[Footnote 3333: Lefebvre, a former sergeant in the French guards, who

became marshal of the empire and Duc de Dantzig, with 150,000 francs a

year, received the visit of a comrade who, instead of having mounted the

ladder as he had done, had remained at the bottom of it. The marshal,

a fine fellow, welcomed his comrade heartily, and showed him over

his hotel. The visitor's face gradually grew somber, and bitter words

escaped from his lips; he often murmured, "Ah, how lucky you are!"--At

last, the marshal, impatient, said to him, "Well, I will make all this

over to you on one condition."--"What is it?"--"You must go down into

the court. I will post two grenadiers at the window with their guns,

and they shall fire at you. If they miss, you shall have the hotel and

everything in it."--"Ah, no, thanks!"--"My friend, more shots than these

have been fired at me and nearer by!"]

[Footnote 3334: Roederer, III., 332 (Aug. 2, 1800).]

[Footnote 3335: Papers of Maine de Biran. (Note communicated by M.

Naville.) Letter of Baron Maurice, prefect of Dordogne, to M. Maine

de Biran, sub-prefect of Bergerac, transmitting to him by order of the

minister of the interior a blank form to be filled up by him presenting

the "Statistics of young ladies belonging to the most notable families

of the arrondissement." The form annexed contained several columns, one

for names and given names, others for the future inheritance of real and

personal estate, etc. A clever or energetic prefect, provided with this

list, was able and was expected to take an active part in marriages

and see that all the large dowries were appropriated on the right

side.--"Memoires de Madame de------," part 3rd, ch. VIII., p. 154.

(These very instructive memoirs by a very sincere and judicious person

are still unpublished. I am not authorized to give the name of the

author.) "It was at this time that the emperor took it into his head

to marry as he saw fit the young girls who had more than 50,000 livres

rental." A rich heiress of Lyons, intended for M. Jules de Polignac,

is thus wedded to M. de Marboeuf. M. d'Aligre, by dint of address and

celerity, evades for his daughter first M. de Caulaincourt and then M.

de Faudoas, brother-in-law to Savary, and in stead weds her to M.

de Pommereu.--Baron de Vitrolles, Mémoires, I. 19. (His daughter

was designated by the prefect of the Basses-Alpes.)--Comte Joseph

d'Estourmel, "Souvenirs de France et d'Italie," 239. (Details of this

description of the young ladies to be married and the circular from the

duke de Rovigo, minister of police.) the eight column of the form was

"reserved to describe the physical charms and deformities, the talents,

the conduct and the religious principles of each of the young ladies."]

[Footnote 3336: "Statistiques des Préfets." (Doubs, by Debry, p. 60;

Meurthe, by Marquis, p. 115, Ain, by Bossi, p.240.)]

[Footnote 3337: "Statistique de l'Ain," by Bossi, p. 1808. From 1140 in

1801, the number of employees and others under state pay amounts to

1771 in 1806. This increase is attributed by the prefect to causes just

stated.]

[Footnote 3338: Napoleon, "Correspondance." (Note of April 11, 1811.)

"There will always be at Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck from 8,000 to 10,000

French, either employees or gendarmes, in the customs and depots."]

[Footnote 3339: One officer may be counted to every 50 men in the

infantry; in the cavalry 1 officer to every 25 or 30 men,--This ratio of

one officer to every fifty men indicates that, among the 1,700,000 men

who perished between 1804 and 1815, there were 24,000 officers, which

gives about 3,000 vacancies per annum, to which must be added the

vacancies due to the wounded, disabled and and retired. It must be

noted, moreover, that the death or retirement of an officer above the

grade of second-lieutenant makes several vacancies, vacancies which are

more numerous the higher the rank. When a captain is killed there are

three promotions and so on.]

[Footnote 3340: "The Revolution" III., 335. (Laff. II. p. 250)--Already,

in 1795, the need of competent and specialized men was so great that the

government sought, even among royalists, for financial and diplomatic

heads of these services; it made offers to M. Dufresne and to M. de

Rayneval.--Ib. 406.--(Cf. "Mémoires" by Gaudin, Miot de Melito and

Mollien.)]

[Footnote 3341: Words of Bouquier, reporter of the law on education

(session of the Convention, Frimaire 22, year II).]

[Footnote 3342: The reader is recommended to do as I have done and

consult biographies on point, also the souvenirs of his grandparents.

(H.A.Taine.)]

[Footnote 3343: Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur la Consulat," p.88.

(Exposition of motives by Roederer to the corps Législatif, Floréal

25, year X.) "After all, it is the creation of a new currency of quite

different value from that which issues from the public treasury, a

currency of unchangeable worth and of an inexhaustible mine, since

it lies in French honor; a currency which can solely reward actions

regarded as above any recompense."]

[Footnote 3344: Thibaudeau, ibid., 83. (Address by the First Consul to

the council of State, Floréal 14, year X.)--Also "Mémorial": "Old and

corrupt nations are not governed the same as young and virtuous ones;

sacrifices have to be made to interest, to enjoyments, to vanity. This

is the secret of the return to monarchical forms, to titles. crosses,

ribbons, harmless baubles suited to exciting the respect of the

multitude while at the same time enforcing self-respect."]

[Footnote 3345: "La Légion d'honneur," by M. Mazas, passim. Details on

the nomination ceremonials. "The veritable date was July 15th, as the

14th was Sunday. Augereau and about sixty officers, "bad fellows" who

disliked the mass, refused to go into the chapel and remained outside in

the court."]

[Footnote 3346: Several generals, Lecourbe, Souham, etc., were excluded

as being too republican or suspect and hostile. Lemercier, Ducis,

Delille, and Lafayette refused. Admiral Truguet, through pique and

discontent, had at first declined the grade of grand-officer, but

finally changed his mind and became at first commander and then

grand-officer.]

[Footnote 3347: "Les Cahiers du capitaine Coignet," passim and pp. 95,

145. "When the ceremony was over, handsome women who could get at me to

examine my cross, asked me if they might give me a kiss."--At the Palais

Royal the proprietor of a café says to him: "Order whatever you want,

the Legion of Honor is welcome to anything."]

[Footnote 3348: Mazas, ibid., p. 413.--Edmond Blanc, "Napoléon, ses

institutions civiles et administratives," p. 279.--The number of

decorated, at first, was to be 6,000. In 1806, the emperor had nominated

14,500, and taking his entire reign, until his fall, about 48,000. The

real force of legionaries, however, then living does not surpass at this

time 30,000, of which only 1,200 are in civil careers. At the présent

time, December 1, 1888 (documents furnished by the records of the Légion

d'honneur), there are 52.915 decorated persons, of which 31,757 are

soldiers and 21,158 civilians. Under the empire there was in all 1 cross

to every 750 Frenchmen; at that time, out of 50 crosses there were 2 for

civil services, while in our day there are nearly 20. (QUID informs us

that on 30-11-1994 the strength amounted to 207,390 persons. SR.)]

[Footnote 3349: Edmond Blanc, ibid., 276-299, 325 and 326. (List of

titles of prince and duke conferred by the emperor, and of gifts of

100,000 francs rental or of above that sum.)]

[Footnote 3350: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," III., 363.]

[Footnote 3351: Napoleon, "Mémoires."]

[Footnote 3352: Compare with the Brothers Grimm's fairytale: "The

Fisherman and his Wife."]

[Footnote 3353: Thiers, "Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire," V. III.,

p. 210.]

[Footnote 3354: Thiers, ibid., p.195 (October 1806). Napoleon, in one of

his bulletins, had mentioned Murat's cavalry alone, omitting to mention

the infantry of Lannes, which behaved as well. Lannes, disappointed, did

not dare read this bulletin to his men, and spoke to the emperor about

it. 'What reward can they look for if they don't find their names

published by the hundred-tongued voice of Fame which is under your

control!" Napoleon replies: "You and your men are children--glory enough

for all!... One of these days your turn will come in the bulletins of

the grand army." Lannes reads this to his troops on the great square of

Stettin and it is received with outbursts of enthusiasm.]

[Footnote 3355: Madame de Rémusat. III., 129.]

[Footnote 3356: "The Revolution," pp. 356-358. (Laff. I. pp.

825-826.)--Marmont, "Mémoires," I. 122. (Letter to his mother, January

12, 1795.) "Behold your son zealously fulfilling his duties, deserving

of his country and serving the republic.... We should not be worthy of

liberty if we did nothing to obtain it."]

[Footnote 3357: Compare the "Journal du sergent Fricasse," and "les

Cahiers du capitaine Coignet." Fricasse is a volunteer who enlists

in the defence of the country; Coignet is a conscript ambitious of

distinguishing himself, and he says to his masters: "I promise to come

back with the fusil d'honneur or I shall be dead."]

[Footnote 3358: Marmont, I., 186, 282, 296. (In Italy, 1796.) "At this

epoch, our ambition was quite secondary; we were solely concerned about

our duties and amusements. The frankest and most cordial union existed

amongst us all.... No sentiment of envy, no low passion found room in

our breasts. (Then) what excitement, what grandeur, what hopes and what

gayety!... Each had a presentiment of an illimitable future and yet

entertained no idea of personal ambition or calculation."--George

Sand, "Histoire de ma vie." (Correspondence of her father, Commander

Dupin.)--Stendhal, "Vie de Napoléon." "At this epoch (1796), nobody in

the army had any ambition. I have known officers to refuse promotion so

as not to quit their regiment or their mistress."]

