The Cult of Incompetence Part 8

The basis of civility and politeness is respect for others and respect for ourselves. As Abbe Barthelemy has very justly remarked: "In the first cla.s.s of citizens is to be found a spirit of decorum which makes it evident that men respect themselves, and a spirit of politeness which makes it evident that they also respect others." This is what Pascal meant by saying that respect is our own inconvenience, and he explains it thus, that to stand when our neighbour is seated, to remove our hat when he is covered, though trifling acts of courtesy, are tokens of the efforts we would willingly make on his behalf if an opportunity of being really serviceable to him presented itself.

Politeness is a mark of respect and a promise of devotion.

All this is anti-democratic, because democracy does not recognise any superiority, and therefore has no sympathy with respect and personal devotion. Respect to others involves a recognition from us that we are of less importance than they, and politeness to an equal requires from us a courteous affectation that we consider him as our superior. This is entirely contrary to the democratic ideal, which a.s.serts that there is no superiority anywhere. As for pretending to treat your equal as though he were your superior, that involves a double hypocrisy, because it requires a reciprocal hypocrisy on the part of your neighbour. You praise his wit, only in order that he may return the compliment.

Without, however, insisting on this point, democracy will argue that politeness is to be deprecated, because it not only recognises but actually creates superiority. It treats an equal as a superior, as though there were not enough discrepancies already without inventing any more. It seems to imply that if inequality did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. It is tantamount to proclaiming that there cannot be too much aristocracy. That is an opinion which democracy cannot endure.

Considered as a promise of future devotion, politeness is equally anti-democratic. The citizen owes no devotion to any person, he owes it only to the community. It is no small matter to style yourself "your most humble servant"; it means that you single out one man from among many others and promise to serve him; it means that you acknowledge in him some natural or social superiority, and according to democracy there are no superiorities, social or natural, and if there were such a thing as natural superiority, nature has no business to allow it. This is tantamount to proclaiming a form of va.s.salage--a thing which is not to be tolerated.

As to the absence of politeness considered as "a means of giving free play to one's feelings," we recognise that in one sense this also is essentially democratic. The democrat is not proud of or pleased with his faults; not at all; only _ex hypothesi_ he does not believe in their existence. A failing is an inferiority of one man in relation to another; the word itself implies it; it means that something is lacking, that one man has a thing which another has not. But all men are equal, therefore, argues the democrat, I have no failing; therefore I need not try to conceal and control my alleged failings, as they are at worst merely mannerisms, and are possibly virtues.

The democrat, in fact, like young men, like most women, and like all human beings who have begun to think but do not think very profoundly, knows his failings and a.s.sumes that they are virtues. This is very natural, for our faults are the most conspicuous parts of our character, and when we are still at the self-satisfied stage it is our faults that we cherish and admire. Consequently, politeness, in that it consists in concealing our faults, is intolerable to a man who is impatient to display qualities that to him appear commendable and worthy. The usual reason why we do not correct our faults is that we mistake them for qualities, and think that any practice which requires their concealment must be quite absurdly tyrannical.

The democrat is therefore profoundly convinced of two things; first, that all men are equal and that there is no such thing as inferiority or failing, and secondly, that what men call faults are really natural characteristics of great interest. He believes that faults are popular prejudices invented by intriguers, priests, n.o.bles and rulers, for their own base purposes to inspire the poor with humility. He looks upon this sense of inferiority as a curb on the people's power, all the more potent that it works from within and has a paralysing effect on its energy. He is persuaded that, from this point of view, politeness is an aristocratic instrument of tyranny.

This explains why, when the wave of democracy swept over France, it brought with it a perfect frenzy of rudeness, all the more curious in a nation remarkable for courtesy. It was an affirmation that, appearances notwithstanding, neither superiorities nor excellences of human character had any real existence.

Rudeness is democratic.

CHAPTER X.

PROFESSIONAL CUSTOMS.

The contempt for efficiency is carried far even in the liberal professions and in professional customs. We all know the story, perhaps a mythical one, of the judge who said to an earnest young barrister who was conscientiously elaborating a question of law: "Now, Mr. So and So, we are not here to discuss questions of law but to settle this business." He did not say this by way of jest; he wished to say: "The courts no longer deliver judgment on the merits of a case according to law, but according to equity and common sense. The intricacies of the law are left to professors, so please when conducting a case do not behave like a professor of law." This theory, which even in this mild form would have horrified the ancients, is very prevalent nowadays in legal circles. It has crept in as an infiltration, as one might call it, from the democratic system.

