Ralph Raico on how the French Catholic liberals opposed the radical democratic movement in Europe

Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, along with Montalembert the outstanding leader of the French Catholic liberals (see below) delivered upon his election as Tocqueville’s successor at the Académie Française, he lashed out at the radical-democratic movement in Europe for aiding and abetting state centralization: 

The European democrat, idolater of what he calls the State, takes the human being from his cradle in order to offer him as a sacrificial victim to the public Omnipotence. He holds that the child, before belonging to the family, belongs to the City [i.e., the political organization], and that the City, that is, the people represented by those that govern them, has the right to form his mind on a uniform and legal model. He holds that the commune, the province, and every other association, even the most indifferent, depends on the State, and cannot act, nor speak, nor sell, nor buy, nor, finally, exist, without the intervention of the State and in the degree determined by it, in this way making the most absolute civil servitude the entrance way and the foundation of political liberty. 

~ Ralph Raico, Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School (p. 228)

(Raico's source is Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, Notices et Panégyriques (1886) (Paris: Poussielgue), p. 345)