[Footnote 3359: Roederer, III., 556. (Burgos, April 9, 1809,

conversation with General Lasalle written down the same evening.) "You

pass through Paris?" "Yes, it's the shortest way. I shall get there at

five in the morning; I shall order a pair of boots, get my wife with

child and then leave for Germany."--Roederer remarks to him that one

risks one's life and fights for the sake of promotion and to profit

by rising in the world. "No, not at all. One takes pleasure in it. One

enjoys fighting; it is pleasure enough in itself to fight! You are

in the midst of the uproar, of the action, of the smoke. And then, on

acquiring reputation you have had the fun of making it. When you have

got your fortune you know that your wife and children won't suffer. That

is enough. As for myself, I could die to-morrow." (The details of this

conversation are admirable; no document gives a better idea of the

officer of the epoch.)]

[Footnote 3360: Compare with the idea of an ideal Chaver (kibbutznik).:

Melford E. Spiro, wrote "Kibbutz. Venture in Utopia." 60 and described

how the Israeli kibbutzim as early as 1917 wanted the ideal kibbutzim to

be:

Loyal to his people

A brother to his fellows

A man of truth

A helpful and dependable brother

A lover of nature

Obedient to the orders of his leaders

Joyful and gay

Economical and generous

A man of courage

Pure in thoughts, words, and deeds (opposition to drinking,

smoking and sexual relationships).]

[Footnote 3361: Balzac has closely studied and admirably portrayed this

type in a "Ménage de Garçon."--See other similar characters in Mérimée

("Les Mécontens," and "les Espagnols en Danemark"); in Stendhal ("le

Chasseur vert"). I knew five or six of them in my youth.]

[Footnote 3362: Words of Marshal Marmont: "So long as he declared

'Everything for France,' I served him enthusiastically; when he said,

'France and myself' I served him zealously; when he said, 'myself and

France,' I served him with devotion. It is only when he said, 'Myself

without France,' that I left him."]

[Footnote 3363: An expression found by Joseph de Maistre.]

[Footnote 3364: An expression heard by Mickiewicz in his childhood.]

[Footnote 3365: These sums are given, the former by Mérimée and the

latter by Sainte--Beuve.]

[Footnote 3366: M. de Champagny "Souvenirs," III., 183. Napoleon,

passing his marshals in review, said to him (1811): "None of them can

take my place in the command of my armies; some are without the talent,

and others would carry on war for their own benefit. Didn't that burly

Soult want to be king of Portugal?" "Well, sire, war need not be carried

on any longer." "Yes, but how maintain my army? And I must have an

army."]

[Footnote 3367: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc),

chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. IV.,

112. (According to the papers of Savary, many of Napoleon's letters and

statements by M. de Saint-Aignan.)]

[Footnote 3368: "Mémorial," Aug.26, 1816.]

[Footnote 3369: The driving motor of unlimited capitalism as well, a

driving force only to be tempered by the law and by a desire for social

admiration of different kinds. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3370: "Travels in France during the years 1814 and 1815."

(Edinburgh, 1816, 2 vols.)--The author, a very good observer, thus sums

up the principle of the system: "To give active employment to all men of

talent and enterprise." There is no other condition: "Birth, education,

moral character were completely set aside."--Hence the general defect of

the system. "The French have literally no idea of any duties which they

must voluntarily, without the prospect of reward, undertake for their

country. It never enters their heads that a man may be responsible

for the neglect of those public duties for the performance of which he

receives no regular salary."]

BOOK FOURTH. DEFECT AND EFFECTS OF THE SYSTEM.

CHAPTER I. LOCAL SOCIETY.

I. Human Incentives.

The two Stimuli of human action.--The egoistic instinct and

the social instinct.--Motives for not weakening the social

instinct.--Influence on society of the law it prescribes.

--The clauses of a statute depend on the legislator who adopts

or imposes them.--Conditions of a good statute.--It favors

the social instinct.--Different for different societies.

--Determined by the peculiar and permanent traits of the

society it governs.--Capital defect of the statute under the

new régime.

So long as a man takes an interest only in himself, in his own fortune,

in his own advancement, in his own success, his interests are trivial:

all that is, like himself, of little importance and of short duration.

Alongside of the small boat which he steers so carefully there are

thousands and millions of others of like it; none of them are

worth much, and his own is not worth more. However well he may have

provisioned and sailed it, it will always remain what it is, slight and

fragile; in vain will he hoist his flags, decorate it, and shove ahead

to get the first place; in three steps he has reached its length.

However well he handles and maintains it, in a few years it leaks;

sooner or later it crumbles and sinks, and with it goes all his effort.

Is it reasonable to work so hard for this, and is so slight an object

worth so great an effort?

Fortunately, man has, for a better placement of his effort, other

aims, more vast and more substantial: a family, a commune, a church, a

country, all the associations of which he is or becomes a member,

all the collective undertakings in behalf of science, education, and

charity, of local or general utility, most of them provided with legal

statutes and organized as corporations or even as a legal entity. They

are as well defined and protected as he is, but more precious and more

viable: for they are of service to a large number of men and last for

ever. Some, even, have a secular history, and their age predicts their

longevity. In the countless fleet of boats which so constantly sink,

and which are so constantly replaced by others, they last like top

rated liners. The men from the flotilla now and then sign on these large

vessels, and the result of their labor is not, as it is at home, futile

or short-lived; it will remain above the surface after he and his boat

have disappeared. It has entered into the common mass of work which owes

its protection to its mass; undoubtedly the portion he contributes may

be worked over again later on; but its substance remains, and often also

its form:

* like a precept of Jesus,

* like Archimedes' theorem

which rests a definite acquisition, intact and permanently fixed for

two thousand years, immortal from the first day.--Consequently, the

individual may take an interest, no longer merely in his own boat, but

again in some ship, in this or that particular one, in this or

that association or community, according to his preferences and his

aptitudes, according to attractiveness, proximity, and convenience of

access, all of which is a new motivation for his activities, opposing

his egoism, which, powerful as it may be, may still be overcome, since a

soul might be very generous or qualified by long and special discipline.

Out of this issues every sacrifice, the surrender of one's-self to one's

work or to a cause,

* the devotion of the sister of charity or of the missionary,

* the abnegation of the scientist who buries himself for twenty years in

the minutia of a thankless task,

* the heroism of the explorer who risks himself on a desert or among

savages,

* the courage of the soldier who stakes his life in defense of his flag.

But these cases are rare; with the mass of men, and in most of their

actions, personal interest prevails against common interest, while

against the egoistic instinct the social instinct is feeble. Hence the

danger of weakening this. The temptation of the individual to prefer his

own boat to the large ship is only too great; if it is desirable for him

to go aboard and work there, he must be provided with the facilities

and motives which prompt him to go aboard and do the work; at the very

least, he must not be deprived of them. Now, that depends on the State,

a sort of central flag-ship, the only one that is armed, and which has

all subordinate vessels under its guns; for, whatever the society may

be, provincial or municipal, educational or charitable, religious or

laic, it is the State which sanctions or adopts its statues, good

or bad, and which, by its laws, tribunals, and police, insures their

execution, whether rigidly or carelessly. Therefore, on this point, it

is responsible; it must adopt or impose the proper statute, the

most suitable social form for strengthening the social instinct, for

maintaining disinterested zeal, for the encouragement of voluntary and

gratuitous labor.

This form, of course, differs according to different societies; the same

charter or constitution is not proper for a church system and a commune,

nor for a Protestant church and a Catholic church, nor for a town of

one hundred thousand inhabitants and a village of five hundred. Each

association has its own peculiar and distinctive features, which grade

it according to its kind, according to its spiritual or temporal aims,

according to its liberal or authoritative spirit, according to is small

or large dimensions, according to the simplicity or complexity of

its affairs, according to the capacity or incapacity of its members:

features which within it are both efficient and permanent; whatever the

legislator may do, these will remain and will regulate all activity.

Thus let him, in each case, keep this in mind. But in all cases his

office is the same; always, on drawing up and countersigning a statute,

he intervenes in the coming conflict between the social instinct and

the egoistic instinct; every provision which he enacts will contribute,

nearby or at a distance, to the final ascendancy of the former or of

the latter. Now, the legislator the natural ally of the former, for the

former is his indispensable auxiliary. In every work or enterprise

of public utility, if the legislator is the external promoter, social

instinct is the internal promoter; and on the inner spring becoming weak

or breaking, the impulsion from outside remains without effect. Hence it

is that, if the legislator would accomplish anything, otherwise than on

paper, he must, before any object or interest, concern himself with the

social instinct[4101]; thus preserving and humoring it; find room for it

and its usefulness; let it have full play; getting all the service it is

capable of rendering, and especially not twist or release it.--In this

respect, any blunder might prove disastrous; and in every statute for

each society, for each of the human vessels which gather together and

serve as a retinue of individual vessels, there are two capital errors.

On the one hand, if the statute, in fact and practically, is or becomes

too grossly unjust, if the rights and benefits which it confers are not

compensated by the duties and obligations it imposes; if it multiplies

excessive burdens for some and sinecures for others; if, at last,

the exploited individual discovers that he is overcharged beyond his

due,--thereafter he refuses on his own to add voluntarily to his load.

