第1051章

The competency of local assemblies is extended and comprises not only new cases but, again, of a new species, while the number of their executive decisions has increased five-fold. The municipal council, instead of holding one session a year, holds four, and of longer duration. The council general, instead of one session a year, holds two, and maintains itself in the interim by its delegation which meets every month. With these increased authorities and generally present, the prefect has to reckon, and what is still more serious, he must reckon with local opinion; he can no longer rule with closed doors;the proceedings of the municipal council, the smallest one, are duly posted; in the towns, they are published and commented on by the newspapers of the locality; the general council furnishes reports of its deliberations. - Thus, behind elected powers, and weighing with these on the same side of the scales, here is a new power, opinion, as this grows in a country leveled by equalized centralization, in heaving or stagnant crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions - a hasty, improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing, based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which the listeners fail to catch the sense, but the sound which, by din of frequent repetition, becomes for them a recognized signal, the blast of a horn or a shrieking whistle which assembles the herd and arrests or drives it on. No opposition can make head against this herd as it rushes along in too compact and too heavy masses. - The prefect, on the contrary, is obliged to cajole it, yield to it, and satisfy it; for under the system of universal suffrage, this same herd, besides local representatives, elects the central powers, the deputies, the government; and when the government sends a prefect from Paris into the provinces, it is after the fashion of a large commercial establishment, with a view to keep and increase the number of its customers, to stay there, maintain its credit, and act permanently as its traveling-clerk, or, in other terms, as its electoral agent, and, still more precisely, as the campaign manager of coming elections for the dominant party and for the ministers in office who have commissioned and appointed him, and who, from top to bottom, constantly stimulate him to hold on to the voters already secured and to gain fresh ones. - Undoubtedly, the interests of the state, department, and commune must be seriously considered, but, first and above all, he is the recruiting officer for voters. By virtue of this position and on this he treats with the council general and the standing committee, with the municipal councilors and mayors, with influential electors, but especially with the small active committee which, in each commune, supports the prevailing policy and offers its zeal to the government.