After this prolonged process, communal property, even when disgorged and restored by the exchequer, is not what it was before; once out of the monster's stomach, the remains of it, dismembered, spoilt, half-digested, are no longer held sacred and inviolable; a settlement of accounts intervenes; "there are a good many communes," says Napoleon[4150] "whose debts have been paid and whose property was not sold; there are many others whose property has been sold and whose debts are not paid....

The result is that many pieces of property in certain communes are not considered reputable." Consequently, he first deprives these of one-tenth of their income from land, and then one-quarter of the produce of their extra cuttings of timber,[4151] and finally, their capital, the whole of their real property,[4152] estimated at 370 millions; in exchange, he gives them 138 millions in the rentes; the loss to them as well as the gain to him, is thus 232 millions, while the sale of communal properties at auction, begun in 1813, continues under the Restoration in 1814, 1815, and even in 1816.

A human community treated in this way for one quarter of a century, ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere material object; as far as this is concerned, its members have come to believe, that it is and must be so and cannot be otherwise.
Above the commune, nearly dead, is the department, completely dead; here local patriotism is stamped out at the beginning by the destruction of the provinces.

Among so many political crimes and other outrages committed by the Revolution against France, this is one of the worst.
The Constituent Assembly has dismantled long-established associations, the accumulated work of ten centuries, historic and powerful names, each of which aroused enthusiasm in thousands of breasts and cemented together thousands of wills, centers of spontaneous co-operation, firesides warm with generous feeling, zeal, and devotion, a practical school of high political education, an admirable theater for available talent, noble careers open to legitimate ambition, in short, the small patrimony whose instinctive cult forms the first step out of egoism and a march onward toward thoughtful devotion to the large patrimony.
Cut apart by geometrical shears, and designated by an entirely new geographical term, small sections of the province became so many factitious agglomerations of juxtaposed inhabitants, human assemblages without any soul; and, for twenty years, the legislator fails to communicate to them that semblance of spirit, the judicial quality of which it disposes; it is only after 1811 that the departments arrive at civil proprietorship and personality: this dignity, besides, the State confers only to disburden itself and to burden them, to impose expenses on them which hardly concern them but which do concern it, to compel them in its place to support the costly maintenance of its prisons, police quarters, courts of justice, and prefectorial mansions; even at this late date, they are not yet, in the eyes of jurisconsults or before the Council of State, incontestable proprietors and complete personalities;[4153] they are not to be fully qualified in this sense until the law of 1838.
Local society, accordingly, proves abortive over the whole 27,000 square leagues of territory; it is simply a legal figment, an artificial grouping together of neighbors who do not find themselves bound and incorporated together by neighborhood; in order that their society might become viable and stimulating would require both commune and department to have in mind and at heart the following idea, which they no longer entertained: "We are all aboard the same ship, it is ours and we are its crew.

We are here to manage it ourselves, with our own hands, each according to his rank and position, each taking his part, little or big, in doing his own work." ***** [Footnote 4101: My understanding, today in 1999, that all people other animals by nature are 'built' as egoists, that is to look out for themselves, to preserve their life, protect their property and family.
As far as the social (or gregarious) instincts are concerned then there are several which manifest themselves in the correct and timely order during our entire existence.