ary power; and
provided that the legislature take upon itself to deprive men of their
independence, they are not dissatisfied.

I am therefore convinced that the prince who, in presence of an
encroaching democracy, should endeavor to impair the judicial authority
in his dominions, and to diminish the political influence of lawyers,
would commit a great mistake. He would let slip the substance
of authority to grasp at the shadow. He would act more wisely in
introducing men connected with the law into the government; and if he
entrusted them with the conduct of a despotic power, bearing some marks
of violence, that power would most likely assume the external features
of justice and of legality in their hands.

The government of democracy is favorable to the political power of
lawyers; for when the wealthy, the noble, and the prince are excluded
from the government, they are sure to occupy the highest stations, in
their own right, as it were, since they are the only men of information
and sagacity, beyond the sphere of the people, who can be the object of
the popular choice. If, then, they are led by their tastes to combine
with the aristocracy and to support the Crown, they are naturally
brought into contact with the people by their interests. They like the
government of democracy, without participating in its propensities
and without imitating its weaknesses; whence they derive a twofold
authority, from it and over it. The people in democratic states does not
mistrust the members of the legal profession, because it is well known
that they are interested in serving the popular cause; and it listens
to them without irritation, because it does not attribute to them any
sinister designs. The object of lawyers is not, indeed, to overthrow the
institutions of democracy, but they constantly endeavor to give it an
impulse which diverts it from its real tendency, by means which are
foreign to its nature. Lawyers belong to the people by birth and
interest, to the aristocracy by habit and by taste, and they may be
looked upon as the natural bond and connecting link of the two great
classes of society.

The profession of the law is the only aristocratic element which can be
amalgamated without violence with the natural elements of democracy, and
which can be advantageously and permanently combined with them. I am
not unacquainted with the defects which are inherent in the character
of that body of men; but without this admixtur