Bureaucracy | Page 7

in a way that
should not diminish the revenues of the State, and to obtain, from a
budget equal to the budgets which now excite such rabid discussion,
results that should be two-fold greater than the present results. Long
practical experience had taught Rabourdin that perfection is brought
about in all things by changes in the direction of simplicity. To
economize is to simplify. To simplify means to suppress unnecessary
machinery; removals naturally follow. His system, therefore, depended
on the weeding out of officials and the establishment of a new order of
administrative offices. No doubt the hatred which all reformers incur
takes its rise here. Removals required by this perfecting process, always
ill-understood, threaten the well-being of those on whom a change in
their condition is thus forced. What rendered Rabourdin really great
was that he was able to restrain the enthusiasm that possesses all
reformers, and to patiently seek out a slow evolving medium for all
changes so as to avoid shocks, leaving time and experience to prove the
excellence of each reform. The grandeur of the result anticipated might
make us doubt its possibility if we lose sight of this essential point in
our rapid analysis of his system. It is, therefore, not unimportant to
show through his self-communings, however incomplete they might be,
the point of view from which he looked at the administrative horizon.
This tale, which is evolved from the very heart of the Civil Service,

may also serve to show some of the evils of our present social customs.
Xavier Rabourdin, deeply impressed by the trials and poverty which he
witnessed in the lives of the government clerks, endeavored to ascertain
the cause of their growing deterioration. He found it in those petty
partial revolutions, the eddies, as it were, of the storm of 1789, which
the historians of great social movements neglect to inquire into,
although as a matter of fact it is they which have made our manners and
customs what they are now.
Formerly, under the monarchy, the bureaucratic armies did not exist.
The clerks, few in number, were under the orders of a prime minister
who communicated with the sovereign; thus they directly served the
king. The superiors of these zealous servants were simply called head-
clerks. In those branches of administration which the king did not
himself direct, such for instance as the "fermes" (the public domains
throughout the country on which a revenue was levied), the clerks were
to their superior what the clerks of a business-house are to their
employer; they learned a science which would one day advance them to
prosperity. Thus, all points of the circumference were fastened to the
centre and derived their life from it. The result was devotion and
confidence. Since 1789 the State, call it the Nation if you like, has
replaced the sovereign. Instead of looking directly to the chief
magistrate of this nation, the clerks have become, in spite of our fine
patriotic ideas, the subsidiaries of the government; their superiors are
blown about by the winds of a power called "the administration," and
do not know from day to day where they may be on the morrow. As the
routine of public business must go on, a certain number of
indispensable clerks are kept in their places, though they hold these
places on sufferance, anxious as they are to retain them. Bureaucracy, a
gigantic power set in motion by dwarfs, was generated in this way.
Though Napoleon, by subordinating all things and all men to his will,
retarded for a time the influence of bureaucracy (that ponderous curtain
hung between the service to be done and the man who orders it), it was
permanently organized under the constitutional government, which was,
inevitably, the friend of all mediocrities, the lover of authentic
documents and accounts, and as meddlesome as an old tradeswoman.

Delighted to see the various ministers constantly struggling against the
four hundred petty minds of the Elected of the Chamber, with their ten
or a dozen ambitious and dishonest leaders, the Civil Service officials
hastened to make themselves essential to the warfare by adding their
quota of assistance under the form of written action; they created a
power of inertia and named it "Report." Let us explain the Report.
When the kings of France took to themselves ministers, which first
happened under Louis XV., they made them render reports on all
important questions, instead of holding, as formerly, grand councils of
state with the nobles. Under the constitutional government, the
ministers of the various departments were insensibly led by their
bureaus to imitate this practice of kings. Their time being taken up in
defending themselves before the two Chambers and the court, they let
themselves be guided by the leading-strings of the Report. Nothing
important was ever brought