Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville
DEMOCRACY
I N AMERICA
Historical-Critical Edition of
De la de mocratie en Ame rique
s4s4s4s4s4
Edited by Eduardo Nolla
Translated from the French by James T. Schleifer
a bilingual french-english edition
volume 1
Indianapolis
This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to
encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif
for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the word
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English translation, translators note, index, 2010 by Liberty Fund, Inc.
The French text on which this translation is based is De la de mocratie en
Ame rique, premie`re edition historico-critique revue et augmentee. Edited by
Eduardo Nolla. Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin; 6, Place de la Sorbonne; Paris, 1990.
French edition reprinted by permission.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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(Set)
(Vol. 1)
(Vol. 2)
(Vol. 3)
(Vol. 4)
Cloth ISBNs
978-0-86597-719-8
978-0-86597-720-4
978-0-86597-721-1
978-0-86597-722-8
978-0-86597-723-5
Paperback ISBNs
978-0-86597-724-2
978-0-86597-725-9
978-0-86597-726-6
978-0-86597-727-3
978-0-86597-728-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 18051859.
[De la democratie en Amerique. English & French]
Democracy in America: historical-critical edition of De la democratie en Amerique/Alexis
de Tocqueville; edited by Eduardo Nolla; translated from the French by James T. Schleifer.
p. cm.
A bilingual French-English edition.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-86597-719-8 (hc: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-720-4 (hc: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-86597-723-5 (hc: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-724-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-86597-725-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-726-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. United StatesPolitics and government. 2. United StatesSocial conditions.
3. DemocracyUnited States. I. Nolla, Eduardo. II. Schleifer, James T., 1942
III. Title.
jk216.t713 2009
320.973dc22 2008042684
liberty fund, inc.
8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300
Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684
democracy i n ameri ca
viii
Contents
Translators Note xxi
Key Terms xxvi
Foreword xxviii
List of Illustrations xlv
Editors Introduction xlvii
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
(1835)
v ol ume i
Introduction 3
Part I
chapter 1: Exterior Conguration of North America 33
chapter 2: Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance for
the Future of the Anglo-Americans 45
Reasons for Some Singularities That the Laws and Customs of the
Anglo-Americans Present 71
chapter 3: Social State of the Anglo-Americans 74
That the Salient Point of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans Is to
Be Essentially Democratic 75
contents ix
Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans 89
chapter 4: Of the Principle of the Sovereignty of the People
in America 91
chapter 5: Necessity of Studying What Happens in the
Individual States before Speaking about the Government of
the Union 98
Of the Town System in America 99
Town District 103
Town Powers in New England 104
Of Town Life 108
Of Town Spirit in New England 110
Of the County in New England 114
Of Administration in New England 115
General Ideas on Administration in the United States 129
Of the State 135
Legislative Power of the State 136
Of the Executive Power of the State 139
Of the Political Effects of Administrative Decentralization in the
United States 142
chapter 6: Of the Judicial Power in the United States and Its
Action on Political Society 167
Other Powers Granted to American Judges 176
chapter 7: Of Political Jurisdiction in the United States 179
chapter 8: Of the Federal Constitution 186
Historical Background of the Federal Constitution 186
Summary Picture of the Federal Constitution 191
Attributions of the Federal Government 193
Federal Powers 195
Legislative Powers 196
[Difference between the Constitution of the Senate and That of the
House of Representatives]
contents x
Another Difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives 200
Of Executive Power 201
How the Position of the President of the United States Differs from That
of a Constitutional King in France 204
Accidental Causes That Can Increase the Inuence of the Executive Power 209
Why the President of the United States, to Lead Public Affairs,
Does Not Need to Have a Majority in the Chambers 210
Of the Election of the President 211
Mode of Election 218
Election Crisis 222
Of the Re-election of the President 225
Of the Federal Courts 229
Way of Determining the Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts 234
Different Cases of Jurisdiction 236
The Federal Courts Way of Proceeding 241
Elevated Rank That the Supreme Court Occupies among the Great Powers
of the State 244
How the Federal Constitution Is Superior to the State Constitutions 246
What Distinguishes the Federal Constitution of the United States of
America from All Other Federal Constitutions 251
Of the Advantages of the Federal System in General, and of Its Special
Utility for America 255
What Keeps the Federal System from Being within the Reach of All
Peoples; And What Has Allowed the Anglo-Americans to Adopt It 263
v ol ume i i
Part II
chapter 1: How It Can Be Strictly Said That in the United
States It Is the People Who Govern 278
chapter 2: Of Parties in the United States 279
Of the Remnants of the Aristocratic Party in the United States 287
contents xi
chapter 3: Of Freedom of the Press in the United States 289
That the Opinions Established under the Dominion of Freedom of the
Press in the United States Are Often More Tenacious than Those That
Are Found Elsewhere under the Dominion of Censorship 298
chapter 4: Of Political Association in the United States 302
Different Ways in Which the Right of Association Is Understood in
Europe and in the United States, and the Different Use That Is Made
of That Right 309
chapter 5: Of the Government of Democracy in America 313
Of Universal Suffrage 313
Of the Choices of the People and of the Instincts of American
Democracy in Its Choices 314
Of the Causes That Can Partially Correct These Democratic Instincts 318
Inuence That American Democracy Has Exercised on Electoral Laws 322
Of Public Ofcials under the Dominion of American Democracy 324
Of the Arbitrariness of Magistrates under the Dominion of
American Democracy 327
Administrative Instability in the United States 331
Of Public Expenses under the Dominion of American Democracy 333
Of the Instincts of American Democracy in Determining the Salary
of Ofcials 340
Difculty of Discerning the Causes That Lead the American Government
to Economy 343
[Inuence of the Government of Democracy on the Tax Base and on the
Use of the Tax Revenues] 345
[Inuence of Democratic Government on the Use of Tax Revenues] 346
Can the Public Expenditures of the United States Be Compared with
Those of France 349
Of the Corruption and Vices of Those Who Govern in Democracy;
Of the Effects on Public Morality That Result from That Corruption
and Those Vices 356
Of What Efforts Democracy Is Capable 360
Of the Power That American Democracy Generally Exercises over Itself 364
contents xii
Of the Manner in Which American Democracy Conducts the Foreign
Affairs of the State 366
chapter 6: What Are the Real Advantages That American
Society Gains from the Government of Democracy? 375
Of the General Tendency of Laws under the Dominion of American
Democracy, and Of the Instinct of Those Who Apply Them 377
Of Public Spirit in the United States 384
Of the Idea of Rights in the United States 389
Of the Respect for the Law in the United States 393
Activity That Reigns in All Parts of the Political Body in the United
States; Inuence That It Exercises on Society 395
chapter 7: Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United
States and Its Effects 402
How the Omnipotence of the Majority in America Increases the
Legislative and Administrative Instability That Is Natural to Democracies 407
Tyranny of the Majority 410
Effects of the Omnipotence of the Majority on the Arbitrariness of
American Public Ofcials 415
Of the Power Exercised by the Majority in America over Thought 416
Effect of Tyranny of the Majority on the National Character of the
Americans; Of the Courtier Spirit in the United States 420
That the Greatest Danger to the American Republics Comes from the
Omnipotence of the Majority 424
chapter 8: Of What Tempers Tyranny of the Majority in the
United States 427
Absence of Administrative Centralization 427
Of the Spirit of the Jurist in the United States, and How It Serves as
Counterweight to Democracy 430
Of the Jury in the United States Considered as a Political Institution 442
chapter 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the
Democratic Republic in the United States 451
Of the Accidental or Providential Causes That Contribute to Maintaining
the Democratic Republic in the United States 452
contents xiii
Of the Inuence of Laws on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in the
United States 465
Of the Inuence of Mores on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in
the United States 466
Of Religion Considered as a Political Institution, How It Serves
Powerfully to Maintain the Democratic Republic among the Americans 467
Indirect Inuence Exercised by Religious Beliefs on Political Society in the
United States 472
Of the Principal Causes That Make Religion Powerful in America 478
How the Enlightenment, Habits, and Practical Experience of the
Americans Contribute to the Success of Democratic Institutions 488
That Laws Serve More to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the
United States than Physical Causes, and Mores More than Laws 494
Would Laws and Mores Be Sufcient to Maintain Democratic Institutions
Elsewhere than in America? 500
Importance of What Precedes in Relation to Europe 505
chapter 10: Some Considerations on the Present State and
Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of
Present State and Probable Future of the Indian Tribes That Inhabit the
Territory Possessed by the Union 522
Position That the Black Race Occupies in the United States; Dangers to
Which Its Presence Exposes the Whites 548
What Are the Chances for the American Union to Last? What Dangers
Threaten It? 582
Of Republican Institutions in the United States, What Are Their Chances
of Lasting? 627
Some Considerations on the Causes of the Commercial Greatness of the
United States 637
Conclusion 649
Notes 658
xiv
(1840)
v ol ume i i i
Part I: Inuence of Democracy on the
Intellectual Movement in the United States
chapter 1: Of the Philosophical Method of the Americans 697
chapter 2: Of the Principal Source of Beliefs among
Democratic Peoples 711
chapter 3: Why the Americans Show More Aptitude and Taste
for General Ideas than Their Fathers the English 726
chapter 4: Why the Americans Have Never Been as Passionate
as the French about General Ideas in Political Matters 737
chapter 5: How, in the United States, Religion Knows How to
Make Use of Democratic Instincts 742
chapter 6: Of the Progress of Catholicism in the United States 754
chapter 7: What Makes the Minds of Democratic Peoples
Incline toward Pantheism 757
chapter 8: How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of
the Indenite Perfectibility of Man 759
chapter 9: How the Example of the Americans Does Not Prove
That a Democratic People Cannot Have Aptitude and Taste for the
Sciences, Literature, and the Arts 763
chapter 10: Why the Americans Are More Attached to the
Application of the Sciences than to the Theory 775
chapter 11: In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts 788
chapter 12: Why Americans Erect Such Small and Such Large
Monuments at the Same Time 796
contents xv
chapter 13: Literary Physiognomy of Democratic Centuries 800
chapter 14: Of the Literary Industry 813
chapter 15: Why the Study of Greek and Latin Literature Is
Particularly Useful in Democratic Societies 815
chapter 16: How American Democracy Has Modied the
English Language 818
chapter 17: Of Some Sources of Poetry among
Democratic Nations 830
chapter 18: Why American Writers and Orators Are
Often Bombastic 843
chapter 19: Some Observations on the Theater of
chapter 20: Of Some Tendencies Particular to Historians in
Democratic Centuries 853
chapter 21: Of Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States 861
Part II: Inuence of Democracy on the
Sentiments of the Americans
chapter 1: Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and
More Enduring Love for Equality than for Liberty 872
chapter 2: Of Individualism in Democratic Countries 881
chapter 3: How Individualism Is Greater at the End of a
Democratic Revolution than at Another Time 885
chapter 4: How the Americans Combat Individualism with
Free Institutions 887
chapter 5: Of the Use That Americans Make of Association
in Civil Life 895
contents xvi
chapter 6: Of the Relation between Associations
and Newspapers 905
chapter 7: Relations between Civil Associations and
Political Associations 911
chapter 8: How the Americans Combat Individualism by the
Doctrine of Interest Well Understood 918
chapter 9: How the Americans Apply the Doctrine of Interest
Well Understood in the Matter of Religion 926
chapter 10: Of the Taste for Material Well-Being in America 930
chapter 11: Of the Particular Effects Produced by the Love of
Material Enjoyments in Democratic Centuries 935
chapter 12: Why Certain Americans Exhibit So Excited
a Spiritualism 939
chapter 13: Why the Americans Appear So Restless Amid
Their Well-Being 942
chapter 14: How the Taste for Material Enjoyment Is United,
among the Americans, with the Love of Liberty and Concern for
Public Affairs 948
chapter 15: How from Time to Time Religious Beliefs Divert
the Soul of the Americans toward Non-material Enjoyments 954
chapter 16: How the Excessive Love of Well-Being Can
Harm Well-Being 963
chapter 17: How, in Times of Equality and Doubt, It Is
Important to Push Back the Goal of Human Actions 965
chapter 18: Why, among the Americans, All Honest Professions
Are Considered Honorable 969
chapter 19: What Makes Nearly All Americans Tend toward
Industrial Professions 972
chapter 20: How Aristocracy Could Emerge from Industry 980
contents xvii
v ol ume i v
Part III: Inuence of Democracy on
Mores Properly So Called
chapter 1: How Mores Become Milder as Conditions
Become Equal 987
chapter 2: How Democracy Makes the Habitual Relations of
the Americans Simpler and Easier 995
chapter 3: Why the Americans Have So Little Susceptibility in
Their Country and Show Such Susceptibility in Ours 1000
chapter 4: Consequences of the Three Preceding Chapters 1005
chapter 5: How Democracy Modies the Relationships of
Servant and Master 1007
chapter 6: How Democratic Institutions and Mores Tend to
Raise the Cost and Shorten the Length of Leases 1020
chapter 7: Inuence of Democracy on Salaries 1025
chapter 8: Inuence of Democracy on the Family 1031
chapter 9: Education of Young Girls in the United States 1041
chapter 10: How the Young Girl Is Found Again in the Features
of the Wife 1048
chapter 11: How Equality of Conditions Contributes to
Maintaining Good Morals in America 1052
chapter 12: How the Americans Understand the Equality of
Man and of Woman 1062
chapter 13: How Equality Divides the Americans Naturally into
a Multitude of Small Particular Societies 1068
chapter 14: Some Reections on American Manners 1071
contents xviii
chapter 15: Of the Gravity of Americans and Why It Does Not
Prevent Them from Often Doing Thoughtless Things 1080
chapter 16: Why the National Vanity of the Americans Is More
Anxious and More Quarrelsome than That of the English 1085
chapter 17: How the Appearance of Society in the United States
Is at the Very Same Time Agitated and Monotonous 1089
chapter 18: Of Honor in the United States and in
Democratic Societies 1093
chapter 19: Why in the United States You Find So Many
Ambitious Men and So Few Great Ambitions 1116
chapter 20: Of Positions Becoming an Industry among Certain
chapter 21: Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare 1133
chapter 22: Why Democratic Peoples Naturally Desire Peace
and Democratic Armies Naturally Desire War 1153
chapter 23: Which Class, in Democratic Armies, Is the Most
Warlike and the Most Revolutionary 1165
chapter 24: What Makes Democratic Armies Weaker than
Other Armies while Beginning a Military Campaign and More
Formidable When the War Is Prolonged 1170
chapter 25: Of Discipline in Democratic Armies 1176
chapter 26: Some Considerations on War in
Part IV: Of the Inuence That Democratic Ideas and
Sentiments Exercise on Political Society
chapter 1: Equality Naturally Gives Men the Taste for
contents xix
chapter 2: That the Ideas of Democratic Peoples in Matters of
Government Naturally Favor the Concentration of Powers 1194
chapter 3: That the Sentiments of Democratic Peoples Are
in Agreement with Their Ideas for Bringing Them to
Concentrate Power 1200
chapter 4: Of Some Particular and Accidental Causes That End
Up Leading a Democratic People to Centralize Power or That Turn
Them Away from Doing So 1206
chapter 5: That among the European Nations of Today the
Sovereign Power Increases although Sovereigns Are Less Stable 1221
chapter 6: What Type of Despotism Democratic Nations
Have to Fear 1245
chapter 7: Continuation of the Preceding Chapters 1262
chapter 8: General View of the Subject 1278
Notes 1286
Appendixes 1295
appendix 1: Journey to Lake Oneida 1295
appendix 2: A Fortnight in the Wilderness 1303
appendix 3: Sects in America 1360
appendix 4: Political Activity in America 1365
appendix 5: Letter of Alexis de Tocqueville
to Charles Stoffels 1368
appendix 6: Foreword to the Twelfth
Edition 1373
Works Used by Tocqueville 1376
Bibliography 1396
Index 1499
xxi
Translators Note
This new translation of Tocquevilles Democracy in America is intended to
be a close, faithful, and straightforward rendering of Tocqueville into con-
temporary American English. A second key goal is to present a smooth,
readable version of Tocquevilles classic work. Part of my challenge has
therefore been to maintain the right balance between closeness and felicity,
between faithfulness and readability.
The translation scrupulously follows Tocquevilles somewhat idiosyn-
cratic paragraphing and attempts to reect the varied sentence structure
of the original. I have tried, where possible, to follow Tocquevilles sen-
tence structure and word order. But in many cases this effort would be
inappropriate and untenable. It would not work for constructing sen-
tences in English and would obscure Tocquevilles meaning. So some-
times I have shifted Tocquevilles word order and rearranged, even totally
recast, his sentences. At times, for example, Tocquevilles extraordinarily
long sentences, built from accumulated phrases, had to be broken to t
English usage. Nonetheless, the translation tries to reect Tocquevilles
stylistic mix of long, complex sentences with short, emphatic ones. Oc-
casionally Tocquevilles sentence fragments are retained; more often, I
have turned them into complete (though still very brief) sentences by in-
serting a verb.
As part of the effort to achieve a contemporary American English text,
I have avoided translating the French on as one; almost invariably, I have
used you (sometimes we or another pronoun, depending on context), or
have changed the sentence from active to passive. And with the goal of
closeness in mind, I have also used cognates where they t and are appro-
priate.
Another basic principle for this translation has been consistency, espe-
xxii trans lator s note
cially for key terms. But a rigid or narrow consistency can be a false and
dangerous goal, even a trap. Words often have many meanings and there-
fore need to be translated differently depending on context. There are sev-
eral good examples. Objet can mean object (the object of desire), subject
(the subject under consideration), matter (the matter under discussion), or
objective (the objective of a plan). Biens can mean property or goods, or
the opposite of evil(s): good, good things, or even, on a few occasions, ad-
vantages. And de sert can mean wilderness, uninhabited area, or desert. The
reader will nd other examples of such clusters of possible meanings inthe
translation. But for the key terms used by Tocqueville, the principle has
been to be as consistent as possible. (See Key Terms.)
Finally, the translation follows these more specic principles: (1) words
referring specically to France, to French institutions and history, such as
commune, conseil de tat, parlement, are usually left in French; (2) quotations
presented by Tocqueville from Pascal, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Guizot,
and many other French writers have been newly translated; (3) on a few
occasions, specic translators notes have been inserted; (4) the French De
at the beginning of chapter or section titles has beenretainedandtranslated
invariably as Of (eg. Of the Point of Departure . . .). The great exception,
of course, is the name of the book itself, Democracy in America, a title
simply too familiar in English to be altered; and (5) in cases where Tocque-
ville quotes directly and closely froman English-language source, the origi-
nal English text has been provided; but in cases where Tocqueville has
quoted an English-language source from a French translation, or has only
paraphrased or followed an English text very loosely, Tocqueville has been
translated.
The Nolla edition, on which this translationis based, presents anenormous
amount and variety of materials from the drafts and manuscript variants
of Tocquevilles work, as well as excerpts fromclosely relatedmaterials such
as travel notes and correspondence, and several chapters or partial chapters
never included in the published text.
Within this collection of drafts, variants, and other materials there exists
an important, but not always clear, hierarchy of manuscript materials.
trans lator s note xxiii
These layers largely reect chronology, the development over time of
Tocquevilles thinking from early notes and sketches, through successive
draft versions, to nal text (still often overlaid with last-minute thoughts,
queries, and clarications). But they also reect the tangled paths of his
musings, including intellectual trials, asides, and dead ends.
And from these diverse materials comes a major challenge for the trans-
lator: to reect the stylistic and chronological shifts fromearly to late, from
informal to formal, from rough to polished versions of Tocquevilles book.
In some of the drafts, especially, the translation must try to reproduce
Tocquevilles tentativeness and confusion, as reected in incomplete, bro-
ken, or ambiguous sentences. Most important, the many layers of text need
to be translated in a way that maintains parallel phrasing, but at the same
time reects key variations in wording as they occur in the unfolding de-
velopment of Tocquevilles work. The various stages of manuscript variants
and the nal text need to match, to be harmonious where they are more or
less the same, and to differ where Tocqueville has made signicant changes
in vocabulary or meaning.
The very act of translationteaches a great deal about the author beingtrans-
lated. Tocqueville, like all good writers, had certain stylistic characteristics
and idiosyncrasies that a translator must grasp in order to render a faithful
translation.
In general, Tocquevilles sentences are much more dense and compact
in volume I of Democracy than in volume II, where they are more abstract
and open. In the rst volume, his sentences often seem stuffed with short,
qualifying phrases. This difference results from the more abstract and
reective nature of the second volume, but it also arises from the more
detailed, concrete, and historical subject matter that takes up much of
volume 1.
Tocqueville often painted verbal pictures to summarize and to express
his ideas in a single image that he hoped would grab and even persuade
his readers. To create these images, he repeatedly used certain clusters of
related words. Among his favorite word pictures, for example, are images
of light and darkness, of eyes and seeing, of shadows and fading light;
xxiv trans lator s note
images of movement, motion or stirring; dramatic images of rising ood-
waters or raging rivers; and such geometric images as the circle, the sphere,
and converging beams or roads. I have been careful to reproduce these
word pictures as faithfully as possible. Examples occur throughout the
Democracy.
A key to Tocquevilles writing is his reliance on parallel structures: par-
allel or matched sentences, phrases, or even words. I have tried to retain
such parallels, because they reveal how Tocqueville thought habitually in
pairs, especially in contrasting pairs, a feature of his thinking that elsewhere
I have called pairs in tension.
Still another key to Tocquevilles writing is its very deductive, even syl-
logistic nature. This is one of the dening characteristics of his thought.
In the Democracy, he frequently offers deductive sets of ideas, expressed in
chains of paragraphs or sentences, or even in chains of phrases within a
single, long sentence. Many segments of his book are essentially elaborate
syllogisms. In an attempt to carry the reader along by the sheer force of
logic, Tocqueville often presents his ideas as a tight logical sequence: since
. . . , and since . . . , so; or this . . . , moreover this . . . , therefore . . . . (Donc
and ainsi are two of his favorite words, especially in volume I.) Again, as
translator, I have attempted to retain this syllogistic avor.
Acknowledgments
My work as translator has beneted greatly from the careful readings and
suggestions of several individuals: my initial reader, AlisonPedicordSchlei-
fer; my primary reader, Paul Seaton; the other members of the editorial
committee, Peter Lawler, Pierre Manent, Catherine Zuckert, Eduardo
Nolla, and Christine Henderson, Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund. I would
also like to thank Melvin Richter and David Bovenizer, who were involved
in the early phases of the project, and Emilio Pacheco, executive vice pres-
ident of Liberty Fund, who provided constant support throughout the pro-
ject. I extend my deepest appreciation to all for their insights, attention,
support, and good will along the way. This project has made us colleagues
and friends.
trans lator s note xxv
The resulting translation is mine, and I take full responsibility for any
weaknesses or failings.
James T. Schleifer
New Haven 2007
xxvi
Key Terms
Certain key terms used by Tocqueville present particular translation dif-
culties. Some, for example, have no precise English equivalent (e.g., lu-
mie `res ); others are extremely abstract or have a variety of meanings, de-
pending oncontext. As translator, my goal was tochoose the best alternative
and then to be consistent throughout the edition. The following terms
should be noted:
e tat socialtranslated closely as social state, instead of social condition.
ide e me `retranslated as either generative or main idea. The same principle
is used for pense e me `re, passion me `re, etc. But science me `re is rendered as
mother science.
inquie tudeusually translated as restlessness (and inquiet as restless ), but
sometimes it can be concern or worry. Earlier French dictionaries showthat
traditionally the word meant primarily an inability to be at rest, or rest-
lessness; the more modern sense of worry or concern was not as important.
A closely related word, agitation, is almost always rendered as the cognate,
agitation, except occasionally when it is translated as constant motion or
constant movement.
inte re t bien entendutranslated as interest well understood or well under-
stood interest, rather than interest properly understood, self-interest properly/
well understood, or enlightened self-interest, all of which are unnecessary
glosses on the meaning.
liberte de crireIn English, for freedom of written expression, there is no
equivalent such as freedom of speech for freedom of spoken expression;
freedom of the press is a more specic term. So for liberte de crire, I have
simply used freedom to write. Related terms to note include liberte de penser,
freedom of thought, and liberte desprit, freedom of mind (in the sense of
intellectual freedom).
key terms xxvii
lumie `resusually translated as enlightenment, occasionally as knowledge or
learning.
murstranslatedas mores, not anideal word, but the best availableoption
in English.
pouvoir dun seul translated as power of one man or, occasionally, power
of one man alone, rather than power of a single man, which is ambiguous.
In addition, the following less crucial, but still important words should
be noted:
affairesalmost always translated as public affairs, unless clearly otherwise
(such as matters ).
empiretranslated as dominion, or a few times, as sway or rule.
E
tattranslated as State (upper case) when referring to the nation, the

