Liberté compatible avec la vie des peuples chez qui nulle classe n'a plus de privilèges, mais où une

CHAP. 10: Liberty compatible with the life of peoples among whom no class has any more privileges, but where a considerable portion of society is carried away toward the search for places.

§ 1. A great revolution, effected in France forty years ago, destroyed there, almost radically, the social order I have just described. All distinctions of order were effaced, all artificial hierarchies abolished, all surreptitious influences annulled, all oppressive corporations dissolved.

It must not be said, however, as has been done so often and so falsely, that the level was passed over all heads. It was surely not decided that men of six feet should have but five, that virtue should be lowered to the level of vice, that folly should have its place beside genius, that ignorance and destitution should obtain in society the same ascendancy as wealth and enlightenment: far from seeking to destroy natural inequalities, it was desired, on the contrary, to make them stand out by removing the factitious inequalities that prevented them from being produced.

It was the men of the preceding regime, it was the apostles of privilege, who had been the true levelers. In their arbitrary and immutable classifications, they took no account of real pre-eminences, and they willed that one should be great or small, good or bad, skillful or foolish, by right of birth. It is against this absurd and forced equalization that the revolution was directed: it broke the level that oppressive hands held lowered over the masses; and, without pretending to assign a rank to anyone, it willed that each could become all that he legitimately could be, and should never be in law what he would be in reality.

The means it took to arrive at this end was simple: it was decided quite plainly that no one could be hindered in the inoffensive use of his natural faculties; that all peaceful careers would be open to all activities; that all professions, all labors, all legitimate services would be delivered to universal competition. It is in this that consisted the new social order that it proclaimed [^274] .

§ 2. That liberty existed virtually at the bottom of such an order of things is what does not appear to be able to be put in doubt. This new order permitted, in a way, human faculties to take on an unlimited development; it assured the progress of morals, by the very fact that it assured that of enlightenment and of well-being; it excluded, finally, all violence. But at the same time it offended too many illegitimate interests for it to be able to establish itself easily; and, besides, there was in public morals a passion, among many others, which alone would have sufficed to prevent it from being founded, even if it had not met in those it compressed so great a resistance. I mean the love of public offices and that almost universal tendency that had been contracted to seek distinction and fortune in public service.

That the public should have considered the government, the police of the country, its administration, its defense, as a thing that interested the citizens, that concerned them all and over which it was important that they all have their eyes open; that it should have envisaged it as an enterprise of public interest, which it was necessary to award to the most worthy and on the best possible conditions, like all public works, that is not where the evil would have been, and that is not the thing I am pointing out.

But, while thinking that in effect one ought, without any distinction of birth, to award public service to the best citizens and on the best conditions for society, each thought a little of taking a direct part in it and on the best conditions for himself; each, in imitation of the classes that had been despoiled of it, was rather disposed to envisage it as a resource; each wanted to draw from it something of the wealth and the luster that it had always spread upon its possessors. All professions were declared free; but it was toward that one, preferably, that activity was directed; the tendency of ideas and of morals was to make of it in a way a general means of existence, an immense career, open to all ambitions. Now, it was this tendency which alone would have sufficed to denature the new social order, even if all the passions of the old regime had not leagued together to destroy it [^275] .

§ 3. One knows whence this disposition had come. Although the laboring classes had acquired diverse sorts of privileges, the social position of the governing classes had remained, as I have said, incomparably the best. Their professions were those that led most surely and most rapidly to fortune; they were the only ones, moreover, that gave distinction. Industry, in passing into the royal domain, had not ceased to be plebeian: it was to lose caste to engage in commerce; there were no noble labors but those of public service. Thus had the classes that had reserved for themselves the monopoly of it decided; and, in this regard as in many others, it was from them still that the public received its ideas. There was therefore every reason for power to be preferred to industry: thus the tendency had been, at all times, to abandon private professions for the exercise of public functions. The laboring classes were not yet advanced enough to understand that true dignity is not so much in the profession one exercises as in what one brings to it of enlightenment and of elevated sentiments; they saw glory only in drawing near to the dominating classes, in belonging to them, in participating in their privileges; there were very few men, among them, who were not ready to trade for a title, a commission, a public office, the fortune they had painfully acquired in the exercise of private professions; people went from all parts to meet these sorts of exchanges, and however much power multiplied offices, it could scarcely suffice for the eagerness of the solicitors: “The king,” said Colbert, “cannot create an office, but God, at that very instant, creates a fool to buy it.”

“Where has the abuse of places extended further than today in France?” wrote the Marquis d'Argenson, nearly a century ago. “Everything in it is employment, everything takes honor from it, and everything lives on public funds. Men of finance and of the robe, administrators, politicians, men of court, military men, all pretend to satisfy their luxury by employments, and very lucrative employments. The young men know not what to do if they have no office. It is necessary therefore that everyone meddle in administration: thereby the State is lost. Each wants to dominate the public, to render service, they say, to the public, and no one wants to be of that public. The perceptible abuses of this vermin increase each day, and everything decays [^276] .”

The Marquis d'Argenson made these remarks in 1735, a few years after he was called to the ministry. Since then, the abuse of which he complained only grew. As the third estate became more powerful and richer, public functions were more coveted, and each day more aversion and jealousy were conceived against the privileges of the classes that held a monopoly on them.

