h Poland never
recovered.

Thus did the masses of Southern Poland discover, for one generation at
least, that they were not many things, but one thing; a class, capable of
brotherhood and unity, though, alas! only of such as belongs to a pack of
wolves. But such outbursts as this were rare exceptions. In general,
feudalism kept the people divided, and therefore helpless. And as
feudalism died out, and with it the personal self-respect and loyalty
which were engendered by the old relations of master and servant, the
division still remained; and the people, in France especially, became
merely masses, a swarm of incoherent and disorganised things intent on
the necessaries of daily bread, like mites crawling over each other in a
cheese.

Out of this mass were struggling upwards perpetually, all who had a
little ambition, a little scholarship, or a little money, endeavouring to
become members of the middle class by obtaining a Government appointment.
"A man," says M. de Tocqueville, "endowed with some education and small
means, thought it not decorous to die without having been a Government
officer." "Every man, according to his condition," says a contemporary
writer, "wants to be something by command of the king."

It was not merely the "natural vanity" of which M. de Tocqueville accuses
his countrymen, which stirred up in them this eagerness after place; for
we see the same eagerness in other nations of the Continent, who cannot
be accused (as wholes) of that weakness. The fact is, a Government
place, or a Government decoration, cross, ribbon, or what not, is, in a
country where self-government is unknown or dead, the only method, save
literary fame, which is left to men in order to assert themselves either
to themselves or their fellow-men.

A British or American shopkeeper or farmer asks nothing of his
Government. He can, if he chooses, be elected to some local office
(generally unsalaried) by the votes of his fellow-citizens. But that is
his right, and adds nothing to his respectability. The test of that
latter, in a country where all honest callings are equally honourable, is
the amount of money he can make; and a very sound practical test that is,
in a country where intellect and capital are free. Beyond that, he is
what he is, and wishes to be no more, save what he can make himself. He
has his rights, guaranteed by law and public opinion; and as long as he
stands within them, and (as he well phrases it)