Let others, let the favored and the privileged bear the gratuitous,

extra weight. Far from stepping forward and offering his shoulders, he

gets out of the way, hides himself, and lightens his load as much as he

can; he even rebels when he has a chance, and violently casts off every

legal burden, be it tax or due of any kind. Thus did the ancient régime

perish.--On the other hand, if the statute withdraws the management of

the ship from those who are concerned; if, on this vessel, which belongs

to them, it permanently installs a foreign crew, which assumes and

exercises all command, then the owner of the vessel, reduced to the

humble condition of a mere subject and quiescent taxpayer, will no

longer feel concerned. Since the intruders exercise all authority, let

them have all the trouble; the working of the ship concerns them and not

him; he looks on as a spectator, without any idea of lending a hand; he

folds his arms, remains idle, and becomes critical.--Against the first

defect, the new régime is on its guard: there must be neither the

preferred nor the disgraced, neither favors nor exemptions, neither

exclusions nor releases, no more misappropriation, embezzlement, or

robbery, not alone in the State, but elsewhere in any direction,--in

the department, in the commune, in the Church, or in educational and

benevolent institutions. It excels in practicing distributive justice.

The second defect is its hidden flaw: the legislator having introduced

this into all local and special statutes, its effects differ according

to different societies; but all these effects converge, paralyzing in

the nation the best half of the soul, and, worse still, to leading

the will astray and perverting the public mind, transforming generous

impulses into evil outbursts, and organizing lasting inertia, ennui,

discontent, discord, feebleness, and sterility.[4102]

II. Local Community.

Local societies.--Their principal and distinctive

character.--Their type on a small scale.--A dwelling-house

in Annecy or Grenoble.--Compulsory association of its

inmates.--Its object and limits.--Private in character.

Let us first consider local society whether a province, a department,

or a county. For the past ten years (1789-99), the legislator has

unceasingly deformed and assaulted. On his side, he refuses to open his

eyes; preoccupied with theories, he will not recognize it for what it is

in reality, a society of a distinct species, different from the

State, with its own peculiar aims, its limits marked out, its members

prescribed, its statutes drawn up, everything formed and defined

beforehand. As it is local, it is founded on the greater or less

proximity of its habitations. Thus, to comprehend it, we must take a

case in which this proximity is greatest that of certain houses in some

of our southeastern towns, as, for example, Grenoble and Annecy. Here,

a house often belongs to several distinct owners, each possessing his

story, or apartment on a story, one owning the cellar and another the

attic, each enjoying all the rights of property over his portion, the

right of renting it, selling it, bequeathing it, and mortgaging it, but

all holding it in common for the maintenance of the roof and the main

walls.--Evidently, their association is not a free one; willingly or

not, each forms a member of it, for, willingly or not, each benefits

or suffers through the good or bad state of the roof and the principal

walls: therefore, all must furnish their quota of the indispensable

expenses; even a majority of votes would not rid them of these; one

claimant alone would suffice to hold them responsible; they have no

right to impose on him the danger which they accept for themselves, nor

to shirk expenses by which they profit as well as himself. Consequently,

on the report of an expert, the magistrate interferes, and, willingly or

not, the repairs are made; then, willingly or not, both by custom and in

law, each pays his quote, calculated according to the locative value of

the portion belonging to him.--But here his obligations cease. In fact

as in law, the community (of property) is restricted; the associates

take good care not to extend this, not to pursue other aims at the same

time, not to add to their primitive and natural purpose a different and

supplementary purpose, not to devote one room to a Christian chapel

for the residents of the house, another room for a kindergarten for the

children that live in it, and a side room to a small hospital for those

who fall ill; especially, they do not admit that a tax may be imposed

for these purposes and each of them be subject to a proportional

increase of assessment at so many additional centimes per franc.[4103]

For, if the proprietor of the ground-floor is an Israelite, the

proprietor of a room on the second story is a bachelor, the proprietor

of the fine suite of rooms on the first story is rich, and has a doctor

visit him at the house, these must pay for a service for which they get

no return.--For the same reason, their association remains private; it

does not form part of the public domain; they alone are interested in

it; if the State let us use its tribunals and officials, it is the same

as it is with ordinary private individuals. It would be unjust both

against it and against itself if it would exclude or exempting it from

common right, if it put it on its administrative rolls. It would deform

and disrupt its work if it interfered with its independence, if added

to its functions or to its obligations. It is not under its tutelage,

obliged to submit its accounts to the prefect; it delegates no powers

and confers no right of justice, or police; in short, it is neither

its pupil nor its agent. Such is the lien which permanent proximity

establishes between men; we see that it is of a singular species:

neither in fact, nor in law, can the associates free themselves from

it; solely because they are neighbors, they form a community for certain

indivisible or jointly owned things, an involuntary and obligatory

community. To make amends, and even owing to this, I mean through

institution and in the natural order of things, their community

is limited, and limited in two ways, restricted to its object and

restricted to its members, reduced to matters of which proprietorship

or enjoyment is forcibly in common, and reserved to inhabitants who, on

account of situation and fixed residence, possess this enjoyment or this

property.i

III. Essential Public Local Works.

Analysis of other local societies, commune, department, or

province.--Common interests which necessitate local action.

--Two objects in view: care of public roads and means of

protection against spreading calamities.--Why collaboration

is an obligation.--Neighbors involuntarily subject to a

common bond on account of proximity.--Willingly or not each

shares in its benefits.--What portion of the expense belongs

to each.--Equal advantages for each.--The unequal and

proportionate advantages for each in his private expenses,

industrial or commercial gains, and in the locative value of

his real estate.--Each person's quota of expense according

to his equal and proportionate share in advantages.

All local societies are of this kind, each limited to a certain

territory and included with others like it inside a larger area, each

possessing two budgets depending on whether it is a distinct body or

member of a larger corporation, each, from the commune to the department

or province, instituted on a basis of interests which make them jointly

but involuntarily liable.--There are two of these important interests

which, as in the Annecy building, elude human arbitrariness, which

demand common action and distribution of the expense, because, as in the

Annecy building, they are the inevitable results of physical proximity:

First, comes care for the public highways, by land or by water, river

navigation, canals, towing-paths, bridges, streets, public squares,

by-roads, along with the more or less optional and gradual improvements

which public roads demand or prescribe, such as their laying-out,

sidewalks, paving, sweeping, lighting, drainage, sewers, rolling,

ditches, leveling, embankments, and other engineering works, which

establish or increase safety and convenience in circulation, with

facilities for and dispatch in transportation.

Next, comes protection against the spread of calamities, such as fires,

inundations, contagious diseases, epidemics, along with the more or

less optional and remote precautions which this protection exacts or

recommends, night watchers in Russia, dikes in Holland, levees in

the valleys of the Po and the Loire, cemeteries and regulations for

interment, cleanliness of the streets, ventilation of holes and

corners, drainage of marshes, hydrants, and supplies of drinkable water,

disinfecting of contaminated areas, and other preventive or necessary

hygienic measures which remove or prevent insalubrities growing out of

neighborhood or contact.

All this has to be provided for, and the enterprise, if not wholly

and in its developments, at least in itself and in what is necessary,

imposes itself, collectively, on all the inhabitants of the

conscription, from the highest to the lowest. For, in the absence of a

public road, none of them can do his daily work, travel about, or even

leave his premises; while transportation ceases and trade is suspended;

hence, commerce and other pursuits languish, industry is arrested,

agriculture becomes impracticable or fruitless; the fields are no longer

cultivated; while provisions, food, including bread,[4104] everything is

wanting; the dwellings becoming uninhabitable, more so than the Annecy

houses when the roofs fall in and let in the rain.--On the other hand,

for lack of protection against calamities, these get a free rein: the

day arrives when an equinoctial tide submerges the flat coastal area,

when the river overflows and devastates the countryside, when the

conflagration spreads, when small-pox and the cholera reach a contagious

point, and life is in danger, far more seriously imperiled than when, in

the Annecy domicile, the main walls threaten to tumble down.[4105]

Undoubtedly, I can personally accept this miserable condition of things,

resign myself to it, and consent, as far as I am concerned, to shut

myself up within my own walls, to fast there, and run the risk, more or

less imminent, of being drowned, burnt, or poisoned; but I have no

right to condemn another to do this, nor to refuse my contribution to a

protection by which I am to profit. As to my share of the expense it is

fixed beforehand, and fixed through my share in the benefit:

Whoever receives, owes, and in proportion to what he receives;

such is an equitable exchange; no society is prosperous and healthy

without this; it is essential that, for each member of it, the duties

should exactly compensate the advantages, and that the two sides of the

scale should balance. In the local community, the care taken of public

roads and the precautions taken against natural calamities are useful in

two ways: one, which especially improves the condition of persons, and

the other, which especially improves the condition of things. The first

is equal and the same for all. The poor man, quite as much as the rich

one, needs to go and come and to look after his affairs; he uses the

street, pavement, sidewalks, bridges, highways, and public fountains

quite as much; he equally benefits by the sweeping and lighting of the

public gardens. It may be claimed that, in certain respects, he derives

more benefits from all this; for he suffers sooner and more keenly when

bad roads stop transportation, arrest labor, and increase the cost of

food; he is more subject to contagion, to epidemics, to all physical

ills; in case of a fire, the risks of a workman in his garret, at the

top of steep, narrow stairs, are greater than those of the opulent

proprietor on the first story, in a mansion provided with a broad range

of steps. In case of inundation, the danger is more suddenly mortal for

the humble villager, in his fragile tenement, than for the gentleman

farmer in his massive constructions. Accordingly, under this heading,

the poor man owes as much as the rich one; the rich man, at least, owes

no more than the poor one; if, each year, the poor man cannot pay but

one franc, the rich one, each year, should not pay more than that sum

likewise.--The second advantage, on the contrary, is not equal for all,

but more or less great for each, according to what he spends on the

spot, according to his industrial or commercial gains, and according to

his local income. Indeed, the more perfect the public highway is, the

more are the necessities and conveniences of life; whatever is agreeable

and useful, even distant and remote, more within reach, and at my

disposition, in my very hands, I enjoy it to the utmost, the measure of

my enjoyment of it being the importance of my purchases, everything

I consume, in short, my home expenditure.[4106] If I am, besides,

industrial or in commerce, the state of the public highway affects me

even more; for my transportation, more or less costly, difficult and

slow, depends on that, and next, the receipt of my raw materials and

goods, the sale of my manufactures, the dispatch of my merchandise,

bought and sold, while the measure of this special interest, so direct

and so intense, is the annual sum-total of my business, or, more

strictly speaking, the probable sum of my profits.[4107] If, finally,

I own real estate, a house or land, its locative value increases or

diminishes according to the salubrity and convenience of its site,

together with its facilities for cultivating, selling, and distributing

its crops, for its various outlets, for its security against floods and

fires, and, after this, to improvements in public transit, and to the

collective works which protect both soil and buildings against natural

calamities.[4108] It follows that the inhabitant who benefits from these

services, owes a second contribution, greater or lesser according to the

greater or lesser advantage which he derives from them.

