on will be
the natural form of government. *c

[Footnote c: See Appendix X.]

Chapter IV: Of Certain Peculiar And Accidental Causes Which Either Lead
A People To Complete Centralization Of Government, Or Which Divert Them
From It

If all democratic nations are instinctively led to the centralization of
government, they tend to this result in an unequal manner. This depends
on the particular circumstances which may promote or prevent the
natural consequences of that state of society--circumstances which are
exceedingly numerous; but I shall only advert to a few of them. Amongst
men who have lived free long before they became equal, the tendencies
derived from free institutions combat, to a certain extent, the
propensities superinduced by the principle of equality; and although
the central power may increase its privileges amongst such a people, the
private members of such a community will never entirely forfeit their
independence. But when the equality of conditions grows up amongst a
people which has never known, or has long ceased to know, what freedom
is (and such is the case upon the Continent of Europe), as the former
habits of the nation are suddenly combined, by some sort of natural
attraction, with the novel habits and principles engendered by the state
of society, all powers seem spontaneously to rush to the centre.
These powers accumulate there with astonishing rapidity, and the State
instantly attains the utmost limits of its strength, whilst private
persons allow themselves to sink as suddenly to the lowest degree of
weakness.

The English who emigrated three hundred years ago to found a democratic
commonwealth on the shores of the New World, had all learned to take
a part in public affairs in their mother-country; they were conversant
with trial by jury; they were accustomed to liberty of speech and of the
press--to personal freedom, to the notion of rights and the practice
of asserting them. They carried with them to America these free
institutions and manly customs, and these institutions preserved them
against the encroachments of the State. Thus amongst the Americans it
is freedom which is old--equality is of comparatively modern date. The
reverse is occurring in Europe, where equality, introduced by absolute
power and under the rule of kings, was already infused into the habits
of nations long before freedom had entered into their conceptions.

I have said that amongst democratic nations the