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 municipal 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 municipal 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 municipal 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 municipal council, and who, after the council general or municipal council have voted on it, remains on the spot the sole executor, director, and master of the operation to which they have assented. 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 documents 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 passed, his hands are not so free. The competency of local assemblies 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 municipal 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 municipal 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 repetition, becomes for them a recognized signal, the blast of a horn or a shrieking whistle which assembles 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 masses.—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 fashion 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 municipal 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, entitled 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 municipal 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 chargÉ d'affaires not only of the department and commune, but again of the State. Titular conductor or overseer of all general services, he is, in his circumscription, head inquisitor of the republican faith4235, 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, SÉvres 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 pass 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, hardship, 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 institution 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 passions, 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 anticipation 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 anticipate 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 passage 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 principal 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 surpassed the sum of the principal. "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 principal 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 francs4243, 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