em with
reluctance. In democratic communities the rule is that centralization
must increase in proportion as the sovereign is less aristocratic. When
an ancient race of kings stands at the head of an aristocracy, as the
natural prejudices of the sovereign perfectly accord with the natural
prejudices of the nobility, the vices inherent in aristocratic
communities have a free course, and meet with no corrective. The reverse
is the case when the scion of a feudal stock is placed at the head of
a democratic people. The sovereign is constantly led, by his education,
his habits, and his associations, to adopt sentiments suggested by the
inequality of conditions, and the people tend as constantly, by their
social condition, to those manners which are engendered by equality.
At such times it often happens that the citizens seek to control the
central power far less as a tyrannical than as an aristocratical power,
and that they persist in the firm defence of their independence, not
only because they would remain free, but especially because they are
determined to remain equal. A revolution which overthrows an ancient
regal family, in order to place men of more recent growth at the head
of a democratic people, may temporarily weaken the central power; but
however anarchical such a revolution may appear at first, we need not
hesitate to predict that its final and certain consequence will be to
extend and to secure the prerogatives of that power. The foremost or
indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in
centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love
equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of
despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it
were to a single principle.

Chapter V: That Amongst The European Nations Of Our Time The Power Of
Governments Is Increasing, Although The Persons Who Govern Are Less
Stable

On reflecting upon what has already been said, the reader will be
startled and alarmed to find that in Europe everything seems to conduce
to the indefinite extension of the prerogatives of government, and to
render all that enjoyed the rights of private independence more weak,
more subordinate, and more precarious. The democratic nations of Europe
have all the general and permanent tendencies which urge the Americans
to the centralization of government, and they are moreover exposed to a
number of secondary and incidental ca