er to resist the authority of the Crown, or to diminish the power of
their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights to
the people. Or, more frequently, the king permitted the lower orders
to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the
aristocracy. In France the kings have always been the most active and
the most constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious they
spared no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when
they were temperate or weak they allowed the people to rise above
themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by
their vices. Louis XI and Louis XIV reduced every rank beneath the
throne to the same subjection; Louis XV descended, himself and all his
Court, into the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and
personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every
improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh
element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery,
every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved
satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. The taste for
luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial
as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to
enrich the poor and to impoverish the rich.

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of
strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition
to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea as a germ of power
placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory,
the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all
the gifts which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned
to the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the
possession of its adversaries they still served its cause by throwing
into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests spread,
therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge, and literature
became an arsenal where the poorest and the weakest could always find
weapons to their hand.

In perusing the pages of our history, we shall scarcely meet with a
single great event, in the lapse of seven hundred years, which has not
turned to the advantage of equality. The Crusades and the wars of the
English decimated the nobles and divided their possessions; the erection
of comm