knowledge and intelligence, attended their
meetings and, besides, served them as scribe, like the present secretary
of the mayoralty, for about the same pay, amounting in all to about the
same total of fees or salaries.[4227]--At the present time, there is
nobody in the municipal council to advise and give information to its
members; the schoolmaster is their secretary, and he cannot be, and
should not be, other than a scribe. He reads in a monotonous tone of
voice the long financial enigma which French public book-keeping, too
perfect, offers to their divination, and which nobody, save one who is
educated to it, can clearly comprehend until after weeks of study. They
listen all agog. Some, adjusting their spectacles, try to pick out among
so many articles the one they want, the amount of taxes they have
to pay. The sum is too large, the assessments are excessive; it is
important that the number of additional centimes should be reduced, and
therefore that less money should be expended. Hence, if there is any
special item of expense which can be got rid of by a refusal, they set
it aside by voting No, until some new law or decree from above obliges
them to say Yes. But, as things go, nearly all the expenses designated
on the paper are obligatory; willingly or not, these must be met, and
there is no way to pay them outside of the additional centimes; however
numerous these are, vote them they must and sanction the centimes
inscribed. They accordingly affix their signatures, not with trust but
with mistrust, with resignation, and out of pure necessity. Abandoned
to their natural ignorance, the twenty-seven thousand petty municipal
councilors of the country are no more passive, more inert, more
constrained than ever; deprived of the light which, formerly, the choice
of the prefect or a restricted suffrage could still throw into the
darkness around them, there remains to them only one safe tutor
or conductor; and this final guide is the official of the bureaus,
especially this or that old, permanent chief, or under clerk, who is
perfectly familiar with his files of papers. With about four hundred
municipal councils to lead, one may imagine what he will do with them:
nothing except to drive them like a flock of sheep into a pen of printed
regulations, or urge them on mechanically, in lots, according to his
instructions, he himself being as automatic and as much in a rut as they
are.

VI. The larger Communes.

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