members of the community, and a more exclusive power of governing
each of them in his smallest concerns. *a Almost all the charitable
establishments of Europe were formerly in the hands of private persons
or of corporations; they are now almost all dependent on the supreme
government, and in many countries are actually administered by that
power. The State almost exclusively undertakes to supply bread to the
hungry, assistance and shelter to the sick, work to the idle, and to
act as the sole reliever of all kinds of misery. Education, as well
as charity, is become in most countries at the present day a national
concern. The State receives, and often takes, the child from the arms of
the mother, to hand it over to official agents: the State undertakes to
train the heart and to instruct the mind of each generation. Uniformity
prevails in the courses of public instruction as in everything else;
diversity, as well as freedom, is disappearing day by day. Nor do I
hesitate to affirm, that amongst almost all the Christian nations of our
days, Catholic as well as Protestant, religion is in danger of falling
into the hands of the government. Not that rulers are over-jealous of
the right of settling points of doctrine, but they get more and more
hold upon the will of those by whom doctrines are expounded; they
deprive the clergy of their property, and pay them by salaries; they
divert to their own use the influence of the priesthood, they make them
their own ministers--often their own servants--and by this alliance with
religion they reach the inner depths of the soul of man. *b

[Footnote a: This gradual weakening of individuals in relation to
society at large may be traced in a thousand ways. I shall select
from amongst these examples one derived from the law of wills. In
aristocracies it is common to profess the greatest reverence for the
last testamentary dispositions of a man; this feeling sometimes even
became superstitious amongst the older nations of Europe: the power of
the State, far from interfering with the caprices of a dying man, gave
full force to the very least of them, and insured to him a perpetual
power. When all living men are enfeebled, the will of the dead is less
respected: it is circumscribed within a narrow range, beyond which it
is annulled or checked by the supreme power of the laws. In the Middle
Ages, testamentary power had, so to speak, no limits: amongst the French
at the present day, a man cannot di