few of the larger communes
are so populous as to be divided into a number of cantons.

*383. The Commune.*--The most fundamental of the administrative
divisions of France, and the only one whose origins antedate the
Revolution, is the commune. The commune is at the same time a
territorial division and a corporate personality. "On the one hand,"
to employ the language of a recent writer, "it is a tract of territory
the precise limits of which were defined by the law of December 22,
1789, or by some subsequent law or decree; for by the law of 1789 all
local units which had a separate identity during the old regime were
authoritatively recognized as communes, and since that enactment there
have been a number of suppressions, divisions, consolidations, and
creations of communal units. On the other hand, the commune is an
agglomeration of citizens united by life in a common locality and
having a common interest in the communal property. A commune ranks as
a legal person: it may sue and be sued, may contract, acquire, or
convey property,--it may, in general, exercise all of the ordinary
rights of a corporation."[516]

[Footnote 516: Munro, Government of European
Cities, 15.]

Of communes there are, in all, under the territorial land survey of
1909, 36,229. In both size and population they vary enormously. Some
comprise but diminutive hamlets of two or three score people; others
comprise cities like Bordeaux, Lyons, and Marseilles, each with a
population in excess of a quarter of a million. At the last census
27,000 communes had a population of less than one thousand; 17,000, of
less than five hundred; 9,000, of less than three hundred; 137, of
less than fifty. On the other hand, 250 contained each a population of
more than ten thousand, and fourteen of more than one hundred
thousand. In area they vary all the way from a few acres to the
254,540 acres of the commune of Arles.[517]

[Footnote 517: A. Porche, La question des grandes
et des petits communes (Paris, 1900).]

*384. The Communal Council.*--Except Paris and Lyons, all communes are
organized and governed in the same manner. In each is a council, (p. 349)
whose members are elected by manhood suffrage and, normally, on the
principle of the _scrutin de liste_, for a term of four years. The
body is renewed integrally, on the first Sunday in May in every fourth
year. In communes whose popula