f competitive examination, which is supposed to be a
guarantee for the ability of those who seek admission into government
service. The object of these examinations, which are extremely detailed
and complicated, is to test the ability of the candidate in every
particular, to give employment to merit and to exclude favouritism.

--You call that an anti-democratic remedy! It is as democratic as well
can be!--

Nay, pardon! It would be anti-monarchical if we lived under a monarchy,
anti-aristocratic if we lived under an aristocracy, and it is
anti-democratic because our lot is cast in a democracy. Competition for
public offices is a sort of co-optation. In fact it is co-optation pure
and simple. When I suggested that the magistracy should be chosen by the
magistrates, that is, the _Cour de Cassation_ by the magistrates and the
magistrates in turn by the _Cour de Cassation_, I was of course accused
of being paradoxical, as is always the case, when one suggests
something contrary to the usual custom. I was, however, only carrying a
little further the principle which is already applied to officials. In a
certain sense and to a large extent officials recruit their numbers by
co-optation.

It is true, they do not actually choose the officials, but they
eliminate the candidates whom they do not wish to have. Examination is
ostracism of the inefficient. The Government, of course, has to decide
who may be candidates, but its selection for employment is limited to
those of whom other officials (the officials who conduct the
examination) can approve. It is in fact co-optation.

The committee of examiners which admits a candidate to St. Cyr appoints
an officer. The committee which admits a candidate to the _Ecole
Polytechnique_ appoints an officer or an engineer. A committee also
which refuses a candidate at either of these places is encroaching on
the National Sovereignty, because it is forbidding the National
Sovereignty to make of this young man an officer or an engineer. This is
co-optation. This is a guarantee of efficiency. Here a wall is raised
against incompetence, and against the jobbery under which incompetence
would profit.

It is hardly necessary for me to add that this co-optation is limited to
a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the
threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecrated
official, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regards
advancement, promo