§ 4. One conceives therefore with what impetuosity the multitude must have rushed toward power, when the revolution came to overthrow the barriers that defended its approach from the great number, and declared it accessible to all [^277] . It was odious, it was crying, that a few families should have enjoyed its advantages alone until then. Justice willed that everyone should have a share in it; and instead of considering it, as reason prescribed, as a thing doubtless indispensable, but naturally onerous, and to which it was desirable that society should have to apply as little as possible of its time, its activity, and its resources, one was reduced to envisaging it as a common source of profits, where each should be able to go and draw, and from which in effect an immense number of persons soon wished to draw their subsistence [^278] .

“From the bosom of disorder and anarchy,” says a publicist, “there emerged a cloud of petty, despotic administrators, covered in the ink and dust of dossiers, the quill behind the ear, the ‘whereas’ on their lips. This army pitched its offices like tents over the entire surface of France. It is wrongly that its creation is attributed to Napoleon; when he appeared, it was already in full activity... But Napoleon was careful not to destroy an order of things that marvelously served the centralization of power, and paralyzed all particular independences [^279] .”

Far from combating the ambitious and cupidinous passions, the head of the government applied himself to inflaming them; he made of them his principal means of elevation and of fortune; he acted constantly as if the nation, in proclaiming the equal admissibility of all citizens to all employments, had only wished to extend to all the right to draw one's fortune from the public, which had previously been the patrimony of a class. It is true that people were only too disposed to feel equality thus. They were even more so after the fall of the empire. We have seen the most liberal of our ministries, the ministry of 1819, undertake to justify the enormity of public expenditures, by saying that political equality must necessarily make government more expensive. [^280] We have seen the most commendable writers excuse and almost defend the disposition of the public to prosper by the industry of place-seeking. What does it matter, after all, they seemed to say, that the government personnel be more or less numerous, that its action be exercised with more or less intensity and extent, that its expenditures be more or less considerable, if besides it is in conformity with the spirit of society, if its conduct is upright and directed to the public good?

“True economy is not always reducible to figures. There is much of it in electing one's deputies, in discussing one's laws, in enjoying the security of persons and of property, the liberty of the press, even when the machine that procures these advantages costs a great deal [^281] .”

[^272]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 238. [^273]: Traité d'économie politique, by M. Say, vol. I, p. 238. [^274]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284. [^275]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284. [^276]: Considérations sur le gouvernement de la France. [^277]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284. [^278]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284. [^279]: Revue encyclopédique, t. XL, p. 121. [^280]: Exposé des motifs de la loi des finances de 1819, by M. le baron Louis. [^281]: Du gouvernement représentatif, by M. Guizot.§ 5. Objections present themselves in droves against this doctrine. I will focus on a single one that contains them all. There is economy, it is said, in spending a great deal on the costs of government, if one obtains, by favor of this expenditure, the security of persons and property, the liberty of industry and of thought. But the question is precisely to know whether, when a government costs a great deal, it can procure these advantages; whether it is not contradictory to wish at once to be free, and to spend a great deal on the costs of government. This is what the honorable publicists of whom I speak do not ask themselves, and yet it is what would be essential to examine. It is also the inquiry I am about to make. My object here is to know what liberty can be enjoyed by a people that has abolished all privilege, declared every profession free, but whose activity remains particularly turned toward the exercise of power, which spends on the costs of administration and government a very considerable portion of its time, its capital, its intelligence, its forces.

§ 6. I will willingly grant that this new manner of being comprises more liberty than that which was described in my last chapter. By the sole fact that all distinctions of caste are abolished therein, that no corporation holds a monopoly on any kind of labor, that all professions are delivered to competition, it is easy to perceive that human faculties must there develop more fully, that morals must there become purer, that they must be less violent; that consequently there must be, in every way, more liberty.

The state of France since the beginning of the revolution offers striking proofs of this. What it has gained in industry, in enlightenment, in riches, by the sole fact of the abolition of corporations and privileges, and despite the obstacles that the passion for offices and the expensive and oppressive regime that it is in the nature of this passion to bring forth have placed on its progress, is truly incalculable. It has therefore made, in this first respect, great progress in power and in liberty.

At the same time that its inhabitants have acquired more enlightenment and well-being, they have adopted better morals. This is a fact that any impartial observer will be disposed to recognize. There is no man of good faith who, having seen the French under the old regime, and comparing them to what they have become since the revolution, would not agree that they are today more occupied, more active, more careful of their affairs, better regulated in their expenditures, less given to libertinism, ostentation, dissipation, more capable, in a word, of making, with respect to themselves, a judicious and moral use of their faculties. They have therefore again, in this respect, become much more free.

Finally, they have also become more free because they have done each other reciprocally less violence, because from one to another they have used their faculties more equitably. It has no longer been in the power of one man to prevent another from being able to honestly earn his living. None has raised the pretension of exclusively doing what harmed no one, and what, by that very fact, had to be permitted to all. What a number of hindrances this change has caused to fall; what oppositions, hatreds, rivalries, lawsuits, intestine wars it has caused to cease; what facility and liberty it has, by that very fact, placed in individual actions and in social relations could only be very difficultly and very imperfectly appreciated.

