s, special informers and important applicants. If not
restrained by a very strong sentiment of distributive justice and very
great solicitude for the public good he can hardly resist them, and in
general when he takes up his pen it is to write under the dictation of
his Jacobin collaborators.

DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE IN 1889, SUMMARY.

Thus has the institution of the year VIII deviated (The France of the
revolution corrected and decreed by Napoleon), no longer attaining its
object. The prefects, formerly appointed to a department, like a
pacier of the Middle Ages, imposed on it from above, ignorant of local
passions, independent, qualified and fitted for the office, was, during
fifty years, in general, able to remain the impartial minister of the
law and of equity, maintaining the rights of each, and exacting from
each his due, without heeding opinions and without respect to persons.
Now he is obliged to become an accomplice of the ruling faction, govern
for the advantage of some to the detriment of others, and to put into
his scales, as a preponderating weight, every time he weighs judgment,
a consideration for persons and opinions. At the same time, the entire
administrative staff in his hands, and under his eye, deteriorates; each
year, on the recommendation of a senator or deputy, he adds to it,
or sees, intruders there, whose previous services are null, feeble in
capacity and of weak integrity who do poor work or none at all, and who,
to hold their post or get promoted, count not on their merits but on
their sponsors. The rest, able and faithful functionaries of the old
school, who are poor and to whom no path is open, become weary and lose
their energy; they are no longer even certain of keeping their place; if
they stay, it is for the dispatch of current business and because they
cannot be dispensed with; perhaps to-morrow, however, they will cease to
be considered indispensable; some political denunciation, or to give a
political favorite a place, will put them by anticipation on the retired
list. From now on they have two powers to consult, one, legitimate and
natural, the authority of their administrative chiefs, and the other
illegitimate and parasite, consisting of democratic influence from both
above and below. For them, as for the prefect, public welfare descends
to the second rank and the electoral interest mounts upward to the
first rank. With them as with him self-respect, professional honor,
the conscie