The cult of incompetence

by Émile Faguet

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.