After the year IX, however, this publication stops; it renders the general councils too important; it might rally the entire population of the department to them and even of all France that could read; it might hamper the prefect and diminish his ascendancy.
From now on, it is the prefect alone who replies to these questions, and of which the government gives an analysis or tables of statistics;[4138] then, the publication of these ceases; decidedly, printing always has its drawbacks--manuscript reports are much better; local affairs are no longer transacted outside the bureaus, and are managed with closed doors; any report that might spread outside the prefect's cabinet or that of the minister, is carefully toned down or purposely stifled, and, under the prefect's thumb, the general council becomes an automaton.
In private, dealing directly with the Emperor's representative, it appears as if one is dealing directly with the Emperor.

Consider these few words--in the presence of the Emperor; they carry an immeasurable weight in the scales of contemporaries.

For them, he has every attribute of Divinity, not only omnipotence and omnipresence, but again omniscience, and, if he speaks to them, what they feel far surpasses what they imagine.

When he visits a town and confers with the authorities of the place on the interests of the commune or department, his interlocutors are bewildered; they find him as well informed as themselves, and more clear-sighted; it is he who explains their affairs to them.

On arriving the evening before, he calls for the summaries of facts and figures, every positive and technical detail of information, reduced and classified according to the method taught by himself and prescribed to his administrators.[4139] During the night he has read all this over and mastered it; in the morning, at dawn, he has taken his ride on horseback; with extraordinary promptness and accuracy, his topographical glance has discerned "the best direction for the projected canal, the best site for the construction of a factory, a harbor, or a dike."[4140] To the difficulties which confuse the best brains in the country, to much debated, seemingly insoluble, questions, he at once presents the sole practical solution; there it is, ready at hand, and the members of the local council had not seen it; he makes them touch it with their fingers.