collector after six years' service, are not re-elected. Should these officials have deserved and won the confidence of the electors, should familiarity with affairs have made them specially competent and valuable, so much the worse for affairs and the public; they are not to be anchored to their post.[2315] Should their continuance in office introduce into the service a spirit of order and economy, that is of no consequence; there is danger of their acquiring to much influence, and the law sends them off as soon as they become expert and entitled to rule.--Never has jealousy and suspicion been more on the alert against power, even legal and legitimate. Sapping and mining goes on even in services which are recognized as essential, as the army and the gendarmerie.[2316] In the army, on the appointment of a non-commissioned officer, the other non-commissioned officers make up a list of candidates, and the captain selects three, one of whom is chosen by the colonel. In the choice of a sub-lieutenant, all the officers of the regiment vote, and he who receives a majority is appointed. In the gendarmerie, for the appointment of a gendarme, the directory of the department forms a list; the colonel designates five names on it, and the directory selects one of them. For the choice of a corporal, quartermaster or lieutenant, there is, besides the directory and the colonel, another intervention, that of the officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned. It is a system of elective complications and lot-drawings; one which, giving a voice in the choice of officers to the civil authorities and to military subordinates, leaves the colonel with only a third or one-quarter of his former ascendancy. In relation to the National Guard, the new principle is applied without any reservation. All the officers and non-commissioned officers up to the grade of captain are elected by their own men. All the superior officers are elected by the inferior officers. All under-officers and all inferior and superior officers are elected for one year only, and are not eligible for re-election until after an interval of a year, during which they must serve in the ranks.[2317]--The result is manifest: command, in every civil and in every military order, becomes upset; subalterns are no longer precise and trustworthy instruments; the chief no longer has any practical hold on them; his orders, consequently, encounter only tame obedience, doubtful deference, sometimes even open resistance; their execution remains dilatory, uncertain, incomplete, and at length is utterly neglected; a latent and soon flagrant system of disorganization is instituted by the law. Step by step, in the hierarchy of Government, power has slipped downwards, and henceforth belongs by virtue of the Constitution to the authorities who sit at the bottom of the ladder. It is not the King, or the minister, or the directory of the department or of the district who rules, but its municipal officers;