Seven hundred and fifty people, every two years
raised to the supreme power, has already produced at least fifteen
hundred bold, acting politicians: a great number for even so great a
country as France. These men never will quietly settle in ordinary
occupations, nor submit to any scheme which must reduce them to an
entirely private condition, or to the exercise of a steady, peaceful,
but obscure and unimportant industry. Whilst they sit in the Assembly,
they are denied offices of trust and profit,--but their short duration
makes this no restraint: during their probation and apprenticeship they
are all salaried with an income to the greatest part of them immense;
and after they have passed the novitiate, those who take any sort of
lead are placed in very lucrative offices, according to their influence
and credit, or appoint those who divide their profits with them.
This supply of recruits to the corps of the highest civil ambition goes
on with a regular progression. In very few years it must amount to many
thousands. These, however, will be as nothing in comparison to the
multitude of municipal officers, and officers of district and
department, of all sorts, who have tasted of power and profit, and who
hunger for the periodical return of the meal.
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