always carried away by the general impulse of mankind.
Something of the same kind may be observed between nations: two nations
having the same aristocratic social condition, might remain thoroughly
distinct and extremely different, because the spirit of aristocracy
is to retain strong individual characteristics; but if two neighboring
nations have the same democratic social condition, they cannot fail
to adopt similar opinions and manners, because the spirit of democracy
tends to assimilate men to each other.]

If I inquire why it is that the Helvetic Confederacy made the greatest
and most powerful nations of Europe tremble in the fifteenth century,
whilst at the present day the power of that country is exactly
proportioned to its population, I perceive that the Swiss are become
like all the surrounding communities, and those surrounding communities
like the Swiss: so that as numerical strength now forms the only
difference between them, victory necessarily attends the largest army.
Thus one of the consequences of the democratic revolution which is going
on in Europe is to make numerical strength preponderate on all fields
of battle, and to constrain all small nations to incorporate themselves
with large States, or at least to adopt the policy of the latter. As
numbers are the determining cause of victory, each people ought of
course to strive by all the means in its power to bring the greatest
possible number of men into the field. When it was possible to enlist a
kind of troops superior to all others, such as the Swiss infantry or the
French horse of the sixteenth century, it was not thought necessary to
raise very large armies; but the case is altered when one soldier is as
efficient as another.

The same cause which begets this new want also supplies means of
satisfying it; for, as I have already observed, when men are all alike,
they are all weak, and the supreme power of the State is naturally much
stronger amongst democratic nations than elsewhere. Hence, whilst these
nations are desirous of enrolling the whole male population in the
ranks of the army, they have the power of effecting this object: the
consequence is, that in democratic ages armies seem to grow larger
in proportion as the love of war declines. In the same ages, too,
the manner of carrying on war is likewise altered by the same causes.
Machiavelli observes in "The Prince," "that it is much more difficult to
subdue a people which has a prince and