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• Democracy In America,(1840), Volume Iv
• Third Part a ] Influence of Democracy On Mores Properly So Called
• Chapter 1 A: How Mores Become Milder As Conditions Become Equal
• Chapter 2 A: How Democracy Makes the Habitual Relations of the Americans Simpler and Easier B
• Chapter 3 A: Why the Americans Have So Little Susceptibility In Their Country and Show Such Susceptibility In Ours B
• Chapter 4 A: Consequences of the Three Preceding Chapters
• Chapter 5 A: How Democracy Modifies the Relationships of Servant and Master
• Chapter 6 A: How Democratic Institutions and Mores Tend to Raise the Cost and Shorten the Length of Leases
• Chapter 7 A: Influence of Democracy On Salaries
• Chapter 8 A: Influence of Democracy On the Family B
• Chapter 9 A: Education of Young Girls In the United States B
• Chapter 10 A: How the Young Girl Is Found Again In the Features of the Wife
• Chapter 11 A: How Equality of Conditions Contributes to Maintaining Good Morals In America
• Chapter 12 A: How the Americans Understand the Equality of Man and of Woman B
• Chapter 13 A: How Equality Divides the Americans Naturally Into a Multitude of Small Particular Societies B
• Chapter 14 A: Some Reflections On American Manners B
• Chapter 15 A: of the Gravity of Americans and Why It Does Not Prevent Them From Often Doing Thoughtless Things B
• Chapter 16 A: Why the National Vanity of the Americans Is More Anxious and More Quarrelsome Than That of the English B
• Chapter 17 A: How the Appearance of Society In the United States Is At the Very Same Time Agitated and Monotonous B
• Chapter 18 A: of Honor In the United States and In Democratic Societies 1
• Chapter 19 A: Why In the United States You Find So Many Ambitious Men and So Few Great Ambitions B
• Chapter 20 A: of Positions Becoming an Industry Among Certain Democratic Nations
• Chapter 21 A: Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare B
• Chapter 22 A: Why Democratic Peoples Naturally Desire Peace and Democratic Armies Naturally Desire War
• Chapter 23 A: Which Class, In Democratic Armies, Is the Most Warlike and the Most Revolutionary
• Chapter 24 A: What Makes Democratic Armies Weaker Than Other Armies While Beginning a Military Campaign and More Formidable When the War Is Prolonged B
• Chapter 25 A: of Discipline In Democratic Armies
• Chapter 26 A: Some Considerations On War In Democratic Societies
• Fourth Part a ] of the Influence That Democratic Ideas and Sentiments Exercise On Political Society B
• Chapter 1: Equality Naturally Gives Men the Taste For Free Institutions
• Chapter 2 A: That the Ideas of Democratic Peoples In Matters of Government Naturally Favor the Concentration of Powers B
• Chapter 3: That the Sentiments of Democratic Peoples Are In Agreement With Their Ideas For Bringing Them to Concentrate Power a
• Chapter 4 A: of Some Particular and Accidental Causes That End Up Leading a Democratic People to Centralize Power Or That Turn Them Away From Doing So B
• Chapter 5: That Among the European Nations of Today the Sovereign Power Increases Although Sovereigns Are Less Stable a
• Chapter 6: What Type of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear a
• Chapter 7 A: Continuation of the Preceding Chapters
• Chapter 8 A: General View of the Subject B
• Notes
• Appendix 1: Journey to Lake Oneida a
• Appendix 2: A Fortnight In the Wilderness a
• Appendix 3: Sects In America a
• Appendix 4: Political Activity In America a
• Appendix 5: Letter of Alexis De Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels
• Appendix 6: Foreword to the Twelfth Edition
• Ouvrages Utilisés Par Tocqueville [ Works Used By Tocqueville ]
• Bibliographie [ Bibliography ]

chapter 4a

Of Some Particular and Accidental Causes That End up Leading a Democratic People to Centralize Power or That Turn Them Away from Doing Sob

If all democratic peoples are carried instinctively toward centralization of powers, they are led there in an unequal manner. It depends on particular circumstances that can develop or limit the natural effects of the social state. These circumstances are in very great number; I will only speak about a few.

