at a time when the human mind
is fully impressed with the importance and the sanctity of such rights,
the injury done is confined to the individual whose right is infringed;
but to violate such a right, at the present day, is deeply to corrupt
the manners of the nation and to put the whole community in jeopardy,
because the very notion of this kind of right constantly tends amongst
us to be impaired and lost.

There are certain habits, certain notions, and certain vices which are
peculiar to a state of revolution, and which a protracted revolution
cannot fail to engender and to propagate, whatever be, in other
respects, its character, its purpose, and the scene on which it takes
place. When any nation has, within a short space of time, repeatedly
varied its rulers, its opinions, and its laws, the men of whom it is
composed eventually contract a taste for change, and grow accustomed
to see all changes effected by sudden violence. Thus they naturally
conceive a contempt for forms which daily prove ineffectual; and they do
not support without impatience the dominion of rules which they have so
often seen infringed. As the ordinary notions of equity and morality no
longer suffice to explain and justify all the innovations daily begotten
by a revolution, the principle of public utility is called in, the
doctrine of political necessity is conjured up, and men accustom
themselves to sacrifice private interests without scruple, and
to trample on the rights of individuals in order more speedily to
accomplish any public purpose.

These habits and notions, which I shall call revolutionary, because all
revolutions produce them, occur in aristocracies just as much as amongst
democratic nations; but amongst the former they are often less powerful
and always less lasting, because there they meet with habits, notions,
defects, and impediments, which counteract them: they consequently
disappear as soon as the revolution is terminated, and the nation
reverts to its former political courses. This is not always the case
in democratic countries, in which it is ever to be feared that
revolutionary tendencies, becoming more gentle and more regular, without
entirely disappearing from society, will be gradually transformed into
habits of subjection to the administrative authority of the government.
I know of no countries in which revolutions re more dangerous than
in democratic countries; because, independently of the accidental and
transient