Each federation, after exacting the same gathering or the
same roll-call, sends delegates by hundreds of thousands to the
principal towns of the districts and departments, and tens of
thousands to Paris. - The powers thus instituted at the cost of so
great an effort, require an equal effort to make them work; one
branch alone of the administration[28] keeps 2,988 officials busy in
the departments, 6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes -
in all, nearly one million two hundred thousand administrators,
whose places, as we have seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a
political machine require so prodigious an expenditure of force to
set it up and keep it in motion. In the United States, where it is
now (around 1875) deranged by its own action, it has been estimated
that, to meet the intentions of the law and keep each wheel in its
proper place, it would be necessary for each citizen to give one
whole day in each week, or on-sixth of his time, to public business.
In France, under the newly adopted system, where disorder is
universal, where the duty of National Guard is added to and
complicates that of elector and administrator, I estimate that two
days would be necessary.
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