naturally wanting in a taste for public business, but they have
frequently no time to attend to it. Private life is so busy in
democratic periods, so excited, so full of wishes and of work, that
hardly any energy or leisure remains to each individual for public life.
I am the last man to contend that these propensities are unconquerable,
since my chief object in writing this book has been to combat them. I
only maintain that at the present day a secret power is fostering them
in the human heart, and that if they are not checked they will wholly
overgrow it.

[Footnote a: See Appendix W.]

I have also had occasion to show how the increasing love of well-being,
and the fluctuating character of property, cause democratic nations
to dread all violent disturbance. The love of public tranquillity is
frequently the only passion which these nations retain, and it becomes
more active and powerful amongst them in proportion as all other
passions droop and die. This naturally disposes the members of the
community constantly to give or to surrender additional rights to the
central power, which alone seems to be interested in defending them by
the same means that it uses to defend itself. As in ages of equality no
man is compelled to lend his assistance to his fellow-men, and none
has any right to expect much support from them, everyone is at once
independent and powerless. These two conditions, which must never be
either separately considered or confounded together, inspire the
citizen of a democratic country with very contrary propensities. His
independence fills him with self-reliance and pride amongst his equals;
his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of some outward
assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them, because they are
all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament he naturally turns
his eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of
universal depression. Of that power his wants and especially his desires
continually remind him, until he ultimately views it as the sole and
necessary support of his own weakness. *b This may more completely
explain what frequently takes place in democratic countries, where the
very men who are so impatient of superiors patiently submit to a master,
exhibiting at once their pride and their servility.

[Footnote b: In democratic communities nothing but the central power has
any stability in its position or any permanence in its undertakings.