Such is the spirit of the institution and such is its form. After 1814 and 1815, after the fall of the Empire and the Restoration, the institution subsists and remains as it was before in form and in spirit: it is always the government which appoints and directs all the representatives of local society, in the department, in the commune, and in the intermediate circumscriptions, the prefect, sub-prefects, mayors and assistants, the councilors of the department, of the arrondissement and of the commune. Whatever the ruling power may be it is repugnant to any change; never does it voluntarily restrict itself in its faculty of bestowing or withholding offices, authority, consideration, influence, or salaries, every desirable and every desired good thing; as far as it can, it retains these in its own hands to distribute them as it pleases, and in its own interest to bestow them on its partisans and to deprive its adversaries of them, to attract clients and create minions. The four thousand offices of prefect, sub-prefect, and councilors of the prefecture, department, and arrondissement, the four hundred thousand offices of mayor, assistants, and municipal councilors, and added to these, the innumerable salaried employments of auxiliary or secondary agents, from the secretary-general of the prefecture down to the secretary of the mayor, from the scribes and clerks of the prefecture and sub-prefecture down to the staff of the municipal police and of the octroi in the towns, from the city or department architect down to the lowest road-surveyor, from the watchmen and superintendents of a canal or harbor down to the field-guards and stone-breakers or the highway, directly or indirectly, the constitutional government disposes of them in the same fashion as the imperial government, with the same interference in the most trifling details and in the most trifling affair. Commune or department, such local society remains under the second RÉgime what it was under the first one, an extension of the central society, an appendix of the State, an adjunct of the great establishment of which the seat is at Paris. In these adjuncts, controlled from above, nothing is changed, neither the extent and limits of the circumscription, nor the source and hierarchy of powers, nor the theoretic framework, nor the practical mechanism, not even the names.4146 After the prefects of Empire come the prefects of the Restoration, the same in title and uniform, installed in the same mansion, to do the same work, with equal zeal, that is to say, with dangerous zeal, to such an extent that, on taking leave of their final audience, on setting out for their department, M. de Talleyrand, who knows men and institutions profoundly, gives them, as his last injunction, the following admirable order: "And, especially, no zeal! "—According to the recommendation of FouchÉ, "the Bourbons slept in the bed of Napoleon," which was the bed of Louis XIV., but larger and more comfortable, widened by the Revolution and the Empire, adapted to the figure of its latest occupant, and enlarged by him so as to spread over the whole of France. When, after twenty-five years of exile, one returns home, it is pleasant to find such a bed in the house ready made, taking down and remaking the old one would give double trouble; moreover, in the old one, one was less at his ease; let us profit by all that rebels and the usurper have done that was good. In this particular, not alone the king, but again the most antiquated of the Bourbons are revolutionaries and Bonapartists; despotic traditionally, and monopolists through their situation, they accept with no regrets the systematic demolition effected by the Constituent Assembly, and the systematic centralization instituted by the First Consul. The Duc d'AngoulÊme, when, in 1815, he was paraded about the country, among the bridges, canals, and splendid roads of Languedoc, on being reminded that these fine works were formerly executed by the "Ètats" of the province, dryly replied "We prefer the departments to the provinces."4147

With the exception of a few antiquarian and half-rustic royalists, nobody objects; there is no thought of reconstructing the machine on another plan; in sum, nobody is dissatisfied with the way it works. It works well, most effectively; under the Restoration as under the Empire, it renders to those who are interested the service demanded of it; it goes on providing better and better for the two grand objects of local society, care for the public highways and protection against natural calamities. In 1814, its net results are already admirable and do it credit—reparation of the ruins accumulated by the Revolution,4148 the continuation and completion of former projects, new and striking enterprises, dikes against the sea and the rivers, basins, moles, and jetties in the harbors, quays, and bridges, locks and canals, public edifices, 27,200 kilometers of national roads and 18,600 kilometers of departmental roads,4149 without counting the district roads just laid out; all this done regularly, exactly, and economically, Charles Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le commencement du XIXe siÈcle." In 1816, the four direct contributions returned, in principal, 249 millions, and, in additional centimes, 89 millions only. For a long time the additional centimes applied to the local service and voted by the department or by the commune are not many and do not exceed 5 %. of the principal. by competent functionaries, employed and superintended, who at first through fear are compelled to be prudent, and then through habit and honor have become honest accountants; there is no waste, no underhand stealing, no arbitrary charges; no sum is turned aside between receipts and expenses to disappear and be lost on the road, or flow out of its channel in another direction. The sensitive taxpayer, large or small, no longer smarts under the painful goad which formerly pricked him and made him jump. Local taxation, annexed to the general tax, is found to be reformed, lightened, and duly proportioned. Like the principal, the "additional centimes" are an equitable charge, graduated according to the sum of net revenue; like the principal, they are assessed according to the assumed sum of this net revenue by the councils of the arondissements among the communes, and by the communal assessors among the inhabitants. They are collected by the same collector, with the same formalities, and every taxpayer who thinks himself taxed too heavily finds a court of appeal in the council of the prefecture, before which he can make his claim and obtain the release or reduction of his quota.—Thus no crying iniquity exists, nor keen suffering; on the other hand, there are the infinite conveniences and daily enjoyment of possessions, the privation of which, to the modern man, is equal to the lack of fresh, pure air, physical security and protection against contagion, facilities for circulation and transport, pavements, light, the salubrity of healthy streets purged of their filth, and the presence and vigilance of the municipal and rural police. All these benefits, the objects of local society, are due to the machine which works with little cost, without breaking down or stopping for any long time, as lately under the Republic, and without any extortion and clashing, as in the times of the ancient RÉgime. It works by itself, almost without the help of the parties interested, and which, in their eyes, is not its least merit; with it, there is no bother, no responsibility, no elections to attend to, no discussions to maintain, no resolutions to pass. There is only one bill to be settled, not even a specified bill, but a surplus of centimes added to each franc, and included with the principal in the annual quota. Just like an owner who, by his correct, exact, and somewhat slow although punctual and capable supervisors, are relieved of the care of his property. He may dismiss the head steward of his domain in a fit of ill-humor, but, if he changes his stewards, he does not change the system; he is too accustomed to it, and his indolence demands it; he is not tempted to take care and trouble on himself, nor is he qualified to become his own intendant.

