The World in 2000 Years

by Georges Pellerin

  “I am following progress step by step, and I can see, before long, a sudden denouement, a second edition of the great Revolution. The world progresses in lurches. Although individual liberty has suddenly been infused into Europe, many people are still gnawing at the bit under the yoke of autocracy. A new revolution is necessary to confirm the first and level the rest of society.

  “It will be announced by a formidable cataclysm; but it will not be partial, like the first, but universal. From that collision a reformed society will surge forth: that which I can see at this moment.”

  “But out of all the forms of government we have tried,” Hobson interjected, “which is the one that ought to lead us to the objective?”

  “The Republic,” replied Monsieur Landet. “Can you doubt it? All the other forms of government only satisfy the interests of a minority. The Republic, by contrast, is the government of all by all, and that government is exercised by the intermediary of representatives, who, themselves, make and unmake the agents of power. Everyone collaborates in general action, everyone governs, everyone has a say in the matter, and that voice, transmitted by votes, is augmented by other voices, whose ensemble makes the machine of State function.”

  “So the government that we will have in 2000 years is a Republic?”

  “Yes, a Republic, definitively constituted, after an interminable series of upsets occasioned by the ambition, cupidity and hatred of some. Oh, egoism is the deadliest enemy of humanity! It is a Republic, but not a lame Republic formed of the wreckage of fallen regimes, pulled in contrary directions by the competition of parties, disfigured by contradictions, privileges and injustices. It is a solid Republic based on the union of its citizens, on respect for the law, on individual liberty, on equality of rights, on the general interest and, above all, on universal suffrage.

  “No more fits of intrigue and favor. Administrative responsibilities, so sought after in our day as rapid means of acquiring a fortune and honors, are positions of trust, accorded to the most deserving.

  “That Republic is the image of a great Company, funded by shares, based on statutes elaborated by a board of directors and submitted for the approval of the general assembly. The citizens are the shareholders in that company, which is administered on their behalf by employees appointed by them. At the head of those employees is a managing director, equipped with discretionary powers, under the permanent control of a board of directors, itself appointed by the general assembly.

  “The shareholders meet every year. The managing director justifies his actions to it and renders an account of the operations he has carried out, in concert with the board of directors. The general assembly, all-powerful, deliberates on the conduct of the managing director, the senior employees and the board of directors. The parallel is easy to see. The managing director is the President of the Republic; the senior employees are the ministers; the board of directors is the parliament and the general assembly public gatherings.

  “Thus, the government comprises a passive President, active ministers, a responsible parliament and all-powerful public gatherings. Electoral assemblies are held every four years, at town halls, during ordinary assemblies, to proceed with the election of a representative; revisionary assemblies once a year, to assess the representative’s conduct; and extraordinary assemblies in cases of urgency, to invalidate the representative if he has betrayed his mandate.

  “The candidates submit programs to their electors. That program, once admitted, is carefully preserved in the archives of the town hall. It is a sort of profession of faith, which the elected representative is obliged to follow to the letter, under penalty of being relieved of his office at the annual assemblies.

  “His initiative, attenuated by the imperative mandate, remains to him within the measure of the line of conduct he has mapped out, since the mandate is his own work, and since it is on the propositions it contains that the electors have accepted him.

  “If the opinions advertized in the program are the strict expression of his thought, he only owes allegiance to himself; he has only to follow the politics he has indicated, having been put on his guard against the pull of passions.

  “His will is, therefore, perfectly free between the limits he has set for himself. If he strays beyond them, he is a man devoid of logic, stability and conviction, unworthy to represent the fraction of the country that has called on him to defend its interests. It is not on his own account that he governs but on the account of his electors. Party hatred, ambition and complaisance must be effaced before a unique objective: the mission to be fulfilled.

  “The representative only speaks and acts by virtue of the instructions he has received; he is simply the delegate of his electors.

  “In our day, universal suffrage is merely an illusion. Credulous people are dazzled by it, and appoint their representatives on the basis of their marvelous proclamations. As soon as they reach parliament, those representatives do not hesitate to renounce their principles. Party allegiance directs their slightest actions; cupidity and ambition are the objectives of their constant thought, and their electors, who believed what they said, are merely the stepping-stone of their pride. They have no other sanction but their conscience, and the country is condemned to support the punishment of its confidence, without appeal, for six years.

  “With the imperative mandate, deception is no longer possible. It is a contract that binds the representative to the elector, as a lease binds the tenant to the proprietor. No more compromises that annul an election; no more tortuous maneuvers that are not clarified before the annual assemblies. Everything is above board. The electors follow their representatives step by step in the official bulletins. On the day his powers are reviewed, they revoke them or maintain them. The representative recognized as being in default on any point whatsoever is voted out, and a new candidate is elected.

