The Cult of Incompetence Part 6

In the Steinheil case in the same month and year, the jury's verdict involved (1) that no one had been a.s.sa.s.sinated in the Steinheils' house, and (2) that Mme Steinheil was not the daughter of Mme j.a.py. If a verdict were a judgment this would have put an end to all attempts to discover the a.s.sa.s.sins of M. Steinheil and Mme j.a.py, and on the other hand there would have been terrible social complications.

But the verdict of a jury is not a judgment. Why? Because the legislator foresaw the alarming absurdity of verdicts. It is presumed in law that all juries' verdicts are absurd, and experience proves that this is often the case. Juries' verdicts always seem to have been decided by lot like those of the famous judge in Rabelais, and it is proverbial at the law courts that it is impossible to foresee the issue of any case that comes before a jury. It looks as if the jury reasoned thus: "I am a chance judge, and it is only right that my judgment should be dictated by chance."

Voltaire was in favour of the jury system, princ.i.p.ally because he had such a very low opinion of the magistrates of his day, whom he used to compare to Busiris. But, with his usual inconsequence, he takes no pains to conceal the fact that the populations of Abbeville and its neighbourhood were unanimously exasperated against La Barre and D'Etalonde, and the people of Toulouse against Calas, and all of them would have been condemned by juries summoned from those districts as surely as they were by the magisterial Busiris.

The jury system is nothing but a refined example of the cult of incompetence. Society, having to defend itself against thieves and murderers, lays the duty of defending it on some of its citizens, and arms them with the weapon of the law. Unfortunately it chooses for the purpose citizens who do not know how to use the weapon. It then fondly imagines that it is adequately protected. The jury is like an unskilled gladiator entangled in the meshes of his own net.

I need hardly say that democracy with its usual pertinacity is now trying to reduce the jury a step lower, and draw it from the lower instead of the lower middle cla.s.ses. I see no harm in this myself, for in the matter of law the ignorance and inexperience of the lower middle cla.s.s and the ignorance of the working cla.s.s are much the same. I have only mentioned it to show the tendency of democracy towards what is presumably greater incompetence.

Now comes the turn of the _juges de paix_. At present we still have _juges de paix_. Here we have a most interesting example of the way democracy strives after incompetence in matters judicial.

Owing to the expense entailed by an appeal the jurisdiction of a _juge de paix_ is very often final. He ought to be an instructed person with some knowledge of law and jurisprudence. He is therefore usually chosen from men who have a degree in law or from lawyers' clerks who have a certificate of ability. To be quite honest this is but a feeble guarantee.

By the law of July 12th, 1905, the French Senate, anxious to find men of still grosser incompetence, decided that _juges de paix_ might be nominated from those, who, not having the required degree or certificate, had occupied the posts of mayor, deputy-mayor or councillor for ten years.

The object of this decision was the very honest and legitimate one of giving senators and deputies the opportunity of rewarding the electoral services of the village mayors and their a.s.sistants. And remember senators especially are nominated by these officials. Further it was an opportunity not to be missed for applying our principle--and our principle is this: we ask, where is absolute incompetence to be found, for to him who can lay indisputable claim to it we must confide authority.

Now mayors and their a.s.sistants answer this description exactly. They must be able to sign their names, but they are not obliged to know how to read, and eighty per cent. of them are totally illiterate. Their work is done for them very usually by the local schoolmaster. The Senate, therefore, was quite sure of finding among them men absolutely incompetent for the post of _juge de paix_, and it has found what it wanted. Incompetence so colossal deserved an appointment, and an appointment has been given to it.

The magistrature and the powers that be, seem to have been somewhat disturbed by certain consequences of this highly democratic inst.i.tution.

