lves for the support
of the school, for repairs to the church or fountain, and for beginning
or carrying on a suit in court.--All these remains of the ancient
provincial and communal initiative, respected or tolerated by
monarchical centralization, are crushed out and extinguished. The First
Consul very soon falls upon these local societies and seizes them in his
claws; in the eyes of the new legislator they scarcely seem to exist;
there must not be any local personalities for him. The commune and
department, in his eyes, are merely territorial districts, physical
portions of the public domain, provincial workshops to which the central
State transfers and uses its tools, in order to work effectively and on
the spot. Here, as elsewhere, he takes the business entirely in his own
hands; if he employs interested parties it is only as auxiliaries, at
odd times, for a few days, to operate with more discernment and more
economy, to listen to complaints and promises, to become better informed
and the better to apportion changes; but, except this occasional and
subordinate help, the members of the local society must remain passive
in the local society; they are to pay and obey, and nothing more. Their
community no longer belongs to them, but to the government; its chiefs
are functionaries who depend on him, and not on it; it no longer issues
its mandate; all its legal mandatories, all its representatives and
directors, municipal or general councilors, mayors, sub-prefects
or prefects, are imposed on it from above, by a foreign hand, and,
willingly or not, instead of choosing them, it has to put up with them.

VI. Local Elections under the First Consul.

Lists of notables.--Senatus-consultes of the year X.
--Liberal institution becomes a reigning instrument.
--Mechanism of the system of appointments and candidatures.
--Decree of 1806 and suppression of candidatures.

At the beginning, an effort was made to put in practice the
constitutional principle proposed by Sieyes: Power in future, according
the accepted formula, must come from above and confidence from below. To
this end, in the year IX, the assembled citizens appointed one-tenth
of their number, about 500,000 communal notables, and these, likewise
assembled, appointed also one-tenth of their number, about 50,000
departmental notables. The government selected from this list the
municipal councilors of each commune, and, from this second list, the