t_, the engineer-in-chief, or the
_procureur-general_.

We note then, in the first place, how everything concurs to make the
representative of the popular will as incompetent as he is omnipotent.
Incompetent he undoubtedly is, as we have already seen, to start with,
and _if he were not so already_, he would certainly become so by reason
of the trade or rather of the miscellaneous assortment of trades which
are thrust upon him. The surest way of making a man incompetent is to
make him Jack-of-all-trades, for then he will be master of none. In the
next place, the representative of the popular will and spirit, besides
his trade of legislator, has to cross-examine ministers and to dictate
to them the details of their duty, that is to say, he has to busy
himself in all home and foreign politics. He has also to administer, by
choosing and watching administrators and by controlling and inspiring
their actions. Without saying anything of the small individual services
which it is his interest to render to his constituents and which his
constituents are by no means backward in demanding, he looks on himself
as responsible for the conduct of things in general. He becomes a sort
of universal foreman, not a man, but a man-orchestra, a busybody, so
busy that he can apply himself to nothing. He cannot study, or think, or
investigate, or, to speak accurately, acquire any sense at all.

If he be efficient in some particular subject, when he enters on his
public career, he becomes hopelessly inefficient in all subjects after a
few years of public life, and then, void of all individuality, he
remains nothing but a public man, that is, a man representing the
popular will and never thinking, or able to think, of anything but how
to make that will prevail.

And, to press the point again, this is all that is wanted of him; for
can you conceive a representative of the popular will, who had somehow
preserved a measure of competence in financial or judicial
administration, who would prefer, before other candidates, not a
political partisan but a man of merit, knowledge and aptitude, and who
would even approve in an administrator not acts of political partiality
but acts that are just and in conformity with the interests of the
state? Why! Such a man would be a detestable servant in the eyes of
democracy.

Yes, and I have known such a man. He was not wanting in intelligence or
wit and he was honest. A lawyer, he was naturally interested in
p