Such are the great undertakings which form a whole, which bear alike on the present, past, and future budget of the commune, and which, as so many distinct branches of every considerable enterprise, require, for proper execution, to have their continuity and connection always present in the thoughtful and directing mind which has them in charge.[4229] Experience shows that, in the great industrial or financial companies, in the Bank of France, in the Crédit Lyonnais, and in the insurance, navigation, and railroad companies, the best way to accomplish this end is a permanent manager or director, always present, engaged or accepted by the administrative board on understood conditions, a special, tried man who, sure of his place for a long period, and with a reputation to maintain, gives his whole time, faculties, and zeal to the work, and who, alone, possessing at every moment a coherent and detailed conception of the entire undertaking, can alone give it the proper stimulus, and bring to bear the most economical and the most perfect practical improvements. Such is also the municipal administration in the Prussian towns on the Rhine. Then, in Bonn, for instance,[4230] the municipal council, elected by the inhabitants "goes in quest" of some eminent specialist whose ability is well known. It must be noted that he is taken wherever he can be found, outside the city, in some remote province; they bargain with him, the same as with some famous musician, for the management of a series of concerts. Under the title of burgomaster, with a salary of 10,000 francs per annum, he becomes for twelve years the director of all municipal services, leader of the civic orchestra, solely entrusted with executive power, wielding the magisterial baton which the various instruments obey, many of these being salaried functionaries and others benevolent amateurs,[4231] all in harmony and through him, because they know that he is watchful, competent, and top quality, constantly occupied with am overall view, responsible, and in his own interest, as a point of honor, wholly devoted to his work which is likewise their work, that is to say, to the complete success of the concert.
Nothing in a French town corresponds to this admirable type of a municipal institution. Here, also, and to a much greater extent in the village, the effect of universal suffrage has been to discredit the true notables and to incite the abdication or insure the exclusion of men who, by their education, the large proportion of the taxes they pay, and still greater influence or production on labor and on business, are social authorities, and who should become legal authorities. In every country where conditions are unequal, the preponderance of a numerical majority necessarily ends in the nearly general abstention or almost certain defeat of the candidates most deserving of election. But here the case is different; the elected, being towns-people (citadins) and not rural, are not of the species as in the village. They read a daily newspaper, and believe that they understand not only local matters but all subjects of national and general importance, that is to say, high level economy, philosophy and law; somewhat resembling the schoolmaster who, being familiar with the rules of arithmetic, thinks that he can teach the differential calculus, and the theory of functions. At any rate, they talk loud and argue on every subject with confidence, according to Jacobin traditions, being, indeed, so many budding Jacobins. They are the heirs and successors of the old sectarians, issuing from the same stock and of the same stamp, a few in good faith, but mainly narrow-minded, excited, and bewildered by the smoke of the glittering generalities they utter. Most of them are mere politicians, charlatans, and intriguers, third-class lawyers and doctors, literary failures, semi-educated stump-speakers, bar-room, club, or clique orators, and vulgar climbers. Left behind in private careers, in which one is closely watched and accepted for what he is worth, they launch out on a public career because, in this business, popular suffrage at once ignorant, indifferent, is a badly informed, prejudiced and passionate judge and prefers a moralist of easy conscience, instead of demanding unsullied integrity and proven competency. Nothing more is demanded from candidates but witty speech-making, assertiveness and showing off in public, gross flattery, a display of enthusiasm and promises to place the power about to be conferred on them by the people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and prejudices. Thus introduced into the municipal council, they constitute its majority and appoint a mayor who is their figurehead or creature, now the bold leader and again the docile instrument of their spite, their favors, and their headlong action, of their blunders and presumption, and of their meddlesome disposition and encroachments.—In the department, the council general, also elected by universal suffrage, also bears the marks of its origin; its quality, without falling so low, still descends in a certain degree, and through changes which keep on increasing: politicians install themselves there and make use of their place as a stepping-stone to mount higher; it also, with larger powers and prolonged during its vacations by its committee, is tempted to regard itself as the legitimate sovereign of the extensive and scattered community which it represents.—Thus recruited and composed, enlarged and deteriorated, the local authorities become difficult to manage, and from now on, to carry on the administration, the prefect must come to some understanding with them.
VII. Local society in 1880.
Present state of local society.—Considered as an organism,
it is stillborn.—Considered as a mechanism, it gets out of
order.—Two successive and false conceptions of local
government.—In theory, one excludes the other.—
Practically, their union ends in the actual system.—Powers
of the prefect.—Restrictions on these through subsequent
changes.—Give and take.—Bargaining.—Supported by the
government and cost to the State.
