see how an accomplished
critic, used to a free and active life, could thus describe the
official.

"Every imaginable and real social interest," says Mr. Laing, "religion,
education, law, police, every branch of public or private business,
personal liberty to move from place to place, even from parish to
parish within the same jurisdiction; liberty to engage in any branch of
trade or industry, on a small or large scale, all the objects, in
short, in which body, mind, and capital can be employed in civilised
society, were gradually laid hold of for the employment and support of
functionaries, were centralised in bureaux, were superintended,
licensed, inspected, reported upon, and interfered with by a host of
officials scattered over the land, and maintained at the public
expense, yet with no conceivable utility in their duties. They are not,
however, gentlemen at large, enjoying salary without service. They are
under a semi-military discipline. In Bavaria, for instance, the
superior civil functionary can place his inferior functionary under
house-arrest, for neglect of duty, or other offence against civil
functionary discipline. In Wurtemberg, the functionary cannot marry
without leave from his superior. Voltaire says, somewhere, that, 'the
art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly
can pay for the benefit of the other third'. This is realised in
Germany by the functionary system. The functionaries are not there for
the benefit of the people, but the people for the benefit of the
functionaries. All this machinery of functionarism, with its numerous
ranks and gradations in every district, filled with a staff of clerks
and expectants in every department looking for employment,
appointments, or promotions, was intended to be a new support of the
throne in the new social state of the Continent; a third class, in
connection with the people by their various official duties of
interference in all public or private affairs, yet attached by their
interests to the kingly power. The Beamptenstand, or functionary class,
was to be the equivalent to the class of nobility, gentry, capitalists,
and men of larger landed property than the peasant-proprietors, and was
to make up in numbers for the want of individual weight and influence.
In France, at the expulsion of Louis Philippe, the civil functionaries
were stated to amount to 807,030 individuals. This civil army was more
than double of the military. In Ge