ns down to the
Florentines and the English, who were not a free people also. There
is therefore a close bond and necessary relation between these two
elements--freedom and productive industry. This proposition is generally
true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations. I have
already shown that men who live in ages of equality continually require
to form associations in order to procure the things they covet; and, on
the other hand, I have shown how great political freedom improves and
diffuses the art of association. Freedom, in these ages, is therefore
especially favorable to the production of wealth; nor is it difficult
to perceive that despotism is especially adverse to the same result.
The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or
cruel, but minute and meddling. Despotism of this kind, though it does
not trample on humanity, is directly opposed to the genius of commerce
and the pursuits of industry.

Thus the men of democratic ages require to be free in order more readily
to procure those physical enjoyments for which they are always longing.
It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive
for these same enjoyments abandons them to the first master who appears.
The passion for worldly welfare then defeats itself, and, without
perceiving it, throws the object of their desires to a greater distance.

There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a
democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications amongst
such a people has grown more rapidly than their education and their
experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried
away, and lose all self-restraint, at the sight of the new possessions
they are about to lay hold upon. In their intense and exclusive anxiety
to make a fortune, they lose sight of the close connection which exists
between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all.
It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip
them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen
their hold. The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a
troublesome annoyance, which diverts them from their occupations and
business. If they be required to elect representatives, to support the
Government by personal service, to meet on public business, they have no
time--they cannot waste their precious time in useless engagements: such
idle amusements are unsuited