The Revolution provides an internal outlet and an unlimited
career.—Effect of this.—Exigencies and pretensions of the
modern man.—Theoretical rule of selection among rivals.
—Popular suffrage raised to be lord and judge.—Consequence
of its verdict.—Unworthiness of its choice.
But the Revolution arrived and the ambitions which, under the ancient Régime, found a field abroad or cooled down at home, arose on the natal soil and suddenly expanded beyond all calculation. After 1789, France resembles a hive in a state of excitement; in a few hours, in the brief interval of an August morning, each insect puts forth two huge wings, soars aloft and "all whirl together pell-mell;" many fall to the ground half cut to pieces and begin to crawl upward as before; others, with more strength or with better luck, ascend and glitter on the highways of the atmosphere.—Every great highway and every other road is open to everybody through the decrees of the Constituent-Assembly, not only for the future, but even immediately. The sudden dismissal of the entire ruling staff, executive, or consultative, political, administrative, provincial, municipal, ecclesiastical, educational, military, judicial and financial, summon to take office all who covet it and who have a good opinion of themselves. All previously existing conditions, birth, fortune, education, old family and all apprenticeships, customs and ways which retard and limit advancement, are abolished: There are no longer any guarantees or sponsors; all Frenchmen are eligible to all employments; all grades of the legal and social hierarchy are conferred by a more or less direct election, a suffrage becoming more and more popular, by a mere numerical majority. Consequently, in all branches of the government under central or local authority and patronage, there is the installation of a new staff of officials. The transposition which everywhere substitutes the old inferior to the old superior, is universal,[3319] "lawyers for judges, bourgeois for statesmen, former plebeians for former nobles, soldiers for officers, officers for generals, curés for bishops, vicars for curés, monks for vicars, stock-jobbers for financiers, self-taught persons for administrators, journalists for publicists, rhetoricians for legislators, and the poor for the rich." A sudden jump from the bottom to the top of the social ladder by a few, from the lowest to the highest rung, from the rank of sergeant to that of major-general, from the condition of a pettifogger or starving newspaper-hack to the possession of supreme authority, even to the effective exercise of omnipotence and dictatorship—such is the capital, positive, striking work of the Revolution.
At the same time, and as an after-effect, a revolution is going on in minds and the moral effect of the show is greater and more lasting than the events themselves. The minds have been stirred to their very depths; stagnant passions and slumbering pretensions are aroused. The multitude of offices presented and expected vacancies "has excited the thirst for power, stimulated self-esteem, and fired the hopes of men the most inept. An fierce, gross presumption has freed the ignorant and the foolish of any feeling of modesty or incompetence; they have deemed themselves capable of everything because the law awards public office simply to the able. Everybody had a perspective glimpse of gratified ambition; the soldier dreamt only of displacing the officer, the officer of becoming general, the clerk of supplanting the head administrator, the lawyer of yesterday of the supreme court, the curé of becoming bishop, the most frivolous littérateur of seating himself on the legislative bench. Places and positions, vacant due to the promotion of so many parvenus, provided in their turn a vast career to the lower classes. Seeing a public functionary issue out of nothingness, where is the shoeblack whose soul would not stir with ambition?"—This new sentiment must be taken into account: for, whether reasonable or not, it is going to last, maintain its energy, stimulate men with extraordinary force[3320] and become one of the great incentives of will and action. Henceforth, government and administration are to become difficult matters; the forms and plans of the old social architecture are no longer applicable; like construction is not possible with materials of a different kind, whether with stable or unstable materials, with men who do not dream of quitting their condition or with men who think of nothing but that.
