A sudden heaviness overpowers me, and I
grope through the surrounding darkness, to find the aperture which will
restore me to daylight and the air.

But all this is not applicable to men already enlightened who retain
their freedom, after having abolished from amongst them those peculiar
and hereditary rights which perpetuated the tenure of property in the
hands of certain individuals or certain bodies. When men living in a
democratic state of society are enlightened, they readily discover that
they are confined and fixed within no limits which constrain them to
take up with their present fortune. They all therefore conceive the idea
of increasing it; if they are free, they all attempt it, but all do
not succeed in the same manner. The legislature, it is true, no
longer grants privileges, but they are bestowed by nature. As natural
inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal as soon as every man
exerts all his faculties to get rich. The law of descent prevents the
establishment of wealthy families; but it does not prevent the existence
of wealthy individuals. It constantly brings back the members of the
community to a common level, from which they as constantly escape:
and the inequality of fortunes augments in proportion as knowledge is
diffused and liberty increased.

A sect which arose in our time, and was celebrated for its talents and
its extravagance, proposed to concentrate all property into the hands of
a central power, whose function it should afterwards be to parcel it
out to individuals, according to their capacity. This would have been a
method of escaping from that complete and eternal equality which seems
to threaten democratic society. But it would be a simpler and less
dangerous remedy to grant no privilege to any, giving to all equal
cultivation and equal independence, and leaving everyone to determine
his own position. Natural inequality will very soon make way for itself,
and wealth will spontaneously pass into the hands of the most capable.

Free and democratic communities, then, will always contain a
considerable number of people enjoying opulence or competency. The
wealthy will not be so closely linked to each other as the members of
the former aristocratic class of society: their propensities will be
different, and they will scarcely ever enjoy leisure as secure or as
complete: but they will be far more numerous than those who belonged to
that class of society could ever be. These persons