M. Barthou, the Minister of Justice, complained bitterly of the work which this new inst.i.tution caused him. He made the following speech in the Chamber of Deputies: "We are here to tell each other the truth, and, with all the due moderation and prudence that is fitting, I feel it my duty to warn the chamber against the results of the law of 1905. At the present moment I am besieged with applications for the post of _juge de paix_. I need hardly mention that there are some 9,000 of them in my office, because a certain number are not eligible for consideration, but there are in round numbers 5,500 applications which are recommended and examined." (What he means to say is, that these are examined because they have been recommended, for, as is only right, those that are not backed by some political personage are not looked at.) "As the average annual number of vacancies is a hundred and eighty, you will readily see what a quandary I am in. Some of these applications are made with the most extraordinary persistency, I might even call it ferocity, and these invariably come from men who have held the office of mayor or deputy-mayor for ten years, often in the most insignificant places."

The Minister of Justice then read a report made on the subject by a _procureur-general_.

"In this department there are forty-seven _juges de paix_, twenty of whom, as I learn from an enquiry, were mayors at the time of their appointment. It is not to be wondered at that the number of provincial magnates who aspire to the post is on the increase, for it seems to be generally recognised in this department that elective office irrespective of all professional apt.i.tude is the normal means of access to a paid appointment, more especially to that of _juge de paix_. Once they are appointed, the mayors combine both their munic.i.p.al and judicial duties, and their interests lie far more in the commune which they administer than in the district in which they dispense justice and which, without permission, they should never leave. Sometimes these district magistrates will go to any length to obtain moral support from the politicians of the neighbourhood. They extort this as a sort of blackmail given in exchange for the electoral influence which they can bring to bear in their munic.i.p.al capacity. They attach far less importance to being quashed by the bench, than to the eventual support of the deputy. Those who come into their courts are the unfortunate victims of these compromising arrangements which are giving the Republican system a bad name."

I think the Minister of Justice and his _procureur-general_ have very little ground for these lamentations. After all the minister only complains of having 9,000 applications for office. It would surely be quite easy for him, in compliance with the generally recognised principle, to choose those whose incompetence seems to be most thorough, or those who are most influentially supported, according to the prevailing custom.

As for the _procureur-general's_ sarcasms, which he thinks so witty, they are quite delightfully diverting and ingenuous. "It seems to be generally recognised that elective office, irrespective of all professional apt.i.tude, is the normal means of access to a paid appointment." What else does he expect? It is eminently democratic that the marked absence of professional capacity should single a man out for employment. That is the very spirit of democracy. He surely does not think that a man is an elector by reason of his legislative and administrative capacity?

It is likewise essentially democratic that elective office should lead to paid appointments, for the democratic theory is that all office, paid and unpaid, should be elective. Why, this _procureur-general_ must be an aristocrat!

As for the mutual services rendered by the justice, as mayor, to the deputy, and by the deputy to the justice, this is democracy pure and simple. The deputies distribute favours that they may be returned to power; the influential electors put all their interest, both personal and official, at the service of the deputies in order to obtain those favours. They are hand in glove with each other, and form a solid union of interests.

What more does the _procureur-general_ want? Does he want a different system? If he wants another system, whatever else it may be, it will not be democracy, or at least it will not be a democratic democracy. Nor have I any idea what he means when he says the Republican system will get a bad name. The good name of the Republic depends upon its putting into practice every democratic principle; and democratic principles have certainly never been more precisely realised than in the preceding example, which I have had great pleasure in rescuing from oblivion and presenting to the notice of sociologists.

CHAPTER VIII.

EXAMPLES OF INCOMPETENCE.

I have already compared this, our desire to wors.h.i.+p incompetence, to an infectious disease. It has attacked the State at the very core, in its const.i.tution, and it is not surprising that it is spreading rapidly to the customs and to the morals of the country.

The stage, we know, is an imitation of life. Life also, to perhaps an even greater extent, is an imitation of the stage. Similarly laws spring from morals, and morals spring from law. "Men are governed by many things," said Montesquieu, "by climate, religion, laws, precept, example, morals and manners, which act and react upon each other and all combine to form a general temperament."

Morals, more often than not, determine the nature of our laws, particularly in a democracy, which is deplorable, but Montesquieu was right in saying: "Morals take their colour from laws, and manners from morals," for laws certainly "help to form morals, manners" and even "national character." For instance in Rome under the Empire the code of morals was to some extent the result of arbitrary power, as to-day the moral character of the English is to some extent due to the laws and const.i.tution of their country.

