In many respects their programme of municipal reforms marked a great improvement on the type of town-government prevalent during the Empire.

That was, practically, under the control of the imperial _prefets_.

The Communists now asserted the right of each town to complete self-government, with the control of its officials, magistrates, National Guards, and police, as well as of taxation, education, and many other spheres of activity.

The more ambitious minds looked forward to a time when France would form a federation of self-governing Communes, whose delegates, deciding matters of national concern, would reduce the executive power to complete subservience.

At bottom this Communal Federalism was the ideal of Rousseau and of his ideal Cantonal State.
By such means, they hoped, the brain of France would control the body, the rural population inevitably taking the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water, both in a political and material sense.
Undoubtedly the Paris Commune made some intelligent changes which pointed the way to reforms of lasting benefit; but it is very questionable whether its aims could have achieved permanence in a land so very largely agricultural as France then was.