The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789. Alexis de Tocqueville
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contrary was the case. There the ancient noble families which still existed had not only kept, but greatly increased their fortunes; they were still first in riches as in power. The new families which had risen beside them had only copied but had not surpassed their wealth.
In France the non-noble classes alone seemed to inherit all the wealth which the nobility had lost; they fattened, as it were, upon its substance. Yet there were no laws to prevent the middle class from ruining themselves, or to assist them in acquiring riches; nevertheless they incessantly increased their wealth; in many instances they had become as rich as, and often richer than the nobles. Nay, more, their wealth was of the same kind, for, though dwelling in the town, they were often landowners in the country, and sometimes they even bought seignorial estates.
Education and habits of life had already created a thousand other points of resemblance between these two classes of men. The middle class man was as enlightened as the noble, and it deserves to be remarked, his acquirements were derived from the very same source. The same light shone upon both. Their education had been equally theoretical and literary. Paris, which became more and more the sole preceptor of France, had ended by giving to all minds one common form and action.
At the end of the eighteenth century no doubt some difference was still perceptible between the manners of the nobility and those of the middle class, for nothing assimilates more slowly than that surface of society which we call manners; at bottom, however, all men above the rank of the common people were alike; they had the same ideas, the same habits, the same tastes; they indulged in the same pleasures, read the same books, and spoke the same language. The only difference left between them was in their rights.
I much doubt whether this was the case in the same degree anywhere else, even in England, where the different classes, though firmly united by common interests, still differed in their habits and feelings; for political liberty, which possesses the admirable power of placing the citizens of a State in compulsory intercourse and mutual dependence, does not on that account always make them similar; it is the government of one man which, in the end, has the inevitable effect of rendering all men alike, and all mutually indifferent to their common fate.
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