notion of government
naturally presents itself to the mind under the form of a sole and
central power, and that the notion of intermediate powers is not
familiar to them. This is peculiarly applicable to the democratic
nations which have witnessed the triumph of the principle of equality
by means of a violent revolution. As the classes which managed local
affairs have been suddenly swept away by the storm, and as the confused
mass which remains has as yet neither the organization nor the habits
which fit it to assume the administration of these same affairs, the
State alone seems capable of taking upon itself all the details of
government, and centralization becomes, as it were, the unavoidable
state of the country. Napoleon deserves neither praise nor censure for
having centred in his own hands almost all the administrative power
of France; for, after the abrupt disappearance of the nobility and
the higher rank of the middle classes, these powers devolved on him of
course: it would have been almost as difficult for him to reject as to
assume them. But no necessity of this kind has ever been felt by the
Americans, who, having passed through no revolution, and having governed
themselves from the first, never had to call upon the State to act for
a time as their guardian. Thus the progress of centralization amongst a
democratic people depends not only on the progress of equality, but on
the manner in which this equality has been established.

At the commencement of a great democratic revolution, when hostilities
have but just broken out between the different classes of society, the
people endeavors to centralize the public administration in the hands of
the government, in order to wrest the management of local affairs
from the aristocracy. Towards the close of such a revolution, on the
contrary, it is usually the conquered aristocracy that endeavors to
make over the management of all affairs to the State, because such an
aristocracy dreads the tyranny of a people which has become its equal,
and not unfrequently its master. Thus it is not always the same class
of the community which strives to increase the prerogative of the
government; but as long as the democratic revolution lasts there is
always one class in the nation, powerful in numbers or in wealth, which
is induced, by peculiar passions or interests, to centralize the public
administration, independently of that hatred of being governed by one's
neighbor, which is