eir legal representative.

Upon the whole, if, in this old society, the pressure was unequally
distributed, if the general equilibrium was unstable, if the upper parts
bore down too heavily on the lower ones, the sorting, at least, which
goes on in every civilized State, constantly separating the wheat from
the chaff, went on tolerably well; except at the center and at the
Court, where the winnowing machine had worked haphazard and, frequently,
in an opposite sense for a century, the separation proceeded
regularly, undoubtedly slower, but, perhaps, more equitably than in our
contemporary democracy. The chance that a notable by right could become
a notable de facto was then much greater: it was less difficult, and the
inclination to found, maintain and perpetuate a family or a business
was much stronger; people looked more often beyond themselves; the eyes
naturally turned outside the narrow circle of one's personality, looking
backward as well as beyond this present life. The (later) institution
of an equal partition of property, the (later) system of obligatory
partition and the rule of partition in kind, with other prescriptions
of the (new) civil code, did not split up an heritage and ruin the
home.[4184] Parental negligence and the children's lack of respect and
consideration had not yet upset the authority and abolished respect in
the family. Useful and natural associations were not yet stifled in the
germ nor arrested in their development by the systematic hostility of
the law. The ease and cheapness of transportation, the promiscuity of
schools, the excitement of competition, everyone's rush to placement and
office, the increasing excitement of ambition and greed, had not (yet)
immeasurably multiplied the class of irresponsible malcontents and
mischievous nomads. In the political order of things, inaptitude, envy,
brutality were not sovereign; universal suffrage did not exclude from
power the men, born, bred and qualified to exercise it; countless public
posts were not offered as a prey to charlatanism and to the intrigues
of politicians. France was not then, as now-a-days, on a way to become
a vast lodging-house administered by casual managers, condemned to
periodical failures, inhabited by anonymous residents, indifferent
to each other, lacking local ties, lacking engagements and having no
corporate loyalties, merely tenants and passing consumers, placed in
numerical order around a common mess-table where each t