In effect, whatever vacancy may occur, each aspirant thinks himself fit for it, and only one of the aspirants can obtain it. Accordingly some rule of preference must be adopted outside of the opinion that each candidate entertains of himself. Accordingly, at a very early date, one was established, and there could be no better one, namely, that, among the competitors for the place, the most competent to fill it should be chosen. Unfortunately, the judge, ordinary, extraordinary and supreme, instituted to decide in this case, was the plurality of male, adult Frenchmen, counted by heads, that is to say a collective being in which the small intelligent, élite body is drowned in the great rude mass; of all juries, the most incompetent, the easiest duped and misled, the least able to comprehend the questions laid before it and the consequences of its answer; the worst informed, the most inattentive, the most blinded by preconceived sympathies or antipathies, the most willingly absent, a mere flock of enlisted sheep always robbed or cheated out of their vote, and whose verdict, forced or simulated, depended on politicians beforehand, above and below, through the clubs as well as through the revolutionary government, the latter, consequently, maneuvering in such a way as to impose itself along with their favorites on the choice of the French people. Between 1792 and 1799, the republican official staff just described is thus obtained.—It is only in the army where the daily and keen sense of a common physical and mortal danger ends in dictating the choice of the best, and raises tried merit to the highest rank; and yet it must be noted that Jacobin infatuation bore down as rigorously on the army as elsewhere and on two occasions: at the outset through the election of a superior officer conferred on subordinates, which handed rank over to the noisy disputants and intemperate intriguers of the mess-room; and again during the Reign of Terror, and even later,[3321] in the persecution or dismissal of so many patriotic and deserving officers, which led Gouvion-Saint-Cyr and his comrades, through disgust, to avoid or decline accepting high rank, in the scandalous promotion of club brawlers and docile nullities, in the military dictatorship of the civil proconsuls, in the supremacy conferred on Léchelle and Rossignol, in the subordination forced on Kléber and Marceau, in the absurd plans of a demagogue with huge epaulettes like Cartaux,[3322] in the grotesque orders of the day issued by a swaggering inebriate like Henriot,[3323] in the disgrace of Bonaparte, and in the detention of Hoche.—In the civil order of things, it was worse. Not only was the rule of regulating promotion by merit not recognized but it was applied in an inverse sense. In the central government as in the local government, and from top to bottom of the hierarchy, from the post of minister of foreign affairs down to that of president of a petty revolutionary committee, all offices were for the unworthy. Their unfitness kept on increasing inasmuch as incessant weeding out worked against them, the functionary, degraded by his work, growing worse along with his function.—Thus the constitutional rights of merit and capacity ended in the practical privilege of incapacity and demerit. And in the allotment of grades and social advantages, distributive justice had given way to distributive injustice, while practice, contrary to theory, instituted permanently, on the one hand, the exclusion or retirement of competent, instructed, expert, well-bred, honorable and respected men and, on the other hand, brought forward illiterate, inept and rude novices, coarse and vulgar brutes, common blackguards, men used up or of tarnished reputations, rogues ready for anything, fugitives from justice, in short the adventurers and outcasts of every kind and degree.[3324] The latter, owing their success to perversion or lack of conscientiousness, derived their principal title from their vigorous fists and a fixed determination to hold on to their places as they had obtained them, that is to say by main force and by the murder or exile of their rivals.—Evidently, the staff of officials which the Declaration of Human Rights had promised was not the staff on duty ten years later there was a lack of experience.[3325] In 1789, careers were open to every ambition; down to 1799, the rivalry of ambitions had simply produced a wild uproar and a brutal conquest. The great modern difficulty remained: how to discipline the competition and to find an impartial judge, an undisputed arbitrator of the competition.
IV. Napoleon, Judge-Arbitrator-Ruler.
Napoleon as judge of competition.—Security of his seat.
—Independence of his decisions.—Suppression of former
influences and end of monarchical or democratic intrigues.
—Other influences against which he is on guard.—His favorite
rule.—Estimate of candidates according to the kind and
amount of their useful labor.—His own competency.—His
perspicacity.—His vigilance.—Zeal and labor of his
functionaries.—Result of competition thus viewed and of
functions thus exercised.—Talents utilized and jealousies
disarmed.
Behold him, at last, this judge-arbitrator. On the 8th November, 1799, he appears and takes his seat, and that very evening he goes to work, makes his selections among the competitors and gives them their commissions. He is a military chieftain and has installed himself; consequently he is not dependent on a parliamentary majority, and any insurrection or gathering of a mob is at once rendered abortive by his troops before it is born. Street sovereignty is at an end; Parisians are long to remember the 13th of Vendémaire and the way General Bonaparte shot them down on the steps of Saint-Roch. All his precautions against them are taken the first day and against all agitators whatever, against all opponents disposed to dispute his jurisdiction. His arm-chair as first Consul and afterwards his throne as Emperor are firmly fixed; nobody but himself can undermine them; he is seated definitively and will stay there. Profound silence reigns in the public crowd around him; some among them dare whisper, but his police has its eye on them. Instead of conforming to opinion he rules it, masters it and, if need be, he manufactures it. Alone by himself from his seat on high, in perfect independence and security, he announces the verdicts of distributive justice. Nevertheless he is on his guard against the temptations and influences which have warped the decisions of his predecessors; in his tribunal, the schemes and intrigues which formerly obtained credit with the people, or with the king, are no longer in vogue; from now on, the profession of courtier or of demagogue is a poor one.