of families, provided they were not to be introduced into
the administration of public affairs. Whilst the torrent of democracy
overwhelmed the civil laws of the country, he hoped to find an easy
shelter behind its political institutions. This policy was at once both
adroit and selfish; but a compromise of this kind could not last; for
in the end political institutions never fail to become the image and
expression of civil society; and in this sense it may be said that
nothing is more political in a nation than its civil legislation.]

It may perhaps not be without utility to show how these changes which
take place in family relations, are closely connected with the social
and political revolution which is approaching its consummation under
our own observation. There are certain great social principles, which a
people either introduces everywhere, or tolerates nowhere. In countries
which are aristocratically constituted with all the gradations of rank,
the government never makes a direct appeal to the mass of the governed:
as men are united together, it is enough to lead the foremost, the
rest will follow. This is equally applicable to the family, as to all
aristocracies which have a head. Amongst aristocratic nations, social
institutions recognize, in truth, no one in the family but the father;
children are received by society at his hands; society governs him,
he governs them. Thus the parent has not only a natural right, but he
acquires a political right, to command them: he is the author and
the support of his family; but he is also its constituted ruler. In
democracies, where the government picks out every individual singly from
the mass, to make him subservient to the general laws of the community,
no such intermediate person is required: a father is there, in the eye
of the law, only a member of the community, older and richer than his
sons.

When most of the conditions of life are extremely unequal, and the
inequality of these conditions is permanent, the notion of a superior
grows upon the imaginations of men: if the law invested him with no
privileges, custom and public opinion would concede them. When, on
the contrary, men differ but little from each other, and do not always
remain in dissimilar conditions of life, the general notion of a
superior becomes weaker and less distinct: it is vain for legislation
to strive to place him who obeys very much beneath him who commands; the
manners of the time bring the