n the performance of
its duty, to maintain probity and to prevent disorder, to protect there
not alone the governed against the governors and the governors against
the governed, but again the community, which is lasting, against its
directors, who are temporary, to assign to each member his quota of dues
or of charges, and his quote of influence or of authority, to regulate
the way in which the society shall support and govern itself, to decide
upon and sanction the equitable statute, to oversee and impose its
execution, that is to say, in sum to maintain the right of each person
and oblige each to pay what he owes.--This is difficult and delicate.
But, being done, the collective personality is, as much as any
individual, complete and defined, independent and distinct from the
State; by the same title as that of the individual, it has its own
circle of initiation and of action, its separate domain, which is its
private affair. The State, on its side, has its own affairs too, which
are those of the public; and thus, in the nature of things, both circles
are distinct; neither of them should prey upon or encroach on the
other.--Undoubtedly, local societies and the State may help each other,
lend each other their agents, and thus avoid employing two for one; may
reduce their official staff, diminish their expenses, and, through
this interchange of secondary offices, do their work better and more
economically. For example, the commune and the department may let the
State collect and deposit their "additional centimes," borrow from it
for this purpose its assessors and other accountants, and thus receive
their revenues with no drawback, almost gratis, on the appointed day.
In the like manner, the State has very good reason for entrusting the
departmental council with the re-distribution of its direct taxes among
the districts, and the district council with the same re-distribution
among the communes: in this way it saves trouble for itself, and there
is no other more effective mode of ensuring an equitable allocation.
It will similarly be preferable to have the mayor, rather than anybody
else, handle petty public undertakings, which nobody else could do as
readily and as surely, with less trouble, expense, and mistakes, with
fewer legal document, registers of civil status, advertisements of laws
and regulations, transmissions by the orders of public authorities to
interested parties, and of local information to the public autho