And what is worse, in the present case the master has forgotten that he is the owner of his domain, he hardly remembers that he is a personality. Whether large or small, department or commune, local society has no longer the consciousness of being a natural body, composed of involuntarily united members with common interests; this sentiment, already weakened and drooping at the end of the ancient rÉgime, lost under the multiplied attacks of the Revolution and under the prolonged compression of the Empire. During twenty-five years it has suffered too much; it has been too arbitrarily manufactured or mutilated, too frequently recast, and made and unmade.—In the commune, everything has been upset over and over again, the territorial circumscription, the internal and external system, all collective property. To the 44,000 municipalities improvised by the Constituent Assembly, there succeeded under the Directory 6000 or 7000 cantonal municipalities, a sort of local syndicate, represented in each commune by a subaltern agent, and then, under the Consulate, 36,000 distinct and permanent communes. Sovereign at the start, through the improvidence and abdication of the Constituent Assembly, the communes become, in the hands of the Convention, so many timorous subjects surrendered to the brutality of perambulating pashas and resident agas, imposed upon them by Jacobin tyranny; then under the Empire, a docile herd governed in a correct way from above, but possessing no authority of their own, and therefore indifferent to their own affairs and utterly wanting in public spirit. Other more serious blows affect of the them still more deeply and acutely. Through a decree of the Legislative Assembly, in every commune where a third of the inhabitants demand a partition of the communal property, the commune is stripped, and its time-honored patrimony is set off in equal lots, in portions according to families or per head, and converted into small private holdings. (Page 319/584)Through a decree of the Convention, the whole of the communal fortune, its debts and assets, are swallowed up by the public fortune and engulfed along with that in the sale of real property, in the discredit of the assignats, and in the final bankruptcy. After this prolonged process, communal property, even when disgorged and restored by the exchequer, is not what it was before; once out of the monster's stomach, the remains of it, dismembered, spoilt, half-digested, are no longer held sacred and inviolable; a settlement of accounts intervenes; "there are a good many communes," says Napoleon4150 "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."

4101 (return)
[ 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.)]

4102 (return)
[ 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.]

4103 (return)
[ The so-called "Centimes additionels" was an increase in certain taxes to be paid to the communes and departments.]

4104 (return)
[ Rocquain, "L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire" (report by Fourcroy, pp. 138, 166)": A sack of wheat worth 18 francs at Nantes costs an equal sum for its cartage to Brest. I have seen carters plodding along, seven or eight in a line, each with six or eight strong horses dragging their vehicles and alternately helping each other, their horses hauling their carts out of ruts into which they had got stuck... In many places, I was grieved to see carts and wagons leaving the high-road and traversing, in spaces from 100 to 200 yards wide, the plowed ground, when each made his own road.... The carters sometimes make only three or four leagues from morning to night."—Hence, a dearth of provisions at Brest. "We are assured that the people have long been on half-rations, or even quarter rations."—And yet, "There is now in the river, at Nantes, from four to five hundred boats loaded with grain; they have been there for months, and their number increases daily. Their cargoes are deteriorating and becoming damaged."]

