rred
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, cures for bishops, vicars for cures, 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 cure of becoming
bishop, the most frivolous litterateur 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 energ