In the central government as in the local government, and from top to bottom of the hierarchy, from the post of minister of foreign affairs down to that of president of a petty revolutionary committee, all offices were for the unworthy.

Their unfitness kept on increasing inasmuch as incessant weeding out worked against them, the functionary, degraded by his work, growing worse along with his function .-- Thus the constitutional rights of merit and capacity ended in the practical privilege of incapacity and demerit.

And in the allotment of grades and social advantages, distributive justice had given way to distributive injustice, while practice, contrary to theory, instituted permanently, on the one hand, the exclusion or retirement of competent, instructed, expert, well-bred, honorable and respected men and, on the other hand, brought forward illiterate, inept and rude novices, coarse and vulgar brutes, common blackguards, men used up or of tarnished reputations, rogues ready for anything, fugitives from justice, in short the adventurers and outcasts of every kind and degree.[3324] The latter, owing their success to perversion or lack of conscientiousness, derived their principal title from their vigorous fists and a fixed determination to hold on to their places as they had obtained them, that is to say by main force and by the murder or exile of their rivals .-- Evidently, the staff of officials which the Declaration of Human Rights had promised was not the staff on duty ten years later there was a lack of experience.[3325] In 1789, careers were open to every ambition; down to 1799, the rivalry of ambitions had simply produced a wild uproar and a brutal conquest.

The great modern difficulty remained: how to discipline the competition and to find an impartial judge, an undisputed arbitrator of the competition.
IV.

Napoleon, Judge-Arbitrator-Ruler.
Napoleon as judge of competition .-- Security of his seat.
-- Independence of his decisions .-- Suppression of former influences and end of monarchical or democratic intrigues.
-- Other influences against which he is on guard .-- His favorite rule .-- Estimate of candidates according to the kind and amount of their useful labor .-- His own competency .-- His perspicacity .-- His vigilance .-- Zeal and labor of his functionaries .-- Result of competition thus viewed and of functions thus exercised .-- Talents utilized and jealousies disarmed.
Behold him, at last, this judge-arbitrator.