4105 (return)
[ Ibid., preface and summary, p.41 (on the dikes and works of protection against inundations at Dol in Brittany, at FrÉjus, in Camargue, in Lower Rhine, in Nord, in Pas-de-Calais, at Ostende and Blankenberg, at Rochefort, at La Rochelle, etc.). At Blankenberg, a gale sufficed to carry away the dike and let in the sea. "The dread of some disaster which would ruin a large portion of the departments of the Lys and of the Escaut kept the inhabitants constantly in a state of frightful anxiety."]

4106 (return)
[ 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.]

4107 (return)
[ Hence the communal "additional centimes" to the tax on business licenses.]

4108 (return)
[ Hence the "additional centimes" to the land tax.]

4109 (return)
[ 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.).]

4110 (return)
[ 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.)]

4111 (return)
[ See "The Revolution," vol. I., passim. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 315-445).]

4112 (return)
[ 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.]

4113 (return)
[ Rocquain, "l'État de la France au 18 Brumaire," passim.]

4114 (return)
[ Raynouard, "Histoire du droit municipal,"II., 356, and Dareste, "Histoire de l'administration en France," I., 209, 222. (Creation of the posts of municipal mayor and assessors by the king, in 1692, for a money consideration.) "These offices were obtained by individuals, along with hereditary title, now attached to communities, that is to say, bought in by these," which put in their possession the right of election.—The king frequently took back these offices which he had sold, and sold them over again. In 1771, especially, he takes them back, and, it seems, to keep them forever; but he always reserves the right of alienating them for money. For example (Augustin Thierry, "Documens sur l'histoire du tiers État," III., 319), an act of the royal council, dated October 1, 1772, accepts 70,000 francs from the town of Amiens for the repurchase of the installment of its magistracies, and defining these magistracies, as well as the mode of election according to which the future incumbents shall be appointed. Provence frequently bought back its municipal liberties in the same fashion, and, for a hundred years, expended for this purpose 12,500,000 livres. In 1772, the king once more established the venality of the municipal offices: but, on the Parliament of Aix remonstrating, in 1774, he returned their old rights and franchises to the communities.—Cf. Guyot, "RÉpertoire de jurisprudence" (1784), articles, Echevins, Capitouls, Conseillers.]

4115 (return)
[ Thibaudeau, p.72 (words of the First Consul at a meeting of the Council of State, PluviÔse 14, year X).]

4116 (return)
[ Roederer, III., 439 (Note of PluviÔse 28, year VIII), ib., 443 "The pretended organic sÉnatus-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,"]

4117 (return)
[ 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.)]

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

4119 (return)
[ Ibid., p. 293. SÉnatus-consulte of Thermidor 16, year X, and of Fructidor 19, year X.]

4120 (return)
[ Decree of January 17, 1806, article 40.]

4121 (return)
[ Aucoc, "ConfÉrence sur l'administration et le droit administratif," §§ 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]

4122 (return)
[ SÉnatus-consulte of Thermidor 16, year X.]

4123 (return)
[ Decree of May 13, 1806, title III., article 32.]

4124 (return)
[ 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."]

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

4126 (return)
[ Faber, "Notice sur l'intÉrieur de la France" (1807), p.25.]

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

4128 (return)
[ 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."]

4129 (return)
[ "Correspondance de NapolÉon," No.4474, note dictated to Lucien, minister of the interior, year VIII.]

4130 (return)
[ Cf. "ProcÉs-verbaux des conseil gÉnÉraux" 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."]

4131 (return)
[ Laws of February 29—March 9, 1804 And February 28—March 10, 1805.]

4132 (return)
[ Laws of July 23, 1802, and of February 27, 1811.]

4133 (return)
[ "Correspondance de NapolÉon," No. 4474 (note dictated to Lucien).]

4134 (return)
[ 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."]

4135 (return)
[ Decree of Thermidor 4, year X.]

4136 (return)
[ Law of PluviÔse 28, year VIII.]

4137 (return)
[ "ProcÉs-verbaux des conseils gÉnÉraux" 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.)]

4138 (return)
[ "Statistiques des prÉfets" (from the years IX to XIII, about 40 volumes).]

4139 (return)
[ Beugnot, "MÉmoires," I., 363.]

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

4141 (return)
[ 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."]

4142 (return)
[ 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.]

4143 (return)
[ 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 "MÉmoires de M. VillÈle," vol. I., passim.]

4144 (return)
[ 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!"]

4145 (return)
[ 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 "Æuvres complÈtes," vol. III.)]

4146 (return)
[ 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, CÔte d'Or, Ain, Loiret, Indre-et-Loire, Indre, Loire-InfÉrieure 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."]

4147 (return)
[ M. de VillÈle, ibid., I., 248.]

4148 (return)
[ Rocquam, "l'État de la France au 18 Brumaire," reports of the councilors of state sent on missions, p.40.]

4149 (return)
[ De Feville, "La France economique," 248 and 249.]

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

4151 (return)
[ 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."]

4152 (return)
[ 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.]

4153 (return)
[ Aucoc, ibid., §§ 55 and 135.]