Sous-préfet

“ Lastly, the préfet. What shall I say of him, save that he was a préfet in the South, and wants to be one again? His greatest endeavors in any cause will be to pledge its success in Burgundy, or, if you wish, drink the downfall of its enemy; and as to his enthusiasm, he cares a devilish deal more for a change of weather than a change of dynasty, particularly in the truffle season, or when the vines are ripening. Such are the truly dangerous associates you have kept company with. ”

“ The sous-préfets, having very limited powers of deciding questions, serve above all as intermediaries between the prefect and the persons under his administration. This function was most useful in the year VIII., when communications were difficult, even within a department, but nowadays it only leads to complications. As a matter of fact their chief service to the administration lies in keeping up good relations with the maires of the communes in their arrondissement, and thus acquiring a certain amount of influence over them. ”

“ The youngest, appointed sous-prefet, ere long became a legal official and director of a municipal board of the city of Paris, where he was safe from changes in Legislature. These bounties, bestowed without parade, and as secret as the favor enjoyed by the Count, fell unperceived. Though the father and his three sons each had sinecures enough to enjoy an income in salaries almost equal to that of a chief of department, their political good fortune excited no envy. ”

“ The prefect, however, is no more than an intend ant in miniature, being only at the head of a department, whereas the intend ant was over a généralité, which was a much larger district. In the same way the sous-préfets correspond to the subdélégués of the intend ants, with the difference that they are actual officials subordinate to the prefects, while the subdélégués were merely the representatives with whom the intend ants provided themselves, and to whom they gave powers. ”

“ Retired magistrates make far too young Prefets. Partisans of the right, riding the high horse on points of law, they are not light-handed in arbitary action such as critical circumstances often require; cases in which the Prefet should be as prompt as a fireman called to a conflagration. So, face to face with the Vice-President of the Council of State, the Prefet confessed to more faults than the police really has, deplored its abuses, and presently was able to recollect the visit paid to him by the Baron de Nucingen and his inquiries as to Peyrade. ”

“ The prefets of the departments, and sous-prefets of districts, are nominated by the king, subject to approval by the chamber of deputies. The communal chiefs and councils are elected by the people over whom they are to preside. ”

“ Because each man's post and duties are not sufficiently definite. Nothing is distinctly defined; and no person, even of those highest in office, is placed in the department for which he is best fitted. Most usually, the préfet himself, on being elected to fill that important situation, is wholly ignorant of the duties of the police, and yet he ascends at once to the highest rank in it, there to pass through his apprenticeship. ”

“ Then you must beg the Countess to secure her husband’s support, for he is a Minister of State, to carry you to the Prefecture of Police.
“When you have got there, face to face with the Prefet, make your complaint, but as a man of political consequence, who will sooner or later be one of the motor powers of the huge machine of government. You will speak of the police as a statesman should, admiring everything, the Prefet included. The very best machines make oil-stains or splutter. Do not be angry till the right moment. ”

“ Préfets and sous-préfets changed, wonderful prospects of little work and high pay held out to doubtful electors, and the same bright illusive promises made to the masses, which all parties make in all elections and which the people believe each time. ”

“ The Republic made the Maires elective; the Republic placed education in the hands of the local authorities. Under its influence the communes, the cantons, and the departments were becoming real administrative bodies. They are now geographical divisions. The Préfet appoints the Maires; the Préfet appoints in every canton a Commissaire de Police, seldom a respectable man, as the office is not honourable; the Gardes champêtres, 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 ”

“ Next, the [52] people does not confine itself to electing its administrators, it watches and spies on them, keeps them in leading strings, and just as the popular representatives dictate to ministers the details of government, so also they dictate to administrators the details of administration.
A préfet, a procureur-général, an engineer-in-chief under democratic rule is a much harassed man. He has to play his own hand against his ministerial chief and the deputies of his district. ”

“ In each district also there is a head-man, but his post is always elective and generally non-salaried. He occupies towards a district assembly the same position that the sub-prefecture head-man holds towards a sub-prefectural assembly. Over the governors stands the minister for home affairs, who discharges general duties of superintendence and sanction, has competence to delete any item of a local budget, and may, with the emperor’s consent, order the dissolution of a local assembly, provided that steps are taken to elect and convene another within three months. ”

“ So it came about that the old ajun class became a sort of hereditary advisorship to the local prefects in each district.
Each prefecture is a miniature of the central government. The prefect becomes, as it were, the king of his little state, and the ajuns are his ministers. So closely is the resemblance carried out that each prefect has his six ministers; namely, of Interior, Finance, Ceremonies, War, Law and Industries. It is through these men that all the business is performed. The emperor can change his cabinet at will, and has thousands from whom to choose, but the prefect has no choice. ”

“ The Deputy is above the Assistant, the Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empress be not responsible to her Maker—if there is no Maker for her to be responsible to—the entire system of Our administration must be wrong. Which is manifestly impossible. ”

