of the
mineral springs, doctors and accountants of the insane asylums and for
epidemics, head-overseers of octrois, wolf-bounty guards, commissioners
of the urban police, inspectors of weights and measures, town
collectors, whose receipts do not exceed thirty thousand francs, down
to and comprising the lowest employees, such as forest guards of the
department and commune, lock-keepers and navigation guards, overseers
of the quays and of commercial ports, toll-gatherers on bridges and
highways, field-guards of the smallest village, policemen posted on
the corner of a street, and stone-breakers on the public highway. When
things and not persons are concerned, it is he, again, who, in every
project, enterprise, or proceeding, is charged with the preliminary
examination and final execution of it, who proposes the department
budget and presents it, regularly drawn up, to the council general, who
draws up the communal budget and presents that to the municipal council,
and who, after the council general or municipal council have voted on
it, remains on the spot the sole executor, director, and master of the
operation to which they have assented. Their total, effective part in
this operation is very insignificant, it being reduced to a bare act of
the will; in reaching a vote they have had in their hands scarcely any
other documents than those furnished and arranged by him; in gradually
reaching their decision step by step, they have had no help but his,
that of an independent collaborator who, governed by his own views
and interests, never becomes the mere instrument. They lack for their
decision direct, personal, and full information, and, beyond this,
complete, efficient power; it is simply a dry Yes, interposed between
insufficient resources, or else cut off, and the fruit of which is
abortive or only half ripens. The persistent will of the prefect alone,
informed, and who acts, must and does generally prevail against this
ill-supported and ill-furnished will. At bottom, and as he stands, he
is, in his mental and official capacity, always the prefect of the year
VIII.

Nevertheless, after the laws lately passed, his hands are not so free.
The competency of local assemblies is extended and comprises not only
new cases but, again, of a new species, while the number of their
executive decisions has increased five-fold. The municipal council,
instead of holding one session a year, holds four, and of longer
duration. The counci