Africa may be considered as the most complete and most extraordinary
picture of the vices of this system. I am convinced that it alone,
without the Arabs, the sun, the desert and the fever, would be enough to
prevent us from colonising. All the defects of centralisation, its
oppressions, its faults, its absurdities, its endless documents, which
are dimly perceived in France, become one hundred times bigger in Africa.
It is like a louse in a microscope.'
'I conversed,' I answered, 'with Violar and with my landlord at the
mineral waters, and they did not complain of centralisation.' 'They did
not complain,' he answered, 'of the word, which perhaps is unknown to
them. But if you had made them enter into the details of the public
administration, or even of their own private affairs, you would have seen
that the colonist is more confined in all his movements, and more
_governed, for his good_, than you were with regard to your passport.
'This is what Violar meant when he told you that roads were wanting,
because the Government would not permit its subjects to interfere in
making them.']
_Monday, May_ 28.--Tocqueville called on me.
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