The Modern Regime Volume I Part 34

VII. Local society in 1880.

Present state of local society.--Considered as an organism, it is stillborn.--Considered as a mechanism, it gets out of order.--Two successive and false conceptions of local government.--In theory, one excludes the other.-- Practically, their union ends in the actual system.--Powers of the prefect.--Restrictions on these through subsequent changes.--Give and take.--Bargaining.--Supported by the government and cost to the State.

Before 1870, when he appointed the mayors and when the council general held its sessions only fifteen days in the year, the prefect was almost omnipotent; still, at the present day, (1889), "his powers are immense,"[4232] and his power remains preponderant. He has the right to suspend the munic.i.p.al council and the mayor, and to propose their dismissal to the head of the state. Without resorting to this extremity, he holds them with a strong hand, and always uplifted over the commune, for he can veto the acts of the munic.i.p.al police and of the road committee, annul the regulations of the mayor, and, through a skillful use of his prerogative, impose his own. He holds in hand, removes, appoints or helps appoint, not alone the clerks in his office, but likewise every kind and degree of clerk who, outside his office, serves the commune or department,[4233] from the archivist, keeper of the museum, architect, director, and teachers of the munic.i.p.al drawing-schools, from the directors and collectors of charity establishments, directors and accountants of almshouses, doctors of the mineral springs, doctors and accountants of the insane asylums and for epidemics, head-overseers of octrois, wolf-bounty guards, commissioners of the urban police, inspectors of weights and measures, town collectors, whose receipts do not exceed thirty thousand francs, down to and comprising the lowest employees, such as forest guards of the department and commune, lock-keepers and navigation guards, overseers of the quays and of commercial ports, toll-gatherers on bridges and highways, field-guards of the smallest village, policemen posted on the corner of a street, and stone-breakers on the public highway. When things and not persons are concerned, it is he, again, who, in every project, enterprise, or proceeding, is charged with the preliminary examination and final execution of it, who proposes the department budget and presents it, regularly drawn up, to the council general, who draws up the communal budget and presents that to the munic.i.p.al council, and who, after the council general or munic.i.p.al council have voted on it, remains on the spot the sole executor, director, and master of the operation to which they have a.s.sented. Their total, effective part in this operation is very insignificant, it being reduced to a bare act of the will; in reaching a vote they have had in their hands scarcely any other doc.u.ments than those furnished and arranged by him; in gradually reaching their decision step by step, they have had no help but his, that of an independent collaborator who, governed by his own views and interests, never becomes the mere instrument. They lack for their decision direct, personal, and full information, and, beyond this, complete, efficient power; it is simply a dry Yes, interposed between insufficient resources, or else cut off, and the fruit of which is abortive or only half ripens. The persistent will of the prefect alone, informed, and who acts, must and does generally prevail against this ill-supported and ill-furnished will. At bottom, and as he stands, he is, in his mental and official capacity, always the prefect of the year VIII.

Nevertheless, after the laws lately pa.s.sed, his hands are not so free.

