ople amongst whom that class happens to exist. It is owing
to this, as much as to the greatness of the French people, and the
favorable disposition of the nations who listen to them, that the great
effect which the French political debates sometimes produce in the
world, must be attributed. The orators of France frequently speak to
mankind, even when they are addressing their countrymen only.

Section 2: Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of Americans

Chapter I: Why Democratic Nations Show A More Ardent And Enduring Love
Of Equality Than Of Liberty

The first and most intense passion which is engendered by the equality
of conditions is, I need hardly say, the love of that same equality. My
readers will therefore not be surprised that I speak of its before
all others. Everybody has remarked that in our time, and especially in
France, this passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the
human heart. It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries
are far more ardently and tenaciously attached to equality than to
freedom; but as I do not find that the causes of the fact have been
sufficiently analyzed, I shall endeavor to point them out.

It is possible to imagine an extreme point at which freedom and equality
would meet and be confounded together. Let us suppose that all the
members of the community take a part in the government, and that each of
them has an equal right to take a part in it. As none is different from
his fellows, none can exercise a tyrannical power: men will be perfectly
free, because they will all be entirely equal; and they will all be
perfectly equal, because they will be entirely free. To this ideal state
democratic nations tend. Such is the completest form that equality can
assume upon earth; but there are a thousand others which, without being
equally perfect, are not less cherished by those nations.

The principle of equality may be established in civil society, without
prevailing in the political world. Equal rights may exist of indulging
in the same pleasures, of entering the same professions, of frequenting
the same places--in a word, of living in the same manner and seeking
wealth by the same means, although all men do not take an equal share
in the government. A kind of equality may even be established in the
political world, though there should be no political freedom there. A
man may be the equal of all his countrymen save one, who is the master
of all