introduced into the Electoral Army. 699 



Nothing is more subversive of discipline than to have 

 individual outside dealings with one's subordinates. The 

 officer, however, who managed the business of his com- 

 pany, especially the one who wished to carry on this trans- 

 action for his own advantage, was compelled to engage 

 in such dealings. The quartermaster-sergeant (Fourier] 

 was commonly an important personage in this business ; 

 and, in order to pay him for his trouble, it was necessary 

 to give him various small preferences and advantages. 

 And since no human passion is more easily excited and 

 more ungovernable than pride, especially among people 

 of little education, it is easy to see what sort of an in- 

 fluence this secret combination between the captains 

 and the quartermaster-sergeants would exert upon the 

 latter, and how this would of necessity cause hatred, ill 

 feeling, and discontent among the other inferior officers 

 and the common soldiers. 



How could any one expect love for and appreciation 

 of the profession of the soldier where the pen was more 

 honoured than the sword, and where the shortest and 

 surest means of being distinguished by one's superiors 

 was, of necessity, felt to be to submit to being used as a 

 tool of a base self-interest ? 



I would not, indeed, assert that all the captains of 

 the Electoral army had lost sight of their duties in 

 managing the business of the companies intrusted to 

 them : so far from this, I know very well that these 

 officers, taken as a whole, are most upright men, and 

 utterly incapable of any base transactions. Sad ex- 

 amples of the opposite have, however, been known, and 

 that not seldom ; and in every great establishment too 

 much dependence ought not to be placed on the up- 

 rightness of men ; but, on the contrary, the attempt 



