e of real property, in the
discredit of the assignats, and in the final bankruptcy. After this
prolonged process, communal property, even when disgorged and restored
by the exchequer, is not what it was before; once out of the monster's
stomach, the remains of it, dismembered, spoilt, half-digested, are no
longer held sacred and inviolable; a settlement of accounts intervenes;
"there are a good many communes," says Napoleon[4150] "whose debts have
been paid and whose property was not sold; there are many others whose
property has been sold and whose debts are not paid.... The result is
that many pieces of property in certain communes are not considered
reputable." Consequently, he first deprives these of one-tenth of their
income from land, and then one-quarter of the produce of their extra
cuttings of timber,[4151] and finally, their capital, the whole of their
real property,[4152] estimated at 370 millions; in exchange, he gives
them 138 millions in the rentes; the loss to them as well as the gain
to him, is thus 232 millions, while the sale of communal properties at
auction, begun in 1813, continues under the Restoration in 1814, 1815,
and even in 1816. A human community treated in this way for one quarter
of a century, ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere material
object; as far as this is concerned, its members have come to believe,
that it is and must be so and cannot be otherwise.

Above the commune, nearly dead, is the department, completely dead; here
local patriotism is stamped out at the beginning by the destruction
of the provinces. Among so many political crimes and other outrages
committed by the Revolution against France, this is one of the worst.
The Constituent Assembly has dismantled long-established associations,
the accumulated work of ten centuries, historic and powerful names,
each of which aroused enthusiasm in thousands of breasts and cemented
together thousands of wills, centers of spontaneous co-operation,
firesides warm with generous feeling, zeal, and devotion, a practical
school of high political education, an admirable theater for available
talent, noble careers open to legitimate ambition, in short, the small
patrimony whose instinctive cult forms the first step out of egoism and
a march onward toward thoughtful devotion to the large patrimony.
Cut apart by geometrical shears, and designated by an entirely new
geographical term, small sections of the province became so many
facti