The competency of local a.s.semblies is extended and comprises not only new cases but, again, of a new species, while the number of their executive decisions has increased five-fold. The munic.i.p.al council, instead of holding one session a year, holds four, and of longer duration. The council general, instead of one session a year, holds two, and maintains itself in the interim by its delegation which meets every month. With these increased authorities and generally present, the prefect has to reckon, and what is still more serious, he must reckon with local opinion; he can no longer rule with closed doors; the proceedings of the munic.i.p.al council, the smallest one, are duly posted; in the towns, they are published and commented on by the newspapers of the locality; the general council furnishes reports of its deliberations.--Thus, behind elected powers, and weighing with these on the same side of the scales, here is a new power, opinion, as this grows in a country leveled by equalized centralization, in heaving or stagnant crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions--a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which the listeners fail to catch the sense, but the sound which, by din of frequent repet.i.tion, becomes for them a recognized signal, the blast of a horn or a shrieking whistle which a.s.sembles the herd and arrests or drives it on. No opposition can make head against this herd as it rushes along in too compact and too heavy ma.s.ses.--The prefect, on the contrary, is obliged to cajole it, yield to it, and satisfy it; for under the system of universal suffrage, this same herd, besides local representatives, elects the central powers, the deputies, the government; and when the government sends a prefect from Paris into the provinces, it is after the fas.h.i.+on of a large commercial establishment, with a view to keep and increase the number of its customers, to stay there, maintain its credit, and act permanently as its traveling-clerk, or, in other terms, as its electoral agent, and, still more precisely, as the campaign manager of coming elections for the dominant party and for the ministers in office who have commissioned and appointed him, and who, from top to bottom, constantly stimulate him to hold on to the voters already secured and to gain fresh ones.--Undoubtedly, the interests of the state, department, and commune must be seriously considered, but, first and above all, he is the recruiting officer for voters. By virtue of this position and on this he treats with the council general and the standing committee, with the munic.i.p.al councilors and mayors, with influential electors, but especially with the small active committee which, in each commune, supports the prevailing policy and offers its zeal to the government.

Give and take. These indispensable auxiliaries must obtain nearly all they ask for, and they ask a great deal. Instinctively, as well as by doctrine and tradition, the Jacobins are exacting, disposed to regard themselves as the representatives of the real and the ideal people, that is to say, as sovereigns by right, above the law, ent.i.tled to make it and therefore to unmake it, or, at least, strain it and interpret it as they please. Always in the general council, in the munic.i.p.al council, and in the mayoralty, they are tempted to usurp it; the prefect has as much as he can do to keep them within the local bounds, to keep them from meddling with state matters and the general policy; he is often obliged to accept their lack of consideration, to be patient with them, to talk to them mildly; for they talk and want the administration to reckon with them as a clerk with his master; if they vote money for any service it is on condition that they take part in the use of the funds and in the details of the service, in the choice of contractors and in hiring the workmen; on condition that their authority be extended and their hands applied to the consecutive execution of what does not belong to them but which belongs to the prefect.[4234] Bargaining, consequently, goes on between them incessantly and they come to terms.--The prefect, it must be noted, who is bound to pay, can do so without violating the letter of the law. The stern page on which the legislator has printed his imperative text is always provided with an ample margin where the administrator, charged with its execution, can write down the decisions that he is free to make. In relation to each departmental or communal affair, the prefect can with his own hand write out what suits him on the white margin, which, as we have already seen, is ample enough; but the margin at his disposition is wider still and continues, beyond anything we have seen, on other pages; he is charge d'affaires not only of the department and commune, but again of the State. t.i.tular conductor or overseer of all general services, he is, in his circ.u.mscription, head inquisitor of the republican faith[4235], even in relation to private life and inner sentiments, the responsible director of orthodox or heretical acts or opinions, which are laudable or blamable in the innumerably army of functionaries by which the central state now undertakes the complete mastery of human life, the twenty distinct regiments of its vast hierarchy--with the staff of the clergy, of the magistracy, of the preventive and repressive police, of the customs; with the officials of bridges and highways, forest domains, stock-breeding establishments, postal and telegraph departments, tobacco and other monopolies; with those of every national enterprise which ought to be private, Sevres and Gobelins, deaf and dumb and blind asylums, and every auxiliary and special workshop for war and navigation purposes, which the state supports and manages. I pa.s.s some of them and all too many. Only remark this, that the indulgence or severity of the prefecture in the way of fiscal violations or irregularities is an advantage or danger of the highest importance to 377,000 dealers in wines and liquors; that an accusation brought before and admitted in the prefecture may deprive 38,000 clergymen of their bread,[4236] 43,000 letter-carriers and telegraph messengers, 45,000 sellers of tobacco and collecting-clerks, 75,000 stone-breakers, and 120,000 male and female teachers;[4237] directly or indirectly, the good or ill favor of the prefecture is of consequence, since recent military laws, to all adults between 20 and 45 years, and, since recent school laws, to all children between 6 and 13 years of age. According to these figures, which go on increasing from year to, calculate the breadth of the margin on which, alongside of the legal text which states the law for persons and things in general, the prefect in his turn gives the law for persons and things in particular. On this margin, which belongs to him, he writes what he pleases, at one time permissions and favors, exemptions, dispensations, leaves of absence, relief of taxes or discharges, help and subventions, preferences and gratuities, appointments and promotions, and at another time disgrace, hards.h.i.+p, legal proceedings, dismissals, and special favors. To guide his hand in each case, that is to say, to spread all the favors on one side and all the disfavors on the other, he has, among the local Jacobins, special informers and important applicants. If not restrained by a very strong sentiment of distributive justice and very great solicitude for the public good he can hardly resist them, and in general when he takes up his pen it is to write under the dictation of his Jacobin collaborators.

DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE IN 1889, SUMMARY.

Thus has the inst.i.tution of the year VIII deviated (The France of the revolution corrected and decreed by Napoleon), no longer attaining its object. The prefects, formerly appointed to a department, like a pacier of the Middle Ages, imposed on it from above, ignorant of local pa.s.sions, independent, qualified and fitted for the office, was, during fifty years, in general, able to remain the impartial minister of the law and of equity, maintaining the rights of each, and exacting from each his due, without heeding opinions and without respect to persons.

Now he is obliged to become an accomplice of the ruling faction, govern for the advantage of some to the detriment of others, and to put into his scales, as a preponderating weight, every time he weighs judgment, a consideration for persons and opinions. At the same time, the entire administrative staff in his hands, and under his eye, deteriorates; each year, on the recommendation of a senator or deputy, he adds to it, or sees, intruders there, whose previous services are null, feeble in capacity and of weak integrity who do poor work or none at all, and who, to hold their post or get promoted, count not on their merits but on their sponsors. The rest, able and faithful functionaries of the old school, who are poor and to whom no path is open, become weary and lose their energy; they are no longer even certain of keeping their place; if they stay, it is for the dispatch of current business and because they cannot be dispensed with; perhaps to-morrow, however, they will cease to be considered indispensable; some political denunciation, or to give a political favorite a place, will put them by antic.i.p.ation on the retired list. From now on they have two powers to consult, one, legitimate and natural, the authority of their administrative chiefs, and the other illegitimate and parasite, consisting of democratic influence from both above and below. For them, as for the prefect, public welfare descends to the second rank and the electoral interest mounts upward to the first rank. With them as with him self-respect, professional honor, the conscientious performance of duty, reciprocal loyalty go down; discipline relaxes, punctuality falters, and, as the saying goes, the great administrative edifice is no longer a well-kept house, but a barracks.

Naturally, under the democratic regime, the maintenance and service of this house becomes more and more costly;[4238] for, owing to the additional centimes, it is the rich and well-to-do minority which defrays the larger portion of the expense. Owing to universal suffrage, the poor or half-poor majority which dominate the elections so that the large majority with impunity can overtax the minority. At Paris, the parliament and the government, elected by this numerical majority, contrive demands in its behalf, force expenditure, augment public works, schools, endowments, gratuities, prizes, a multiplication of offices to increase the number of their clients, while it never tires in decreeing, in the name of principles, works for show, theatrical, ruinous, and dangerous, the cost of which they do not care to know, and of which the social import escapes them. Democracy, above as well as below, is short-sighted; it seizes whatever food it comes across, like an animal, with open jaws and head down; it refuses to antic.i.p.ate and to calculate; it burdens the future and wastes every fortune it undertakes to manage, not alone that of the central state, but, again, those of all local societies. Up to the advent of universal suffrage, the administrators appointed above or elected below, in the department or in the commune, kept tight hold of the purse-strings; since 1848, especially since 1870, and still later, since the pa.s.sage of the laws of 1882, which, in suppressing the obligatory consent of the heaviest taxed, let slip the last of these strings, this purse, wide open, is emptied in the street.--In 1851,[4239] the departments, all together, expended 97 millions; in 1869, 192 millions; in 1881, 314 millions. In 1836, the communes, all together, save Paris, expended 117 millions, in 1862, 450 millions, in 1877, 676 millions. If we examine the receipts covering this expenditure, we find that the additional centimes which supplied the local budgets, in 1820, with 80 millions, and, in 1850, with 131 millions, supplied them, in 1870, with 249 millions, in 1880, with 318 millions, and, in 1887, with 364 millions. The annual increase, therefore, of these superadded centimes to the princ.i.p.al of the direct taxes is enormous, and finally ends in an overflow. In 1874,[4240] there were already 24 departments in which the sum of additional centimes reached or surpa.s.sed the sum of the princ.i.p.al. "In a very few years,"

