especially in the townships.

American society was not yet prepared to adopt it with all its
consequences. The intelligence of New England, and the wealth of the
country to the south of the Hudson (as I have shown in the preceding
chapter), long exercised a sort of aristocratic influence, which tended
to retain the exercise of social authority in the hands of a few. The
public functionaries were not universally elected, and the citizens were
not all of them electors. The electoral franchise was everywhere placed
within certain limits, and made dependent on a certain qualification,
which was exceedingly low in the North and more considerable in the
South.

The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty
of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships and
municipalities, took possession of the State: every class was enlisted
in its cause; battles were fought, and victories obtained for it, until
it became the law of laws.

A no less rapid change was effected in the interior of society, where
the law of descent completed the abolition of local influences.

At the very time when this consequence of the laws and of the revolution
was apparent to every eye, victory was irrevocably pronounced in favor
of the democratic cause. All power was, in fact, in its hands, and
resistance was no longer possible. The higher orders submitted without
a murmur and without a struggle to an evil which was thenceforth
inevitable. The ordinary fate of falling powers awaited them; each
of their several members followed his own interests; and as it was
impossible to wring the power from the hands of a people which they
did not detest sufficiently to brave, their only aim was to secure its
good-will at any price. The most democratic laws were consequently voted
by the very men whose interests they impaired; and thus, although the
higher classes did not excite the passions of the people against their
order, they accelerated the triumph of the new state of things; so
that by a singular change the democratic impulse was found to be most
irresistible in the very States where the aristocracy had the firmest
hold. The State of Maryland, which had been founded by men of rank,
was the first to proclaim universal suffrage, and to introduce the most
democratic forms into the conduct of its government.

When a nation modifies the elective qualification, it may easily be
foreseen that sooner or later that qualification will