individual considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation,
when public authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a
crime to have been clothed with it, what can be expected of our
efforts to restore order? "[6]

All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand
groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small
market villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and
improvised National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses. --
But these local chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are
timid. Chosen by acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the
midst of riots they feel themselves in danger. Hence, they
generally obey the crowd.

"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the
municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest
excesses rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or
later, they may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . .
. Municipal bodies have no longer the power to resist anything."

Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic, who is a
farmer, makes it his first aim to make no enemies, and would resign
his place if it were to bring him any "unpleasantness" with it. His
rule in the towns, and especially in large cities, is almost as lax
and more precarious, because explosive material is accumulated here
to a much larger extent, and the municipal officers, in their arm-
chairs at the town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any
time. To-morrow, perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the
suburbs, or some incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will
furnish the spark. - No other defense against the populace is at