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 regime, or this or that parvenu of the new regime 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 Villele, 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 Villele 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 Regime 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 Fouche, "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'Angouleme, 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 "Etats" 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 siecle." 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 Regime. 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 regime, 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'Etat 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 Frejus, 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'Etat 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 Etat," 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, "Repertoire 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, Pluviose 14, year X).]

[Footnote 4116: Roederer, III., 439 (Note of Pluviose 28, year VIII), ib., 443 "The pretended organic senatus-consulte of Aug. 4, 1802, put an end to notability by instituting electoral colleges... The First Consul was really recognized as the grand-elector of the notability,"]

[Footnote 4117: Any dictator or dictator's draftsman will, upon reading this understand how easy it is to make a sham constitution and sham electoral systems for a de facto dictatorship.(SR.)]

[Footnote 4118: Thibaudeau, 72, 289 (words of the First Consul at a meeting of the Council of State, Thermidor 16, year X).]

[Footnote 4119: Ibid., p. 293. Senatus-consulte of Thermidor 16, year X, and of Fructidor 19, year X.]

[Footnote 4120: Decree of January 17, 1806, article 40.]

[Footnote 4121: Aucoc, "Conference sur l'administration et le droit administratif," Sec.Sec. 101, 162, 165. In our legislative system the council of the arrondissement has not become a civil personality, while it has scarcely any other object than to apportion direct taxes among the communes of the arrondissement]

[Footnote 4122: Senatus-consulte of Thermidor 16, year X.]

[Footnote 4123: Decree of May 13, 1806, title III., article 32.]

[Footnote 4124: Thibaudeau, ibid., 294 (Speech of the First Consul to the Council of State, Thermidor 16, year X). "What has become of the men of the Revolution? Once out of place, they have been entirely neglected: they have nothing left; they have no support, no natural refuge. Look at Barras, Reubell, etc." The electoral colleges are to furnish them with the asylum they lack. "Now is the time to elect the largest number of men of the Revolution; the longer we wait, the fewer there will be.... With the exception of some of them, who have appeared on a grand stage,... who have signed some treaty of peace... the rest are all isolated and in obscurity. That is an important gap which must be filled up.... It is for this reason that I have instituted the Legion of Honor."]

[Footnote 4125: Baron de Vitrolles, "Memoires," preface, XXI. Comte de Villele, "Memoires et Correspondance," I., 189 (August, 1807).]

[Footnote 4126: Faber, "Notice sur l'interieur de la France" (1807), p.25.]

[Footnote 4127: Supporters of the Sovereign king or of the legitimate royal dynasty. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4128: The following document shows the sense and aim of the change, which goes on after the year VIII, also the contrast between both administrative staffs. (Archives Nationales, F 7, 3219; letter of M. Alquier to the First Consul, Pluviose 18, year VIII.) M. Alquier, on his way to Madrid, stops at Toulouse and sends a report to the authorities of Haute-Garonne: "I was desirous of seeing the central administration. I found there the ideas and language of 1793. Two personages, Citizens Barreau and Desbarreaux, play an active part then. Up to 1792, the first was a shoemaker, and owed his political fortune simply to his audacity and revolutionary frenzy. The second, Desbarreaux, was a comedian of Toulouse, his principal role being that of valets. In the month of Prairial, year III, he was compelled to go down on his knees on the stage and ask pardon for having made incendiary speeches at some previous period in the decadal temple. The public, not deeming his apology sufficient, drove him out of the theater. He now combines with his function of departmental administrator the post of cashier for the actors, which thus brings him in 1200 francs... The municipal councilors are not charged with lack of probity: but they are derived from too law a class and have too little regard for themselves to obtain consideration from the public... The commune of Toulouse is very impatient at being governed by weak, ignorant men, formerly mixed in with the crowd, and whom, probably, it is urgent to send back to it.... It is remarkable that, in a city of such importance, which provides so large a number of worthy citizens of our sort of capacity and education, only men are selected for public duties who, with respect to instruction, attainments, and breeding, offer no guarantee whatever to the government and no inducement to win public consideration."]

[Footnote 4129: "Correspondance de Napoleon," No.4474, note dictated to Lucien, minister of the interior, year VIII.]

[Footnote 4130: Cf. "Proces-verbaux des conseil generaux" of the year VIII, and especially of the year IX. "Many of the cross roads have entirely disappeared at the hands of the neighboring owners of the land. The paved roads are so much booty." (for example, Vosges, p.429, year IX.) "The roads of the department are in such a bad state that the landowners alongside carry off the stones to build their houses and wall in their inheritance. They encroach on the roads daily; the ditches are cultivated by them the same as their own property."]

