stribute his fortune amongst his
children without the interference of the State; after having domineered
over a whole life, the law insists upon regulating the very last act of
it.]

[Footnote b: In proportion as the duties of the central power are
augmented, the number of public officers by whom that power is
represented must increase also. They form a nation in each nation; and
as they share the stability of the government, they more and more fill
up the place of an aristocracy.

In almost every part of Europe the government rules in two ways; it
rules one portion of the community by the fear which they entertain of
its agents, and the other by the hope they have of becoming its agents.]

But this is as yet only one side of the picture. The authority of
government has not only spread, as we have just seen, throughout the
sphere of all existing powers, till that sphere can no longer contain
it, but it goes further, and invades the domain heretofore reserved
to private independence. A multitude of actions, which were formerly
entirely beyond the control of the public administration, have been
subjected to that control in our time, and the number of them is
constantly increasing. Amongst aristocratic nations the supreme
government usually contented itself with managing and superintending
the community in whatever directly and ostensibly concerned the national
honor; but in all other respects the people were left to work out their
own free will. Amongst these nations the government often seemed to
forget that there is a point at which the faults and the sufferings of
private persons involve the general prosperity, and that to prevent
the ruin of a private individual must sometimes be a matter of public
importance. The democratic nations of our time lean to the opposite
extreme. It is evident that most of our rulers will not content
themselves with governing the people collectively: it would seem as
if they thought themselves responsible for the actions and private
condition of their subjects--as if they had undertaken to guide and to
instruct each of them in the various incidents of life, and to secure
their happiness quite independently of their own consent. On the other
hand private individuals grow more and more apt to look upon the
supreme power in the same light; they invoke its assistance in all their
necessities, and they fix their eyes upon the administration as their
mentor or their guide.

I assert that the