The multitude of offices presented and expected vacancies "has excited the thirst for power, stimulated self-esteem, and fired the hopes of men the most inept.

An fierce, gross presumption has freed the ignorant and the foolish of any feeling of modesty or incompetence; they have deemed themselves capable of everything because the law awards public office simply to the able.

Everybody had a perspective glimpse of gratified ambition; the soldier dreamt only of displacing the officer, the officer of becoming general, the clerk of supplanting the head administrator, the lawyer of yesterday of the supreme court, the cure of becoming bishop, the most frivolous litterateur of seating himself on the legislative bench.

Places and positions, vacant due to the promotion of so many parvenus, provided in their turn a vast career to the lower classes.

Seeing a public functionary issue out of nothingness, where is the shoeblack whose soul would not stir with ambition ?"--This new sentiment must be taken into account: for, whether reasonable or not, it is going to last, maintain its energy, stimulate men with extraordinary force[3320] and become one of the great incentives of will and action.
Henceforth, government and administration are to become difficult matters; the forms and plans of the old social architecture are no longer applicable; like construction is not possible with materials of a different kind, whether with stable or unstable materials, with men who do not dream of quitting their condition or with men who think of nothing but that.
In effect, whatever vacancy may occur, each aspirant thinks himself fit for it, and only one of the aspirants can obtain it.