says an eminent economist,[4241] "it is probable that, for nearly all of the departments," the overcharge will be similar. Already, for a long time, in the total of personal taxation,[4242] the local budgets raised more than the state, and, in 1888, the princ.i.p.al of the tax real property, 183 millions, is less than the total of centimes joined with it, 196 millions. Coming generations are burdened over and beyond the present generation, while the sum of loans constantly increases, like that of taxation. The indebted communes, except Paris, owed, altogether, in 1868, 524 millions francs[4243], in 1871, 711 millions, and in 1878, 1322 millions francs.[4244] Paris, in 1868, already owed 1326 millions, March 30, 1878, it owed 1988 millions. In this same Paris, the annual contribution of each inhabitant for local expenses was, at the end of the first Empire, in 1813, 37 francs per head, at the end of the Restoration,[4245] francs, after the July monarchy, in 1848, 43 francs, and, at the end of the second Empire, in 1869, 94 francs. In 1887,45 it is 110 francs per head. [4246]

VIII. Final result in a tendency to bankruptcy.

Such, in brief, is the history of local society from 1789 down to 1889.

After the philosophic demolition of the Revolution and the practical constructions of the Consulate, it could no longer be a small patrimony, something to take pride in, an object of affection and devotion to its inhabitants. The departments and communes have become more or less vast lodging-houses, all built on the same plan and managed according to the same regulations one as pa.s.sable as the other, with apartments in them which, more or less good, are more or less dear, but at rates which, higher or lower, are fixed at a uniform tariff over the entire territory, so that the 36,000 communal buildings and the 86 department hotels are about equal, it making but little difference whether one lodges in the latter rather than in the former. The permanent taxpayers of both s.e.xes who have made these premises their home, have not obtained recognition for what they are, invincibly and by nature, a syndicate of neighbors, an involuntary, obligatory and private a.s.sociation, in which physical solidarity engenders moral solidarity, a natural, limited society whose members own the building in common, and each possesses a property right more or less great, according to the greater or lesser contribution he makes to the expenses of the establishment. Up to this time no room has yet been found, either in the law or in minds, for this very plain truth; its place is taken and occupied in advance by the two errors which, in turn or both at once, have led the legislator and opinion astray.