I could, if I wished to insist, give innumerable detailed proofs of the truth of these results. But first, the progress of our industrial power is so patent that no one dreams of contesting it; and, as for that of our morals, is it any less evident because one is more disposed to doubt it? There are traits by which one recognizes it easily. What has become of all those licentious poets who formerly were the delight of the best company? Why do the Boufflers, the Parnys, the Bertins, the Gentil-Bernards, the Pirons not have a successor among our young poets? It is because libertinism is no longer in good taste. The bonds of family are stronger, more respected: it is no longer amusing to bring disorder into a household; one laughs less at deceived husbands; one despises seducers more: who today seeks to pass for a man of easy conquests? On another hand, expenditures are more sensible: if one does not yet have a very severe political probity, if one is not very delicate about the means of drawing money from the public, at least one dissipates less foolishly that which one steals from it. Every possessor of sinecures thinks of saving; courtiers make savings; one no longer builds great castles; one demolishes many of those that remained. The great lords no longer drag in their wake that numerous throng of valets, who debauched for pastime the peasant women of their lands and of the other places where they passed. The expenditure for lodging, the table, clothing, domestic service, is infinitely better understood. So much for private habits. As for the morality of relations, the progress is no less manifest. One is perhaps less ceremonious, less complimentary; but one respects each other mutually more; men of all ranks have more worth. Above all, one despises and mistreats the lower classes less: fine gentlemen would not take it into their heads today to distribute blows of the cane to hackney coachmen, as it was fashionable to do, and as was done with impunity, in Paris, before the revolution. One no longer lives in the same familiarity with one's valet; but, if one does not let him into the secret of one's weaknesses, one does not treat him with the same harshness either. One has likewise ceased to make confidences to one's servants and to beat them: one is much more, in all respects, within the measure of justice and propriety toward one's inferiors. At the same time, there is infinitely less distance between all the classes: forty years ago, no one would have dared to take on the costume of a station superior to his own; a notary was not received in good houses; a rich man would scarcely admit his doctor to his table; the stockbroker of the royal treasury dared not permit himself a carriage, and went about in a public cab, although he was a millionaire, etc., etc. All that is much changed. We are all clothed in the same manner; we all receive the same education: the son of the prince of the blood and that of the rich grocer frequent the same schools, and compete for the same prize. No class, no profession is held in a state of systematic degradation; we no longer distinguish men except by their degree of culture. Doubtless the rich man does not make his society of the porter, the heavy porter; but it is not that their labor seems contemptible to him, it is that their minds are different, it is that they do not have the same morals, the same language. There is no useful profession that does not appear honorable, when exercised by men capable of honoring it. It is not doubtful, therefore, that, since the abolition of the old regime, since the suppression of the orders, corporations, privileges, and monopolies, one has, in general, made a more extensive and better regulated use of one's forces, and that one has consequently become much more free.

§ 7. But, at the same time, it must be recognized that the lust for offices has greatly diminished the effects of this great reform, and in general that there are in this passion, especially when it has become very common, immense obstacles to liberty. Let us begin by observing the change it produces in the economy of society, and the entirely new order of things that it tends to substitute for the old regime of privileges.

In this new social state, there will no longer be classes, orders, corporations, communities; but, in the place of these diversely privileged aggregations, the passion I point out will raise up a gigantic administration that will inherit all their privileges; what was a matter for bodies will become a matter for government; a multitude of powers and particular establishments will pass into the domain of political authority [^282]. This effect is natural, it is inevitable, as has been seen well enough among us. As ambitious passions have drawn more men toward power, power has gradually extended its sphere. It has multiplied not only employments, but administrations. One could with difficulty count the number of state administrations it has created to open outlets for the ever-growing multitude of zealous, and especially disinterested, men who asked to devote themselves to the public good: state administrations for tobacco, salt, games, theaters, schools, commerce, manufactures, etc. It has little by little extended its action to everything; it has interfered in all labors with the pretension of regulating and conducting them. One no longer found on one's path the syndics of the corporations; but one had before one the agents of authority. In the fields, in the woods, in the mines, on the roads, at the frontiers of the State, at the gates of the cities, on the threshold of all professions, at the entrance of all careers, one has met them everywhere. The first effect of the passion for offices has been to multiply them beyond all measure: this passion has caused the central authority to take on unlimited developments.

This effect has entailed others. The more the attributions of power have extended, the more expenditures have had to rise. At the same time that the personnel of all administrations has increased, the costs of all services have grown. It would be long to consider these increases in expenditure in all their details; but let us observe them in their entirety. It is surely a curious thing to follow the filiation of the finance laws since the beginning of this century, and to see how, from an enormous budget, there is born every year a budget a little more colossal. From 1802 to 1807, expenditures rose from 500 million to 720; they were 772 in 1808, 788 in 1809, 795 in 1810; they reached a billion in 1811; they passed it by 30 million in 1812, and by 150 million in 1813. In 1814, France, returned to peace and to its old limits, could not but reduce its costs of government; however, these costs remained proportionally more considerable, and the budget always continued to follow its movement of progression: from 791 million in 1815, it was 884 in 1816, a billion 69 million in 1817, and touched 1,100 million in 1818. Returned then, by the departure of the foreigners, to less frightening proportions, it nevertheless remained much stronger than it was before their arrival; and, while it had risen only to 791 million in 1815, it was 845 in 1819, 875 in 1820, 896 in 1821, more than 912 in 1822, and now it again exceeds a billion; that is to say that expenditures have once again become as high as they were in 1812, when France was putting Europe under contribution, when it was a good third larger, when it reached Lübeck and Rome, when it had six hundred thousand men under arms, and when it was making war near Cadiz and in Moscow [^283].

