Democracy In America, vol 1 | Page 8

spread of
mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art,
opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of
government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters
took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the
privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths
were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was
beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was
conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced
into the Government by the aristocracy itself.
In the course of these seven hundred years it sometimes happened that
in order 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 communities introduced an element of democratic liberty
into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms
equalized the villein and the noble on the field of battle; printing
opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post was
organized so as to bring the same information to the door of the poor
man's cottage and to the gate of the palace; and Protestantism
proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven. The
discovery of America offered a thousand new paths to fortune, and
placed riches and power within the reach of the adventurous and the
obscure. If we examine what has happened in France at intervals of
fifty years, beginning with the eleventh century, we shall invariably

perceive that a twofold revolution has taken place in the state of society.
The noble has gone down on the social ladder, and the roturier has gone
up; the one descends as the other rises. Every half century brings them
nearer to each other, and they will very shortly meet.
Nor is this phenomenon at all peculiar to France. Whithersoever we
turn our eyes we shall witness the same continual revolution throughout
the whole of Christendom. The various occurrences of national
existence have everywhere turned to the advantage of democracy; all
men have aided it by their exertions: those who have intentionally
labored in its cause, and those who have served it unwittingly; those
who have fought for it and those who have declared themselves its
opponents, have all been driven along in the same track,