virtues were so inherent in the constitution of an aristocratic nation, and are so opposite to the character of a modern people, that they can never be infused into it; some good tendencies and some bad propensities which were unknown to the former, are natural to the latter; some ideas suggest theinselves spontaneously to the imagination of the one, which are utterly repugnant to the mind of the other. They are like two distinct orders of human beings, each of which has its own merits and defects, its own advantages and its own evils. Care must therefore be taken not to judge the state of society, which is now coming into existence, by notions derived from a state of society which no longer exists; for as these states of society are exceedingly different in their structure, they cannot be submitted to a just or fair comparison.

"The object is not to retain the peculiar advantages which the inequality of conditions bestows upon mankind, but to secure the new benefits which equality may supply. We have not to seek to make ourselves like our progenitors, but to strive to work out that species of greatness and happiness which is our own.

"For myself, who now look back from this extreme limit of my task, and discover from afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted my more attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions and of hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off,-mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief, that for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous they require but to will it.

"I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free: as it is with man, so with communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.

But the application to be made of this book, and indeed the purposes to which its author would doubtless have it applied, are of a more practical character. Men will not be slow to draw this inference, nor to act suitably upon the convictions it may produce in their minds. The principle of necessity is not required to impart a deeper gloom to the picture which these volumes disclose. Nay rather, whilst we yield our ac

knowledegment of the fidelity of its outline, we invoke the powers which may yet remain to us, to prove, that whatever progress the democratic element may have made, its uncontrolled and inevitable dominion is not yet paramount. Whilst M. de Tocqueville, writing for a people amongst whom the social change is made and the work of revolution accomplished, provides to meet the consequences of the democratic principle, we write for a people who may yet provide to meet the principle itself before its authority is unquestioned, and even its excess justified by its power.

It will be asked whether the diffusion of knowledge, in quantities necessarily limited, will suffice to keep the great principles of science and of abstruse truth in view, to reward the first merit in art, and to explore and extend the utmost limits to which the intellect may attain: or whether it be not possible at once to promote these higher pursuits by the highest rewards of distinction, whilst their derivatives are broadly diffused among the mass of the people by an enlightened system of popular education. The paltry indulgences of animal life, the mere pursuit of self-interest, and the desultory chace of unattained happiness and imperfect results, cannot satisfy minds which are not devoid of cravings for the highest intellectual enjoyment, of all sense of the pleasures of duty, and of the conscious pride of perseverance and lasting success. Men who have learned to work with a view to their future, to their family, and to their dependents, will not willingly forego the objects which they have in view beyond the limits of the day-objects to which they are bound by the permanence of their property and by their sense of lasting duties.

We have already indicated that the want of human sympathy is the mark of a decaying aristocracy: the energetic performance of human duties is the test of an invincible one. These are the qualities which justify the hardship of unequal conditions, and resolve the difficulty of God's various allotments to men; since none are so high or happy as not to be made higher and happier by the discharge of humble duties, nor any so humble as not to be the monitors of the world's greatness. But that bastard aristocracy which M. de Tocqueville predicts may arise from the manufacturing powers

of our age, has all the harshness of contrast, with none of its humane correctives-all the hideous consequences of the property of man in man, without even the interested sympathy of the slave-owner in the negro. Such an aristocracy would indeed be the worst of all changes, even from the worst democracy.

The jealousy which pervades democratic societies is the deadliest enemy to their happiness and ultimately their prosperity, for it tends to put consequences at enmity with causes. We have seen, for instance, how practical science is severed from the high theoretical science in which its powers originate: so in the arts, the highest excellence is too high for mediocrity to assent to its supremacy, and mediocrity, too ignorant or too proud to borrow from the highest excellence, lapses into mere balderdash. Man can only improve by humility, by the love of superiority, and by the respect for what is higher than himself: but these qualities are the reverse of the democratic virtues of reliance on self, emulation pushed to jealousy, and disdain of authority. Until in the end, as the highest models of truth in science, power in politics, virtue in civil society, taste in the arts, or superiority in whatever else, cease to be fostered and acknowledged, their great function is at an end, and they are superseded by an aggregate of inferior qualities, which must ever go on declining, because that aggregate forswears its dependence on those superior models from which its merits-such as they are-did originally proceed.