[Footnote 4131: Laws of February 29—March 9, 1804 And February 28—March 10, 1805.]

[Footnote 4132: Laws of July 23, 1802, and of February 27, 1811.]

[Footnote 4133: "Correspondance de Napoleon," No. 4474 (note dictated to Lucien).]

[Footnote 4134: Decree of March 1, 1808: "Are counts by right, all ministers, senators, councilors of state for life, presidents of the corps Legislatif, and archbishops. Are barons by right, all bishops. May become barons, after ten years of service, all first presidents and attorney generals, the mayors of the thirty-six principal towns. (In 1811, instead of 36, there are 52 principal towns.) May also become barons, the presidents and members of the department electoral colleges who have attended three sessions of these colleges."]

[Footnote 4135: Decree of Thermidor 4, year X.]

[Footnote 4136: Law of Pluviose 28, year VIII.]

[Footnote 4137: "Proces-verbaux des conseils generaux" of the years VIII and X. (The second series drawn up after those propounded by the minister Chaptal, is much more complete and furnishes an historical document of the highest importance.)]

[Footnote 4138: "Statistiques des prefets" (from the years IX to XIII, about 40 volumes).]

[Footnote 4139: Beugnot, "Memoires," I., 363.]

[Footnote 4140: Faber, ibid., 127.—Cf. Charlotte de Sohr, "Napoleon en 1811" (details and anecdotes on Napoleon's journey through Belgium and Holland).]

[Footnote 4141: Beugnot, I., 380, 384. "He struck the good Germans dumb with admiration, unable to comprehend how it was that their interests had become so familiar to him and with what superiority he treated them."]

[Footnote 4142: Beugnot, ibid., I., 395. Everywhere, on the Emperor's passage (1811), the impression experienced was a kind of shock as at the sight of a wonderful apparition.]

[Footnote 4143: Thiers, "Histoire du Consulat et l'Empire," XVI., 246 (January, 1813). "A word to the prefect, who transmitted this to one of the municipal councilors of his town, was enough to insure an offer from some large town and have this imitated throughout the empire. Napoleon had an idea that he could get towns and cantons to offer him troops of horse, armed and equipped."—In fact, this offer was voted with shouts by the Paris municipal council and, through contagion, in the provinces. As to voting this freely it suffices to remark how the annexed towns voted, which, six months later, are to rebel. Their offers are not the least. For instance, Amsterdam offers 100 horsemen, Hamburg 100, Rotterdam 50, the Hague 40, Leyden 24, Utrecht 20, Dusseldorf 12.—The horsemen furnished are men enlisted for money; 16,000 are obtained, and the sum voted suffices to purchase additionally 22,000 horses and 22,000 equipments.—To obtain this money, the prefect himself apportions the requisite sum among those in his department who pay the most taxes, at the rate of from 600 to 1000 francs per head. On these arbitrary requisitions and a great many others, either in money or in produce, and on the sentiments of the farmers and landed proprietors in the South, especially after 1813, cf. the "Memoires de M. Villele," vol. I., passim.]

[Footnote 4144: Comte Joseph d'Estourmel, "Souvenirs de France et d'Italie," 240. The general council of Rouen was the first to suggest the vote for guards of honor. Assembled spontaneously (meetings are always spontaneous), its members pass an enthusiastic address. "The example was found to be excellent; the address was published in the Moniteur, and sent to all the prefects.... The councils were obliged to meet, which generously disposed of other people's children, and very worthy persons, myself first of all, thought that they might join in this shameful purpose, to such an extent had imperial fanaticism fascinated them and perverted consciences!"]

[Footnote 4145: Archives nationales (state of accounts of the prefects and reports of the general police commissioners, F7, 5014 and following records.—Reports of senators on their senatoreries, AF, IV., 1051, and following records).—These papers disclose at different dates the state of minds and of things in the provinces. Of all these reports, that of Roederer on the senatorerie of Caen is the most instructive, and gives the most details on the three departments composing it. (Printed in his "aeuvres completes," vol. III.)]

[Footnote 4146: The reader will find in the Archives nationales, the fullest and most precise information concerning local administration and the sentiments of the different classes of society, in the correspondence of the prefects of the first Restoration, of the hundred days, and of the second Restoration from 1814 to 1823 (Cf. especially those of Haute-Garonne, the Rhine, Cote d'Or, Ain, Loiret, Indre-et-Loire, Indre, Loire-Inferieure and Aisne.) The letters of several prefects, M. de Chabroe, M. de Tocqueville, M. de Remusat, M. de Barante, are often worth publishing; occasionally, the minister of the interior has noted with a pencil in the margin, "To be shown to the King."]