Where the chapter of expenditures grows thus, one feels that that of ways and means would with difficulty remain stationary. There will be no expedient that one will not devise to try to extract a little more money from the public each year. No source will appear so impure that one will blush to draw from it; no tax, so immoral that one will fear to establish or maintain it. All commodities, all industries, all transactions, all enjoyments, all movements, so to speak, will be subjected to some kind of levy. One will imagine making a resource of arrears, and of swelling one's debts to be able to increase one's expenditures. One will collect, under diverse pretexts, levies that no law has authorized. The genius of taxation, to surprise the revenues of the public, will successively take on all forms. Not content with exhausting revenues, it will set about, by loans, to attack capital, and one may see, in a few years, the national debt grow by several billions [^284].

That is not all. As the cupidinous passions thus extend encroachments and expenditures, they will wish, to put themselves more at ease, to pervert all institutions. The more they tend to make the administration fiscal, the more they will be interested in making the government despotic. One will see them, at each new revolution, at each change of regime, strive to corrupt or falsify all powers, to create fraudulent election laws, to forbid discussion to deliberative bodies, to remove publicity from their sessions, to transform juries into commissions, to substitute provost judges for regular justice, to deliver the election of general and municipal councils to the responsible functionaries whom these councils are supposed to supervise; not to give themselves any rest, finally, until they have subjugated all the bodies destined to protect the citizens, and have converted them into instruments of oppression and pillage.

Let us add, to complete the picture of this regime, that with it and by it will be fortified the passions that engender it, and which are the most proper to perpetuate it. The more the career of offices expands, the more offices are avidly sought. There happens in this regard what happens with regard to any branch of industry that comes to open numerous outlets to general activity: the crowd naturally turns that way. There is even a reason for one to move toward power with more eagerness than one would toward another profession. To push oneself in the ways of industry, one needs talents and moral qualities that are far from being equally indispensable in the ways of ambition. Chance, intrigue, favor, dispose of a great number of employments. From then on, there is no one who does not believe he can obtain one; the government becomes a lottery in which each flatters himself with having a good ticket; it presents itself as a resource to him who has no other; all men without a profession pretend to make it their trade, and an almost innumerable multitude of intriguers, idlers, honest and dishonest men, throw themselves pell-mell into this career, where soon there are a thousand times more hands than it is possible to employ.

Finally, while this regime goes on fomenting in all ranks of society the cupidity that gave it birth, it destroys everywhere the disinterestedness and the courage that would be capable of reforming it. Seek here neither public spirit, for there is no public; nor corporate spirit, for there are no more bodies; nor individual independence, for what can individuals be before the formidable colossus that universal ambition has raised? Just as all bodies have melted into one corporation, all wills seem to have been reduced to one. There is personality, proper existence, only in the administration. Outside of it, nothing that lives, that feels, that resists, neither individuals, nor constituted bodies. Do not hope that elevated powers, do not go believing that a Tribunate, a Legislative Body, a Senate, will put into defending the interests of the public the courage that, in other times, the weakest and most obscure corporations put into guarding their particular privileges: the spirit of solicitation that has invaded the last ranks of society reigns in the superior orders with still more empire; electors, deputies, senators, everything has descended to the role of client, and the most eminent posts are envisaged only as particular positions where intrigue has more chances of fortune, and where basenesses are better paid.

Here then is what the passion that has been in our days the most popular, the passion for offices, naturally tends to produce: under the name of administration, some monstrous, immense body, extending its innumerable hands to everything, placing hindrances on all things, levying enormous contributions, bending by fraud, corruption, violence, all political powers to its designs, breathing everywhere the spirit of ambition that produces it, and the spirit of servility that preserves it..... It remains only to examine what, under the influence of this body and of the passions that have created it and that make it live, it is possible to have of liberty; what can be industry, morals, social relations, and, in general, all the things on which we know the more or less free exercise of our faculties depends.

§ 8. I will again recognize that industry is here less compressed than under the regime of privileges: power does not oppose as many hindrances to it as the corporations opposed; it is not as inclined to restrict its movements, and does not put the same zeal into it. However, what obstacles does it not still find in this new state!

[^282]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284. [^283]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284. [^284]: Histoire de la législation, by Pastoret, t. IX, p. 284.Observe first that, the stronger the spirit of ambition is here, the weaker the spirit of industry must remain. These two spirits cannot animate the same population at the same time. They are not merely different, they are contrary: the taste of offices excludes the qualities necessary for labor. It has not been sufficiently remarked to what extent the habit of living on salaries can destroy all industrial capacity in us. I have seen men full of talent and practical instruction become profoundly affected by the loss of a position that was far from giving them what they could easily have earned through the exercise of an independent profession. The possibility of creating a fortune for themselves by an active and sustained use of their productive faculties was not worth, in their eyes, the meager, but fixed and secure, salary they had lost. They could not bear the idea of being in charge of themselves, of finding themselves responsible for their own existence, of having to make the necessary efforts to secure it; and with real and powerful faculties, they did not know what to devise to provide for their needs. They were like those birds raised in captivity, who have never had to concern themselves with the care of their food: if they were given their liberty, they would not know how to live, and would be exposed to perishing in the midst of harvests [^285] .

