general councilors of each department.--The machine, however, is
clumsy, difficult to set going, still more difficult to manage, and too
unreliable in its operation. According to the First Consul, it is an
absurd system, "a childish piece of ideology; a great nation should
not be organized in this way."[4115] At bottom,[4116] "he does not want
notables accepted by the nation. In his system, he is to declare who
the notables of the nation shall be and stamp them with the seal of the
State; it is not for the nation to present them to the head of the State
stamped with the national seal." Consequently, at the end of a year, he
becomes, through the establishment of electoral colleges, the veritable
grand-elector of all the notables; he has transformed, with his usual
address, a liberal institution into a reigning instrumentality.[4117]
Provisionally, he holds on to the list of communal notables, "because it
is the work of the people, the result of a grand movement which must
not prove useless, and because, moreover, it contains a large number
of names.... offering a wide margin from which to make good
selections.[4118] He brings together these notables in each canton, and
invites them to designate their trusty men, the candidates from which he
will choose municipal councilors. But, as there are very few cultivated
men in the rural districts, "nearly always it is the old seignior who
would get himself designated";[4119] it is essential that the hand of
the government should not be forced, that its faculty of choosing should
not be restricted. Thus, the presentation of municipal councilors
of that category must cease, there must no longer be any preliminary
candidates. Now, according the senatus-consulte, this category is a
large one, for it comprises all communes of less than 5000 souls, and
therefore over 35,000 municipal councils out of 36,000, whose members
are appointed arbitrarily, without the citizens whom they represent
taking any part in their nomination.--Four or five hundred average
or large communes still remain, in which for each municipal post, the
cantonal assembly designates two candidates between whom the government
chooses. Let us see this assembly duly installed and at work.

Its president, as a precautionary step, is imposed upon it. He is
appointed in advance by the government, and is well informed as to what
the government wants. He alone controls the police of the chamber and
the order of all deliberat