[Footnote 4147: M. de Villele, ibid., I., 248.]

[Footnote 4148: Rocquam, "l'Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire," reports of the councilors of state sent on missions, p.40.]

[Footnote 4149: De Feville, "La France economique," 248 and 249.]

[Footnote 4150: Pelet de la Lozere, "Opinions de Napoleon au conseil d'Etat," P. 277 (Session of March 15, 1806).—Decree of March 16, 1806, and of September 15, 1807.]

[Footnote 4151: Ibid., 276. "To those who objected that a tax could only be made according to law, Napoleon replied that it was not a tax, since there were no other taxes than those which the law established, and that this one (the extra assessment of a quarter of the produce of timber) was established by decree. It is only a master, and an absolute master, who could reason in this way."]

[Footnote 4152: Law of March 20, 1813. (Woods, meadows, and pasture-grounds used by the population in common are excepted, also buildings devoted to public use, promenades, and public gardens.)—The law takes rural possessions, houses and factories, rented and producing an income. Thiers, XVI., 279. The five percents at this time were worth 75 francs, and 138 millions of these gave a revenue of 9 millions, about the annual income derived by the communes from their confiscated real estate.]

[Footnote 4153: Aucoc, ibid., Sec.Sec. 55 and 135.]



CHAPTER II. LOCAL SOCIETY SINCE 1830.



I. Introduction of Universal suffrage.

Local society since 1830.—Introduction of a new internal motor.—Subordinate to the external motor.—Advantageous under the system of universal suffrage.

Neither lips nor heart are capable of pronouncing the above invigorating and conclusive phrase after a silence of 30 years. That local society ought to be a private association, does not interest those who are concerned, while the legislator does not permit it. Indeed, after the year VIII (1799), the State (Napoleon) introduces into the machine the new motivation described above. After the revolution of 1830,[4201] the municipal and general councilors become elective and are appointed by a limited suffrage; after the revolution of 1848, they are elected by universal suffrage.[4202] After the revolution of 1870,[4203] each municipal council elects its own mayor, while the council-general, whose powers are enlarged, leaves in its place, during its vacations, a standing committee who arrange with, and govern along with, the prefect. Here, in local society, is a superadded internal motor, working from below, whilst the first one is external and works from above; from now on, both are to work together and in accord.—But, in reality, the second (the council-general) remains subordinate; moreover, it does not suit the machine[4204] and the machine does not suit it; it is only a superfluity, an inconvenient and cumbersome intruder, nearly always useless, and often mischievous. Its influence is feeble and of little effect; too many brakes are attached to it; its force diminishes through the complexity of its numerous wheels; it fails in giving action; it cannot but little more than impede or moderate other impulses, those of the external motor, sometimes as it should, and sometimes the contrary. Most frequently, even nowadays (1889), it is of no efficiency whatever. Three-quarters of the municipal councils, for three-fourths of their business, hold sessions only to give signatures. Their pretended deliberations are simply a parade formality; the incentive and direction continue to come from without, and from above; under the third Republic, as under the Restoration and the first Empire, it is always the central State which governs the local society; amid all the wrangling and disputes, in spite of passing conflicts it is, and remains, the initiator, mover, leader, controller, accountant, and executor of every undertaking, the preponderating power in the department as well as in the commune, and with what deplorable results we all know.—There is still another and more serious result. Nowadays, its interference is an advantage, for should it renounce its preponderance this would pass over to the other power which, since this has become vested in a numerical majority, is mere blind and brutal force; abandoned to itself and without any counter-weight, its ascendancy would be disastrous, we would see reappearing along with the blunders of 1789, the outrages, usurpations, and distress of 1790, 1791 and 1792.[4205]—In any event, there is this advantage in despotic centralization, that it still preserves us from democratic autonomy. In the present state of institutions and minds, the former system, objectionable as it may be, is our last retreat against the greater evil of the latter.



II. Universal suffrage.

Application of universal suffrage to local society.—Two assessments for the expenses of local society.—The fixed amount of one should in equity be equal to the average sum of the other.—Practically, the sum of one is kept too low.- -How the new regime provides for local expenditure.—The "additional centimes."—How the small taxpayer is relieved in town and country.—His quota in local expenditure reduced to the minimum.—His quota of local benefits remains intact.—Hence the large or average taxpayer bears, beside his own burden, that of the relieved small taxpayer.—Number of those relieved.—The extra burden of the large and average taxpayer is alms-giving.—The relief of the small taxpayer is a levy of alms.

In effect, direct universal suffrage, counted by heads, is in local society a discordant element, a monstrous system, to which it is adverse. Constituted as this is, not by human judgment, but by the preponderance of numbers and their force, its mechanism is determined beforehand; it excludes certain wheels and connections.[4206] That is why the legislator must write laws which reflect the nature of our existence, or, at least, translate this as closely as he can, without any gross contradiction. Nature herself presents him with ready-made statutes.[4207] His business is to read these properly; he has already transcribed the apportionment of burdens; he can now transcribe the apportionment of rights.

So, we have seen, local society renders two distinct services[4208], which, that the expenses of both may be met, require two distinct assessments, one personal and the other real, one levied on everybody and of which the amount is alike for all, and the other levied only on those whose amount is based on what he spends, on the importance of his business, and on the income from his real estate.—In strict equity, the amount of the former should be equal to the average amount of the latter; in effect, as has been shown, the services defrayed by the former are as many, as diverse, and as precious, still more vital, and not less costly than those of which the latter is the price. Of the two interests which they represent, each, did it stand alone, would be obliged to secure the same services, to take upon itself the whole of the work; neither would obtain more in the dividend, and each would have to pay the whole of the expense. Accordingly, each gains as much as the other in the physical solidarity which binds them together. Hence, in the legal bond which unites them they enter into it on an equal footing, on condition that each is burdened or relived as much as the other, on condition that if the latter assumes one-half of the expense the former shall assume the other half, on condition that if the latter quota on each one hundred francs expended against calamities and for public roads is 50 francs, the former quota shall also be 50 francs.—Practically, however, this is impossible. Three times out of four the former levy with this apportionment would not be returned; through prudence as well as humanity, the legislator is bound not to overburden the poor. Recently, in organizing the general tax and the revenue of the State, he has looked out for them; now, in organizing the local tax and the revenue of the department or of the commune, he looks out for them to a still greater extent.

In the new financial scheme, so many centimes, added to each franc of direct tax, form the principal resource of the department and commune, and it is through this extra charge that each taxpayer pays his quota of local expenditure. Now, there is no surcharge on the personal tax, no additional centimes. Under this heading, the laborer without any property or income, the workman who lives in lodgings, on his wages, and from day to day, contributes nothing to the expenses of his commune or department. In vain do "additional centimes" pour down on other branches of direct taxation; they are not grafted on this one, and do not suck away the substance of the poor.[4209]—There is the same regard for the half poor, in relation to the artisan who furnishes his own room, but who lodges in an upper story, and in relation to the peasant whose hovel or cottage has but one door and one window.[4210] Their rate of taxation on doors and windows is very low, purposely reduced, kept below one franc a year, while the rate of their personal tax is scarcely higher. "Additional centimes" may be imposed on so small a principal and be multiplied in vain, never will they reach more than an insignificant amount.-Not only are the destitute relieved of both principal and "additional centimes," the verified poor, those who are registered and are helped, or should be, that is to say 2,470,000 persons;[4211] but, again, others, by hundreds of thousands, whom the municipal council judges incapable of paying.—Even when people possess but a small piece of land, they are also relieved of the land tax and of the numerous additional centimes which increase it. Such is the case with those who are infirm or burdened with a family. The exchequer, so as not to convert them into beggars and vagabonds, avoids expropriation, selling out their concrete hovel, vegetable garden, and small field of potatoes or cabbages; it gives them receipts gratis, or, at least, refrains from prosecuting them.[4212] In this way the poor peasant, although a land-owner, again exempts himself, or is exempted from his local indebtedness. In truth, he pays nothing, or nearly nothing, otherwise than by prestations (payments) in money or in kind; that is to say, by three days' work on the district roads, which, if he pays in kind, are not worth more than 50 sous.[4213] Add to this his portion, very small and often null, of the additional centimes on the tax on doors and windows, on the personal tax, and on the tax on real estate, in all 4 or 5 francs a year. Such is the amount by which the poor or half-poor taxpayer in the villages liberates himself toward his department and commune.—In the towns, he apparently pays more, owing to the octroi. But, at first, there are only 1525 communes out of 36,000 in which the octroi[4214] has been established; while in the beginning, under the Directory and Consulate, it was revived only on his account, for his benefit, in behalf of public charity, to defray the expenses of asylums and hospitals ruined by revolutionary confiscation. It was then "an octroi for charity," in fact as well as in name, like the surplus tax on theater seats and tickets, established at the same time and for the same purpose; it still to-day preserves the stamp of its first institution. Bread, the indispensable provision for the poor, is not subjected to the octroi nor the materials for making it, either grain or flour, nor milk, fruits, vegetables, or codfish, while there is only a light tax on butcher's meat. Even on beverages, where the octroi is heavier, it remains, like all indirect taxes, nearly proportional and semi-optional. In effect, it is simply an increase of the tax on beverages, so many additional centimes per franc on the sum of indirect taxation, as warrantable as the impost itself, as tolerable, and for the same motives.[4215] For the greater the sobriety of the taxpayer, the less is he affected by this tax. At Paris, where the increase is excessive, and adds to the 6 centimes paid to the state, on each quart of wine, 12 centimes paid to the city; if he drinks but one quart a day, he pays, under this heading, into the city treasury 43 francs 80 centimes per annum: but, as compensation for this, he is free of personal tax of 11 3/4%, which this adds to the amount of each rental of the 11 3/4%, whereby this would have added to his rent, and therefore 47 francs per annum as a rent of 400 francs. Thus what he has paid with one hand he gets back with the other. Now, at Paris, all rentals under 400 francs[4216] are thus free of any personal tax; all rentals between 400 and 1000 francs are more or less free, and, in the other octroi towns, an analogous discharge reimburses to the small taxpayers a portion more or less great of the sum they pay to the octroi.—Accordingly, in the towns as in the country, they are favored at one time through fiscal relief and at another through administrative favor, now through compulsory deduction and now through total or partial reimbursement. Always, and very wisely, the legislator apportions the burden according to the strength of the shoulders; he relieves them as much as he can, at first, of the general tax, and next, which is still better, of the local tax. Hence, in local expenditure, their quota diminishes out of all proportion and is reduced to the minimum. Nevertheless, their quota of local benefit remains full and entire; at this insignificant price they enjoy the public highways and profit by all the precautions taken against physical ills; each profits by this personally, equally with any millionaire. Each personally receives as much in the great dividend of security, health, and convenience, in the fruit of the vast works of utility and enjoyment due to improved communications, which preserve health, assist traffic, and beautify the locality, and without which, in town as well as in the country, life would be impossible or intolerable.

But these works which cost so much, these defensive operations and apparatus against inundations, fires, epidemics, and contagions, these 500,000 kilometers of district and department roads, these dikes, quays, bridges, public gardens, and promenades, this paving, drainage, sweeping and lighting, these aqueducts and supplies of drinkable water, all this is paid for by somebody, and, since it is not done by the small taxpayer, it is the large or average taxpayer who pays for it. The latter then, bears, besides his obligatory weight, a gratuitous surplus burden, consisting of the weight of which the other is relieved.

Evidently the greater the number of the relieved, the heavier will be this overweight, and the relieved count by millions. Two millions and a half of declared poor[4217] are relieved of any direct tax, and, therefore, of all the centimes which have just increased the burden. Out of 8 millions of real-estate owners,[4218] 3 millions, considered as insolvent, pay neither the real estate tax nor the centimes which it comprises. In the octroi towns, it is not the minority but the majority of the inhabitants who are relieved in the way just described; in Paris,[4219] out of 685,000 rentals, 625,000, in other terms twelve out of thirteen lodgings, are exempt, wholly or in part, from the personal tax, the principal and "additional centimes." On each franc of this principal there are 96 of these superadded centimes for the benefit of the town and department and because the department and the town expend a good deal, and because receipts are essential for the settlement of these accounts, this or that sum is noted beforehand in every chapter of receipts, and the main thing now is to have this paid in, and it must be paid by somebody; it matters little whether the peasants are few or numerous; if among thirteen taxable persons there is only one that pays, so much the worse for him, for he must pay for himself and the other twelve. Such is the case in Paris, which accounts for the "additional centimes" here being so numerous,[4220] owing to there being less than 60,000 rentals for the acquittance of the entire tax, and, besides paying their own debt, they must discharge the indebtedness of 625,000 other rentals, the tax on which is reduced or null.—Frequently, before the Revolution, some rich convent or philanthropic seignior would pay the taxes of his poor neighbors out of his own pocket; willingly or not, 60,000 Parisians, more or less well lodged, now hand over the same sum, bestow the same charity, on 625,000 thousand badly or only tolerably lodged Parisians; among these 60,000 benefactors whom the exchequer obliges to be benevolent, 34,800 who pay from 1000 to 3000 francs rent, bestow, under this heading, a pretty large sum for charitable purposes, while 14,800, who pay more than 3000 francs rent, pay a very large one. Other branches of direct taxation, in the country as well as in the city, present the same spectacle: it is always the rich or the well-to-do taxpayers who, through their over-tax, more or less completely relieve the poor or straitened taxpayers; it is always the owners of large or small properties, those who pay heavy or average licenses, the occupants of lodgings with more than five openings,[4221] and whose locative value surpasses 1000 francs, who in local expenditure pay besides their own dues the dues of others and, through their additional centimes, almost entirely defray the expenses of the department and commune.—This is nearly always the case in a local society, except when it chances to possess an abundant income, arising from productive real estate, and is able to provide for its wants without taxing its members; apart from this rare exception, it is forced to tax some in order to relieve others. In other words, the same as with other enterprises, it manufactures and sells its product but, just the reverse of other enterprises, it sells the product, an equal quantity of the same product, that is to say, equal protection against the same calamities, and the equal enjoyment of the same public highway, at unequal prices, very dear to a few, moderately dear to many, at cost price to a large number, and with a discount to the mass; to this last class of consumers the discount goes on increasing like the emptiness of their purse; to the last of all, extremely numerous, the goods are delivered almost gratis, or even for nothing.