The taste of offices therefore profoundly alters the industrial faculties of the people infected by it. It destroys in them the spirit of invention and enterprise, activity, emulation, courage, patience, all that constitutes the spirit of industry.

It is, in this respect, all the more harmful, as it dominates principally the superior classes, and thus deprives the useful arts of the contribution of the men who could most contribute to their advancement.

And it does not harm them only by taking from them the help of the classes whose fortune and social position would best enable them to serve the arts; it does them a still graver injury, perhaps, in that it diverts from them a much too considerable portion of the population [^286] .

Add that the men of whom it needlessly deprives them are not only nullified, but rendered harmful: their activity is not merely stolen from industry, it is directed against it. As the necessary offices cannot suffice to occupy them, it is necessary to create useless, vexatious ones, in which they do nothing but hinder the movements of society, trouble its labors, and delay the development of its wealth and its forces.

It is a small thing to take men from them; it also makes them lose capital. Each new creation of employments entails a corresponding creation of new taxes, and industry, already deprived of the services of the individuals whom ambition throws needlessly into the career of offices, is further obliged to provide the necessary funds to maintain these individuals in their new employment.

Note further that these funds, like these individuals, are not only lost to industry, but employed against it. They serve to pay not idlers, not holders of sinecures (that would be only half the evil), but men whom one wants to make earn their money, and whose activity is exhausted in harmful acts; so that industry is stripped of considerable capital, which would contribute powerfully to its progress, only to see, in return, its development thwarted in a thousand ways.

Finally, as such an order would have some difficulty maintaining itself on its own, it is necessary, to shelter it from all reform, to arrest as much as possible the flight of the population; to destroy in it all political capacity, all spirit of association, all aptitude for conducting its own affairs; to prevent, as best one can, its learning to read, its becoming instructed, its speaking, its writing; and industry, already much weakened by the money taken from it and the fetters put on it, finds itself further deprived of what the activity of teaching, that of public debates, and the spirit of association in all its forms could communicate to it of strength and liberty.

I do not claim to give here a complete idea of the damage that the fury of offices causes to industry; for that it would be necessary to know the quantity of men it needlessly diverts from its labors, and to be able to say at the same time what obstacles those men place on the activity of all the others; it would be necessary to know what funds they take from them, what hindrances they impose on them, what violences they make them suffer; it would be necessary to be able to estimate the time they make them lose, the distractions they cause them, the discouragement they inspire in them. All that is hardly susceptible of evaluation; but if I were to say that, by the ensemble of fiscal laws and compressive measures that the passion I point out has caused to be established in this country, the productive power of its inhabitants has sometimes been reduced by half, I do not know if I would be making a very exaggerated estimation of the harm that, in this respect, it causes it [^287] .

§ 9. If such is the injury that this passion does to the arts, it is scarcely less fatal to morals. Even if it had no other effect than to delay the progress of wealth and universal ease, it would already be a great obstacle to the perfection of morals; but it goes directly to corrupting them, because it teaches bad ways to get rich. Of citizens it makes courtiers; it extends the vices of the court to the entire part of society that has some instruction and some political activity; where industry ought to reign, it foments ambition; for the activity of labor it substitutes that of intrigue; an obsequious tone, uniformly ministerial habits, are communicated to all ranks of society: to flatter, to solicit, to beg, is no longer the privilege of one class, it is the occupation of all; the more people who devote themselves to this trade, the more cunning one must display to practice it fruitfully: one puts emulation into baseness; one strives to debase oneself, to prostitute oneself. Morals, in other respects, are no better; to the servility of courtiers one joins their licentious habits, their taste for pomp and dissipation; debauchery propagates itself under the name of gallantry; luxury accompanies lust; one is guided in one's expenditures, not by that enlightened desire to be better off, that is to say, more healthily, more conveniently, more comfortably, which is born of laborious habits and which encourages them, but by the vain desire to shine, to impress the eye: one does not aspire to be, but to appear. It was easy to observe most of these effects in the time of the empire, in that classical age of ambition, when the love of offices reigned supreme, when everyone wanted to be something, and when one was something only through offices; when the search for and exploitation of offices were the principal industry of the country, the true national industry. One could see then, I say, what frivolity, corruption, and above all servility this industry can put into the habits of a people: our character still retains, in more than one respect, the unfortunate imprints it received in that time, and it will take more than one generation for them to be effaced.

§ 10. Finally, as much as the passion whose effects I here expose can introduce depravity into morals, so much trouble does it bring to social relations. Where the love of offices dominates, though offices may multiply, their number is very inferior to that of the ambitious who covet them. Henceforth, it is a question of who will have them; no party believes itself obliged to renounce them in favor of any other. Many people would abstain from claiming them, if the public interest were consulted in establishing them, who want their share, like everyone else, the moment they exist only to satisfy private ambitions.

