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CHA P. XI.

CONTRACTS OF LABOUR.

SERVICE,

ERVICE in this country is, as it ought to

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be, voluntary, and by contract; and the master's authority extends no farther than the terms or equitable conftruction of the contract will justify.

The treatment of fervants, as to diet, difcipline, and accommodation, the kind and quantity of work to be required of them, the intermiffion, liberty, and indulgence to be allowed them, must be determined in a great measure by cuftom; for where the contract involves fo many particulars, the contracting parties express a few perhaps of the principal, and by mutual understanding refer the reft to the known cuftom of the country in like cafes.

A fervant is not bound to obey the unlawful commands of his mafter; to minifter, for in

ftance,

ftance, to his unlawful pleafures; or to affift him in unlawful practices in his profeffion; as in fmuggling or adulterating the articles in which he deals. For the fervant is bound by nothing but his own promise; and the obligation of a promife extends not to things unlawful.

For the fame reafon, the mafter's authority is no juftification of the servant in doing wrong; for the fervant's own promise, upon which that authority is founded, would be none.

Clerks and apprentices ought to be employed entirely in the profeffion or trade which they are intended to learn. Inftruction is their hire, and to deprive them of the opportunities of inftruction, by taking up their time with occupations foreign to their business, is to defraud them of their wages.

The master is refponfible for what a fervant does in the ordinary courfe of his employment; for it is done under a general authority committed to him, which is in justice equivalent to a specific direction. Thus, if I pay money to a banker's clerk, the banker is accountable; but not if I had paid it to his butler or his footman, whose business it is not to receive money. Upon the fame principle, if I once fend a fervant to take up goods upon credit, whatever goods he

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afterwards takes up at the fame fhop, so long as he continues in my fervice, are justly chargeable to my account.

The law of this country goes great lengths in intending a kind of concurrence in the mafter, fo as to charge him with the confequences of his fervant's conduct. If an inn-keeper's fervant rob his guests, the inn-keeper must make reftitution; if a farrier's fervant lame a horse, the farrier must answer for the damage; and still farther, if your coachman or carter drive over a paffenger in the road, the paffenger may recover from you a fatisfaction for the hurt he fuffers. But thefe determinations ftand, I think, rather upon the authority of the law, than any principle of natural justice.

There is a careleffness and facility in " giving "characters," as it is called, of fervants, especially when given in writing, or according to fome eftablished form, which, to speak plainly of it, is a cheat upon those who accept them. They are given with fo little reserve and veracity, “that I "fhould as foon depend," fays the author of the Rambler, " upon an acquittal at the Old Bailey, "by way of recommendation of a fervant's ho "nefty, as upon one of these characters." It is fometimes careleffness; and fometimes also to

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rid of a bad fervant without the uneafinefs of a dispute; for which nothing can be pleaded, but the most ungenerous of all excuses, that the person whom we deceive is a stranger.

There is a conduct, the reverse of this, but more injurious, because the injury falls where there is no remedy. I mean the obftructing of a fervant's advancement, because you are unwilling to fpare his fervice. To ftand in the way of your fervant's intereft, is a poor return for his fidelity; and affords flender encouragement for good behaviour, in this numerous and therefore important part of the community. It is a piece of injustice, which, if practised towards an equal, the law of honour would lay hold of; as it is, it is neither uncommon nor difreputable.

A master of a family is culpable, if he permit any vices among his domestics, which he might reftrain by due discipline and a proper interference. This refults from the general obligation to prevent misery when in our power; and the affurance which we have, that vice and mifery at the long run go together. Care to maintain in his family a sense of virtue and religion, received the divine approbation in the person of ABRAHAM, Gen. xviii. 19-" I know him, that

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"he will command his children, and his house"hold after him; and they fhall keep the way "of the LORD, to do juftice and judgment." And indeed no authority seems so well adapted to this purpose, as that of mafters of families; because none operates upon the fubjects of it, with an influence fo immediate and constant.

What the Chriftian Scriptures have delivered, concerning the relation and reciprocal duties of mafters and servants, breathes a spirit of liberality, very little known in ages when fervitude was flavery; and which flowed from a habit of contemplating mankind under the common relation in which they ftand to their Creator, and with refpect to their intereft in another exiftence. *"Servants be obedient to them that are

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your mafters, according to the flesh, with "fear and trembling; in fingleness of your "heart, as unto Chrift; not with eye service, as men pleasers, but as the fervants of Christ, ແ doing the will of God from the heart; with

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good will, doing fervice as to the Lord, and not

to men: knowing that whatsoever good thing te any man doth, the fame fhall he receive of the "LORD, whether he be bond or free. And ye

* Eph. vi. 5.- -9.

"mafters

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