stitutions:

* a Church without believers,

* schools without pupils,

* hospitals without incomes,

* a geometrical hierarchy of improvised powers in the commune, district,
and department,

all badly organized, badly adjusted, out of gear at the start,
overwhelmed with political functions, as incapable of performing
their proper duties as their supplementary duties, and, from the very
beginning, either powerless or mischievous.[2308] Changes repeatedly
marred by arbitrariness from above or from below, set aside or perverted
now by the mob and again by the government, inert in the country,
oppressive in the towns, we have seen the state into which they had
fallen at the end of the Directory; how, instead of a refuge for
liberty, they had become haunts of tyranny or sinks of egoism; why, in
1800, they were as much decried as their predecessors in 1788, why their
two successive props, the old one and the most recent, historic custom
and popular election, were now discredited and no longer resorted
to.--After the disastrous experience of the monarchy and the still worse
experience of the republic, another prop had to be sought for; but only
one remained, that of the central power, the only one visible and
which seemed substantial; in default of others they had recourse to
this.[2309] In any event, no protestation, even secret and moral, any
longer prevented the State from attaching other corporate bodies to
itself, in order to use them for its own purposes as instruments or
appendages.

II. Doctrines of Government.

The theory.--Agreement of speculative ideas with practical
necessities.--Public rights under the Ancient Regime.--The
King's three original rights.--Labors of the jurists in
extending royal prerogatives.--Historical impediments.--The
primitive or ulterior limits of royal power.--The
philosophic and revolutionary principle of popular
sovereignty.--Unlimited extension of State power.
--Application to spontaneous bodies.--Convergence of ancient
and new doctrines.--Corporations considered as creations of
the public power.--Centralization through the universal
intervention of the State.

The theory here agreed with the need, and not alone the recent theory,
but again the ancient theory. Long before 1789, public right had
elevated the prerogative of centralized power into a dogma and
exaggerated it beyond measure.

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