“Since the destination of power is to make fortunes, it must make mine as well as yours; if it is but a mine to be exploited, why should I not exploit it as well as you? Come now, sir, you have held the public to ransom long enough; it is my turn now; move aside, so I can take your place!...;”

and there you have war over offices. The most inevitable effect of the shameful vice I denounce, especially when it has become very general, as is my hypothesis here, is to give birth to parties that stubbornly dispute power; and, as none of these parties seeks it except to exercise it for its own profit, another effect of the same passion is to make the public equally discontented with all the parties that seize it, and to dispose it to make common cause with all those who do not have it, against all those who possess it.

Finally, the passion for offices can further enlarge the circle of discords it provokes, and cause external war to succeed intestine struggles. Mother of despotic governments, it also gives birth to conquering governments: it is this passion that diverted our revolution from its end, that caused a war of liberty and independence to degenerate into wars of invasion, that furnished instruments to Bonaparte for the conquest and spoliation of Europe, just as it furnished him with them for the pillage and enslavement of France. It is enough that it raises, in each country, the number of the ambitious far above what is possible to create in offices, for it to give any government that consents to satisfy it a powerful interest in extending its domination, and thus become, between peoples, a very active cause of dissensions and wars.

§ 11. This passion is therefore equally fatal to industry, to morals, to peace, to everything that facilitates, strengthens, and extends the exercise of our forces. To perceive at a glance to what point it is contrary to them, one has only to consider what it makes industry lose annually in men and capital; what delay, by this enormous and ceaselessly renewed expenditure, it brings to the development of our intellectual and material riches; what further obstacles the pernicious use it causes to be made of these means stolen from our culture adds to the development of our faculties; how, in arresting the progress of our ideas in general, it arrests that of our moral ideas; how, in forcing us to remain poor, it causes our tastes to remain coarse; what trouble it puts into our mutual relations; how many ambitions it stirs up, how many parties it gives birth to, what nourishment it provides to their jealous hatreds, what homicidal struggles it provokes between them, what discord it maintains between the citizens and the public power, what extension, finally, it sometimes gives to the quarrels it provokes, and how from the dissensions of a single country it can make European, universal wars.

§ 12. There are two ways of emerging from the social state that this passion has produced among us. The first would be to return to the regime of privileges, that is to say, to a state where the right to enrich oneself by the exercise of domination would be, as in former times, the privilege of a class. The second is to arrive at the regime of industry, that is to say, to a state where this right would be the privilege of no one; where neither few nor many men would found their fortune on the pillage of the rest of the population; where labor would be the common resource, and government a public work, which the community would award, like any work of the same kind, to men of its choice, for a reasonable and fairly debated price.

The first means is the one being attempted. Since 1815, and especially since 1820, it has been a question, not of diminishing the budget, not of undoing the fiscal administrations, not of reducing the number of employments, but of making this entire administrative establishment, the work of the ambitions of all times and the cupidities of all regimes, become the exclusive, incommutable property of the classes that formerly held power [^288] .

This enterprise, which alarms many people for liberty, seems to me destined to serve it. There is not much appearance that it is being done in liberty's interest, and I do believe that, strictly speaking, we can dispense with gratitude; but I say that in result it serves it. Already, it has begun to produce a very salutary revolution in our morals. By forcing back into private life a multitude of intelligent, active, ardent men whom the revolution had drawn toward power, one has put these men in the position of learning that there is something more noble, more generous, more moral, and even more fruitful than domination: labor. It is impossible not to see that, for some years, a considerable change has been taking place in our dispositions in this regard; that ambitious passions trouble us less; that titles, ribbons, sinecures, are falling in value in our minds; that the useful arts, on the contrary, are taking on more importance in our eyes; that, in a word, we are seeking more to prosper through industry. As we become more established in this way of life, we will increasingly adopt its morals, we will acquire more and more the knowledge related to it, we will instruct ourselves above all in the political regime it requires, and after having nobly renounced useless offices, the time will come, I have the hope, when we will no longer wish to pay for them. It seems evident to me, therefore, that in making an effort to lead us back to the regime of privileges [^289] , one contributes to pushing us toward the regime of industry, and that this new mode of existence is the one to which the present epoch is leading us. This movement of the public spirit is of such high interest that I will be forgiven, before finishing this chapter, for pausing a moment longer to note it and to show its true character.

I repeat, the political reaction that has been operating for ten years, in France and in Europe, is bringing about a very happy one in morals. I would not for anything in the world approve the spirit that appears to direct it; I deplore the numerous particular misfortunes it has caused; but I sincerely bless the general effect it produces, an effect so advantageous that it suffices, in my view, to amply compensate for all the harm that it may otherwise do.

The counter-revolution will not vanquish the revolution; the revolution is inherent in human nature; it is but the movement that pushes it to improve its destinies, and this movement is happily invincible. But the counter-revolution tends to change the course of the revolution; from being ambitious and conquering, it makes it laborious; it was directing all its forces toward power, it constrains it to turn its immense activity toward industry. It is important to know precisely in what this change consists.

