In an ideal republican world, government officeholders ought to serve without salary. Receiving profits from a public office smacked of interestedness and tainted the officeholder’s virtue. Which is why the radical Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 abolished all “offices of profit” in the government; there was no need for them, the constitution declared, for they created “dependence and servility unbecoming freemen in the possessors and expectants, faction, contention, corruption, and disorder among the people.” In place of offices of profit the Pennsylvania constitution provided “reasonable
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