IV. Local associations.

Local society, thus constituted, is a collective legal

entity.--The sphere of its initiation and action.--Its

relation to the State.--Distinction between the private and

the public domain.

Such is in itself local society and, with or without the legislator's

permission, we find it to be a private syndicate,[4109] analogous

to many others.[4110] Whether communal or departmental, it concerns,

combines, and serves none but the inhabitants of one circumscription;

its success or failure does not interest the nation, unless indirectly,

and through a remote reaction, similar to the slight effect which, for

good or ill, the health or sickness of one Frenchman produces on the

mass of Frenchmen. That which directly and fully affects a local society

is felt only by that society, the same as that which affects a private

individual is felt only by him; it is a close corporation, and belongs

to itself within its physical limits, the same as he, in his, belongs to

himself; like him, then, it is an individual, less simple, but no less

real, a human combination, endowed with reason and will, responsible

for its acts, capable of wronging and being wronged; in brief, a legal

entity. Such, in fact, it is, and, through the explicit declaration

of the legislator, who constitutes it a legal entity, capable of

possessing, acquiring, and contracting, and of prosecuting in the courts

of law: he likewise confers on the eighty-six departments and on the

thirty-six thousand communes all the legal capacities and obligations of

an ordinary individual. The State, consequently, in relationship to them

and to all collective persons, is what it is with respect to a private

individual, neither more nor less; its title to intervene between them

is not different. As justiciary, it owes them justice the same as to

private persons, nothing more or less; only to render this to them, it

has more to do, for they are composite and complex. By virtue even of

its mandate, it is bound to enter their domiciles in the performance of

its duty, to maintain probity and to prevent disorder, to protect there

not alone the governed against the governors and the governors against

the governed, but again the community, which is lasting, against its

directors, who are temporary, to assign to each member his quota of dues

or of charges, and his quote of influence or of authority, to regulate

the way in which the society shall support and govern itself, to decide

upon and sanction the equitable statute, to oversee and impose its

execution, that is to say, in sum to maintain the right of each person

and oblige each to pay what he owes.--This is difficult and delicate.

But, being done, the collective personality is, as much as any

individual, complete and defined, independent and distinct from the

State; by the same title as that of the individual, it has its own

circle of initiation and of action, its separate domain, which is its

private affair. The State, on its side, has its own affairs too, which

are those of the public; and thus, in the nature of things, both circles

are distinct; neither of them should prey upon or encroach on the

other.--Undoubtedly, local societies and the State may help each other,

lend each other their agents, and thus avoid employing two for one; may

reduce their official staff, diminish their expenses, and, through

this interchange of secondary offices, do their work better and more

economically. For example, the commune and the department may let the

State collect and deposit their "additional centimes," borrow from it

for this purpose its assessors and other accountants, and thus receive

their revenues with no drawback, almost gratis, on the appointed day.

In the like manner, the State has very good reason for entrusting the

departmental council with the re-distribution of its direct taxes among

the districts, and the district council with the same re-distribution

among the communes: in this way it saves trouble for itself, and there

is no other more effective mode of ensuring an equitable allocation.

It will similarly be preferable to have the mayor, rather than anybody

else, handle petty public undertakings, which nobody else could do as

readily and as surely, with less trouble, expense, and mistakes, with

fewer legal document, registers of civil status, advertisements of laws

and regulations, transmissions by the orders of public authorities to

interested parties, and of local information to the public authorities

which they need, the preparation and revision of the electoral lists and

of conscripts, and co-operation in measures of general security. Similar

collaboration is imposed on the captain of a merchant vessel, on the

administrators of a railway, on the director of a hotel or even of a

factory, and this does not prevent the company which runs the ship, the

railway, the hotel, or the factory, from enjoying full ownership and

the free disposition of its capital; from holding meetings, passing

resolutions, electing directors, appointing its managers, and regulating

its own affairs, preserving intact that precious faculty of possessing,

of willing and of acting, which cannot be lost or alienated without

ceasing to be a personality. To remain a personality (i.e. a legal

entity), such is the main interest and right of all persons, singly

or collectively, and therefore of local communities and of the State

itself; it must be careful not to abdicate and be careful not to

usurp.--It renounces in favor of local societies when, through optimism

or weakness, it hands a part of the public domain over to them; when

it gives them the responsibility for the collection of its taxes, the

appointment of its judges and police-commissioners, the employment of

its armed forces, when it delegates local functions to them which

it should exercise itself, because it is the special and responsible

director, the only one who is in a suitable position, competent, well

provided, and qualified to carry them out. On the other side, it causes

prejudice to the local societies, when it appropriates to itself a

portion of their private domain, when it confiscates their possessions,

when it disposes of their capital or income arbitrarily, when it imposes

on them excessive expenses for worship, charity, education, and any

other service which properly belongs to a different association; when it

refuses to recognize in the mayor the representative of the commune and

the government official, when it subordinates the first of these two

titles to the second, when it claims the right of giving or taking away,

through with the second which belongs to it, the first which does

not belong to it, when in practice and in its grasp the commune

and department cease to be private companies in order to become

administrative compartments.--According to the opportunity and the

temptation, it glides downhill, now toward the surrender of its duty,

and now toward the meddlesome interference of an intruder.

V. Local versus State authority.

Case in which the State abdicates.--Anarchy during the

Revolution.--Case in which the State usurps.--Regime of the

year VIII.--Remains of local independence under the ancient

regime.--Destroyed under the new regime.--Local society

after 1800.

From and after 1789, the State, passing through intermittent fits and

starts of brutal despotism, had resigned its commission. Under its

almost nominal sovereignty, there were in France forty-four thousand

small States enjoying nearly sovereign power, and, most frequently,

sovereignty in reality.[4111] Not only did the local community manage

its private affairs, but again, in the circumscription, each exercised

the highest public functions, disposed of the national guard, of the

police force, and even of the army, appointed civil and criminal judges,

police commissioners,[4112] the assessors and collectors of taxes. In

brief, the central State handed over, or allowed the seizure of the

powers of which it ought never to deprive itself, the last of its means

by which alone it acts effectively and on the spot,

* its sword, which it alone should wield,

* its scales of justice, which it alone should hold,

* its purse, for it to fill, and we have seen with what harm to

individuals, to the communes, and to itself, with what a lamentable

series of disastrous results:

* universal, incurable, persistent anarchy,

* impotence of the government,

* violation of the laws,

* complete stoppage of revenue, an empty treasury,

* despotism of the strong, oppression of the weak,

* street riots,

* rural brigandage,

* extortions and waste at the town halls,

* municipal usurpations and abdications,

* ruin of the highways, and all useful public works and buildings, and

* the ruin and distress of the communes.[4113]

In contrast with this, and through disgust, the new Régime takes the

other side, and even goes to the other extreme; the central State, in

1800, no longer a party that has resigned, as formerly, becomes the

interloper. Not only does it take back from local communities the

portion of the public domain which had been imprudently conceded to

them, but, again, it lays its hand on their private domain; it

attaches them to it by way of appendices, while its systematic, uniform

usurpation, accomplished at one blow, spread over the whole territory,

again plunges them all, communes and departments alike, into a chaos in

which, under the old monarchy, they would never have fallen.