—On the one hand, there is no success, as formerly under the monarchy, through the attentions of the ante-chamber, through elegant manners, delicate flattery, fashionable drawing-rooms, or valets and women on an intimate footing; mistresses here enjoy no credit and there are neither favorites nor the favored; a valet is regarded as a useful implement; great personages are not considered as extra-ornamental and human furniture for the palace. Not one among them dare ask for a place for a protégé which he is incapable of filling, an advancement which would derange the lists of promotions, a pass over the heads of others; if they obtain any favors, these are insignificant or political; the master grants them as an after-thought, to rally somebody, or a party, to his side; they personally, their ornamental culture, their high-bred tone, their wit, their conversational powers, their smiles and bows—all this is lost on him, or charged to account. He has no liking for their insinuating and discreet ways;[3326] he regards them as merely good domestics for parade; all he esteems in them is their ceremonial significance, that innate suppleness which permits them to be at once servile and dignified, the hereditary tact which teaches them how to present a letter, not from hand to hand, but on the rim of a hat, or on a silver plate, and these faculties he estimates at their true worth.—On the other hand, nobody succeeds, as lately under the Republic, through tribunal or club verbosity, through appeals to principles, through eloquent or declamatory tirades; "glittering generalities," hollow abstractions and phrases made to produce an impression have no effect; and what is better, political ideology, with a solicitor or pleader, is a bad note. The positive, practical mind of the judge has taken in at a glance and penetrated to the bottom of arguments, means and valid pretensions; he submits impatiently to metaphysics and pettifoggery, to the argumentative force and mendacity of words.—This goes so far that he distrusts oratorical or literary talent; in any event when he entrusts active positions or a part in public business then he takes no note of it. According to him, "the men who write well and are eloquent have no solidity of judgment; they are illogical and very poor in discussion,"[3327] they are mere artists like others, so many word-musicians, a kind of special, narrow-minded instrument, some of them good solo players, like Fontanes, and who the head of a State can use, but only in official music for grand cantatas and the decoration of his reign. Wit in itself, not alone the wit which gives birth to brilliant expressions and which was considered a prime accomplishment under the old regime, but general intelligence, has for him only a semi-value.[3328] "I am more brilliant[3329], you may say? Eh, what do I care for your intelligence? What I care for is the essence of the matter. There is nobody so foolish that is not good for something—there is no intelligence equal to everything." In fact, on bestowing an office it is the function which delegates; the proper execution of the function is the prime motive in determining his choice; the candidate appointed is always the one who will best do the work assigned him. No factitious, party popularity or unpopularity, no superficial admiration or disparagement of a clique, of a salon, or of a bureau, makes him swerve from his standard of preference.[3330] He values men according to the quality and quantity of their work, according to their net returns, and he estimates them directly, personally, with superior perspicacity and universal competency. He is special in all branches of civil or military activity, and even in technical detail; his memory for facts, actions, antecedence and circumstances, is prodigious; his discernment, his critical analysis, his calculating insight into the resources and shortcomings of a mind or of a soul, his faculty for gauging men, is extraordinary; through constant verifications and rectifications his internal repertory, his biographical and moral dictionary, is kept daily posted; his attention never flags; he works eighteen hours a day; his personal intervention and his hand are visible even in the appointment of subordinates. "Every man called to take part in affairs was selected by him;"[3331] it is through him that they retain their place; he controls their promotion and by sponsors whom he knows. "A minister could not have dismissed a functionary without consulting the emperor, while the ministers could all change without bringing about two secondary changes throughout the empire. A minister did not appoint even a second-class clerk without presenting a list of several candidates to the emperor and, opposite to it, the name of the person recommending him." All, even at a distance, felt that the master's eyes were on them. "I worked," says Beugnot,[3332] "from night to morning, with singular ardor; I astonished the natives of the country who did not know that the emperor exercised over his servitors, however far from him they might be, the miracle of the real presence. I thought I saw him standing over me as I worked shut up in my cabinet."—"Under him," writes Roederer, "there is no man of any merit who, as a reward for long and difficult labor, does not feel himself better compensated by a new task than by the most honorable leisure." Never did positions less resemble sinecures. Never was the happiness of successful candidates or the misery of unsuccessful candidates better justified. Never the compliance, the difficulty, the risks of a required task have been compensated more fairly by the enjoyment of the allocated rewards nor moderated the bitterness of the frustrated pretensions.[3333] Never were public functions assigned or fulfilled in a way to better satisfy the legitimate craving for advancement, the dominant desire of democracy and of the century, and in a way to better disarm the bad passions of democracy and of the century, consisting of an envious leveling, anti-social rancor and the inconsolable regrets of the man who has failed. Never did human competition encounter a similar judge, so constant, so expert and so justified.—He is himself conscious of the unique part he plays. His own ambition, the highest and most insatiate of all, enables him to comprehend the ambition of others; to place everywhere the man who suits the post in the post which suits the man—this is what he has done for himself and what he does for others. He knows that in this lies his power, his deep-seated popularity, his social utility.
"Nobody," says Napoleon,[3334] "is interested in overthrowing a government in which all the deserving are employed."
Then, again, comes his significant exclamation at the end, his summary of modern society, a solemn grandiose figure of speech found in the legendary souvenirs of a glorious antiquity, a classic reminiscence of the noble Olympian games,