ty.--The chief or under chief of the prefectorial
bureau.

Let us consider these results in turn in the small and in the great
communes; clear enough and distinct at the two extremities of the scale,
they blend into each other at intermediate degrees, because here
they combine together, but in different proportions, according as the
commune, higher or lower in the scale, comes nearer to the village or
to the city.--On this territory, too, subdivided since 1789, and, so to
say, crumbled to pieces by the Constituent Assembly, the small communes
are enormous in number; among the 36,000, more than 27,000 have less
than 1000 inhabitants, and of these, more than 16,000 have less than 500
inhabitants.[4224] Whoever has traveled over France, or lived in this
country, sees at once what sort of men compose such purely rural groups;
he has only to recall physiognomies and attitudes to know to what extent
in these rude brains, rendered torpid by the routine of manual labor and
oppressed by the cares of daily life, how narrow and obstructed are
the inlets to the mind; how limited is their information in the way of
facts; how, in the way of ideas, the acquisition of them is slow; what
hereditary distrust separates the illiterate mass from the lettered
class; what an almost insurmountable wall the difference of education,
of habits, and of manners interposes in France between the blouse
and the dress-coat; why, if each commune contains a few cultivated
individuals and a few notable proprietors, universal suffrage sets them
aside, or at least does not seek them out for the municipal council or
the mayoralty.--Before 1830, when the prefect appointed the municipal
councilors and the mayor, these were always on hand; under the monarchy
of July and a limited suffrage, they were still on hand, at least for
the most part; under the second Empire, whatever the elected municipal
council might be, the mayor, who was appointed by the prefect, and even
outside of this council, might be one of the least ignorant and least
stupid even in the commune. At the present day (1889), it is only
accidentally and by chance that a noble or bourgeois, in a few provinces
and in certain communes, may become mayor or municipal councilor; it is,
however, essential that he should be born on the soil, long established
there, resident and popular. Everywhere else the numerical majority,
being sovereign, tends to select its candidates from among the average
peop