But to this inequality of prices may correspond the inequality of rights, and compensation will come, the balance may be restored, distributive justice may be applied, if, in the government of the enterprise, the parts assigned are not equal, if each member sees his portion of influence growing or diminishing along with the weight of his charge, if the regulations, graduating authority according to the scale of the levies, assigns few votes to those who pay the lowest quotas of expense and receive alms, and many votes to those who give alms and pay the largest quotas of the expenditure.



III. Equity in taxation.

Possible compensation in the other side of the scale.—What the distribution of rights should be according to the principle of distributive justice.—In every association of stock-owners.—In local society confined to its natural object.—In local society charged with supplementary functions.—The local statue in England and Prussia.—The exchange equitable when burdens are compensated by rights.

Such is the rule in every association of interests, even in stock companies in which the distribution of charges allows of no favor or disfavor to any associate. It must be noted that, in these companies, co-operation is not compulsory, but voluntary; the associates are not, as in the local society, conscripts enlisted under the constraint of physical solidarity, but subscribers bound together under the impulsion of a deliberate preference, each remaining in its of his own free will just as he entered it; if he wishes to leave it he has only to sell his stock; the fact of his keeping this confirms his subscription, and, thus holding on to it, he daily subscribes anew to the statute. Here, then, is a perfectly free association; its is accordingly perfectly equitable, and its statute serves as a model for others.

Now this statute always makes a distinction between the small and the large stockholders; it always attributes a greater share of authority and influence to those who share most largely in the risks and expenses; in principle, the number of votes in confers on each associate is proportionate to the number of shares of which he is the owner or bearer.—All the stronger is the reason why this principle should be embodied in the statutes of a society which, like the local community, diminishes the burden of the small taxpayer through its reductions, and increases by its extra taxation the burden of the large or average taxpayer; when the appointment of managers is handed over to universal suffrage, counted by heads, the large and average taxpayers are defrauded of their dues and deprived of their rights, more so by far and more deeply wronged than the bearer or owner of a thousand shares in an omnibus or gas company if, on voting at a meeting of stockholders, his vote did not count for more than that of the owner or bearer of a single share.—

How is it then when a local society adds to its natural and unavoidable purpose an optional and supplementary purpose;

* when, increasing its load, it undertakes to defray the cost of public charity and of primary education;

* when, to support this additional cost, it multiplies the additional centimes;

* when the large or average taxpayer pays alone, or nearly alone, for this benevolent work by which he does not benefit;

* when the small taxpayer pays nothing, or next to nothing, to this benevolent work by which he does benefit;

* when, in voting for the expense thus apportioned, each taxpayer, whatever the amount of his contribution, has one vote and only one?

In this case, powers, benefits, reductions, and exemptions, all the advantages are on one side, that of the poor and half-poor forming the majority and who if not restrained from above, will persistently abuse their numerical force to augment their advantages, at the increasing expense of the rich or well-do-do minority. In the future, in the local society, the average or large taxpayer is no longer an associate but a victim; were he free to choose he would not enter into it; he would like to go away and establish himself elsewhere; but were he to enter others, near or remote, his condition would be no better. He remains, accordingly, where he is, physically present, but absent in feeling; he takes no part in deliberate meetings; his zeal has died out; he withholds from public affairs that surplus of vigilant attention, that spontaneous and ready collaboration which he would have contributed gratis; he lets matters go along without him, just as it happens; he remains there just what he is, a workable, taxable individual in capricious hands, in short, a passive subject who gives and has become resigned.—For this reason, in countries where an encroaching democracy has not yet abolished or perverted the notion of equity, the local statute applies the fundamental rule of an equitable exchange; it lays down the principle that

he who pays commands, and in proportion to the sum he pays.[4222]

