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CHAPTER XXIII.
WHICH IS THE MOST WARLIKE AND MOST REVOLUTIONARY CLASS IN
DEMOCRATIC ARMIES.
It is a part of the essence of a democratic army to be very
numerous in proportion to the people to which it belongs, as I shall
hereafter show. On the other hand, men living in democratic
times seldom choose a military life. Democratic nations are therefore
soon led to give up the system of voluntary recruiting for that
of compulsory enlistment. The necessity of their social condition
compels them to resort to the latter means, and it may easily be
foreseen that they will all eventually adopt it.
When military service is compulsory, the burden is indiscriminately and equally borne by the whole community. This is another necessary consequence of the social condition of these nations, and of their notions. The government may do almost whatever it pleases, provided it appeals to the whole community at once: it is the unequal distribution of the weight, not the weight itself, which commonly occasions resistance.
But as military service is common to all the citizens, the evident consequence is, that each of them remains but for a few years on active duty. Thus it is in the nature of things that the soldier in democracies only passes through the army, while among most aristocratic nations the military profession is one which the soldier adopts, or which is imposed upon him, for life.
This has important consequences. Among the soldiers of a democratic army, some acquire a taste for military life, but the majority being enlisted against their will, and ever ready to go back to their homes, do not consider themselves as seriously engaged in the military profession, and are always thinking of quitting it. Such men do not contract the wants, and only half partake in the passions, which that mode of life engenders. They
