ry, England has been the mother of
parliaments and has exercised a dominant influence
upon the evolution of national governments, France
has had an equally important role in moulding
systems of local administration among the nations."
Munro, Government of European Cities, 7.]

[Footnote 511: The texts of these acts are in
Helie, Constitutions, 1019-1050.]

At the establishment, in 1848, of the Second Republic, the essentials
of the administrative system then prevailing were retained. It was
enacted merely that the various councils should be elected on a basis
of manhood suffrage, and that in communes of fewer than six thousand
inhabitants the council should be permitted to elect the mayor and the
deputies, while in the larger ones appointment should be made as
heretofore by the central authorities. With the conversion, in
1851-52, of the Second Republic into the Second Empire, this
decentralizing tendency suffered a distinct check. Throughout the
reign of Napoleon III. the communal council continued to be elected,
at least nominally, upon the principle of manhood suffrage; but so
thoroughgoing was the prefectorial supervision that there remained to
the councils very little of initiative or independence of action. Even
the privilege which the smaller communes possessed of choosing their
own mayors was speedily lost, while by a decree of March 25, 1852, the
powers of the prefect in communal affairs were substantially (p. 345)
extended. Many matters pertaining to departmental and communal
interests which this official had been accustomed to refer to the
authorities at Paris he was now authorized to dispose of at his own
discretion. Throughout the Second Empire the prefect, more truly than
ever before, was the pivot of the administrative system. Despite the
survival of elective councils in the departments, the arrondissements,
and the communes, local autonomy all but disappeared.

*379. Changes Under the Third Republic.*--Upon the establishment of the
Third Republic the Napoleonic system was discontinued in only some of
its more arbitrary aspects. The National Assembly of 1871 revived
tentatively the scheme laid down in the constitution of 1848, save
that once again the councils of smaller communes were authorized to
elect the mayors and deputies. Even at such a time of unsettlement,