"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.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE REFUGES OF EFFICIENCY.
Will efficiency then, you may well ask, when driven out of all public employment, find refuge somewhere? Certainly it will. In private employments and in employments paid by public companies. Barristers, solicitors, doctors, business men, manufacturers and authors are not paid by the state, nor are engineers, mechanics, railway employees; and so far from their efficiency being a bar to their employment, it is their most valuable asset. When a man consults his lawyer or his medical adviser he obviously has no interest in their politics, and when a railway company chooses an engineer, it enquires into his qualifications and ability and is quite indifferent as to whether his political views coincide with the general mentality of the people.
It is for this reason, or at least partly for this reason, that democracy tries to nationalise all employment, as a step in the direction of the nationalisation of everything. For instance it can partly nationalise the medical profession by establishing appointments for doctors, at relief offices, schools, and lycées. It can also partly nationalise the legal profession by appointing state-paid professors of law.