length of time without finding out how order is maintained amongst a
large number of men, and by what contrivance they are made to advance,
harmoniously and methodically, to the same object. Thus they learn to
surrender their own will to that of all the rest, and to make their own
exertions subordinate to the common impulse--things which it is not less
necessary to know in civil than in political associations. Political
associations may therefore be considered as large free schools, where
all the members of the community go to learn the general theory of
association.

But even if political association did not directly contribute to the
progress of civil association, to destroy the former would be to impair
the latter. When citizens can only meet in public for certain purposes,
they regard such meetings as a strange proceeding of rare occurrence,
and they rarely think at all about it. When they are allowed to meet
freely for all purposes, they ultimately look upon public association
as the universal, or in a manner the sole means, which men can employ to
accomplish the different purposes they may have in view. Every new want
instantly revives the notion. The art of association then becomes, as I
have said before, the mother of action, studied and applied by all.

When some kinds of associations are prohibited and others allowed, it is
difficult to distinguish the former from the latter, beforehand. In this
state of doubt men abstain from them altogether, and a sort of public
opinion passes current which tends to cause any association whatsoever
to be regarded as a bold and almost an illicit enterprise. *a

[Footnote a: This is more especially true when the executive government
has a discretionary power of allowing or prohibiting associations. When
certain associations are simply prohibited by law, and the courts of
justice have to punish infringements of that law, the evil is far less
considerable. Then every citizen knows beforehand pretty nearly what he
has to expect. He judges himself before he is judged by the law, and,
abstaining from prohibited associations, he embarks in those which are
legally sanctioned. It is by these restrictions that all free nations
have always admitted that the right of association might be limited.
But if the legislature should invest a man with a power of ascertaining
beforehand which associations are dangerous and which are useful, and
should authorize him to destroy all associations i