We know that by his laws Peter the Great changed if not the character at least the manners and customs of his people.

Custom is the offspring of law, and morals are the offspring of custom.

National character is not really changed, for character, I believe, is a thing incapable of change, but it appears to be changed, and it certainly undergoes some modifications; one set of tendencies is checked, while others are encouraged.

The law abolis.h.i.+ng the right of primogeniture has obviously affected national morals, though it has not otherwise altered national character.

For a peculiar mental att.i.tude is evolved by the constant domination of an elder brother, whose birthright gives him precedence and authority second only to that of the father. In countries where the right of unrestricted testamentary bequests is still maintained, family morals are very different from those which obtain where the child is considered a joint proprietor of the patrimony.

Since the pa.s.sing of the law permitting divorce, a sad but necessary evil, there have been far more applications for divorce than there ever were for separation. Can this be accounted for solely by the fact that formerly it seemed hardly worth while to take steps to obtain the qualified freedom of separation? I think not. For when a yoke is unbearable, efforts to relax it would naturally be quite as strenuous and as unremitting as efforts to get rid of it altogether.

The truth is, I think, that when both civil and ecclesiastical law agreed in prohibiting divorce, people held a different view of marriage; it was looked upon as something sacred, as a tie that it was shameful to break, and that could not be broken except as a last resource and then almost under pain of death. The law permitting divorce was what our forefathers would have called a "legal indiscretion." It has abolished the feeling of shame. Except where there is strong religious feeling, there is now no scruple nor shame in seeking divorce. The old order has pa.s.sed away; modesty has been superseded by a desire for liberty, or for another union. This change has been brought about by a law which was the result of a new moral code; but the law itself has helped to enlarge and expand the code.

Thus democracy extends that love of incompetence which is its most imperious characteristic. Greek philosophers used to delight in imagining what morals, especially domestic morals, would be like under a democracy. They all vied with Aristophanes. One of Xenophon's characters says: "I am pleased with myself, because I am poor. When I was rich I had to pay court to my calumniators, who knew full well that they could harm me more than I could them. Then the Republic was always imposing fresh taxes and I could not escape. Now that I am poor, I am invested with authority; no one threatens me. I threaten others. I am free to come and go as I choose. The rich rise at my approach and give me place.

I was a slave, now I am a king; I used to pay tribute, now the State feeds me. I no longer fear misfortunes, and I hope to acquire wealth."

Plato too is quietly humorous at democracy's expense. "This form of government certainly seems the most beautiful of all, and the great variety of types has an excellent effect. At first sight does it not appear a privilege most delightful and convenient that we cannot be forced to accept any public office however eligible we may be, that we need not submit to authority and that every one of us can become a judge or magistrate as our fancy dictates? Is there not something delightful in the benevolence shown to criminals? Have you ever noticed how, in such a State as this, men condemned to death or exile remain in the country and walk abroad with the demeanour of heroes? See with what condescension and tolerance democrats despise the maxims which we have been brought up from childhood to revere and a.s.sociate with the welfare of the Republic. We believe that unless a man is born virtuous, he will never acquire virtue, unless he has always lived in an environment of honesty and probity and given it his earnest attention. See with what contempt democrats trample these doctrines under foot and never stop to ask what training a man has had for public office. On the contrary, anyone who merely professes zeal in the public interests is welcomed with open arms. It is instantly a.s.sumed that he is quite disinterested.

"These are only a few of the many advantages of democracy. It is a pleasant form of government _in which equality reigns among unequal as well as among equal things_. Moreover, when a democratic State, athirst for liberty, is controlled by unprincipled cupbearers, who give it to drink of the pure wine of liberty and allow it to drink till it is drunken, then if its rulers do not show themselves complaisant and allow it to drink its fill, they are accused and overthrown under the pretext that they are traitors aspiring to an oligarchy; for the people prides itself on and loves the equality that confuses and will not distinguish between those who should rule and those who should obey. Is it any wonder that the spirit of licence, insubordination, and anarchy should invade everything, even the inst.i.tution of the family? Fathers learn to treat their children as equals and are half afraid of them, while children neither fear nor respect their parents. All the citizens and residents and even strangers aspire to equal rights of citizens.h.i.+p.

"Masters stand in awe of their disciples and treat them with the greatest consideration and are jeered at for their pains. Young men want to be on the same terms as their elders and betters, and old men ape the manners of the young, for fear of being thought morose and dictatorial.

Observe too to what lengths of liberty and equality the relations between the s.e.xes are carried. You would hardly believe how much freer domestic animals are there than elsewhere. It is proverbial that little lap-dogs are on the same footing as their mistresses, or as horses and a.s.ses; they walk about with their noses in the air and get out of n.o.body's way."

Aristotle, faithless at this point to his favourite method of always contradicting Plato, has no particular liking, as we have said, for democracy. He does not spare it though he does not imitate Plato's scathing sarcasm.

In the first place, Aristotle is frankly in favour of slavery, as was every ancient philosopher except perhaps Seneca; but he is more insistent on this point than anyone else, for he looks upon slavery, not as one of many foundations, but as the very foundation of society.

He considers artisans as belonging to a higher estate but still as a cla.s.s of "half-slaves." He a.s.serts as an historical fact that only extreme and decadent democracies gave them rights of citizens.h.i.+p, and theoretically he maintains that no sound government would give them the franchise of the city. "Hence in ancient times, and among some nations, the working cla.s.ses had no share in the government--a privilege which they only acquired under the extreme democracy.... Doubtless in ancient times and among some nations the artisan cla.s.s were slaves or foreigners, and therefore the majority of them are so now. The best form of State will not admit them to citizens.h.i.+p...."

He admits that democracy may be considered as a form of government ("...

if democracy be a real form of government...."), and he admits too that "... mult.i.tudes, of which each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together, may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively.... Hence the many are better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for some understand one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole. [Observe that he is still speaking of a democracy in which slaves and artisans are not citizens.] Doubtless too democracy is the most tolerable of perverted governments, and Plato has already made these distinctions, but his point of view is not the same as mine. For he lays down the principle that of all good const.i.tutions democracy is the worst, but the best of bad ones." But still Aristotle cannot help thinking that democracy is a sociological mistake "... It must be admitted that we cannot raise to the rank of citizens all those, even the most useful, who are necessary to the existence of the State."

Democracy has this drawback that it cannot const.i.tutionally retain within itself and encourage eminent men. In a democracy "if there be some one person or more than one, although not enough to make up the whole complement of a State, whose virtue is so pre-eminent that the virtues or the capacity of all the rest admit of no comparison with his or theirs, he or they can be no longer regarded as part of a State; for justice will not be done to the superior, if he is reckoned only as the equal of those who are so far inferior to him in virtue and in political capacity. Such an one may truly be deemed a G.o.d among men. Hence we see that legislation is necessarily concerned only with those who are equal in birth and in power; and that for men of pre-eminent virtue there is no law--they are themselves a law. Anyone would be ridiculous who attempted to make laws for them: they would probably retort what, in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the hares--'where are your claws?'--when in the council of the beasts the latter began haranguing and claiming equality for all. And for this reason democratic States have inst.i.tuted ostracism; equality is above all things their aim, and therefore they ostracise and banish from the city for a time those who seem to predominate too much through their wealth, or the number of their friends, or through any other political influence. Mythology tells us that the Argonauts left Heracles behind for a similar reason; the s.h.i.+p Argo would not take him because she feared that he would have been too much for the rest of the crew."

Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, asked Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, one of the seven sages of Greece, for advice on the art of government. Periander made no reply but proceeded to bring a field of corn to a level by cutting off the tallest ears. "This is a policy not only expedient for tyrants or in practice confined to them, but equally necessary in oligarchies and democracies. Ostracism is a measure of the same kind, which acts by disabling and banis.h.i.+ng the most prominent citizens."

