“All classes that touch power abuse it; no one has the right to say he would have been better.”Alexis de Tocqueville · Vechiul Regim și Revoluția · 1856 · Vechiul Regim și Revoluția, Cartea a II-a, capitolul 8
Abusive power comes from the absence of checks, not from the bad character of the class holding it.
Tocqueville blames no particular class, only the position: unchecked power corrupts whoever holds it. Nobles abused it when they ruled, the bourgeoisie abused it when it rose, and freed peasants abused it in turn. The mechanism is the absence of checks, not bad character. The French Revolution changed who held power, not its limits.
If corruption comes from position, not character, then the solution is not to find better people but to build better brakes. Tocqueville suggests power must be limited from outside, because from inside no one limits themselves. A board that writes its own rules will hardly obey them. A landlord who sets his own rent increase will find no reason to freeze it. The limit must come from somewhere external: a law, an independent check, an opponent with a real vote. The practical question becomes: who actually holds the power to say no? The next step is to see what happens when brakes exist on paper but not in fact.
Why it matters It is a lesson for any change of government or leadership: ask not only who comes to power, but what checks they will face.