PHI LOS 0 P H Y . - Classic Works of Apologetics Online

Service. 123
Clerks and apprentices ought to be employed entirely
in the profession or trade' which they are
intended to learn. Instruction is their hire~ and to
deprive them of the opportunities of instruction, by
taking up their time with cccupation~ foreign to
their business, is to defraud therr1 of their wages.
The master is responsible for what a servant does
in the ordinary course of his employment; for it is
done under a general authority committed to him,
which is in justice equivalent to a specific direction.
rrhus, if I pay money to a banker's clerk, the bank~r
is accountable; but not if I had paid it to his butler
or his footman, whose business it is not to receive
money. lIpon the same principle, if 1 once send a
servant to take up goods upon credit, whatever goods
he afterwards takes up at the same shop, so long as
he continues in my sen~ice, are ju~tly
chargeable to
my account.
The law of this country goes great lengths in intending
a kind of concurren.ce in the master, so as
to charge him with the consequences of bis servant· ~
conduct. If an inn-keeper's servant rob his guests,
the inn-keeper must make restitution; if a farrier's
servant_ lame a horse, the farrier must ans\~!'er for
the damage; and, still farther'} if your coachman or
carter drive over a pas~enger, in the road, the passen.
ger may recover from you a satisfaction for the
hurt he suffers. But these determinations stand, I
think, rather upon the authority of the law, than
any principle of natural justice.
There is a carelessness and facility in "giving
characters," as it is calJerl, of ~ervants, especially
when given in writing, or according to some estab~
lished form, which, to speak plainly of it, is a cheat
upon those who accept them. They are given with
so little reserve and veracity, " that I sh!:luld as soon
depend," says the author of the Rambler, "upon
an acquittal at the Old Boailey, by way of recommendation
of a servant's honesty, as upon one of
the5c characters." It is sometimes carelessness; and