Taking things as a whole, it is admitted up to 1830 that the legitimate proprietor of the local building is the central state, that it may install its delegate therein, the prefect, with full powers; that, for better government, he consents to be instructed by the leading interested and most capable parties on the spot; that he should fix the petty rights he concedes to them within the narrowest limits; that he should appoint them; that, if he calls them together for consultation, it is from time to time and generally for form's sake, to add the authority of their a.s.sent to the authority of his omnipotence, on the implied condition that he shall not give heed to their objections if he does not like them, and not follow their advice if he does not choose to accept it.--Taking things as a whole, it is admitted that, since 1848, the legitimate proprietors of the building are its adult male inhabitants, counted by heads, all equal and all with an equal part in the common property, comprising those who contribute nothing or nearly nothing to the common expenditure of the house, the numerous body of semi-poor who lodge in it at half price, and the not less numerous body to whom administrative charity furnishes house comforts, shelter, light, and frequently provisions, gratuitously.--Between both these contradictory and false conceptions, between the prefect of the year VIII, and the democracy of 1792, a compromise has been effected; undoubtedly, the prefect, sent from Paris, is and remains the t.i.tular director, the active and responsible manager of the departmental or communal building; but, in his management of it he is bound to keep in view the coming elections, and in such a way as will maintain the parliamentary majority in the seats they occupy in parliament; consequently, he must conciliate the local leaders of universal suffrage, rule with their help, put up with the intrusion of their bias and cupidity, take their advice daily, follow it often, even in small matters, even in payments day by day of sums already voted, in appointing an office-clerk, in the appointment of an unpaid underling, who may some day or other take this clerk's place.[4247]--Hence the spectacle before our eyes: a badly kept establishment in which profusion and waste render each other worse and worse, where sinecures multiply and where corruption enters in; a staff of officials becoming more and more numerous and less and less serviceable, hara.s.sed between two different authorities, obliged to possess or to simulate political zeal and to neutralize an impartial law by partiality, and, besides performing their regular duties, to do dirty work; in this staff, there are two sorts of employees, the new-comers who are greedy and who, through favor, get the best places, and the old ones who are patient and pretend no more, but who suffer and grow disheartened; in the building itself, there is great demolition and reconstruction, architectural fronts in monumental style for parade and to excite attention, entirely new decorative and extremely tiresome structures at extravagant cost; consequently, loans and debts, heavier bills at the end of each year for each occupant, low rents, but still high, for favorites in the small rooms and garrets, and extravagant rents for the larger and more sumptuous apartments; in sum, forced receipts which do not offset the expenses; liabilities which exceed a.s.sets; a budget which shows only a stable balance on paper,--in short, an establishment with which the public is not content, and which is on the road to bankruptcy.

[Footnote 4201: Laws of March 21, 1831, and July 18, 1837, June 22, 1833, and May 10, 1838. The munic.i.p.al electors number about 2,250,000 and form the superior third of the adult masculine population; in the choice of its notables and semi-notables, the law takes into account not only wealth and direct taxation but likewise education and services rendered to the public.--The department electors number about 200,000, about as many as the political electors. The reporter observes that "an almost complete a.n.a.logy exists between the choice of a deputy and the choice of a department councilor, and that it is natural to confide the election to the same electoral body otherwise divided, since the object is to afford representation to another order of interests."]

[Footnote 4202: Laws of July 3, 1848.]

[Footnote 4203: Laws of Aug. 12, 1876, March 28, 1882, and April 5, 1884; law of Aug. 10, 1871.]

[Footnote 4204: The prefect, who is directed and posted by the minister of the Interior in Paris.]

[Footnote 4205: "The Revolution," vol. I., book VIII. (Laff. I. pp.

467-559.)]

[Footnote 4206: And in 1880 it certainly excluded the female side of human nature. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4207: It must have been evident that nature gives to each worker, hunter, farmer or fisherman in accordance with their competence and industry. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4208: Construction of roads, ca.n.a.ls, sewers, highways etc and protection against calamities.]

[Footnote 4209: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traite de la science des finances," 4th edition, I., p. 303: "The personal tax, levied only as princ.i.p.al, oscillates between the minimum of 1 fr. 50 and the maximum of 4 fr. 50 per annum, according to the communes."--Ibid., 304: "In 1806 the personal tax produced in France about sixteen millions of francs, a little less than 0 fr. 50 per head of the inhabitants."]

[Footnote 4210: Ibid., I., 367 (on the tax on doors and windows).