This is what we may call a const.i.tutional necessity for the democracy.

To be quite honest, it is not always obliged to cut off the ears of corn. It has a simpler method. It can systematically prevent any man who betrays any superiority whatsoever, either of birth, fortune, virtue or talent, from obtaining any authority or social responsibility. It can "send to Coventry." I have often pointed out that under the first democracy Louis XVI was guillotined for having wished to leave the country, while under the third democracy his great-nephews were exiled for wis.h.i.+ng to remain in it. Ostracism is, in these instances, still feeling its way, and its action is contradictory because it has not made up its mind. This will continue till it has been reduced to a science, when it will contrive to level, by one method or another, every individual eminence, great and small, that dares to vary by the merest fraction from the regulation standards. This is ostracism, and ostracism, so to speak, is a physiological organ of democracy. Democracy by using it mutilates the nation, without it democracy would mutilate itself.

Aristotle often tries to solve the problem of the eminent man. "Good men," he says, "differ from any individual of the many, as the beautiful are said to differ from those who are not beautiful, and works of art from realities, because in them the scattered elements are combined....

Whether this principle can apply to every democracy and to all bodies of men is not clear.... But there may be bodies of men about whom our statement is nevertheless true. And if so, the difficulty which has been already raised--viz., what power should be a.s.signed to the ma.s.s of freemen and citizens--is solved. There is still a danger in allowing them to share the great offices of State, for their folly will lead them into error and their dishonesty into crime. But there is a danger also in not letting them share, for a State in which many poor men are excluded from office will necessarily be full of enemies. The only way of escape is to a.s.sign to them some deliberative and judicial functions.... But each individual left to himself, forms an imperfect judgment."

It is not only the eminent man that is the thorn in the flesh of democracies, but every form of superiority, whether individual or collective, which exists outside the State and the Government.

If we recollect that Aristotle coupled extreme democracy with tyranny, it will be interesting to recall his summary of the "ancient prescriptions for the preservation of a tyranny...." "The tyrant should lop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit: he must not allow common meals, clubs, education and the like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire either courage or confidence among his subjects; he must prohibit literary a.s.semblies or other meetings for discussion, and he must take every means to prevent people from knowing one another (for acquaintance begets mutual confidence)." Aristotle's conclusions are subjectively aristocratic: "In the perfect State there would be great doubts about the use of ostracism, not when applied to excess in strength, wealth, popularity or the like, but when used against some one who is pre-eminent in virtue. What is to be done with him? Mankind will not say that such an one is to be expelled and exiled; on the other hand he ought not to be a subject, that would be as if men should claim to rule over Zeus on the principle of rotation of office. The only alternative is that all should joyfully obey such a rule, according to what seems to be the order of nature, and that men like him should be kings in their State for life." But when he speaks objectively, Aristotle comes to another conclusion, which we shall have occasion to mention later on.

Among moderns, Rousseau declared that he was not a democrat, and he was right, because by democracy he meant the Athenian system of direct government, of which he did not for an instant approve. In the "Social Contract" he has drawn up a most detailed scheme, which, in spite of some contradictions and obscure pa.s.sages, is an exact description of democracy as we understand the word; but still we cannot tell if he is actually a democrat, because we do not know what he means by "citizens,"

whether he means everybody or only one cla.s.s, though that a numerous one. Rousseau has written more fully than anyone else, not so much of the influence of democracy on morals, as of the _coincidence_ between democracy and good morals. Equality, frugality and simplicity can all be found, according to Rousseau, in States where there is neither royalty nor aristocracy nor plutocracy. As I understand it, his meaning is that the same virtue which makes certain nations love equality, frugality and simplicity is also productive of a form of government which excludes aristocracy, plutocracy and royalty. If you have simplicity, frugality and equality, you will probably live in a republic that is democratic or virtually democratic. This is, I think, the clearest and most impartial summary that we can make of Rousseau's doctrine, which, though set forth in rigid formulae, is still extremely vague.