It will be recollected that one of the most striking facts in the elements of the ancient European society is their diversity, separation, and independence. The feudal nobility, the clergy, and the boroughs, had each a position, laws, and manners, entirely distinct; they were so many separate societies, each governing itself for its own behoof, and by its individual rules and power. They were in mutual relation and contact, but not in a veritable union, nor did they form a nation or state, properly so called. The fusion of all these societies into one has been accomplished; this is distinctly, as has been seen, the distinguishing fact, the essential character, of modern society. The old social elements have been reduced to two--the government and the nation--that is to say, diversity having ceased, similarity produced union. But before this result was consummated, and indeed to avert it, numerous efforts were tried to render it possible for all these particular societies to live and act in common, without destroying their diversity or independence. Their object was not to make any attack of moment on their individual position, their privileges, or their special nature, and yet to unite them into one single state, to form from them the substance of a nation, and to rally them under one and the same government. All these attempts failed. The result which I have just mentioned, the unity of modern society, attests their bad success. Even in those countries of Europe where there still subsist some traces of the ancient diversity in the social elements--in Germany, for example, where there are yet a true feudal nobility and a true burgher order, and in England, where a national church is in possession of special revenues and a peculiar jurisdiction--it is clear that this distinct existence is but a semblance and pretence, and that these particular societies are politically confounded in the general society, absorbed in the nation, governed by the public recognised powers, in subjection to one system, and drawn along in the current of the prevailing ideas and manners. Therefore, I repeat, the separation and independence of the old social elements have no sort of reality, even where they are formally sustained. {168}