If we carefully examine the state of society in France before the Revolution we may see it under two very contrary aspects. It would seem that the men of that time, especially those belonging to the middle and upper ranks of society, who alone were at all conspicuous, were all exactly alike. Nevertheless we find that this monotonous crowd was divided into many different parts by a prodigious number of small barriers, and that each of these small divisions formed a distinct society, exclusively occupied with its own peculiar interests, and taking no share in the life of the community at large. When we consider this almost infinitesimal division, we shall perceive that the citizens of no other nation were so ill prepared to act in common, or to afford each other a mutual support during a crisis; and that a society thus constituted might be utterly demolished in a moment by a great revolution. Imagine all those small barriers thrown down by an earthquake, and the result is at once a social body more compact and more homogeneous than any perhaps that the world had ever seen. I have shown that throughout nearly the whole kingdom the independent life of the provinces had long been extinct; this had powerfully contributed to render all Frenchmen very much alike. Through the diversities which still subsisted the unity of the nation might already be discerned; uniformity of legislation brought it to light. As the eighteenth century advanced there was a great increase in the number of edicts, royal declarations, and Orders in Council, applying the same regulations in the same manner in every part of the empire. It was not the governing body alone but the mass of those governed, who conceived the idea of a legislation so general and so uniform, the same everywhere and for all: this idea was apparent in all the plans of reform which succeeded each other for thirty years before the outbreak of the Revolution. Two centuries earlier the very materials for such conceptions, if we may use such a phrase, would have been wanting.