Before 1870, when he appointed the mayors and when the council general held its sessions only fifteen days in the year, the prefect was almost omnipotent; still, at the present day, (1889), "his powers are immense,"[4232] and his power remains preponderant. He has the right to suspend the municipal council and the mayor, and to propose their dismissal to the head of the state. Without resorting to this extremity, he holds them with a strong hand, and always uplifted over the commune, for he can veto the acts of the municipal police and of the road committee, annul the regulations of the mayor, and, through a skillful use of his prerogative, impose his own. He holds in hand, removes, appoints or helps appoint, not alone the clerks in his office, but likewise every kind and degree of clerk who, outside his office, serves the commune or department,[4233] from the archivist, keeper of the museum, architect, director, and teachers of the municipal drawing-schools, from the directors and collectors of charity establishments, directors and accountants of almshouses, doctors 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 council 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 must be seriously considered, but, first and above all, he is the recruiting officer for voters. By virtue of this position and on this he treats with the council general and the standing committee, with the municipal councilors and mayors, with influential electors, but especially with the small active committee which, in each commune, supports the prevailing policy and offers its zeal to the government.
Give and take. These indispensable auxiliaries must obtain nearly all they ask for, and they ask a great deal. Instinctively, as well as by doctrine and tradition, the Jacobins are exacting, disposed to regard themselves as the representatives of the real and the ideal people, that is to say, as sovereigns by right, above the law, entitled to make it and therefore to unmake it, or, at least, strain it and interpret it as they please. Always in the general council, in the municipal council, and in the mayoralty, they are tempted to usurp it; the prefect has as much as he can do to keep them within the local bounds, to keep them from meddling with state matters and the general policy; he is often obliged to accept their lack of consideration, to be patient with them, to talk to them mildly; for they talk and want the administration to reckon with them as a clerk with his master; if they vote money for any service it is on condition that they take part in the use of the funds and in the details of the service, in the choice of contractors and in hiring the workmen; on condition that their authority be extended and their hands applied to the consecutive execution of what does not belong to them but which belongs to the prefect.[4234] Bargaining, consequently, goes on between them incessantly and they come to terms.—The prefect, it must be noted, who is bound to pay, can do so without violating the letter of the law. The stern page on which the legislator has printed his imperative text is always provided with an ample margin where the administrator, charged with its execution, can write down the decisions that he is free to make. In relation to each departmental or communal affair, the prefect can with his own hand write out what suits him on the white margin, which, as we have already seen, is ample enough; but the margin at his disposition is wider still and continues, beyond anything we have seen, on other pages; he is chargé d'affaires not only of the department and commune, but again of the State. Titular conductor 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, Sévres 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 Jacobins, special informers and important applicants. If not restrained by a very strong sentiment of distributive justice and very great solicitude for the public good he can hardly resist them, and in general when he takes up his pen it is to write under the dictation of his Jacobin collaborators.
DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE IN 1889, SUMMARY.
Thus has the institution of the year VIII deviated (The France of the revolution corrected and decreed by Napoleon), no longer attaining its object. The prefects, formerly appointed to a department, like a pacier of the Middle Ages, imposed on it from above, ignorant of local passions, independent, qualified and fitted for the office, was, during fifty years, in general, able to remain the impartial minister of the law and of equity, maintaining the rights of each, and exacting from each his due, without heeding opinions and without respect to persons. Now he is obliged to become an accomplice of the ruling faction, govern for the advantage of some to the detriment of others, and to put into his scales, as a preponderating weight, every time he weighs judgment, a consideration for persons and opinions. At the same time, the entire administrative staff in his hands, and under his eye, deteriorates; each year, on the recommendation of a senator or deputy, he adds to it, or sees, intruders there, whose previous services are null, feeble in capacity and of weak integrity who do poor work or none at all, and who, to hold their post or get promoted, count not on their merits but on their sponsors. The rest, able and faithful functionaries of the old school, who are poor and to whom no path is open, become weary and lose their energy; they are no longer even certain of keeping their place; if they stay, it is for the dispatch of current business and because they cannot be dispensed with; perhaps to-morrow, however, they will cease to be considered indispensable; some political denunciation, or to give a political favorite a place, will put them by anticipation on the retired list. From now on they have two powers to consult, one, legitimate and natural, the authority of their administrative chiefs, and the other illegitimate and parasite, consisting of democratic influence from both above and below. For them, as for the prefect, public welfare descends to the second rank and the electoral interest mounts upward to the first rank. With them as with him self-respect, professional honor, the conscientious performance of duty, reciprocal loyalty go down; discipline relaxes, punctuality falters, and, as the saying goes, the great administrative edifice is no longer a well-kept house, but a barracks.