frequently preserved great freedom of mind, even in the most complete
dependence. This liberty, irregular, intermittent," says M. de
Tocqueville, "helped to form those vigorous characters, those proud and
daring spirits, which were to make the French Revolution at once the
object of the admiration and the terror of succeeding generations."

This liberty--too much akin to anarchy, in which indeed it issued for
awhile--seems to have asserted itself in continual petty resistance to
officials whom they did not respect, and who, in their turn, were more
than a little afraid of the very men out of whose ranks they had sprung.

The French Government--one may say, every Government on the Continent in
those days--had the special weakness of all bureaucracies; namely, that
want of moral force which compels them to fall back at last on physical
force, and transforms the ruler into a bully, and the soldier into a
policeman and a gaoler. A Government of parvenus, uncertain of its own
position, will be continually trying to assert itself to itself, by
vexatious intermeddling and intruding pretensions; and then, when it
meets with the resistance of free and rational spirits, will either
recoil in awkward cowardice, or fly into a passion, and appeal to the
halter and the sword. Such a Government can never take itself for
granted, because it knows that it is not taken for granted by the people.
It never can possess the quiet assurance, the courteous dignity, without
swagger, yet without hesitation, which belongs to hereditary legislators;
by which term is to be understood, not merely kings, not merely noblemen,
but every citizen of a free nation, however democratic, who has received
from his forefathers the right, the duty, and the example of
self-government.

Such was the political and social state of the Ancien Regime, not only in