According to the population of the commune, this is from 0 fr. 30 to 1 fr. for each opening, from 0 fr. 45 to 1 fr. 50 for two openings, from 0 fr. 90 to 4 fr. 50 for three openings, from 1 fr. 60 to 6 fr. 40 for four openings, and from 2 fr. 50 to 8 fr. 50 for five openings. The first of these rates is applied to all communes of less than 5000 souls.

We see that the poor man, especially the poor peasant, is considered; the tax on him is progressive in an inverse sense.]

[Footnote 4211: De Foville, "La France Economique" (1887), p.59: "Our 14,500 charity bureaux gave a.s.sistance in 1883 to 1,405,500 persons;....

as, in reality, the population of the communes aided (by them) is only 22,000,000, the proportion of the registered poor amounts to over six per cent."]

[Footnote 4212: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Essai sur la repart.i.tion des richesses," p.174, et seq.--In 1851, the number of land-owners in France was estimated at 7,800,000. Out of these, three millions were relieved of the land tax, as indigent, and their quotas were considered as irrecoverable.]

[Footnote 4213: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traite de la science des finances," p.721.]

[Footnote 4214: De Foville, p.419. (In 1889.)]

[Footnote 4215: Cf ante, on the characteristics of indirect taxation.]

[Footnote 4216: Here it is the estimated rent, which stands to the real rent as four to five; an estimated rent of 400 francs indicates a real rent of 500 francs.]

[Footnote 4217: De Foville, p.57.]

[Footnote 4218: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu," Essai sur la repart.i.tion de richesses," p. 174.]

[Footnote 4219: Ibid., p.209: In 1878, in Paris, 74,000 houses with 1,022,539 rentals, 337,587 being for trade and commerce, and 684,952 for dwelling purposes. Among the latter, 468,641 have a locative value inferior to 300 francs a year; 74,360 are between 500 and 750 francs; 21,147 are between 750 and 1000 francs. All these lodgings are more or less exempt from the personal tax: those between 1000 and 400 francs pay it with a more or less great reduction: those under 400 francs pay nothing. Above 1000 francs, we find 17,202 apartments from between 1000 and 1250 francs; 6198 from between 1250 and 1500 francs; 21,453 from 1500 to 3000 francs. These apartments are occupied by more or less well-to-do people.--14,858 apartments above 3000 francs are occupied by the richer or the wealthy cla.s.s. Among the latter 9985 are from 3000 to 6000; 3040 are from 6000 to 10,000; 1443 are from 10,000 to 20,000; 421 are above 20,000 francs. These two latter categories are occupied by the really opulent cla.s.s.--According to the latest statistics, instead of 684,952 dwelling rentals there are 806,187, of which 727,419 are wholly or partly free of the personal tax. ("Situation au 1ere Janvier, 1888,"

report by M. Lamouroux, conseiller-munic.i.p.al.)]

[Footnote 4220: The following appropriations for 1889 are printed on my tax-bill: "To the State, 51%.; to the Department, 21%; to the commune, 25%." On business permits: "To the State, 64%.; to the Department, 12%; to the commune, 20%. The surplus of taxes is appropriated to the benevolent fund and for remission of taxes."]

[Footnote 4221: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traite de la science des finances," I., pp. 367-368: "In communes under 5000 inhabitants the princ.i.p.al of the tax on doors and windows is, for houses with one opening, 0 fr. 30 per annum; for those with four openings, 1 fr. 60."

Now, "a house with five openings pays nearly nine times as much as a house with one opening." The small taxpayers are accordingly largely relieved at the expense of those who pay heavy and average taxes, the magnitude of this relief being appreciable by the following figures: In 1885, out of 8,975,166 houses, 248,352 had one opening, 1,827,104 two openings, 1,624,516 three openings, and 1,165,902 four openings. More than one-half of the houses, all of those belonging to the poor or straitened, are thus relieved, while the other half, since the tax is an impost, not a quota, but an apportionment, is overcharged as much.]

