Such, in fact, it is, and, through the explicit declaration of the legislator, who constitutes it a legal entity, capable of possessing, acquiring, and contracting, and of prosecuting in the courts of law: he likewise confers on the eighty-six departments and on the thirty-six thousand communes all the legal capacities and obligations of an ordinary individual.

The State, consequently, in relationship to them and to all collective persons, is what it is with respect to a private individual, neither more nor less; its title to intervene between them is not different.

As justiciary, it owes them justice the same as to private persons, nothing more or less; only to render this to them, it has more to do, for they are composite and complex.

By virtue even of its mandate, it is bound to enter their domiciles in the performance of its duty, to maintain probity and to prevent disorder, to protect there not alone the governed against the governors and the governors against the governed, but again the community, which is lasting, against its directors, who are temporary, to assign to each member his quota of dues or of charges, and his quote of influence or of authority, to regulate the way in which the society shall support and govern itself, to decide upon and sanction the equitable statute, to oversee and impose its execution, that is to say, in sum to maintain the right of each person and oblige each to pay what he owes .-- This is difficult and delicate.
But, being done, the collective personality is, as much as any individual, complete and defined, independent and distinct from the State; by the same title as that of the individual, it has its own circle of initiation and of action, its separate domain, which is its private affair.

The State, on its side, has its own affairs too, which are those of the public; and thus, in the nature of things, both circles are distinct; neither of them should prey upon or encroach on the other .-- Undoubtedly, local societies and the State may help each other, lend each other their agents, and thus avoid employing two for one; may reduce their official staff, diminish their expenses, and, through this interchange of secondary offices, do their work better and more economically.