De Tocqueville scores again

From David Marqand. Decline of the public. Cambridge : Polity, 2004, p. 120:

"In a haunting passage in Democracy in America Alexis De Tocqueville warned that democracy was menaced by a new and subtle find of despotism, in which the "immense and tutelary power" drew its authority from popular election.

'That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labours, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness ....[W]hat remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people'

[Alexis De Tocqueville. Democracy in America. Ed. Alan Ryan. London : Everyman's Library, 1994. pp318-319.]

Think "relaxed and comfortable".