Before 1789, collective legal entities (persons), provincial and

communal, still existed. On the one hand, five or six great local

bodies, represented by elective assemblies, full of life and

spontaneously active, among others those of Languedoc and Brittany,

still provided for and governed themselves. The other provinces, which

the central power had reduced to administrative districts, retained, at

least, their historic cohesion, their time-honored name, the lament for,

or at least the souvenir of, their former autonomy, and, here and there,

a few vestiges or fragments of their lost independence; and, better yet,

these old, paralyzed, but not mutilated bodies, had just assumed new

life, and under their renewed organism were striving to give the

blood in their veins a fresh start. Twenty-one provincial assemblies,

instituted over the entire territory, between 1778 and 1787, and

provided with powers of considerable importance, undertook, each in its

own sphere, to direct provincial interests. Communal interest, also,

had its representatives in the urban or rural communes. In the towns, a

deliberative assembly, composed of the leading notables and of delegates

elected by all the corporations and communities in the place, formed an

intermittent municipal council the same as to-day, but much more ample,

which voted and passed resolutions on important occasions; there was a

board of management at the head of it, "the town corps," comprising

the various municipal officials, the mayor, his lieutenant, sheriffs,

prosecuting attorney, treasurer, and clerk,[4114] now elected by the

deliberative assembly, now the legal purchasers, heirs, and proprietors

of their office, the same as a notary or advocate of to-day owns

his office, protected against administrative caprices by a royal

acquittance, and, for a money consideration, titular in their towns, the

same as a parliamentarian in his parliament, and hence planted in, or

grafted upon, the commune like a parliamentarian among his peers, and,

like him, defenders of local interests against the central power.--In

the village, the heads of families met together on the public square,

deliberated in common over common affairs, elected the syndic, likewise

the collectors of the taille, and deputies to the intendant; of their

own accord, but with his approval, they taxed themselves for the support

of the school, for repairs to the church or fountain, and for beginning

or carrying on a suit in court.--All these remains of the ancient

provincial and communal initiative, respected or tolerated by

monarchical centralization, are crushed out and extinguished. The First

Consul very soon falls upon these local societies and seizes them in his

claws; in the eyes of the new legislator they scarcely seem to exist;

there must not be any local personalities for him. The commune and

department, in his eyes, are merely territorial districts, physical

portions of the public domain, provincial workshops to which the central

State transfers and uses its tools, in order to work effectively and on

the spot. Here, as elsewhere, he takes the business entirely in his own

hands; if he employs interested parties it is only as auxiliaries, at

odd times, for a few days, to operate with more discernment and more

economy, to listen to complaints and promises, to become better informed

and the better to apportion changes; but, except this occasional and

subordinate help, the members of the local society must remain passive

in the local society; they are to pay and obey, and nothing more. Their

community no longer belongs to them, but to the government; its chiefs

are functionaries who depend on him, and not on it; it no longer issues

its mandate; all its legal mandatories, all its representatives and

directors, municipal or general councilors, mayors, sub-prefects

or prefects, are imposed on it from above, by a foreign hand, and,

willingly or not, instead of choosing them, it has to put up with them.

VI. Local Elections under the First Consul.

Lists of notables.--Sénatus-consultes of the year X.

--Liberal institution becomes a reigning instrument.

--Mechanism of the system of appointments and candidatures.

--Decree of 1806 and suppression of candidatures.

At the beginning, an effort was made to put in practice the

constitutional principle proposed by Sieyès: Power in future, according

the accepted formula, must come from above and confidence from below. To

this end, in the year IX, the assembled citizens appointed one-tenth

of their number, about 500,000 communal notables, and these, likewise

assembled, appointed also one-tenth of their number, about 50,000

departmental notables. The government selected from this list the

municipal councilors of each commune, and, from this second list, the

general councilors of each department.--The machine, however, is

clumsy, difficult to set going, still more difficult to manage, and too

unreliable in its operation. According to the First Consul, it is an

absurd system, "a childish piece of ideology; a great nation should

not be organized in this way."[4115] At bottom,[4116] "he does not want

notables accepted by the nation. In his system, he is to declare who

the notables of the nation shall be and stamp them with the seal of the

State; it is not for the nation to present them to the head of the State

stamped with the national seal." Consequently, at the end of a year, he

becomes, through the establishment of electoral colleges, the veritable

grand-elector of all the notables; he has transformed, with his usual

address, a liberal institution into a reigning instrumentality.[4117]

Provisionally, he holds on to the list of communal notables, "because it

is the work of the people, the result of a grand movement which must

not prove useless, and because, moreover, it contains a large number

of names.... offering a wide margin from which to make good

selections.[4118] He brings together these notables in each canton, and

invites them to designate their trusty men, the candidates from which he

will choose municipal councilors. But, as there are very few cultivated

men in the rural districts, "nearly always it is the old seignior who

would get himself designated";[4119] it is essential that the hand of

the government should not be forced, that its faculty of choosing should

not be restricted. Thus, the presentation of municipal councilors

of that category must cease, there must no longer be any preliminary

candidates. Now, according the sénatus-consulte, this category is a

large one, for it comprises all communes of less than 5000 souls, and

therefore over 35,000 municipal councils out of 36,000, whose members

are appointed arbitrarily, without the citizens whom they represent

taking any part in their nomination.--Four or five hundred average

or large communes still remain, in which for each municipal post, the

cantonal assembly designates two candidates between whom the government

chooses. Let us see this assembly duly installed and at work.

Its president, as a precautionary step, is imposed upon it. He is

appointed in advance by the government, and is well informed as to what

the government wants. He alone controls the police of the chamber and

the order of all deliberations. On opening the session, he draws a list

from his pocket, which list, furnished by the government, contains the

names of one hundred of the heaviest taxpayers of the canton, from whom

the assembly must select its candidates. The lists lies spread out on

the table, and the electors advance in turn, spell the names, and try to

read it over. The president would not be very adroit and show but little

zeal did he not help them in reading it, and if he did not point out by

some sign, a tone of the voice, or even a direct word, what names

were agreeable to the government. Now, this government, which has five

hundred thousand bayonets at command, dislikes opposition: the electors

know it, and look twice before expressing any counter opinion; it is

very probable that most of the names suggested by the government are

found on their ballots; were only one-half of them there, these would

suffice; of the two candidates proposed for each place, if one is

acceptable this one will be elected; after making him a candidate the

government makes sure that he will become titular. The first act of

the electoral comedy is played, and it is not long before no trouble

whatever is taken to play it. After January, 1806, by virtue of a

decree which has passed himself, Napoleon is the only one[4120] who will

directly fill every vacancy in the municipal councils; from now on these

councils are to owe their existence wholly to him. The two qualities

which constitute them, and which, according to Sieyès, are derived from

two distinct sources, are now derived from only one source. Only the

Emperor can confer upon them both public confidence and legal power.

The second act of the comedy begins; this act is more complicated, and

comprises several scenes which end, some of them, in the appointment of

the arrondissement councils, and others in that of the council-general

of the department. We will take only the latter, the most

important;[4121] there are two, one following the other, and in

different places.--The first one[4122] is played in the cantonal

assembly above described; the president, who has just directed the

choice of municipal candidates, draws from his portfolio another list,

likewise furnished to him by the prefect, and on which six hundred names

of those who pay the heaviest taxes in the department are printed. It is

from among these six hundred that the cantonal assembly must elect ten

or twelve members who, with their fellows, chosen in the same way by

the other cantonal assemblies, will form the electoral college of the

department, and take their seats at the chief town of the prefecture.

This time again, the president, who is the responsible leader of

the cantonal flock, takes care to conduct it; his finger on the list

indicates to the electors which names the government prefers; if need

be, he adds a word to the sign he makes, and, probably, the voters will

be as docile as before; and all the more because the composition of the

electoral college only half interests them. This college, unlike the

municipal council, does not touch or hold any of them on their sensitive

side; it is not obliged to tighten or loosen their purse-strings; it

does not vote the "additional centimes"; it does not meddle with their

business; it there only for show, to simulate the absent people, to

present candidates, and thus perform the second electoral scene in the

same way as the first one, but at the chief town of the prefecture and

by new actors. These extras are also led by a head conductor, appointed

by the government, and who is responsible for their behavior, "a

president who has in sole charge the police of their assembled college,"

and must direct their voting. For each vacancy in the council-general of

the department, they are to present two names; certainly, almost without

any help, and with only a discrete hint, they will guess the suitable

names. For they are smarter, more open-minded, than the backward and

rural members of a cantonal assembly; they are better informed and

better "posted," they have visited the prefect and know his opinion, the

opinion of the government, and they vote accordingly. It is certain that

one-half, at least, of the candidates whom they present on the list are

good, and that suffices, since twice the required number of candidates

have to be nominated. And yet, in Napoleon's eye, this is not

sufficient. For the nomination of general councilors,[4123] as well as

that of municipal councilors, he suppresses preliminary candidature, the

last remnant of popular representation or delegation. According to

his theory, he is himself the sole representative and delegate of the

people, invested with full powers, not alone in the State, but again

in the department and commune, the prime and the universal motor of the

entire machine, not merely at the center, but again at the extremities,

dispenser of all public employments, not merely to suggest the candidate

for these and make him titular, but again to create directly and at

once, both titular and candidate.

VII. Municipal and general councillors under the Empire.

Quality of municipal and general councilors under the

Consulate and the Empire.--Object of their meetings.--Limits

of their power.--Their real role.--Role of the prefect and

of the government.

Observe the selections which he imposes on himself beforehand; these

selections are those to which he has tied down the electoral bodies.

