ops, for its various outlets, for its security against floods and
fires, and, after this, to improvements in public transit, and to the
collective works which protect both soil and buildings against natural
calamities.[4108] It follows that the inhabitant who benefits from these
services, owes a second contribution, greater or lesser according to the
greater or lesser advantage which he derives from them.

IV. Local associations.

Local society, thus constituted, is a collective legal
entity.--The sphere of its initiation and action.--Its
relation to the State.--Distinction between the private and
the public domain.

Such is in itself local society and, with or without the legislator's
permission, we find it to be a private syndicate,[4109] analogous
to many others.[4110] Whether communal or departmental, it concerns,
combines, and serves none but the inhabitants of one circumscription;
its success or failure does not interest the nation, unless indirectly,
and through a remote reaction, similar to the slight effect which, for
good or ill, the health or sickness of one Frenchman produces on the
mass of Frenchmen. That which directly and fully affects a local society
is felt only by that society, the same as that which affects a private
individual is felt only by him; it is a close corporation, and belongs
to itself within its physical limits, the same as he, in his, belongs to
himself; like him, then, it is an individual, less simple, but no less
real, a human combination, endowed with reason and will, responsible
for its acts, capable of wronging and being wronged; in brief, a legal
entity. Such, in fact, it is, and, through the explicit declaration
of the legislator, who constitutes it a legal entity, capable of
possessing, acquiring, and contracting, and of prosecuting in the courts
of law: he likewise confers on the eighty-six departments and on the
thirty-six thousand communes all the legal capacities and obligations of
an ordinary individual. The State, consequently, in relationship to them
and to all collective persons, is what it is with respect to a private
individual, neither more nor less; its title to intervene between them
is not different. As justiciary, it owes them justice the same as to
private persons, nothing more or less; only to render this to them, it
has more to do, for they are composite and complex. By virtue even of
its mandate, it is bound to enter their domiciles i