  “With such institutions, the people collaborate effectively in the mechanism of government. They have the upper hand over the ministers and the president, whose actions are examined on a daily basis by the parliament, since the management of the sovereign power is annually submitted to its control.

  “The President is elected by universal suffrage, not by a majority of the representatives. His powers have a duration of four years. At the end of that time, his candidature is resubmitted to the vote, and the country, if there is occasion to do so, prolongs his powers for four further years or, if not, replaces him. Appointed at the same time as the parliament, he finishes in concert with it. His election, in order o be the exact expression of the will of the people, must be concordant with the election of the representatives. Both must march in step, supporting one another, both created by the needs of the moment.

  “The issue of universal suffrage, the President can only be recalled by universal suffrage. In the case of discord or abuse of authority, parliament brings it to the attention of the reprobation of the country by means of an order of the day, which is pronounced by a plebiscite.

  “There is, therefore, on the one hand, the executive power, represented by the President, the depository and guardian of the law, the link between the country and its delegates; on the other hand, there is the legislative power, represented by parliament, the center of discussion, where affairs elucidated by means of comparison, a permanent tribunal or the President’s ministers explaining their politics and submitting them to the judgment of the country, which decides by means of the organ of its representatives; and finally, above all that, the constitutive and revisionary power represented by the public assemblies, the supreme tribunal, to which the representatives come annually to render their accounts.

  “Such an internal organization thwarts the political rivalries that, in order to satisfy the interests of the smallest number, drag the masses into civil war. Concord reigns among all the citizens. It is they who decide in the last resort; in a word, they own the Republic, and it is not the Republic that owns them. Everyone makes use of his intelligence and muscle, everyone has a st
ake in the State; everyone is a judge in an infinitely small fraction, whose total constitutes the verdict.

  “The President is only the statue of power. He does nothing by himself; his role is to represent the nation at the International Congress. The ministers govern in his name, but neither he nor they are responsible, parliament accepting or refusing them on the President’s motion.

  “The right to declare war, too serious a responsibility for one man, belongs in principle to the parliament, but that is merely held in reserve, since war has been abolished by the unanimous consent of peoples.”

  “War has been abolished?” Hobson interjected, sharply.

  “War has been abolished and replaced by an International Congress. But I shall come back to that when the question of external politics arises. Let us take things in an orderly fashion.

  “The right to declare war thus belongs to the parliament, which has not yet erased it from the book of the law. One day, as universal solidarity confirms the present constitution in the minds of peoples, a vote will declare the law unnecessary and repeal it. At present the world still takes precautions; it scarcely dares to believe in its happiness; it trembles at the memory of the past; the experience of anterior ages has educated its foresight.

  “The President, as Monsieur Thiers has said in the National, speaking about King Louis-Philippe, ‘reigns, but does not govern.’ He has all the initiative, but he accomplishes nothing of his own purpose. He chooses his ministers, but does not impose them; the parliament accepts or refuses them. The theory of ministerial responsibility exposes the different powers to dangerous collisions that provoke public opinions and are often the signal for civil war. It permits the head of state to entrench himself behind a purely conventional irresponsibility and to make use of straw men to oppose the national will.

  “The Republic being the government of the majority, it is essential that the leaders of the various administrative sections emerge from the bosom of that majority; otherwise, the oppositions produced between the constituted powers will leave affairs of State on sufferance.

  “The responsibility of ministers is therefore considerably attenuated, not to say annulled, by the fact that they can only act after having submitted their plans to a parliamentary vote, as for simple proposals of law. It is, therefore, the parliament on which the real responsibility for their actions is incumbent, during their routine business. It is a clever means of maintaining them under the direct suffrage of the citizens.

  “They participate nonetheless in an active manner in the needs of government, by their projects of innovation or reform, which they carry out when the balance of contrary opinions swings in their favor. From the impact of numerous intelligences, better results flow than from a single intelligence; error succumbs in the conflict, and whatever is good in every idea emerges in discussion, comes to the fore, and, in being aggregated, forms a complete whole.

  “The ministers, proposed by the President and accepted by the majority, are subject to recall by that same majority; that goes without saying. The vote that has accepted them can also depose them in the same manner,

  “Can you rejoice in the transformation that has taken place in society, as I do? Can you bear witness to the tranquility, the security, the cordial agreement that reigns among these unrecognizable people? The general interest, that grave social question which has discouraged our greatest modern statesmen, is so closely united with individual interests that everyone necessarily loves his country, that everyone makes themselves useful, that everyone profits from the common prosperity. And that is natural. What profound attachment can a citizen feel to a fatherland that consults him every six years, for form’s sake? For a fatherland personified in an individual who buys his vote with mendacious promises and who, by an authoritarian gesture, annuls the veto of his voice? For a fatherland that allows itself to be abused by a handful of plotters and informs him, when he wakes up one morning, that a new tyrant has replaced the old?

