ive
than those I confer separately on ten persons in whom I place the most
confidence--to my legal adviser who looks after my fortune, to the
teacher of my children, to the physician who cares for my health, to
the confessor who directs my conscience, to friends who are to serve as
executors of my last will and testament, to seconds in a duel who decide
on my life, on the was of my blood and who guard my honor. Without
reference to the deplorable farce, so often played around the
ballot-box, or to the forced and distorted elections which put a
contrary interpretation on public sentiment, or to the official lies
by which, at this very moment, a few fanatics and madmen, who represent
nobody but themselves, assume to represent the nation,[2214] measure
what degree of confidence I may have, even after honest elections,
in mandatories who are thus chosen! Frequently, I have voted for the
defeated candidate; in which case I am represented by the other who I
did not want for a representative. In voting for the elected candidate,
I did it because I knew of no better one, and because his opponent
seemed to me worse. I have only seen him one time out of four and then
fleetingly, at odd moment; I scarcely knew more of him than the color
of his coat, the tone of his voice, and the way he has of thumping
his breast. All I know of him is through his "platform," vague and
declamatory, through editorials, and through drawing-room, coffee-house,
or street gossip. His title to my confidence is of the flimsiest and
shallowest kind; there is nothing to substantiate to me his integrity
or competency; he has no diploma, and no one to endorse him as has a
private tutor; he has no guarantee from the society to which he belongs,
like the physician, the priest or the lawyer. With references as poor as
these I should hesitate to recruit him even as a domestic. And all the
more because the class from which I am obliged to take him is almost
always that of politicians, a suspicious class, especially in countries
in which universal suffrage prevails. This class is not recruited
among the most independent, the ablest, and the most honest, but among
voluble, scheming men, zealous charlatans, who for want of perseverance,
having failed in private careers, in situations where one is watched too
closely and too nicely weighed in the balance, have selected roles in
which the want of scrupulousness and discretion is a force instead of a
weakness; to their i