Doubtless, the practice of the arts, the study of the sciences, the culture and perfection of our faculties are not new things; but what is new is the way in which one is beginning to view all that. Formerly, one did indeed devote oneself to labor, but it was with a view to domination; industry was but a path to offices; the true end, the final end of all activity, was to arrive at public employment. It is not for that, if you will, that the revolution was made; but it was made with that: the love of public functions played its role in it; and this role was not small, if one judges by the results; for what it produced with the most abundance was functions and functionaries: we have seen it inundate Europe with soldiers, clerks, customs officers, directors, prefects, intendants, governors, kings.

It may well be, therefore, that until now the arts had been practiced; but I say that it was while waiting for offices, and as a remote means of attaining them. The principal effect of the current reaction is to change this tendency. Not only is the revolution brought back to labor by its defeats, but it is beginning to view it better: one no longer makes of it merely a means; it is becoming the end of social activity; one is beginning to see nothing beyond the useful exercise of one's forces and the perfection of one's faculties.

[^285]: See above, book III, chap. 9, § 8. [^286]: See above, book III, chap. 9, § 6. [^287]: See above, book III, chap. 9, § 7. [^288]: See above, book III, chap. 9, § 1. [^289]: See above, book III, chap. 9, § 4.I know full well that this tendency is far from being general; all the passions that have governed society still govern it more or less. The servitude of the glebe has retained its partisans; privileges have still more, and sinecures infinitely more. But in the end, there is no way to disguise the fact that the tendency to industry is becoming stronger and more general every day; infinitely more people seek fortune, and even distinction, in this path; more capital is applied to it; more enlightenment is brought to it; the positive sciences are put more to contribution; the notions of industrial economy are propagating; with them spreads the knowledge of the political regime that suits industry; finally, this regime is passing from theory into practice: it is according to its principles that the United States are constituted, it is according to its principles that the new American republics are constituting themselves, it is according to its principles that the English monarchy is reforming its laws: England lifts prohibitions, diminishes taxes, reduces the number of offices, makes government serve to restrict the action of government, and thus tends to draw closer to the American regime. Now, if this regime has been able to cross the Ocean, are there not some grounds to hope that one day it may also cross the Channel? Is it not permissible to believe that France, which made the revolution, after having renounced useless offices, will not always resign itself to paying for them? This France will surely not want all its efforts to have resulted only in doubling its taxes, in tripling its hindrances, in making it pay four times more functionaries [^290] . The more it corrects itself of any tendency to domination, the less it will consent to remain tributary to a class of dominators. It will become, I hope, strong enough to demand that everyone live, like it, by some useful labor; and, giving to power its true title, that of public service, there is reason to think that one day it will arrange to have servants, and not masters.

I do not believe, therefore, that I am mistaken when I say that the world is tending toward the industrious life, and I flatter myself that in now speaking of this state and of the degree of liberty it comprises, I will not seem too much to be composing a utopia.