  “Has he been consulted? No. He is only consulted when it is too late, and his vote is obligatory. And it is on him that the expenses of that scandalous intrusion fall! What profound attachment can he feel to a fatherland that taxes his labor and his fatigue, to the profit of those privileged by a despot, who uses rigorous measures in his regard when injustice has provoked his indignation?

  “Why should he open the way to honor and fortune to an unknown who, once in parliament, will laugh at his credulity? He, a free citizen, will dispose public fortune in favor of a smooth talker, and will continue to struggle against his poverty!

  “To return to the popular assemblies, they are routinely held every four years, for legislative elections, and every year to review the actions carried out during the parliamentary session.

  “The electoral assemblies take place at the town hall. The electors bring their votes, throw them into the urn, and the count is carried out in their presence. Nothing is secret. A committee appointed by them, composed of local notables, choose several candidates from among the most capable and introduces them to the electors. Once admitted as such, their maneuvers are scrupulously monitored; they are enclosed in cells dedicated to that usage during the entire duration of the election and the debates preceding the election. From their retreat they publish a political program, in which they set out their line of conduct, their projects, their appreciation of the affairs of the country in general and of their own district in particular. That profession of faith, attached to the wall of the town hall, becomes an imperative mandate, which is turned against them if they deviate from it by an iota.

  “The candidate is, from then on, the slave of is program, each article of which is a weapon that a contrary maneuver suspends over his head. He is sincere whether he likes it or not. His ulterior motives, his underhanded calculations, are thwarted; he is condemned by his own actions, becoming his own pitiless adversary: Verba volant, scripta manent.15

  “During this time, the president of the assembly organizes a public reading of his dossier, without any preamble or commentary. The electors then make their decision and, the count having been made, the candidate, whether elected or not, is set free.

  “In that manner, the elector knows his representative thoroughly; his entire life has been revealed to him, his intentions are guaranteed; he votes with a full awareness of the case.

  “Only those who have been subject to an examination of elementary education are electors. It only requires that they know how to read and write and that they have a succinct notion of the history of their country and its parliamentary phases. Is it not of the highest importance that electors, before participating in the destiny of their country, should be aware of the ordeals that it has undergone since the era in which it was constituted? What serious weight can their votes carry in the balance of universal suffrage if they do not know its value? They will decide at hazard or according to a foreign influence, and foreign influences are always pernicious in such cases, being counseled by private interests.

  “It is good that electors, before voting, meditate on what has gone before and discuss the probabilities of the future. It is good that they take account of the exact scope of their determination. Each single voice would be lost in the ensemble of the result obtained, but if the majority of the voters are ignorant, they run the risk of delivering their fatherland to anarchy, for want of the ability to appreciate its needs.

  “Thus, for citizens to be admitted to participate in the election of a representative, it is necessary for them to present a diploma of elementary education. These diplomas are given to them at the age of 21, after an examination supervised by the mayor, assisted by deputies and the administrative officers of the district. From then on, they are citizens, entering in part to the national sovereignty.

  “It follows from this that education is compulsory. Free public courses are held in the evenings at the town hall. Workers, returning from their labors, sometimes pause there to complete their primitive education; that is voluntary. As f
or children, they are sent to school at the age of seven, by courtesy of law as categorical as military law is today among us—conscription to study.

  “Parliament, constituted on these bases, is the direct expression of the will of the country; all the representatives speak and act there according to the programs they have outlined. They propose, discuss and vote, in an invariable circle. It is up to them to reflect maturely before exposing their mandates. There is no secret ballot that would permit them to compromise their mandate under the anonymous cover of a yes or no thrown into the urn. On each voting record, beneath a printed yes or no, they write their names, in such a way that the following day’s Official Bulletin is an echo of their words and actions. Their life is an open book; they no longer belong to themselves but to their electors.

  “The revisionary assemblies meet every year at the town hall under the presidency of the mayor at the end of the parliamentary session, immediately after the closure of the general councils, in order that the representatives, who are also general councilors, can follow their politics through to the end, by discussing departmental decrees in the general council, along with the direct contributions, the number of which, fixed by parliament, remains to be divided between the contributors.

  “The representative then appears before his electors, gives an account of his mission and defends himself against any grievances brought against him. Then the mayor, with the Official Bulletin in hand, assesses his votes and appeals to the electros, who confirm or invalidate him.

  “Every article of the Constitution aims for the highest degree of individual liberty: everything for the people and by the people.”

  “Transport yourself into the bosom of the Parliament,” ordered Hobson, whose curiosity was excited to the highest degree by the savant’s strange double vision.

  Monsieur Landet collected himself momentarily. “The session isn’t open yet,” he replied.