Through a radical, universal, and extraordinary amputation, the like of which is not mentioned in history, with the rashness of the theorist and the brutality of the butcher, the legislator extirpated them all, as far as he could, even including the family, while his fury extended beyond the present into the future.
To legal abolition and total confiscation, he added the systematic hostility of his preventive laws, together with a fresh obstacle in the shape of his new constructions; during three successive legislatures[2307] he provided against their future regeneration, against the permanent instincts and necessities which might one day resuscitate stable families, distinct provinces, and an orthodox church, against artistic, industrial, financial, charitable, and educational corporations, against every spontaneous and organized group, and against every collective, local, or special enterprise.

In place of these he installed synthetic bodies or institutions: * a Church without believers, * schools without pupils, * hospitals without incomes, * a geometrical hierarchy of improvised powers in the commune, district, and department, all badly organized, badly adjusted, out of gear at the start, overwhelmed with political functions, as incapable of performing their proper duties as their supplementary duties, and, from the very beginning, either powerless or mischievous.[2308] Changes repeatedly marred by arbitrariness from above or from below, set aside or perverted now by the mob and again by the government, inert in the country, oppressive in the towns, we have seen the state into which they had fallen at the end of the Directory; how, instead of a refuge for liberty, they had become haunts of tyranny or sinks of egoism; why, in 1800, they were as much decried as their predecessors in 1788, why their two successive props, the old one and the most recent, historic custom and popular election, were now discredited and no longer resorted to .-- After the disastrous experience of the monarchy and the still worse experience of the republic, another prop had to be sought for; but only one remained, that of the central power, the only one visible and which seemed substantial; in default of others they had recourse to this.[2309] In any event, no protestation, even secret and moral, any longer prevented the State from attaching other corporate bodies to itself, in order to use them for its own purposes as instruments or appendages.
II.

Doctrines of Government.
The theory .-- Agreement of speculative ideas with practical necessities .-- Public rights under the Ancient Regime .-- The King's three original rights .-- Labors of the jurists in extending royal prerogatives .-- Historical impediments .-- The primitive or ulterior limits of royal power .-- The philosophic and revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty .-- Unlimited extension of State power.
-- Application to spontaneous bodies .-- Convergence of ancient and new doctrines .-- Corporations considered as creations of the public power .-- Centralization through the universal intervention of the State.
The theory here agreed with the need, and not alone the recent theory, but again the ancient theory.

Long before 1789, public right had elevated the prerogative of centralized power into a dogma and exaggerated it beyond measure.
There are three titles under which this power was conferred .-- Feudal seignior, and suzerain, that is to say, commander-in-chief of the great resident army whose willing forces had served to reconstruct society in the ninth century, the King, through the remotest of his origins--that is to say, through the immemorial confusion of sovereignty with property--was the owner of France, the same as an individual owns his private domain.[2310]--Married, moreover, to the Church since the first Capets, consecrated and crowned at Rheims, anointed by God like a second David,[2311] not only was he believed to be authorized from on high, like other monarchs, but, from Louis le Gros, and especially after the time of saint Louis, he appeared as the delegate from on high, invested with a laic sacerdotalism, clothed with moral power, minister of eternal justice, redresser of wrongs, protector of the weak, benefactor of the humble--in short, "His Most Christian Majesty."-- At length, after the thirteenth century, the recent discovery and diligent study of the ancient codes of Justinian had shown in his person the successor of the Caesars of Rome and of the Emperors of Constantinople.

According to these codes the people in a body had transferred its rights to the prince; now, in antique cities, all rights were vested in the community, and the individual had none;[2312] accordingly, through this transfer, all rights, public or private, passed into the hands of the prince; henceforth he could exercise them as he pleased, under no restriction and no control.