Among men who have lived free for a long time before becoming equal, the instincts that liberty gave combat, up to a certain point, the tendencies suggested by equality; and although among those men the central power increases its privileges, the individuals there never entirely lose their independence.

But when equality happens to develop among a people who have never known or who, for a long time, have no longer known liberty, as is seen on the continent of Europe, and when the old habits of the nation come to combine suddenly and by a sort of natural attraction with the new habits and doctrines that arise from the social state, all powers seem to rush by themselves toward the center; they accumulate there with a surprising rapidity, and the State all at once attains the extreme limits of its strength, while the individuals allow themselves to fall in a moment to the lowest degree of weakness.

The English who came, three centuries ago, to establish a democratic society in the wilderness of the New World were all accustomed in the mother country to take part in public affairs; they knew the jury; they had freedom of speech and freedom of the press, individual liberty, [added: independent courts], the idea of right and the custom of resorting to it. They carried these free institutions and these manly mores to America, and these institutions and mores sustained them against the invasions of the State.

Among the Americans, it is therefore liberty that is old; equality is comparatively new. The opposite happens in Europe where equality, introduced by absolute power and under the eyes of the kings, had already penetrated the habits of the people long before liberty entered their ideas.

I have said that, among democratic peoples, government naturally presented itself to the human mind only under the form of a unique and central power, and that the notion of intermediary powers was not familiar to it. That is particularly applicable to democratic nations that have seen the principle of equality triumph with the aid of a violent revolution. Since the classes that directed local affairs [<served as intermediary between the sovereign and the people>] disappear suddenly in this tempest, and the confused mass that remains still has neither the organization nor the habits that allow it to take in hand the administration of these same affairs, you see nothing except the State itself which can take charge of all the details of government. Centralization becomes in a way a necessary fact.c

Napoleon [{the national Convention}]d must be neither praised nor blamed for having concentrated in his hands alone all administrative powers; for, after the abrupt disappearance of the nobility and of the upper bourgeoisie, these powers came to him by themselves; it would have been as difficult for him to reject them as to take them. [<He must be reproached for the tyrannical use that he often made of his power, rather than for his power.>]e Such a necessity has never been felt by the Americans, who, not having had a revolution and being from the beginning governed by themselves, have never had to charge the State with temporarily serving them as tutor.f

Thus, among a democratic people, centralization develops not only according to the progress of equality, but also according to the manner in which this equality is established.g

[When conditions have become equal among a nation only following a long and difficult social effort, the sentiments that led to the democratic revolution and those given birth by it subsist for a long time after the revolution. The memory of privileges is joined with the privileges themselves. The trace of former ranks is perpetuated. The people still see the destroyed remnants with hatred and envy, and the nobles envisage the people with terror. You find former adversaries around you on both sides, and you outdo each other throwing yourselves into the arms of the government for fear of falling under the oppression of your neighbors.

This is how the political tendencies that equality imparts are that much stronger among a people as conditions have been more unequal and as equality has had more difficulty becoming established.

The Americans arrived equal on the soil that they occupy. They never had privileges of birth or fortune to destroy. They naturally feel no hatred of some against others. So they subject themselves readily to the administration of those close at hand, because they neither hate nor fear them.]h

At the beginning of a great democratic revolution, and when the war between the different classes has only begun, the people try hard to centralize public administration in the hands of the government, in order to tear the direction of local affairs away from the aristocracy. Toward the end of this same revolution, on the contrary, it is ordinarily the vanquished aristocracy which attempts to deliver to the State the direction of all [{local}] affairs, because it fears the petty tyranny of the people, who have become its equal and often its master.

