title: Tocqueville: The Ancien Rgime and the French Revolution (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)
author: Jon Elster
description: This new translation of an undisputed classic aims to be both accurate and readable. Readers will appreciate The Ancien Rgime and the French Revolution for its sense of irony as well as tragedy, for its deep insights into political psychology, and for its impassioned defense of liberty.
zlib_text: THE ANCIEN REGIME
  1
  THE ANCIEN REGIME
  by Charles Kingsley
  
  THE ANCIEN REGIME
  2
  PREFACE
  The rules of the Royal Institution forbid (and wisely) religious or
  political controversy.  It was therefore impossible for me in these
  Lectures, to say much which had to be said, in drawing a just and
  complete picture of the Ancien Regime in France.  The passages inserted
  between brackets, which bear on religious matters, were accordingly not
  spoken at the Royal Institution.
  But more.  It was impossible for me in these Lectures, to bring
  forward as fully as I could have wished, the contrast between the
  continental nations and England, whether now, or during the eighteenth
  century.  But that contrast cannot be too carefully studied at the present
  moment.  In proportion as it is seen and understood, will the fear of
  revolution (if such exists) die out among the wealthier classes; and the
  wish for it (if such exists) among the poorer; and a large extension of the
  suffrage will be looked on as--what it 