Centralization and Bureaucracy.

27

In the first three days of the Provisional Government, Lamartine was truly a great man: he was exactly the man demanded by the crisis; he had all the qualities those sixty hours of "fighting with human beasts" required ;-and it was not till that long agony was passed, and the Government, once fairly seated, was called upon to act, that his profound incapacity and ignorance of political science became apparent. No man spoke more ably or more nobly: no man could have acted more madly, weakly, or irresolutely. He sank at once like a stone. From being the .admiration of Europe-the central object on whom all eyes were turned, he fell with unexampled rapidity into disrepute, obscurity, and contempt; and the entire absence of dignity, manliness, and sense betrayed in his subsequent writings has been astounding and appalling. The words in which he sums up the characteristics of the old Girondins are precisely descriptive of himself: Ils ne savaient faire que deux choses-bien parler, et bien mourir."

The peculiar administrative institutions of France present another obstacle of the most formidable nature to the establishment of a stable republican government in that country. There are two distinct and opposite systems of administration, the municipal or self-governing, and the centralizing or bureaucratic; and the degree of real freedom enjoyed by any nation will depend more on the circumstance which of these systems it has adopted, than on the form of its government or the name and rank of its ruler. The former system prevails in America, in England, and in Norway; the latter is general upon the Continent, and has reached its extreme point in Germany and France. The two systems, as usually understood, are utterly irreconcilable: they proceed upon opposite assumptions; they lead to opposite results. The municipal system proceeds on the belief that men can manage their own individual concerns, and look after their own interests for themselves; and that they can combine for the management of such affairs as require to be carried on in concert. Centralization proceeds on the belief that men cannot manage their own affairs, but that government must do all for them. The one system narrows the sphere of action of the central power to strictly national and general concerns; the other makes this sphere embrace, embarrass, and assist at the daily life of every individual in the community. Out of the one system a republic naturally springs; or, if the form of national government be not republican in name, it will have the same freedom and the same advantages as if it were:-out of the other no republic can arise; on it no republic, if forcibly engrafted, can permanently take root; its basis, its fundamental idea, is despotic.

In no country has the centralizing system been carried so far as in France. In no country does it seem so suitable to or so submissively endured by the inhabitants. In no country is the metropolis so omnipotent in fashion, in literature, and in politics. In none is provincialism so marked a term of contempt. In none has the minister at the centre such a stupendous army of functionaries at his beck, appointed by his choice, and removable at his pleasure. The number of civil officers under the control of the central government in France is 535,000: in England it is 23,000. The functions of these individuals penetrate into every man's home and business; they are cognizant of, and license or prohibit his goings out and comings in, his buildings and pullings down, his entering into, or leaving business, and his mode of transacting it. This system, which in England would be felt to be intolerably meddlesome and vexatious, is (it is in vain to disguise it) singularly popular in France;-it is a grand and magnificent fabric to behold; it dates in its completeness from the Consulate, when the nation first began to breathe freely after the revolutionary storms; and amid all the changes and catastrophes which have since ensued, amid governments overthrown and dynasties chased away, no one has made any serious endeavour to alter or even to mitigate this oppressive and paralyzing centralization. It has evidently penetrated into and harmonizes with the national character. The idea of ruling themselves is one which has not yet reached the French understanding the idea of choosing those who are to rule them is the only one they have hitherto been able to conceive.

Now, this system, and the habits of mind which it engenders, operate in two ways to add to the difficulties of establishing a firm and compact government. In the first place, it deprives the people of all political education; it shuts them out from the means of obtaining political practice or experience; it forbids that daily association of the citizens with the proceedings of the government, from which only skill and efficient knowledge is to be derived. In England and in America, every citizen is trained in vestries, in boards of guardians, in parochial or public meetings, in political unions, in charitable societies, in magistrates' conclaves, to practise all the arts of government and self-government on a small scale and in an humble sphere; so that when called upon to act in a higher function and on a wider stage, he is seldom at a loss. This apprenticeship, these normal schools, are wholly wanting to the Frenchman. The establishment of them and practice in them is an essential preliminary to the formation of any republic that can last. The French have been busy in erecting the superstructure, but have never thought of laying the foundation. The following contrast drawn by a citizen

Municipalism versus Functionarism.

29

of the United States is, in many respects, just and instruc

tive :

"It has never been denied that political institutions are healthful and durable only according as they have naturally grown out of the manners and wants of the population among which they exist. Thus, the inhabitants of the United States, inheriting from their English ancestors the habit of taking care of themselves, and needing nothing but to be left to the government of their own magistrates, have gone on prospering and to prosper in the work of their own hands. Every state, county, city, and town in America, you need not be told, has always been accustomed to manage its own concerns without application to or interference from the supreme authority at the capital. And this self-controlling policy is so habitual and ingrained wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has spread, that it will for ever present an insuperable obstacle to the successful usurpation of undue authority by any individual. The people of the thirteen original transatlantic states, in the construction of a commonwealth, had only to build upon a real and solid foundation made to hand; but in France the reverse of this was the case when in the last century a republic was proclaimed, and continues so now, without any material diminution of the rubbish, which must be swept away before a trustworthy basis can be found for the most dangerous experiment in a nation's history. The executive power, securely ensconced in central Paris, like a sleepless fly-catcher in the middle of his well-spun web, feels and responds to every vibration throughout the artfully organized system, which extends from channel to sea, and from river to ocean. aim has been to keep the departments in leading-strings, and its success to prevent neighbours from leaning only on each other for neutral aid and comfort in every undertaking great or small, and to drive them to the Minister of the Interior as the sole dispenser of patronage. Provincialism has hence become naturally associated with social inferiority, sliding easily into vulgarity; and as vulgarity is often carelessly taken for intellectual incapacity, the consequence is, that the many millions living at a distance from the factitious fountain of power are regarded and treated as children even in matters that most deeply concern their daily comfort. If, for example, a river is to be bridged, a morass drained, or a church erected, more time is lost in negotiating at head-quarters for permission to commence the undertaking than would suffice in England or America to accomplish the same object twice over. Disgusted, doubtless, with all this, and, as too frequently happens, expressly educated by aspiring parents for some official employment, most provincials of distinguished talents, instead of honourably addressing themselves for advancement, as is the custom in the United States, to their own immediate communities, hasten to the feast of good things, whether within the Elysée or elsewhere, at which they soon learn to take care of themselves, leaving their country, as the motto on their current coin has it, to the 'protection of God.'

