But Napoleon is an intelligent creditor; he knows that this debt is "most frightful and most detestable for families," that his debtors are real, living men, and therefore different in kind, that the head of the state should keep these differences in mind, that is to say, their condition, their education, their sensibility and their vocation; that, not only in their private interest, but again in the interest of the public, not merely through prudence, but also through equity, all should not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to the same manual labour, to the same indefinite servitude of soul and body. Napoleon also exempts the conscript who has a brother in the active army, the only son of a widow, the eldest of three orphans, the son of a father seventy-one years old dependent on his labour, all of whom are family supports. He joins with these all young men who enlist in one of his civil militias, in his ecclesiastical militia, or in his university militia, pupils of the École Normale, seminarians for the priesthood, on condition that they shall engage to do service in their vocation, and do it effectively, some for ten years, others for life, subject to a discipline more rigid, or nearly as rigid, as military discipline. _IV.--The Prefect Absolute_ Yet another institution which Napoleon gave to the Modern Régime in France is the Prefect of a Department. Before 1870, when this prefect appointed the mayors, and when the council general held its session only fifteen days in the year, this Prefect was almost omnipotent; still, at the present day, his powers are immense, and his power remains preponderant. He has the right to suspend the municipal council and the mayor, and to propose their dismissal to the head of the state. Without resorting to this extremity, he holds them with a strong hand, and always uplifted over the commune, for he can veto the acts of the municipal police and of the road committee, annul the regulations of the mayor, and, through a skilful use of his prerogative, impose his own. He holds in hand, removes, appoints or helps appoint, not alone the clerks in his office, but likewise every kind and degree of clerk who, outside his office, serves the commune or department, from the archivist down to and comprising the lowest employees, such as forest-guards of the department, policemen posted at the corner of a street, and stone-breakers on the public highway. Such, in brief, is the system of local and general society in France from the Napoleonic time down to the date 1889, when these lines are written. After the philosophic demolitions of the revolution, and the practical constructions of the consulate, national or general government is a vast despotic centralised machine, and local government could no longer be a small patrimony.