Bureaucracy Part 27

Bixiou [shrugging his shoulders]. "--to be able to define, explain, and a.n.a.lyze precisely what a government clerk is? Do you know what he is?"

Poiret. "I think I do."

Bixiou [twisting the b.u.t.ton]. "I doubt it."

Poiret. "He is a man paid by government to do work."

Bixiou. "Oh! then a soldier is a government clerk?"

Poiret [puzzled]. "Why, no."

Bixiou. "But he is paid by the government to do work, to mount guard and show off at reviews. You may perhaps tell me that he longs to get out of his place,--that he works too hard and fingers too little metal, except that of his musket."

Poiret [his eyes wide open]. "Monsieur, a government clerk is, logically speaking, a man who needs the salary to maintain himself, and is not free to get out of his place; for he doesn't know how to do anything but copy papers."

Bixiou. "Ah! now we are coming to a conclusion. So the bureau is the clerk's sh.e.l.l, husk, pod. No clerk without a bureau, no bureau without a clerk. But what do you make, then, of a customs officer?" [Poiret shuffles his feet and tries to edge away; Bixiou twists off one b.u.t.ton and catches him by another.] "He is, from the bureaucratic point of view, a neutral being. The excise-man is only half a clerk; he is on the confines between civil and military service; neither altogether soldier nor altogether clerk--Here, here, where are you going?" [Twists the b.u.t.ton.] "Where does the government clerk proper end? That's a serious question. Is a prefect a clerk?"

Poiret [hesitating]. "He is a functionary."

Bixiou. "But you don't mean that a functionary is not a clerk? that's an absurdity."

Poiret [weary and looking round for escape]. "I think Monsieur G.o.dard wants to say something."

G.o.dard. "The clerk is the order, the functionary the species."

Bixiou [laughing]. "I shouldn't have thought you capable of that distinction, my brave subordinate."

Poiret [trying to get away]. "Incomprehensible!"

Bixiou. "La, la, papa, don't step on your tether. If you stand still and listen, we shall come to an understanding before long. Now, here's an axiom which I bequeath to this bureau and to all bureaus: Where the clerk ends, the functionary begins; where the functionary ends, the statesman rises. There are very few statesmen among the prefects. The prefect is therefore a neutral being among the higher species. He comes between the statesman and the clerk, just as the custom-house officer stands between the civil and the military. Let us continue to clear up these important points." [Poiret turns crimson with distress.] "Suppose we formulate the whole matter in a maxim worthy of Larochefoucault: Officials with salaries of twenty thousand francs are not clerks. From which we may deduce mathematically this corollary: The statesman first looms up in the sphere of higher salaries; and also this second and not less logical and important corollary: Directors-general may be statesmen. Perhaps it is in that sense that more than one deputy says in his heart, 'It is a fine thing to be a director-general.' But in the interests of our n.o.ble French language and of the Academy--"

Poiret [magnetized by the fixity of Bixiou's eye]. "The French language!

the Academy!"

Bixiou [twisting off the second b.u.t.ton and seizing another]. "Yes, in the interests of our n.o.ble tongue, it is proper to observe that although the head of a bureau, strictly speaking, may be called a clerk, the head of a division must be called a bureaucrat. These gentlemen" [turning to the clerks and privately showing them the third b.u.t.ton off Poiret's coat] "will appreciate this delicate shade of meaning. And so, papa Poiret, don't you see it is clear that the government clerk comes to a final end at the head of a division? Now that question once settled, there is no longer any uncertainty; the government clerk who has. .h.i.therto seemed undefinable is defined."

Poiret. "Yes, that appears to me beyond a doubt."

Bixiou. "Nevertheless, do me the kindness to answer the following question: A judge being irremovable, and consequently debarred from being, according to your subtle distinction, a functionary, and receiving a salary which is not the equivalent of the work he does, is he to be included in the cla.s.s of clerks?"

Poiret [gazing at the cornice]. "Monsieur, I don't follow you."

Bixiou [getting off the fourth b.u.t.ton]. "I wanted to prove to you, monsieur, that nothing is simple; but above all--and what I am going to say is intended for philosophers--I wish (if you'll allow me to misquote a saying of Louis XVIII.),--I wish to make you see that definitions lead to muddles."

Poiret [wiping his forehead]. "Excuse me, I am sick at my stomach"

[tries to b.u.t.ton his coat]. "Ah! you have cut off all my b.u.t.tons!"

Bixiou. "But the point is, /do you understand me/?"

Poiret [angrily]. "Yes, monsieur, I do; I understand that you have been playing me a shameful trick and twisting off my b.u.t.tons while I have been standing here unconscious of it."

Bixiou [solemnly]. "Old man, you are mistaken! I wished to stamp upon your brain the clearest possible image of const.i.tutional government"

[all the clerks look at Bixiou; Poiret, stupefied, gazes at him uneasily], "and also to keep my word to you. In so doing I employed the parabolical method of savages. Listen and comprehend: While the ministers start discussions in the Chambers that are just about as useful and as conclusive as the one we are engaged in, the administration cuts the b.u.t.tons off the tax-payers."

All. "Bravo, Bixiou!"

Poiret [who comprehends]. "I don't regret my b.u.t.tons."

Bixiou. "I shall follow Minard's example; I won't pocket such a paltry salary as mine any longer; I shall deprive the government of my co-operation." [Departs amid general laughter.]

Another scene was taking place in the minister's reception-room, more instructive than the one we have just related, because it shows how great ideas are allowed to perish in the higher regions of State affairs, and in what way statesmen console themselves.