general political body; otherwise, state (lower case) when referring to one
of the American states.
fonctionnairetranslated as ofcer when related to the American town
(town ofcer); otherwise, ofcial.
intelligencesNo good English equivalent exists; usually translated as
minds; sometimes the phrase is altered to use the adjective intellectual.
la justiceIn certain chapters of Tocquevilles book the word means jus-
tice, but usually it means the judicial system or court system.
le gislateurtranslated as law-maker when Tocqueville is talking about the
maker of fundamental law, the constitution-maker; otherwise, legislator.
patrietranslated as native land or country, rather than fatherland or
homeland.
sauvageeither savage or wild, depending on the context.
solitudesclosely related to de sert(s) (see Translators Note, p. xxii); usually
translated as uninhabited (or empty ) places (or areas ), sometimes as wil-
derness, and once or twice as solitude or seclusion.
xxviii
Foreword
In this regard, you will pardon me, I hope, if I express a regret that I believe
is general. You have pushed too far a scruple, otherwise very laudable, of
not wanting to publish anything that had not absolutely received the nal
touch of the author. I know well the conscientiousness that caused our
friend to present the expression of his thought to the public only after he
had brought it to the highest perfection that he felt capable of giving it;
but it is one thing to put a piece of writing aside in order to make it more
perfect and something else to want it suppressed when fate has decreedthat
the process of perfecting it cannot take place. Even the rough drafts of a
thinker and observer like Tocqueville would be of inestimable value for
thinkers to come; and unless he opposed it while alive, it seems to me that
there would be no disadvantage in publishing his imperfect manuscripts
while presenting themonly for what they are and scrupulously retaining all
the indications of an intention to go back to some piece and to submit its
ideas to a later verication.
1
In these words, following the publication of the complete works, John
Stuart Mill expressed his regret to the editor, Gustave de Beaumont, for
not having been able to read the whole body of Tocquevilles unpublished
papers.
Within the framework of this edition, I wanted to revisit Beaumonts
decision and in part to satisfy Mills desire. I have resolved not only to offer
to the reader the text of Democracy in America revised and corrected, but
also to give animportant place to the notes, drafts, andmaterials of all kinds
that accompanied the period of its writing.
I have therefore chosen to present to the reader at the same time a new
1. The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, 18491873 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1972. J. S. Mill Collected Works, XV), p. 719. [Note: Original is in French.]
foreword xxix
edition of the Democracy and a different edition. This new Democracy is
not only the one that Tocqueville presented to the reader of 1835 and then
to the reader of 1840. It is enlarged, amplied by a body of texts that has
never existed in the form that I give it today. If the added pages that follow
are indeed from Tocquevilles pen, most of them existed only as support,
as necessary scaffolding for the constructionof the work. As such, they were
naturally meant to disappear from the nal version.
Drawn out of obscurity, they are going to reappear in the middle of the
known text. These fragments, revived by the choice of the editor, appear
between brackets in the main text and in notes. They must be treated with
caution. Although they have been brought back to life here, it is advisable
not to forget that Tocqueville had condemned them to disappearance. If
they often lead to some interesting site, they also lead many times to a lab-
yrinth or to an impenetrable wall. Then we will be forced to agree with the
judgment that once relegated them to oblivion.
What interest does their presence have then? Above all that of vividly
highlighting the extraordinary complexity of the writing of the Democracy
and aiding in its comprehension by presenting a portion of the erasures
and over-writings, the prodigious layering of Tocquevilles great work.
The reader will discover, for example, how Tocqueville, often hesitant, un-
certain about the direction to follow, asks for advice from his family and
friends, and howthe latter guide his thought whenwritingsome paragraphs
and sentences. He will better understand the reasons for certain additions
and deletions. He will also be able to note certain changes due to the criti-
cisms made by the rst readers of the manuscript. Finally and above all, he
will see how Tocqueville proceeded with the elaboration of the main ideas
of his book.
Every text is unstable for a long time. When it has acquired a certain
coherence and the author judges it complete, it is printed. Every typo-
graphic reproduction leads, however, to adulteration, an adulteration as
necessary as it is inevitable. The printed book cannot convey either the
handwriting or the look of the manuscript. Only a facsimile, a perfect re-
production of the original, made on the same paper, damaged by time and
humidity, would manage to show to the reader Democracy in America in
all its complexity and liveliness. But it would be an illusory Democracy,
foreword xxx
entirely as hard to read and grasp as the original, and one whose intrinsic
value would be lost.
If the edition that is being presented today is careful to restore to the
Democracy part of its difculties of composition, of its mistakenideas, and
of its faltering efforts, it is not trying to and cannot in any way take the
place of the manuscript, any more than it can come close to being a fac-
simile. A good number of research projects will still have to return to the
unique object that the manuscript represents.
2
The Manuscripts of Tocqueville
The preparation of the rst edition of the complete works goes back to
1859, and comes just after the death of Tocqueville. The work of Gustave
de Beaumont, who held Tocquevilles manuscripts from his widow, Mary
Mottley, was done with the aid of Louis de Kergorlay.
Beaumont knewTocquevilles obsessionto publish nothing that hadnot
been read and reread a hundred times. Since the author was no longer there
to ensure the correction of his texts, Beaumont took charge of it. In so
doing, he doctored certain passages; he deleted certain others without in-
dication; and nally he destroyed an indeterminate number of documents
(perhaps in response to the demands of Tocquevilles wife).
That rst edition, which elicited considerable criticism, possesses almost
as many good qualities as failings. We know that the editorial practices of
the period differed markedly from ours, that mutilations and corrections
of all sorts did not as clearly give rise to condemnation. Some of the people
cited in the correspondence were still alive at the time of publication. Fi-
2. The working manuscript of Democracy in America is at the Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library of Yale University. It is divided among four boxes (with the
classication CVIa) and follows the order of chapters of the book. Only chapters 1, 18,
19, and 20 of the second part of the 1840 volume are missing. When, for this edition, I
refer to the manuscript, it is this text that I mean.
The Yale collection does not have the denitive version of the Democracy, the one
that Tocqueville had sent to the publisher, Charles Gosselin. This version, whichGeorge
W. Pierson believed that he had seen in France in 1930, was not found at the time of the
purchase of the manuscripts of the Democracy in 1954. Everything suggests that this nal
version did not present perceptible differences from the rst edition.
foreword xxxi
nally, the political situation of the Second Empire weighed on the decision
of the editor to make a certain number of modications.
It is no less true that Beaumont provided an impressive work in a rela-
tively short time. Nine volumes appeared in the space of seven years.
Mary Mottley died in 1865. Since her relations with the Tocqueville fam-
ily were never good, she bequeathed all of her husbands papers to Gustave
de Beaumont. The family of the latter possessed them until 1891. At that
time Christian de Tocqueville acquired them.
Not long after the end of the First World War, Paul Lambert White,
professor at Yale University, became interested in Tocquevilles manuscripts.
He went to France, where he consulted and catalogued all of the manu-
scripts in the possession of the Tocqueville family. Moreover, he obtained
the authorization to have the manuscripts that concerned America copied.
M. Bonnel, the schoolteacher at Tocqueville, was charged with this work.
3
At the death of Paul White, George W. Pierson, then a doctoral student
at Yale, went in turn to France with the encouragement of John M. S.
Allison. He proceeded to do a new catalogue of the manuscripts
4
and ob-
tained the money necessary for the continuation of the work of copying.
In this way Bonnel continued to work and to send copies regularly to the
United States.
Several years after World War II, a new inventory revealed the disap-
pearance of most of the manuscripts copied for the American university
by Bonnel. Yale found itself from that time on in possession of invaluable
documents.
Little by little, the collection grew, augmented over the years by new
acquisitions and bequests. One of the most important contributions was
the purchase, over a period of about twenty years (from 1953 to 1973), of
the quasi-totality of the manuscripts of Gustave de Beaumont. In 1954,
Yale acquired the manuscript and the nal drafts of Democracy in America.
3. White also gained permission to have copies made of certain documents in the
hands of Antoine Redier who was then preparing his book, Comme disait Monsieur de
Tocqueville (Paris: Perrin, 1925). These copies were done by the secretaries of Abel Doysie,
responsible for copying for the Library of Congress documents belonging to the French
diplomatic archives.
4. Yale owns copies of all of the catalogues of Tocquevilles manuscripts.
foreword xxxii
At that time, the American university became the sole depository of the
vast majority of the texts, notes, and correspondence relating to Tocque-
villes principal work.
5
The collection holds original manuscripts as well as copies of lost
originals. In the work of this edition, the drafts and the manuscript called
the working manuscript of the Democracy have received particular
attention.
The greater part of the drafts of the second part of the Democracy, to
which the author gave the name rubish
6
and which constitutes perhaps
the most interesting portion of the Yale collection, is unfortunately in very
bad condition. Insects and moisture have led to its deterioration, the hand-
writing is particularly hard to read, and the paper is crumbling into pieces.
A quantity of minuscule bits of paper remains at the bottom of the two
boxes that protect the Rubish.
7
Other drafts of the second part of the book, and all those belonging to
the rst part, exist only as copies (that all together number about 1,500pages
divided into sixteen notebooks); they can be relatively trusted.
8
To all of that, the notes written by Tocqueville during his journey to
America
9
must be added, and a group of more than three hundred letters,
5. The other important collection of Tocquevilles manuscripts is at the chateau de
Tocqueville.
6. The Englishrubbish means debris, remnants, trash. FollowingTocqueville, wespell
the word incorrectly throughout this edition. By the word, we mean either the drafts of
each chapter (rubish), or the whole body of the drafts of the second part (Rubish).
7. Some omissions could be lled in by consulting the microlm done at the time of
the arrival of the manuscript at Yale and a partial copy of the Rubish in Bonnels hand.
8. The comparison of this copy of one part of the Rubish with the original shows
some differences and omissions, as well as a certain arbitrariness in the placement of the
text on the page. Bonnel also resorted, perhaps a bit too rapidly, to the expedient of
illegible word, although this type of abuse is more desirable in a copyist than is an
excess of imagination. I have corrected a number of obvious errors.
9. These notes have been published in the fth volume of the uvres comple `tes pub-
lished by Gallimard. I have nonetheless preferred to refer to the Yale texts, given the
presence in that edition, on more than one occasion, of differences and omissions.
foreword xxxiii
some still unpublished. This involves Tocquevilles and Beaumonts cor-
respondence with Americans and the English during and after their visit to
the United States, and letters written to their families and to various French
correspondents.
10
Other documents that are of interest for understanding the Democracy
include bibliographies, lists of questions posed by Tocqueville and Beau-
mont to the Americans they spoke to, and above all, numerous documents
in Beaumonts hand for the writing of his novel, Marie, ou lesclavage aux
E
tats-Unis, and for that of his essay on Ireland.

Some Details Concerning the Present Edition
Theodore Sedgwick, a correspondent of Tocqueville, said jokingly that the
handwriting of the latter oscillatedbetweenhieroglyphics andcuneiform.
11
The condition of notes meant by Tocqueville to be read only by himself
can be imagined.
Following a system frequently used at the time, the draft occupies
the right side of the folio and leaves the left side free for notes and vari-
ants.
12
The text, nonetheless, often extends beyond the right side and suc-
cessively invades the left side, the margins, and the space between the lines.
Supplementary sheets are added at the end of each chapter, small pieces
of paper are glued over the original, and sometimes other papers are even
10. The letters sent by Beaumont to his family during the American voyage have been
publishedby Andre Jardinand George W. Piersonwiththe title Lettres dAme rique (Paris:
PUF, 1973).
11. In a letter of 15 January 1856 (YTC, DIIa).
In a letter of 28 December 1856 to the countess de Grancey (OCB, VII, p. 424),
Tocqueville makes the Abbe Lesueur responsible for his bad handwriting: He had the
singular idea of making me learn to write before teaching me spelling. Since I did not
know how to write my words, I muddled them as well as I could, drowning my errors
in my scribbling. As a result, I have never known how to spell perfectly, and I have
continued to scribble indenitely. We know, moreover, that Didot, the rst publisher
of LAncien Re gime et la Re volution, sent the manuscript back to the author twice in
succession because of illegibility.
12. In certain cases, I have reproduced the notes in pencil that are in Tocquevilles
hand.
foreword xxxiv
stuck to the rst ones. Crosses, xs, ovals, circles, letters, anddiacritical signs
are multiplied to indicate transfers and additions. It is clear that an exact
reproduction of the many minor changes in the text of the manuscript is
as unnecessary as it would be boring, and I have not bothered with it.
Notes in the margin testify to Tocquevilles doubts about certain pas-
sages, his desire to review them, and sometimes his intention to ask for the
opinion of his friends or their criticisms. The fragments that he intended
to eliminate are generally circled.
At the point of nishing the composition of Democracy in America,
Tocqueville wanted his family and certain of his friends to be able to read
the manuscript, comment onit, andcritique it. Withthis intention, in1834,
he hired the services of a copyist.
13
This copy of the manuscript, which
could have been sent to the publisher once denitively corrected, has been
lost except for a few loose sheets that are found with the manuscript. The
reading of these pages reveals the difculties experienced by the copyist; it
is probable, from several notes in the manuscript, that Tocqueville himself
dictated a good part of the book.
14
References made elsewhere give an idea
15
of this copy, which contained
a certain number of errors, as did, we can assume, the copy that constituted
13. Perhaps Monsieur Parier, cited in note o of p. 384. A letter of E
douard to Alexis
de Tocqueville (CIIIb, 2, pp. 6567, reproduced in note c of pp. 14243) suggests the
idea that the copy was done in notebooks. Two notes in the drafts speak about the price
of the copies and the number of pages copied (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 17, and CVh, 2, p. 11).
In a letter to Beaumont of 23 October 1839 (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII,
1, p. 389), Tocqueville refers to a copy of the second volume.
14. On the jacket of chapter VII of the fourthpart of volume II, we read, for example:
twenty minutes. Is this an allusion to the time taken to read the chapter?
15. The commentaries from the Tocqueville family, from Gustave de Beaumont, and
fromLouis de Kergorlay often reproduce the fragments to whichthey are referring. Most
of the commentaries of the rst readers of Tocquevilles book relate to details of writing,
style, and the vocabulary used. Of course, I have reproduced at the bottom of the page
only those criticisms that seemed of some theoretical interest.
foreword xxxv
the nal version sent to the publisher. The printing process inevitably in-
troduced others.
16
The editions that followed worked to correct the errors of the rst edi-
tion, but added new ones. For his part, Tocqueville also made certain de-
letions and several additions.
17
At the time of the preparation of this edition, I began by comparing the
most important French editions (those of 1835, 1838, 1840, and 1850). I dis-
covered a certain number of differences from one edition to another: cor-
rections by the author, modications of punctuation, omissions, etc. After
recovering the missing passages, I then compared the whole text with the
manuscript and identied more than a hundred diverse errors. To those,
some errors made by Tocqueville had to be added. For the latter, I have
merely pointed out the error; I tried to correct it if possible, but I have not
in any way modied the text.
I then incorporated the fragments that I chose into the known text.
18
To
do this, a meticulous selection of texts was made among the multiple var-
16. For example, where Tocqueville wanted to say that aristocratic countries are full
of rich and inuential individuals who know how to be self-sufcient and who are not
easily or secretly oppressed (II, p. 1267), certain editions assert: aristocratic countries
are full of rich and inuential individuals who do not know howto be self-sufcient and
who are not easily or secretly oppressed (my emphasis).
In chapter IV of the second part of the second volume (p. 306), the author maintains
that in 1831 the proposal of the partisans of the tariff circulated in a few days due to
the power of the printed word, while several editions attribute this fact to the birth of
the printed word. The editions in use contain more than a hundred errors of this type.
17. The reader will ndin the notes the reasons that ledto certainof these corrections.
For instance, the deletion of the allusion to John Quincy Adams (note k for p. 53).
The editors of the new edition of the complete works of Tocqueville, published by
Gallimard, preferred to produce the last edition corrected by Tocqueville, the thirteenth,
which dates from 1850. That edition nonetheless presents a good number of the errors
present in previous editions. It also introduced a certain number of new errors.
18. The writing of the fragments that I cite is not always, as you will see, at the level
of the published texts. The sometimes maladroit, sometimes frankly incorrect sentences
that are reproduced have clearly not received the attention accorded to the published
texts. You will nd in particular certain stylistic and grammatical archaisms, as well as
certain errors in the use of tenses, moods, andprepositions that I have not triedtomodify
in any way.
foreword xxxvi
iants and versions present in the manuscript; the selection was made for
obvious reasons of interest as well as placement. I have deliberately chosen
to concentrate the greatest portion of the additions in the chapters that
seemto me to have the most interest, andinparticular inthe secondvolume
of the book. The additions to the main text appear between brackets; they
may be preceded and followed by various diacritical signs whose meaning
is set forth below.
19
The notes consist of marginalia, of variants or versions predating the
nal version, which belong to the drafts, travel notes, fragments of corre-
spondence, and criticisms put forth by friends and family. Their sources
have been carefully and systematically indicated. To these notes is added
the critical apparatus that I wanted to be useful as well as succinct.
Finally, at the end of the fourth volume, I have included in the form of
appendixes six texts of different types.
20
The rst two, Journey to Lake
19. The new fragments that this edition presents are reproduced as they can be read
in the manuscript. I have nonetheless made a certain number of corrections and mod-
ications necessary for comprehension:
1. Punctuation and capitalizations have been added in almost all of the new
fragments.
2. Spelling errors, particularly those of foreign proper names, suchas Massachusetts
or Pennsylvania, written indifferently in a correct or incorrect way, have always been
corrected. When the error is systematic, I have included the correct word in brackets.
3. In many cases, the manuscript includes several variants of the same fragment,
the same sentence, or the same word. I have chosen to present the versionthat seemed
to me the most appropriate. I have not always presented all the versions that exist in
the manuscript if they seemed to have nothing more than a philological interest.
Sometimes the gender or the number of the verb in the original agrees with only one
of the variants; in this case, I have reestablished the correct form of the verb.
4. I have completed some of the abbreviations used by Tocqueville in the
manuscript.
5. All of the italics are Tocquevilles, withthe exceptionof citations inthecriticisms
by Tocquevilles family and friends, and, sometimes, of titles of books. On this point
I have made modications due to usage.
20. The thirteenth edition included for the rst time as an appendix the report of
Tocqueville to the Academie des sciences morales et politiques on the book by Cherbuliez,
De la de mocratie en Suisse, and Tocquevilles speech of 27 January 1848 to the Chamber,
in which he foresaw the February revolution. Tocquevilles intention had been as well
foreword xxxvii
Oneida and A Fortnight in the Wilderness, had been written by Tocqueville
during his journey in the United States. Everything suggests that they
would have constituted appendices to the Democracy if Beaumont had not
written Marie. We knowin fact fromthe latter that Tocqueville hadjudged
the two narratives to be too close to his travel companions ctional venture
to consider publishing them.
21
The two texts that follow are part of the drafts. Without the polish and
the quality of the two preceding ones, they still have a certaindocumentary
interest.
To include a certain number of ideas that will constitute the keystones
of Tocquevilles political thought, I have added an unpublished letter from
the author, dating from 1830 and addressed to Charles Stoffels.
Finally, I believed it was good to recapitulate in appendixes the foreword
to the twelfth edition and all of the works cited by Tocqueville in his book
as well as in the drafts, in order to aid in the reconstruction of the Tocque-
ville library.
to include as an appendix a short work written in October 1847 and published with the
title De la classe moyenne et du people [Of the middle class and the people] (OC,
III, 2, p. 738741), which he sent to Pagnerre (letter from Tocqueville to Pagnerre of 13
September 1850, at the National Assembly). Because of length, the present edition does
not reproduce the two appendixes of the 1850 edition.
21. See OCB, V, p. 27.
foreword xxxviii
Notes of
the journey
Correspondence
Rough drafts
M
a
r
g
i
n
a
l

n
o
t
e
s

a
n
d

v
a
r
i
a
n
t
s
U
n
e
d
i
t
e
d

f
r
a
g
m
e
n
t
s
Copy sent to
the editor
[lost]
Copy [lost]
Critiques of family
and friends
BOOK
1835
1840
TEXT OF THIS
EDITION
[ . . . ]
EDITORIAL NOTES
Manuscript
foreword xxxix
Abbreviations and Symbols Used in This Edition
[ . . . ] Text not crossed out in the manuscript.
<. . . > Text circled or surrounded in pen (this generally concerns
fragments that Tocqueville wanted to delete, but the
presence of a circle around a word sometimes served solely
to draw the authors attention: Is the use pertinent? Does
the word conict phonetically with the one following?).
. . . Word or text crossed out by one or several vertical or
diagonal lines.
{ . . . } Word or text crossed out horizontally.
/ Sign placed at the end of the sentence to indicate that a
horizontal line separates it in the manuscript from the one
that follows.
.-.-.-.- Illegible for physical reasons. Generally due to the very
poor condition of the original.
[*] Note of Tocqueville, present in the manuscript but absent
from the published version.
* Note of Tocqueville, omitted in certain editions.
[ . . . (ed.)] Information given by the editor.
a, b, c, . . . Notes of the editor.
(A), (B), . . . Notes of Tocqueville that refer to the end of the volume.
1, 2, 3, . . . Notes of Tocqueville placed at the bottom of the page.
OC Edition of complete works published by Gallimard under
the direction of J. P. Mayer at rst, and Francois Furet and
Jean-Claude Casanova afterward.
uvres comple `tes. Paris: Gallimard, 1951:
t. I: De la de mocratie en Ame rique. 2 vols. (1951)
t. II: LAncien Re gime et la Re volution. 2 vols. (1952, 1953)
t. III: E
crits et discours politiques.

vol. 1. (1962)
vol. 2 . (1985)
vol. 2 . (1990)
t. IV: E
crits sur le syste `me pe nitentiaire en France et a` le tranger.

