CONFUSION OF FUNCTIONS.
And what is the result of all this? The result, which is very logical,
very just from the democratic point of view, and precisely that which
the democracy desires and cannot do otherwise than desire, is that the
national representatives do exactly what the people would wish them to
do, and what the people would do itself if it undertook to govern
directly itself. _The representative government wishes to do everything
itself_, just as the people would like to do, if it were itself
exercising the functions of government directly, just as it did in olden
times on the Pnyx at Athens.
Montesquieu realised this fully, though naturally he had no experience
of how the theory worked under a representative and parliamentary
system. The principle of it all is at bottom the same, and only the
change of a single phrase is needed to make the following quotation
strictly applicable. "The principle of democracy," he says, "is
perverted not only when it loses the spirit of equality, but still more
_when it carries the spirit of equality to an extreme, and when every
one wishes to be the equal of those whom he chooses to govern him_. For
then the people, not being able to tolerate the authority which it has
created, _wishes to do everything itself_, to deliberate for the Senate,
to act for the magistrates, and to usurp the functions of the judges.
The people wishes to exclude the magistrates from their functions, and
the magistrates naturally are no longer respected. The deliberations of
the Senate are allowed to have no weight, and senators naturally fall
into contempt."
Let us translate the foregoing passage into the language of to-day.
Under democratic parliamentary government the representatives of the
people are determined to do everything themselves. They must be equal to
those whom they choose for their rulers. They cannot tolerate the
authority which they have entrusted to the Government. They must
themselves govern in the place of the Government, administer in the
place of the executive staff, substitute their own authority for that
of all the bench of judges, perform the duties of magistrates, and, in a
word, throw off all regard and respect for persons and things.
This is the true inwardness of the popular spirit, the will of the
people which wishes to do everything itself, or what is the same thing,
through its representatives, its faithful and servile creatures.
From this point onwards efficiency is hunted and exterminated in every
direction; just as it was excluded in the election of representatives,
so the representatives laboriously and continuously exclude it from
every sort of office and employment under the public service.
The Government, to begin our analysis of functional confusion at the
top, ought to be watched and advised by the national representatives,
but it ought to be independent of the national representatives, at least
it ought not to be inextricably mixed up with them, in other words the
national representatives ought not to govern. Under democracy this is
precisely what they want to do. They elect the Government, a privilege
which need not be denied them; but, "not being able to tolerate the
authority which they have created," as soon as they have set it up, they
put pressure on it and insist on governing continuously in its place.
The assembly of national representatives is not a body which makes laws,
but a body which, by a never ending string of questions and
interruptions, _dictates_ from day to day to the Government what it
ought to do, that is to say, it is a body which governs.
The country is governed, literally, by the Chamber of Deputies. _This is
absolutely necessary_ if, as the true spirit of the system requires, the
people is to be governed by no one but itself, if there is to be no will
at work other than the will of the people, emanating from itself and
bringing back a sort of harvest of executive acts. Again, I repeat, this
is absolutely necessary, in order that there shall be nothing, not even
originating with the people, which, for a single moment and within the
most narrowly defined limits, shall exercise the functions of
sovereignty over the sovereign people.
This is all very well, but government is an art and we assume that there
is a science of government, and here we have the people governed by
persons who have neither science nor art, and who are chosen precisely
because they have not these qualifications and on the guarantee that
they have none of them!
Again, in a democracy of this kind, if there exist, as a result of
tradition or of some necessity arising out of foreign relations, an
authority, independent for a certain term of years of the legislative
assembly, which has no accounts to render to it and which cannot be
questioned or constitutionally overthrown, that authority is so strange,
and, if the phrase may pass, so monstrous an anomaly, that it dares not
exercise its power, and dreads the scandal which it would raise by
acting on its rights, and seems as it were paralysed with terror at the
very thought of its own existence.
And its attitude is right; for if it exercised its powers, or even lent
itself to any appearance of so doing, there at once would be an act of
will which was not an act of the popular will, a theory altogether
contrary to the spirit of this system. For in this system the chief of
the state can only be the nominal chief of the state. A will of his own
would be an abuse of power, an idea of his own would be an
encroachment, and a word of his own would be an act of high treason.
It follows that, if the constitution has formally conferred these
powers, the constitution on these points is a dead letter, because it
contravenes an unwritten constitution of higher authority, viz., the
inner inspiration of the political institution.
