Remuneration affair
The Remuneration affair was a sequence of events in 1821 triggered by the Baron of Ral-lang, later Prime Minister in the 1840s, attempting to reform the pay structure of the Themiclesian Navy. He sought to eliminate payroll fraud by naval bursars who were rumoured to withhold wages from servicepeople by means like fictitious charges, compensations, and fines by publishing a clear schedule of remunerations applicable to various classes of servicepeople and the standard ways by which this pay was increased or reduced, and furthermore by involving them in the tabulation process so as to render them aware if they salaries were unduly withheld. However, the reform was poorly legislated and implemented without due consideration for the servicepeople it sought to protect, leading to the Marines' revolt of 1821 which the Baron claimed was merely a rumour. Yet stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the mistakes of the policy, Parliament finally rescinded the law in 1822 after a joint brief submitted by the Kien-k'ang Board of Financiers, Chamber of Barristers, Guild of Scriveners, and Governing Board of Notary Attestors; in the brief, they testified for both Houses of Parliament the reform was legally faulty, confusing, and a genuine monstrosity.
Background
Revolt
Joint petition and brief
In the brief, the Kien-k'ang Board of Financiers, Chamber of Barristers, Guild of Scriveners, and Governing Board of Notary Attestors jointly asserted that the 1821 statute (viz. Caput 32 ′Er Anno LIX) introduced into the law a large number of anomalies and contradictions which, together with the other effects it produced, made the statute "not worth having on the books" and "to the profit of many rapidly removed, expunged, and reversed".
The primary complaint the four submitters had was that Caput 32 (disharmoniously with the finance-legal establishment) framed a marine's salary as a debt rather than a expense, which, without further legislation, would be charged on the incorrect fund in the imperial treasury. Thus, in its present state, each marine may actually be committing the crime of fraud by receiving funds in the form required by Caput 32, and the requisite seals of scriveners and attestors would be on a formally meritless petition, which is prohibited by the rules of their trade. As the submitters argued, Caput 32 is a statute that places individuals affected by it in impossible positions, i.e. causes them to commit a crime and does not protect them from it.
The reason for this is that the salaries of marines is, at the law, an expense the state by its own laws ought to pay out, but not because it is owed to marines. That is, in more abstract terms, the state has not contracted this debt to the marines in its service and therefore has no debt to honour. Yet Caput 32 directs each marine to submit a claim to the Exchequer, which necessarily implies that they claim the state owes a debt to them while it does not. Thus, the claim being meritless though not fraudulent, their reception of the salary payment has no legal basis, even if the act of submitting the claim has legal basis.
The brief goes on to explain, in very arcane terms, why the state cannot owe money to the marines claiming their salaries. It reviews the historical documents when debt between the crown and his officials is created:
By the Testaments we know that the Crown has declared that a given other person has a valid claim of goods, moneys, and lands against his household for whatever reason. This act of validating a claim, as it entails a transfer of wealth, implicitly creates the roles and entities of title-originator and title-holder; these two things are, by this validation, defined as non-intersecting, distinct persons. That is, one party is the soruce, and other is the destination. If these terms are to have any meaning whatsoever, then they must be conceptually distinct; if the Crown owed a titleholder of his five acres, the Crown cannot simply rob the titleholder of five acres and then give the land back to claim it has settled the debt of five acres. In this scenario, there is no distinct bodies of source and destination. This is why distinct bodies are required if a genuine transfer is to take place between them. Thus, viewed in the ancient lens, the state being a lasting agreement between family-dynasties, it is actually built upon the relationship of debt and delivery. If one is genuinely to give up ownership, and another genuinely to receive ownership, then the two must be distinct; there is no genuine giving if one can simply take back, and there is no genuine receiving if one must surrender.
If one examines the means by which the said marines—or indeed many other classes of the Crown's servants—take their salaries, we see easily this is not the relationship as formerly described. The Crown has never declared marines entitled to anything of his estate, and so it is not within their right to claim against it via a claim petition delivered to the Exchequer, which is charged with the duty of administering the Crown's rights and debts. It has, on the other hand, declared it will give to marines such an amount of money for a given period of service. When this money is given, there is no taking back on account of non-service or poor service, for the payment of that money is not in exchange for service. That is the note and character of largess rather than payment. It is true that if a marine were to have salary withheld, there is recourse, but that is against the misbehaviour of an officer responsible for giving this money to him, not against the crown for not fulfilling a debt.
Resolution
By Caput 4 Kryang II, Caput 32 was repealed. Caput 4 also pardoned anyone who has received any amount from the Exchequer not in excess of what should, by statute, be given to them.