A magistrate, nowadays, whatever remnant of the ancient feeling of caste he may have retained, certainly does not consider himself bound by the letter of the law, or by jurisprudence, the written tradition; when he is anything more than a subordinate with no other idea of duty than subservience to the Government, he is a democratic magistrate, a Heliast of Athens; he delivers judgment according to the dictates of his individual conscience; he does not consider himself as a member of a learned body, bound to apply the decisions of that body, but as an independent exponent of the truth.

An eccentric, but in truth very significant, example of the new att.i.tude of mind is to be found in the judge, who formally attributed to himself the right to make law and who in his judgments made references, not to existing laws, but to such vague generalities as appealed to him, or to doctrines which he prophesied would _later on_ be embodied in the law.

His Code was the Code of the future.

The mere existence of such a man is of no particular importance, but the fact that many people, even those partially enlightened, took him seriously, that he was popular, and that a considerable faction thought him a good judge, is most significant.

There is another much commoner sign of the times. The worst form of incompetence is perhaps that which allows a man to be competent without realising it, and, in criminal cases at least, this seems to be the normal att.i.tude of the majority of our magistrates.

We should read on this point a very curious pamphlet called _Le Pli Professionnel_ (1909), by Marcel Lestranger, a provincial magistrate. It is very pertinent to our subject. It shows plainly that the magistracy nowadays, both the qualified stipendiaries and the bench of magistrates, has lost all confidence in itself and is terrified of public opinion as represented by newspapers, a.s.sociations, political clubs and the man in the street; the magistrate knows too, or thinks he knows, that promotion depends, not on a reputation for severity as it used to do, but on a reputation for indulgence.

He is confronted in the execution of his duty by forces which are always in coalition against him; the public, almost always favourable to the accused, the press, both local and Parisian, the so-called science of judicial medicine, which is almost always disposed to consider the accused as persons not responsible for their actions. He lives, too, in constant terror of being mixed up in a miscarriage of justice, for miscarriage of justice is now a sort of craze, and with a considerable section of the public every conviction is a miscarriage of justice. And so the magistrate of first instance never dares to sum up severely, and the stipendiary never dares press his interrogations with firmness.

There are exceptions of course; but these exceptions, by the astonishment which they excite, and by the reaction to which they give rise, show sufficiently, indeed conclusively, that they are abnormal, outside the new order of things, outside the new habits of the people.

More often than not the subordinate magistrate, whose business it is to commit the prisoner for trial, acts with timidity and reserve, apologetically attenuating the crime; he leaves loopholes of escape, appeals in audible asides for indulgence, dwells on the uncertainty of evidence. He demands indeed the prisoner's head but lives in terror lest he obtain it.

The fact is what both he and the stipendiary desire is that the affair should be settled by an acquittal, for an affair settled by an acquittal is an affair buried. Stone-dead has no fellow; it is consigned to oblivion. It can never be made the sort of affair which someone is sure to declare is a miscarriage of justice, or which someone, animated by private and political spite or merely for the sake of a jest, can make into a ghost to haunt for ten or even fifteen years the unfortunate magistrate who had to deal with it.

M. Lestranger tells a story which, from all the information I can glean and from what I can remember hearing at the time, is absolutely true and a perfect ill.u.s.tration of thousands of similar cases.

A poacher, aged nineteen, first outraged and then strangled in the woods a peasant woman, the mother of a family. On this occasion there could be no question of a miscarriage of justice or even of any suggestion of such a thing, because the prisoner pleaded guilty. That is a great point. In France every conviction that is not based upon the prisoner's confession is a miscarriage of justice; but when the prisoner pleads guilty there can be no incriminations of this sort, although there might be, for false confessions are not unknown, but nothing of the sort is ever put forward, and the case seemed to be quite straightforward.

But the magistrates were terrified that the prisoner would be condemned to death. The crime was horrible, particularly in the eyes of a village jury, whose wives and daughters were often obliged to work some distance from the village. Moreover, there was a tiresome man, the widower of the victim, thirsting for vengeance, who sang the praises of his wife and brought his weeping son into court while he gave his evidence. The president and the public prosecutor were in despair.

"I have done all I can," said the president to the public prosecutor. "I have made the most of his youth. I have repeated 'only nineteen years of age.' I have indeed done all I can."

"I have done all I can," said the public prosecutor to the president. "I have not said a word about the punishment. I merely accused. I could not plead for the defence. I have done my best."

At the close of the hearing the chief constable was very rea.s.suring to these gentlemen. "He is under twenty and he looked so respectable at the enquiry. It is quite impossible that he should be condemned to death in this quiet village. You will see, he will not be sentenced to capital punishment."

He was not. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty with extenuating circ.u.mstances. The magistrates recovered their tranquillity.

M. Lestranger's facts are supported by figures. Those who commit crimes which excite pity, such as infanticide and abortion, are less and less likely to be prosecuted, and if they are, they are frequently let off, however flagrant the offence. The average number of acquittals during the last twelve years is twenty-six per cent. A magistrate nowadays is a St. Francis of a.s.size.

Either the magistrate does not believe in his own efficiency, or he sacrifices it to his peace of mind, and he cares more for his own peace of mind than for the public safety. The magistracy will soon be no more than a _facade_, still imposing but not at all alarming.

There is already a very serious symptom of how little confidence the crowd has in the wholesome severities of justice; the criminal caught in the act is often lynched or almost lynched, because it is well known that if he is not punished immediately, he is very likely to escape punishment altogether.

--Yet this same crowd, in the form of a jury, is often, almost always, very indulgent.--True, and that is because between the crime and the a.s.sizes there is often an interval of six months. At the date of the crime it is the misfortune of the victim that excites the crowd, at the date of the a.s.size it is the misfortune of the accused. Be this as it may, the practice of lynching amounts to a formal accusation that both magistrates and juries are over indulgent.

The clergy even, who are more tenacious of tradition than any other order in the State, are gradually becoming democratic to this extent, that though by profession teachers of dogmas and mysteries, they now teach only morality. In this way they try to get into closer touch with the poor, and so have a greater hold upon them. Evidently they are not altogether to blame. Only, when they cease to teach dogma and interpret mysteries, they cease to be a learned body or to have the prestige of a learned body. On the other hand they sink to the level of any other philosophy, which teaches and explains morality, and ill.u.s.trates it by sacred examples just as well as any priesthood. The result is that the people say to themselves "What need have we of priests? Moral philosophers are good enough for us."

This Americanism is not very dangerous, in fact it does not matter, in America, where there are very few lay moral philosophers; but it is a very great danger in France, Italy and Belgium where their name is legion.

In every profession, to sum it all up, the root of the evil is this, that we believe that mere dexterity and cunning are incomparably superior to knowledge and that cleverness is infinitely more valuable than sound learning. Those who follow professions believe this, and the lay public that employs the professions is not dismayed by this att.i.tude of the professional cla.s.s; and so things tend to that equality of charlatanry to which democracy instinctively tends. Democracy does not respect efficiency, but it soon will have no opportunity to respect it; for efficiency is being destroyed and before long will have disappeared altogether. There will soon be no difference between the judge and the suitor, between the layman and the priest, the sick man and the physician. The contempt which is felt for efficiency destroys it little by little, and efficiency, accepting the situation, outruns the contempt that is felt for it. The end will be that we shall all be only too much of one opinion.

CHAPTER XI.

ATTEMPTED REMEDIES.

We have sought very conscientiously, and democrats themselves have sought very conscientiously, to find remedies for this const.i.tutional disease of democracy. We have preserved certain bodies, relatively aristocratic, as refuges, we would fain believe, of efficiency. We have preserved for instance a Senate, elected by universal suffrage, not directly, but in the second degree. We have preserved also a Parliament (a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies), a floating aristocracy which is continually being renewed. This is, however, in a sense an aristocracy inasmuch as it stands between us and a direct and immediate government of the people by the people.

These remedies are by no means to be despised, but we recognise that they are very feeble, for the reason that democracy always eludes them.

By the care it takes to exclude efficiency, it has made the Chamber of Deputies (with some few exceptions) a body resembling itself with absolute fidelity both in respect of the superficial character of its knowledge and the violence of its prejudices; with the result in my opinion that the crowd might just as well govern directly and, without the intervention of representatives, by means of the plebiscite.

The same thing applies to the Senate, though perhaps in a more direct fas.h.i.+on. The Senate is chosen by the delegates of universal suffrage.

These delegates, however, are not chosen by a general universal suffrage where each department would choose four or five hundred delegates, but by the town councillors of each commune or parish. In these communes, especially in the rural communes, the munic.i.p.al councillors who are by far the most numerous and, with regard to elections, the most influential, are more or less completely dependent on the _prefets_. The result is that the Senate is, practically, chosen by the _prefets_, that is, by the Government, as used to be the case under the First and Second Empire. The maker of the const.i.tution made this arrangement for the benefit of his own party, for he upheld authority; and he wanted the Central Government to control the elections of the Senate. It has not turned out as he intended. _Vos non vobis_, others have profited by his device, as the following considerations will show.

It is well known that in France a deputy belonging to the opposition, though sure of his const.i.tuents, and certain to be re-elected indefinitely, who for private reasons wishes to be a senator, is obliged to be civil to the Government in power, to abate his opposition, and to make himself pleasant, if he wishes to avoid failure in his new ambition. It is very inconvenient to have a strong and active opposition in the Senate.

It comes back again to this, that we have a Senate not far removed from one elected by universal suffrage.