to serious men who are engaged with the
more important interests of life. These people think they are following
the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that
principle is a very rude one; and the better to look after what they
call their business, they neglect their chief business, which is to
remain their own masters.

As the citizens who work do not care to attend to public business, and
as the class which might devote its leisure to these duties has ceased
to exist, the place of the Government is, as it were, unfilled. If at
that critical moment some able and ambitious man grasps the supreme
power, he will find the road to every kind of usurpation open before
him. If he does but attend for some time to the material prosperity of
the country, no more will be demanded of him. Above all he must insure
public tranquillity: men who are possessed by the passion of physical
gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs
their welfare, before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote
it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion intrudes into the petty
pleasures of private life, they are aroused and alarmed by it. The fear
of anarchy perpetually haunts them, and they are always ready to fling
away their freedom at the first disturbance.

I readily admit that public tranquillity is a great good; but at the
same time I cannot forget that all nations have been enslaved by being
kept in good order. Certainly it is not to be inferred that nations
ought to despise public tranquillity; but that state ought not to
content them. A nation which asks nothing of its government but the
maintenance of order is already a slave at heart--the slave of its own
well-being, awaiting but the hand that will bind it. By such a nation
the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism
of an individual. When the bulk of the community is engrossed by private
concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper
hand in public affairs. At such times it is not rare to see upon
the great stage of the world, as we see at our theatres, a multitude
represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an
absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action whilst all are
stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change
the laws, and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and
then men wonder to see into how small a number of w