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