Being the substitute of these bodies, he takes, as they do, general

councilors from those in the department who pay the most taxes, and

municipal councilors from those most taxed in the canton. One the

other hand, by virtue of the municipal law, it is from the municipal

councilors that he chooses the mayor. Thus the local auxiliaries and

agents he employs are all notables of the place, the leading landowners

and largest manufacturers and merchants. He systematically enrolls the

distributors of labor on his side, all who, through their wealth and

residence, through their enterprises and expenditure on the spot,

exercise local influence and authority. In order not to omit any of

these, and be able to introduce into the general council this or that

rich veteran of the old régime, or this or that parvenu of the new

régime who is not rich, he has reserved to himself the right of adding

twenty eligible members to the list, "ten of which must be taken from

among citizens belonging to the Legion of Honor, or having rendered

important services, and ten taken from among the thirty in the

department who pay the most taxes." In this way none of the notables

escape him; he recruits them as he pleases and according to his needs,

now among men of the revolution who he does not want to see discredited

or isolated,[4124] now among men of the old monarchy whom he wants

to rally to himself by favor or by force. Such is the Baron de

Vitrolles,[4125] who, without asking for the place, becomes mayor of

Versailles and councilor-general in Basses-Alps, and then, a little

later, at his peril, inspector of the imperial sheepfolds. Such is the

Count de Villèle, who, on returning to his estate of Morville, after an

absence of fourteen years, suddenly, "before having determined where he

would live, either in town or in the country," finds himself mayor

of Morville. To make room for him, his predecessor is removed and the

latter, "who, since the commencement of the Revolution, has performed

the functions of mayor," is let down to the post of assistant. Shortly

after this the government appoints M. de Villèle president of the

cantonal assembly. Naturally the assembly, advised underhandedly,

presents him as a candidate for the general council of Haute-Garonne,

and the government places him in that office.--"All the notable

land-owners of the department formed part of this council, and the

Restoration still found us there seven years afterwards. General orders

evidently existed, enjoining the prefects to give preference in their

choice to the most important land-owners in the country." Likewise,

Napoleon everywhere selects the mayors from the rich and

well-to-do class"; in the large towns he appoints only "people with

carriages."[4126] Many of them in the country and several in the towns

are legitimists[4127], at least at heart, and Napoleon knows it; but,

as he says; "these folks do not want the earthquake"; they are too

much interested, and too personally, in the maintenance of order.[4128]

Moreover, to represent his government, he needs decorative people; and

it is only these who can be so gratis, be themselves, look well, at

their own expense, and on the spot. Besides, they are the most informed,

the best able to supervise accounts, to examine article by article the

budgets of the department and commune, to comprehend the necessity of

a road and the utility of a canal, to offer pertinent observations,

to proclaim wise decisions, to obey orders as discreet and useful

collaborators. All this they will not refuse to do if they are sensible

people. In every form of government, it is better to be with the

governors than with the governed, and in this case, when the broom

is wielded from above and applied so vigorously and with such

meticulousness to everybody and everything, it is well to be as near the

handle as possible.

And what is still better, they will volunteer, especially at the

beginning, if they are good people. For, at least during the first

years, one great object of the new government is the re-establishment

of order in the local as well as in the general administration. It is

well-disposed and desires to mend matters; it undertakes the suppression

of robbery, theft, embezzlement, waste, premeditated or unintentional

arrogation of authority, extravagance, negligence and failure.

"Since 1790,"[4129] says the First Consul to the minister of the

interior, "the 36,000 communes represent, in France, 36,000 orphans.

.. girls abandoned or plundered during ten years by their municipal

guardians, appointed by the Convention and the Directory. In changing

the mayors, assistants, and councilors of the commune, scarcely more

has been done than to change the mode of stealing; they have stolen

the communal highway, the by-roads, the trees, and have robbed the

Church;[4130] they have stolen the furniture belonging to the commune

and are still stealing under the spineless municipal system of year

VIII."

All these abuses are investigated and punished;[4131] he thieves are

obliged to restore and will steal no more. The county budget, like of

the State, must now be prepared every year,[4132] with the same method,

precision, and clearness, receipts on one side and expenses on the

other, each section divided into chapters and each chapter into

articles, the state of the liabilities, each debt, the state of the

assets and a tabular enumeration of distinct resources, available

capital and unpaid claims, fixed income and variable income, certain

revenue and possible revenue. In no case must "the calculation of

presumable expenditure exceed the amount of presumable income." In no

case must "the commune demand or obtain an extra tax for its ordinary

expenses." Exact accounts and rigid economy, such are everywhere

indispensable, as well as preliminary reforms, when a badly kept house

has to be transformed into one which is kept in good order. The First

Consul has at heart these two reforms and he adheres to them. Above

all there must be no more indebtedness; now, more than one-half of the

communes are in debt. "Under penalty of dismissal, the prefect is to

visit the communes at least twice a year, and the sub-prefect four times

a year.[4133] A reward must be given to mayors who free their commune

of debt in two years, and the government will appoint a special

commissioner to take charge of the administration of a commune which,

after a delay of five years, shall not be liberated. The fifty mayors

who, each year, shall have most contributed to unencumber their commune

and assure that is has resources available, shall be summoned to Paris

at the expense of the State, and presented in solemn session to the

three consults. A column, raised at the expense of the government and

placed at the principal entrance of the town or village, will transmit

to posterity the mayor's name, and, besides, this inscription: 'To the

guardian of the commune, a grateful country.'"

Instead of these semi-poetic honors adapted to the imaginations of the

year VIII, take the positive honors adapted to the imaginations of the

year XII, and the following years, brevets and grades, decorations of

the Legion d'Honneur, the titles of chevalier, baron, and count,[4134]

presents and endowments,--the rewards offered to the representatives of

local society, the same as to the other functionaries, but on the same

condition that they will likewise be functionaries, that is to say,

tools in the hands of the government. In this respect, every precaution

is taken, especially against those who, forming a collective body,

may be tempted to consider themselves a deliberative assembly, such

as municipal and general councils, less easily handled than single

individuals and, at times, capable of not being quite so docile. None of

these can hold sessions of more than fifteen days in the year; each must

accept its budget of receipts and expenses, almost complete and ready

made, from the prefecture. In the way of receipts, its powers consist

wholly in voting certain additional and optional centimes, more or less

numerous, at will, "within the limits established by law";[4135] again,

even within these limits, its decision can be carried out only after an

examination and approval at the prefecture. There is the same regulation

in regard to expenses; the council, indeed, municipal or general, is

simply consultative; the government delegates the mayor, sub-prefect, or

prefect, who prescribes what must be done. As the preliminary steps are

taken by him, and he has constant direction of the local council for two

weeks, and finally the right of confirmation, he controls it, and

then for eleven months and a half, having sole charge of the daily and

consecutive execution of its acts, he reigns in the local community.

Undoubtedly, having received and expended money for the community, he

is accountable and will present his yearly accounts at the following

session; the law says[4136] that in the commune, "the municipal council

shall listen to and may discuss the account of municipal receipts and

expenses." But read the text through to the end, and note the part which

the law, in this case, assigns to the municipal council. It plays

the part of the chorus in the antique tragedy: it attends, listens,

approves, or disapproves, in the background and subordinate, approved

or rebuked, the principal actors remain in charge and do as they please;

they grant or dispute over its head, independently, just as it suits

them. In effect, it is not to the municipal council that the mayor

renders his accounts, but "to the sub-prefect, who finally passes them,"

and gives him his discharge. Whatever the council may say, the approval

is valid; for greater security, the prefect, if any councilor proves

refractory, "may suspend from his functions" a stubborn fellow like

him, and restore in the council the unanimity which has been partially

disturbed.--In the department, the council-general must likewise

"listen" to the accounts for the year; the law, owing to a significant

omission, does not say that is may discuss them. Nevertheless, a

circular of the year IX requests it to "make every observation on the

use of the additional centimes" which the importance of the subject

demands, to verify whether each sum debited to expenses has been used

for the purpose assigned to it, and even "to reject expenses, stating

the reasons for this decision, which have not been sufficiently

justified." And better still, the minister, who is a liberal, addresses

a systematic series of questions to the general councils, on all

important matters,[4137] "agriculture, commerce, and manufactures,

asylums and public charities, public roads and other works, public

instruction, administration properly so called, state of the number of

population, public spirit and opinions," collecting and printing their

observations and desires. After the year IX, however, this publication

stops; it renders the general councils too important; it might rally the

entire population of the department to them and even of all France that

could read; it might hamper the prefect and diminish his ascendancy.

From now on, it is the prefect alone who replies to these questions, and

of which the government gives an analysis or tables of statistics;[4138]

then, the publication of these ceases; decidedly, printing always has

its drawbacks--manuscript reports are much better; local affairs are

no longer transacted outside the bureaus, and are managed with closed

doors; any report that might spread outside the prefect's cabinet or

that of the minister, is carefully toned down or purposely stifled, and,

under the prefect's thumb, the general council becomes an automaton.

In private, dealing directly with the Emperor's representative, it

appears as if one is dealing directly with the Emperor. Consider these

few words--in the presence of the Emperor; they carry an immeasurable

weight in the scales of contemporaries. For them, he has every

attribute of Divinity, not only omnipotence and omnipresence, but again

omniscience, and, if he speaks to them, what they feel far surpasses

what they imagine. When he visits a town and confers with the

authorities of the place on the interests of the commune or department,

his interlocutors are bewildered; they find him as well informed as

themselves, and more clear-sighted; it is he who explains their affairs

to them. On arriving the evening before, he calls for the summaries of

facts and figures, every positive and technical detail of information,

reduced and classified according to the method taught by himself and

prescribed to his administrators.[4139] During the night he has read

all this over and mastered it; in the morning, at dawn, he has taken

his ride on horseback; with extraordinary promptness and accuracy, his

topographical glance has discerned "the best direction for the projected

canal, the best site for the construction of a factory, a harbor, or a

dike."[4140] To the difficulties which confuse the best brains in the

country, to much debated, seemingly insoluble, questions, he at once

presents the sole practical solution; there it is, ready at hand, and

the members of the local council had not seen it; he makes them touch it

with their fingers. They stand confounded and agape before the universal

competence of this wonder genius. "He's more than a man" exclaimed the

administrators of Dusseldorf to Beugnot.[4141] "Yes," replied Beugnot,

"he's the devil!" In effect, he adds to mental ascendancy the ascendancy

of force; we always see beyond the great man in him the terror-striking

dominator; admiration begins or ends in fear; the soul is completely

subjugated; enthusiasm and servility, under his eye, melt together into

one sentiment of impassioned obedience and unreserved submission.[4142]

Voluntarily and involuntarily, through conviction, trembling, and

fascinated, men abdicate their freedom of will to his advantage. The

magical impression remains in their minds after he has departed. Even

absent, even with those who have never seen him, he maintains his

prestige and communicates it to all who command in his name. Before the

prefect, the baron, the count, the councilor of state, the senator

in embroidered uniform, gilded and garnished with decorations, every

municipal or general council loses his free will and becomes incapable

of saying no, only too glad if not obliged to say yes "inopportunely,"

to enter upon odious and disagreeable undertakings, to simulate at

one's own expense, and that of others, excessive zeal and voluntary

self-sacrifice, to vote for and hurrah at patriotic subscriptions of

which it must contribute the greatest portion and for supplementary

conscriptions[4143] which seize their sons that are except or bought out

of service.[4144] It allows itself to be managed; it is simply one of

the many wheels of our immense machine, one which receives its

impulsion elsewhere, and from above, through the interposition of

the prefect.--But, except in rare cases, when the interference of

the government applies it to violent and oppressive schemes, it

is serviceable; fixed in position, and confining itself to turning

regularly and noiselessly in its little circle, it may, in general,

still render the double service demanded of it in the year IX, by a

patriotic minister. According to the definition which Chaptal then gave

the general councils, fixing their powers and competence, they exist for

two purposes and only two:[4145] they must first "insure to the governed

impartiality in the assessment of taxes along with the verification

of the use of the latest levies in the payment of local expenses," and

next, they must, with discretion and modesty, "obtain for the government

the information which alone enables it to provide for the necessities

of each department and improve the entire working of the public

administration."

