[CHAPTER II.]
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!