But on the Continent democracy sprang from very different antecedents, and possesses a very different character. Equality was introduced into France by convulsion, and has engrossed an undue share of her attention since. Freedom, on the other hand, has been really less desired than power. The Revolution found the affairs of that country administered by a strong centralized organization, with its hand everywhere and on everything, and the Revolution left them so. Revolution has succeeded revolution; dynasties and constitutions have come and gone; almost every part of the political and social system has suffered change; the form of government has been republic, empire, monarchy, empire and republic again; but the authority of government, its sphere, its attributes, have remained throughout the same. Each party in succession has seized the power of the State, but none has sought to curb its range. On the contrary, their temptation lay the other way; they have been always so bent on using the authority and mechanism of government to impair or suppress the influence of their adversaries, whom they regarded as at the same time the adversaries of the State, that they could only wish that authority to be larger and that mechanism more perfect than they already were. Even the more popular parties are content to accept the existing over-government as the normal state of affairs, and always strive to gain the control of it rather than to restrain its action. And so it has come about that, while they sought liberty for themselves, they were afraid to grant it to their opponents, for fear their opponents should be able to get the authority of this too powerful administration into their hands and serve them in the same way. The struggle for freedom has thus been corrupted into a struggle for power. That is the secret of the pathetic story of modern France. That is why, with all her marvellous efforts for liberty, she has never fully possessed it, and that is why she seems condemned to instability.