One of these honorary chiefs of the state has said: "During all my term
as president, I was constitutionally silent." This is not correct, for
the constitution gave him leave to speak and even to act. At bottom it
was true, for the constitution, in allowing him to act and speak, was
acting unconstitutionally. In speaking he would have been
constitutional, in holding his tongue he was _institutional_. He had
been in fact _institutionally_ silent. He disobeyed the letter of the
constitution, but he had admirably extracted its meaning from it, and
understood and respected its spirit.
Under democracy, then, the national representatives govern as directly
and as really as possible, dictating a policy to the executive and
neutralising the supreme chief of the executive to whom it is not able
to dictate.
The national representatives are not content with governing, they wish
to administer. Now consider how it would be if the permanent officials
of finance, justice and police, etc., depended solely on their
parliamentary chiefs, who are ministers only because they are the
creatures of the popular assembly, liable to instant and frequent
dismissal; surely then, these officials, more permanent than their
chiefs, would form an aristocracy, and would administer the state
independently of the popular will and according to their own ideas.
This, of course, must not be allowed to happen. There must not be any
will but the people's will, no other power, however limited, but its
own.
This causes a dilemma which is sufficiently remarkable. Here we seem to
have contrary results from the same cause. Since the popular assembly
governs ministers, and frequently dismisses them, they are not able to
govern their subordinates as did Colbert and Louvois, and these
subordinates accordingly are very independent; so it comes about that
the greater the authority which the popular assembly wields over
ministers, the more it is likely to lose in its control over the
subordinates of ministers, and in destroying one rival power it creates
another.
The dilemma, however, is avoided easily enough. No public official is
appointed without receiving its _visa_, and it contrives even to elect
the administrative officials. In the first place, the national
representatives, in their corporate capacity, and in the central offices
of government, watch most attentively the appointment of the permanent
staff, and further each single member of the representative government
in his province, in his department, in his _arrondissement_ picks and
chooses the candidates and really appoints the permanent staff. This is,
of course, necessary, if the national will is to be paramount here as
well as elsewhere, and if the people is to secure servants of its own
type, if it is "to choose its own magistrates," as Montesquieu said.
The people, then, chooses its servants through the intervention of its
representatives; and consider, to return to our point, how absolutely
necessary it is for it to secure representatives who are intellectually
the exact image and imitation of itself. Everything dovetails neatly
together.
Here then we have the people interfering influentially in the
appointment of the civil service. It continues "to do everything
itself." Complaints are raised on all sides of this confusion of
politics with the business of administration, and indeed we hear
continually that politics pervade everything. But what is the reason of
this? It is the principle of the national sovereignty asserting itself.
Politics, political power, means the will of the majority of the nation,
and is it not fitting that the will of the majority should make itself
felt--indeed need we be surprised that it insists on making itself
felt--in the details of public business, as administered by the
permanent staff, as well as elsewhere? The ideal of democracy is that
the people should elect its own rulers, or, if this is not its ideal, it
is its idea, and this is what it does under a parliamentary democracy
through the intervention of its representatives.
This is all very well, but efficiency has been dealt another blow. For
how is a candidate to recommend himself for an office to which
appointment is made by the people and its representatives? By his merit?
His chiefs and his fellow civil servants might be good judges of that;
but the people or its representatives are much less capable of judging.
"The people is admirably fitted to choose those to whom it has to
entrust some part of its authority"; so Montesquieu; we must now examine
this saying a little more closely. What reasons does the philosopher
give? "The people can only be guided by things of which it cannot be
ignorant, and which fall, so to speak, within its own observation. It
knows very well that a man has experience in war, and that he has had
such and such successes; it is therefore quite capable of electing a
general. It knows that a judge is industrious, that many of those who
are litigants in his court go away satisfied, and that he has never been
convicted of bribery, and this is enough to warrant it in appointing to
any judicial office. It has been impressed by the magnificence or riches
of some citizen, and this fits it for appointing an aedile. All these
things are matters of fact about which the man in the street has better
knowledge than the king in his palace."
This passage, I confess, does not appear to be convincing. Why should
not a king in his palace know of the riches of a financier, the
reputation of a judge or the success of a colonel just as well as the
man in the street? There is no difficulty in getting information about
such things. The people knows that such an one was always a good judge
and such another always an excellent officer. Therefore it is qualified
to appoint a general or a high-court judge or other officer of the law.
So be it, but for the selection of a young judge or a young and untried
officer what special source of information has the people? I cannot find
that it has any. In this very argument, Montesquieu limits the
competence of the people to the election of the great chiefs, and of the
most exalted magistrates, and indeed further confines the popular
prerogative in this matter to assigning an office and career to one who
has already given proof of his capacity. But for putting the competent
man for the first time in the place where he is wanted, how has the
people any special instinct or information? Montesquieu shows that the
people can recognise ability when it has been proved, but he says
nothing to show that it recognises readily nascent, unproved talent. The
argument of Montesquieu is not here conclusive.
He has been led astray, it seems to me, by his desire to present his
argument antithetically (using the term in its logical sense). What he
really wished to prove was not so much the truth of the proposition that
he was then advancing, but the falsity of quite another proposition. The
question for him, the question which he had in his mind, was as follows:
Is the people capable of governing the state, of taking measures
beforehand, and of understanding and solving the difficulties of home
and foreign affairs? By no means. Then is it fit to elect its own
magistrates? Well, it might do that. Thus he had been led away by this
antithesis so far as to say: Able to govern?--Certainly not! Able to
elect its own magistrates? Admirably! The explanation of the whole
paragraph which I have just quoted lies in the conclusion, which runs as
follows: "All these things are matters of fact about which the man in
the street has better knowledge than the king in his palace. _But_ can
the people pursue a policy and know how to avail itself of the places,
occasions, and times when action will be profitable? No! certainly
not."
The truth is that the people is a little better fitted to choose a
magistrate than to undertake a policy for the gradual humbling of the
House of Austria. But not very much so, as it is only a little more
difficult to humble the House of Austria, than it is to discover the man
who is able to do it.
The masses are particularly incapable of making initial appointments and
of giving promotion in the early stages of a career to those who deserve
it. Yet in a democracy this is what they are constantly doing.
Again, by what means has the candidate for civil service employment, who
is favoured by the people and its representatives, earned their
approval? By his merit, of which the people and its representatives are
very bad judges? No! By what then? By his conformity to the general
views of the people; that is, by the subserviency of his political
opinions. The political opinions of a candidate for civil service
employment are the only things which mark him out to the popular choice
because they are the only subjects on which the people is a good judge.
Yes, but the subserviency of his political opinions may be combined
with real merit. True, but this is a mere matter of chance. The people
is not, perhaps, in this particular matter consciously hostile to
efficiency, rather it is indifferent, or ignores the qualification
altogether. Indeed, there is no great compliment paid to efficiency in
such transactions.
Here is what inevitably happens. The candidate for a permanent
appointment who is not conscious of possessing any particular merit is
not slow to realise that it is by his political opinions that he will
succeed, and he naturally professes those which are wanted. The
candidate who is conscious of merit, very often knowing very well what
less meritorious competitors are about, and not wishing to be beaten,
also professes the same useful opinions. There we have that "infection
of evil," which M. Renouvier has explained so admirably in his _Science
de la Morale_.
First, then, we see how most of the candidates chosen by the mandatories
of the people are incapable; others who are chosen in spite of their
capacity are men of indifferent character; and character, we must admit,
in all or nearly all public careers is a necessary part of efficiency.
There remains a small number of meritorious persons who have never
identified themselves with current political opinions, and who have
slipped into public employment, thanks to some brief moment of
inattention on the part of the politicians. These intruders sometimes
get on by the mere force of circumstances, but they never reach the
highest posts which are always reserved, as indeed is proper and
fitting, for those in whom the people has put its trust.
This is how the people administers as well as governs through the
intervention of the representative system, dictating to ministers the
policy and the details of government.
--I realise, some one here will object, that administrators are
nominated by the people, but I do not see how the affairs of the country
are actually administered by the people.--
Well, I will tell you. In the first place, by nominating officials it is
already far on the road to controlling them, for it infuses into the
body of the permanent civil service the spirit of the people to the
exclusion of every other source of inspiration, and effectually prevents
the civil service from becoming an aristocracy as otherwise it has
always a tendency to do. Next, the people does not confine itself to
electing its administrators, it watches and spies on them, keeps them in
leading strings, and just as the popular representatives dictate to
ministers the details of government, so also they dictate to
administrators the details of administration.
A _prefet_, a _procureur-general_, an engineer-in-chief under democratic
rule is a much harassed man. He has to play his own hand against his
ministerial chief and the deputies of his district. He ought to obey the
minister, but he has also to obey the deputies of the district which he
administers. In this connection curious points arise and situations not
a little complicated. The _prefet_ owes obedience to the deputies and to
the minister, and the minister obeys the deputies, and it might
therefore have been supposed that there was only one will, the will
which the _prefet_ obeyed. But what the minister has to obey is the
general will of the popular representatives, and it is this will that he
transmits for the allegiance of the _prefet_; but then the _prefet_
finds himself colliding against the individual wills of the deputies of
his district. The result is what we may call conflicts of obedience
which have extraordinary interest for the psychologist, but which are
less agreeable for the _prefet_, the engineer-in-chief, or the
_procureur-general_.
We note then, in the first place, how everything concurs to make the
representative of the popular will as incompetent as he is omnipotent.
Incompetent he undoubtedly is, as we have already seen, to start with,
and _if he were not so already_, he would certainly become so by reason
of the trade or rather of the miscellaneous assortment of trades which
are thrust upon him. The surest way of making a man incompetent is to
make him Jack-of-all-trades, for then he will be master of none. In the
next place, the representative of the popular will and spirit, besides
his trade of legislator, has to cross-examine ministers and to dictate
to them the details of their duty, that is to say, he has to busy
himself in all home and foreign politics. He has also to administer, by
choosing and watching administrators and by controlling and inspiring
their actions. Without saying anything of the small individual services
which it is his interest to render to his constituents and which his
constituents are by no means backward in demanding, he looks on himself
as responsible for the conduct of things in general. He becomes a sort
of universal foreman, not a man, but a man-orchestra, a busybody, so
busy that he can apply himself to nothing. He cannot study, or think, or
investigate, or, to speak accurately, acquire any sense at all.
If he be efficient in some particular subject, when he enters on his
public career, he becomes hopelessly inefficient in all subjects after a
few years of public life, and then, void of all individuality, he
remains nothing but a public man, that is, a man representing the
popular will and never thinking, or able to think, of anything but how
to make that will prevail.
And, to press the point again, this is all that is wanted of him; for
can you conceive a representative of the popular will, who had somehow
preserved a measure of competence in financial or judicial
administration, who would prefer, before other candidates, not a
political partisan but a man of merit, knowledge and aptitude, and who
would even approve in an administrator not acts of political partiality
but acts that are just and in conformity with the interests of the
state? Why! Such a man would be a detestable servant in the eyes of
democracy.
Yes, and I have known such a man. He was not wanting in intelligence or
wit and he was honest. A lawyer, he was naturally interested in
politics. For local reasons he had failed to be elected as deputy or as
senator. Tired of fighting, he obtained a judicial appointment by the
influence of his political friends. He became president of court. A case
was brought before him where the accused, a person not perhaps of
altogether blameless life, was clearly not guilty of any indictable
offence. The accused, however, a former _prefet_, appointed by a
government now become very unpopular, and known as a reactionary and an
aristocrat, was pursued by the animosity of the whole democratic
population of the town and province. The president, in the face of
openly expressed hostility in court, acquitted him. In the evening the
president remarked, not without a touch of humour: "There, that serves
them right for not making me a senator!" In other words: "If they had
accepted me as a politician, they would have made me a fool, or at
least paralysed my efficiency. But they would not have it; so here I am,
a man who knows the law and applies it. So much the worse for them!"
"By making a man a slave Zeus took from him half his soul." So Homer. By
making a man a politician, Demos takes from him his whole soul, and in
omitting to make him a politician, it is foolish enough to leave him his
soul.
This is why Demos hates a permanent civil service. An irremovable
magistrate or functionary is a man whom the constitution sets free from
the grip of the populace. An irremovable official is a man enfranchised,
a free man. Demos does not love free men.
This will explain why in every nation where it is paramount, democracy
suspends from time to time the irremovable independent official element
wherever it is found. The object is nominally to clarify and filter the
_personnel_ of the official world; but really it is intended to teach
the officials whom it spares, that their permanence is only very
relative and that, like every one else, they have to reckon with the
sovereignty of the people which will turn and rend them if they
venture to be too independent.
According to the constitution of 1873 there were irremovable senators in
France. In the interest of good government, this was perhaps a sound
arrangement. The irremovable senators, in the scheme of the
constitution, were intended to be, and in fact were, political and
administrative veterans from whose knowledge, efficiency and experience
their colleagues were to profit. The plan, from this point of view,
might have worked well if the irremovable senators had not been elected
by their colleagues but had become so by right; for example every former
President of the Republic, every former president of the _Cour de
Cassation_, every former president of the Court of Appeal, every
admiral, every archbishop might _ex officio_ have been raised to the
rank of senator for life. From the democratic point of view, however, it
was regarded as a positive outrage that there should exist a
representative of the people who had not to render account to the
people, a representative of the people who had nothing to fear from the
accidents of re-election, no risk of failing to secure re-election, in
other words that a man should be elected for his supposed efficiency,
in no sense representing the people but himself alone.
Permanent senators were abolished. Obviously they constituted a
political aristocracy, founded on the pretence of services rendered, and
the Senate which elected them also fell under the taint of aristocratic
leanings since at that time it recruited its members by co-optation.
This of course could not be tolerated.