ome interference of an intruder.

V. Local versus State authority.

Case in which the State abdicates.--Anarchy during the
Revolution.--Case in which the State usurps.--Regime of the
year VIII.--Remains of local independence under the ancient
regime.--Destroyed under the new regime.--Local society
after 1800.

From and after 1789, the State, passing through intermittent fits and
starts of brutal despotism, had resigned its commission. Under its
almost nominal sovereignty, there were in France forty-four thousand
small States enjoying nearly sovereign power, and, most frequently,
sovereignty in reality.[4111] Not only did the local community manage
its private affairs, but again, in the circumscription, each exercised
the highest public functions, disposed of the national guard, of the
police force, and even of the army, appointed civil and criminal judges,
police commissioners,[4112] the assessors and collectors of taxes. In
brief, the central State handed over, or allowed the seizure of the
powers of which it ought never to deprive itself, the last of its means
by which alone it acts effectively and on the spot,

* its sword, which it alone should wield,

* its scales of justice, which it alone should hold,

* its purse, for it to fill, and we have seen with what harm to
individuals, to the communes, and to itself, with what a lamentable
series of disastrous results:

* universal, incurable, persistent anarchy,

* impotence of the government,

* violation of the laws,

* complete stoppage of revenue, an empty treasury,

* despotism of the strong, oppression of the weak,

* street riots,

* rural brigandage,

* extortions and waste at the town halls,

* municipal usurpations and abdications,

* ruin of the highways, and all useful public works and buildings, and

* the ruin and distress of the communes.[4113]

In contrast with this, and through disgust, the new Regime takes the
other side, and even goes to the other extreme; the central State, in
1800, no longer a party that has resigned, as formerly, becomes the
interloper. Not only does it take back from local communities the
portion of the public domain which had been imprudently conceded to
them, but, again, it lays its hand on their private domain; it
attaches them to it by way of appendices, while its systematic, uniform
usurpation, accomplished at one blow, spread over the whole territory,
again plunges them