Under its influence the communes, the cantons, and the departments were becoming real administrative bodies.  They are now geographical divisions.  The Prefet appoints the Maires; the Prefet appoints in every canton a Commissaire de Police, seldom a respectable man, as the office is not honourable; the Gardes champetres, who are the local police, are put under his control; the Recteur, who was a sort of local Minister of Education in every department, is suppressed; his powers are transferred to the Prefet; the Prefet appoints, promotes, and dismisses all the masters of the ecoles primaires.  The Prefet can destroy the prosperity of every commune that displeases him.  He can displace the functionaries, close its schools, obstruct its public works, and withhold the money which the Government habitually gives in aid of local improvement.  He can convert it, indeed, into a mere unorganised aggregation of individuals, by dismissing every communal functionary, and placing its concerns in the hands of his own nominees.  There are many hundreds of communes that have been thus treated, and whose masters are now uneducated peasants.  The Prefet can dissolve the Conseil general of his department, and although he cannot actually name their successors, he does so virtually.  No candidate for an elective office can succeed unless he is supported by the Government.  The Courts of law, criminal and civil, are the tools of the executive.  The Government appoints the judges, the Prefet provides the jury, and la Haute Police acts without either.  All power of combination, even of mutual communication, except from mouth to mouth, is gone.  The newspapers are suppressed or intimidated, the printers are the slaves of the Prefet, as they lose their privilege if they offend; the secrecy of the post is habitually and avowedly violated; there are spies in every country town to watch and report conversation; every individual stands defenceless and insulated, in the face of this unscrupulous executive, with its thousands of armed hands and its thousands of watching eyes.  The only opposition that is ventured is the abstaining from voting.  Whatever be the office, and whatever be the man, the candidate of the Prefet comes in; but if he is a man who would have been unanimously rejected in a state of freedom, the bolder electors show their indignation by their absence.

’In such a state of society the traveller can learn little.  Even those who rule it, know little of the feelings of their subjects.  The vast democratic sea on which the Empire floats is influenced by currents, and agitated by ground swells which the Government discovers only by their effects.  It knows nothing of the passions which influence these great apparently slumbering masses.  Indeed, it takes care, by stifling their expression, to prevent their being known.