e the masses to
insurrection. By opening out in this way to the public ambition paths
that are at once difficult and easy, easy for strong wills, difficult
for weak or imperfect ones, a State averts the perils of the revolutions
caused by the struggles of men of superior powers to rise to their
proper level. Our long agony of forty years should have made it clear to
any man who has brains that social superiorities are a natural
outcome of the order of things. They are of three kinds that cannot
be questioned--the superiority of the thinker, the superiority of the
politician, the superiority of wealth. Is not that as much as to say,
genius, power, and money, or, in yet other words--the cause, the means,
and the effect? But suppose a kind of social _tabula rasa_, every social
unit perfectly equal, an increase of population everywhere in the same
ratio, and give the same amount of land to each family; it would not
be long before you would again have all the existing inequalities of
fortune; it is glaringly evident, therefore, that there are such things
as superiority of fortune, of thinking capacity, and of power, and we
must make up our minds to this fact; but the masses will always regard
rights that have been most honestly acquired as privileges, and as a
wrong done to themselves.

"The _social contract_ founded upon this basis will be a perpetual
pact between those who have and those who have not. And acting on these
principles, those who benefit by the laws will be the lawmakers, for
they necessarily have the instinct of self-preservation, and foresee
their dangers. It is even more to their interest than to the interest of
the masses themselves that the latter should be quiet and contented. The
happiness of the people should be ready made for the people. If you look
at society as a whole from this point of view, you will soon see, as I
do, that the privilege of election ought only to be exercised by men who
possess wealth, power, or intelligence, and you will likewise see that
the action of the deputies they may choose to represent them should be
considerably restricted.

"The maker of laws, gentlemen, should be in advance of his age. It is
his business to ascertain the tendency of erroneous notions popularly
held, to see the exact direction in which the ideas of a nation are
tending; he labors for the future rather than for the present, and for
the rising generation rather than for the one that is passing away. But