Thus the author traces the decline of all that is most worth living for in the world: nor does he stop short of the final consequences to which his premises of the necessary approach of democracy lead him. He does not pause till he has described a condition more degraded, more servile, more unworthy of man than the worst times of ancient despotism; a condition which he shows to be naturally superinduced by the vices and by some of the virtues of democratic ages, but which he believes may be warded off by strenuous effort, by wise education, and by a judicious use of free institutions.

Without entering upon the train of argument by which these conclusions are established, we shall trace the moral effects of this change, in one of the cases in which its results would appear to be least questionable. Amongst the institu

tions now existing in the United States which tend to obviate some of the immediate evils, if not to correct the ulterior tendencies of democracy, M. de Tocqueville places in the foremost rank the practice of association for civil and political purposes. His remarks are here again more especially pointed at his own country, where the habit of association is as little known as many of the higher correctives of the democratic element.

"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. If it be proposed to advance some truth, or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the Government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

"Thus the most democratic country on the face of the earth is that in which men have in our time carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the object of their common desires, and have applied this new science to the greatest number of purposes. Is this the result of accident? or is there in reality any necessary connection between the principle of association and that of equality?

"Aristocratic communities always contain, amongst a multitude of persons who by themselves are powerless, a small number of powerful and wealthy citizens, each of whom can achieve great undertakings singlehanded. In aristocratic societies men do not need to combine in order to act, because they are strongly held together. Every wealthy and powerful citizen constitutes the head of a permanent and compulsory association, composed of all those who are dependent upon him, or whom he makes subservient to the execution of his designs.

"Amongst democratic nations, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent and feeble; they can do hardly anything by themselves, and none of them can oblige his fellow-men to lend him their assistance. They all, therefore, fall into a state of incapacity, if they do not learn voluntarily to help each other. If men living in democratic countries had no right and no inclination to associate for political purposes, their independence would be in great jeopardy; but they might long preserve their wealth and their cultivation : whereas if they never acquired the habit of forming associations in ordinary life, civilization itself would be endangered. A people amongst which individuals should lose the power of achieving great things single-handed, without acquiring the means of producing them by united exertions, would soon relapse into barbarism."

In the last part of the book, the principle of association is in like manner advocated as the only means of opposing an adequate resistance to the centralizing spirit of modern despotism.

But admitting all that can be said of the principle of association as a means for accomplishing physical and even moral objects, when all other means fail,-that is to say when individual strength cannot attain the one, nor religious authority command the other,—the real value of the principle of association in itself still remains to be determined. It promotes certain objects; it creates a new kind of relation in which men stand by one another, who would otherwise live wholly apart; and it teaches certain habits of discipline and deference to the general will, which are advantageous to the community and the individual. But here the advantages of this social contrivance end: you will seek in vain in associated bodies for the sense of duty and responsibility, which every man seeks to shift from himself to his neighbour. M. de Tocqueville himself remarks at the close of his work :-" It must be admitted that "these collective beings which are called associations are 66 stronger and more formidable than a private individual can "ever be, and that they have less of the responsibility of their 66 own actions; whence it seems reasonable that they should "not be allowed to retain so great an independence of the "supreme power as might be conceded to a private indivi"dual." Associations, of the description here chiefly alluded to, have no conscience: they have no fixed principle, for their acts and their professions are almost always a compromise between the sincere personal convictions of their own members. For their misdeeds no man will take blame to himself: nor will there be any room left for those higher and better impulses which act upon him individually, not collectively. "Associated man," said Shelley, with much truth, in spite of the bitterness of the sentiment, "holds it "as the very sacrament of his union to forswear all delicacy, "all benevolence, all remorse,-all that is true, tender and "sublime.”—That is to say when men are associated for a purpose, not by a principle.

Individually, man cannot wholly separate the pursuit of his interests from the dictates of his own nature and conscience; -collectively, he strengthens the former by an alliance with a host of other men's passions as eager as his own, and stifles the latter in the solitude or oblivion of his heart. What is profitable to the company can hardly be criminal to himself: