This Americanism is not very dangerous, in fact it does not matter, in America, where there are very few lay moral philosophers; but it is a very great danger in France, Italy and Belgium where their name is legion.
In every profession, to sum it all up, the root of the evil is this, that we believe that mere dexterity and cunning are incomparably superior to knowledge and that cleverness is infinitely more valuable than sound learning. Those who follow professions believe this, and the lay public that employs the professions is not dismayed by this attitude of the professional class; and so things tend to that equality of charlatanry to which democracy instinctively tends. Democracy does not respect efficiency, but it soon will have no opportunity to respect it; for efficiency is being destroyed and before long will have disappeared altogether. There will soon be no difference between the judge and the suitor, between the layman and the priest, the sick man and the physician. The contempt which is felt for efficiency destroys it little by little, and efficiency, accepting the situation, outruns the contempt that is felt for it. The end will be that we shall all be only too much of one opinion.
[CHAPTER XI.]
ATTEMPTED REMEDIES.
We have sought very conscientiously, and democrats themselves have sought very conscientiously, to find remedies for this constitutional disease of democracy. We have preserved certain bodies, relatively aristocratic, as refuges, we would fain believe, of efficiency. We have preserved for instance a Senate, elected by universal suffrage, not directly, but in the second degree. We have preserved also a Parliament (a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies), a floating aristocracy which is continually being renewed. This is, however, in a sense an aristocracy inasmuch as it stands between us and a direct and immediate government of the people by the people.
These remedies are by no means to be despised, but we recognise that they are very feeble, for the reason that democracy always eludes them. By the care it takes to exclude efficiency, it has made the Chamber of Deputies (with some few exceptions) a body resembling itself with absolute fidelity both in respect of the superficial character of its knowledge and the violence of its prejudices; with the result in my opinion that the crowd might just as well govern directly and, without the intervention of representatives, by means of the plebiscite.
The same thing applies to the Senate, though perhaps in a more direct fashion. The Senate is chosen by the delegates of universal suffrage. These delegates, however, are not chosen by a general universal suffrage where each department would choose four or five hundred delegates, but by the town councillors of each commune or parish. In these communes, especially in the rural communes, the municipal councillors who are by far the most numerous and, with regard to elections, the most influential, are more or less completely dependent on the préfets. The result is that the Senate is, practically, chosen by the préfets, that is, by the Government, as used to be the case under the First and Second Empire. The maker of the constitution made this arrangement for the benefit of his own party, for he upheld authority; and he wanted the Central Government to control the elections of the Senate. It has not turned out as he intended. Vos non vobis, others have profited by his device, as the following considerations will show.
It is well known that in France a deputy belonging to the opposition, though sure of his constituents, and certain to be re-elected indefinitely, who for private reasons wishes to be a senator, is obliged to be civil to the Government in power, to abate his opposition, and to make himself pleasant, if he wishes to avoid failure in his new ambition. It is very inconvenient to have a strong and active opposition in the Senate.