demonstrates the fact. The inhabitants of the United States were never divided by any privileges; they have never known the mutual relation of master and inferior, and as they neither dread nor hate each other, they have never known the necessity of calling in the supreme power to manage their affairs. The lot of the Americans is singular: they have derived from the aristocracy of England the notion of private rights and the taste for local freedom; and they have been able to retain both the one and the other, because they have had no aristocracy to combat.
If at all times education enables men to defend their independence, this is most especially true in democratic ages. When all men are alike, it is easy to found a sole and all-powerful government, by the aid of mere instinct. But men require much intelligence, knowledge, and art to organize and to maintain secondary powers under similar circumstances, and to create amidst the independence and individual weakness of the citizens such free associations as may be in a condition to struggle against tyranny without destroying public order.
Hence the concentration of power and the subjection of
individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not
only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the
same proportion as their ignorance. It is true, that in ages
of imperfect civilization the government is frequently as wanting
in the knowledge required to impose a despotism upon
the people as the people are wanting in the knowledge
required to shake it off; but the effect is not the same on both
sides. However rude a democratic people may be, the
central power which rules it is never completely devoid of
cultivation, because it readily draws to its own uses what little
cultivation is to be found in the country, and, if necessary,
may seek assistance elsewhere. Hence, amongst a nation
which is ignorant as well as democratic, an amazing differrence
cannot fail speedily to arise between the intellectual
capacity of the ruler and that of each of his subjects. This
completes the easy concentration of all power in his hands:
