ect
colloquial equality.

Thus, at the same time that the power of aristocracy is declining, the
austere, the conventional, and the legal part of parental authority
vanishes, and a species of equality prevails around the domestic hearth.
I know not, upon the whole, whether society loses by the change, but I
am inclined to believe that man individually is a gainer by it. I think
that, in proportion as manners and laws become more democratic, the
relation of father and son becomes more intimate and more affectionate;
rules and authority are less talked of; confidence and tenderness are
oftentimes increased, and it would seem that the natural bond is drawn
closer in proportion as the social bond is loosened. In a democratic
family the father exercises no other power than that with which men
love to invest the affection and the experience of age; his orders would
perhaps be disobeyed, but his advice is for the most part authoritative.
Though he be not hedged in with ceremonial respect, his sons at least
accost him with confidence; no settled form of speech is appropriated
to the mode of addressing him, but they speak to him constantly, and are
ready to consult him day by day; the master and the constituted ruler
have vanished--the father remains. Nothing more is needed, in order
to judge of the difference between the two states of society in this
respect, than to peruse the family correspondence of aristocratic ages.
The style is always correct, ceremonious, stiff, and so cold that the
natural warmth of the heart can hardly be felt in the language.
The language, on the contrary, addressed by a son to his father in
democratic countries is always marked by mingled freedom, familiarity
and affection, which at once show that new relations have sprung up in
the bosom of the family.

A similar revolution takes place in the mutual relations of children. In
aristocratic families, as well as in aristocratic society, every place
is marked out beforehand. Not only does the father occupy a separate
rank, in which he enjoys extensive privileges, but even the children
are not equal amongst themselves. The age and sex of each irrevocably
determine his rank, and secure to him certain privileges: most of these
distinctions are abolished or diminished by democracy. In aristocratic
families the eldest son, inheriting the greater part of the property,
and almost all the rights of the family, becomes the chief, and, to a
certain extent, the m