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CHAPTER V.
THAT AMONG THE EUROPEAN NATIONS OF OUR TIME THE POWER OF
GOVERNMENTS IS INCREASING, ALTHOUGH THE PERSONS WHO GOVERN
ARE LESS STABLE.
On reflecting upon what has already been said, the reader will
be startled and alarmed to find that in Europe everything seems
to conduce to the indefinite extension of the prerogatives of
government, and to render all that enjoyed the rights of private
independence more weak, more subordinate, and more precarious.
The democratic nations of Europe have all the general and permanent tendencies which urge the Americans to the centralization of government, and they are moreover exposed to a number of secondary and incidental causes with which the Americans are unacquainted. It would seem as if every step they make toward equality brings them nearer to despotism.
And indeed if we do but cast our looks around, we shall be convinced that such is the fact. During the aristocratic ages which preceded the present time, the sovereigns of Europe had been deprived of, or had relinquished, many of the rights inherent in their power. Not a hundred years ago, among the greater part of European nations, numerous private persons and corporations were sufficiently independent to administer justice, to raise and maintain troops, to levy taxes, and frequently even to make or interpret the law. The State has everywhere resumed to itself alone these natural attributes of sovereign power; in all matters of government the State tolerates no intermediate agent between itself and the people, and in general business it directs the people by its own immediate influence. I am far from blaming this concentration of power, I simply point it out.
At the same period a great number of secondary powers existed in Europe, which represented local interests and administered local
