Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONitism. In societies where economic development lagged, the publicservice therefore provided an alternative focus for the rising middleclasses.* It is no accident that in the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848,68 per cent of all deputies were civil servants or other officials (asagainst only 12 per cent of the 'free professions' and 2 • 5 per cent ofbusinessmen). 13It was thus fortunate for the intending careerist that the post-Napoleonic period was almost everywhere one of marked expansionin the apparatus and activity of governments, though hardly largeenough to absorb the growing supply of literate citizens. Between1830 and 1850 public expenditure per capita increased by 25 per centin Spain, by 40 per cent in France, by 44 per cent in Russia, by50 per cent in Belgium, by 70 per cent in Austria, 75 per centin the USA and by over 90 per cent in the Netherlands. (Only inBritain, the British colonies, Scandinavia and a few backward statesdid government expenditure per head of the population remain stableor fall during this period, the heyday of economic liberalism.) 1 * Thiswas due not only to the obvious consumer of taxes, the armed forces,which remained much larger after the Napoleonic Wars than before,in spite of the absence of any major international wars: of the majorstates only Britain and France in 1851 had an army which was verymuch smaller than at the height of Napoleon's power in 1810 andseveral—e.g. Russia, various German and Italian states and Spain—were actually larger. It was due also to the development of old and theacquisition of new functions by states. For it is an elementary error (andone not shared by those logical protagonists of capitalism, the Benthamite'philosophic radicals') to believe that liberalism was hostile tobureaucracy. It was merely hostile to inefficient bureaucracy, topublic interference in matters better left to private enterprise and toexcessive taxation. The vulgar-liberal slogan of a state reduced to thevestigial functions of the nightwatchman obscures the fact that thestate shorn of its inefficient and interfering functions was a much morepowerful and ambitious state than before. For instance, by 1848 it wasa state which had acquired modern, -often national, police-forces: inFrance from 1798, in Ireland from 1823, in England from 1829, andin Spain (the Guardia Civil) from 1844. Outside Britain it was normallya state which had a public educational system; outside Britain and theUSA one which had or was about to have a public railway service;everywhere, one which had an increasingly large postal service tosupply the rapidly expanding needs of business and private communi-* Allfonctionnaires in Balzac's novels appear to come from, or to be associated with, familieof small entrepreneurs.192