ABSTRACT
The principle of equality may be established in civil society, without prevailing in the political world. In democratic ages, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual to the race are much clearer, devoted service to any one man becomes rarer; the bond of human affection is extended, but it is relaxed. Aristocracy had made a chain of all the members of the community, from the peasant to the king: democracy breaks that chain, and severs every link of it. Despotism then, which is at all times dangerous, is more particularly to be feared in democratic ages. The Americans have combated by free institutions the tendency of equality to keep men asunder, and they subdued it. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools.
