Again, Rousseau's notion of the limitations of law and the prerogative of the people, carried out, would lead to the utter subversion of central authority, and reduce nations to an absolute democracy of small communities. They would divide and subdivide until society was resolved into its original elements. This idea existed among the early Greek states, when a state rarely comprised more than a single city or town or village, such as might be found among the tribes of North American Indians. The great political question in Ancient Greece was the autonomy of cities, which kept the whole land in constant wars and dissensions and quarrels and jealousies, and prevented that centralization of power which would have made Greece unconquerable and the mistress of the world. Our wholesome American system of autonomy in local affairs, with a common authority in matters affecting the general good, is organized liberty. But the ancient and outgrown idea of unregulated autonomy was revived by Rousseau; and though it could not be carried out by the French Revolutionists who accepted nearly all his theories, it led to the disintegration of France, and the multiplication of offices fatal to a healthy central power. Napoleon broke up all this in his centralized despotism, even if, to keep the Revolutionary sympathy, he retained the Departments which were substituted for the ancient Provinces. The extreme spirit of democratic liberty which is the characteristic of Rousseau's political philosophy led to the advocacy of the wildest doctrines of equality. He would prevent the accumulation of wealth, so that, to use his words, "no one citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and no one so poor as to be obliged to sell himself." He would have neither rich people nor beggars. What could flow from such doctrines but discontent and unreasonable expectations among the poor, and a general fear and sense of insecurity among the rich? This "state of nature," moreover, in his view, could be reached only by going backward and destroying all civilization,--and it was civilization which he ever decried,--a very pleasant doctrine to vagabonds, but likely to be treated with derisive mockery by all those who have something to conserve.