touching this word
_government_ with which it is impossible to dispense. For a long time
past the word has entailed ideas of national unity, general
organization, and regular and efficient power. There has been no lack of
revolutions which have changed dynasties and the principles and forms of
the supreme power in the State; but they have always left existing,
under different names, the practical machinery whereby the supreme power
makes itself felt and exercises its various functions over the whole
country. Open the _Almanac_, whether it be called the Imperial, the
Royal, or the National, and you will find there always the working
system of the government of France; all the powers and their agents,
from the lowest to the highest, are there indicated and classed
according to their prerogatives and relations. Nor have we there a mere
empty nomenclature, a phantom of theory; things go on actually as they
are described--the book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to
construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers;
there might be set down in it dukes, counts, vicars, centeniers, and
sheriffs (_scabini_), and they might be distributed, in regular
gradation, over the whole territory; but it would be one huge lie, for
most frequently, in the majority of places, these magistracies were
utterly powerless and themselves in complete disorder. The efforts of
Charlemagne, either to establish them on a firm footing or to make them
act with regularity, were continual but unavailing. In spite of the
fixity of his purpose and the energy of his action the disorder around
him was measureless and insurmountable. He might check it for a moment
at one point; but the evil existed wherever his terrible will did not
reach, and wherever it did the evil broke out again as soon as it had
been withdrawn. How could it be otherwise? Charlemagne had not to
grapple with one single nation or with one single system of
institutions; he had to deal with different nations, without cohesion,
and foreign one to another. The authority belonged, at one and the same
time, to assemblies of free men, to landholders over the dwellers on
their domains, and to the king over the leudes and their following.
These three powers appeared and acted side by side in every locality as
well as in the totality of the State. Their relations and their
prerogatives were not governed by any generally recognized principle,
and none of the three was invest