According to the definition which Chaptal then gave the general councils, fixing their powers and competence, they exist for two purposes and only two:[4145] they must first "insure to the governed impartiality in the assessment of taxes along with the verification of the use of the latest levies in the payment of local expenses," and next, they must, with discretion and modesty, "obtain for the government the information which alone enables it to provide for the necessities of each department and improve the entire working of the public administration." VIII.

Excellence of Local Government after Napoleon.
The institution remains intact under the Restoration.
-- Motives of the governors .-- Excellence of the machine.
-- Abdication of the administrator.
Such is the spirit of the institution and such is its form.

After 1814 and 1815, after the fall of the Empire and the Restoration, the institution subsists and remains as it was before in form and in spirit: it is always the government which appoints and directs all the representatives of local society, in the department, in the commune, and in the intermediate circumscriptions, the prefect, sub-prefects, mayors and assistants, the councilors of the department, of the arrondissement and of the commune.

Whatever the ruling power may be it is repugnant to any change; never does it voluntarily restrict itself in its faculty of bestowing or withholding offices, authority, consideration, influence, or salaries, every desirable and every desired good thing; as far as it can, it retains these in its own hands to distribute them as it pleases, and in its own interest to bestow them on its partisans and to deprive its adversaries of them, to attract clients and create minions.

The four thousand offices of prefect, sub-prefect, and councilors of the prefecture, department, and arrondissement, the four hundred thousand offices of mayor, assistants, and municipal councilors, and added to these, the innumerable salaried employments of auxiliary or secondary agents, from the secretary-general of the prefecture down to the secretary of the mayor, from the scribes and clerks of the prefecture and sub-prefecture down to the staff of the municipal police and of the octroi in the towns, from the city or department architect down to the lowest road-surveyor, from the watchmen and superintendents of a canal or harbor down to the field-guards and stone-breakers or the highway, directly or indirectly, the constitutional government disposes of them in the same fashion as the imperial government, with the same interference in the most trifling details and in the most trifling affair.