occasion to observe that the relations of man and woman have become
more orderly or more chaste. In some places the very reverse may be
detected: some classes are more strict--the general morality of the
people appears to be more lax. I do not hesitate to make the remark, for
I am as little disposed to flatter my contemporaries as to malign them.
This fact must distress, but it ought not to surprise us. The propitious
influence which a democratic state of society may exercise upon orderly
habits, is one of those tendencies which can only be discovered after
a time. If the equality of conditions is favorable to purity of morals,
the social commotion by which conditions are rendered equal is adverse
to it. In the last fifty years, during which France has been undergoing
this transformation, that country has rarely had freedom, always
disturbance. Amidst this universal confusion of notions and this general
stir of opinions--amidst this incoherent mixture of the just and unjust,
of truth and falsehood, of right and might--public virtue has become
doubtful, and private morality wavering. But all revolutions, whatever
may have been their object or their agents, have at first produced
similar consequences; even those which have in the end drawn the bonds
of morality more tightly began by loosening them. The violations of
morality which the French frequently witness do not appear to me to have
a permanent character; and this is already betokened by some curious
signs of the times.

Nothing is more wretchedly corrupt than an aristocracy which retains its
wealth when it has lost its power, and which still enjoys a vast deal
of leisure after it is reduced to mere vulgar pastimes. The energetic
passions and great conceptions which animated it heretofore, leave it
then; and nothing remains to it but a host of petty consuming vices,
which cling about it like worms upon a carcass. No one denies that the
French aristocracy of the last century was extremely dissolute; whereas
established habits and ancient belief still preserved some respect for
morality amongst the other classes of society. Nor will it be contested
that at the present day the remnants of that same aristocracy exhibit
a certain severity of morals; whilst laxity of morals appears to have
spread amongst the middle and lower ranks. So that the same families
which were most profligate fifty years ago are nowadays the most
exemplary, and democracy seems only to have strengthe