Thus, it is not always the same class of citizens that applies itself to increasing the prerogatives of power; but as long as the democratic revolution lasts, a class, powerful by numbers or by wealth, is always found in the nation that is led to centralize the public administration by special passions and particular interests, apart from hatred of the government of the neighbor, which is a general and permanent sentiment among democratic peoples. You can see today that it is the lower classes of England that work with all their strength to destroy local independence and to carry the administration of all points from the circumference to the center, while the upper classes try hard to keep this same administration within its ancient limits. I dare to predict that a day will come when you will see an entirely opposite spectacle.j

What precedes makes it well understood why, among a democratic people who has arrived at equality by a long and difficult social effort, the social power must always be stronger and the individual weaker than in a democratic society where, from the beginning, citizens have always been equal. This is what the example of the Americans finally proves.

The men who inhabit the United States have never been separated by any privilege; they have never known the reciprocal relation of inferior and master, and since they do not fear and do not hate one another, they have never known the need to call upon the sovereign to direct the details of their affairs.k The destiny of the Americans is singular; they took from the aristocracy of England the idea of individual rights and the taste for local liberties; and they were able to preserve both, because they did not have to combat aristocracy.

If in all times enlightenment is useful to men for defending their independence, that is above all true in democratic centuries. It is easy, when all men are similar, to establish a unique and omnipotent government; instincts are sufficient. But men need a great deal of intelligence, science and art, in order to organize and to maintain, in the same circumstances, secondary powers, and in order to create, amid the independence and individual weakness of citizens, free associations able to struggle against tyranny without destroying order [{and in order to replace the individual power of a few families with free associations of citizens}].

So concentration of powers and individual servitude will grow, among democratic nations, not only in proportion to equality, but also by reason of ignorance.m

It is true that, in centuries less advanced in knowledge, the government often lacks the enlightenment to perfect despotism, as the citizens lack the enlightenment to escape it. But the effect is not equal on the two sides.

However uncivilized a democratic people may be, the central power that directs it is never completely without enlightenment, because it easily attracts what little enlightenment there is in the country, and because, as needed, it goes outside to seek it. So among a nation that is ignorant as well as democratic, a prodigious difference between the intellectual capacity of the sovereign power and that of each one of its subjects cannot fail to manifest itself. The former ends by easily concentrating all powers in its hands. The administrative power of the State expands constantly, because only the State is skillful enough to administer.n

Aristocratic nations, however little enlightened you suppose them, never present the same spectacle, because enlightenment there is distributed equally between the prince and the principal citizens.

The Pasha who reigns today over Egypt found the population of the country composed of very ignorant and very equal men, and to govern it he appropriated the science and the intelligence of Europe. The particular enlightenment of the sovereign thus coming to combine with the ignorance and the democratic weakness of his subjects, the farthest limit of centralization has been attained without difficulty, and the prince has been able to make the country into his factory and the inhabitants into his workers.o

I believe that the extreme centralization of political power ends by enervating society and thus by weakening the government itself in the long run. But I do not deny that a centralized social force is able to execute easily, in a given time and at a determined point, great enterprises.p That is above all true in war, when success depends much more on the ease that you find in bringing all your resources rapidly to a certain point, than even on the extent of those resources. So it is principally in war that peoples feel the desire and often the need to increase the prerogatives of the central power. All warrior geniuses love centralization, which increases their forces, and all centralizing geniuses love war, which obliges nations to draw all powers into the hands of the State. Thus, the democratic tendency which leads men constantly to multiply the privileges of the State and to limit the rights of individuals is much more rapid and more continuous among democratic peoples who are subject by their position to great and frequent wars, and whose existence can often be put in danger, than among all others.

I have said how the fear of disorder and the love of well-being imperceptibly led democratic peoples to augment the attributions of the central government, the sole power that seems to them by itself strong enough, intelligent enough, stable enough to protect them against anarchy. I hardly need to add that all the particular circumstances that tend to make the state of a democratic society disturbed and precarious increase this general instinct and lead individuals, more and more, to sacrifice their rights to their tranquillity.

So a people is never so disposed to increase the attributions of the central power than when emerging from a long and bloody revolution that, after tearing property from the hands of its former owners, has shaken all beliefs, filled the nation with furious hatreds, opposing interests and conflicting factions. The taste for public tranquillity then becomes a blind passion, and citizens are subject to becoming enamored with a very disordered love of order.

I have just examined several accidents, all of which contribute to aiding the centralization of power. I have not yet spoken about the principal one.

The first of all the accidental causes which, among democratic peoples, can draw the direction of all affairs into the hands of the sovereign is the origin of the sovereign himself and his inclinations.

Men who live in centuries of equality love the central power naturallyq and willingly expand its privileges; but if it happens that this same power faithfully represents their interests and exactly reproduces their instincts, the confidence that they have in it has hardly any limits, and they believe that they are granting to themselves all that they are giving away.r

Drawing administrative powers toward the center will always be less easys and less rapid with kings who are still attached at some point to the old aristocratic order than with new princes, self-made men, who seem to be tied indissolubly to the cause of equality by birth, prejudices, instincts and habits. I do not want to say that the princes of aristocratic origin who live in the centuries of democracy do not seek to centralize. I believe that they apply themselves to that as diligently as all the others. For them, the only advantages of equality are in this direction; but their opportunities are fewer, because the citizens, instead of naturally anticipating their desires, often lend themselves to those desires only with difficulty. In democratic societies, centralization will always be that much greater as the sovereign is less aristocratic: there is the rule.

[I do not believe in the hereditary and imprescriptible rights of princes, and I know how difficult it is to maintain the old families of kings in the midst of new ideas. Ancient dynasties have some particular advantages in centuries of equality, however, that I want to acknowledge.]t

When an old race of kings directs an aristocracy, since the natural prejudices of the sovereign are in perfect accord with the natural prejudices of the nobles, the vices inherent in aristocratic societies develop freely and find no remedy. The opposite happens when the offshoot of a feudal branch is placed at the head of a democratic people. The prince is inclined each day by his education, his habits and his memories, toward sentiments that inequality of conditions suggests; and the people tend constantly, by its social state, toward the mores to which equality gives birth. So it often happens that the citizens seek to contain the central power, much less as tyrannical than as aristocratic; and that they firmly maintain their independence, not only because they want to be free, but above all because they intend to remain equal. [It is in this sense that you can say that old dynasties lead aristocratic peoples to despotism and democratic nations to liberty.

<It is difficult for such a struggle to last for long without leading to a revolution, but as long as it lasts, you cannot deny that it powerfully serves the political education of the democracy.>]

A revolution that overturns an old family of kings, in order to place new men at the head of a democratic people, can temporarily weaken the central power; but however anarchic it seems at first, you must not hesitate to predict that its final and necessary result will be to expand and to assure the prerogatives of this very power.

The first, and in a way the only necessary condition for arriving at centralization of the public power in a democratic society is to love equality or make people believe that you do. Thus, the science of despotism, formerly so complicated, is simplified; it is reduced, so to speak, to a unique principle.u

[a. ] Appendix of section.—Section IV./

Ideas of the chapter.

1.When liberty has existed before equality, it establishes habits that are opposed to the excessive development of the central power.

2.When equality has developed rapidly with the aid of a revolution, the taste for intermediary powers disappears more quickly. Centralization becomes necessary in a way.

3. Revolution makes hatred and jealousy of the neighbor more intense and leads either the upper or the lower classes to want to centralize.

4. Enlightenment and ignorance.

5. War.

6. Disorder.

7. Democratic nature of the central power.

[In the margin: New ideas.

