Let us consider the other series of abuses, and the way in which the State performs the service of the corporate bodies it supplants.

In the first place there is a chance that, sooner or later, it will shirk this work, for this new service is more or less costly, and, sooner or later, it seems too costly.—Undoubtedly the State has promised to defray expenses; sometimes even, like the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, the revenues for this having been confiscated, it has to furnish an equivalent; it is bound by contract to make good the local or special sources of revenue which it has appropriated or dried up, to furnish in exchange a supply of water from the grand central reservoir, the public treasury.—But if water becomes low in this reservoir, if the taxes in arrears stop the regular supply, if a war happens to open a large breach in it, if the prodigality and incapacity of the rulers, multiply its fissures and leaks, then there is no money on hand for accessory and secondary services. The State, which has adopted this service drops it: we have seen under the Convention and the Directory how, having taken the property of all corporations, provinces, and communes, of institutions of education, art, and science, of churches, hospitals, and asylums, it performed their functions; how, after having been a despoiler and a robber, it became insolvent and bankrupt; how its usurpation and bankruptcy ruined and then destroyed all other services; how, through the double effect of its intervention and desertion, it annihilated in France education, worship, and charity; why the streets in the towns were no longer lighted nor swept; why, in the provinces, roads went to decay, and dikes crumbled; why schools and churches stood empty or were closed; why, in the asylum and in the hospital, foundlings died for lack of milk, the infirm for lack of clothing and food, and the sick for lack of broth, medicines, and beds.2205

In the second place, even when the State respects a service or provides the means for it, there is a chance that it will pervert this simply because it comes under its direction.—When rulers lay their hands on an institution it is almost always for the purpose of making something out of it for their own advantage and to its detriment: they render everything subordinate to their interests or theories, they put some essential piece or wheel out of shape or place; they derange its action and put the mechanism out of order; they make use of it as a fiscal, electoral, or doctrinal engine, as a reigning or sectarian instrument.—Such, in the eighteenth century, was the ecclesiastical staff with which we are familiar,2206 court bishops, drawing-room abbÉs imposed from above on their diocese or their abbey, non-residents, charged with functions which they do not fulfill, largely-paid idlers, parasites of the Church, and, besides all this, worldly, gallant, often unbelievers, strange leaders of a Christian clergy and which, one would say, were expressly selected to undermine Catholic faith in the minds of their flocks, or monastic discipline in their convents.—Such, in 1791,2207 is the new constitutional clergy, schismatic, excommunicated, interlopers, imposed on the orthodox majority to say masses which they deem sacrilegious and to administer sacraments which they refuse to accept.

In the last place, even when the rulers do not subordinate the interests of the institution to their passions, to their theories, or to their own interests, even when they avoid mutilating it and changing its nature, even when they loyally fulfill, as well as they know how, the supererogatory (distributive) mandate which they have adjudged to themselves, they infallibly fulfill it badly, at least worse than the special and spontaneous bodies for which they substitute themselves, for the structure of these bodies and the structure of the state are different.—Unique of its kind, alone wielding the sword, acting from above and afar by authority and constraints, the State acts over the entire territory through uniform laws, through imperative and minute regulations, by a hierarchy of obedient functionaries, which it maintains under strict instructions. Hence, it is not adapted to business which, to be well done, needs springs and processes of another species. Its springs, wholly exterior, are insufficient, too weak to support and push undertakings which require an internal motor like private interest, local patriotism, family affections, scientific curiosity, charitable instincts, and religious faith. Its wholly mechanical processes, too rigid and too limited, cannot urge on enterprises which demand of whoever undertakes them delicate and safe handling, supple manipulation, appreciation of circumstances, ready adaptation of means to ends, constant contrivance, the initiative, and perfect independence. On this account the State is a poor head of a family, a poor commercial or agricultural leader, a bad distributor of labor and of subsistence, a bad regulator of production, exchanges, and consumption, a mediocre administrator of the province and the commune, an undiscerning philanthropist, an incompetent director of the fine arts, of science, of instruction, and of worship.2208 In all these offices its action is either dilatory or bungling, according to routine or oppressive, always expensive, of little effect and feeble in returns, and always beyond or apart from the real wants it pretends to satisfy. The reason is that it starts from too high a point therefore extending over too vast a field. Transmitted by hierarchical procedures, it lags along in formalism, and loses itself in "red-tape." On attaining its end and object it applies the same program to all territories alike a program devised beforehand in the Cabinet, all of a piece, without experimental groping and the necessary corrections;

* a program which, calculated approximately according to the average and the customary, is not exactly suited to any particular case;

* a program which imposes its fixed uniformity on things instead of adjusting itself to its diversity and change;

* a sort of model coat, obligatory in pattern and stuff, which the government dispatches by thousands from the center to the provinces, to be worn, willingly or not, by figures of all sizes and at all seasons.