“ Always in the general council, in the municipal council, and in the mayoralty, they are tempted to usurp it; the prefect has as much as he can do to keep them within the local bounds, to keep them from meddling with state matters and the general policy; he is often obliged to accept their lack of consideration, to be patient with them, to talk to them mildly; for they talk and want the administration to reckon with them as a clerk with his master ”

“ At the head of each of the departments is a prefect, appointed and removed nominally by the President of the Republic, but in reality by the Minister of the Interior. The prefect, who is much the most important of all local officials, is at the same time an agent of the general government and the executive head of the department in the administration of local affairs. As agent of the general government he acts, in some instances, upon detailed instructions; in others, he enjoys a wide range of discretion. His powers extend to virtually all public matters affecting the department. ”

“ The supreme administration in each department is vested in a prefect appointed by and responsible solely to the president. As the prefect has the appointment of subordinate department officials, including the alcaldes, the authority of the national executive reaches every hamlet in the republic, and may easily become autocratic. There are no legislative assemblies in the departments, and their government rests with the national executive and congress. ”

“ It is to be hoped that, in these days, when we all take an interest in our Empire, everybody knows that the Executive Council is the outward, visible, and recognised form of that impalpable, unrecognised, all-powerful institution, the Cabinet, consisting in fact, though not in theory, of the same persons, save that the Governor is present when the meeting is of the Council, and absent when it is of the Cabinet—a difference of less moment than it sounds, seeing that, except in extreme cases, the Governor has little to do but listen to what is going to be done. ”

“ They need the prefect's signature almost every day to stamp some official act; they require government grants for the maintenance of schools, roads and other purposes in their communes; they dare not offend the prefects, under penalty of having men appointed as rural constables, mayors' secretaries and letter-carriers who shall be so many enemies of the mayors and shall thwart them at every step. The prefect thus exercises enormous influence in every commune, both over the mayor and the lower class of appointees. ”

“ Under the pressure, however, of custom and of parliamentary control, they have been reduced to essentially a common style of organization and a common mode of administrative procedure. In virtually every instance the department is presided over by a single responsible minister, assisted as a rule by one or more parliamentary under-secretaries and, more remotely, by a greater or lesser body of non-political officials who carry on the actual work of the department and whose tenure is not affected by the political fortunes of their chiefs. ”

“ So, in the case of appointing officers, if it can be truly said that these heads of departments are the servants of the President alone, we shall make the executive department a dangerous one.
I do not admit that any man has an estate in his office. I conceive all officers to be appointed during pleasure, except where the Constitution stipulates for a different tenure—unless, indeed, the law should create the office, or officer, for a term of years. After observing this, I must contend that the power of removal is incidental to the power of appointment. ”

“ The emperor is assisted in the discharge of his executive duties by a prime minister and nine department ministers; besides these he has the advice of a privy council, composed of elder statesmen, of which Marquis Ito is now the president.
Each state has what corresponds to our legislature, and each city has a council; both of these bodies are elective and to the city council is entrusted the selection of the mayor.
They have a judiciary, federal and local, appointed for life, but no jury system. ”

“ In several of the States where there has been a traditional fear of the executive power, the Governor's prerogatives are very narrow—he has no veto power and but little power of appointment. To aid the Governor in the administration there are in every State a number of executive departments, at the head of which are officers usually chosen at the same time, in the same manner, and for the same term as himself. ”

“ The prefectural assemblies, which were designed to pave the way for organised self-government through representative bodies on the western model, continued to meet in the provinces and to constitute a very useful training for the people in the principles of local administration and the formation of public opinion. The functions of these provincial parliaments were definitely laid down in a special ordinance in the year 1888, a few months before the assembly of the first Diet, so that there should be no conflict in regard to the respective powers of these institutions. ”

“ Moreover, we wish to make it clear that we are not necessarily standing for a division of power. There may be separately constituted departments of government, one primarily for administration, the other primarily for legislation, yet a concentration of authority in one of them, as in the case under the cabinet system of Europe. The gentlemen of the opposition are advocating not only a concentration of power, but a fusion of functions as well. Their commission is at once the executive cabinet and the legislative body. ”

“ Secondly, the Executive Department, which is responsible for the administration of public business, must, in making appointments or nominations to the Senate, remain independent of the dictation of Congressmen, many if not most of whom want to use the offices for the promotion of their own political ends. Thirdly, the qualifications of candidates for office must, whenever possible, be ascertained according to well regulated public methods, either by officers of the Departments themselves, or through competent men appointed for that purpose. ”

“ Government departments and officials would be multiplied in order to cope with the necessary increase of routine work, the executive and judicial functions would be carefully separated, and the individual civil servant would become a mere member or mouthpiece of a single department, instead of uniting in his own person—as he does at present—half a dozen different executive functions and wide discretionary powers with regard to general administration. ”

“ The syndics (or mayors) are now elected by a secret ballot of the communal council, though they are still government officials. In the provincial administrations the functions of the prefects have been curtailed. Each province has a prefect, responsible to and appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, while each of the regions (called variously circondarii and distretti) has its sub-prefect. ”