ible number.

The men who are entrusted with the direction of public affairs in the
United States are frequently inferior, both in point of capacity and of
morality, to those whom aristocratic institutions would raise to
power. But their interest is identified and confounded with that of the
majority of their fellow-citizens. They may frequently be faithless and
frequently mistaken, but they will never systematically adopt a line of
conduct opposed to the will of the majority; and it is impossible that
they should give a dangerous or an exclusive tendency to the government.

The mal-administration of a democratic magistrate is a mere isolated
fact, which only occurs during the short period for which he is elected.
Corruption and incapacity do not act as common interests, which may
connect men permanently with one another. A corrupt or an incapable
magistrate will not concert his measures with another magistrate, simply
because that individual is as corrupt and as incapable as himself; and
these two men will never unite their endeavors to promote the corruption
and inaptitude of their remote posterity. The ambition and the
manoeuvres of the one will serve, on the contrary, to unmask the other.
The vices of a magistrate, in democratic states, are usually peculiar to
his own person.

But under aristocratic governments public men are swayed by the interest
of their order, which, if it is sometimes confounded with the interests
of the majority, is very frequently distinct from them. This interest is
the common and lasting bond which unites them together; it induces them
to coalesce, and to combine their efforts in order to attain an end
which does not always ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest
number; and it serves not only to connect the persons in authority,
but to unite them to a considerable portion of the community, since
a numerous body of citizens belongs to the aristocracy, without being
invested with official functions. The aristocratic magistrate is
therefore constantly supported by a portion of the community, as well as
by the Government of which he is a member.

The common purpose which connects the interest of the magistrates in
aristocracies with that of a portion of their contemporaries identifies
it with that of future generations; their influence belongs to the
future as much as to the present. The aristocratic magistrate is urged
at the same time toward the same point by the passions of the com