nts.[389] Neither Stein nor Hardenberg touched the (p. 266)
constitution of the country communes, but the extension, during the
Napoleonic occupation, of the French communal system into all the
Prussian territories west of the Elbe prepared the way for the
essentially uniform system which was established by the Westphalian
and Rhineland Edicts of 1841 and 1845. Edicts of 1807 and 1811
abolished the aristocratic basis of the ancient circles (Kreise), and
after 1815 the circle as a unit of local government next above the
commune was extended to all the conquered or reconquered territories.
The revival of the old provincial organization was begun also in 1815,
when the kingdom was divided into ten provinces; and in the same year
there were established twenty-six government districts (Regierungsbezirke),
two or three within each province, each under the control of one of
the government boards (Regierungen) whose creation had been begun in
1808.[390]

[Footnote 389: The text of the law of 1853 is
printed in the appendix of A. W. Jebens, Die
Staedtverordneten (Berlin, 1905).]

[Footnote 390: E. Meier, Die Reform der
Verwaltungsorganisation unter Stein und Hardenberg
(Leipzig, 1881).]

*285. The Reforms of Bismarck.*--Throughout the middle portion of the
nineteenth century the administrative system, modified but slightly by
legislative enactment, continued to present a curious combination of
elements which were popular and elements which were narrowly
bureaucratic and, in some instances, essentially feudal. Beginning in
1872, Bismarck addressed himself to the task of co-ordinating,
strengthening, and to a certain extent liberalizing, the local
institutions of the kingdom. The ends at which he aimed principally
were the abolition of conditions by which it was made possible for the
whole machinery of local government to be captured from time to time
by a single social class for its own benefit, and the establishment of
a system under which all classes of the population might be admitted
to participation in the management of purely local affairs. In the
course of the reform which was carried through numerous features of
English local institutions were copied with some closeness. In a
number of scholarly volumes appearing between 1863 and 1872 the genius
of these institutions had been convincingly expounded b