There is only one bill to be settled, not even a specified bill, but a surplus of centimes added to each franc, and included with the principal in the annual quota.

Just like an owner who, by his correct, exact, and somewhat slow although punctual and capable supervisors, are relieved of the care of his property.

He may dismiss the head steward of his domain in a fit of ill-humor, but, if he changes his stewards, he does not change the system; he is too accustomed to it, and his indolence demands it; he is not tempted to take care and trouble on himself, nor is he qualified to become his own intendant.
And what is worse, in the present case the master has forgotten that he is the owner of his domain, he hardly remembers that he is a personality.

Whether large or small, department or commune, local society has no longer the consciousness of being a natural body, composed of involuntarily united members with common interests; this sentiment, already weakened and drooping at the end of the ancient regime, lost under the multiplied attacks of the Revolution and under the prolonged compression of the Empire.

During twenty-five years it has suffered too much; it has been too arbitrarily manufactured or mutilated, too frequently recast, and made and unmade .-- In the commune, everything has been upset over and over again, the territorial circumscription, the internal and external system, all collective property.