2 vols. (1985)
t. V: Voyages.
vol. 1: En Sicile et aux E
tats-Unis. (1957)
vol. 2: En Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algerie. (1958)
foreword xl
t. VI: Correspondances anglaises.
vol. 1: Avec Henry Reeve et John Stuart Mill. (1954) [cite
comme Correspondance anglaise. ]
vol. 2: Correspondance et conversations dAlexis de
Tocqueville et Nassau William Senior. (1991)
vol. 3: Correspondance anglaise. (2003)
t. VII: Correspondance e trange `re dAlexis de Tocqueville. 1 vol.
(1986)
t. VIII: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et de Gustave de
Beaumont. 3 vols. (1967)
t. IX: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et dArthur de
Gobineau. 1 vol. (1959)
t. X: Correspondance et e crits locaux. (1995)
t. XI: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et de Pierre-Paul
Royer-Collard. Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et
de Jean-Jacques Ampe `re. 1 vol. (1970)
t. XII: Souvenirs. 1 vol. (1964)
t. XIII: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de
Kergorlay. 2 vols. (1977)
t. XIV: Correspondance familiale. (1998)
t. XV: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et de Francisque de
Corcelle. Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville et de
Madame Swetchine. 2 vols. (1983)
t. XVI: Me langes. (1989)
t. XVII: Correspondance a` divers. Not yet published.
t. XVIII: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville avec Adolphe de
Circourt et Madame de Circourt. 1 vol. (1984)
OCB Edition of complete works directed by Gustave de
Beaumont.
uvres comple `tes publie es par Madame de Tocqueville. Paris:
Michel Levy Fre`res, 18641878:
t. IIII: De la de mocratie en Ame rique.
t. IV: LAncien Re gime et la Re volution.
t. V: Correspondance et uvres posthumes.
t. VI: Correspondance dAlexis de Tocqueville.
t. VII: Nouvelle correspondance.
t. VIII: Me langes, fragments historiques et notes sur lAncien
Re gime et la Re volution.
t. IX: E
tudes e conomiques, politiques et litte raires.

manuscript In the notes of the editor, the working manuscript of the
Democracy in America (YTC, CVIa, four boxes).
v: variant
foreword xli
YTC Yale Tocqueville Collection. Collection of manuscripts of
Yale University, belonging to the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. Sterling Library owns several
supplementary manuscripts.
YTC, BIIb In this classication: lists of questions meant for American
interlocutors.
YTC, CIIc In this classication: Sources manuscrites, alphabetic list,
drawn up by Tocqueville, of travel notes.
YTC, CVaCVk In this classication: drafts of Democracy.
CVa Bundle no. 8 Notes that very probably have no place
to be used (59 pp.)
CVb Bundle no. 13 Various documents on the system of
administration in America from which a note can be
done for the chapter titled Of Government and
Administration in the United States; (34 pp.)
CVc Bundle no. 6 That equality of conditions is an
accomplished, irresistible fact, that breaks all those who
will want to struggle against it. Consequence of this
fact (9 pp.)
CVd Bundle no. 5 Ideas and fragments that all relate more
or less to the great chapter titled: how the ideas and
sentiments that equality suggests inuence the political
constitution (53 pp.)
CVe Bundle no. 17 (two copies of 13 and 17 pp.)
CVf Bundle no. 4 Notes, detached ideas, fragments,
criticisms, relative to my two last volumes of the
Democracy (52 pp.)
CVg Bundle no. 9 Drafts of the chapters of the second
part of the Democracy (partial copy in Bonnels hand,
three notebooks numbering a total of 416 pp. and two
boxes with the original manuscript). This is the so-
called Rubish.
CVh Bundle no. 3, 15 Notes, documents, ideas relative to
America. Good to consult if I again want to write
something on this subject (ve notebooks, 484 pp.)
CVj Bundle no. 2, 12 . . . detached . . . on the
philosophic method of the Americans, general ideas,
the sources of belief . . . to be put in the . . . and that
cannot be placed in the chapter (two notebooks, 138
pp.)
CVk Bundle no. 7, 12 Fragments, ideas that I cannot
place in the work (March 1840) (insignicant
collection) (two notebooks, 148 pp.)
foreword xlii
Note on the Manuscripts
In addition to the documents of Yale University, the editor quotes or re-
produces, with the kind permission of the libraries mentioned, the follow-
ing documents:
Letter of Herve de Tocqueville, 15 January 1827, Bibliothe`que de
Versailles.
List of questions on the situation of Blacks in the United States, library
of Haverford College, Pennsylvania (E. W. Smith, no. 955).
Letter to Edward Everett, 6 February 1833 (Tocqueville, Alexis de. Letter
to Edward Everett, 6 February 1833. Edward Everett papers); letter to
Edward Everett, 15 February 1850 (Tocqueville, Alexis de. Letter to Ed-
ward Everett, 15 February 1850. Edward Everett papers); passages drawn
from the journal of Theodore Sedgwick (Sedgwick, Theodore III. Paris
journal, volume 3, November 1833July 1834, pages 8081, 85. Sedgwick
family papers), Massachusetts Historical Society.
Review project (General Manuscripts, Miscellaneous, TITO); letter
to Basil Hall, 19 June 1836 (General Manuscripts [MISC] Collection,
Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collec-
tions), library of Princeton University.
Documents relating to the question of the indemnities (Dreer Collec-
tion), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Letter to Sainte-Beuve, [8 April 1835]; letter of Sainte-Beuve to Beau-
mont, 26 November 1865, bibliothe`que de lInstitut, Spoelberch de
Lovenjoul collection.
Letter to Richard M. Milnes, 29 May 1844; letter to Richard M. Milnes,
14 April 1845; and letter to Richard M. Milnes, 9 February 1852, Trinity
College, Cambridge (Houghton papers, 25/200, 201 and 209).
foreword xliii
Letter to the prefect, 3 December 1851 (Ms. 1070), bibliothe`que histo-
rique de la ville de Paris.
Letter to Charles Monnard, 15 October 1856, library of the canton and
university of Lausanne.
foreword xliv
Acknowledgments
I very much want to extend my deep thanks to the Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library of Yale University, which continually put at my
disposal the innumerable manuscripts that I was able to consult. My thanks
go to the entire staff, and very particularly to two curators, Marjorie G.
Wynne and Vincent Giroud. I also thank the Beinecke Library for its kind
permission to quote and to reproduce the manuscripts and documents of
the Tocqueville collection.
xlvii
Editors Introduction
Man obeys rst causes of which he is unaware, secondary
causes that he cannot foresee, a thousand caprices of his
fellows; in the end, he puts himself in chains and binds
himself forever to the fragile work of his hands.
I have spoken and dreamed a great deal about what I have seen; I believe
that if I had the leisure after my return, I would be able to write something
passable on the United States. To embrace the whole in its entirety would
be foolishness. I am incapable of aiming at a universal exactitude; I have
not seen enough for that; but I already know, I think, much more than we
have ever been taught in France about it, and certain points of the picture
can be of great, even current interest.
22
Published in two parts, in 1835 and 1840 successively, republished more
than one hundred and fty times and translated into fteen languages, De-
mocracy in America has elicited an enormous interest since its appearance.
Elevated to the status of a classic of political philosophy and, as such, prob-
ably the last great text of that discipline, Tocquevilles work continues to
attract readers, researchers, thinkers, and politicians, thanks to a modernity
that few works of the nineteenth century can claim.
Regarding Democracy, the question of its topicality is often discussed.
This is entirely appropriate if by it we mean that this exceptional work still
continues to be understood and studied.
22. Letter to E
douard de Tocqueville, Washington, 20 January 1832. This letter be-

longs to the Yale University collection of manuscripts (Yale Tocqueville Collection
hereafter cited as YTCclassication BIa2). The reader will ndinthe Foreworda com-
plete list of the abbreviations and symbols used in this edition.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xlviii
With the perspicacity that was characteristic of him, Tocqueville envis-
aged the reception of his book in this way: Some will nd that at bottom
I do not like democracy and that I am harsh toward it; others will think
that I imprudently favor its development. I would be happier if the book
were not read, and perhaps that happiness will come.
23
Readers have not failed to multiply, but they have indeed divided as
the author forecast. It could not have been otherwise since this contradic-
tory interpretation coincides precisely with Tocquevilles thinking and its
development.
I
Legacies
Alexis de Tocqueville belongedtoanoldNormanfamily, Clerel, whichtook
the patronymic de Tocqueville in 1661.
24
In the following centuries, the fam-
ily, Clerel de Tocqueville, left their land from time to time to serve the
church or the crown, imitating inthis their ancestor, Guillaume Clarel, who
had participated in the battle of Hastings.
The Revolution surprised a family rmly established on the Cotentin
peninsula, on good terms with its vassals, and honoring its seigniorial du-
ties. When the revolutionary tide reached Normandy, it carried away only
23. In a letter of the correspondence with Kergorlay [1835] (OC, XIII, 1, p. 374), but
probably addressed to someone else.
24. The village of Tocqueville and the chateau are about fteen kilometers from
Cherbourg. On the origins of the Tocqueville family see G.-A. Simon, Les Clarel a`
le poque de la conque te dAngleterre et leur descendance dans la famille Cle rel de Tocqueville
(Caen: Societe dImpression de Basse Normandie, 1936); and Histoire ge ne alogique des
Cle rel, seigneurs de Rampan, Tocqueville, Clouay, Lignerolles, . . . (Caen: Imprimerie
Ozanne et Cie., 1954).
My intention here is to present the principal features of Tocquevilles biographydur-
ing the years that preceded the Democracy. For more details, refer to R.-Pierre Marcel,
Essai politique sur Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1910); Antoine Redier, Comme
disait Monsieur de Tocqueville (Paris: Perrin, 1925); J.-P. Mayer, Prophet of the Mass Age:
A Study of Alexis de Tocqueville (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1939); Andre Jardin,
Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: Hachette, 1984); Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life
(New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007).
edi tor s i ntroducti on xlix
the dovecote of the chateau. It took from the Tocqueville family just the
privilege of raising pigeons.
Herve de Tocqueville welcomed the revolution with a certainsympathy.
After a short stay in Brussels, disgust for the life of the e migre the notes
of his son on the depravity of a powerless aristocracy are the direct echo
of the opinions of the fatherled himto return to Paris, where he enlisted
in the national guard. On 10 August 1792, Herve de Tocqueville was part
of a section of the national guard that, coming from the faubourg Saint-
Victor, was preparing to defend the Tuileries. Rallying to the opinion of
citizens met along the way, the men who made up the section decided to
march against the palace; following this sudden change of opinion Herve
surreptitiously abandoned the section.
After several months in Picardy, Herve returned to Paris inJanuary 1793.
At the endof the month, he went toMalesherbes and, onMarch12, married
Louise Le Peletier de Rosanbo, granddaughter of the famous Malesherbes.
The refuge at Malesherbes protected its inhabitants until the end of au-
tumn. The defender of Louis XVI was strongly urged to leave France, but
he stubbornly remained, intending perhaps to serve as the defender of the
Queen. On 17 and 19 December, two members of the revolutionary com-
mittee arrested all the inhabitants of the chateau. Herve de Tocqueville, his
wife, the Peletier dAunay family, and the young Louis de Rosanbo owed
their lives only to 9 Thermidor. They would see Malesherbes, Madame de
Rosanbo, Jean-Baptiste de Chateaubriand, and his wife perish.
25
The unpublished memoirs of Herve de Tocqueville speak, not without
some melancholy, about moments spent in the company of Malesherbes
and other prisoners at Port-Libre (Port-Royal).
26
The months that preceded
the trial and inevitable sentence of death for Malesherbes brought forth
within Herve a boundless admiration for the noble old man who with dig-
nity mounted the scaffold following his daughter and granddaughter.
25. Monsieur de Rosanbo was guillotined on 20 April 1794; Malesherbes, Madame
de Rosanbo, Jean-Baptiste de Chateaubriand and his wife, the older daughter of the
Rosanbos, were guillotined the following day.
26. On the captivity and execution of Malesherbes, E
douard de Tocqueville published

one part of the memoirs of his father with the title Episodes of the Terror, Le contem-
porain, revue de conomie chre tienne, January 1861, republished as a brochure in 1901.
edi tor s i ntroducti on l
Such events must have been evoked many times in the family, andAlexis
always sawin his great-grandfather, Malesherbes, anexemplary gure with-
out peer.
27
At one time he would conceive the project of writing a book on
his ancestor. The idea would come to nothing, but the shadow of Males-
herbes hovers over many pages of Democracy.
28
A bust of the President of
the Cour des Aides, placed on the worktable of the author, would preside
silently over the writing of many works.
Under the Empire, the Tocqueville family lived in Paris in the winter
and at Verneuil in the summer, where Herve
29
accepted the more or less
symbolic position of mayor.
30
The education of the children was entrusted
to the Abbe Lesueur, who had been Herves private tutor and who did not
27. When Tocqueville was looking for a position, his father wrote him a letter of
recommendation in which he explained:
My last son Alexis de Tocqueville intends to pursue a career as a magistrate. He has
just completed his law degree with some success, and I beg the support of your ex-
cellency in opening this career to him. In his family there are examples that will im-
pose onhimthe obligationto followit withzeal. Grandsonby his mother of President
de Rosanbo and of M. de Malesherbes, if he cannot equal them in talent, he will at
least try to approach them in the qualities that distinguish a good magistrate. He
would be very happy to begin under your auspices.
Letter of 15 January 1827 to an unspecied recipient, with the kind permission of the
Bibliothe`que de Versailles.
28. Tocquevilles political career nished with a gesture worthy of President Males-
herbes. Arrested with many of his colleagues at the time of the coup of Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte, Tocqueville in prison at Vincennes received an order to be set free. He im-
mediately wrote to the prefect: I have just received an order setting me free. I had not
solicited it and I have authorized no one to solicit it; since it does not include all of my
colleagues detained for the same reason and in the same way in the same prison, I have
reason to believe that it has been addressed to me by mistake, and in any case, I cannot
benet from it, since my intention is to leave here only with my colleagues. Vincennes,
3 December 1851, with the kind permission of the Bibliothe`que historique de la ville de
Paris.
29. According to Andre Jardin, Herve could have been the secret agent of the Count
dArtois during the Empire (Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 16). This book also devotes a chapter
to his career as prefect (pp. 1839).
30. The father of Alexis seems to have fullledhis duties witha zeal that was particular
to him, but not without presenting a certain resistance to the orders of the Emperor. In
1814, for example, he organized the mass marriage of young men about to be conscripted
into the army and posted decrees so high that it was impossible to read them. Antoine
Redier, Comme disait Monsieur de Tocqueville, p. 34.
edi tor s i ntroducti on li
hide his partiality for Alexis.
31
Several documents attest to the anti-liberal
tendencies of Lesueur as well as to his position as an intransigent Catholic
monarchist; inthis he seemedinbetter agreement withthe ultra sympathies
of the Countess de Tocqueville than with the more conciliatory and intel-
ligent position of her husband.
32
The days of the future author of Democracy were occupied by the
lessons of the Abbe, reading sessions with the family, composition ex-
ercises, and visits by relatives and friends.
33
The private tutor believed
in a brilliant future for his pupil.
34
Like his brothers and his intimate
31. Hippolyte, the eldest, was born on 1 October 1797, and began a military career on
1 July 1814. He participated in the Spanish expedition with the rank of captain and left
the army on 15 October 1830. Married to E
milie Evrard de Belisle, he would spend most

of his time developing his property of Nacqueville, in the Contentin.
E
douard, born in 1800, entered the army in 1816, but had to leave it in 1822 for health
reasons. In 1829, he married Alexandrine Ollivier, who owned a large property at Baugy,
in Oise. Tocqueville would feel particular affection for their sons, Rene and Hubert.
Andre Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, pp. 4650.
Alexis was born in 1805.
32. In a letter from Lesueur to E
douard, 13 September 1822, we read regarding secret

societies:
It is more than time to deal with them. All of Europe is infected by this accursedrace.
It seems impossible to destroy the germ, but vigorous means must be invented to
stop their contagion. There must be a pest house in the Siberian oceans in which the
leaders of the plague would be enclosed; there they would be forcibly quarantined
not for days, but for years. I am persuaded that not one would return from there.
They would poison each other, kill each other, consume each other (YTC, AIV).
33. The catalogue of the library of the Tocqueville chateau, established in 1818, in-
cludes, among other prestigious names, those of Montaigne, La Bruye`re, Locke, Bacon,
Fontenelle, Pope, Morelly, Montesquieu, Thomas More, Buffon, Corneille, Racine,
Molie`re, Voltaire, Plutarch, Grotius, Hume, and Bossuet. YTC, AIe.
34. At the time of a family celebration in 1822, the Abbe Lesueur addressed to the
Countess de Tocqueville the following verse regarding her son:
As wise as a Demosthenes
is the youngest of your sons
going to appear in the arena:
to testify to his victory,
the name of the great Alexis
will be inscribed in the history [of the college].
edi tor s i ntroducti on lii
friend, Louis de Kergorlay,
35
the young Alexis considered a military
career.
We perhaps owe the abandonment of Alexiss military plans to the Abbe
Lesueurs insistence: My dear E
douard, wrote the Abbe in 1822, you

must counsel him against becoming a military man. You know the draw-
backs better than we, and I am sure that he will rely more on his brothers
than on his father. That character, Louis de Kergorlay, put this idea in his
head. They are going to meet again, and indeed my planis to ask M. Loulou
to leave us alone and to mind his own business.
36
A distant cousin, froma quite similar family background, Kergorlay had
established the bonds of a profound friendship with Tocqueville. They ex-
pressed it in an abundant correspondence that deals as much with Tocque-
Let us postpone our homage,
it is the wisest course,
and to regain our spirits,
let us wait until next year.
Next year, the Monarchy,
its foundations reestablished,
will see the liberals ee;
and our King on his throne,
nally master of his kingdom,
will want to cure all our ills.
Tune: When the oxen go two by two, the plowing goes better . . . (Letter from
Lesueur to E
douard de Tocqueville, 25 August 1822, YTC, AIV).

35. During the weeks that followed the July Revolution, Tocqueville would momen-
tarily regret not having followed his initial impulse, that of entering a military career: I
regret more than ever not having followed the initial ideas of my youth and not entering
the armyhe confessed to his friend Charles Stoffels on 26 August 1830.
Those in the army are also humiliated, but they have a thousand occasions before
themto rise up again, and we do not. The thought of striking a saber blowfor France,
if foreigners wanted to invade her territory for a third time, is the only one that rouses
me amid the disgust that surrounds me. Love of independence of our country, of
its external grandeur, is the only sentiment that still makes something in my soul
vibrate (YTC, AVII).
36. Letter from the Abbe Lesueur to E
douard de Tocqueville, 14 September 1822,

YTC, AIV. The same idea is found in a letter dated 16 September: How sad it would
be to smother under a helmet a talent that promises so many distinctions.
edi tor s i ntroducti on liii
villes works as with books, parliamentary opinions, and the matrimonial
plans of Kergorlay; it also includes many commentaries and recommen-
dations of the latter on the writings of his friend.
37
Kergorlays mark on
the pages of Democracy is clear and easy enough to spot.
With the Restoration, Herve began a roving career as a prefect, begin-
ning in1814 inMaine-et-Loire. Herve afterwardfullledthe same functions
in Oise and in Dijon (1816). In 1817, he accepted the prefecture of Metz,
where he remained until 1823. He then moved to Amiens, and in 1826 was
nally back in Versailles. His nomination as a peer of France on 4 Novem-
ber 1827 forced him, for reasons of incompatibility of duties, to leave his
position in January 1828. The July Revolution would eliminate the peerage
and remove him forever from political life.
38
The Countess Louise de Tocqueville, who seemed never to have been
able to recover from her months of detention, followed her husband in his
different posts until 1817, the moment that she settled denitively in Paris.
The family correspondence shows her prostrate, requiring the constant at-
tention of those around her. Alexis lived with her until 1820.
In April of that year, while his two brothers began their military careers,
Alexis rejoined his father in Moselle to complete his studies at the royal
college of Metz, which he nished in 1823.
39
He then returned to Paris to
begin his studies in law.
40
37. This correspondence is published in the two tomes of volume XIII of the uvres
comple `tes.
38. In 1829, Herve de Tocqueville had published a brochure on the proposed mu-
nicipal law, entitled De la charte provinciale. On this point, the ideas of the son would
not be those of the father, but they wouldpartially echo them. In1847, Herve de Tocque-
ville published Histoire philosophique du re `gne de Louis XV, in two volumes, and in 1850,
Coup dil sur le re `gne de Louis XVI. These two works continue to have a certain interest.
39. Two of his school compositions are preserved: De Laudibus Demosthenes and
Limportance de leloquence chez lhomme. A Discours sur le progre`s des Arts dans
la Gre`ce had a certain effect. In 1822, Herve presented his son with an edition of
Horace (Qvinti Horatii Flacci Opera. Londini Aeneis Tabulis incidit Iohannes Pine
MDCCXXXIII [MDCCXXXVII], 2 vols.) with this dedication: Given to my son,
Alexis, on 5 September 1822, the day when he obtained the prize of honor in Rhetoric,
the rst prize in Latin translation, the second prize in French composition, and four
certicates of merit. Metz, 5 September 1822. The Count de Tocqueville.BernardQuav-
edi tor s i ntroducti on liv
At the end of 1826, his law studies nished, Tocqueville started on a
journey to Italy and Sicily in the company of his brother, E
douard. His
nomination as juge auditeur at Versailles, on 5 April 1827, precipitated his
return to Paris.
The Machine at Law
Tocqueville spent the rst months at the prefecture of his father. Following
the latters resignation, he then shared an apartment with a new friend,
Gustave de Beaumont.
41
The family Bonnin de La Bonninie`re originated in Touraine. It had
spread into the neighboring provinces and had recently acquired the pat-
ronymic de Beaumont. At the beginning of the century the Count Jules de
Beaumont, his wife, and their four children lived at the chateau de La
Borde, at Beaumont-la-Chartre, in Sarthe. Jules de Beaumont was the
mayor there during the Empire. It was in this setting, little different from
that of Verneuil, that Gustave had spent his childhood.
The Tocquevilles devoted afternoons to reading and conversation, in-
cluding among their visitors Chateaubriand, who proted particularly from
his visits to work on his Mo se. At the home of the Beaumonts, the family
read together and devoted itself to music, painting, and charitable works.
42
itch, catalogue 1069, December 1986. I owe this information to the kindness of Marjorie
G. Wynne, librarian of Yale University.
40. He would gain his diploma after the presentation of two theses: De usurpa-
tionibus aut de usucapionibus and LAction en rescision ou nullite. Andre Jardin,
Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 70.
41. George W. Pierson indicated the importance of the inuence of Beaumont in
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), and
even earlier in Gustave de Beaumont: Liberal, Franco-American Review 1 (19361937):
30716. More recently, Seymour Drescher has insistedonthe signicance of Beaumonts
texts for understanding Tocqueville in an interesting appendix to Tocqueville and Beau-
mont on Social Reform (New York: Harper, 1968), pp. 20117, Tocqueville and Beau-
mont: A Rationale for Collective Study. See also Christine Dunn Henderson, Beau-
mont y Tocqueville, in Eduardo Nolla, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville. Libertad, igualdad,
despotismo (Madrid: Gota a Gota, 2007), pp. 7399.
42. Rose Preau de la Baraudie`re had been called La Providence by the inhabitants
of Beaumont-la-Charte. On her tomb is written: She was, while alive, the mother of
the poor.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lv
Even if the Beaumont family belonged to the minor provincial nobility
and could not include among its ancestors a Lamoignon de Malesherbes,
the family had, like the Tocqueville family, distinguished itself in arms and
was related to the Lafayette family.
In February 1826, Gustave de Beaumont was named substitut du pro-
cureur du roi at Versailles. Tocqueville struckupa friendshipwithhimwhen
he assumed his responsibility as juge auditeur,
43
in June 1827.
The future author of Democracy chose a legal career with some hesita-
tion. He was afraid of turning into a machine at law.
44
His rst weeks of
work as a magistrate showed him the deciencies of his legal preparation
and revealed a certain trouble speaking in public that he would regret all
his life. He would attribute a large part of his failure in politics to this
difculty.
Gustave de Beaumont placed him under his protection. It was the be-
ginning of a friendship that, Tocqueville would say, was born already
old.
45
Heine from his perspective would compare the two friends to oil
and vinegar.
46
The rst letter that still exists of their correspondence goes
back to the month of October 1828. It is devoted to a long reection on A
43. A position without salary and with vaguely dened duties.
44. To Kergorlay, 23 July 1827, OC, XIII, 1, p. 108.
45. In a note from Tocqueville to Beaumont criticizing his oratorical style (YTC,
CIVa).
46. It must be said infairness about M. de Tocqueville, whoreported, that he upheld
his convictions with energy; he is a man of the mind, who has little fervor and who,
beneath the frozen surface, follows the arguments of his logic; consequently his speeches
have a certain frigid brilliance, like sculpted ice. But what M. de Tocqueville lacks in
feeling, his friend, M. de Beaumont, possesses in superabundance; and these two insep-
arable companions, whom we see together everywhere, in their travels, in their publi-
cations, in the Chamber of Deputies, complement each other in the best possible way.
The one, the severe thinker, and the other, the man with smooth feelings, go together
like a bottle of vinegar and a bottle of oil. Heinrich Heine, Allemands et Franc ais (Paris:
Calmann Levy, 1881), pp. 31314.
Another contemporary noted: Gustave de Beaumont was as lively as he was amiable;
he had solid qualities of the heart and a vivacity of spirit that gave rise to a great deal of
grace and gaiety. Tocqueville, in contrast, was cold, reserved, master of himself to the
point of calculating his actions as well as his relationships. Louis Passy, Le marquis de
Blosseville, souvenirs (E
vreux: Charles Herissey, 1898), p. 107.

