settled by express agreement; but these agreements, to be equitable, shou pursue the principle of the rule here laid down.

All the partners are bound by what any one of them does in course of the business; for, quoad hoc, each partner is consi as an authorized agent for the rest.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONTRACTS OF LABOUR.

OFFICES.

In many offices, as schools, fellowships of colleges, professorships of the universities, and the like, there is a twofold contract, one with the founder, the other with the electors.

The contract with the founder obliges the incumbent of the office to discharge every duty appointed by the charter, statutes, deed of gift, or will of the founder; because the endowment was given, and consequently accepted for that purpose, and upon these conditions.

The contract with the electors extends this obligation to all duties that have been customarily connected with, and reckoned a part of the office, though not prescribed by the founder; for the electors expect from the person they choose all the duties which his predecessors have discharged; and as the person elected cannot be ignorant of their expectation, if he mean to refuse this condition he ought to apprize them of his objection,

And here let it be observed that the permission of the electors is, in conscience, an excuse from this last class of duties only; because this class results from a contract to which the electors and the person elected are the only parties. The other class of duties results from a different contract.

It is a question of some magnitude and difficulty, what offices may be conscientiously supplied by a deputy.

We will state the several objections to the substitution of a deputy; and then it will be understood, that a deputy may be allowed in all cases to which these objections do not apply.

An office may not be discharged by deputy,

1. Where a particular confidence is reposed in the person appointed to it; as the office of a steward, guardian, judge, commander-in-chief by land or sea..

2. Where the custom hinders; as in the case of schoolmasters, tutors, and of commissions in the army and navy.

3. Where the duty cannot, from its nature, be so well performed by a deputy; as the deputy-governor of a province may not possess the legal authority, or the actual influence of his principal.

4. When some inconveniency would result to the service in general from the permission of deputies in such cases; for example, it is probable that military merit would be much discouraged, if the duties belonging to commissions in the army were generally allowed to be executed by substitutes.

The non-residence of the parochial clergy, who supply the duty, of their benefices by eurates, is worthy of a more distinct consideration. And in order to draw the question upon this case to a point, we will suppose the officiating curate to discharge every duty which his principal, were he present, would be bound to discharge, and in a manner equally beneficial to the parish: under which circumstances, the only objection to the absence of the principal, at least the only one of the foregoing objections, is the last.

And, in my judgment, the force of this objection will be much diminished, if the absent rector or vicar be, in the mean time, engaged in any function or employment of equal importance to the general interest of religion, or of greater. For the whole revenue of the national church may properly enough be considered as a common fund for the support of the national religion; and if a clergyman be serving the cause of Christianity and Protestantism, it can make little difference, out of what particular portion of this fund, that is, by the tithes and glebe of what particular parish, his service be requited; any more than it can prejudice the king's service, that an officer who has signalized his merit in America, should be rewarded with the government of a fort or castle in Ireland, which he never saw; but for the custody of which proper provision is made and care taken. ·

Upon the principle thus explained, this indulgence is due to none more than to those who are occupied in cultivating or communicating religious knowledge, or the sciences subsidiary to religion.

This way of considering the revenues of the church as a common fund for the same purpose, is the more equitable, as the value of particular preferments bears no proportion to the particular charge or labour.

But when a man draws upon this fund, whose studies and employments bear no relation to the object of it; and who is no further a minister of the Christian religion, than as a cockade makes a soldier, it seems a misapplication little better than robbery.

And to those who have the management of such matters I submit this question, whether the impoverishing of the fund by converting the best share of it into annuities for the gay and illiterate youth of great families, threatens not to starve and stifle the little clerical merit that is left amongst us?

All legal dispensations from residence proceed upon the supposi tion, that the absentee is detained from his living by some engagement of equal or of greater public importance. Therefore, if in a case where no such reason can with truth be pleaded; it be said that this question regards a right of property, and that all right of 91700

property awaits the disposition of law; that, therefore, if the law, which gives a man the emoluments of a living, excuse him from residing upon it, he is excused in conscience: we answer that the law does not excuse him by intention, and that all other excuses are fraudulent.