Its

"No one ought to feel surprised, then, whenever a revolution hap

pens here, and a republic, the universal panacea which haunts the French brain, is announced, that the people out of Paris, utterly destitute of political training, and without leaders, as they are, should stand agape and helpless as a shipload of passengers in a gale whose ruthless violence has left them without captain or crew. Nor should their helplessness and apparent imbecility be a reproach to their natural intelligence, for the system of centralization, so briefly alluded to above as a curse to the country, has in its long course benumbed their faculties and paralyzed their energies for every sort of action beyond the little circle of a material existence. Neither is this system likely to be soon abandoned, the present Minister of the Interior having very lately, to my certain knowledge, fiercely and firmly resisted every attempt on the part of the Council of State to modify its operation. In the absence, therefore, of the very groundwork whereon to create and sustain a republic, how can such a form of government endure, except while it is kept as at present from toppling over, by the unwilling support of various factions, which preserve it from falling only to prevent an antagonist still more detested from taking its place?"

The second effect of this administrative centralization is to direct all the active, aspiring, discontented spirit which is always fermenting in the community, upon the originating power in the state. The people are passive as regards the administrators, aggressive as regards the government. They are annoyed or insulted by a policeman or a sous-préfet, and they at once, having no means of direct action upon him, the immediate and subordinate agent, vent their indignation on the central power. They have no readier way of avenging themselves on an obnoxious prefect than by upsetting the dynasty which appointed him. When they feel themselves oppressed, unprosperous, or suffering, they go at once to that which the system has taught them to regard as the source of all-the regal palace or the ministerial hotel at Paris: they cashier their rulers, but never dream of changing the system of administration, and consequently never mend their position. The evil remains undiminished; the discontent continues; and all that has been learned is the fatal lesson with what astounding facility governments may be overthrown which have no root in the affections, the habits, the wants, or the character of the people. In England, if a policeman affronts us, we bring him before a magistrate; if an overseer or relieving officer disgusts us, we remember it at the next election of guardians; if a taxgatherer oversteps his powers, we complain to his chief and insist on his dismissal; if refused a hearing we make Parliament itself a party to our grievance; if a magistrate acts oppressively we either expose him, or bring an action against him, secure of impartial justice. But no act of

Reliance on the State.

31

injustice or oppression ever weakens our loyalty to Queen or Parliament, for we know they are not responsible for the faults of their subordinates, since they have given us ample means of self-protection against them.

A third reason which renders this central bureaucracy incompatible with any settled and secure government, except a powerful despotism, deserves much consideration. We have already spoken of the great difficulties thrown in the way of the re-organization of France, by that passion for material wellbeing which is at present so salient a feature in the character of her citizens. These difficulties are enormously enhanced when this material wellbeing is demanded at the hands of the government. Yet this demand is one which every Frenchman thinks himself entitled to make; and for generations successive governments have countenanced the claim. By taking out of the hands of the individual the regulation of his own destiny, and teaching him. to look up to the abstraction called "The State," for guidance, direction, and support, it has sedulously fostered a habit of expecting everything from this supposed omnipotence, and has effectually trodden out that spirit of humble but dignified selfreliance which is the chief source from which material wellbeing can be derived. It has said to its subjects, to quote the words of one who has read deeply the signs of the times, "Ce n'est point à vous, faibles individus, de vous conserver, de vous diriger, de vous sauver vous-mêmes. Il y a tout près de vous un être merveilleux, dont la puissance est sans bornes, la sagesse infaillible, l'opulence inépuisible. Il s'appelle l'état. C'est à lui qu'il faut vous addresser; c'est lui qui est chargé d'avoir de la force et de la prévoyance pour tout le monde; c'est lui qui devinera votre vocation, qui disposera de vos capacités, qui recompensera vos labeurs, qui élevera votre enfance, qui recueillera votre vieillesse, qui soignera vos maladies, qui protégera votre famille, qui vous donnera sans mesure travail, bien-être, liberté."* It is not wonderful, then, that the French should have contracted the habit of asking and expecting everything-even impossibilities-from their government; and of urging their claims with the confidence and audacity of "sturdy beggars ;"-but picture to yourself a people "passionné pour le bonheur," and trained to look for this bonheur at the hands of a government which has taught them to demand it, but has no power to bestow it, and then ask yourself what chance of success or permanence can a republic so situated have?

Republicanism and bureaucracy are incompatible existences. You may call your state a republic if you will-you may modify

* Emile Saisset.