l general, instead of one session a year, holds two,
and maintains itself in the interim by its delegation which meets every
month. With these increased authorities and generally present, the
prefect has to reckon, and what is still more serious, he must reckon
with local opinion; he can no longer rule with closed doors; the
proceedings of the municipal council, the smallest one, are duly posted;
in the towns, they are published and commented on by the newspapers
of the locality; the general council furnishes reports of its
deliberations.--Thus, behind elected powers, and weighing with these on
the same side of the scales, here is a new power, opinion, as this grows
in a country leveled by equalized centralization, in heaving or stagnant
crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central,
rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and
jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and
haphazard impressions--a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial
opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or
five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words
imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of
which the listeners fail to catch the sense, but the sound which, by din
of frequent repetition, becomes for them a recognized signal, the blast
of a horn or a shrieking whistle which assembles the herd and arrests or
drives it on. No opposition can make head against this herd as it
rushes along in too compact and too heavy masses.--The prefect, on the
contrary, is obliged to cajole it, yield to it, and satisfy it; for
under the system of universal suffrage, this same herd, besides
local representatives, elects the central powers, the deputies, the
government; and when the government sends a prefect from Paris into the
provinces, it is after the fashion of a large commercial establishment,
with a view to keep and increase the number of its customers, to stay
there, maintain its credit, and act permanently as its traveling-clerk,
or, in other terms, as its electoral agent, and, still more precisely,
as the campaign manager of coming elections for the dominant party and
for the ministers in office who have commissioned and appointed him,
and who, from top to bottom, constantly stimulate him to hold on to
the voters already secured and to gain fresh ones.--Undoubtedly, the
interests of the state, department, and commune