VIII. Excellence of Local Government after Napoleon.

The institution remains intact under the Restoration.

--Motives of the governors.--Excellence of the machine.

--Abdication of the administrator.

Such is the spirit of the institution and such is its form. After

1814 and 1815, after the fall of the Empire and the Restoration, the

institution subsists and remains as it was before in form and in

spirit: it is always the government which appoints and directs all the

representatives of local society, in the department, in the commune, and

in the intermediate circumscriptions, the prefect, sub-prefects, mayors

and assistants, the councilors of the department, of the arrondissement

and of the commune. Whatever the ruling power may be it is repugnant to

any change; never does it voluntarily restrict itself in its faculty of

bestowing or withholding offices, authority, consideration, influence,

or salaries, every desirable and every desired good thing; as far as it

can, it retains these in its own hands to distribute them as it pleases,

and in its own interest to bestow them on its partisans and to deprive

its adversaries of them, to attract clients and create minions. The

four thousand offices of prefect, sub-prefect, and councilors of the

prefecture, department, and arrondissement, the four hundred thousand

offices of mayor, assistants, and municipal councilors, and added to

these, the innumerable salaried employments of auxiliary or secondary

agents, from the secretary-general of the prefecture down to the

secretary of the mayor, from the scribes and clerks of the prefecture

and sub-prefecture down to the staff of the municipal police and of the

octroi in the towns, from the city or department architect down to the

lowest road-surveyor, from the watchmen and superintendents of a canal

or harbor down to the field-guards and stone-breakers or the highway,

directly or indirectly, the constitutional government disposes of

them in the same fashion as the imperial government, with the same

interference in the most trifling details and in the most trifling

affair. Commune or department, such local society remains under the

second Régime what it was under the first one, an extension of the

central society, an appendix of the State, an adjunct of the great

establishment of which the seat is at Paris. In these adjuncts,

controlled from above, nothing is changed, neither the extent and limits

of the circumscription, nor the source and hierarchy of powers, nor

the theoretic framework, nor the practical mechanism, not even the

names.[4146] After the prefects of Empire come the prefects of the

Restoration, the same in title and uniform, installed in the same

mansion, to do the same work, with equal zeal, that is to say, with

dangerous zeal, to such an extent that, on taking leave of their final

audience, on setting out for their department, M. de Talleyrand,

who knows men and institutions profoundly, gives them, as his last

injunction, the following admirable order: "And, especially, no zeal!

"--According to the recommendation of Fouché, "the Bourbons slept in the

bed of Napoleon," which was the bed of Louis XIV., but larger and more

comfortable, widened by the Revolution and the Empire, adapted to the

figure of its latest occupant, and enlarged by him so as to spread over

the whole of France. When, after twenty-five years of exile, one returns

home, it is pleasant to find such a bed in the house ready made, taking

down and remaking the old one would give double trouble; moreover, in

the old one, one was less at his ease; let us profit by all that rebels

and the usurper have done that was good. In this particular, not

alone the king, but again the most antiquated of the Bourbons

are revolutionaries and Bonapartists; despotic traditionally, and

monopolists through their situation, they accept with no regrets the

systematic demolition effected by the Constituent Assembly, and the

systematic centralization instituted by the First Consul. The Duc

d'Angoulême, when, in 1815, he was paraded about the country, among the

bridges, canals, and splendid roads of Languedoc, on being reminded that

these fine works were formerly executed by the "Ètats" of the province,

dryly replied "We prefer the departments to the provinces."[4147]

With the exception of a few antiquarian and half-rustic royalists,

nobody objects; there is no thought of reconstructing the machine on

another plan; in sum, nobody is dissatisfied with the way it works. It

works well, most effectively; under the Restoration as under the Empire,

it renders to those who are interested the service demanded of it; it

goes on providing better and better for the two grand objects of local

society, care for the public highways and protection against natural

calamities. In 1814, its net results are already admirable and do it

credit--reparation of the ruins accumulated by the Revolution,[4148]

the continuation and completion of former projects, new and striking

enterprises, dikes against the sea and the rivers, basins, moles, and

jetties in the harbors, quays, and bridges, locks and canals, public

edifices, 27,200 kilometers of national roads and 18,600 kilometers of

departmental roads,[4149] without counting the district roads just

laid out; all this done regularly, exactly, and economically, Charles

Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le commencement du XIXe

siècle." In 1816, the four direct contributions returned, in principal,

249 millions, and, in additional centimes, 89 millions only. For a long

time the additional centimes applied to the local service and voted by

the department or by the commune are not many and do not exceed 5 %. of

the principal. by competent functionaries, employed and superintended,

who at first through fear are compelled to be prudent, and then through

habit and honor have become honest accountants; there is no waste, no

underhand stealing, no arbitrary charges; no sum is turned aside between

receipts and expenses to disappear and be lost on the road, or flow out

of its channel in another direction. The sensitive taxpayer, large or

small, no longer smarts under the painful goad which formerly pricked

him and made him jump. Local taxation, annexed to the general tax,

is found to be reformed, lightened, and duly proportioned. Like the

principal, the "additional centimes" are an equitable charge, graduated

according to the sum of net revenue; like the principal, they are

assessed according to the assumed sum of this net revenue by the

councils of the arondissements among the communes, and by the communal

assessors among the inhabitants. They are collected by the same

collector, with the same formalities, and every taxpayer who thinks

himself taxed too heavily finds a court of appeal in the council of the

prefecture, before which he can make his claim and obtain the release

or reduction of his quota.--Thus no crying iniquity exists, nor keen

suffering; on the other hand, there are the infinite conveniences and

daily enjoyment of possessions, the privation of which, to the modern

man, is equal to the lack of fresh, pure air, physical security and

protection against contagion, facilities for circulation and transport,

pavements, light, the salubrity of healthy streets purged of their

filth, and the presence and vigilance of the municipal and rural police.

All these benefits, the objects of local society, are due to the machine

which works with little cost, without breaking down or stopping for any

long time, as lately under the Republic, and without any extortion and

clashing, as in the times of the ancient Régime. It works by itself,

almost without the help of the parties interested, and which, in

their eyes, is not its least merit; with it, there is no bother, no

responsibility, no elections to attend to, no discussions to maintain,

no resolutions to pass. There is only one bill to be settled, not even

a specified bill, but a surplus of centimes added to each franc, and

included with the principal in the annual quota. Just like an owner who,

by his correct, exact, and somewhat slow although punctual and capable

supervisors, are relieved of the care of his property. He may dismiss

the head steward of his domain in a fit of ill-humor, but, if he changes

his stewards, he does not change the system; he is too accustomed to it,

and his indolence demands it; he is not tempted to take care and trouble

on himself, nor is he qualified to become his own intendant.

And what is worse, in the present case the master has forgotten that

he is the owner of his domain, he hardly remembers that he is a

personality. Whether large or small, department or commune, local

society has no longer the consciousness of being a natural body,

composed of involuntarily united members with common interests; this

sentiment, already weakened and drooping at the end of the ancient

régime, lost under the multiplied attacks of the Revolution and under

the prolonged compression of the Empire. During twenty-five years it

has suffered too much; it has been too arbitrarily manufactured or

mutilated, too frequently recast, and made and unmade.--In the

commune, everything has been upset over and over again, the territorial

circumscription, the internal and external system, all collective

property. To the 44,000 municipalities improvised by the Constituent

Assembly, there succeeded under the Directory 6000 or 7000 cantonal

municipalities, a sort of local syndicate, represented in each commune

by a subaltern agent, and then, under the Consulate, 36,000 distinct and

permanent communes. Sovereign at the start, through the improvidence

and abdication of the Constituent Assembly, the communes become, in the

hands of the Convention, so many timorous subjects surrendered to the

brutality of perambulating pashas and resident agas, imposed upon them

by Jacobin tyranny; then under the Empire, a docile herd governed in a

correct way from above, but possessing no authority of their own, and

therefore indifferent to their own affairs and utterly wanting in public

spirit. Other more serious blows affect of the them still more deeply

and acutely. Through a decree of the Legislative Assembly, in every

commune where a third of the inhabitants demand a partition of the

communal property, the commune is stripped, and its time-honored

patrimony is set off in equal lots, in portions according to families

or per head, and converted into small private holdings. (Page

319/584)Through a decree of the Convention, the whole of the communal

fortune, its debts and assets, are swallowed up by the public fortune

and engulfed along with that in the sale of real property, in the

discredit of the assignats, and in the final bankruptcy. After this

prolonged process, communal property, even when disgorged and restored

by the exchequer, is not what it was before; once out of the monster's

stomach, the remains of it, dismembered, spoilt, half-digested, are no

longer held sacred and inviolable; a settlement of accounts intervenes;

"there are a good many communes," says Napoleon[4150] "whose debts have

been paid and whose property was not sold; there are many others whose

property has been sold and whose debts are not paid.... The result is

that many pieces of property in certain communes are not considered

reputable." Consequently, he first deprives these of one-tenth of their

income from land, and then one-quarter of the produce of their extra

cuttings of timber,[4151] and finally, their capital, the whole of their

real property,[4152] estimated at 370 millions; in exchange, he gives

them 138 millions in the rentes; the loss to them as well as the gain

to him, is thus 232 millions, while the sale of communal properties at

auction, begun in 1813, continues under the Restoration in 1814, 1815,

and even in 1816. A human community treated in this way for one quarter

of a century, ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere material

object; as far as this is concerned, its members have come to believe,

that it is and must be so and cannot be otherwise.

