or overseer of all general services, he is, in
his circumscription, head inquisitor of the republican faith[4235],
even in relation to private life and inner sentiments, the responsible
director of orthodox or heretical acts or opinions, which are laudable
or blamable in the innumerably army of functionaries by which the
central state now undertakes the complete mastery of human life, the
twenty distinct regiments of its vast hierarchy--with the staff of the
clergy, of the magistracy, of the preventive and repressive police, of
the customs; with the officials of bridges and highways, forest domains,
stock-breeding establishments, postal and telegraph departments, tobacco
and other monopolies; with those of every national enterprise which
ought to be private, Sevres and Gobelins, deaf and dumb and blind
asylums, and every auxiliary and special workshop for war and navigation
purposes, which the state supports and manages. I pass some of them and
all too many. Only remark this, that the indulgence or severity of
the prefecture in the way of fiscal violations or irregularities is
an advantage or danger of the highest importance to 377,000 dealers in
wines and liquors; that an accusation brought before and admitted in
the prefecture may deprive 38,000 clergymen of their bread,[4236] 43,000
letter-carriers and telegraph messengers, 45,000 sellers of tobacco and
collecting-clerks, 75,000 stone-breakers, and 120,000 male and female
teachers;[4237] directly or indirectly, the good or ill favor of the
prefecture is of consequence, since recent military laws, to all adults
between 20 and 45 years, and, since recent school laws, to all children
between 6 and 13 years of age. According to these figures, which go on
increasing from year to, calculate the breadth of the margin on which,
alongside of the legal text which states the law for persons and things
in general, the prefect in his turn gives the law for persons and things
in particular. On this margin, which belongs to him, he writes what he
pleases, at one time permissions and favors, exemptions, dispensations,
leaves of absence, relief of taxes or discharges, help and subventions,
preferences and gratuities, appointments and promotions, and at another
time disgrace, hardship, legal proceedings, dismissals, and special
favors. To guide his hand in each case, that is to say, to spread all
the favors on one side and all the disfavors on the other, he has, among
the local Jacobin