ded into an executive directory of nine and
a deliberative council of twenty-seven. In the district was
established a similar, but smaller, elective directory and council,
and in the commune provision was made for the election, under a
broadly democratic franchise, of a mayor and a council. The canton was
not employed for administrative purposes.[506]

[Footnote 506: For the text of the Decret sur les
Municipalites of December 14, 1789, see Helie;
Constitutions, 59-72. An English version is in
Anderson, Constitutions, 24-33.]

*377. The Revival of Centralization, 1795-1800.*--Experience proved,
that in the direction both of democracy and of decentralization the
reformers had gone too far. With the re-establishment of order
following the close of the Revolution proper, in 1795, there was
revived the rule of official experts, together with the maintenance
over the local administrative organs of a highly centralized
supervision. The Constitution of the Year III. (1795), while
perpetuating the elective principle in respect to local officers,
replaced the commune by the canton as the basal administrative unit
and made provision in a variety of ways for the effective control of
local affairs by the national Directory.[507] Under the Napoleonic
regime, established in 1799-1800, the centralizing process was carried
yet further. The canton was reduced to the status of a judicial
district and the commune was restored as the basal administrative
unit;[508] but it was stipulated that the mayor, the _adjoints_, or
deputies, and the council of the commune should be no longer elective,
but should be appointed by the central government, directly or by its
departmental agents. By law of February 17, 1800, there was
established in each department a prefect, appointed by the First
Consul, responsible only to him, and endowed with functions scarcely
less comprehensive than, in the days of the Old Regime, had been those
exercised by the _intendant_. The general council of the department
was perpetuated, but its sixteen to twenty-four members were
henceforth to be named for a term of three years by the First Consul.
Each department, furthermore, was divided for administrative purposes
into _arrondissements_, within each, of which were established a
sub-prefect and a council of eleven members, likewise appointive. The
arrondissement represented substantially a reviv