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Notes

[^274]: This is the only reasonable order, one cannot repeat it enough. It is only by the free competition of all citizens in all kinds of services that men manage to classify themselves, as justice and common utility demand. There can be no predetermined ranks except between the various classes of individuals who must contribute to any given enterprise, wherever a certain subordination must exist for the service to be performed, in a factory, in an administration, in an army. But to establish ranks among the members of society in general is an absolutely impossible thing. Nothing is less stable than greatness, talent, morality, wealth, and all the qualities that could initially motivate such an arrangement. These qualities are constantly shifting; and to want to assign in advance and in perpetuity a certain rank to certain families would be to make a decision whose motives could cease almost as soon as the decision had been made. [^275]: I hope this will not give rise to any misunderstanding. It is clear enough what I am blaming. What I am blaming is not political activity, as some people have seemed to believe; it is not the disposition to oversee the management of the general interests of society; it is not even the desire to become the man of business of society, provided it is with its consent and on conditions freely debated with it or with its loyally elected delegates: the political vice I am pointing out is the disposition to live off the public's resources, to accept posts without being sure that they are useful to it, and salaries without examining too closely whether, in a free and enlightened market, it would consent to give for the services one claims to render it the price that one consents to receive for them. [^276]: Unpublished memoirs. [^277]: This is what all our constitutions have done, from that of 1791 to the charter of 1814 and the additional act of 1815. There is not one of these social pacts in which the equal admissibility of all citizens to all public functions has not been expressly stipulated; whereas there is not one, if I remember correctly, where the free exercise of private professions has been consecrated: a proof unfortunately too clear that, until recent times, more importance was attached to the faculty of attaining public office than to that of not being hindered in one's work. [^278]: I would not, however, want to say that the revolution was undertaken with views of ambition. I believe that what was wanted above all was the reform of abuses; but I also believe that to this generous hatred of abuses was joined, in the public mind, a very old and very strong propensity to attain public office; a penchant that the destruction of many private industries, the defeat and emigration of the formerly governing classes, the necessity of reforming a government, that of defending the revolution, and other circumstances still, soon excited to the highest degree. [^279]: M. Alex. de Laborde, De l'Esprit d'association, p. 43, first ed. [^280]: See, in the Moniteur of the month of June 1819, sessions of the Chamber of Deputies, the speeches of MM. Decazes and de Saint-Aulaire, in the part of the budget discussion relating to the salaries of prefects. — Political equality doubtless multiplies the number of active citizens; but from the fact that there are more citizens, it does not follow that the government must cost more. [^281]: M. Guizot, Des moyens de gouvernement et d'opposition. [^282]: It is thus, for example, that after having destroyed the teaching bodies and the private colleges, public schools were created with a central direction in Paris, and that the men devoted to teaching, from the private individuals they were, have become public officials. It would be easy to cite other examples, and to show how, by the effect of the dominant passion, a multitude of private stations have been transformed into public offices. [^283]: A German publicist, Friedrich Gentz, has undertaken to explain and justify the rapid progress that government expenditures are making in all the countries of Europe, and especially in rich countries. “This increase,” he says, “is linked to the very progress of wealth, which, at the same time that it creates a multitude of new needs, raises the price of all commodities. Every man wants to spend more, and, with the same amount of money, he can barely have half of what he obtained fifty years ago. The government, as a collective person, finds itself in the same position as individuals. Following the example of everything that surrounds it, it must extend the sphere of its expenditures, and from year to year, it is obliged to pay more for all the objects of its immense consumption.” (Essay on the Administration of the Finances and Wealth of Great Britain, pp. 12 to 22.)These remarks, however specious they may be, do not justify the extreme increase in public expenditures. If there are reasons for them to increase, far better reasons exist for them to decrease. First, it is not accurate to say that everything is increasing in value. On the contrary, the progress of the arts has lowered the price of many things. Next, it cannot be denied that government, which is also an art, could, like all others, be simplified if one wished, and thereby become less expensive. Not every way of policing and administering justice is equally good. In this respect, as in any other, methods are certainly highly susceptible to improvement. Add to this that the public needs I have just mentioned—the needs for police and justice—become easier to satisfy as we become more civilized. It surely takes less trouble and expense to maintain order among a laborious and cultivated people than in the midst of a band of barbarians. Finally, there is a multitude of things—and this becomes more patent every day—that the authorities could, with great profit to the public, abandon to the efforts of private activity. [^284]: In April 1814, the public debt was, in round numbers, 61 million; it is now 207. It has therefore increased by 146 million, which, at the current rate of the rente, constitutes a capital debt of nearly 3.5 billion, with which France has been burdened for fifteen years. It is fair to observe that this increase stems almost entirely from the actions of previous administrations. [^285]: There is strange proof of the aversion that men, accustomed to not worrying about their own subsistence, have for any change in status that would place this care in their charge. At this price, even slaves themselves would not always accept freedom. From 1807 to 1811, an attempt was made in Prussia to emancipate all the peasants who had remained serfs; and, a singular thing! this act of justice and humanity was coldly received by the very class of men it most concerned. Many peasants preferred to remain serfs rather than lose what they called the support of their lord, and to leave a position where their existence was surely very miserable, but where it was nevertheless assured. (See le Globe of February 27, 1827.) [^286]: Not only, by the effect of this penchant, have we created as many administrations as possible in our country, but we have also arranged it so that, in each administration, there are as many jobs as possible. As equality demanded that everyone participate in the benefits of power, it was thought necessary to pay functionaries less and create a greater number of functions. This is how the number of judges was brought to five or six thousand, and the salary of most of these public officers limited to 60 louis. There is not a single branch of public service in France that does not bear witness to these efforts to multiply positions. This is especially noticeable in the army: “I ask,” observed M. Casimir Perrier (Chamber of Deputies, session of June 2, 1826), “what is our military situation: it is, they say, two hundred thirty-one thousand five hundred and sixty men, including troop children, musicians, drummers, etc., for whom we spend 190,308,027 fr. Of this number of men, there are seventeen thousand eight hundred and seven officers and fifty-one thousand and forty-five non-commissioned officers, for a total of sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and fifty-two. This leaves us with one hundred fifty-nine thousand six hundred and fifty-seven soldiers, which makes roughly one officer or non-commissioned officer for every two men.” [^287]: Taxes, observes an English writer, do much less good for the aristocracy they are intended to enrich than they do harm to those who pay them. The aristocracy does not receive a fifth part of the extravagant expenditures we make for our fleets, our armies, our colonies. A cavalry regiment, for example, is advantageous to it only for its staff; but independently of the costs of this staff, and for it to exist, we must also bear the expense of the horses and the common soldiers, which is much more considerable. Warships are good for the aristocracy only because of the positions of admirals, vice-admirals, captains, etc.; but the costs of construction and maintenance for each ship are enormous for the people. It is the same with the colonies, which profit the privileged only because of the positions of governors and the other administrative or military posts in the colonial establishments. At bottom, the most economical means of maintaining the aristocracy would be to give it pensions, etc....” (Rev. Britan., vol. 10, p. 197 et seq.) [^288]: I must observe that this was written under the ministry of M. de Villèle. I leave it to the reader to judge to what extent these remarks may still seem well-founded under the present administration. It was asserted, under the preceding ministry, that large property owners had a 300-million-franc interest in the levying of public taxes, and that they drew 60 fr. from the treasury for every écu they paid into it (Labbey de Pompières, Chamber of Deputies, session of July 13, 1821). I do not know to what extent these proportions have since varied. [^289]: I repeat what was written under another ministry. [^290]: In 1791 the expenditure budget scarcely exceeded 500 million; the number of posts and employees was infinitely less considerable; we still had some municipal liberties that we have lost; a number of private industries and professions were less dependent on public authority than they are today.