In no country in Europe has the great social revolution which I have
been describing made such rapid progress as in France; but it has always
been borne on by chance. The heads of the State have never had any
forethought for its exigencies, and its victories have been obtained
without their consent or without their knowledge. The most powerful, the
most intelligent, and the most moral classes of the nation have never
attempted to connect themselves with it in order to guide it. The people
has consequently been abandoned to its wild propensities, and it has
grown up like those outcasts who receive their education in the
public streets, and who are unacquainted with aught but the vices and
wretchedness of society. The existence of a democracy was seemingly
unknown, when on a sudden it took possession of the supreme power.
Everything was then submitted to its caprices; it was worshipped as the
idol of strength; until, when it was enfeebled by its own excesses, the
legislator conceived the rash project of annihilating its power, instead
of instructing it and correcting its vices; no attempt was made to fit
it to govern, but all were bent on excluding it from the government.

The consequence of this has been that the democratic revolution has been
effected only in the material parts of society, without that concomitant
change in laws, ideas, customs, and manners which was necessary to
render such a revolution beneficial. We have gotten a democracy, but
without the conditions which lessen its vices and render its natural
advantages more prominent; and although we already perceive the evils it
brings, we are ignorant of the benefits it may confer.

While the power of the Crown, supported by the aristocracy, peaceably
governed the nations of Europe, society possessed, in the midst of its
wretchedness, several different advantages which can now scarcely be