1. Extraordinary talents.

2. Two ideas relative to revolutions and which have not been treated there.

3. When a people has been formed from several peoples, like the Americans.

≠4. When democratic society is ancient, the permanent ambition of the g[overnment (ed.)] gives it the advantage in the long run, because of the shifting desires of the citizens and of the multitude of (illegible word) into which they are constantly throwing themselves.≠]

The entire vice of this chapter seems to me to reside in this:

• 1. Definitively, the greatest number and the principal ones of the particular reasons that I give are connected with the particular accident of a revolution. So it would be necessary to put them separately and to announce in advance that I am going to deal with this order of particular causes. It is worth the trouble.
• 2. It would be necessary to put those causes in a better order so that the mind would pass better from one to the other.

It is on these two points that I must make a final effort while reviewing one last time.

6 November 1839 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 74-76).

On a page of drafts:

If I do not make the reader see America clearly, he will perhaps be invincibly opposed to my ideas, because seen in a haze and considered roughly, America seems in fact to provide an opposite argument.

Reflect on all that while reviewing (Rubish, 2).

[c. ] “In our time a famous sect has appeared that claimed to centralize all the forces of society in the same hands.

“[Further along, on the same page] If someone had spoken to me about the doctrines of the Saint-Simonians without letting me know the time or the country that saw them arise, I dare to affirm that I would have said without fear that they had been born in a democratic century [v: country]” (notes of the chapter,Rubish, 2).

[d. ] Financial centralization, and that one includes all the others, was established in France by the Convention, 5 September 1794, on a report of Cambon who, applying to finances the great principle of the unity and of the indivisibility of France, declared that in the future there would be only one budget, as there was only one State.

The excess of this principle forced it to be abandoned in the year IV and forced departmental budgets to be done.

But since then we have not ceased and still do not cease to remove sums from these budgets in order to carry them over to the budget of the State, that is to say that little by little we return more and more to the financial system created abruptly by the Convention. We see, adds the Journal des débats, which provided me with these details (6 March 1838) that the movement of administrative centralization continues, since the budget of the State swells and the departmental budget decreases (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 42).

Tocqueville is referring here to discussions on the law on departmental attributions that had taken place in the Chamber of Deputies in the month of March 1838. The details cited belong to the session of 6 March, reproduced in the Journal des débats the next day.

[e. ] In the margin: “≠This sentence is too much because here it is only a matter of administrative centralization.≠”

[f. ] .-.-.- In France, Napoleon was in the matter .-.-[of (ed.)].-.- centralization the accident, but the real and permanent cause was this sudden destruction of the upper {administrative} classes.

Those whose education, wealth, habits and memories naturally enabled them to conduct provincial affairs disappear; and with the confused mass that remained, still not having either enlightenment, or organization, or mores which could allow it to direct these same affairs, to whom would this same concern necessarily revert, if not to the central power? So centralization has been a necessary fact. That is true; the error is to say that it must be an eternal fact.

[To the side] I put a child under my guardianship; is this to say that I must keep him under my rule at manhood? (unity, centralization, administrative despotism,Rubish, 2).

[g. ] The two great disadvantages of centralization are these: 1. In the long run it prevents more undertakings and improvements than it can produce. 2. It delivers all of the social existence to a power that, becoming indolent or tyrannical, can end by plunging the nation into impotence or servitude.

These two dangers are distant and .-.-.-.- disclose even .-.-.-.-

The good that centralization produces, the order, the regularity, the uniformity so adored by democratic peoples, are, on the contrary, noticed and appreciated right away by these same minds.

How would its cause not be popular? (thoughts to add on the influence exercised by democratic ideas on the forms of government,Rubish, 2).

[h. ] This fragment constitutes an independent sheet of the manuscript. Tocqueville’s indications allow us to think that it would have been placed here.

[j. ] “When you examine all the laws that .-.-.- in England for the past fifty years and above all during recent years, you will see that all more or less have a tendency toward centralization and uniformity. That is enough for me to conclude that the great democratic revolution that today shapes the world is proceeding constantly among the English people, in spite of the obstacles that oppose it and despite the wealth and the men that the aristocracy still possesses there” (relative to the idea of unity in general,Rubish, 2).