In the following pages, but above all in the pages of the Democracy, we will gain a
better idea of Beaumonts decisive role in the work of his friend.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lvi
History of England From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Commence-
ment of the Reign of Williamthe Third, by John Lingard, whichTocqueville
shared with his dear future collaborator.
47
The two friends shared read-
ings and together attended Guizots course on the history of civilizationin
Europe.
48
In September 1829, Beaumont was named substitut for the department
of Seine. The distance that separated himfromhis friend did not interrupt
their friendship. Beaumont came to Versailles as soon as his work allowed.
Tocqueville now shared his apartment with Ernest de Chabrol, who took
Beaumonts place at the court of premie`re instance at Versailles.
The July Revolution broke out soon after. It was going to change con-
siderably the life of the two young magistrates.
The July Days
Although they belonged to a milieu largely hostile to the French Revolu-
tion, Tocqueville andBeaumont were not contemporaneous withtheevent.
As such, their ideas, without being completely opposite to those of their
relatives, were inevitably different. They witnessedthe JulyRevolutionwith
more disillusionment and sadness than hatred.
In a letter to Henry Reeve,
49
Tocqueville admitted:
Some absolutely want to make me a party man and I am not; I am given
passions and I have only opinions, or rather I have only one passion, the
love of liberty and human dignity. In my view, all governmental forms are
47. Letter of 5 October 1828, Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, p. 71. A
year later, Tocqueville wrote to his friend: We are now intimately bound, bound for
life, I think (ibid., p. 89); and a little later:
Some good works on history can still emerge from our common efforts. It goes with-
out saying that we must develop the homme politique in us. And for that it is the
history of men and, above all, the history of those who have most immediately pre-
ceded us in the world that we must study (Letter of 25 October 1829, ibid., p. 93).
48. We have the notes of Tocqueville for the lectures given between 11 April 1829 and
29 May 1830, which deal with Charlemagne and feudal society. Tocqueville also knew
the contents of the other lectures.
49. Letter to Reeve, 22 March 1837, OC, VI, 1, pp. 3738.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lvii
only more or less perfect means to satisfy that holy and legitimate passion
of men. I am given alternately democratic or aristocratic prejudices; I
would perhaps have had one or the other, if I had been born in another
century and in another country. But the chance of my birth has made it
very easy for me to defend myself from both. I came into the world at the
end of a long Revolution that, after destroying the old state, had created
nothing lasting. The aristocracy was already dead when I was born, and
democracy did not yet exist; so my instinct could not carry me blindly
toward either the one or the other. I lived in a country that for forty years
had tried a bit of everything without settling denitively on anything, so
I wasnt easily inuenced regarding political illusions. As part of the old
aristocracy of my country myself, I had neither hatrednor natural jealousy
against the aristocracy, and since this aristocracy was destroyed, I did not
have any natural love for it either, for we are strongly attachedonly towhat
is alive. I was close enough to it to know it well, far enough away to judge
it without passion. I will say as much about the democratic element. No
family memory, no personal interest gave me a natural and necessary in-
clination toward democracy. But as for me, I had received no injury from
it; I had no particular reason to love it or to hate it, apart from those pro-
vided by my reason. In a word, I was in such good equilibrium between
the past and the future that I felt naturally and instinctively drawn to nei-
ther the one nor the other, and it did not take great efforts for me to look
calmly at both sides.
50
50. Beaumont expressed himself in nearly identical terms:
When I was born, a social order that was fteen centuries old nally collapsed. [ . . . ]
Never had such a great ruin appeared before the eyes of peoples. [ . . . ] Never had
sucha great reconstructionincitedthe genius of men. Anewworldarose onthe debris
of the old one; spirits were restless, passions ardent, minds in labor; all of Europe
changed, [ . . . ] opinions, mores, laws, were swept along in a whirlpool so rapid that
new institutions could scarcely be distinguished from those that no longer existed.
[ . . . ] The origin of sovereignty had been displaced; the principles of government
were changed; a new art of war had been invented, new sciences created; men were
no less extraordinary than events; the greatest nations of the world took children as
leaders, while old men were expelled from public affairs [ . . . ] soldiers without ex-
edi tor s i ntroducti on lviii
If Tocqueville exaggeratedthe coldness anddisinterestedness withwhich
he observedthe twoopposing options, he was sincere inthe idea that history
could just as easily have made him an ultra as a liberal.
Beaumont found himself in a quite similar situation. In Paris on 30 July
1830, he wrote in his memoirs: All the men wore a tri-colored ribbon in
their button hole, or a cockade on their hat. I did not have one; no one said
anything to me. But when someone approached me yelling `Long live the
Charter in a demanding tone, I gave the same cry, and it didnt cost my
conscience anything to do so.
51
perience triumphed over the most battle hardened groups; generals who had just
come out of school overthrew powerful empires [ . . . ] the rule of peoples was sol-
emnly proclaimed; and never were such strong and such glorious individuals seen.
Everyone rushed into an arena that fortune seemed to open to all (Marie, ou esclavage
aux E
tats-Unis (Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1835), I, pp. 3940).

51. Beaumonts unpublished memoirs on the July Revolution (YTC, AV). Beaumont
summarized his thinking about the revolution as follows:
The middle class made the revolution that the people executed; but the republican
party, a party recruited from all classes, led it and determined its results. I will explain:
The industrialists, tradesmen, heads of companies, small proprietors, etc., irritated
by the Ministry and by the government of the king, knew that they did not want
that government, but did not know what they wanted in its place. They cried Vive
la Charte because the Charter was violated. They wanted what the government did
not want.
They said to the workers: You will not work, which is to say, you will not live if
this illegal state of things continues.
They said nothing more. That was indeed to say: overthrow it; and since force
alone could destroy it, that was also to say: even use force. But it was not in the mores
of peaceful tradesmen and tranquil industrialists to march at the head of the workers
in order to lead their assaults.
Then came the men who for ten years had established a new government for when
the government ended. The society, aide-toi, le ciel taidera, whose power burst forth
in the newspapers, in the elections, in attacks against public ofcials, appeared
stronger andbolder thanever. Composedinthe majority of enlightened, enterprising
men who were inexible in their principles and ready to sacrice their lives for the
sanctity of their cause, they provided the leaders for the populace whose courage they
regularized; and when these leaders had led the populace to victory, they were its
masters; they were the masters of force fromthe beginning. This is howa monarchical
republic emerged from the triumph of a multitude set into motion by a class whose
impulse was toward the constitutional monarchy.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lix
The following day, Tocqueville returned to the town hall of Versailles
the musket and ammunition that he had received the day before as a mem-
ber of the national guard and declared to Ernest de Blosseville: There is
nothing more to be done; everything is nished. At the gate of Saint-Cloud,
I have just seen the convoy of the monarchy pass by, the King, the children
of France, the ministers are in carriages surrounded by body guards. And
well! Would you believe, the escutcheons of the royal carriages are hidden
beneath mud coverings.
52
From the time of the appointment of the Polignac government on 8
August 1829,
53
Tocqueville and Beaumont expected an event of this type.
A partisan of the Bourbons, Tocqueville owed a certain loyalty to his social
origins, but the accomplished deed of the change of dynasty led him in
fact to discover a great delity to France.
54
It was far from the intention of
Tocqueville and Beaumont to qualify themselves as liberals in 1830. None-
theless, the fact of putting the honor of France as well as the principles of
the Charter and of liberty before the Bourbons put them closer to liberal
positions than they (and Tocqueville in particular) believed.
This loyalty to the nation rather than to the Bourbons nevertheless iso-
lated them from their milieu. Friends and relatives withdrew from public
life as the possibility of overturning the monarchy seemed more unreal, in
particular after the month of August, when all ofcials were asked to swear
anoath of loyalty to Louis-Philippe. At that moment Hippolyte deTocque-
ville and Louis de Kergorlay left the army, and Herve lost his title of peer
of France.
55
52. Louis Passy, Le marquis de Blosseville, p. 130.
53. This is Beaumonts opinion in his unpublished memoirs. Tocqueville wrote the
same to his brother, E
douard. Andre Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, pp. 8384.

54. Tocqueville would describe his feelings in this way: Tied to the Royalists by the
sharing of a few principles and by a thousand family bonds, I see myself in some way
bound to a party whose conduct seems to me often not very honorable andalmost always
extravagant. I cannot help suffering immensely from their faults, all the while con-
demning them with all my power. Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 18 October 1831, YTC,
BIa2.
55. Herve seemed to fear that the newgovernment, suspecting his loyalty to the Bour-
bons, had his mail opened. During his journey in America, Tocqueville asked his sister-
in-law, Alexandrine, to assure his father that his letters arrived punctually and sealed.
Letter to Madame E
douard de Tocqueville, 18 October 1831, YTC, BIa2.

edi tor s i ntroducti on lx
For their part, Tocqueville and Beaumont were confronted with a dif-
cult choice: swear an oath to the new king or abandon their judicial ca-
reers. Tocqueville swore an oath, and justied his decision by the fear of
anarchy:
I swore an oath to the new government. I believed that by acting in this
way I have fullled the strict duty of a Frenchman. In our current state,
if Louis-Philippe were overthrown, it would certainly not be to the prot
of Henry V, but of the republic and of anarchy. Those who love their
country must therefore rally openly to the new power that is arising, since
it alone can now save France from itself. I despise the new king; I believe
his right to the throne less than doubtful, and yet I will support himmore
rmly, I think, than those who smoothed the way for him and who will
not take long to be his masters or his enemies.
56
When Henrion, a friend of aristocratic origin, criticized Tocquevilles
decision, the latter responded in words that leave no doubt about his
position:
The morning of the ordinances I declared before the assembled tribunal
that henceforth resistance seemed legitimate to me and that I would resist
in my narrow sphere. When the movement went so far as to overthrow
the dynasty, I hid from no one my opposition to this measure. I said that
I would wage civil war if it took place. Once it was an accomplished fact,
I continued to believe what I had always believed, that the strictest duty
was not toward a man or a family, but toward country. The salvation of
France, at the point where we were, seemed to me to be in maintaining
the new king. So I promised to support him, without hiding the fact that
I did not do it for him. I protested that I did not intendanoath that bound
me forever to any cause other than to the interest of our country, and I
56. Letter to Charles Stoffels, 26 August 1830, YTC, AVII. Tocqueville swore the oath
for the rst time on 16 August 1830.
The conduct of Beaumont testies to his desire to move beyond the quarrels of the
moment. Thus, he opposed the policy of not applying the principle of amnesty to those
who pillaged Paris on 27, 28, and 29 July, and he decided not to go forward with trials
brought about by facts that seemed to him covered by the amnesty. He wrote a report
on the question and defended it before the king on 14 September 1830. YTC, AV.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxi
did not hide the fact that the moment that the new dynasty became in-
compatible with that interest, I would conspire against it.
57
It was out of these precise circumstances that the idea of the journey to
America was born.
58
The plan and its realization did not take much time.
On 31 October 1830, six days after Tocqueville took the oath a second time,
following his nomination to the post of juge supple ant, the two magistrates
presented to the government a proposal for a mission whose purpose was
to study the American penal institutions.
59
It involved describing and understanding the advantages and disadvan-
tages of the two systems in use in the United States. The Pennsylvania
system provided for incarceration in solitary connement night and day as
well as individual work by each person in his cell. The Auburn system, in
the state of New York, provided for imprisonment in solitary connement
and work in common, but under the strict law of silence.
About his American plans, Tocqueville gave the following argument that
he conded to his friend Stoffels:
My position in France is bad on all points, at least as I see it; for either the
government will consolidate itself, which is not very probable, or it will
be destroyed.
57. Draft of a letter to Henrion, 17 October 1830, YTC, AVII.
58. See OCB, V, pp. 1516. Young Tocqueville hadperhaps spokentoChateaubriand
about his American projects. In a letter to Charles Stoffels of 26 August 1830 (YTC,
AVII), he commented on them in this way: If I am forced to leave my career, and if
nothing necessarily keeps me in France, I have decided to ee the idleness of private life
and to take up the busy existence of the traveler again for a few years. For a long time I
have had the greatest desire to visit North America. I will go there to see what a great
republic is. The only thing I fear is that, during that time, one will be established in
France. The study of the penitentiary system is a very honorable pretext that makes
us seem particularly to merit the interest of the government, whatever it may be, and
that assures us its goodwill uponour return. Letter of 11 October 1831 toCharles Stoffels,
YTC, AVII.
59. See Note sur le syste `me pe nitentiaire et sur la mission cone e par M. le Ministre de
lInte rieur a` MM. Gustave de Beaumont et Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: H. Fournier,
1831).
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxii
In the rst case, my situation is not very pleasant and will not be for a
long while. I do not want advancement, because that would tie me to men
whose intentions I suspect. So here I am, an obscure juge supple ant, having
no way to make myself known, even in the narrow sphere in which I am
enclosed; for if I become part of the opposition, as a member of the public
prosecutors ofce, I do not even have the honor of being removed from
ofce; they will be content to keep me quiet by preventing me from
working in court. If I support those men, I am doing something that is
in accord with neither my principles nor my position. So there I am
necessarily reduced to the role of a neutral, which is to say to the most
pitiful role of all, especially when you occupy a lower grade. To all of
that, add that the future is until now so obscure that it is impossible to
say which party we should, in the interest of our country, desire to have
the denitive victory.
Now, suppose that this government is overthrown; amidthe disruption
that will follow, I have no chance to make myself known, for I amstarting
too low. I still have done nothing to attract public attention. Invainwould
I try to do my best; this revolution would nd me too young or too ob-
scure. I would certainly warmly embrace the banner of the party that ap-
peared to me the most just, but I would serve in its lowest ranks, which
would scarcely suit me.
There is my future in France; I sketched it without exaggeration. Now,
suppose that, without ceasing to be a magistrate and still maintaining my
rights of seniority, I go to America; fteen months go by; the parties be-
come clear in France; you see clearly which one is incompatible with the
grandeur and tranquility of your country; you thenreturnwitha clear and
decided opinion and free of any engagement with whomsoever in the
world. This journey, all by itself, has drawn you out of the most common
class; the knowledge that you have acquired among so celebrated a people
nally brings you out of the crowd. You know just what a vast republic
is, why it is practical here, impractical there! All the points of public ad-
ministration have been successively examined. Returning to France, you
feel, certainly, a strength that you did not have when you left. If the mo-
ment is favorable, some publication can alert the public to your existence
and x the attention of the parties on you. If that does not happen, oh
well! Your journey at least did you no harm, for you were as unknown in
America as you were in France, and returning to your country you are
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxiii
entirely as suited to advance as if you had remained there. There, I think,
is a plan that is not in all ways absurd.
60
It is therefore understood that initially the book on the United States
was considered a means: that of opening the doors of a political career for
its author. But the publication that Tocqueville is referring to in the cited
passage still lacked a name and substance. Moreover, the initial intention
of Tocqueville and Beaumont was to publish a shared text on the political
institutions and mores of the North Americans. So we are a long way from
the birth of Democracy in America and Marie, ou lesclavage aux E
tats-Unis.
The reasons that Beaumont had for leaving France for a time were not
very far from those of Tocqueville. In Marie, he gave the following ro-
mantic version that he put in the mouth of the protagonist:
Toward the year 1831, a Frenchman resolved to go to America with the
intention of settling there. This plan was inspired by various causes. A
recent revolution had revived in his country political passions that were
believed to be extinct. His sympathies and his convictions carried him
towardone party; his family ties kept himinanother. Thus placedbetween
his principles and his feelings, he constantly felt some conict; to follow
the movements of his heart, he would have to stie the voice of his reason;
and if he remained faithful to his beliefs, he would offend his dearest
affections.
61
It couldalso be that Beaumont hadrefusedtoremove twocompromising
documents relating to the trial of the Baroness de Feuche`res, and it has
been suggested that the government sent him to the United States with the
60. Letter to Charles Stoffels, 4 November 1830, YTC, AVII. But, in a letter probably
dating from 1835 (OC, XIII, 1, p. 374), Tocqueville afrmed on the contrary: I did not
go there with the idea of doing a book, but the idea of a book came to me there.
Tocquevilles letters must be used with certain precautions. The author very clearly
takes into account the person who is to receive his letters. Thus, he sometimes writes to
his correspondents what they expect, hiding certain information fromhis most intimate
friends, while sharing it with acquaintances, etc.
61. Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 23.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxiv
intention of removing him from the matter.
62
The Baroness de Feuche`res
was, we recall, an adventuress of English origin. She was accused of having
murdered her lover, the old Prince de Conde. The personwhoundoubtedly
proted the most from the death of the latter turned out to be Louis-
Philippe himself, since his son was the direct heir of the largest portion of
the wealth of the last Conde. If it is incorrect that the French government
sent Beaumont to the United States for the purpose of removing himfrom
the trial, it remains true that it was bent on including a magistrate of aris-
tocratic origin in a trial in which the king could be implicated. By pro-
ceeding in this way, the government shielded itself from the suspicions of
the legitimists and, if the judgment ever implicated the conduct of the
monarch,
63
it could always turn against a lawyer who did not have the rep-
utation of being favorable to the new regime.
America
Tocqueville and Beaumont left for America on April 2, 1831. Their baggage
included dozens of letters of introduction and a few works on the United
States: those of Volney and of Cooper, a history of the United States, and
the book by Basil Hall. They did not need them very much. All the infor-
mation that they were curious about was to be provided on site. It seemed
to them that the book they planned to write upon their return had to con-
cern America as much as democracy, and they were very impatient to know
both.
During the crossing of the Atlantic, they translated one part of Basil
Halls work
64
as preparation for their research on the prisons; they learned
about the history of the United States and discussed the Cours de conomie
politique of Jean-Baptiste Say.
62. Louis Andre, La myste rieuse Baronne de Feuche `res (Paris: Perrin, 1925), pp. 261
62. On the Feuche`res affair, we can also consult Marjorie Bowen, The Scandal of Sophie
Dawes (New York: Appleton, 1935); and Emile Lesueur, Le dernier Conde (Paris: Alcan,
1937).
63. The Beinecke Library holds, under the classication CIf, some of Beaumonts
letters to his superiors on the matter of the Baroness de Feuche`res.
64. A few pages of notes remain in YTC, BIf 2.9.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxv
On the afternoon of 9 May, they reached Newport. They were in New
York the next day. They would remain in the United States until 20 Feb-
ruary 1832.
65
Upon their arrival, Tocqueville and Beaumont discovered that the pub-
licity that their ofcial mission had received in the American press opened
every door to them.
66
So the ofcial study of the penitentiary system and
the unofcial research on that new form of government called democracy
seemed to look very promising.
Concerning democracy, the greatest difculty was foundnot inAmerica,
but in France.
Once rst impressions had passed, the two friends realized that their
eagerness to know and understand American society required above all a
real knowledge of French society, which they lacked. The purpose of their
journey became more precise. It would concern a double and simultaneous
intellectual journey whose subject would be France as well as America. I
will admit to you that what most prevents me from knowing what is hap-
pening on this point in America, wrote Tocqueville to his friend Blosse-
ville, is being almost completely ignorant of what exists in France.
67
This
observation is found many times in his correspondence.
It then became imperative to contact colleagues, friends, and relatives in
order to obtain the information necessary for understanding America by
way of understanding France.
Onthis point, Tocqueville beganby asking his father, Chabrol, andBlos-
seville for information about the French administration:
65. This is not the place to reconstitute the American itinerary in detail. Moreover,
it is impossible in this matter to improve on what George W. Pierson said in Tocqueville
and Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938). I use the mention
of this work to express my deep acknowledgment to Mr. Pierson for the time that he
devoted to my questions and for the encouragement that he constantly lavished on me
during my work.
66. It is true that the newspapers, which deal with everything, have announced our
arrival and expressed the hope that we will nd active assistance everywhere. The result
is that all doors are open to us and that everywhere we receive the most attering wel-
come. Letter from Tocqueville to his mother, 29 April19 May 1831, YTC, BIa2.
67. Letter of 30 October 1831, YTC, BIa2.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxvi
You must [ . . . ] provide another [service] to Beaumont and to mehe
wrote to Ernest de Chabrolwhich is, perhaps youre going to laugh, to
instruct us as fully as possible on what people think at home about this
country. Since we left France, we have lived with Americans, either on the
ship that carried us, or since our arrival here; as a result, we have become
accustomed by degree, and without abrupt transitions, to the new order
of things in the midst of which we live. We have already largely lost our
national prejudices about this people. And yet you sense how necessary it
is for us to know the opinions that prevail at home if we want to modify
them and even if we desire to study particularly here what can be useful
for enlightening minds.
About twenty questions followed concerning French ideas on American
political institutions, on the national character, on the different classes of
society, on the commercial situation, the future of the country, its position
in religious matters, etc.
To what cause do you attribute the prosperity of this nation? Is it political
institutions or material and industrial causes? [ . . . ] Do you think there
are political parties in the United States? How far do you think the spirit
of equality is pushed here? Is it in the mores or in the laws? What form
do you think it takes?
68
In order not to inuence the responses of his informants, Tocqueville
decided not to share with them his impressions about America except by
chance. The rst letter to his family contained a long description of the
journey and of the arrival in America, but reections about American so-
ciety had to wait until the letter to E
douard dated 28 May:

We are very truly in another world here; political passions are only at the
surface; the profound passion, the only one that deeply moves the human
heart, the passion of every day, is the acquisition of wealth, and there are
a thousandways to acquire it without disturbing the State. Youwouldhave
to be blind, in my opinion, to want to compare this country to Europe
68. Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 18 May 1831, YTC, BIa2. Tocqueville asked him to
give the same questions to E
lie de Beaumont. He also asked that the lectures of Guizot

on Roman society and the Middle Ages be sent to him.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxvii
and to adopt in one what works in another; I believed it before leaving
France; I believe it more and more examining the society in the midst of
which I now live; they are a people of merchants who occupy themselves
with public affairs when their work leaves spare time. I hope that on our
return to Europe, we will be able to say something good on this subject;
perhaps no one is better placed to study a people than we are.
69
A letter to Ernest de Chabrol, a few days after that one, returned to the
same idea:
Imagine, my dear friend, if you can, a society composed of all the nations
of the world: English, French, Germans . . . , everyone having a language,
a belief, opinions that are different; in a word, a society without common
prejudices, sentiments, ideas, without a national character, a hundred
times happier than ours. More virtuous? I doubt it. There is the point of
departure. What serves as a bond for such diverse elements, what makes
all of that a people? Interest. There is the secret. Particular interest that
pokes through at every instant, interest that, moreover, arises openly and
calls itself a social theory.
70
Only the exceptional physical conditions of the United States seemed
to justify the survival of the republic and allow the free exercise of interest:
America nds itself, for the present, in such a favorable physical situation
that particular interest is never contrary to general interest, which is cer-
tainly not the case in Europe.
71
69. YTC, BIa2. The passage refers to Chateaubriand. In1825, Tocqueville hadwritten
a few pages criticizing an article of Chateaubriand that had appeared in the Journal des
de bats of 24 October, and in which the latter recommended to the French the model of
the American democracy. The only task worthy of genius would have been to show us
the difference that exists between American society and us, wrote Tocqueville, andnot
to abuse us with a false likeness. Quoted by Antoine Redier, Comme disait Monsieur de
Tocqueville, p. 93.
70. Letter of 9 June 1831, YTC, BIa2. Tocqueville copied this passage into his alpha-
betic notebook A. This letter contains several key ideas of the book. Chabrol is also the
recipient of a letter dated 26 November 1831 that contains very precise informationabout
the American judicial system. YTC, BIa2.
71. Tocqueville added in the same letter: This people seems to be a company of
merchants, gathered for business; and the further you dig into the national character of
the Americans, the more you see that they have sought the value of everything only in
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxviii
At the beginning, as we see, Tocqueville was above all recalling Bodin
and Montesquieu.
72
We must wait until the end of the journey to see cli-
matic theories given a less important place. The nal versions of the manu-
script of Democracy still emphasize the decisive importance of the physical
setting on American democracy, however.
73
Tocqueville also thought that it was the exceptional physical conditions
of the United States that allowedthe Americans toget along without public
power.
74
If a public career was closed to ambition, a thousand others were
open to the Americans. In America the entire world seems [ . . . ] a mal-
leable material that man turns and shapes as he wills.
75
The element that thwarted the harmful effects of the unlimited desire
for money soonappearedclearly; it was religion. At the endof June Tocque-
ville wrote to his family: Never have I felt so muchthe inuence of religion
on the mores and the social and political state of a people than since I have
been in America, and it is impossible here to ignore the necessity of this
force for motivating and regulating human actions.
76
Before the multitude of sects and doctrines, the author had no doubt
about the one that was suitable for democracy:
I have always believed, you know, that constitutional monarchies would
arrive at the republic; and I am persuaded as well that Protestantism will
necessarily end up at natural religion. What I am saying to you is felt very
deeply by many religious souls here; they are revolted at the sight of this
consequence of their doctrines, and the reaction throws them into Ca-
the answer to this single question: how much money will it make? Letter of 9 June 1831
to Ernest de Chabrol, YTC, BIa2.
72. See the letter to Ernest de Chabrol of 26 July 1831, YTC, BIa2; James T. Schleifer,
The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 45, 5253; and George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont
in America, p. 126.
73. See, for example, p. lxix.
74. Here, there is no public power and, truly speaking, there is no needfor it. Letter
of 9 June 1831 to Ernest de Chabrol, YTC, BIa2. In another letter to Chabrol on 16 June
1831, Tocqueville wrote: As for the government, we are still looking for it. It doesnt
really exist (YTC, BIa2).
75. Letter of 9 June 1831 to Ernest de Chabrol, YTC, BIa2.
76. Letter to E
douard, 20 June 1831, YTC, BIa2.

