a basis of manhood suffrage. This council comprises one
member chosen in each canton for a period of six years, half of the
number retiring every three years. The actual powers of the body are
not large. Aside from the apportioning of the direct taxes among the
arrondissements, they are restricted pretty generally to the
administration of highways, canals, schools, asylums, and similar
interests. Questions of a political nature or of a national (p. 347)
bearing are rigorously excluded from consideration. The council has
but two ordinary sessions a year--one extending through not more than
fifteen days, the other not more than a month. The longer begins
regularly in August and is devoted to the consideration of the budget.
During the intervals between sessions the council is represented by a
_commission departementale_, or permanent delegation, of from four to
seven members. Neither the council nor the delegation possesses any
considerable measure of control over the prefect. The council's acts
may be vetoed by the President of the Republic, and, except when the
national parliament is in session, the body may be dissolved by the
same power. The department is an essentially artificial political
unit. During the century and a quarter of its existence it has not
become--indeed has been prevented deliberately from becoming--a sphere
of forceful, independent governmental activity.[514]

[Footnote 514: An administrative reform which
appears not infrequently in current political
discussion in France is the grouping of the
departments into "regions" possessing a certain
community of character and interest. Each of a
score or more of regions might conceivably be made
to have an assembly of its own, and within each of
them one of the departmental prefects might be
given a certain superiority over his colleagues.
The principal purpose would be to offset somewhat
the nation's present excess of administrative
centralization. On this proposal see C. Beauquier,
Un projet de reforme administrative; l'organisation
regionale en France, in _Revue Politique et
Parlementaire_, Nov. 10, 1909. Cf. A. Brette, La
reforme des departements a