the latter to
obey?--the free and temporary consent of both their wills. Neither of
them is by nature inferior to the other; they only become so for a time
by covenant. Within the terms of this covenant, the one is a
servant, the other a master; beyond it they are two citizens of the
commonwealth--two men. I beg the reader particularly to observe that
this is not only the notion which servants themselves entertain of their
own condition; domestic service is looked upon by masters in the same
light; and the precise limits of authority and obedience are as clearly
settled in the mind of the one as in that of the other.

When the greater part of the community have long attained a condition
nearly alike, and when equality is an old and acknowledged fact, the
public mind, which is never affected by exceptions, assigns certain
general limits to the value of man, above or below which no man can
long remain placed. It is in vain that wealth and poverty, authority
and obedience, accidentally interpose great distances between two men;
public opinion, founded upon the usual order of things, draws them to a
common level, and creates a species of imaginary equality between them,
in spite of the real inequality of their conditions. This all-powerful
opinion penetrates at length even into the hearts of those whose
interest might arm them to resist it; it affects their judgment whilst
it subdues their will. In their inmost convictions the master and the
servant no longer perceive any deep-seated difference between them, and
they neither hope nor fear to meet with any such at any time. They are
therefore neither subject to disdain nor to anger, and they discern in
each other neither humility nor pride. The master holds the contract of
service to be the only source of his power, and the servant regards
it as the only cause of his obedience. They do not quarrel about their
reciprocal situations, but each knows his own and keeps it.

In the French army the common soldier is taken from nearly the same
classes as the officer, and may hold the same commissions; out of the
ranks he considers himself entirely equal to his military superiors, and
in point of fact he is so; but when under arms he does not hesitate to
obey, and his obedience is not the less prompt, precise, and ready,
for being voluntary and defined. This example may give a notion of what
takes place between masters and servants in democratic communities.

It would be prepostero