edi tor s i ntroducti on lxix
tholicism, whose principle is very questionable, but where, at least, every-
thing is linked together.
77
Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts
a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealththese are, fromthe rst
weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundlymarked
Tocquevilles arguments.
In the months that followed, natural conditions would no longer cover
physical circumstances strictly speaking, but would also include the point
of departure andthe originof the UnitedStates; interest wouldtakevarious
forms: individualism, monotony, love of material enjoyments, manufac-
turing aristocracy, industrialization of art and of life; religion would also
be calledpatriotism, honor, andgeneral ideas. But, addedtoa certaintheory
of history, the three initial elementsphysical conditions, interest and re-
ligionwould continue to form the framework of the entire system of
Democracy.
The journey led Tocqueville and Beaumont from New York to Albany
and Buffalo; it let them briey see the great wilderness beyond Detroit, at
Pontiac and Saginaw; it took them to the Great Lakes and to Canada in
order to bring them back afterward to New England and New York. From
there, the travelers went to the west and the south. They saw Philadelphia
and Baltimore; they passed through Philadelphia again in order to see next
Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans.
78
They re-
turned to the north by Montgomery, Norfolk, Washington, and nally
New York.
All of this allowed scarcely any leisure. As Tocqueville wrote to Louis de
Kergorlay: What categorizes a traveler are his questions, his research, and
77. Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 26 October 1831, YTC, BIa2. This letter contains a
long reection on religions in the United States.
78. Their knowledge of the south of the Union was consequently very limited.
Tocqueville recognized this in a letter to E
douard: I amleaving America after using my

time there wisely and pleasantly. I have only a supercial idea about the South of the
Union, but in order to knowit as well as the north it wouldbe necessary to have remained
there six months. In general, two years are necessary to develop a complete and exact
picture of the United States. I hope, however, that I have not wasted my time. Letter
of 20 January 1832, YTC, BIa2.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxx
not the degree of facility with which he expresses himself in the national
language.
79
The two magistrates, transformed into indefatigable question-
ers, interrogated, took notes, read and observed.
80
Tocqueville made rough
notebooks in which he noted the result of his research. Beaumont did the
same and carefully recorded each of their interviews.
81
Tocquevilles notes are not truly a travel diary, nor do they constitute the
only material out of which his theory is going to emerge.
82
Reading them
provides little information about his principal ideas. If you are unaware of
the theoretical presuppositions of the author, the notes are sometimes un-
interesting, even insignicant. The fragments of conversations, various re-
marks, and interviews only make some sense on the condition that they be
considered not as the beginning of reections on the United States but as
stages in an intellectual process predating the American journey.
It is not by chance, or by some peculiar mental skill, that the whole book
is already found in the rst impressions about America.
83
Even if he wrote
the opposite to some of his correspondents,
84
Tocqueville was in America
as much to observe the facts that would allow him to write Democracy as
79. Letter to Kergorlay, 4 July 1837, OC, XIII, p. 460.
80. Six lists of questions exist: 1. List of forty-two questions on criminal justice. 2.
List of seven questions on education. 3. Six questions on political questions. 4. Twelve
questions on town rights. 5. Three questions on roads. 6. Other questions on townprob-
lems. YTC, BIIb.
81. We have the travel notes of Tocqueville, but nearly all of Beaumonts notes are
lost. The few rare notes that remain show observations that are more wide-ranging and
more detailed, but less theoretical in nature than those of Tocqueville. They wouldhave
beenof great interest for the reconstructionof the intellectual journey of the twofriends.
82. The notes of the journey to America have been published in Voyages en Sicile et
aux Etats-Unis, OC, V, 1.
83. For example, ina letter of 29 June 1831 toLouis de Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, pp. 225
36.
84. If I ever do something [blank] about America, it will be in France, and with the
documents that I ambringing back, that I will try to undertake it. I will leave America
able to understand the documents that I have not been able to study yet: that is the
clearest result of the journey. Moreover, on this country, I have only notes without
order or coherence: detached ideas that only I have the key to, isolated facts that
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxi
to give body and substance to a certain idea of Democracy that he already
had in mind before the American journey.
85
The theory began to take shape by bits and pieces in the letters sent to
France. Keep this letter, I beg of you, wrote Tocqueville to his mother,
it contains details that I do not have the time to note and that I will nd
again later with pleasure.
86
This request was found in all of his travel
correspondence.
remind me about a host of others. What I am bringing back of most interest are two
small notebooks in which I have written word for word the conversations that I had
with the most notable men of this country. This sum of paper has an inestimable
value for me, but only for me who can sense the value of the questions and answers.
The only, somewhat general ideas that I have expressed about America until noware
found in some letters addressed to my family and to a few people in France. Even
then, these were written hastily, on steamboats, or in some hole where I had to use
my knees as a table. Will I ever publish anything about this country? In truth, I do
not know. It seems to me that I have some good ideas; but I still do not know yet in
what framework to put them, and public attentionfrightens me (letter of Tocqueville
to his mother, 24 October 1831, YTC, BIa2).
Compare the passage quoted with this fragment from a letter to E
douard of 20 June
of the same year:
In France no one doubts what America is, and we nd ourselves in an excellent po-
sition to give an account of it. We come here after very serious study that has made
our minds aware of or put them on the track of many ideas. We come here together
so that there is a constant clash of minds. [ . . . ] No matter what happens, we lack
neither ardor nor courage, and if some obstacle does not stop us, I hope that we will
nish by bringing forth the work we have thought about for a year (YTC, BIa2).
85. In a letter published in the correspondence with Kergorlay, but perhaps addressed
to Euge`ne Stoffels, as Andre Jardin has pointed out, Tocqueville confessed: For nearly
ten years, I have been thinking about part of what I explained to you just now. I was in
America only to enlighten myself on this point. The penitentiary system was a pretext;
I took it as a passport that wouldenable me topenetrate everywhere inthe UnitedStates.
Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, p. 374.
Also see the letter to Charles Stoffels, 21 April 1830, reproduced in Appendix V of
the second volume, which already advances the theory of history that is present in
Democracy.
86. Letter of 26 April19 May 1831, YTC, BIa2. The remark is found again in the
letters addressed to his friends. Thus, in the letter to Kergorlay of 29 June 1831 (Keep
this letter. It will be interesting for me later.), OC, XIII, 1, p. 236; or in that of 16 July
1831, to Ernest de Chabrol (Do not forget to keep my letters.), YTC, BIa2.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxii
We must not forget, however, that Tocqueville did not travel alone. If,
in the end, the two friends each offered to the public his own version of
democracy, it is no less true that until their return to France the notion of
a great work on democracy in America was elaborated in concert, in the
duel of minds that Tocqueville mentioned several times. It is difcult in
these conditions to decide on the paternity of an idea, or the origin of a
citation. The nal result would forever obliterate the daily debates of the
two travelers.
As has sometimes been said, Beaumont had more than the effect of a
catalyst on Tocqueville. He drewTocquevilles attention to many phenom-
ena in American society. He collaborated with energy on the writing and
revisionof Democracy. Finally he producedanadmirable social novel meant
to accompany the work of his friend. Beaumonts notes could have given
an idea of the intellectual debate with Tocqueville. In their absence, Beau-
monts criticisms of the manuscript of Democracy, the drafts of his own
books, and the reading of his publications bring clearly to light an intel-
ligence that was only slightly inferior to that of Tocqueville.
It is difcult to pinpoint the moment when the book project ceased to
be shared. The rst news from America sent by Beaumont spoke of our
great work.
87
In a letter to his mother dated 7 October, he mentioned for
the rst time my plans, and the expression was found again in the cor-
respondence that follows.
88
Between May and October, Beaumont discov-
ered, then got to know more closely the American Indians, and as George
W. Pierson noted, perhaps this is what explains the abrupt change in his
plans.
89
If family correspondence spoke with enthusiasm about the brilliant fu-
ture that their works on America were to bring to the travelers, the letters
addressed to colleagues remained nonetheless quite vague:
87. Gustave de Beaumont, Lettres dAme rique, pp. 28, 45, 48, 66, and 92.
88. Ibid., p. 159; my work, in a letter of 26 October; and the great work that is
going to immortalize me, in a letter of 8 November.
89. In a letter of 1 August 1831, to his father and in another of 2 August, addressed
to Ernest de Chabrol, Beaumont already announcedhis interest inthe fate of the Indians.
Ibid., pp. 105 and 110.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxiii
You speak to me about what could be written about America, noted
Tocqueville to an unknown recipient, and I do not know at all if I will
ever have the occasion to publish the least thing onthis subject; the general
tableau of English America is an immense work absolutely beyond my
strength, andfromanother perspective, if I abandonthe idea of the whole,
I no longer know to which details to pay particular attention. So I have
limited myself until now to gathering a host of diverse documents and
partial observations. I enjoy this work, and it interests me deeply; but will
it ever be useful to me for anything? I assure you that the further I go, the
more I doubt it.
But, as you say, there would be piquant new insights to present about
this country. Except for about ten people in Paris who, like you, are not
absorbed by the politics of the day, America is as unknown as Japan; or
rather, people talk about it as Montesquieu did about Japan. The Amer-
icans argumenti causa are made to say and do a host of things, in honor
of true principles, that the poor fellows are very innocent of, I swear.
90
Tocqueville was obviously not interested in disclosing to his superiors
that what most interested him in America was not the project ofcially
announced, but writing about the American republic. Only Le Peletier
dAunay seemed to have been let in on the secret: I expected a good work
from you, wrote dAunay to Tocqueville in August 1831, and this eld of
your observations makes me certain of it. You will show us this America
much more exactly than all the other travelers, beginning with Liancourt
and Volney. Nothing will escape, I am sure, from the observation of your
solid intelligence. On your return, give the government the report prom-
ised. But save, for your reputation, your glory, the full journey to that
country.
91
Beaumont and Tocqueville in America had different interests, but their
intention was to publish their books simultaneously, as two parts of the
same work. In 1831, and for some time after, their books constituted the
two sides of the same coin. They would become distinct only later. The
90. In a draft of a letter written in Philadelphia, November 1831 (YTC, BIa2). He
also hid his plans from Ernest de Chabrol (letter of 24 January 1832, YTC, BIa2).
91. Letter of Le Peletier dAunay, 16 August 1831, YTC, BId.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxiv
rst edition of Syste `me pe nitentiaire still announced a joint work on Amer-
ica by Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, with the title Ins-
titutions et murs ame ricaines. A month after the publication of Syste `me
pe nitentiaire, a letter from Tocqueville to Edward Everett still suggested a
collaborative work: We are now busy, M. de Beaumont and I, composing
a more general work on America.
92
On20 February 1832, Tocqueville andBeaumont left NewYorktoreturn
to France.
Tocqueville hardly considered any longer taking up the duties that he
had at Versailles. He entertained other plans that he revealed in condence
to Ernest de Chabrol: I do not know if I must withdraw entirely, he
confessed, as I amoften tempted to do, or try to advance; what I see clearly
at least is that I will not put on the robe of juge supple ant again. I will no
longer be seen at Versailles, or I will be seen with another title. This point
is decided (but between us).
93
The Penitentiary System
After returning to France at the end of March, Beaumont rejoinedhis fam-
ily in Sarthe, while Tocqueville remained in Paris.
Beaumont began to write the report on the penitentiary systemand met
Tocqueville in Paris in mid-April in order to ensure his collaboration.
Weeks passed. As Beaumont moved ahead preparing the report on the pris-
ons, Tocqueville was plunged into a great despondency from which he did
not want to emerge for work on any intellectual endeavor.
94
He seemed
incapable of adapting to the idleness that followed the year of feverish ag-
itation spent in North America. He accepted visiting the prison of Toulon,
92. Letter to Edward Everett, 6 February 1833, with the kind permission of the Mas-
sachusetts Historical Society (Tocqueville, Alexis de. Letter to Edward Everett, 6 Feb-
ruary 1833. Edward Everett papers).
93. To Ernest de Chabrol, 24 January 1832, YTC, BIa2.
94. Letter of 4 April 1832 to Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, pp. 11112.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxv
then those of Geneva and Lausanne in May and June, but the largest part
of the work of writing the report fell to Beaumont.
95
Before these journeys, Tocqueville came to the aid of his friend, Louis
de Kergorlay, implicated in the adventure of the Duchess de Berry. On 9
March, for the rst and last time, Tocqueville exercised his profession as a
lawyer. He defended Kergorlay who, acquitted, was soon set free.
96
The defense of one of the prisoners of the Carlo Alberto must not suggest
that Tocqueville had changed his position about the subversive efforts to
overthrow the July Monarchy. If he preferred the Bourbons, if his friend-
ship for Kergorlay was unshakable, he remained clearly opposed to the vi-
olent expulsion of the reigning monarch. The American letters already re-
vealed the fear of a precipitous return to Europe in case of the overthrow
of the monarchy
97
and the fear of seeing the hothead,
98
Hippolyte, in-
volved in such an overthrow.
As for his opinion about the ultras, it can be claried by a letter inwhich,
sensing that his older brother was tempted to take some radical decision
against the July Monarchy, Tocqueville expressed himself in these terms:
Amid the chaos in which we nd ourselves, I seemto see one incontestable
fact. For forty years we have made immense progress in the practical un-
derstanding of the idea of liberty. Peoples, like individuals, need to be-
come educated before they know how to act. I cannot doubt that our
people advance. There are riots in the large cities, but the mass of the
95. You know what Beaumonts publications are; but there is a detail that perhaps
you do not know. The rst work that we published together, M. de Beaumont and
I, on the American prisons, had as the sole writer, M. de Beaumont. I only provided
my observations and a fewnotes. Although our two names were attachedto that book
which was, I can say more easily now, a true success, I have never hidden from my
friends that M. de Beaumont was so to speak the sole author (letter of 26 June 1841,
supporting Beaumonts candidacy to the Academie des sciences morales et politiques,
very probably addressed to Mignet, YTC, DIIa).
96. His plea appears in OC, XIII, 1, pp. 32127.
97. The idea of an exile in the United States also crossed their minds. See note j of
p. 1302 of the second volume.
98. In his letter to E
douard, on 20 June 1831, Tocqueville exhorted his brother tohave

the utmost patience (YTC, BIa2). Also see the letter to Kergorlay of 21 June 1831, OC,
XIII, 1, pp. 23536.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxvi
population calmly obeys the laws; and yet the government is useless. Do
you think as much would have happened forty years ago? We are har-
vesting the fruit of the fteen years of liberty that we enjoyed under the
Restoration. Arent you struck to see the extreme left protest that it wants
to proceed only by legal measures and, at the same time, to hear the roy-
alists declare that they must appeal to public opinion, that public opinion
alone can give strength to the throne, that it must be won over before
anything else? Amid all the miseries of the present time and the t of high
fever that gave us the July Revolution, dont you nd reasons to hope that
we will nally reach a settled social state? I do not know if we are made
to be free, but what is certain is that we are innitely more capable of
being so thanforty years ago. If the Restorationhadlastedtenyears longer,
I believe we would have beensaved; the habit of legality andconstitutional
forms would have entirely gotten into our mores. But now, could things
be put back in their place; could a second Restoration take place? I see
many obstacles. The greatest of all without question is found in the per-
sonnel of the royalist party that would triumph. Never will you make the
most active portion of the royalist party understand that there are con-
cessions without which they cannot hope to govern, that to be lasting the
legitimist monarchy must be national, must ally itself with the ideas of
liberty or be broken by them. If the Bourbons ever regain the throne, they
will make use of force, and they will fall again. Perhaps in France we have
what is needed to create a government that is strong because of military
glory, but not a government that is strong solely because of right. Right
canindeedhelpto maintaina government if it is skillful, but not toprotect
it from its own failings.
In any case, it seems to me that the behavior of the royalists is well
conceived. I am pleased to see them stand on the ground of legality, to see
them work to win the majority and not to make the minority triumph by
force. That fact augurs well. If they had always acted like this, they would
have sparedthemselves andFrance great misfortunes. Moreover, byadopt-
ing in this way what is reasonable in the ideas of liberty, they assume in
everyones eyes a tacit commitment to respect those ideas, if they are ever
the masters. Many among them become convinced by their own words,
without expecting to. They acquire the habit of associating, of appealing
to public opinion, all the free and constitutional habits that they never
had. This spectacle reassures me a bit about the future. I hope that after
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxvii
so many conicts we will succeed in saving ourselves from anarchy and
despotism.
99
The pages of a plan for a review
100
that Tocqueville and Beaumont at
one time intended to establish with the participation of Blosseville, Cha-
brol, Montalembert, and a few others put clearly in view the political con-
victions of the future editors:
They [the editors of the review] do not feel prejudices in favor of the
government created by the July Revolution; they do not want to destroy
it. They place themselves neither against it nor within it, but next to it,
and they want to try to judge its acts without passion and without weak-
ness. If the free expression of the national will brought the elder branch
of the Bourbons back to the throne, if a restoration could take place while
assuring the nation of the rights that are its due, the editors of the review
would see the event with pleasure; they would consider it as a favorable
measure of future social progress. But they want a restoration only on
those conditions; and if it must take place in a totally other way and lead
to opposite results, they would regard it as a duty to oppose it.
101
The plan was soon abandoned, probably at the end of the summer of 1833.
99. Letter to Hippolyte, 4 December 1831, YTC, BIa2. In contrast, in a rough copy
of a letter of August 1831, probably addressed to Dalmassy, Tocqueville noted: Some-
thing tells me that we will not escape from civil war. YTC, BIa2.
100. See the correspondence exchangedonthis subject by Tocqueville andBeaumont
in OC, VIII, 1, pp. 11930.
101. With the kind permission of the Library of Princeton University (General Man-
uscripts [MISC] Collection, Manuscripts Division. Department of Rare Books andSpe-
cial Collections), reproduced in OC, III, 2, pp. 3539. The same idea is found again in
a letter to Mary Mottley:
As I had foreseen and you announced a few days ago, civil war has begun in the west.
The royalists will perhaps have some temporary successes, but I predict to you again
that they will be crushed. How much loyal and honorable blood is going to ow! I
have already read in the newspaper the name of a brave young man that I knew. He
has just been miserably killed. So explain to me why in all times honor and incom-
petence seem to go hand in hand. Who were more brave, more loyal, and at the same
time, more clumsy and more unfortunate than your Jacobites? Our French royalists
are following their track exactly (3 June 1832, YTC, CIb).
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxviii
When he was not yet nished with his report and not thinking only
about the creation of a review, Beaumont was againfacedwiththe shadowy
affair of the Baroness de Feuche`res. This time it concerned a trial for def-
amation by the baroness against the Rohan family, descendants of the
Prince de Conde. Beaumont refused to take charge of it and explainedthat
he knew nothing about the question, that he was working on his report,
that the eighteen-month leave that had been granted to him had not yet
ended.
102
The response was not long in coming. On 16 May 1832, he was
removed from his duties.
Little satised by a profession that weighed on him, uncertain of his
qualities for exercising it, Tocqueville found in the dismissal of Beaumont
the pretext for honorably abandoning the legal career. As soonas he learned
the news in Toulon, he presented his resignation.
103
Once the work of drafting the report on the penitentiary system was
nished, Tocqueville reviewed the text written by Beaumont, collaborated
actively on the introduction, and wrote part of the notes. The two mag-
istrates submitted their report on 10 October. Du syste `me pe nitentiaire aux
E
tats-Unis et de son application en France appeared in January 1833.

The First Democracy
The work on the penitentiary system was generally well received. Reviews
noted with satisfaction the full account of the question and the impartial
presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems in use
in the United States. If the authors seemed to lean toward the systemused
in Pennsylvania, they did not seem to forget either the high cost of the
construction of a penitentiary of this type or the danger of keeping the
prisoners isolated in their cell night and day. In August, the Academie des
sciences morales et politiques awarded the Montyon prize to Syste `me
pe nitentiaire.
Tocqueville and Beaumont had planned to complete their American
journey with a visit to England. They thought that England would offer
102. In a letter of 18 April 1832, YTC, CIf.
103. On 21 May 1832, YTC, CIc.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxix
an image of the Americans before their departure for the United States as
well as that of a society midway betweenaristocratic France anddemocratic
America. They also thought that England was at the dawn of a revolution
that would lead to democracy. The cholera epidemic that broke out at the
end of 1831 had precipitated their return to France. Once the prison report
was published, Tocqueville went to England from August 3 to September
7, 1833.
104
By going to England, I wanted [ . . . ] to ee for a time from the insipid
spectacle that our country presents at this moment. I wanted to gotorelieve
my boredoma bit among our neighbors. And besides! Some claimthat they
are denitely going to begin a revolution and that one must hurry to see
them as they are. So I hastened to go to England as to the nal performance
of a beautiful play.
105
A few days spent on the other side of the Channel enlightened Tocque-
ville about his error. England was not on the eve of a revolution. Unlike
the French aristocracy, the English aristocracy was open; it continued to
exercise ancestral duties and the inferior classes of society could attain ar-
istocracy by money.
106
The English aristocracy, wrote Tocqueville in his notes, belongs very
much by its passions and its prejudices to all the aristocracies of the world,
but it is not based on birth, something inaccessible, but on the money that
everyone can acquire; and this single difference allows it to resist, when all
the others succumb either to peoples or to kings.
107
A week after his arrival in London, he wrote to Beaumont: In short, I
do not recognize in anything here our America.
108
If, following these ob-
servations, England did not serve strictly speaking as a reference point for
the American and French situations, it was no less one of the keys for un-
derstanding America. It is evoked throughout Democracy.
104. The notes of the journey to England in 1833 are published in Voyages en Angle-
terre, Irlande, Suisse et Alge rie, OC, V, 2, pp. 1143.
105. Letter to the Countess de Pisieux, 5 July 1833, YTC, CIf.
106. OC, V, 2, p. 36.
107. OC, V, 2, pp. 2930.
108. Letter to Beaumont, 13 August 1833, OC, VIII, 1, p. 124.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxx
Upon his return to Paris, Tocqueville began writing his book.
109
To do
this, he settled into the attic of his parents house, onrue de Verneuil. Beau-
mont, for his part, made a short journey to the Midi where his book began
to take the double form of a novel and a social commentary.
In a later letter to his wife, Tocqueville would evoke the rst months
spent writing his book as follows:
When I wrote Democracy in America, I had none of the advantages [no-
tably a librarian at his disposal], but I had the youth, ardor, faithina cause,
and hope that allowed me to do without the kindness of librarians and
the favor of archivists. Cuvier created in a garret the admirable works that
earned him a beautiful house in which he set up a beautiful special room
intended for the study of each of the subjects that interested him. It was
a whole series of apartments each of which was as if impregnated with
the particular idea that the author wanted to treat. From the moment
when he was so admirably aided in his work, he did hardly anything con-
siderable; and perhaps he sometimes came to regret the garret. But he
would have found it old and cold. Those who want to return to the garret
in which they passed the years of an intense and fruitful youth cannot do
so. My owngarret was a small roomonthe rue de Verneuil, where I worked
in deep obscurity on the work that would bring me out of that obscurity.
You are part of that memory, like all of those memories in my life that
deserve to be remembered. The day was occupied by my work. Nearly
every evening was spent near you.
110
Provided with his notes on the United States, publications brought back
from America, an ample correspondence with Americans and Frenchmen,
his own letters, and a list of the subjects of his notes,
111
Tocqueville drew
up the initial plan of his book.
109. James T. Schleifer has reconstructed in detail the writing of the most important
chapters of Democracy in The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America.
110. Letter of Tocqueville to his wife, with the only citation as Sunday morning,
YTC, CIb.
111. Sources manuscrites. Subjects that can be of some interest to treat. YTC, CIIc.
The list includes more or less the same questions as the rst plan of the book.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxi
The rst outline included three categories: Political society (relations
between the federal and particular governments and the citizen of the
Union and citizen of each state), civil society (relations of the citizens with
each other), religious society (relations between God and the members of
society, and of the religious sects with each other).
112
Tocqueville continued by specifying what should be found under each
division:
Political society.
In political society there are two principles to which all the others are
connected; the rst, sovereignty of the people, democracy, whose principle
divides and dissolves; the second, federation, whose principle unites and
preserves.
He then noted, in two columns, the ideas that correspond to each
principle:
Sovereignty of the people.
Democracy, no counter-balance. Tyranny of the majorityno aris-
tocracy; difculty of an aristocracy in America. Gentlemen farmers.
Government of the majority; public opinion; stubbornness of the ma-
jority once formedformation and working of parties.
Public ofces (administrative ofcials particularly enforce the laws be-
tween the State and individualsjudicial ofcials more especially the laws
between individuals; the rst belong to political society, the second to civil
society). Public ofces are small matters.Why? Municipal administra-
tionPresidency of the United StatesArmyFinances.
Electionsbinding mandates.
Town meetings.
Convention.
Freedom of the pressways and effects.
Public instruction.
LawsTheir mobile character.
Militia (perhaps should be carried to the other side).
Obedience to laws. Oath
112. YTC, CVh, 1, p. 23.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxii
(Everything that precedes is nothing more than the means that the ma-
jority uses to express and to maintain itself, and those that are put to use
by the minority to attack or to defend itself.)
Under the word federation, we read the following:
Federation.
Causes for the weakness of all federal governmentsespecially for the
United Statesfuture of the Uniondiverse interestsmultiplication
Centralizationdistinguish between that of the federal government and
that of the states themselvesalmost non-existentthe lack of central-
ization already felthowever less dangerous than it will become. Causes
that will make it more dangerous.
Federal taxtariff.
Canals.
Roads.
Banks of the United States.
Land sales.
Indians.
Maritime commerce, free trade.
Patents.
Show how the various Presidents since Jefferson have successively
stripped the federal government of its attributionsconcessions to de-
mocracythat is to say, to the principle on the opposite side.
113
The section with the theme society included in turn:
Civil society.
Entry. The appointment of magistrates is the work of the political
powers, but since their duties are principally for the purpose of regulating
the relations and the rights of citizens with each other, they belong to civil
society.
Jurisdiction.
Common law.
113. YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 2325.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxiii
Civil laws: Slavery, equalityNegroes
Civil stateinheritancespaternal power.
Criminal laws: Duelgamblingdrunkenness
fornicationetc.
Jurypublic prosecutors ofcelawyers.
Commercial laws: Bankruptcy.
Interest on money.
Mores: American character.
Associationcommerceindustry.
To make money.
Washingtoncostume of the Lyceums.
114
Finally, religious society:
Religious society.
Nomenclature of the various sectsFromCatholicismto the sect that
is farthest removed from it.
Quakers, MethodistsPoint out what is antisocial in the doctrines of
the Quakers, Unitarians.
Relations of the sects with each other.
Freedomof religionToleration: fromthe legal aspect; fromthe aspect
of mores.
Catholicism.
Place of religion in the political order and its degree of inuence on
American society.
115
Certain ideas outlined in this rst sketch would not be found again in
the denitive version. The canals, roads, gambling, etc. were so many ele-
ments that would be abandoned in the process of writing.
116
Others would
114. YTC, CVh, 1, p. 26.
115. YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 2627.
116. At the head of the bundle of drafts that bears the number 3 (copied in notebook
CVh, 1) appears the following note:
Diverse and important notes. The (illegible word) must be found here. Two or three
new chapters to put I do not know where.
1. Of the great men of America and in particular of Washington.
2. Of American patriotism.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxiv
be joined to the second part, such as the army, paternal power, Catholicism,
the desire to make money.
The fundamental idea of the entire book, the keystone on which
Tocquevilles whole theory rests, the idea for understanding the struggle
between aristocracy and democracy, between a principle that divides and a
principle that unites, was already evident.
Once the general lines of the work were drawn, Tocqueville attackedthe
work of writing in the strict sense. For this, he followed a singular system
that he described in this way to Duvergier de Hauranne:
I think what is best for me to do is to followthe method that I have already
followed for writing the book that just appeared [Old Regime ], and even
for the Democracy. I am going to tell you about it, although it is disagree-
able to talk for so long about oneself, because, knowing it, youwill perhaps
be able to give me some good advice. When I have whatever subject to
treat, it is quasi-impossible for me to readany books that have beenwritten
on the same matter; contact with the ideas of others agitates and disturbs
me to the point of making the reading of these works painful. So I refrain,
as much as I can, from knowing how their authors have interpreted the
facts that occupy me, the judgment that they have made of them, the
diverse ideas that these facts have suggested to them (which, parentheti-
cally, exposes me sometimes to repeating, without knowing it, what has
already beensaid). It requires of me, onthe contrary, anunbelievableeffort
to nd the facts by myself in the documents of the time; often in this way
I obtain, with immense labor, what I would have easily foundby following
another path. Once this harvest is gathered so laboriously, I withdrawinto
myself, as if into a very closed space; in a general review, I examine with
an extreme attention all the notions that I have acquired by myself; I com-
pare them, I link them, and then I make it a rule to explicate the ideas
that came spontaneously to me from this long work without any consid-
3. Of the non-physical bonds of society in America.
4. Of public ofcials.
5. Of the different ways to understand the republican regime.
6. That the absolute goodness of laws {must not always be judged} by the respect
that they are given by those who vote for them.
7. (Illegible word) on the inuence of manufacturing on democratic liberty (YTC,
CVh, 1, p. 1).
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxv
eration whatsoever for the consequences that these men or those men can
draw from them. It is not that I am not extremely sensitive about the
opinion of different readers; but experience has taught me that, as soon
as I wanted to write with a preconceived viewpoint, to uphold a thesis, I
absolutely lost all true talent, and that I was not able to do anything of
value, if I did not limit myself to wanting to make clear what was most
real in my impressions and in my opinions.
117
If Beaumont informed Tocqueville in a summary way about the works
that appeared on the United States, the author went forward alone and
scarcely consulted any books on America, with the exception perhaps of
the book by Chevalier.
118
The writing moved ahead at a good pace. InNovember 1833, Tocqueville
thought he would nish the part devoted to the institutions of the United
States (what nowconstitutes the rst part of the rst volume of this edition)
before the rst of January 1834, and at one moment had the idea of pub-
lishing the rst volume before the second.
119
This plan was abandoned, and Tocqueville buckled down immediately
to writing the second part, which little by little increased to an extent be-
yond what the author had foreseen. In addition, the part devoted to the
American political institutions was reviewed and corrected several more
times and, before being completed, requiredthe aidof several collaborators.
Even as he worked relentlessly on his book, Tocqueville helped Beau-
mont with the writing of his.
120
Their collaboration continuedthroughout
117. Tocqueville to Duvergier de Hauranne, 1 September 1856, OCB, VI, pp. 33233.
118. It is possible that he knewabout several letters by Chevalier publishedintheRevue
des deux mondes. See volume II, p. 898 of this edition and OC, VIII, 1, pp. 176, 2023.
Moreover, Tocqueville read Basil Halls book during the crossing. He does not seem to
have consulted Society in America by Harriet Martineau.
119. Remember that the Democracy of 1835 was published in two volumes.
120. The collaboration of Tocqueville on Beaumonts novel probably dated fromthe
rst moments of its development. In the manuscript of Marie, concerning the plan of
the novel, this note is found in Tocquevilles handwriting:
Plan./
It involves portraying a man such as he often becomes after great revolutions,
whose desires are always beyond his capacities (but there must not be any ridicule,
that is to say, that the one you want to portray really has a great soul, a remarkable
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxvi
the whole following year, in Paris and in Sarthe. The inuence of Tocque-
ville on the writing of Marie is difcult to measure. Beaumonts manu-
scripts bear the trace of conversations and of comments by Tocqueville,
but the small number of available manuscripts does not allow us to assess
the true extent of his inuence.
121
Beaumont consulted his friend about
certain passages of his book and even at the last moment asked for his opin-
ion about certain fragments that were too reminiscent of Chateaubriand.
122
spirit, but he aims higher than the humanity of his time); a man who, never content
with his lot, has an exaggerated picture of human happiness in this world, and who,
reaching the point of seeing his errors and discerning what dose of happiness life can
really present, has become incapable of obtaining it and has become unsuited to
society. He then looks hard and calmly at himself; convinced that he would not be
able to attain the rst goal of his desires, no longer capable of feeling the pleasure of
reaching another one, he withdraws into the wilderness without passions, without
despair, with the serenity of a strong soul that judges the greatness of its misfortunes
and submits.
Perhaps here you would need a rapid and oratorical recapitulation of the reality
of the things of this world and of the impossibility that he, who sees things as they
are, but who has found them better in his imagination, nds of submitting . . .
You must not have him attempt love in Europe. He reconnects with love inAmer-
ica as to a plank of salvation, and still he misses it . . . (YTC, CIX, and OC, VIII, 1,
p. 131).
121. In the margins of the manuscript of Marie, there are comments by Tocqueville,
written in pencil. The latter particularly pointed out unfortunate similarities to Atala:
You cannot close your eyes to the fact that this has a great deal of similarity withAtala
(vol. II, p. 136 of Marie ); Here again you have to be careful about father Aubry. Perhaps
I am wrong. Think about it (vol. II, p. 151 of Marie ); Again, be careful here of Atala
(vol. II, p. 156 of Marie ).
122. Thus this note fromBeaumont meant for Tocqueville that is foundinthe manu-
script of the novel:
Note for Tocqueville.
There are two passages that are reminiscent of Chateaubrianddespite all the efforts
that I have made to avoid it. They are at page 6 and 20. Here I am giving the passages
of Chateaubriand so that you can see if it is possible to leave mine:
The reverie of a traveler is a kind of fullness of heart and blankness of mind that
allows you to enjoy your whole existence at peace. It is by thinking that we disturb
the felicity that God gives us; the soul is peaceful, the mind is restless. (See Voyages,
t. 6, p. 112.)
I went from tree to tree, to the right and to the left indiscriminately, saying to
myself: here no road to follow, no cities, no narrow houses, no presidents, republics,
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxvii
At the beginning of the year 1834, Tocqueville hired an American living
in Paris, Francis Lippitt,
123
to help him in the compilation of the docu-
ments that he brought back from the United States. At the house of the
authors parents, Faubourg St. Germain, Lippitt compiled books and bro-
chures, newspaper clippings and diverse documents.
Theodore Sedgwick, another American whom Tocqueville contacted
when he still needed information about the United States, but whom he
did not hire, seems to have played a more important role. His journal bears
the traces of several interviews with Tocqueville that would exercise a clear
inuence on several points of Democracy.
124
Once the writing of the principal part of the work was nished (only
the last chapter of the second part was missing), Tocqueville had a copy of
his manuscript made and circulated. In this way his brothers and his father,
Gustave de Beaumont, and Louis de Kergorlay read the quasi-totality of
the work. A few passages were read aloud at the evening gatherings of Ma-
dame Ancelot.
125
kings. (See Essai historique sur les Re volutions, t. 2, p. 417, YTC, CIX and OC, VIII,
1, p. 145.)
123. See note a of p. 84.
124. Sedgwick met Tocqueville in the ofces of the American delegation to Paris and
pointed out several books that could be useful to him. His journal for the months of
November and December 1833, of January and February 1834, refers several times in
succession to Tocqueville (pp. 28, 29, 32, 79, 85, 98). See Sedgwick, Theodore III. Paris
journal, volume 3, November 1833July 1834, pp. 8081, 85. Sedgwick family papers,
Massachusetts Historical Society.
On 20 January 1834, for example, Sedgwick indicated that Tocqueville found that
Russia and the United States [ . . . ] were the only powers which presented an avenir [a
future]. Both are aggrandizingthe others are stationary or diminishing (pp. 8081).
You nd on p. 85 (Friday, 24 January 1834): Either this day or the day before went
with Tocqueville over to the legation and show [sic ] him the books there which might
assist him. On p. 98 (8 February 1834): Tocqueville called about 11 for more infor-
mation about the E
tats-Unis. Withthe kindpermissionof the Massachusetts Historical

Society.
Tocqueville also counted on the collaboration of two other American residents in
Paris: Edward Livingston, head of the American representation in Paris, and Nathaniel
Niles, secretary of the delegation.
125. See OC, VIII, 1, p. 141, and Madame Ancelot, Un salon de Paris, de 1824 a` 1864
(Paris: Dentu, 1866), p. 79. Did Guerry, a friend of Beaumont, read part of the manu-
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxviii
When E
douard, on 15 June, wrote to his brother to share his observations

critiques, only the revision of the second part remained to be done in order
tocomplete the work. Tocqueville workedonthe revisionduringthemonth
of July, striking out a great deal and in some places retaining only one out
of three pages of the initial draft. The same month, he contacted the pub-
lisher, Charles Gosselin, who committed to publishing the text in Novem-
ber. He planned a printing of ve hundred copies.
On 14 August 1834, Tocqueville left Paris for the chateau de Gallerande,
in Sarthe, and there joined Beaumont. The two friends spent their days
hunting and making nal corrections on their texts.
Once the work was nished, a title remained to be found.
In 1833 the book by Tocqueville and Beaumont had been announced
with the title American Institutions and Mores.
126
Once Beaumonts project
became differentiated from that of Tocqueville, the latter, in March 1834,
announced to Senior the publication of a book on American institu-
tions.
127
Beaumont kept the term American mores. In July, at the time
of Tocquevilles arrangements with his publisher, the treatise on American
institutions received the title The Dominion of Democracy in the United
States;
128
in a perhaps later note announcing the publication and con-
tained in the drafts of the rst part, we nd The Dominionof Democracy
in America, while a rst version of the same announcement mentioned
The Dominion of Democracy in the United States. In mid-October,
script? The jacket that contains the chapter on the point of departure and the one that
contains the chapter on the social state bear this comment: The copy has been sent to
Guerry.
126. Tocqueville gave a very similar title to Sparks. Letter of 30 August 1833, YTC,
CId.
127. Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William
Senior (London: H.S. King and Co., 1872), I, p. 2. In his prologue to Marie (p. viii),
Beaumont echoes the original title of the joint work and declares: M. de Tocqueville
described the institutions; I myself tried to sketch the mores.
128. G[osselin] asked me what the title of the work would be. I had only lightly
considered it, so that I was quite embarrassed. I answered, however, that my idea was to
title the book: The Dominion of Democracy in the United States. Since thenI have thought
about it, and I nd the title good. It expresses well the general idea of the book and puts
it in relief. What does my judge say about it? OC, VIII, 1, p. 141.
edi tor s i ntroducti on lxxxix
with the book in proofs, the publisher wrote to the author to ask him the
title of his book. That is when Tocqueville chose Democracy in America.
129
In the Courier Franc ais of 24 December 1834,
130
Leon Faucher an-
nounced the publication of the work and reproduced a few passages from
Democracy in America. The text appeared with this title in January 1835.
131
The Reception of Democracy
If it is true that the workers in the print shop had shownTocquevilles book
particular attention and interest, the dazzling success of the Democracy was
no less totally surprising to its author.
Tocqueville thought that the recent political tension with the United
States wouldnot fail toincrease interest inandcuriosityabout theAmerican
continent and could therefore create a favorable situation for the success of
the Democracy. But readers seem to have been attracted immediately by
something far beyond the simple effect of timeliness. Moreover, if the in-
demnity affairindemnities that the Americans had demanded from the
French since the Napoleonic periodcould be protable to Tocqueville in
France, such was not the case in America, where the publication of the
Democracy was delayed until 1838.
132
The appearance of the Democracy was unanimously acclaimed. Cha-
teaubriand, Lamartine, Guizot, and Royer-Collard never tired in their
praise. Very few publications met its appearance with silence. The reviews
129. Letter of 18 October 1834, copied in CVh, 2, pp. 5556: We do not have the
title of your work, and I forgot yesterday to ask you about it. We cannot set the pages
without the title.
130. Leon Faucher, Democracy in the United States, by M. Alexis de Tocqueville
(unpublished), Courier franc ais, 358, 24 December 1834.
131. On the 23rd, 27th, or 31st of the month, depending on the sources.
132. This is the opinion of Jared Sparks in his letter of 6 June 1837 to Tocqueville
(YTC, CId). Sparks had contracted with a publisher in Boston for the preface and notes
of an American version of the Democracy. He would abandon the project when he
learned of the imminent appearance of another edition.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xc
of Salvandy
133
and Sainte-Beuve
134
alone were enough to consecrate the
author.
135
Not one of the chapters of this book, wrote Sainte-Beuve, fails to
testify to one of the best and most assured minds, to one of those minds
most appropriate for political observation, a eld in which we nd so few
striking and solid strides since the incomparable gure of Montesquieu.
136
The name of the great le giste also appeared from the pen of Salvandy who,
in the Journal des de bats,
137
proposed for Democracy the subtitle The Spirit
of American Laws.
138
Among the number of discordant voices, the following can be cited:
It is with a very particular predilection that this author offers for the ad-
miration of the peoples of Europe a republic in which are found three
colors, one color who are the masters, two other colors; a country of tri-
133. Narcise-Achille de Salvandy, Democracy in America, Journal des de bats, 23
March and 2 May 1835.
134. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Alexis de Tocqueville. De la democratie en
Amerique, Le temps, 7 April 1835. The rst one to be astonished by the good reception
of the work, Tocqueville wrote to Sainte-Beuve the next day:
Allow me, Sir, to place even more importance on something other than on the judg-
ment that you have made of the American democracy, that is seeing the relationship
that has been established between us continue and become more frequent. I cannot
keep from believing that there are many points in common between us and that a
sort of intellectual and moral intimacy would not take long to prevail between you
and me, if we had the occasion to know each other better (letter with the sole com-
ment Wednesday morning [8 April 1835], with the kind permission of the Institut
de France, Collection Spoelberch de Lovenjoul).
135. On the last day of March, Gosselin asserted to the author: But it seems that you
have created a masterpiece (Letter to Beaumont, 1 April 1835, OC, VIII, 1, p. 151). The
second edition was published in June, and the third at the end of the year. The fourth
and fth date from 1836. The sixth was published the following year, and the seventh in
1839.
136. Le temps, 7 April 1835.
137. Journal des de bats, 23 March 1835.
138. Le semeur noted: Either we are very wrong, or M. de Tocqueville greatly studied
Montesquieu before studying America (4, no. 9 [4 March 1835]: 6568, p. 65).
The commentaries of the entire French press agreed on the point. Le national de 1834,
on 7 June 1835, described the text as a work whose high level will be felt by all those
who meditate on the current state of society in Europe, and on the future that is in store
for it.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xci
colored humanity in which the red men who are the natural masters nd
themselves being exterminated by the white men who are the usurpers; in
which the Black men are sold jumbled together with animals in the public
square. A touching example of equality, admirable evidence of indepen-
dence that it is currently stylish to take as the model in Europe, to see as
the standard for true perfectibility!
139
American readers, for their part, downplayed certain critical observa-
tions of the author about American society,
140
but would acknowledge the
impartiality of the work and particularly its clear superiority over the com-
mentaries of English travelers.
Foreign publications did not spare compliments. The English found in
Tocqueville an abundance of arguments against the American republic
141
and recalled in reviews the precarious character of the experiment.
142
The
London and Paris Courier of 14 January 1836 asserted on its part: Much,
indeed, has been written by Englishmen respecting America, and a good
deal by visitants from the continent of Europe. But with the solitary ex-
ception of the De mocratie en Ame rique, by M. de Tocqueville, nothing ab-
solutely has been written by a foreigner which approaches to an accurate
delineation of our political organization.
When, in December, the Moniteur du commerce mentioned this excel-
lent book that everyone has known and judged for a long time, the remark
139. Gazette de France, 3 and 13 February 1835. The passage quoted is found in the
issue of 3 February.
140. For example, the review in American Quarterly Review, 19, March 1839, pp. 124
66.
141. See Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, 37, no. 230 (1835): 75866. The commen-
tary of the Atheneum is particularly critical: rational, at times, even to dullness [ . . . ] a
dislike of its ambitious styleits reduction of everything to theoryand its over-
arrogant aim at uniting the sentenciousness of Montesquieu to the orid description of
the Comte de Segur (394, 16 May 1835, p. 375). In a letter of 6 June 1837 (YTC, CId),
Jared Sparks informed Tocqueville that the English reviews that mention the passages
against democracy inTocquevilles workhadbeenreproducedinAmericanpublications,
and that, in his opinion, this fact might diminish the desire for a quick translation of
Democracy.
142. Among the English critiques, that of John Stuart Mill stands clearly apart.
Tocqueville wrote to him, You are [ . . . ] the only one who has understood me entirely
(Letter of 7 December 1835, OC, VI, 1, p. 302). Mills commentary had been published
in the London Review 30, no. 2 (1835): 85129.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xcii
did not seem exaggerated. Democracy was in fashion, and the Academie des
sciences morales et politiques ratied the publics interest with the Mont-
yon prize, which bestowed on the author twelve thousand francs.
For its part, the publication of Marie, ou lesclavage aux E
tats-Unis
143
brought a success in no way inferior to that of Democracy.
144
Between 1835
and 1842, there would be ve editions of the novel by Gustave de Beau-
mont. It would fall afterward, and very wrongly, into oblivion. Its reception
was generally warm, though measured, although the Quarterly Review did
not hesitate to declare it the most interesting [book] that has ever yet been
published on the subject of American society and manners by a native of
the European continent.
145
Francisque de Corcelle wrote the review for
the Revue des deux mondes.
146
The principal failing of the book was proclaimed immediately. Marie
had the peculiarity of being a novel and a social commentary at the same
time. As such, it did not succeed in satisfying either those who love theo-
retical works, who preferred the Democracy by far, or those whoreadnovels.
The author of the reviewin the Journal des de bats
147
sawthis correctly when
he wrote:
There are two books in [the] book. That is its failing perhaps. The large
public that wants to be amused is always afraid that it is being instructed.
The rare public that seeks instruction fears being interested and moved.
The readers of M. de Beaumont are indeed exposed to this double danger.
He teaches the most frivolous. He captures, carries away, touches the most
unsentimental and the coldest. The whole of American society is brought
to life in this work that is so true that I dare not call it a novel; that is so
143. Marie, ou lesclavage aux E
tats-Unis, tableau des murs americaines. Paris: Charles

Gosselin, 1835. 2 vols.
144. Beaumonts novel appeared in Brussels in 1835. It was translated into Spanish in
1840andrepublishedin1849, andtranslatedintoPortuguese in1847. Anabridgededition
was published in Germany in 1836. The second French edition dates from 1835, the third
from the following year, the fourth from 1840, and the fth and last from 1842.
145. Quarterly Review 53, no. 106 (1835): 289.
146. Francisque de Corcelle, De lesclavage aux E
tats-Unis, Revue des deux mondes,