In England, a surplus of votes is awarded to those most heavily taxed, even six votes to one voter; in Prussia, local taxation is divided into thirds, and, accordingly, the taxpayers into three groups, the first one composed of heavy taxpayers, few in number, and who pay the first third, the second composed of average taxpayers, average in number, and who pay the second third, and the third composed of the great number of small taxpayers, who pay the last third.[4223] To each of these groups is assigned the same number of suffrages in the commune election, or the same number of representatives in the commune representation. Through this approximate balance of legal burdens and of legal rights, the two sides of the scales are nearly level, the level which distributive justice demands, and the level which the state, special interpreter, sole arbiter and universal minister of distributive justice, should establish when, in the local community, it imposes, rectifies, or maintains the articles in accordance with which it derives its income and governs.



IV. On unlimited universal suffrage.

How unlimited universal suffrage found its way into local society.—Object and mode of the French legislator.

If the government, in France, does just the opposite, it is at the height of a violent and sudden revolution, forced by the party in power and by popular prejudice, through deductive reasoning, and through contagion. According to revolutionary and French usage, the legislator was bound to institute uniformity and to make things symmetrical; having placed universal suffrage in political society, he was likewise determined to place it in local society. He had been ordered to apply an abstract principle, that is to say, to legislate according to a summary, superficial, and verbal notion which, purposely curtailed and simplified to excess, did not correspond with its aim. He obeyed and did nothing more; he made no effort outside of his instructions. He did not propose to himself to restore local society to its members, to revive it, to make it a living body, capable of spontaneous, co-ordinate, voluntary action, and, to this end, provided with indispensable organs. He did not even take the trouble to imagine, how it really is, I mean by this, complex and diverse and inversely to legislators before 1789, and adversely to legislators before and after 1789 outside of France, against all the teachings of experience, against the evidence of nature, he refused to recognize the fact that, in France, mankind are of two species, the people of the towns and the people of the country, and that, therefore, there are two types of local society, the urban commune and the rural commune. He was not disposed to take this capital difference into consideration; he issued decrees for the Frenchman in general, for the citizen in himself, for fictive men, so reduced that the statute which suits them can nowhere suit the actual and complete man. At one stroke, the legislative shears cut out of the same stuff, according to the same pattern, thirty-six thousand examples of the same coat, one coat indifferently for every commune, whatever its shape, a coat too small for the city and too large for the village, disproportionate in both cases, and useless beforehand, because it could not fit very large bodies, nor very small ones. Nevertheless, once dispatched from Paris, people had to put the coat on and wear it; it must answer for good or for ill, each donning his own for lack of another better adjusted; hence the strangest attitudes for each, and, in the long run, a combination of consequences which neither governors nor the governed had foreseen.



V. Rural or urban communes.

No distinction between the rural and the urban commune. —Effects of the law on the rural commune.—Disproportion between the intelligence of its elected representatives and the work imposed upon them.—The mayor and the municipal council.—Lack of qualified members.—The secretary of the mayoralty.—The chief or under chief of the prefectorial bureau.

Let us consider these results in turn in the small and in the great communes; clear enough and distinct at the two extremities of the scale, they blend into each other at intermediate degrees, because here they combine together, but in different proportions, according as the commune, higher or lower in the scale, comes nearer to the village or to the city.—On this territory, too, subdivided since 1789, and, so to say, crumbled to pieces by the Constituent Assembly, the small communes are enormous in number; among the 36,000, more than 27,000 have less than 1000 inhabitants, and of these, more than 16,000 have less than 500 inhabitants.[4224] Whoever has traveled over France, or lived in this country, sees at once what sort of men compose such purely rural groups; he has only to recall physiognomies and attitudes to know to what extent in these rude brains, rendered torpid by the routine of manual labor and oppressed by the cares of daily life, how narrow and obstructed are the inlets to the mind; how limited is their information in the way of facts; how, in the way of ideas, the acquisition of them is slow; what hereditary distrust separates the illiterate mass from the lettered class; what an almost insurmountable wall the difference of education, of habits, and of manners interposes in France between the blouse and the dress-coat; why, if each commune contains a few cultivated individuals and a few notable proprietors, universal suffrage sets them aside, or at least does not seek them out for the municipal council or the mayoralty.—Before 1830, when the prefect appointed the municipal councilors and the mayor, these were always on hand; under the monarchy of July and a limited suffrage, they were still on hand, at least for the most part; under the second Empire, whatever the elected municipal council might be, the mayor, who was appointed by the prefect, and even outside of this council, might be one of the least ignorant and least stupid even in the commune. At the present day (1889), it is only accidentally and by chance that a noble or bourgeois, in a few provinces and in certain communes, may become mayor or municipal councilor; it is, however, essential that he should be born on the soil, long established there, resident and popular. Everywhere else the numerical majority, being sovereign, tends to select its candidates from among the average people: in the village, he is a man of average rural intelligence, and, mostly, in the village a municipal council which, as narrow-minded as its electors, elects a mayor equally as narrow-minded as itself Such are, from now on, the representatives and directors of communal interests; except when they themselves are affected by personal interests to which they are sensitive, their inertia is only equaled by their incapacity[4225]

