Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/193

Rh of the ambition which compels the politician to enter the arena of public life. Men of small calibre, the rank and file of politicians, may be influenced by other motives; they think it a matter of the greatest importance to secure for themselves and their friends the spoils of office, to bore a small hole into the State barrel and help themselves to its contents through their own little straw. These petty politicians and carpet-baggers, as they are called in North America, these office seekers are only the paid hirelings of the leaders; they are not an indispensable part of Parliamentism, but help fill it out as wadding. To the leaders however, the material advantages of then-position are but secondary matters. The point of the greatest importance to them is the unchecked expansion of an Ego that has painful cramps if obliged to stay folded up.

No word reappears so often in politics as "I". I and always I alone. This shows that a representative constitution has proved to be the triumph, the apotheosis o> egotism. According to abstract theory it is an organized fellowship, but in practice it is self-interest reduced to a science. The fiction is that the representative relinquishes his individuality and is transformed into a selfless collective being, through whom those who elected him think and speak, decide and act. The reality is that the electors renounce by the act of election, all their rights in favor of the representative, and he gains the entire authority which they lose. In his programme and in the speeches with which he wins the vote of the people, the candidate of course pretends to accept this fiction. Before election he talks of nothing but the interests of the public, he is the guardian and promoter of the common good, he forgets himself in his anxiety for the welfare of the community. But these are only formulas which even the most