Only the Emperor can confer upon them both public confidence and legal power.
The second act of the comedy begins; this act is more complicated, and comprises several scenes which end, some of them, in the appointment of the arrondissement councils, and others in that of the council-general of the department.

We will take only the latter, the most important;[4121] there are two, one following the other, and in different places .-- The first one[4122] is played in the cantonal assembly above described; the president, who has just directed the choice of municipal candidates, draws from his portfolio another list, likewise furnished to him by the prefect, and on which six hundred names of those who pay the heaviest taxes in the department are printed.

It is from among these six hundred that the cantonal assembly must elect ten or twelve members who, with their fellows, chosen in the same way by the other cantonal assemblies, will form the electoral college of the department, and take their seats at the chief town of the prefecture.
This time again, the president, who is the responsible leader of the cantonal flock, takes care to conduct it; his finger on the list indicates to the electors which names the government prefers; if need be, he adds a word to the sign he makes, and, probably, the voters will be as docile as before; and all the more because the composition of the electoral college only half interests them.

This college, unlike the municipal council, does not touch or hold any of them on their sensitive side; it is not obliged to tighten or loosen their purse-strings; it does not vote the "additional centimes"; it does not meddle with their business; it there only for show, to simulate the absent people, to present candidates, and thus perform the second electoral scene in the same way as the first one, but at the chief town of the prefecture and by new actors.

These extras are also led by a head conductor, appointed by the government, and who is responsible for their behavior, "a president who has in sole charge the police of their assembled college," and must direct their voting.