- Even an absolute chief;
sent from a distance and from high place, the most energetic and
expert possible, supported by the best-disciplined and most obedient
troops, would scarcely succeed in such an undertaking; and there is
instead only a municipality which has neither the authority, the
means, the experience, the capacity, nor the will.
In the country, says an orator in the tribune,[21] "the municipal
officers, in twenty thousand out of forty thousand municipalities,
do not know how to read or write." The cur?, in effect, is excluded
from such offices by law, and, save in La Vend?e and the noble is
excluded by public opinion. Besides, in many of the provinces,
nothing but patois is spoken.[22] French, especially the philosophic
and abstract phraseology of the new laws and proclamations, remains
gibberish to their inhabitants. They cannot possibly understand and
apply the complicated decrees and fine-spun instructions which reach
them from Paris. They hurry off to the towns, get the duties of the
office imposed on them explained and commented on in detail, try to
comprehend, imagine they do, and then, the following week, come back
again without having understood anything, either the mode of keeping
state registers, the distinction between feudal rights which are
abolished and those retained, the regulations they should enforce in
cases of election, the limits which the law imposes as to their
powers and subordination.
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