Most of them are mere politicians, charlatans, and intriguers, third-class lawyers and doctors, literary failures, semi-educated stump-speakers, bar-room, club, or clique orators, and vulgar climbers.

Left behind in private careers, in which one is closely watched and accepted for what he is worth, they launch out on a public career because, in this business, popular suffrage at once ignorant, indifferent, is a badly informed, prejudiced and passionate judge and prefers a moralist of easy conscience, instead of demanding unsullied integrity and proven competency.

Nothing more is demanded from candidates but witty speech-making, assertiveness and showing off in public, gross flattery, a display of enthusiasm and promises to place the power about to be conferred on them by the people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and prejudices.
Thus introduced into the municipal council, they constitute its majority and appoint a mayor who is their figurehead or creature, now the bold leader and again the docile instrument of their spite, their favors, and their headlong action, of their blunders and presumption, and of their meddlesome disposition and encroachments .-- In the department, the council general, also elected by universal suffrage, also bears the marks of its origin; its quality, without falling so low, still descends in a certain degree, and through changes which keep on increasing: politicians install themselves there and make use of their place as a stepping-stone to mount higher; it also, with larger powers and prolonged during its vacations by its committee, is tempted to regard itself as the legitimate sovereign of the extensive and scattered community which it represents .-- Thus recruited and composed, enlarged and deteriorated, the local authorities become difficult to manage, and from now on, to carry on the administration, the prefect must come to some understanding with them.
VII.

Local society in 1880.
Present state of local society .-- Considered as an organism, it is stillborn .-- Considered as a mechanism, it gets out of order .-- Two successive and false conceptions of local government .-- In theory, one excludes the other .-- Practically, their union ends in the actual system .-- Powers of the prefect .-- Restrictions on these through subsequent changes .-- Give and take .-- Bargaining .-- Supported by the government and cost to the State.
Before 1870, when he appointed the mayors and when the council general held its sessions only fifteen days in the year, the prefect was almost omnipotent; still, at the present day, (1889), "his powers are immense,"[4232] and his power remains preponderant.

He has the right to suspend the municipal council and the mayor, and to propose their dismissal to the head of the state.