Des Lupeaulx was presenting the new director, Monsieur Baudoyer, to the minister. A number of persons were a.s.sembled in the salon,--two or three ministerial deputies, a few men of influence, and Monsieur Clergeot (whose division was now merged with La Billardiere's under Baudoyer's direction), to whom the minister was promising an honorable pension.

After a few general remarks, the great event of the day was brought up.

A deputy. "So you lose Rabourdin?"

Des Lupeaulx. "He has resigned."

Clergeot. "They say he wanted to reform the administration."

The Minister [looking at the deputies]. "Salaries are not really in proportion to the exigencies of the civil service."

De la Briere. "According to Monsieur Rabourdin, one hundred clerks with a salary of twelve thousand francs would do better and quicker work than a thousand clerks at twelve hundred."

Clergeot. "Perhaps he is right."

The Minister. "But what is to be done? The machine is built in that way.

Must we take it to pieces and remake it? No one would have the courage to attempt that in face of the Chamber, and the foolish outcries of the Opposition, and the fierce denunciations of the press. It follows that there will happen, one of these days, some damaging 'solution of continuity' between the government and the administration."

A deputy. "In what way?"

The Minister. "In many ways. A minister will want to serve the public good, and will not be allowed to do so. You will create interminable delays between things and their results. You may perhaps render the theft of a penny actually impossible, but you cannot prevent the buying and selling of influence, the collusions of self-interest. The day will come when nothing will be conceded without secret stipulations, which may never see the light. Moreover, the clerks, one and all, from the least to the greatest, are acquiring opinions of their own; they will soon be no longer the hands of a brain, the scribes of governmental thought; the Opposition even now tends towards giving them a right to judge the government and to talk and vote against it."

Baudoyer [in a low voice, but meaning to be heard]. "Monseigneur is really fine."

Des Lupeaulx. "Of course bureaucracy has its defects. I myself think it slow and insolent; it hampers ministerial action, stifles projects, and arrests progress. But, after all, French administration is amazingly useful."

Baudoyer. "Certainly!"

Des Lupeaulx. "If only to maintain the paper and stamp industries!

Suppose it is rather fussy and provoking, like all good housekeepers,--it can at any moment render an account of its disburs.e.m.e.nts. Where is the merchant who would not gladly give five per cent of his entire capital if he could insure himself against /leakage/?"

The Deputy [a manufacturer]. "The manufacturing interests of all nations would joyfully unite against that evil genius of theirs called leakage."

Des Lupeaulx. "After all, though statistics are the childish foible of modern statesmen, who think that figures are estimates, we must cipher to estimate. Figures are, moreover, the convincing argument of societies based on self-interest and money, and that is the sort of society the Charter has given us,--in my opinion, at any rate. Nothing convinces the 'intelligent ma.s.ses' as much as a row of figures. All things in the long run, say the statesmen of the Left, resolve themselves into figures.

Well then, let us figure" [the minister here goes off into a corner with a deputy, to whom he talks in a low voice]. "There are forty thousand government clerks in France. The average of their salaries is fifteen hundred francs. Multiply forty thousand by fifteen hundred and you have sixty millions. Now, in the first place, a publicist would call the attention of Russia and China (where all government officials steal), also that of Austria, the American republics, and indeed that of the whole world, to the fact that for this price France possesses the most inquisitorial, fussy, ferreting, scribbling, paper-blotting, fault-finding old housekeeper of a civil service on G.o.d's earth. Not a copper farthing of the nation's money is spent or h.o.a.rded that is not ordered by a note, proved by vouchers, produced and re-produced on balance-sheets, and receipted for when paid; orders and receipts are registered on the rolls, and checked and verified by an army of men in spectacles. If there is the slightest mistake in the form of these precious doc.u.ments, the clerk is terrified, for he lives on such minutiae. Some nations would be satisfied to get as far as this; but Napoleon went further. That great organizer appointed supreme magistrates of a court which is absolutely unique in the world. These officials pa.s.s their days in verifying money-orders, doc.u.ments, roles, registers, lists, permits, custom-house receipts, payments, taxes received, taxes spent, etc.; all of which the clerks write or copy. These stern judges push the gift of exact.i.tude, the genius of inquisition, the sharp-sightedness of lynxes, the perspicacity of account-books to the point of going over all the additions in search of subtractions. These sublime martyrs to figures have been known to return to an army commissary, after a delay of two years, some account in which there was an error of two farthings. This is how and why it is that the French system of administration, the purest and best on the globe has rendered robbery, as his Excellency has just told you, next to impossible, and as for peculation, it is a myth. France at this present time possesses a revenue of twelve hundred millions, and she spends it.

That sum enters her treasury, and that sum goes out of it. She handles, therefore, two thousand four hundred millions, and all she pays for the labor of those who do the work is sixty millions,--two and a half per cent; and for that she obtains the certainty that there is no leakage.

Our political and administrative kitchen costs us sixty millions, but the gendarmerie, the courts of law, the galleys and the police cost just as much, and give no return. Moreover, we employ a body of men who could do no other work. Waste and disorder, if such there be, can only be legislative; the Chambers lead to them and render them legal. Leakage follows in the form of public works which are neither urgent nor necessary; troops re-uniformed and gold-laced over and over again; vessels sent on useless cruises; preparations for war without ever making it; paying the debts of a State, and not requiring reimburs.e.m.e.nt or insisting on security."