simplest form, was to revise taxation and lower it 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