For example, the commune and the department may let the State collect and deposit their "additional centimes," borrow from it for this purpose its assessors and other accountants, and thus receive their revenues with no drawback, almost gratis, on the appointed day.
In the like manner, the State has very good reason for entrusting the departmental council with the re-distribution of its direct taxes among the districts, and the district council with the same re-distribution among the communes: in this way it saves trouble for itself, and there is no other more effective mode of ensuring an equitable allocation.
It will similarly be preferable to have the mayor, rather than anybody else, handle petty public undertakings, which nobody else could do as readily and as surely, with less trouble, expense, and mistakes, with fewer legal document, registers of civil status, advertisements of laws and regulations, transmissions by the orders of public authorities to interested parties, and of local information to the public authorities which they need, the preparation and revision of the electoral lists and of conscripts, and co-operation in measures of general security.

Similar collaboration is imposed on the captain of a merchant vessel, on the administrators of a railway, on the director of a hotel or even of a factory, and this does not prevent the company which runs the ship, the railway, the hotel, or the factory, from enjoying full ownership and the free disposition of its capital; from holding meetings, passing resolutions, electing directors, appointing its managers, and regulating its own affairs, preserving intact that precious faculty of possessing, of willing and of acting, which cannot be lost or alienated without ceasing to be a personality.

To remain a personality (i.e.a legal entity), such is the main interest and right of all persons, singly or collectively, and therefore of local communities and of the State itself; it must be careful not to abdicate and be careful not to usurp .-- It renounces in favor of local societies when, through optimism or weakness, it hands a part of the public domain over to them; when it gives them the responsibility for the collection of its taxes, the appointment of its judges and police-commissioners, the employment of its armed forces, when it delegates local functions to them which it should exercise itself, because it is the special and responsible director, the only one who is in a suitable position, competent, well provided, and qualified to carry them out.

On the other side, it causes prejudice to the local societies, when it appropriates to itself a portion of their private domain, when it confiscates their possessions, when it disposes of their capital or income arbitrarily, when it imposes on them excessive expenses for worship, charity, education, and any other service which properly belongs to a different association; when it refuses to recognize in the mayor the representative of the commune and the government official, when it subordinates the first of these two titles to the second, when it claims the right of giving or taking away, through with the second which belongs to it, the first which does not belong to it, when in practice and in its grasp the commune and department cease to be private companies in order to become administrative compartments .-- According to the opportunity and the temptation, it glides downhill, now toward the surrender of its duty, and now toward the meddlesome interference of an intruder.
V.Local versus State authority.
Case in which the State abdicates .-- Anarchy during the Revolution .-- Case in which the State usurps .-- Regime of the year VIII .-- Remains of local independence under the ancient regime .-- Destroyed under the new regime .-- Local society after 1800.
From and after 1789, the State, passing through intermittent fits and starts of brutal despotism, had resigned its commission.

Under its almost nominal sovereignty, there were in France forty-four thousand small States enjoying nearly sovereign power, and, most frequently, sovereignty in reality.[4111] Not only did the local community manage its private affairs, but again, in the circumscription, each exercised the highest public functions, disposed of the national guard, of the police force, and even of the army, appointed civil and criminal judges, police commissioners,[4112] the assessors and collectors of taxes.