Above the commune, nearly dead, is the department, completely dead; here

local patriotism is stamped out at the beginning by the destruction

of the provinces. Among so many political crimes and other outrages

committed by the Revolution against France, this is one of the worst.

The Constituent Assembly has dismantled long-established associations,

the accumulated work of ten centuries, historic and powerful names,

each of which aroused enthusiasm in thousands of breasts and cemented

together thousands of wills, centers of spontaneous co-operation,

firesides warm with generous feeling, zeal, and devotion, a practical

school of high political education, an admirable theater for available

talent, noble careers open to legitimate ambition, in short, the small

patrimony whose instinctive cult forms the first step out of egoism and

a march onward toward thoughtful devotion to the large patrimony.

Cut apart by geometrical shears, and designated by an entirely new

geographical term, small sections of the province became so many

factitious agglomerations of juxtaposed inhabitants, human assemblages

without any soul; and, for twenty years, the legislator fails to

communicate to them that semblance of spirit, the judicial quality of

which it disposes; it is only after 1811 that the departments arrive at

civil proprietorship and personality: this dignity, besides, the State

confers only to disburden itself and to burden them, to impose expenses

on them which hardly concern them but which do concern it, to compel

them in its place to support the costly maintenance of its prisons,

police quarters, courts of justice, and prefectorial mansions; even at

this late date, they are not yet, in the eyes of jurisconsults or

before the Council of State, incontestable proprietors and complete

personalities;[4153] they are not to be fully qualified in this sense

until the law of 1838.

Local society, accordingly, proves abortive over the whole 27,000

square leagues of territory; it is simply a legal figment, an artificial

grouping together of neighbors who do not find themselves bound and

incorporated together by neighborhood; in order that their society might

become viable and stimulating would require both commune and department

to have in mind and at heart the following idea, which they no longer

entertained:

"We are all aboard the same ship, it is ours and we are its crew. We are

here to manage it ourselves, with our own hands, each according to his

rank and position, each taking his part, little or big, in doing his own

work."

*****

[Footnote 4101: My understanding, today in 1999, that all people other

animals by nature are 'built' as egoists, that is to look out for

themselves, to preserve their life, protect their property and family.

As far as the social (or gregarious) instincts are concerned then there

are several which manifest themselves in the correct and timely order

during our entire existence. Some will regulate falling in love, others

procreation, others relationship between man and woman, others between

parents and children, at yet others the group and its choice and

submission to a leader. One of the results is that everyone wants to be

important and accepted, another that a mob has drives or instincts which

may galvanize it into compassion, anger, fear and action. To this must

be added that all people can remember, not only what they have tried,

but also what they have seen or heard about. They also tend to imagine

that others react in the same way as they themselves do. This allows

them to look ahead and imagine various possible scenarios. They are also

aware of how they would want to be dealt with by others. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4102: That is what has happened during communism where men

worked as little as possible since the principle of equality made most

effort rest without reward.]

[Footnote 4103: The so-called "Centimes additionels" was an increase in

certain taxes to be paid to the communes and departments.]

[Footnote 4104: Rocquain, "L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire" (report

by Fourcroy, pp. 138, 166)": A sack of wheat worth 18 francs at Nantes

costs an equal sum for its cartage to Brest. I have seen carters

plodding along, seven or eight in a line, each with six or eight strong

horses dragging their vehicles and alternately helping each other, their

horses hauling their carts out of ruts into which they had got stuck...

In many places, I was grieved to see carts and wagons leaving the

high-road and traversing, in spaces from 100 to 200 yards wide, the

plowed ground, when each made his own road.... The carters sometimes

make only three or four leagues from morning to night."--Hence, a dearth

of provisions at Brest. "We are assured that the people have long been

on half-rations, or even quarter rations."--And yet, "There is now in

the river, at Nantes, from four to five hundred boats loaded with grain;

they have been there for months, and their number increases daily. Their

cargoes are deteriorating and becoming damaged."]

[Footnote 4105: Ibid., preface and summary, p.41 (on the dikes and works

of protection against inundations at Dol in Brittany, at Fréjus, in

Camargue, in Lower Rhine, in Nord, in Pas-de-Calais, at Ostende and

Blankenberg, at Rochefort, at La Rochelle, etc.). At Blankenberg, a gale

sufficed to carry away the dike and let in the sea. "The dread of some

disaster which would ruin a large portion of the departments of the

Lys and of the Escaut kept the inhabitants constantly in a state of

frightful anxiety."]

[Footnote 4106: Hence the additional centimes to the tax on doors and

windows, the number of which indicates approximately the value of the

rent. Hence also the additional centimes to the personal tax, which

is proportionate to the rent, this being considered as the most exact

indication of domestic expenditure.]

[Footnote 4107: Hence the communal "additional centimes" to the tax on

business licenses.]

[Footnote 4108: Hence the "additional centimes" to the land tax.]

[Footnote 4109: Today, in 1999, we may in Denmark observe how the

contemporary oligarchy of non-violent Jacobins, have transformed the

local authorities into tools of the central government which through an

all permeating administration, has replaced the authority of the

father and the solidarity of the family with a communal care and

supervision.(SR.).]

[Footnote 4110: Syndicates of this kind are instituted by the law of

June 25, 1865, "between proprietors interested in the execution

and maintenance of public works: 1st, Protection against the sea,

inundations, torrents, and navigable or non-navigable rivers; 2d,

Works in deepening, repairing, and regulating canals and non-navigable

water-courses, and ditches for draining and irrigation; 3d, Works for

the drainage of marshes; 4th, Locks and other provisions necessary

in working salt marshes; 5th, Drainage of wet and unhealthy

ground."--"Proprietors interested in the execution of the

above-mentioned works may unite in an authorized syndical company,

either on the demand of one or of several among them, or on the

initiative of the prefect."--(Instead of authorized, we must read

forced, and we then find that the association may be imposed on all

interested parties, on the demand of one alone, or even without any

one's demand.)--Like the Annecy building, these syndicates enable one to

reach the fundamental element of local society. Cf. the law of September

26, 1807 (on the drainage of marshes), and the law of April 21, 1810 (on

mines and the two owners of the mine, one of the surface and the other

of the subsoil, both likewise partners, and no less forcibly so through

physical solidarity.)]

[Footnote 4111: See "The Revolution," vol. I., passim. (Ed. Laff. I. pp.

315-445).]

[Footnote 4112: Two kinds of police must be distinguished one from the

other. The first is general and belongs to the State: its business is to

repress and prevent, outside and inside, all aggression against private

and public property. The second is municipal, and belongs to the local

society: its business is to see to the proper use of the public roads,

and other matters, which, like water, air, and light, are enjoyed in

common; it undertakes, also, to forestall the risks and dangers of

imprudence, negligence, and filth, which any aggregation of men never

fails to engender. The provinces of these two police forces join and

penetrate each other at many points; hence, each of the two is the

auxiliary, and, if need be, the substitute of the other.]

[Footnote 4113: Rocquain, "l'État de la France au 18 Brumaire," passim.]

[Footnote 4114: Raynouard, "Histoire du droit municipal,"II., 356,

and Dareste, "Histoire de l'administration en France," I., 209, 222.

(Creation of the posts of municipal mayor and assessors by the king,

in 1692, for a money consideration.) "These offices were obtained by

individuals, along with hereditary title, now attached to communities,

that is to say, bought in by these," which put in their possession the

right of election.--The king frequently took back these offices which he

had sold, and sold them over again. In 1771, especially, he takes them

back, and, it seems, to keep them forever; but he always reserves the

right of alienating them for money. For example (Augustin Thierry,

"Documens sur l'histoire du tiers État," III., 319), an act of the royal

council, dated October 1, 1772, accepts 70,000 francs from the town of

Amiens for the repurchase of the installment of its magistracies, and

defining these magistracies, as well as the mode of election according

to which the future incumbents shall be appointed. Provence frequently

bought back its municipal liberties in the same fashion, and, for a

hundred years, expended for this purpose 12,500,000 livres. In 1772, the

king once more established the venality of the municipal offices: but,

on the Parliament of Aix remonstrating, in 1774, he returned their old

rights and franchises to the communities.--Cf. Guyot, "Répertoire de

jurisprudence" (1784), articles, Echevins, Capitouls, Conseillers.]

[Footnote 4115: Thibaudeau, p.72 (words of the First Consul at a meeting

of the Council of State, Pluviôse 14, year X).]