Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/415

 laws of the mother-country. The departments also possess a separate general council, elected in the same way as those of the French circumscriptions, and like them occupied mostly with local affairs, such as the roads and forests, public buildings, education and communal rates, Each delegates six of its members, eighteen altogether, to the Superior Council of Algeria, which also comprises the three prefects, the three generals in command of the divisions, and the twelve members of the special council appointed to assist the governor-general. This assembly, one half of whose members are thus nominated by the Government, and the other half by the citizens indirectly, meets once a year for a session of about twenty days, to settle the current budget and the incidence of taxation. The yearly expenditure is estimated at about £1,600,000, besides over £2,000,000

required for the maintenance of the army. The yearly income about balances the civil expenditure, representing nearly half of the whole outlay, including the military budget.

In Algeria the chief cause of disunion and the greatest obstacle to the fusion of all sections of the population in one nationality is religion. Before the conquest the natives had no official religious hierarchy; but after the occupation the union of Church and State was one of the very first measures introduced by the French. Immediately after the capture of Algiers the prayers read in the mosques for the head of the State were required to be modified by the imams, who henceforth pray for the "auspicious Government of France." Formerly the civil power never