ess exposed, since, although they may lose the
income of their estates, they may hope to preserve the land itself
through the greatest vicissitudes. Hence the former are much more
alarmed at the symptoms of revolutionary commotion than the latter. Thus
nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal
property is augmented and distributed amongst them, and as the number
of those possessing it increases. Moreover, whatever profession men
may embrace, and whatever species of property they may possess, one
characteristic is common to them all. No one is fully contented with
his present fortune--all are perpetually striving in a thousand ways to
improve it. Consider any one of them at any period of his life, and
he will be found engaged with some new project for the purpose of
increasing what he has; talk not to him of the interests and the rights
of mankind: this small domestic concern absorbs for the time all his
thoughts, and inclines him to defer political excitement to some other
season. This not only prevents men from making revolutions, but deters
men from desiring them. Violent political passions have but little hold
on those who have devoted all their faculties to the pursuit of their
well-being. The ardor which they display in small matters calms their
zeal for momentous undertakings.

From time to time indeed, enterprising and ambitious men will arise in
democratic communities, whose unbounded aspirations cannot be contented
by following the beaten track. Such men like revolutions and hail their
approach; but they have great difficulty in bringing them about, unless
unwonted events come to their assistance. No man can struggle with
advantage against the spirit of his age and country; and, however
powerful he may be supposed to be, he will find it difficult to make his
contemporaries share in feelings and opinions which are repugnant to t
all their feelings and desires.

It is a mistake to believe that, when once the equality of conditions
has become the old and uncontested state of society, and has imparted
its characteristics to the manners of a nation, men will easily allow
themselves to be thrust into perilous risks by an imprudent leader or
a bold innovator. Not indeed that they will resist him openly, by
well-contrived schemes, or even by a premeditated plan of resistance.
They will not struggle energetically against him, sometimes they will
even applaud him--but they do not follow him