heaven. The discovery of America offered a thousand new paths to
fortune, and placed riches and power within the reach of the adventurous
and the obscure.

If we examine what has happened in France at intervals of fifty years,
beginning with the eleventh century, we shall invariably perceive that a
twofold revolution has taken place in the state of society. The noble
has gone down on the social ladder, and the _roturier_ has gone up; the
one descends as the other rises. Every half-century brings them nearer
to each other, and they will very shortly meet.

Nor is this phenomenon at all peculiar to France. Whithersoever we turn
our eyes, we shall discover the same continual revolution throughout the
whole of Christendom.

The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to
the advantage of democracy; all men have aided it by their exertions;
those who have intentionally labored in its cause, and those who have
served it unwittingly--those who have fought for it, and those who have
declared themselves its opponents--have all been driven along in the
same track, have all labored to one end, some ignorantly, and some
unwillingly; all have been blind instruments in the hands of God.

The gradual development of the equality of conditions is, therefore, a
providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine
decree: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human
interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its
progress.

Would it, then, be wise to imagine that a social impulse which dates