[k. ] On this point the Americans, whatever their errors and their faults, deserve to be praised. They have well earned humanity’s gratitude. They have shown that the democratic social state and democratic laws did not have as a necessary result the degeneration of the human race.

I am very content to have found this idea because I believe it correct and because it is the only way to make America appear a final time in my last chapters, which really relate only to France.

[To the side] In America the State is a great deal, but the individual is something. Less than in England, but more than in France. He has rights, a strength of individuality less respected than among the English, more than among us (unity, centralization, administrative despotism,Rubish, 2).

[m. ] Centralization./

There are two types of decentralization.

One that is in a way instinctive, blind, full of prejudices, devoid of rules, that is born from the desire of small localities to be independent.

There is another one that is reasoned, enlightened, that knows its limits.

These two decentralizations are at the two ends of civilization. In the middle is a central power [that is] energetic, intelligent, that claims [doubtful reading (ed.)] to be able to do everything by itself and that manages, after a fashion, to do so.

Baden, 14 August 1836 (unity, centralization, administrative despotism,Rubish, 2).

[n. ] On accidental causes./

After the place where I show the government as the necessary heir to the old powers when they are suddenly destroyed.

Every time that a great revolution agitates a people, it gives birth within it to a host of new relationships, interests and needs, and you feel on all sides the need for a power that comes to regulate these relationships, guarantee these interests, satisfy these needs. That gives great opportunities to the government that this revolution has established to expand the circle of its action well beyond the old limits and to create a multitude of new attributions that none of the abolished powers had had. That is that much easier for the government because, amid this renewal of all things, the citizens are full of uncertainty, ignorance and fear, not seeing clearly enough.

So when equality is established with the help of and amid a great revolution it happens that the government immediately (two illegible words) its prerogatives not only because of equality of conditions, but also because of the revolution (which makes conditions equal) (YTC, CVj, 2, p. 13).

Page 14 of this same notebook contains an identical fragment.

After this passage, you read:

[o. ] “Unity. Centralization./

“Supply myself with an article on Egypt published in the Revue des deux mondes of 1 March 1838 and in which someone admires greatly that the Pasha has made himself the proprietor and the unique industrialist of his country, and in which it is implied that something approaching this or analogous could perhaps be tried in France.”

“Symptoms of the time” (unity, centralization, administrative despotism,Rubish, 2).

“.-.-.- centralization of the Pasha of Egypt which proves that when conditions are once equal, the idea of a central and uniform government presents itself as well in a period of incomplete civilization as in one of advanced civilization. I do not even know if centralization is not rather an idea of medium civilization than of very advanced civilization” (ideas to add on the influence exercised by democratic ideas on the forms of government,Rubish, 2).

[p. ] That among democratic nations, above all those that are not commercial, the State must be involved in more enterprises than in others./

Nuance to observe in that. If the State itself takes charge of everything, it finishes by throwing individuals into nothingness. If it takes charge of nothing, it is to be feared that it will not be able to emerge from it. Nuances very delicate, difficult to grasp. Position that is very easy to abuse. English system of not getting involved in anything. Aristocratic system. Liberty gives the desire and the idea of doing great things, and individuals powerful enough to do them easily by associating. American system in which the State encourages and does not share in the activities of enterprises, loans money, grants land, does nothing by itself (with the drafts of chapter 5 of the second part, on association in civil life, Rubish, 1).

[q. ]Superior men who all want to centralize. Accidental cause, the more democracies encounter such men, the more centralized they will become.

All the extraordinary men.

All the extraordinary talents go in this direction. Extraordinary talents in other times are often a cause of restlessness for the people among whom they are found. They create wars, divisions, violence, tyranny. But beyond that, in democracies, they always create centralization, because centralization is an admirable means of action that is clearly conceived and easily obtained only at that time.

I will say as much about all the extraordinary men who come to be born from time to time among these peoples.

All will love centralization and will seek to expand it, and it will be that much greater as they appear in greater number (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 76-77).

