I have thus surveyed French society on every side. I have sought out and exhibited all its real and essential elements, and all my inquiries lead to the same result. On every side, whether in political or civil life, I meet with profound diversities and inequalities: diversities and inequalities which can neither be obliterated in civil life by unity of laws and equality of rights, nor in political life by a republican government; and which endure or revive under legislation of every kind and government of every form. This is not an opinion, an argument, or a conjecture, but a statement of facts. Now what is the import and tendency of these facts? Shall we find in them the ancient classifications of society? Will the ancient political denominations apply to them? Do they exhibit an aristocracy opposed to a democracy; or a nobility, a bourgeoisie, and a so-called people? Would these diversities and inequalities of social and political position form, or tend to form, a hierarchy of classes analogous to those which formerly existed in French society? No, certainly!--the words _aristocracy_, _democracy_, _nobility_, _bourgeoisie_, or _hierarchy_, do not correspond to the constituent elements of modern French society, or express them with any truth or accuracy. Does then this society consist solely of citizens equal among each other? Are there no different classes, and only individual diversities and inequalities, devoid of all political importance? Is there nothing but a great and uniform democracy, which seeks satisfaction in a republic at the risk of finding repose in a despotism? Neither is this the fact; either of these descriptions would equally misrepresent the true state of our society. We must emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of words, and see things as they really are. France is extremely new, and yet full of the past; whilst the principles of unity and equality have determined her organization, she still contains social conditions and political situations profoundly different and unequal. There is no hierarchical classification, but there are different classes; there is no aristocracy, properly so called, but there is something which is not democracy. The real, essential, and distinct elements of French society, which I have just described, may enfeeble each other by perpetual conflicts, but neither can destroy or obliterate the other. They survive all the struggles in which they engage, and all the calamities which they inflict on each other. Their co-existence is a fact which it is not in their power to abolish. Let them then fully acquiesce in it; let them live together, and in peace. Neither the liberty nor the repose, the dignity nor the prosperity, the greatness nor the security of France, are to be had on any other terms. On what conditions can this peace be established? CHAPTER VI. POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE.