olitics. For local reasons he had failed to be elected as deputy or as
senator. Tired of fighting, he obtained a judicial appointment by the
influence of his political friends. He became president of court. A case
was brought before him where the accused, a person not perhaps of
altogether blameless life, was clearly not guilty of any indictable
offence. The accused, however, a former _prefet_, appointed by a
government now become very unpopular, and known as a reactionary and an
aristocrat, was pursued by the animosity of the whole democratic
population of the town and province. The president, in the face of
openly expressed hostility in court, acquitted him. In the evening the
president remarked, not without a touch of humour: "There, that serves
them right for not making me a senator!" In other words: "If they had
accepted me as a politician, they would have made me a fool, or at
least paralysed my efficiency. But they would not have it; so here I am,
a man who knows the law and applies it. So much the worse for them!"

"By making a man a slave Zeus took from him half his soul." So Homer. By
making a man a politician, Demos takes from him his whole soul, and in
omitting to make him a politician, it is foolish enough to leave him his
soul.

This is why Demos hates a permanent civil service. An irremovable
magistrate or functionary is a man whom the constitution sets free from
the grip of the populace. An irremovable official is a man enfranchised,
a free man. Demos does not love free men.

This will explain why in every nation where it is paramount, democracy
suspends from time to time the irremovable independent official element
wherever it is found. The object is nominally to clarify and filter the
_personnel_ of the official world; but really it is intended to teach
the officials whom it spares, that their permanence is only very
relative and that, like every one else, they have to reckon with the
sovereignty of the people which will turn and rend them if they
venture to be too independent.

According to the constitution of 1873 there were irremovable senators in
France. In the interest of good government, this was perhaps a sound
arrangement. The irremovable senators, in the scheme of the
constitution, were intended to be, and in fact were, political and
administrative veterans from whose knowledge, efficiency and experience
their colleagues were to profit. The plan, from this point of view,
might have worked