July, 1830, the error of the materialism of the Restoration. To plant
a government in the hearts of a nation it is necessary to bind
INTERESTS to it, not MEN. The government-clerks being led to detest
the administrations which lessened both their salaries and their
importance, treated them as a courtesan treats an aged lover, and gave
them mere work for money; a state of things which would have seemed as
intolerable to the administration as to the clerks, had the two
parties dared to feel each other's pulse, or had the higher salaries
not succeeded in stifling the voices of the lower. Thus wholly and
solely occupied in retaining his place, drawing his pay, and securing
his pension, the government official thought everything permissible
that conduced to these results. This state of things led to servility
on the part of the clerks and to endless intrigues within the various
departments, where the humbler clerks struggled vainly against
degenerate members of the aristocracy, who sought positions in the
government bureaus for their ruined sons.

Superior men could scarcely bring themselves to tread these tortuous
ways, to stoop, to cringe, and creep through the mire of these
cloacas, where the presence of a fine mind only alarmed the other
denizens. The ambitious man of genius grows old in obtaining his
triple crown; he does not follow in the steps of Sixtus the Fifth
merely to become head of a bureau. No one comes or stays in the
government offices but idlers, incapables, or fools. Thus the
mediocrity of French administration has slowly come about.
Bureaucracy, made up entirely of petty minds, stands as an obstacle to
the prosperity of the nation; delays for seven years, by its
machinery, the project of a canal which would have stimulated the
production of a province; is afraid of everything, prolongs
procrastination, and perpetuates the abuses which in turn perpetuate