Four times a year a bundle of elaborately drawn papers, prepared by the prefecture, are submitted to these innately blind paralytics, large sheets divided into columns from top to bottom, with tabular headings from right to left, and covered with printed texts and figures in writing—details of receipts and expenses, general centimes, special centimes, obligatory centimes, optional centimes, ordinary centimes, extra centimes, with their sources and employment; preliminary budget, final budget, corrected budget, along with legal references, regulations, and decisions bearing on each article. In short, a methodical table as specific as possible and highly instructive to a jurist or accountant, but perfect jargon to peasants, most of whom can scarcely write their name and who, on Sundays, are seen standing before the advertisement board[4226] trying to spell out the Journal Officiel, whose abstract phrases, beyond their reach, pass over their heads in aerial and transient flight, like some confused rustling of vague and unknown forms. To guide them in political life, much more difficult than in private life, they require a similar guide to the one they take in the difficult matters of their individual life, a legal or business adviser, one that is qualified and competent, able to understand the prefecture documents, sitting alongside of them to explain their budget, rights and limits of their rights, the financial resources, legal expedients, and consequences of a law; one who can arrange their debates, make up their accounts, watch daily files of bills, attend to their business at the county town, throughout the entire series of legal formalities and attendance on the bureaus,—in short, some trusty person, familiar with technicalities, who they might choose to select.—Such a person was found in Savoy, before the annexation to France, a notary or lawyer who, practicing in the neighborhood or at the principal town, and with five or six communes for clients, visited them in turn, helped them with his knowledge and intelligence, attended their meetings and, besides, served them as scribe, like the present secretary of the mayoralty, for about the same pay, amounting in all to about the same total of fees or salaries.[4227]—At the present time, there is nobody in the municipal council to advise and give information to its members; the schoolmaster is their secretary, and he cannot be, and should not be, other than a scribe. He reads in a monotonous tone of voice the long financial enigma which French public book-keeping, too perfect, offers to their divination, and which nobody, save one who is educated to it, can clearly comprehend until after weeks of study. They listen all agog. Some, adjusting their spectacles, try to pick out among so many articles the one they want, the amount of taxes they have to pay. The sum is too large, the assessments are excessive; it is important that the number of additional centimes should be reduced, and therefore that less money should be expended. Hence, if there is any special item of expense which can be got rid of by a refusal, they set it aside by voting No, until some new law or decree from above obliges them to say Yes. But, as things go, nearly all the expenses designated on the paper are obligatory; willingly or not, these must be met, and there is no way to pay them outside of the additional centimes; however numerous these are, vote them they must and sanction the centimes inscribed. They accordingly affix their signatures, not with trust but with mistrust, with resignation, and out of pure necessity. Abandoned to their natural ignorance, the twenty-seven thousand petty municipal councilors of the country are no more passive, more inert, more constrained than ever; deprived of the light which, formerly, the choice of the prefect or a restricted suffrage could still throw into the darkness around them, there remains to them only one safe tutor or conductor; and this final guide is the official of the bureaus, especially this or that old, permanent chief, or under clerk, who is perfectly familiar with his files of papers. With about four hundred municipal councils to lead, one may imagine what he will do with them: nothing except to drive them like a flock of sheep into a pen of printed regulations, or urge them on mechanically, in lots, according to his instructions, he himself being as automatic and as much in a rut as they are.



VI. The larger Communes.

Effects of the law on the urban commune.—Disproportion between the administrative capacity of its elected representatives and the work imposed on them.—Lack of a special and permanent manager.—The municipal council and the mayor.—The general council and the intermediary committee.—The prefect.—His dominant rule.—His obligatory concessions.—His principal aim.—Bargains between the central authority and the local Jacobins.—Effect on this on local government, on the officials, and in local finances.