be as other men were, and to become Notables, as they were called in
France; so he migrated from the country into the nearest town, and became
a member of some small body-guild, town council, or what not, bodies
which were infinite in number. In one small town M. de Tocqueville
discovers thirty-six such bodies, "separated from each other by
diminutive privileges, the least honourable of which was still a mark of
honour." Quarrelling perpetually with each other for precedence,
despising and oppressing the very _menu peuple_ from whom they had for
the most part sprung, these innumerable small bodies, instead of uniting
their class, only served to split it up more and more; and when the
Revolution broke them up, once and for all, with all other privileges
whatsoever, no bond of union was left; and each man stood alone, proud of
his "individuality"--his complete social isolation; till he discovered
that, in ridding himself of superiors, he had rid himself also of
fellows; fulfilling, every man in his own person, the old fable of the
bundle of sticks; and had to submit, under the Consulate and the Empire,
to a tyranny to which the Ancien Regime was freedom itself.

For, in France at least, the Ancien Regime was no tyranny. The middle
and upper classes had individual liberty--it may be, only too much; the
liberty of disobeying a Government which they did not respect. "However
submissive the French may have been before the Revolution to the will of
the king, one sort of obedience was altogether unknown to them. They
knew not what it was to bow before an illegitimate and contested power--a
power but little honoured, frequently despised, but willingly endured
because it may be serviceable, or because it may hurt. To that degrading
form of servitude they were ever strangers. The king inspired them with
feelings . . . which have become incomprehensible to this generation . . .They loved him with the affection due to a father; they revered him
with the respect due to God. In submitting to the most arbitrary of his
commands, they yielded less to compulsion than to loyalty; and thus they