9 in their
Departmental System, had proved a failure. In that time of buoyant
hope, when every difficulty and abuse seemed about to be charmed away
by the magic of universal suffrage, local self-government of a most
advanced type had been intrusted to an inexperienced populace. There
were elections for the commune or parish, elections for the canton,
elections for the district, elections for the Department, and
elections for the National Assembly, until the rustic brain, after
reeling with excitement, speedily fell back into muddled apathy and
left affairs generally to the wire-pullers of the nearest Jacobin
club. A time of great confusion ensued. Law went according to local
opinion, and the national taxes were often left unpaid. In the Reign
of Terror this lax system was replaced by the despotism of the secret
committees, and the way was thus paved for a return to organized
central control, such as was exercised by the Directory.

The First Consul, as successor to the Directory, therefore found
matters ready to his hand for a drastic measure of centralization, and
it is curious to notice that the men of 1789 had unwittingly cleared
the ground for him. To make way for the "supremacy of the general
will," they abolished the _Parlements_, which had maintained the old
laws, customs, and privileges of their several provinces, and had
frequently interfered in purely political matters. The abolition of
these and other privileged corporations in 1789 unified France and
left not a single barrier to withstand either the flood of democracy
or the backwash of reaction. Everything therefore favoured the action
of the First Consul in drawing all local powers under his own control.
France was for the moment weary of elective bodies, that did little
except waste the nation's taxes; and though there was some opposition
to the new proposal, it passed on February 16th, 1800 (28 Pluviose,
an, viii).

It substituted local government by the central power for local
self-government. The local divisions remained the same, except that
the "districts," abolished by the Convention, were now reconstituted
on a somewhat larger scale, and were termed _arrondissements_, while
the smaller communes, which had been merged in the cantons since 1795,
were also revived. It is noteworthy that, of all the areas mapped out
by the Constituent Assembly in 1789-90, only the Department and canton
have had a continuous existence--a fact which seems to show the p