THE TYRANNY OF THE "DOSSIER." T HE Prefect of the Haute
Vienne has issued a confidential circular to all his subordinates, in which he asks for the following items of'information about the citizens under their jurisdiction :— " Place and date of birth.. What is known of his ancestors ? Where was he educated and in what establishments ? Is ha married ? Wife's family name and date of birth. What kinsmen has he in the department?. Is there anything particular to notify respecting his wife or other members of his family from a private, political, or religious standpoint ? Has he any children? How many ? Their age. Has he filled one or more elective or other offices ? W hat is his private conduct? What property has he? Is he a landowner? In what departments or communes is his property, and what is its value ? What is his political attitude? Does he exercise any influence on his subordinates or on the inhabitants generally P On what occasions has he clearly manifested his Republican sentiments ? "
The Paris correspondent of the Times, who forwards this circular, seems to think that it will strain the tolerance even of Frenchmen for espionage, and may induce the Royalists to organise a system of reprisals ;. but we hardly know why he is so indignant. The Prefect has only carried the tyranny of the dossier one step further. Ever since the days of Louis XV. it has been the system in France for the police to compile a dossier, or biographical record, of every individual within their jurisdiction, noting his birth, his circum- stances, his relatives, his reputation, and every step in his career from early boyhood down to the latest date of which the official knows. The smallest escapade is recorded, any quarrel with an employer is mentioned, and if there is any. thing against him it is detailed with the minuteness with which a detective relates the history of previous convictions. This dossier is always produced in any criminal trial, some- times with most injurious, or indeed crushing, effect, and is always available, especially just before election time, to the party then in power. So greatly is the record dreaded that desperate efforts have occasionally been made to destroy particular pages, and candidates for the Prefecture of Police have been openly accused of seeking the 'post mainly because they hoped for an opportunity to destroy their "own official biographies. It is in part to fill these dossiers that the spy system is organised, and that heavy sums are constantly paid to spies of all classes of society, who when political sus- pects are concerned are not, if public rumour may be trusted, invariably careful as to the accuracy of their information. Criminals of degree are even reported to be tolerated for a time on condition of their reporting to the Prefecture all they may see or hear.
The system appears to Englishmen simply infamous. They barely tolerate it about habitual criminals and Anarchists, and any Government which sanctioned it about respea. able individuals would be blown out of power by a storm of popular indignation. The idea here is that no gain to the community can justify such an infraction of personal liberty, or the taking by authorities of such an unfair advant- age against the comparative powerlessness of private indi- viduals. We do not wonder, therefore, at the condemnation passed on it by the Times correspondent, but we wish he would tell us why he conceives, if it is hated in France, that Frenchmen bear it. They have had since the Revolution plenty of opportunities of putting it down, and they have never done it, nor, so far as we knew, seriously tried to do it. Under Monarchy or Empire or constitutional regime. under Conservative Republicans or Radical Republicans, the dosszerfi have always been kept up, espionage has always flourished, and the Prefectures have always had at their disposal as heavy a secret service fund as they required. The police have at different times been tyrannical or lax, shielded by authority or roughly controlled by it, but the irre- sistible force of universal suffrage has never been directed against the collection of information about private lives. We greatly doubt whether the French, or indeed any people of the Latin races, seriously dislike it. Their idea is that the police are an indispensable protection to society, and being logical, they wish the police to be in possession of any infor- mation which can assist them in the discharge of their indis- pensable functions. They are accustomed themselves to gather such information for use in their business and the arrangement of their family affairs, and they do not see how without espionage of an elaborate kind the police are to do their work at all. The individual does not think that the system will be used against himself, and he is most willing that it should be used against neighbours, some of whom he acutely distrusts, and whom collectively he regards as con- ceivably rivals or oppressors. Moreover, the Frenchman has a feeling which it is difficult to bring home to Englishmen, who are almost entirely without it. He does not like being a unit. He wants to feel himself a member of a strongly organised community; to be known, if only in secret, to the officials; to be a member, in short, of a great family party, and not a being isolated in the forest. To be unknown, even to the police, inspires him with a vague sense of affront, of neglect, of being looked down upon and thought too insignificant for notice. The Frenchman who complained that in England no one regarded him, "not even the police," expressed a sentiment deep in the hearts of his countrymen, who feel that the least endurable of miseries is utter solitude, and would prefer a sentry at the door to an entire absence of super- vision. He is not really annoyed at inquiries about his grand- father, and his love affairs, and the houses at which he calls, half so much as he would be by being passed over as one whose affairs could matter only to himself. If secrecy is usually maintained, he is content that his intimate life should be known to officials, and resents only one inquiry,—that into his income. He is quite sure, we have no idea why, that
secrecy about that will not be maintained, and that if it is not maintained he will be pestered at once by relations and by the envious; and about that one inquiry, therefore, he holds
out tenaciously, resisting all projects for an Income-tax with a persistent, if passive, resolution which is the despair- not
only of Ministers of Finance, but of the scientific eeetbmists who abound in France, who are sincerely respeatOd, and who seldom succeed in even modifying a
It is not necessary in this country ,to denounce the system, and we are rather interested in inquiring what its apologies rimy be, It seems clear that if honestly worked it must facilitate both the repressive work of the Government, which on the Continent is considered one of its first functions, and the ordinary- administration of criminal justice. The Govern- ment knows where to strike and does not waste its strength, and the Public Prosecutors know accurately the real characters of those whom they assail. Both those results are advantages helpful to the maintenance of that strict, if slightly monotonous, "order" which all who are trained under the Roman Law regard as an ideal, though they do not succeed specially in obtaining it. The system is", in fact, akin to the practice of confession, which, what- ever its other drawbacks, does enable the clerical caste to direct its monitions straight, and not to waste the tninatory side of its energy upon misdoers at large. It may be suspected, too, that fear of the dossier does act, some. times strongly, as a• restraining influence, an opinion said to be fully borne out by the result both in Germany and France of compelling workmen to keep livrets wherein their rela- tions with employers throughout life are clearly recorded. We should say, too; that the treatment of the respectables, whose dossiers are known to the police to be clean, would for that reason be more lenient, and that large classes find in them a certain guarantee of security. But the real defence for them must be that they strengthen the social cohesion, the family life, so to speak, of the community, which the Latin races, if indeed not all Continentals, perpetually seek. We English- men think that life inferior to our own, and if we reflect on the bitterness of Continental social hatreds and their absence among ourselves we are probably right—we say " probably " only because it is impossible to estimate precisely the influ- ence of race upon those hatreds.—but we are not quite sure, if happiness is the end sought, that peoples conscious of a certain inability to stand alone do not act wisely in using every device calculated to bind them closely together. Men are much better without elastic stockings, but if their muscles are weak or their veins liable to swell they may be more efficient, as well as happier, for submitting to such wearying restraints. That life is freer in England than in France is certain, but whether it is happier, or whether Frenchmen, being what they are, would be happier for an imitation of our ways, is not as yet quite so conclusively established.
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