From and after 1789, the State, passing through intermittent fits and starts of brutal despotism, had resigned its commission. Under its almost nominal sovereignty, there were in France forty-four thousand small States enjoying nearly sovereign power, and, most frequently, sovereignty in reality.4111 Not only did the local community manage its private affairs, but again, in the circumscription, each exercised the highest public functions, disposed of the national guard, of the police force, and even of the army, appointed civil and criminal judges, police commissioners,4112 the assessors and collectors of taxes. In brief, the central State handed over, or allowed the seizure of the powers of which it ought never to deprive itself, the last of its means by which alone it acts effectively and on the spot,

* its sword, which it alone should wield,

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

* its purse, for it to fill, and we have seen with what harm to individuals, to the communes, and to itself, with what a lamentable series of disastrous results:

* universal, incurable, persistent anarchy,

* impotence of the government,

* violation of the laws,

* complete stoppage of revenue, an empty treasury,

* despotism of the strong, oppression of the weak,

* street riots,

* rural brigandage,

* extortions and waste at the town halls,

* municipal usurpations and abdications,

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

* the ruin and distress of the communes.4113

In contrast with this, and through disgust, the new RÉgime takes the other side, and even goes to the other extreme; the central State, in 1800, no longer a party that has resigned, as formerly, becomes the interloper. Not only does it take back from local communities the portion of the public domain which had been imprudently conceded to them, but, again, it lays its hand on their private domain; it attaches them to it by way of appendices, while its systematic, uniform usurpation, accomplished at one blow, spread over the whole territory, again plunges them all, communes and departments alike, into a chaos in which, under the old monarchy, they would never have fallen.

Before 1789, collective legal entities (persons), provincial and communal, still existed. On the one hand, five or six great local bodies, represented by elective assemblies, full of life and spontaneously active, among others those of Languedoc and Brittany, still provided for and governed themselves. The other provinces, which the central power had reduced to administrative districts, retained, at least, their historic cohesion, their time-honored name, the lament for, or at least the souvenir of, their former autonomy, and, here and there, a few vestiges or fragments of their lost independence; and, better yet, these old, paralyzed, but not mutilated bodies, had just assumed new life, and under their renewed organism were striving to give the blood in their veins a fresh start. Twenty-one provincial assemblies, instituted over the entire territory, between 1778 and 1787, and provided with powers of considerable importance, undertook, each in its own sphere, to direct provincial interests. Communal interest, also, had its representatives in the urban or rural communes. In the towns, a deliberative assembly, composed of the leading notables and of delegates elected by all the corporations and communities in the place, formed an intermittent municipal council the same as to-day, but much more ample, which voted and passed resolutions on important occasions; there was a board of management at the head of it, "the town corps," comprising the various municipal officials, the mayor, his lieutenant, sheriffs, prosecuting attorney, treasurer, and clerk,4114 now elected by the deliberative assembly, now the legal purchasers, heirs, and proprietors of their office, the same as a notary or advocate of to-day owns his office, protected against administrative caprices by a royal acquittance, and, for a money consideration, titular in their towns, the same as a parliamentarian in his parliament, and hence planted in, or grafted upon, the commune like a parliamentarian among his peers, and, like him, defenders of local interests against the central power.—In the village, the heads of families met together on the public square, deliberated in common over common affairs, elected the syndic, likewise the collectors of the taille, and deputies to the intendant; of their own accord, but with his approval, they taxed themselves for the support of the school, for repairs to the church or fountain, and for beginning or carrying on a suit in court.—All these remains of the ancient provincial and communal initiative, respected or tolerated by monarchical centralization, are crushed out and extinguished. The First Consul very soon falls upon these local societies and seizes them in his claws; in the eyes of the new legislator they scarcely seem to exist; there must not be any local personalities for him. The commune and department, in his eyes, are merely territorial districts, physical portions of the public domain, provincial workshops to which the central State transfers and uses its tools, in order to work effectively and on the spot. Here, as elsewhere, he takes the business entirely in his own hands; if he employs interested parties it is only as auxiliaries, at odd times, for a few days, to operate with more discernment and more economy, to listen to complaints and promises, to become better informed and the better to apportion changes; but, except this occasional and subordinate help, the members of the local society must remain passive in the local society; they are to pay and obey, and nothing more. Their community no longer belongs to them, but to the government; its chiefs are functionaries who depend on him, and not on it; it no longer issues its mandate; all its legal mandatories, all its representatives and directors, municipal or general councilors, mayors, sub-prefects or prefects, are imposed on it from above, by a foreign hand, and, willingly or not, instead of choosing them, it has to put up with them.