ent tendency of American society
appears to me to become more and more democratic. Nevertheless, I do not
assert that the Americans will not, at some future time, restrict the
circle of political rights in their country, or confiscate those rights
to the advantage of a single individual; but I cannot imagine that they
will ever bestow the exclusive exercise of them upon a privileged
class of citizens, or, in other words, that they will ever found an
aristocracy.

An aristocratic body is composed of a certain number of citizens
who, without being very far removed from the mass of the people, are,
nevertheless, permanently stationed above it: a body which it is easy
to touch and difficult to strike; with which the people are in daily
contact, but with which they can never combine. Nothing can be imagined
more contrary to nature and to the secret propensities of the human
heart than a subjection of this kind; and men who are left to follow
their own bent will always prefer the arbitrary power of a king to the
regular administration of an aristocracy. Aristocratic institutions
cannot subsist without laying down the inequality of men as a
fundamental principle, as a part and parcel of the legislation,
affecting the condition of the human family as much as it affects that
of society; but these are things so repugnant to natural equity that
they can only be extorted from men by constraint.

I do not think a single people can be quoted, since human society began
to exist, which has, by its own free will and by its own exertions,
created an aristocracy within its own bosom. All the aristocracies of
the Middle Ages were founded by military conquest; the conqueror was the
noble, the vanquished became the serf. Inequality was then imposed by
force; and after it had been introduced into the manners of the country
it maintained its own authority, and was sanctioned by the legislation.
Communities have existed which were aristocratic from their earliest
origin, owing to circumstances anterior to that event, and which became
more democratic in each succeeding age. Such was the destiny of the
Romans, and of the barbarians after them. But a people, having taken its
rise in civilization and democracy, which should gradually establish an
inequality of conditions, until it arrived at inviolable privileges and
exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world; and nothing intimates
that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.