[Footnote 4222: One result of this principle is, that the poor who are exempt from taxation or who are on the poor list have no vote, which is the case in England and in Prussia.--Through another result of the same principle, the law of May 15, 1818, in France, summoned the heaviest taxpayers, in equal number with the members of the munic.i.p.al council, to deliberate with it every time that "a really urgent expenditure" obliged the commune to raise extra additional centimes beyond the usual 0 fr.

05. "Thus," says Henrion de Pancey ("Du pouvoir munic.i.p.al," p.109), "the members of the munic.i.p.al councils belong to the cla.s.s of small land-owners, at least in a large number of communes, voted the charges without examination which only affected them insensibly."--This last refuge of distributive justice was abolished by the law of April 5, 1882.]

[Footnote 4223: Max Leclerc, "Le Vie munic.i.p.ale en Prusse." (Extrait des "Annales de l'Ecole libre des sciences politique," 1889, a study on the town of Bonn.) At Bonn, which has a population of 35,810 inhabitants, the first group is composed of 167 electors: the second, of 471; the third, of 2607, each group elects 8 munic.i.p.al councilors out of 24.]

[Footnote 4224: De Foville, "La France economique," p. 16 (census of 1881).--Number of communes, 36,097; number below 1000 inhabitants, 27,503; number below 500 inhabitants, 16,870.--What is stated applies partly to the two following categories: 1st, communes from 1000 to 1500 inhabitants, 2982; 2nd, communes from 1500 to 2000 inhabitants, 1917.--All the communes below 2000 inhabitants are counted as rural in the statistics of population, and they number 33,402.]

[Footnote 4225: See Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "L'etat moderne et ses fonctions," p. 169. "The various groups of inhabitants, especially in the country, do not know how to undertake or agree upon anything of themselves. I have seen villages of two or three hundred people belonging to a large scattered commune wait patiently for years and humbly pet.i.tion for aid in constructing an indispensable fountain, which required only a contribution of 200 or 300 francs, 5 francs per head, to put up. I have seen others possessing only one road on which to send off their produce and unable to act in concert, when, with an outlay of 2000 francs, and 200 or 300 francs a year to keep it in order, it would easily suffice for all their requirements. I speak of regions relatively rich, much better off than the majority of communes in France."]

[Footnote 4226: In French villages, on one of the walls of a public building on the square are notices of all kinds, of interest to the inhabitants, and among these, in a frame behind a wire netting, the latest copy of the government official newspaper, giving authentic political items, those which it thinks best for the people to read.

(Tr.)]

[Footnote 4227: On the communal system in France, and on the reforms which, following the example of other nations, might be introduced into it, cf. Joseph Ferrand (formerly a prefect), "Les Inst.i.tutions administratives en France et a l'etranger"; Rudolph Gneist, "Les Reformes administratives en Prusse accomplies par la legislation de 1872," (especially the inst.i.tution of Amtsvorsteher, for the union of communes or circ.u.mscriptions of about 1500 souls); the Duc de Broglie, "Vues sur le gouvernement de la France" (especially on the reforms that should be made in the administration of the commune and canton), p.

21.--"Deprive communal magistrates of their quality as government agents; separate the two orders of functions; have the public functionary whose duty it is to see that the laws are executed in the communes, the execution of general laws and the decisions of the superior authority carried out, placed at the county town."]

[Footnote 4228: De Foville, ibid., p. 16.--The remarks here made apply to towns of the foregoing category (from 5000 to 10,000 souls), numbering 312. A last category comprises towns from 2000 to 5000 souls, numbering 2160, and forming the last cla.s.s of urban populations; these, through their mixed character, a.s.similate to the 1817 communes containing from 1500 to 2000 inhabitants, forming the first category of the rural populations.]

[Footnote 4229: Max Leclerc, "La Vie munic.i.p.ale en Prusse," p 17.--In Prussia, this directing mind is called "the magistrate," as in our northern and northeastern communes. In eastern Prussia, the "magistrate"