4th series, 6, 1836, pp. 22746.
147. Journal des de bats, 6 December 1835.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xciii
clothed in the richest and most intense colors of the imagination that I
cannot call it a treatise.
Shortly after the publication of Marie, Beaumont abandoned the plan
for a second part (announced in the notice).
148
Two years later, when he
was writing Irlande, he seemed to care so little about his novel that he wrote
to Tocqueville: My book is my great and only passion, even more than
yours is for you; I am not doing a second book, it is the rst; and I amafraid
of missing the mark, although I am full of zeal.
149
England and the Second Democracy
Tocqueville hadbegunthe writing of a bookonAmerica withtheintention,
no matter how unhelpful it might be, of making himself known for the
purpose of a political career. His friend Blosseville had even used the op-
portunity of his review of the Democracy to assert, Such books should
open the way to the parliamentary tribune.
150
But in March 1835, Tocqueville was not thinking so much about the
career of a politician as about proting from the extraordinary reputation
that the appearance of his book had just given him. If the Democracy had
not yet opened the doors of the Chamber of Deputies, it had earned him
the friendship of a few prominent individuals who were going to play an
important role in the writing of the second part of his book. They were
Jean-Jacques Ampe`re, Royer-Collard, with whom Tocqueville was going
to begin a profound and determinant intellectual relationship, andCorcelle.
Beaumont, Kergorlay, and E
douard de Tocqueville wouldformthe prin-

cipal trio of critics of the manuscript of the second part of the Democracy.
The text would as well, here and there, bear the imprint of Ampe`re and
Corcelle.
At the beginning of the year 1835, Tocqueville worked on the writing of
148. Marie, I, p. iii.
149. Letter from Beaumont to Tocqueville (15 July 1837?), OC, VIII, 1, p. 209.
150. Le cho franc ais, 11 February 1835.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xciv
a report on pauperism
151
and planned a new journey to England. When
Tocqueville and Beaumont were at the point of making important personal
and professional decisions, the two friends crossed the Channel.
152
What changes had taken place during the last two years? Was the English
aristocracy capable of resisting the advance of democracy? Such were the
questions that Tocqueville and Beaumont asked themselves. Their rst ob-
servations concerned a strong tendency toward centralization. The point
was important, and Tocqueville recognized the necessity of speaking about
it in the second part of Democracy.
153
John Stuart Mill, Lord Minto, and
Henry Reeve conrmedhis impressions onthis subject,
154
but it was Nassau
W. Senior above all who, on the occasion of two long conversations, gave
him the most detailed arguments on centralization.
Senior tells me: The Bill for Reform of the Poor Laws is not only a bill of
social economy, but is above all a political bill. Not only does it cure the
plague of pauperism that torments England, but also it gives to the aris-
tocracy the most fatal blow that it could receive. [ . . . ] The law has cen-
tralized the administration of the poor law; and armed with this principle,
the government, to enforce the law, has appointed a certain number of
commissioners or central agents who have full power in this matter in all
the parishes of England. These commissioners traveled through the ter-
ritory and, in order to kill the local inuences that had to be centralized,
151. Memoire sur le pauperisme, Me moires de la Socie te acade mique de Cherbourg,
1835, pp. 29394. It is impossible to indicate the precise reason for the writing of this
work, whichwas inspiredby the workof Villeneuve-Bargemont, E
conomie politiquechre -
tienne, and which will be mentionedagainelsewhere. Tocqueville hadpromiseda second
part that he never wrote.
152. The notes and drafts of LIrlande allow us to follow in a precise way the journey
of Beaumont and Tocqueville to England and Ireland in 1835. Tocqueville and Beau-
mont left Paris on 21 April, reached Calais on the 22nd and were in London on the 24th,
where they lodged at the Ship-Hotel. The next day they went to the opera to see Anna
Bolena. They began their visits in the English capital, continuing until 24 June. From 7
July to 9 August, they visited Ireland. On the latter date, Beaumont left to visit Scotland
and Tocqueville went to Southampton. On the 18th he crossed the Channel. On 23
August he was again in Cherbourg.
153. Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algerie, OC, V, 2, p. 49. There is also a
long, unpublished conversation with Sharp (YTC, CXIb.1). Beaumonts notes contain
other unpublished conversations.
154. Ibid., pp. 49, 5254.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xcv
united ten or fteen or twenty parishes into a single administrative cir-
cumscription, that they called a union. [ . . . ] These unions have already
been established in this way in two thirds of England, and before long
they will be established everywhere. [ . . . ] The Bill transfers, as you see,
the administration of the poor law from the aristocracy to the middle
classes. And then, there you are, central administrations organized over
the whole kingdom, central administrations composedof citizens, set into
motion, not by the local aristocracy, but indeed by the central power
and this is serious not only for granting to the central power and to the
municipal administration called a union the power to govern England,
but above all for organizing in the country an administrative power
whose center is the government and for which the justices of the peace,
prin[cipal] and essential elements of the aristocracy, are not the agents.
[ . . . ] I note that the result of this is, above all, that the aristocracy is
stripped to the prot of the central power; for the guardians of the poor, as
they are constituted, are agents chosen it is true by the middle class, but
essentially subordinate even in this choice and in their action to the will
of the commissioners of the government.
155
155. YTC, CX.
Tocqueville explained the success of the democratic principle in Englandinthis way:
General idea.
Tocqueville said yesterday [the note is in Beaumonts hand]:
Two elements in English society.
The Saxon principle
and the Norman principle.
The Saxon principledemocratic.
Everything that is democratic in English society dates from this time. The orga-
nization of the parish and the countythe hundredsthe representation of com-
munal interests . . . The Normans came, which threw a layer of absolute power over
this democratic base.
Combination of these two elements in English society.
For a long time, the Norman fact prevailed, without destroying the Saxon prin-
ciple, which just hid and submitted.
Today the awakening of this principle which predominates over the Norman fact
and which particularly showeditself to be superior to its adversary the day the Reform
Bill passed in Parliament (YTC, CX).
edi tor s i ntroducti on xcvi
But the centralizing movement and the rise to power of the middle
classes did not, for all that, imply revolution and the destruction of the
aristocracy. As Tocqueville had already observed during his journey of 1833,
England was very far from a revolution. At the time of this new journey,
Mill conrmed his judgment:
Revolution./
[In the margin: Why no chances of violent revolution.]
I doubt that a quick and violent revolution is happening among us. All
classes are very steady and know too well how to defend themselves. They
are also enlightened, used to ghting and to yielding when necessary.
Moreover, there is an obstacle here to general innovations and to the im-
pulses of reform. Reform never strikes a great number of matters at once.
Since everything in this country is in bits and pieces, you can only change
one thing at a time, and with each change, you only attack a small number
of interests. For the same reason, you excite only a small number of pas-
sions. It is rare to proceed by the path of general reform because there are
few things to which you can apply the same principle in England. ( J. S.
Mill).
156
From the time of his rst journey to England, Tocqueville had shared
this sentiment: in that country, the poor man aspires to occupy the place
of the rich and can sometimes succeed. The French spirit is to want no
superior. The English spirit is to want inferiors.
157
156. YTC, CX. Cf. OC, V, 2, p. 47.
157. Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, p. 47.
Mill explained the same idea in this way:
Aristocracy in the mores./
Aristocratic spirit./
Spirit of equality, aristocratic spirit.
[In the margin: The Whig who attacks the Lord honors him as a rich man.]
Here you often nd allied two sentiments that at rst view seem contradictory;
these are a very intense hostility toward the aristocracy and an innite respect for the
aristocrats. The privileges of the Lords are attacked, but you cannot believe what
consideration there is for them as individuals, so that you see the most ardent dem-
ocrat rant with an extreme exaggeration against the abusive power of an oligarchic
minority andbowwithhumility before the Count or the Marquis of X, solelybecause
edi tor s i ntroducti on xcvii
In Social and Political State of France, Tocqueville would note that the
difference between the French aristocracy and the English aristocracy con-
sists in the fact that only the English one is truly an aristocracy, that is to
say a tiny part of society, having qualities such as blood, intelligence,
money, culture, etc. In France, on the other hand, the sole quality of the
aristocracy is birth, which makes it impossible for anyone to attain it. In
the second part of Democracy, this idea would force Tocqueville to give full
attention to the process of administrative centralization, inasmuch as it is
the rst and most powerful effect of the democratic revolution, and is ca-
pable of making its effects felt even on the English aristocracy.
158
For Beaumont there was a totally different discovery. He who so vig-
orously defended the cause of the Indians and Blacks was struck by the
situation of the Irish. He noted regarding them:
MoralHistory.
I do not believe that the murder of nations is more legitimate thanthat
of individuals.
I declare that in covering the history of peoples, when I see the victors
and the vanquished, I can very much admire the conqueror whose value
shines before my eyes; but all the sympathies of my heart are for the con-
quered country. As long as a subject people exists, as long as it has not
entirely disappeared under conquest, I make wishes for it, I nourishhopes,
I have faith in its instincts of nationality; and in my dreams I see it shaking
off the chains of servitude and cleansing itself of tyranny in the blood of
its tyrants. If one day I learn that this people has expired with glory, I
remainfaithful to it, andI weep onits tomb. For to pardona crime because
he is a Count or Marquis. Here we work hard to abolish privileges, but we respect those
who possess them; we nd that they are clever, because they have reached the goal
that everyone targets. No one has the idea of blaming them for taking a place that is
due not to morality andjustice, but to their privilegedposition. For inEnglishsociety,
everything is privilege ( Jh. Mill, 19 May. London). (Beaumonts note. YTC, CX).
158. During their journey, which took them to several large cities of England,
Tocqueville and Beaumont observed the terrible effects of industrialization, whichthey
could already have done in part during the journey to the United States. On this subject,
they knew about the book by J. B. Say and about the treatise by Villeneuve-Bargemont.
The famous description of Manchester is found in Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2,
pp. 7982.
edi tor s i ntroducti on xcviii
it is successful is an odious and despicable action. It is a despicable action,
commonly done.
(30 January 1836).
159
The two friends divided subjects. To Tocqueville, America; to Beau-
mont, England,
160
and Beaumont intended to devote a book to the Irish
cause. In 1837, he went to England for a second time and visited Ireland in
order to complete his researchonsite. LIrlande, sociale, politique et religieuse
would be published in 1839.
161
The manuscript of Beaumonts bookcontains criticisms inTocquevilles
hand. That of Tocqueville would be considered attentively by Beaumont
before its publication. Their collaboration continued to include innumer-
able exchanges of ideas.
162
The press gave LIrlande a reserved reception, but the book received the
approbation of English intellectuals. In October 1839, John Stuart Mill
wrote to Beaumont:
159. YTC, CX.
160. Tocqueville explained this point in a letter of 5 May 1835 to his father. Andre
Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 229.
161. The second and third editions saw the light of day in 1839; the seventh and last,
in 1863. The English translation appeared in 1839. The English translator took care to
eliminate several passages critical of England; he summarized and altered a certain num-
ber of Beaumonts arguments.
162. Beaumont noted this idea of Tocqueville:
Brittany. Ireland.
Remarkable parallel between the province of Brittany in France and Ireland.
Same origin.Celtic population.
Similarity in mores and in social state.
Small farms in the two countries. Small-scale farming.
Absence of luxury and no idea of material well-being; no efforts to gain it.
Miserable hut in which the family pig grunts as a table companion.
Eminently religious population, faithfulbut not enlightened.
Brittany is only separated by a river fromNormandy where the taste for material
well-being is so developed. In France we have England and Ireland in Normandy and
Brittany.
There is the similarity.
But differencesThe Irishman is merry and ckleThe Breton melancholic and
stubborn.
(Shouted by Tocqueville)
22 December (YTC, CX).
edi tor s i ntroducti on xcix
I hardly know how to express to you the degree of my estimation of your
book, in as measured terms as a sober man likes to use in expressing a
deliberate judgmentbut this I may say, in the condence of being rather
within than beside the markthat the book not only displays a complete
and easy mastery over all the social elements and agencies at work in Ire-
land, over the whole great period of Irish history and Irish civilization;
but that it also manifests a degree of clear comprehension and accurate
knowledge of the far more complicated and obscure phenomena of En-
glish society, never before even approached by any foreigner whomI know
of, and by very, very few Englishmen.
163
Like Marie, LIrlande would be only a half-success. This second book
was also the last. At one time pushed by Tocqueville to become interested
in Austria, Beaumont would cease all important intellectual workfollowing
the death of one of his sons.
The Second Democracy
On 26 October 1835, Tocqueville married Mary Mottley, thus formalizing
a relationship that was already several years old. Beaumont and Kergorlay
were witnesses.
In 1828 or 1829, at Versailles, Tocqueville had met this English woman
of bourgeois origin who lived with her aunt, Mrs. Belam.
164
The corre-
spondence of Tocqueville and his wife has almost totally disappeared. The
documents that remain attest to a certain discomfort, in the family as well
as among a few friends, about a marriage judged disappointing.
On 15 November the couple went to Baugy, near Compie`gne, close to
E
douard de Tocqueville. That is where Alexis began to work on the second

