I am wrong in saying, the secret. The word _Democracy_ is not new, and in all ages it has signified what it signifies now. But what is new and proper to our times is this: the word _Democracy_ is now pronounced every day, every hour, and in every place; and at every time and place it is heard by all men. This formidable appeal to all that is most potent, for good and for evil, in man and in society, was formerly heard only transiently, locally, and among certain classes, which, though bound to other classes by the ties of a common country, were distinct and profoundly different from them. They lived at a distance from each other; each obscurely known to the other. Now there is but one society; and in this society there are no more lofty barriers, no more great distances, no more mutual obscurities. Whether it be false or true, noxious or salutary, when once a social idea arises, it penetrates everywhere, and its action is universal and constant. It is a torch that is never extinguished; a voice that is never wearied or hushed. Universality and publicity are from henceforth the conditions of all the great provocations addressed to men,--of all the great impulses given to society. This is doubtless one of those absolute and sovereign facts which enter into the designs of God with regard to mankind. Such being the fact, the empire of the word _Democracy_ is not to be regarded as a transitory or local accident. It is the development--others would say the explosion--of all the elements of human nature throughout all the ranks and all the depths of society; and consequently the open, general, continuous, inevitable struggle of its good and evil instincts; of its virtues and its vices; of all its powers and faculties, whether to improve or to corrupt, to raise or to abase, to create or to destroy. Such is, from henceforth, the social state, the permanent condition of our nation. CHAPTER II. WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO DEMOCRACY? There are men whom this fearful struggle does not alarm: they have full confidence in human nature. According to them, if left to itself, its progress is towards good: all the evils of society arise from governments which debase men by violence or corrupt them by fraud: liberty--liberty for everybody and everything--liberty will almost always suffice to enlighten or to control the wills of men, to prevent evil or to cure it: a little government--the least possible--may be allowed for the repression of extreme disorder and the control of brute force.