f sums already voted, in
appointing an office-clerk, in the appointment of an unpaid underling,
who may some day or other take this clerk's place.[4247]--Hence the
spectacle before our eyes: a badly kept establishment in which profusion
and waste render each other worse and worse, where sinecures multiply
and where corruption enters in; a staff of officials becoming more
and more numerous and less and less serviceable, harassed between two
different authorities, obliged to possess or to simulate political
zeal and to neutralize an impartial law by partiality, and, besides
performing their regular duties, to do dirty work; in this staff, there
are two sorts of employees, the new-comers who are greedy and who,
through favor, get the best places, and the old ones who are patient and
pretend no more, but who suffer and grow disheartened; in the building
itself, there is great demolition and reconstruction, architectural
fronts in monumental style for parade and to excite attention, entirely
new decorative and extremely tiresome structures at extravagant cost;
consequently, loans and debts, heavier bills at the end of each year
for each occupant, low rents, but still high, for favorites in the
small rooms and garrets, and extravagant rents for the larger and more
sumptuous apartments; in sum, forced receipts which do not offset the
expenses; liabilities which exceed assets; a budget which shows only
a stable balance on paper,--in short, an establishment with which the
public is not content, and which is on the road to bankruptcy.

*****

[Footnote 4201: Laws of March 21, 1831, and July 18, 1837, June 22,
1833, and May 10, 1838. The municipal electors number about 2,250,000
and form the superior third of the adult masculine population; in the
choice of its notables and semi-notables, the law takes into account
not only wealth and direct taxation but likewise education and services
rendered to the public.--The department electors number about 200,000,
about as many as the political electors. The reporter observes that "an
almost complete analogy exists between the choice of a deputy and the
choice of a department councilor, and that it is natural to confide the
election to the same electoral body otherwise divided, since the object
is to afford representation to another order of interests."]

[Footnote 4202: Laws of July 3, 1848.]

[Footnote 4203: Laws of Aug. 12, 1876, March 28, 1882, and April 5,
1884; law of Aug. 10