[r. ] [In the margin: Ease of succeeding when the power does not give rise to fear about equality./

January 1837.]

What must be done in order to take hold of despotic power among democratic peoples and in the centuries of democratic transition. Ease of turning democratic passions against their goal, to cause liberty to be sacrificed to the blind love of equality and to the revolutionary passions that it brings about. To place somewhere toward the end of the volume and perhaps at the end after war (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 56).

[s. ] Variant in the manuscript: “. . . will always be more easy, more rapid and greater among democratic nations that live as a republic than among those that obey a monarch, and under new dynasties than under the old, and it will never meet fewer obstacles than under princes who have emerged from a low position, self-made men, who by their origin, their prejudices, their interests and their habits seem intimately tied to the cause of equality. You can say in a general way that in democratic societies centralization will always be that much greater as the sovereign is less aristocratic.”

[t. ] That, before everything, in order for a power to be able to arrive at tyranny among a democratic people, it must have come from the people and must at every occasion flatter the sentiment of equality.

Centralization. Individualism. Material enjoyment./

What precedes opens the way for me.

I want to find out by what condition despotism could establish itself among a democratic people and show how it could use the ideas and the sentiments that arise from equality. To struggle at the same time against the spirit of equality and the spirit of liberty would be folly, but they can be divided. Thus the great problem that the despots of our time and those of the centuries to come will have to have daily in view [interrupted text (ed.)].

From now on, those who will want to create absolute power by aristocracy or aristocracy by absolute power will be great fools, you can affirm it from today.

So what is necessary first for a power [v: government], so that it is possible for it to aspire to tyranny in a longer or shorter time?

I am not afraid to say it, a popular [v: plebeian] origin. It must, by its prejudices, its instincts, its memories, its interests, be intensely favorable to equality. Those are the primary qualities, without which, skill and even genius would be of no use to it to succeed, and with which, vices would be enough.

If it happened that this same man had a bold, brilliant, fertile mind, that he was without restraint in his passions as without limits in his desires, and that he himself naturally shared the democratic inclinations and vices, faults, opinions, which he wanted to use, I do not doubt that he would soon make himself formidable to liberty, and I do not know what the limits of his fortune would be if he added to all of these advantages that of being a bastard [v: if he joined to all of these advantages that of coming from the ranks of the people, his success would be even more probable].

[To the side: Debatable theorem.]

The first concern and the principal affair (of a government or of a man who aims for tyranny) must be to interest the dominant passion of the century in his favor. He can be wasteful, arbitrary, even cruel; it is not sure that he (illegible word) as long as he is not assumed to be aristocratic. But were he the opposite of all these things, he will assuredly perish if it is half-suspected that he is aristocratic. It is possible that in this, favorable circumstances serve him.

If by chance there exists within a democratic people a party, a class, or even a man who in the eyes of the public represents the principle of the inequality of conditions, that is a fortunate accident from which a government that aims for omnipotence must hasten to profit. Let it first exercise its emerging strength on the former; let it do against them its apprenticeship for tyranny. It can attempt it without danger. Two great results gained from the same blow. On the one hand, it proves in this way its hatred for aristocracy; {on the other} it accustoms the people to illegality and familiarizes them with arbitrariness and violence. How to suspect a power that emerges from our ranks, that represents us to ourselves, that acts for us and in our name, in the matter that is most in our hearts; that loves what we love, hates what we hate and strikes what we cannot reach? Won’t there be time to take precautions when it tries finally to turn against us the weapon that has been entrusted to it? The nation closes its eyes to that and falls asleep.

[With a bracket that includes the last two paragraphs: To delete.]

This reveals the type of utility that a democratic people can draw from ancient dynasties. When an ancient family of kings directs an aristocracy . . . (YTC, CVd, pp. 32-36); you find a draft of this fragment in YTC, CVd, pp. 37-41).

[u. ] The manuscript proposes two other conclusions:

In another place: