I pass from political questions to social questions, and from the state of our political institutions to that of the relations existent between the different parts of society. I say the _different parts_ to avoid saying _different classes_, for we cannot hear the word class pronounced without thinking that we are threatened with the re-establishment of privileges and exclusions, of that entire _régime_ with its narrow compartments and inseparable barriers within which men were formerly enclosed, and ranked according to their origin, their name, their religion, or whatever other factitious or accidental qualification they might possess. In effect, this _régime_ has fallen--fallen completely and definitively; all legal barriers have disappeared; all careers are open; all labour free: by individual merit and by labour every man may aspire to everything, and examples abound in confirmation of the principle. {xxv} This was the great work, the great conquest of 1789; we celebrate it unceasingly, and we have often the air of forgetting that it ever occurred. The different ancient classes are still full of jealousy, of distrust, and of restless irritation; because they have to struggle for influence in the midst of liberty, they persuade themselves that they are still risking life and limb in defence of their situation and of their right. The Restoration was attacked and undermined on account, it was said, of the evils that the _bourgeoisie_ had to endure, and the risks which it had to run at the hands of the nobles. Under the government of July, the working classes were told incessantly that they were the victims of the privileges and of the tyranny of the middle classes. Facts and actual events gave singularly the lie to such assertions. With what effect? In the hurry of passions and the intoxication of thought, men appealed to theories which had been already often produced on the stage of the world,--theories which have only served to agitate, never to satisfy it. {xxvi} Landed property and capital, labour and wages, the artificial distribution of the means of material happiness amongst men, have served sometimes as the subjects of unjust recrimination, sometimes of chimerical expectations. Attacks were made upon things which the assailants had no right to take; and promises were made to give things which the promisers had not the power to give.