men. It is in vain to summon a people, which has
been rendered so dependent on the central power, to choose from time to
time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of
their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them
from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for
themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity. *b
I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and
only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations which have
introduced freedom into their political constitution, at the very
time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative
constitution, have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those
minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted--the people are
held to be unequal to the task, but when the government of the country
is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are
alternately made the playthings of their ruler, and his masters--more
than kings, and less than men. After having exhausted all the different
modes of election, without finding one to suit their purpose, they are
still amazed, and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they
remark did not originate in the constitution of the country far more
than in that of the electoral body. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive
how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should
succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be
governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and
energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient
people. A constitution, which should be republican in its head and
ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to
be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the
people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its
representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon
return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.

[Footnote b: See Appendix Z.]

Chapter VII: Continuation Of The Preceding Chapters

I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic
government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are
equal, than amongst any other; and I think that if such a government
were once established amongst such a people, it would not only oppress
men, but would eventually str