I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world… Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their pleasures and watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if its purpose was to prepare men for manhood. But it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood…
It provides for their security, supplies their needs, facilitates their pleasures, manages their affairs, directs their industry, regulates their property, subdivides their inheritances —what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and trouble of living? … Thus it gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself…
This supreme power… covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided… it does not tyrannize, but it compresses and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to a flock of timid and industrious sheep, of which the government is the shepherd.
UNDER-THE-NET 