without distinction, and who selects equally from among them
all the agents of his power. Several other combinations might be easily
imagined, by which very great equality would be united to institutions
more or less free, or even to institutions wholly without freedom.
Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they be entirely
free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be
confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the
one from the other. The taste which men have for liberty, and that which
they feel for equality, are, in fact, two different things; and I am
not afraid to add that, amongst democratic nations, they are two unequal
things.

Upon close inspection, it will be seen that there is in every age some
peculiar and preponderating fact with which all others are connected;
this fact almost always gives birth to some pregnant idea or some ruling
passion, which attracts to itself, and bears away in its course, all the
feelings and opinions of the time: it is like a great stream, towards
which each of the surrounding rivulets seems to flow. Freedom has
appeared in the world at different times and under various forms; it
has not been exclusively bound to any social condition, and it is
not confined to democracies. Freedom cannot, therefore, form the
distinguishing characteristic of democratic ages. The peculiar and
preponderating fact which marks those ages as its own is the equality
of conditions; the ruling passion of men in those periods is the love
of this equality. Ask not what singular charm the men of democratic ages
find in being equal, or what special reasons they may have for clinging
so tenaciously to equality rather than to the other advantages which
society holds out to them: equality is the distinguishing characteristic
of the age they live in; that, of itself, is enough to explain that they
prefer it to all the rest.

But independently of this reason there are several others, which will at
all times habitually lead men to prefer equality to freedom. If a people
could ever succeed in destroying, or even in diminishing, the equality
which prevails in its own body, this could only be accomplished by long
and laborious efforts. Its social condition must be modified, its laws
abolished, its opinions superseded, its habits changed, its manners
corrupted. But political liberty is more easily lost; to neglect to
hold it fast is to allow it to escape. Me