It sometimes happens in the combinations of
life, that important services are performed by inferiors; but though
their zeal and activity may be paid by pecuniary rewards, they seldom
excite that flow of gratitude, or obtain that accumulation of
recompense, with which all think it their duty to acknowledge the favour
of those who descend to their assistance from a higher elevation. To be
obliged, is to be in some respect inferior to another[h]; and few
willingly indulge the memory of an action which raises one whom they
have always been accustomed to think below them, but satisfy themselves
with faint praise and penurious payment, and then drive it from their
own minds, and endeavour to conceal it from the knowledge of others.
It may be always objected to the services of those who can be supposed
to want a reward, that they were produced not by kindness but interest;
they are, therefore, when they are no longer wanted, easily disregarded
as arts of insinuation, or stratagems of selfishness. Benefits which are
received as gifts from wealth, are exacted as debts from indigence; and
he that in a high station is celebrated for superfluous goodness, would
in a meaner condition have barely been confessed to have done his duty.
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