Note (Back) — Chapter XVIII

375. Local Government Under the Old Régime.—Prior to the Revolution the French administrative system was centralized and bureaucratic, but heterogeneous and notoriously ineffective. The provinces had ceased almost completely to be political units. In but few of them did the ancient assembly of the estates survive, and nowhere did it possess more than merely formal administrative powers. The "governments" of later times, corresponding roughly to the provinces, had fallen likewise into desuetude and the governors had become inactive pensioners. Of political units possessing some vitality there were but two—the généralité and the commune. The généralité was the jurisdiction of a royal officer known as an intendant, to whom was assigned the conduct of every kind of administrative business. The number of généralités in the kingdom varied from thirty to forty. The commune was an irreducible local unit whose history was unbroken from the era of Roman dominion in Gaul. Its constitution in the eighteenth century was in appearance democratic. To the communal assembly belonged all persons who were liable to the taille, and this body elected communal officers, cared for communal property, and regulated local affairs. In point of fact, however, the measure of real independence which the assembly enjoyed was meager. The intendant dictated or controlled virtually its every act. Of true local government it may be said that in pre-revolutionary France there was little or none.[505]