But, as things go, nearly all the expenses designated on the paper are obligatory; willingly or not, these must be met, and there is no way to pay them outside of the additional centimes; however numerous these are, vote them they must and sanction the centimes inscribed.

They accordingly affix their signatures, not with trust but with mistrust, with resignation, and out of pure necessity.

Abandoned to their natural ignorance, the twenty-seven thousand petty municipal councilors of the country are no more passive, more inert, more constrained than ever; deprived of the light which, formerly, the choice of the prefect or a restricted suffrage could still throw into the darkness around them, there remains to them only one safe tutor or conductor; and this final guide is the official of the bureaus, especially this or that old, permanent chief, or under clerk, who is perfectly familiar with his files of papers.

With about four hundred municipal councils to lead, one may imagine what he will do with them: nothing except to drive them like a flock of sheep into a pen of printed regulations, or urge them on mechanically, in lots, according to his instructions, he himself being as automatic and as much in a rut as they are.
VI.

The larger Communes.
Effects of the law on the urban commune .-- Disproportion between the administrative capacity of its elected representatives and the work imposed on them .-- Lack of a special and permanent manager .-- The municipal council and the mayor .-- The general council and the intermediary committee .-- The prefect .-- His dominant rule .-- His obligatory concessions .-- His principal aim .-- Bargains between the central authority and the local Jacobins .-- Effect on this on local government, on the officials, and in local finances.
Let us now look at the other side of the scale, on the side of the large urban communes, of which there are 223, with above 10,000 inhabitants, 90 of these above 20,000 inhabitants, 9 of the latter above 100,000 inhabitants, and Paris, which has 2,300,000.[4228] We see at the first glance cast upon an average specimen of these human anthills, a town containing from 40,000 to 50,000 souls, how vast and complex the collective undertaking becomes, how many principal and accessory services the communal society must co-ordinate and unite together in order to secure to its members the advantages of public roads and insure their protection against spreading calamities: * Maintenance and repairs of these roads, the straightening, laying-out, paving, and drainage, the constructions and expense for sewers, quays, and rivers, and often for a commercial harbor; * the negotiations and arrangements with departments and with the state for this or that harbor, canal, dike, or insane asylum; the contracts with cab, omnibus, and tramway companies and with telephone and house-lighting companies; the street-lighting, artesian wells and aqueducts; * the city police, supervision and rules for using public highways, and orders and agents for preventing men from injuring each other when collected together in large assemblies in the streets, in the markets, at the theater, in any public place, whether coffee-houses or taverns; * the firemen and machinery for conflagrations; the sanitary measures against contagion, and precautions, long beforehand to insure hygiene during epidemics; * and, as extra burdens and abuses, the establishment, direction and support of primary schools, colleges, public lectures, libraries, theaters, hospitals, and other institutions which should be supported and governed by different associations; at the very least, the appropriations to these establishments and therefore a more or less legitimate and more or less imperative intervention in their internal management.
Such are the great undertakings which form a whole, which bear alike on the present, past, and future budget of the commune, and which, as so many distinct branches of every considerable enterprise, require, for proper execution, to have their continuity and connection always present in the thoughtful and directing mind which has them in charge.[4229] Experience shows that, in the great industrial or financial companies, in the Bank of France, in the Credit Lyonnais, and in the insurance, navigation, and railroad companies, the best way to accomplish this end is a permanent manager or director, always present, engaged or accepted by the administrative board on understood conditions, a special, tried man who, sure of his place for a long period, and with a reputation to maintain, gives his whole time, faculties, and zeal to the work, and who, alone, possessing at every moment a coherent and detailed conception of the entire undertaking, can alone give it the proper stimulus, and bring to bear the most economical and the most perfect practical improvements.