Note (Back) — Chapter XVIII

Despite the restrictions which are placed upon it, the commune remains the true focus of local life in France.[518] Its activities, on a sufficiently petty scale though they not infrequently are, run the gamut of finance, commerce, industry, education, religion, and politics. So strong is the communal spirit that public sentiment will acquiesce but rarely in the suppression of a commune, or even in the union of two or more diminutive ones; and, in truth, the code of 1884 recognized the fixity of communal identity by permitting changes of communal boundaries to be undertaken by the departmental authorities only after there shall have been held an enquête and local susceptibilities shall have been duly consulted. Save by special decree of the President of the Republic, not even the name of a commune may be altered.