Its influence is feeble and of little effect; too many brakes are attached to it; its force diminishes through the complexity of its numerous wheels; it fails in giving action; it cannot but little more than impede or moderate other impulses, those of the external motor, sometimes as it should, and sometimes the contrary.
Most frequently, even nowadays (1889), it is of no efficiency whatever.
Three-quarters of the municipal councils, for three-fourths of their business, hold sessions only to give signatures.

Their pretended deliberations are simply a parade formality; the incentive and direction continue to come from without, and from above; under the third Republic, as under the Restoration and the first Empire, it is always the central State which governs the local society; amid all the wrangling and disputes, in spite of passing conflicts it is, and remains, the initiator, mover, leader, controller, accountant, and executor of every undertaking, the preponderating power in the department as well as in the commune, and with what deplorable results we all know .-- There is still another and more serious result.

Nowadays, its interference is an advantage, for should it renounce its preponderance this would pass over to the other power which, since this has become vested in a numerical majority, is mere blind and brutal force; abandoned to itself and without any counter-weight, its ascendancy would be disastrous, we would see reappearing along with the blunders of 1789, the outrages, usurpations, and distress of 1790, 1791 and 1792.[4205]--In any event, there is this advantage in despotic centralization, that it still preserves us from democratic autonomy.

In the present state of institutions and minds, the former system, objectionable as it may be, is our last retreat against the greater evil of the latter.
II.

Universal suffrage.
Application of universal suffrage to local society .-- Two assessments for the expenses of local society .-- The fixed amount of one should in equity be equal to the average sum of the other .-- Practically, the sum of one is kept too low.- -How the new regime provides for local expenditure .-- The "additional centimes."-- How the small taxpayer is relieved in town and country .-- His quota in local expenditure reduced to the minimum .-- His quota of local benefits remains intact .-- Hence the large or average taxpayer bears, beside his own burden, that of the relieved small taxpayer .-- Number of those relieved .-- The extra burden of the large and average taxpayer is alms-giving .-- The relief of the small taxpayer is a levy of alms.
In effect, direct universal suffrage, counted by heads, is in local society a discordant element, a monstrous system, to which it is adverse.