shallowest kind; there is nothing to substantiate to me his integrity or competency; he has no diploma, and no one to endorse him as has a private tutor; he has no guarantee from the society to which he belongs, like the physician, the priest or the lawyer. With references as poor as these I should hesitate to recruit him even as a domestic. And all the more because the class from which I am obliged to take him is almost always that of politicians, a suspicious class, especially in countries in which universal suffrage prevails. This class is not recruited among the most independent, the ablest, and the most honest, but among voluble, scheming men, zealous charlatans, who for want of perseverance, having failed in private careers, in situations where one is watched too closely and too nicely weighed in the balance, have selected roles in which the want of scrupulousness and discretion is a force instead of a weakness; to their indelicacy and impudence the doors of a public career stand wide open.--Such is the august personage into whose hands, according to the theory, I am called upon to surrender my will, my will in full; certainly, if self-renunciation were necessary, I should risk less in giving myself up to a king or to an aristocracy, even hereditary; for then would my representatives be at least recommended by their evident rank and their probable competency.--Democracy, in its nature and composition, is a system in which the individual awards to his representatives the least trust and deference; hence, it is the system in which he should entrust them with the least power. Conscience and honor everywhere enjoin a man to retain for himself some portion of his independence; but nowhere is there so little be ceded. If a modern constitution ought to clearly define and limit the domain of the State, it is in respect of contemporary democracy that it ought to be the most restrictive. III. Origin and nature of the modern State. Origin and nature of the modern State.--Its functions, rights and limits.