rities
which they need, the preparation and revision of the electoral lists and
of conscripts, and co-operation in measures of general security. Similar
collaboration is imposed on the captain of a merchant vessel, on the
administrators of a railway, on the director of a hotel or even of a
factory, and this does not prevent the company which runs the ship, the
railway, the hotel, or the factory, from enjoying full ownership and
the free disposition of its capital; from holding meetings, passing
resolutions, electing directors, appointing its managers, and regulating
its own affairs, preserving intact that precious faculty of possessing,
of willing and of acting, which cannot be lost or alienated without
ceasing to be a personality. To remain a personality (i.e. a legal
entity), such is the main interest and right of all persons, singly
or collectively, and therefore of local communities and of the State
itself; it must be careful not to abdicate and be careful not to
usurp.--It renounces in favor of local societies when, through optimism
or weakness, it hands a part of the public domain over to them; when
it gives them the responsibility for the collection of its taxes, the
appointment of its judges and police-commissioners, the employment of
its armed forces, when it delegates local functions to them which
it should exercise itself, because it is the special and responsible
director, the only one who is in a suitable position, competent, well
provided, and qualified to carry them out. On the other side, it causes
prejudice to the local societies, when it appropriates to itself a
portion of their private domain, when it confiscates their possessions,
when it disposes of their capital or income arbitrarily, when it imposes
on them excessive expenses for worship, charity, education, and any
other service which properly belongs to a different association; when it
refuses to recognize in the mayor the representative of the commune and
the government official, when it subordinates the first of these two
titles to the second, when it claims the right of giving or taking away,
through with the second which belongs to it, the first which does
not belong to it, when in practice and in its grasp the commune
and department cease to be private companies in order to become
administrative compartments.--According to the opportunity and the
temptation, it glides downhill, now toward the surrender of its duty,
and now toward the meddles