ire is exclusively an affair of money. A man whose estate extends over
a whole district, and who owns a hundred farms, is well aware of the
importance of gaining at the same time the affections of some thousands
of men; this object appears to call for his exertions, and to attain it
he will readily make considerable sacrifices. But he who owns a hundred
acres is insensible to similar considerations, and he cares but little
to win the private regard of his tenant.

An aristocracy does not expire like a man in a single day; the
aristocratic principle is slowly undermined in men's opinion, before it
is attacked in their laws. Long before open war is declared against it,
the tie which had hitherto united the higher classes to the lower may be
seen to be gradually relaxed. Indifference and contempt are betrayed by
one class, jealousy and hatred by the others; the intercourse between
rich and poor becomes less frequent and less kind, and rents are raised.
This is not the consequence of a democratic revolution, but its certain
harbinger; for an aristocracy which has lost the affections of the
people, once and forever, is like a tree dead at the root, which is the
more easily torn up by the winds the higher its branches have spread.

In the course of the last fifty years the rents of farms have amazingly
increased, not only in France but throughout the greater part of Europe.
The remarkable improvements which have taken place in agriculture and
manufactures within the same period do not suffice in my opinion to
explain this fact; recourse must be had to another cause more powerful
and more concealed. I believe that cause is to be found in the
democratic institutions which several European nations have adopted, and
in the democratic passions which more or less agitate all the rest. I
have frequently heard great English landowners congratulate themselves
that, at the present day, they derive a much larger income from their
estates than their fathers did. They have perhaps good reasons to be
glad; but most assuredly they know not what they are glad of. They think
they are making a clear gain, when it is in reality only an exchange;
their influence is what they are parting with for cash; and what they
gain in money will ere long be lost in power.

There is yet another sign by which it is easy to know that a great
democratic revolution is going on or approaching. In the Middle Ages
almost all lands were leased for lives, or for ver