“The rôle of the French Deputy is today largely that of a sort of _chargé d’affaires_ sent to Paris to see that its constituency obtains its share of the favors which the government has for distribution. Instead, therefore, of occupying himself with questions of legislation of interest to the country as a whole, he is engaged in playing the rôle of a mendicant for his petty district. He spends his time in the ante-rooms of the ministers soliciting favors for his political supporters and grants for his arrondissement.” Sometimes the constituents ask the deputy to procure nurses for their families, or to do shopping. Some want appointments as vendors of tobacco; the ministers, to purchase their support, agree to appoint their friends to office, give them decorations and advance them politically. The deputy must look for appropriations for local railroads, repairs for churches, pictures for the exhibition, public fountains, monuments. All the school teachers, tobacconists, road overseers and letter carriers are expected to work for him. (_American Political Science Review_, Vol. 7, p. 617.) An interesting book has recently been published by a member of the French Academy, in which he accuses democracy of having an inevitable tendency to produce inefficiency in government. He testifies that such has been the experience in France. It is in the very spirit of democracy, he says, to favor incompetence in all public officials. (_Cult of Incompetence_, Faguet.) This lowering of the official standards has been observed elsewhere, wherever manhood suffrage obtains. Mr. E. L. Godkin, a distinguished New York publicist, writing some years ago said: “There is not a country in the world living under parliamentary government which has not begun to complain of the quality of its legislators. More and more it is said the work of government is falling into the hands of men to whom even small pay is important and who are suspected of adding to their income by corruption.” (_Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy_, p. 117.)