CHAPTER XV.

LIES.

A LIE is a breach of promise; for whoever seriously addresses his discourse to another tacitly promises to speak the truth because he knows that the truth is expected.

Or the obligation of veracity may be made out from the direct ill consequences of lying to social happiness. Which consequences consist, either in some specific injury to particular individuals, or in the destruction of that confidence, which is essential to the intercourse of human life; for which latter reason, a lie may be pernicious in its general tendency, and therefore criminal, though it produce no particular or visible mischief to any one.

There are falsehoods which are not lies; that is, which are not criminal; as,

1. Where no one is deceived; which is the case in parables, fables, novels, jests, tales to create mirth, ludicrous embellishments of a story, where the declared design of the speaker is not to inform, but to divert; compliments in the subscription of a letter, a servant's denying his master, a prisoner's pleading not guilty, an advocate asserting the justice, or his belief of the justice of his client's cause. In such instances, no confidence is destroyed, because none was reposed; no promise to speak the truth is violated, because none was given, or understood to be given.

2. Where the person you speak to has no right to know the truth, or, more properly, where little or no inconveniency results from the want of confidence in such cases; as, where you tell a falsehood to a madman, for his own advantage; to a robber, to conceal your property; to an assassin, to defeat or divert him from his purpose. The particular consequence is by the supposition beneficial : and as to the general consequence, the worst that can happen is, that the madman, the robber, the assassin, will not trust you again; which (beside that the first is incapable of deducing regular conclusions from having been once deceived, and the two last not likely to come a second time in your way) is sufficiently compensated by the immediate benefit which you propose by the falsehood.

It is upon this principle, that, by the laws of war, it is allowed to deceive an enemy by feints, false colours,* spies, false intelligence, and the like; but by no means in treaties, truces, signals of capitu'lation or surrender: and the difference is, that the former suppose hostilities to continue, the latter are calculated to terminate or suspend them. In the conduct of war, and whilst the war continues, there is no use, or rather no place, for confidence betwixt the contending parties: but in whatever relates to the termination of war, the most religious fidelity is expected, because without it wars could not cease, nor the victors be secure, but by the entire destruction of the vanquished.

Many people indulge, in serious discourse, a habit of fiction and exaggeration, in the accounts they give of themselves, of their acquaintance, or of the extraordinary things which they have seen or heard; and so long as the facts they relate are indifferent, and their narratives, though false, are inoffensive, it may seem a superstitious regard to truth, to censure them merely for truth's sake.

In the first place, it is almost impossible to pronounce beforehand, with certainty, concerning any lie, that it is inoffensive. Volat irrevocabile; and collects oftimes accretions in its flight, which entirely change its nature. It may owe possibly its mischief to the officiousness or misrepresentation of those who eirculate it; but the mischief is nevertheless, in some degree, chargeable upon the original author.

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In the next place, this liberty in conversation defeats its own end. Much of the pleasure, and all the benefit of conversation, depends, upon our opinion of the speaker's veracity; for which this rule leaves no foundation. The faith indeed of a hearer must be extremely perplexed, who considers the speaker, or believes that the speaker considers himself, as under no obligation to adhere to truth, but according to the particular importance of what he relates.

But besides and above both these reasons, white lies always introduce others of a darker complexion. I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles, that could be trusted in matters of importance. Nice distinctions are out the question, upon occasions which, like those of speech, return every hour. The habit therefore, when once formed, is easily extended to serve the designs of malice or interest;-like all habits, it spreads indeed of itself.

*There have been two or three instances of late, of English ships-decoying an enemy into their power, by counterfeiting signals of distress; an artifice which ought to be reprobated by the common indignation of mankind: for, a few exam. ples of captures effected by this stratagem, would put an end to that promptitude in affording assistance to ships in distress; which is the best virtue in a seafaring character, and by which the perils of navigation are diminished to all,