part of Democracy. His rst plan was to divide the third volume into two
parts:
163. Letter of J. S. Mill to Beaumont, 18 October 1839, YTC, CIe.
164. Concerning Mary Mottley, few things are known. See Antoine Redier, Comme
disait Monsieur de Tocqueville, pp. 12228, and Andre Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, pp.
5056.
edi tor s i ntroducti on c
Two great divisions.
1. Inuence of democracy on ideas.
2. Id. on sentiments.
165
Then the outline became complicated:
Division to do perhaps.
Effects of democracy
1. On thought.
2. On the heart.
3. On habits.
166
Little by little, the work took on its denitive form:
Plan of the second volume.
Sociability, sympathy, mores becoming milder, susceptibility, p. [blank]
and dignity. All of that comes easily after individualism in order to dem-
onstrate the types of relationships that can exist in a democratic society
despite egoism.
The citizen, patriotism, the master and the servant, master and farmer,
master and worker. All of that again comes easily after the introduction
because it is principally individualism that modies the relationships of
all those people with each other.
Father, son, wife, woman, goodmorals. The mindis prep[ared] bywhat
precedes to enter into families. Moreover, individualism again greatly
modies the relationships of those people.
Tone, manners, conversation, monotony of life, gravity, vanity. The
chapters relating to the family have prepared the mind to descend easily
into the small details of the social existence of the Americans.
Honor, ambition, revolution, military spirit, conquests, armies, per-
haps a chapter that summarizes. These chapters, which perhaps I have not
placed in the relative order that they should have vis-a`-vis each other, el-
evate the mind of the reader and end the book on a high level.
There are three chapters that remain, and I do not knowwhere to place
them: Respect that is attached to all conditions, lack of susceptibilities,
sentiment of dignity.
165. YTC, CVa, p. 6.
166. YTC, CVa, p. 6.
edi tor s i ntroducti on ci
I believe, however, that they come after sociability./
Where to place equalityslavery?
167
Individualism, which opened the book, would nally be placed at the
beginning of the second part of the third volume. The idea of speaking
again about slavery remained only a plan, but the principal ideas of the
whole work were already present. The work of writing, with several inter-
ruptions,
168
would take four years (from November 1835 to November
1839).
In January 1836, following a division of family properties due to the
death of his mother, Alexis received the chateau de Tocqueville andthe title
of count that came with it, although he would always refuse to use the title.
He appeared hardly inclined in the beginning to spend much time in a cold
and damp chateau. Various renovations that his wife would have done
would be necessary before Tocqueville decidedtolive there for longperiods.
Many pages of the second Democracy would see the light of day there,
sometimes under the critical eye of Corcelle, Beaumont, Kergorlay, or Am-
pe`re, regular guests at the chateau.
A large part of the rst section of the book seemed nished when, in
July, after the marriage of Gustave de Beaumont with Clementine de La-
fayette, Tocqueville and his wife left for Baden, in Switzerland. In Novem-
ber they returned to Baugy.
169
There, Tocqueville worked daily from 6:00
to 10:00 oclock in the morning. The writing went well. Only one thing
167. YTC, CVa, pp. 2830.
168. During their journey to England, Mill had begged the French visitors to con-
tribute to the London and Westminster Review by writing articles on France and the
United States. In 1836, Tocqueville sent Mill a rst and only article on the social and
political state of France before and after the Revolution, which was meant to be an in-
troduction to a series of publications on France. Political and Social Condition of
France, London and Westminster Review, 25, 1836, pp. 13769 (reproduced in OC, II, 1,
pp. 3366). The similarity between the rst paragraphs of the article and the chapter on
the philosophical method of the Americans is clear and enlightening.
169. The long stays of Tocqueville at Baugy make it difcult to measure the inuence
exercised by E
douard.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cii
was missing for the author: a good instrument of conversation, I needed
you [Beaumont] or Louis.
170
During the following months, Tocqueville took careful note of all the
information, of every conversation that could be useful for his work. He
interviewed Thiers on the problem of centralization, Kergorlay on the
army, Charles Stoffels on literature. He also met an American named Rob-
inson and a number of other people.
171
From mid-July to mid-August the Corcelles stayed at Tocqueville. At
the end of July, the Beaumonts joined the small set. Inthe intellectual circle
thus constituted by Tocqueville only one member was missing, Louis de
Kergorlay, whom he did not hesitate to call his master.
172
In January 1838, at Baugy, Tocqueville reviewed the chapter on honor.
Marchand April were devotedto the questionof centralization, tothe army
and to the preparation of the fourth and last part of the book. On 15 May,
170. Letter of 22 November 1836 to Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, p. 174. The same month,
Tocqueville wrote to Kergorlay in very similar terms: I feel the importance of this sec-
ond work, which will nd criticism wide-awake and will not be able to take the public
by surprise. So I want to do my best. There is not a day so to speak that I do not feel
your absence. [ . . . ] There are three men with whom I live a bit every day, Pascal, Mon-
tesquieu and Rousseau. I miss a fourth who is you. Letter of 10 November 1836, OC,
XIII, 1, p. 418.
171. He found the time to think about the continuation of his work on pauperism
and asked Beaumont to bring him all available information about the savings banks and
the English pawnshops. There is a list of questions from Tocqueville for Beaumont in
YTC, CXIb.13. Cf. OC, VIII, 1, pp. 185, 191, 193, 196, and 200. He did not nd the time
to choose some unpublished excerpts from Democracy for the London and Westminster
Review as Mill had requested (OC, VIII, 1, p. 187).
Tocqueville also dedicated his efforts to two bids, one to enter the Chamber of Dep-
uties in November and a second to get himself elected to the Academie francaise. These
two attempts failed. Entry to the Academie des sciences morales et politiques was seen
by Tocqueville only as a consolation prize that would make his entry to the Academie
francaise more difcult. He would enter there on 24 December 1841. He published, in
addition, two letters on Algeria, on 23 June and 22 August 1837, in La presse de Seine-et-
Oise.
172. For, after all, and without giving a useless compliment, I believe you are my
master. Letter to Kergorlay, 4 September 1837, OC, XIII, 1, p. 472. Cf. Kergorlays an-
swer, 30 September, ibid., p. 477. Alexis was then working on the chapters on good
morals. In September, he laid down the foundations of the chapter on American
manners.
edi tor s i ntroducti on ciii
Corcelle and Ampe`re were present for a reading of the chapter on revo-
lutions. In July, August, and September, the last chapters took their den-
itive form. The last two chapters on centralization and the idea of equality
grew in length and purpose. The only thing remaining was to revise the
chapter on the philosophical method of the Americans and the one on
general ideas.
On 19 October 1838, Tocqueville would write to Beaumont: I have just
written, my dear friend, the last word of the last chapter of my book.
173
The revision of the whole book would occupy all of the following year.
Kergorlay, who spent most of the autumn at Tocqueville [the village], came
to help the author who worked to revise the rst part of his book. Unsat-
ised, Tocqueville had burned it.
In January 1839, Tocqueville read part of his manuscript to Chateau-
briand, but confessed to Beaumont that he did not think he would be able
to advance much in the revision of the whole book before the month of
March. The work stretched until mid-November, the date when Tocque-
ville returned to Paris with a copy of his manuscript in order to have it read
and approved a nal time by Beaumont and Kergorlay.
Tocqueville had spoken to his correspondents about a book on Amer-
ican manners. The title that tempted Tocqueville was: The Inuence of
Equality on the Ideas and the Sentiments of Men. The book appeared in
April 1840, however, with the same title as that of 1835.
The reception of the second part was not as unanimously laudatory as
what hadaccompaniedthe appearance of the rst volume. Moretheoretical
and less descriptive, the second Democracy found a public little prepared
for the reading of a philosophical work of such length and ambition. The
criticism that appeared in this regard in The Examiner reected the tone.
174
Hunts Merchant Magazine noted: In our deliberate judgment, it is the
most original, comprehensive, and profound treatise that has ever appeared
regarding our republic.
175
The prestigious Blackwoods Edinburgh Maga-
173. OC, VIII, 1, p. 321.
174. The Examiner, 17 May 1840.
175. Hunts Merchant Magazine, 3 July 1840, p. 443.
edi tor s i ntroducti on civ
zine, acknowledging that the second part did not merit the unconditional
approval given to the rst, added: It is a superstructure of theorizing with-
out any base to support it.
176
If favorable reviews were manyand in particular the one of John Stu-
art Mill must be pointed out
177
the same judgment was found just about
everywhere in the English press: too great a disposition to theorize,
178
or
again: Perhaps this method of generalizing facts is occasionally pushedtoo
far.
179
The verdict seemed denitive. Tocquevilles contemporaries seemed
little inclined to accept this philosophy of democracy that the author was
offering to their understanding. The appearance of the rst volume of the
Democracy had elicited nearly seventy commentaries; that of the second
brought forth scarcely half that number.
In the months immediately following the publication, Tocqueville
wrote little and so to speak made no allusion to his book. Elected deputy
on 2 March 1839, he intended to concern himself more with his new
duties.
Nothing has been and remains more contrary to my tastes than to ac-
cept the condition of author in this world, he wrote to Royer-Collard in
1839, explaining:
That is entirely contrary to my way of seeing what is desirable in this life.
So my rm wish, after nishing this book and whatever its fate, is to work
for myself and to write no longer for the public, unless a very important
and very natural occasion presented itself, which is not probable. I am
pushed to this determination not only by the desire to set myself apart
from authors strictly speaking, but also by a certain pride that persuades
me that I will nd no subject as grand as the one that I have just treated
and that, consequently, I would be demeaning myself by taking up the
pen again.
180
176. Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 48, no. 298 (1840): 46378, p. 463.
177. Edinburgh Review 145 (1840): 125.
178. Dublin University Magazine 16, no. 95 (1840): 54463, p. 563.
179. The New York Review 7, no. 13 (1840): p. 234.
180. Letter to Royer-Collard, 20 November 1838, OC, XI, p. 74. Cf. the letter to
Corcelle, 25 June 1838, OC, XV, 1, pp. 100101.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cv
The occasion would not present itself before 1852, when, forcedtoaban-
don all political activity following the coming to power of a person of
whom he highly disapproved, Tocqueville decided to take up the pen again
in order to remind the French of the events that had brought them liberty.
That was the beginning of work on LAncien re gime et la revolution.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cvi
II
181
To Understand the Revolution
Since, like Perrin Dandin, I am driven by the desire to judge without the
power to do so, I need to keep going.
182
Tocquevilles identication with
the main character of the Plaideurs can probably be shared by an entire
generation of judges who, following the revolutions of 1789 and 1830, had
to devote themselves to nding a new equilibrium for society. As Ortega
remarked, the solution to the political question was above all an eminently
personal problemfor Tocqueville and his contemporaries.
183
Ultras andlib-
erals, 1789 and 1793, aristocracy and democracy, liberty and equality, mon-
archy and republic, these were so many opposites that required a choice to
be made.
In this context, where to place the author of Democracy? The question
continues to be asked.
184
The intellectual conversation has rened his
thought and made his adjectives more nuanced; that does not prevent the
labels from remaining very close to those of 1835. Tocqueville is in turn
called a conservative, a liberal, a conservative liberal, a liberal conservative,
a Burkean conservative, a liberal despite himself, a liberal aristocrat, a strange
liberalin short, the confusion about his work continues.
For it to be otherwise wouldbe difcult. The Democracy, whichsets forth
as well one of the most fascinating interpretations of the FrenchRevolution
181. The interpretation I am offering here is necessarily limited.
182. Letter from Tocqueville to the Countess de Pisieux, 5 July 1833, YTC, CIf.
183. Tocqueville y su tiempo, in Meditacion de Europa, Madrid. (Revista de Oc-
cidente, 1966), pp. 13541.
184. There are dozens of books devoted to Tocquevilles thought, but I limit myself
to pointing out those of Jean-Louis Beno t, Tocqueville moraliste (Paris: Honore Cham-
pion, 2004); Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento pol tico de Tocqueville (Madrid: Alianza
Editorial, 1989); Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux democraties (Paris: PUF,
1983); Pierre Manent, Tocqueville et la nature de la de mocratie (Paris: Julliard, 1982); Ni-
cola Matteucci, Alexis de Tocqueville (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990); the brief introduction
to the abridged edition of Democracy by Dalmacio Negro (Madrid: Aguilar, 1971); and
Sheldon S. Wolin, Tocqueville Between Two Worlds (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001).
edi tor s i ntroducti on cvii
ever made, attempts indeed, by using the American mirror,
185
to create
a political philosophy capable of explaining (and producing) revolution
and counter-revolution.
186
Placed in the middle of a rapid river, writes Tocqueville, we obsti-
nately x our eyes on some debris that we still see on the bank, while the
torrent carries us away and pushes us backward toward the abyss.
187
Amid
this dangerous revolutionary turbulence, there is a pressing need to nd a
path and a bedrock somewhere; and this is what forces the author to seek
an explanation for the Revolution from the very rst pages of the Democ-
racy.
188
If we must await LAncien re gime et la re volution for Tocqueville to
give a fuller and more detailed interpretation of the great historical up-
heaval, it is no less true that the principal lines of his theory of revolution
are already present in the two Democracies.
Tocquevilles point of view can be somewhat roughly summarized by
asserting that for him the French Revolution was neither a true revolution,
nor a French revolution.
The Revolution was not a true revolution because authentic revolutions
take place at the level of mentalities, ideas, beliefs, habits of the heart, of
185. I did not want to do a portrait, but to present a mirror, Tocqueville confessed
to Ampe`re. Jean-Jacques Ampe`re, Alexis de Tocqueville, Correspondant 47 (1859):
p. 322.
186. The Revolution that reducedto dust the aristocratic society inwhichour fathers
lived is the great event of the time. It has changed everything, modied everything,
altered everything II, p. 690, note c.
Not by chance did Tocqueville choose as a matter of fact to publish the chapter on
revolutions separately, before the second volume. The chapter on revolutions undoubt-
edly constitutes the axis around which the whole book turns; cf. Alexis de Tocqueville,
Des revolutions dans les societes nouvelles, Revue des deux mondes, XXII, 1840, pp.
32234.
187. I, p. 514, note o. Cf. I, p. 12, note r.
188. The unpublished texts of this edition tend to erase a certain number of differ-
ences between Democracy and LAncien re gime et la re volution. Tocqueville is an author
who treats a very small number of subjects that he considers and studies many times in
each of his writings, while keeping them all interrelated, like the chapters of the same
book. So in a way we have something of a Democracy that extends from 1835 to 1859.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cviii
all the things that, using once again the meaning of the word mores,
189
he
designates by the term murs.
190
Every historical change necessarily begins, according to Tocqueville, at
the level of ideas. In turn, the latter transform and are transformed by the
social and material conditions of a society. These, according toTocqueville,
constitute the social state of a society.
191
Political societies are not made by their laws, but are prepared in advance
by the sentiments, beliefs, ideas, the habits of the hearts and minds of the
men who are part of them, and by what nature and education have made
those men. If this truth does not emerge from all parts of my book, if it
does not in this sense constantly bring readers back to themselves, if it
does not point out to them at every moment, without ever blatantly dis-
playing the pretension of teaching them, the sentiments, ideas, mores that
alone can lead to prosperity and public liberty, the vices and errors that
on the contrary inevitably push prosperity and public liberty away, I will
189. The whole body of the ideas and the mores of a people form its character, and
on this point Tocqueville recalls Montesquieu:
There is indeed in the bent of the ideas and tastes of a people a hidden force that
struggles with advantage against revolutions and time. This intellectual physiognomy
of nations, which is called their character, is found throughout all the centuries of
their history and amid the innumerable changes that take place in the social state,
beliefs and laws. Astrange thing! What is least perceptible and most difcult todene
among a people is at the same time what you nd most enduring among them. Ev-
erything changes among them except the character, which disappears only with na-
tions themselves (I, p. 344, note y).
190. So by this word I understand the whole moral and intellectual state of a people
(I, p. 466).
Montesquieu in fact remarks: The customs of a people in slavery are part of its
servitude; those of a free people are part of its liberty. De lesprit des lois, book XIX, ch.
XXVII, uvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade, 1951), II, p. 382. For Tocqueville, the mores of
a people constitute nearly its entire liberty.
191. Tocqueville did not believe that he had resolved the question of knowing if ideas
are the result or the cause of the social state. Is the social state the result of ideas or are
the ideas the result of the social state? II, p. 748, note f. Ideas will act, alternately, as
effect and as cause.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cix
not have attained the principal and, so to speak, the only goal that I had
in view.
192
The social state in turn shapes the political state.
193
(Today we would
speak about society and state.) This explains why, inFrance as inthe United
States,
194
the people are sovereign, for if the French do not live in a con-
dition of liberty strictly speaking, they have already learned to think of
themselves as equals.
195
The material andintellectual conditions of asociety
modify and are changed by ideas and sentiments; and once the social state
has been changed, the legal and political institutions adapt little by little.
192. Letter to Corcelle, 17 September 1853, OC, XV, 2, p. 81. This is so true that a
change in the law (the abolition of slavery, for example) is useless and even negative if
it is not accompanied by a change in the intellectual world (the idea that the Black man
is henceforth equal to the white man). In this sense Tocqueville can say that, if he had
the power, he would not immediately decide on the abolition of slavery. He was con-
vinced that, without a previous radical change in the mores, the situation of the free
Black would probably be worse than the situation of the slave.
193. This term reappears from time to time (II, p. 1262, note b).
With this supposition, Tocqueville places himself at the origin of the modern social
sciences. If his work attracts sociologists as well as historians, critics, and political sci-
entists, it is because in his work the classic elements of political philosophy are beginning
to separate and take form as sociology, history, or the political sciences. In the same way,
if Democracy, and especially the second part, has not sufciently gained the attentionof
researchers in the political sciences, it is undoubtedly because it requires the latter to go
beyond the position of historians of ideas in order to be political philosophers for a time.
194. Inthe UnitedStates, the dogma of the sovereignty of the people is not anisolated
doctrine that is attached neither to the habits nor to the ensemble of dominant ideas;
you can on the contrary envisage it as the last link in a chain of opinions that envelops
the entire Anglo-American world. Providence has given to each individual, whatever
he is, the degree of reason necessary for him to be able to direct himself in the things
that interest him exclusively. Such is the great maxim on which in the United States
civil and political society rests: the father of the family applies it to his children, the
master to his servants, the town to those it administers, the province to the town, the
state to the provinces, the Union to the states. Extended to the whole of the nation,
it becomes the dogma of the sovereignty of the people.
[So the republicanprinciple of the sovereignty of the people is not onlyapolitical
principle, but also a civil principle.] (I, p. 633)
195. II, p. 1033, note 1. Did Tocqueville participate in Beaumonts plan to present an
essay on the inuence of laws on mores and of mores on laws for the Montyon com-
petition in 1830? See YTC, CXIb6.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cx
In the long run, political society cannot fail to become the expression and
the image of civil society. Sovereignty of the people is born as public
opinion.
196
That is why the true revolutiontookplace largelybefore 1789, accelerated
by a change that was above all European in nature,
197
that began with the
Reformation, continued with Bacon and Descartes, and then gave the En-
lightenment universal ideas, applicable in all periods and to all parts of the
world.
[The Revolution] was just a violent and rapid process by the aid of
which the political state was adapted to the social state, facts to ideas, and
laws to mores,
198
Tocqueville will repeat in the Ancien Re gime. It was noth-
ing more than the abrupt adaptation of the real to the ideal, or more pre-
cisely to an abstract philosophy formed from theories that had not been
rened, called into question, or conrmed by political practice.
The Old Regime wanted to ignore social changes and, by preventing the
slow adaptation of the political to the social, had created the conditions for
its own downfall. The revolutionaries, removed from the political practice
that would have led them to test and adapt their theories to the material
and social circumstances of France, tried for their part to make the legal
and political world conform to abstract and universal principles that were
far from the social state.
A difculty unfailingly appears, however. If the Revolution indeed had
as its point of departure an intellectual movement that predated it, the vast
changes whose arrival it marked cannot be completed as long as differences
exist between the social and political ideas of the French and their legal and
196. What is the sovereign rule of public [v: national] opinion to which all the En-
glish of the last [century (Ed.)] constantly declared that you must submit, if not a still
obscure notion of the democratic dogma of the sovereignty of the people? II, p. 1033,
note e.
197. The French Revolution, in my eyes, is a European event, and everything that
happened in the same period in Europe, principally in Germany, interests me nearly as
much as what [took (Ed.)] place among us Letter to Charles Monnard, 5 October 1856.
With the kind permission of the Bibliothe`que cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne.
198. LAncien Regime et la Revolution, OC, II, 1, p. 66.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxi
social institutions.
199
This raises the following question: canthe Revolution
end? Are France and Europe condemned to an eternal cycle of revolutions
and counter-revolutions? How can you stop a revolution that is constantly
unfolding?
Tocqueville observed again in 1850:
Our country is calmand more prosperous than we could believe after such
violent crises. But condence in the future is lacking and although sixty
years of Revolution have made this feeling of instability less prejudicial
to social progress and less painful to us than it would be to other peoples,
it has nonetheless very unfortunate results. This great nation is entirely in
the state of mind of a sailor at sea or a soldier in the eld. It does as little
of the work of each day as possible, without worrying about tomorrow.
But such a state is precarious and dangerous. Moreover, it is not peculiar
to us. In all of continental Europe, except Russia, you see society in labor
and the old world nally falling into ruins. Trust that all the restorations
of old powers that are being made around us are only temporary happen-
ings that do not prevent the great drama from following its course. This
drama is the complete destruction of the old society and in its place the
creationof I do not knowwhat humanfabric whose formthe mindcannot
yet clearly see.
200
Suchare the circumstances surrounding Tocquevilles project of creating
a new political science that would succeed in explaining the past and the
199. Tocqueville noted that Napoleon, not wanting to give democratic political laws
to France, had agreed to a body of social laws much more democratic than American
laws and thus, very unwillingly, had accelerated the arrival of democracy. For the same
reason, the primacy of the social over the political, Tocqueville asserted: I wouldbelieve
the future of liberty more assured with a government that would have many political
rights and few civil rights than with a government that would have few political rights
and many civil rights. (II, p. 1230, note p).
200. Letter to Edward Everett, 15 February 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society.
The preface to the 1848 edition of Democracy (IV, p. 1373) repeats the same idea.
There is only a single [revolution], a revolution always the same across various for-
tunes and passions, that our fathers saw begin and that, in all probability, we will not
see end Souvenirs, OC, XII, p. 30.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxii
future, the old regime and the new, or, to reuse his terminology, aristocracy
and democracy.
201
There is a country in the world, we read in the introduction to the
rst volume, where the great social revolution that I am speaking about
seems more or less to have reached its natural limits; it came about there in
a simple and easy way, or rather it can be said that this country sees the
results of the democratic revolution that is taking place among us, without
having had the revolution itself.
202
Tocqueville intends to determine whether American society offers the
sole example in the world of an exceptional situation in which the ideal
easily shapes the real, in which the social state coincides with the political
state, in which the entire world is a malleable material that man turns and
shapes as he wills.
203
On this strange continent, it seems that the dream
of the French and of the Europeans can be realized without the need for
a revolution,
204
and that their abstract, rational, and theoretical principles
are real, concrete, and inductive there.
But, if the exceptional physical and intellectual conditions of America
alone explain the success of democracy, there is no hope that Europe could
ever know the democratic state without continual revolutions.
The rst impressions of the United States, especially of the West, con-
rm the existence of an America that does not need revolution. The Amer-
ican frontier, the great wilderness that extends to the Pacic Ocean, offers
a space in which ideas transformreality without encounteringobstacles and
201. Tocquevilles two books thus answer the desire to elucidate rst the new regime
and the Revolution (Democracy ), then LAncien Re gime et la Re volution.
202. I, p. 27. The same idea appears, for example, at the beginning of the second
volume: The Americans have a democratic social state and a democratic constitution,
but they have not had a democratic revolution. They arrived on the soil that they occupy
more or less as we see them. That is very important. II, p. 708.
203. To Ernest de Chabrol, letter of 9 June 1831, YTC, BIa2.
204. The Americans seemed only to have carried out what our writers hadimagined;
they gave the substance of reality to what we were busy dreaming LAncien Re gime et
la Re volution, OC, II, 1, p. 199.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxiii
in a transparent way, so to speak.
205
Tocqueville will perfect and complicate
his theory as his journey moves ahead, but the pioneer of Democracy es-
pecially announces the democratic man described at length in the second
volume of the work.
Everything that is good and evil in American society is found in such
relief [in the West] that you would say it was one of those books published
in large type to teach children to read, already notes the traveler in a letter
to his mother. Everything there is jarring and exaggerated. Nothing has
yet taken its denitive place. [ . . . ] In the west no one has beenable tomake
himself known or has had the time to establish his credit. Consequently
democracy, without this nal barrier, appears withall of its distinctivechar-
acteristics, its ckleness, its envious passions, its instability and its restless
character.
206
The pioneer is, necessarily, occupied entirely by the search for a mini-
mum of commodities. Withdrawn from the rest of the world, isolated in
his cabin, his only concern is the yield of his eld on which his familys
subsistence depends. Each of his movements is dictated by the necessity of
the survival and the protection of his small world. His generosity toward
the stranger who appears at his door is nothing more than the fruit of cal-
culation; it comes fromreasonandnot fromthe heart; it is aninvestment.
207
Obsession with material well-being, individualism, and interest well un-
derstood dene, apparently accidentally and temporarily, life on the fron-
tier, but they run the risk of becoming permanent conditions for the citizen
of every democratic country.
So if North America does not need revolution, it is because the process
of adaptation and struggle among philosophy, social state, and political
conditionis non-existent. Ideas andreality coincide; reasonappears covered
only by the clothing of the present. In order to be free and happy, it is
enough for the American to want to be so.
208
No need for struggle or con-
frontation, no need for the complex interpenetration, necessarily slow, of
205. The rst thing that the pioneer does is to clear his property, to chop down the
trees, to open up his view. The rst symbol of civilization is the absence of trees.
206. Letter of 6 December 1831, YTC, BIa1, pp. 5456, and OCB, VII, p. 90.
207. II, p. 1289.
208. I, p. 276.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxiv
ideas with habits and laws; nowhere are there ruins, the past, and signs of
the past. The Union . . . prots from the experience of the old peoples
of Europe, without being obliged, like them, to make use of the past and
to adapt the past to the present; it is not forced, as they are, to accept an
immense heritage handed down by its fathers, a mixture of glory and mis-
ery, of national friendships and hatreds.
209
The United States has the privilege therefore of being able to enjoy the
results of European thought without being encumbered by the heavy bag-
gage of history. InAmerica, notes Tocqueville, society seems tolive from
day to day, like an army in the eld.
210
Tocqueville comments on the uncommon position of the New World,
which anchors it in an eternal present: For the American, the past is in
a way like the future: it does not exist. He sees nowhere the natural limit
that nature has put on the efforts of man; according to him what is not, is
what has not yet been tried.
211
The pioneer is, in a way, the last link in an historical chain that begins
in Europe and ends in the American wilderness, where he inhabits a present
209. I, p. 369.
For him [the American] the possible has hardly any limit. To change is to improve;
he has constantly before his eyes the image of indenite perfection that throws deep
within his heart an extraordinary restlessness and a great distaste for the present (II,
p. 935, note b).
210. I, p. 331.
211. I, p. 643, note n.
The American inhabits a land of wonders, around him everything is constantly
stirring, and each movement seems to be an improvement. So the idea of the new is
intimately linked in his mind to the idea of the better. Nowhere does he see the limit
that nature might have put on the efforts of man; in his eyes what is not is what has
not yet been attempted (I, p. 643).
Tocqueville species about the frontier:
In whatever direction you looked, your eye searched in vain for the spire of a Gothic
church tower, the wooden cross that marks the road, or the moss-covered doorway of
the presbytery. These venerable remnants of ancient Christian civilization have not
been carried into the wilderness; nothing there yet awakens the idea of the past or of
the future. You do not even nd places of rest consecrated to those who are no more.
Death has not had the time to reclaim its sphere or mark out its eld (II, p. 1346).
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxv
without limit.
212
In the American West the principal characteristics of so-
ciety are also missing: The newstates of the West already have inhabitants;
society still does not exist,
213
writes Tocqueville. Inthe West, the onlycom-
mon ideas and the sole bond between the most immediate past and the
present are found in the weak intellectual network created by the mail and
newspapers.
214
Is the destiny of democratic man to inhabit a world without social ex-
changes, an eternal cycle of death and emptiness, such as the American
forest or the ocean,
215
a denitive present? You could think so. The pioneer
clears an opening in the forest, cuts down the trees and in his eld leaves
the trunks that he does not take the trouble to uproot. He builds himself
a cabin and marks with a subtle trace of history the woods that surround
him. As soon as he disappears, nature takes back its domain. Then nothing
more remains of the passage of man except a few remnants falling into
rot that in a bit of time will have ceased to exist.
216
Is this the price to pay in order to live in a world without revolution?
212. The Indians nd themselves in a quite similar situation. Beaumont writes about
them: Focused on the necessity of the present and fears of the future, the past and its
memories have lost all their power over them (Marie, II, p. 297). Citing ClarkandCass,
Tocqueville repeats the same idea: He [the Indian] easily forgets the past, and is not
interested in the future. I, p. 527, note 7. The same thing can be said about the Black
race, which has left its history in another continent.
213. I, p. 86.
214. The only historical monuments of the United States are newspapers. If anissue
happens to be missing, the chain of time is as if broken: present and past are no longer
joined. I, p. 331.
215. A Fortnight in the Wilderness, II, p. 1339.
Also rivers . . . are roads that respect no trails. II, p. 1353.
216. Journey to Lake Oneida, IV, p. 1301.
Sometimes man moves so quickly that the wilderness reappears behind him. The
forest has only bent under his feet; the moment he passes, it rises up again. It is not
unusual, while traveling through the newstates of the West, to encounter abandoned
dwellings inthe middle of the woods; oftenyoundthe ruins of a cabininthe deepest
solitude, and you are amazed while crossing rough-hewn clearings that attest simul-
taneously to human power and inconstancy. Among these abandoned elds, over
these day-old ruins, the ancient forest does not delay growing newshoots; the animals
retake possession of their realm; nature comes happily to cover the vestiges of man
with green branches and owers and hastens to make the ephemeral trace of man
disappear. (I, p. 461).
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxvi
The question is posed in these terms. So the new political science that
Tocqueville imagines anddevelops inDemocracy inAmerica is goingtohave
as its rst objective mans return to society and to history.
217
The Theoretician of History
It is undoubtedly difcult to nd a period when the question of history
attracted more attention than in the rst half of the nineteenth century.
Uncertainty about the future forces minds to look back: you had to try to
place the Revolution in history, to assimilate it as the past, to understand
it. In order to do this, liberals, like conservatives, court Clio. Politicians
make history and write it; poets and novelists who claim to be historians
capture imaginations and, at times, get involved in politics; all offer the
world an uncommon example of political practice and political theory.
While Burke and the conservatives explain that the French Revolution
was nothing more than an aberration that, far from history, broke its
rhythm, the liberals concentrate their efforts on demonstrating the inevi-
table character of history. At rst view, Tocqueville places himself on this
side because he seems to follow the liberal theory of the inevitability of
history and particularly the historical interpretation of Guizot.
There is no qualifying term that has been more often associated with
Tocqueville, the historian-politician, than that of fatalist. Certain critics
have spoken about determinism
218
or providentialism; others have sought
reasons of a pedagogic nature in his use of the idea of the inevitable move-
ment toward equality of conditions.
219
Howcan Tocqueville, who hates all
forms of fatalism, who speaks of liberty as analmost holy thing, whoasserts
217. Ampe`re said with a great deal of wisdomabout Democracy: In short, at the core
of the whole book stirs the question of time (Correspondance avec Ampe `re, OC, XI,
p. xvi).
218. Jean-Claude Lamberti, La notion dindividualisme chez Tocqueville (Paris: PUF,
1970).
219. Marvin Zetterbaum, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1967), p. 17. Cf. I, pp. 1012, note q.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxvii
that the goal of his book is to reveal very clearly that whatever the ten-
dencies of the social state, men can always modify them and ward off the
bad tendencies while appropriating the good,
220
how can this same
Tocqueville talk at the same time about an irresistible movement of de-
mocracy and make it a providential fact?
At once simple and complex, his answer consists of saying that inevi-
tability concerns only the arrival of social equality. With him, and with
a certain number of others, this fact receives the name democracy. In the
sense that, in the long run, social equality produces legal and political
equality, Tocquevilles theory can be called deterministic, and the arrival
of democracy is inevitable. Once intellectual equality is proclaimed (each
man has the same faculties for attaining truth as another), the transfor-
mation of social and political conditions is no more than a question of
time; in terms of Tocquevilles thought, it is inevitable and even desired
by God.
Once you eliminate all secondary causes, Tocqueville continues, all the
revolutions in the world have been and are made for the sole purpose of
increasing or decreasing equality, which is the foundation or the gener-
ating fact of the revolutionary motor. Revolutions have always consisted
and still consist of setting the rich against the poor and the poor against
the rich.
But this determinism, which is as much logical as historical, is in no way
incompatible with the passionate defense of liberty, because, for Tocque-
ville, the movement toward equality is independent of the development of
liberty. The latter is the true human element of historical change. In other
words, the inevitability of democracy, understood as the adaptation of the
political state to the social state, does not determine the historical evolution
of liberty: equality is as good an ally of despotism as of liberty.
So the presumption of attaining equality of social and political condi-
tions makes the classical typology of political regimes meaningless. Whether
it takes the form of public opinion or whether it presents itself as it is,
220. II, p. 694, note m.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxviii
sovereignty of the people makes possible only two types of regimes: the
republican (or liberal) regime or the despotic regime, liberty or despotism.
In the face of this alternative, it is man who chooses and not destiny that
imposes.
This understanding of history, as Marx remarked, puts Tocqueville
closer to Bossuet than to Guizot.
221
Like the bishop of Meaux, Tocqueville
believes that all the facts of history obey a divine plan, the meaning of
which escapes us, but one that men can predict and whose general tenden-
cies they can discover.
222
The action of man, says Tocqueville, always takes place within a narrow
circle. It has no meaning if it is situated outside this space. Even if man is
incapable of imagining what is going to follow, of reading the plans of
Providence, he can, within the domain reserved to him, recognize a law of
the evolution of history and of intelligence.
The nal stage, that of equality, closes the cycle of history. At the be-
ginning of history, man, isolated and savage, is equal to his fellows in bar-
barism. He has no need of government.
There are few peoples who can do without government in this way. Such
a state of things has never been able to subsist except at the two extremes
of civilization. The savage man, who has only his physical needs to satisfy,
counts only on himself. For the civilized man to be able to do the same,
he must have reached the social state in which his enlightenment allows
him to see clearly what is useful for him, and in which his passions do not
prevent him from acting on it.
223
So the absence of government and equality are found only at the two
ends of civilization: Savages are equal among themselves because they are
221. The Anglophile attitude of Guizot bothered Tocqueville, who was incapable of
accepting that the model of the English revolution was applicable to France. These dif-
ferences of opinion did not pass unnoticed. After the publication of the Democracy of
1840, Guizot wrote to his former student: Why dont we think alike? I do not nd any
good reason. Roland-Pierre Marcel, Essai politique sur Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: Felix
Alcan, 1910, p. 319). Also see Aurelian Craiutu, Liberalism Under Siege (Lanham, Mary-
land: Lexington Books, 2003).
222. See Bossuet, Discours sur lhistoire universelle, part III, section II, entitled: The
revolutions of empires have particular causes that princes must study.
223. Voyage, pp. 8990.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxix
all equally weak and ignorant. Very civilized men can all become equal be-
cause they all have at their disposal analogous means to attain comfort and
happiness.
224
For Tocqueville, as we see, history is neither the progressive, rational,
and necessary development of the idea of liberty, nor the advance, im-
possible to contain, of the middle classes, as Guizot thought. The author
of Democracy notes a form of liberty appropriate to each period and
each country.
225
Liberty understood in this way is therefore as ancient,
as Madame de Stael calls it, as it is modern, as Benjamin Constant de-
scribes it. So post-revolutionary liberty is not and cannot be that of the
Old Regime.
226
In the same way, a form of despotism corresponds to each
period.
The novelty of Tocquevilles theory is to assert that in order to reach the
nal stage of history, the point at which true equality and liberty coincide,
the aristocratic stage is absolutely necessary as an intermediate moment. If
it is in losing their liberty that men acquired the means to reconquer it,
227
true liberty always requires passing by way of servitude.
This constitutes a rst way to put face to face the Old Regime and de-
mocracy, to make aristocracy an inevitable moment of history, and then to
move beyond it. If, in the state of barbarism, men cannot become civilized
224. Memoire sur pauperisme, republished in Commentaire, 30, 1985, p. 633.
225. I would regard it as a great misfortune for humankind if liberty, in all places,
had to occur with the same features. I, p. 513.
226. Guizot had, however, distinguished between two forms of liberty: 1. Liberty as
independence of the individual, who has only his own will as law. This is the barbaric
and anti-social liberty of the childhood of nations, natural liberty. 2. Liberty as inde-
pendence from any will that is different and contrary to reason. Moral liberty or liberty
by right. The survival of society demands the submission of all individuals to a common
rule that cannot exist if natural liberty subsists to its full extent. Journal des cours publics
de jurisprudence, histoire et belles-lettres (Paris: au bureau du journal, 18211822), I,
pp. 24852, lecture 23.
227. I {think that it is in losing their liberty that men acquired the means to re-
conquer it} that it is under an aristocracy or under a prince that men still half-savage
have gathered the various notions that later would allow them to live civilized, equal and
free. II, p. 879, note f.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxx
as long as they are equal,
228
it is aristocracy that, by creating a class free to
dedicate itself to the works of the mind, can invent the general and uni-
versal ideas that will lead to its own destruction and to the appearance of
democracy (understood as equality of conditions).
The rst steptowardequality was takeninthe Middle Ages whenpeoples
began to travel, to enter into contact with each other, to imitate each other.
Each nation little by little lost condence in its particular laws and in its
own organization; the idea of rules common to everyone occurred to men.
France placed itself at the head of these intellectual, moral, and political
changes, even if the impulse that gave them birth was more Europeanthan
specically French.
If the course of history follows the change in mentalities which is, in
turn, the effect and the cause of the social state,
229
and if the latter little by
little transforms the political state, that is to say, laws and institutions, then
it is not surprising that Tocqueville devotes the rst pages of Democracy to
philosophy.
A Philosophy of Action
Perhaps the word philosophy is not totally accurate when applied to the
theory of Tocqueville, who said that he had a horror of philosophy and
who wrote: Philosophy is in fact only the complete exercise of thought
separate from the practice of action.
230
Tocquevilles very principle is todraweverything out of himself. Hedoes
the work of a researcher and does not neglect brochures, reports, collections
of laws. But the list of works consulted in the writing of Democracy in
America does not include books of philosophy.
231
228. If nations had begun with democratic government, I doubt they would ever
have become civilized. I, p. 332.
Even industry follows this general law of evolution. The manufacturing aristocracy
is the equivalent of the landed aristocracy. II, p. 980, note b.
229. Economic conditions are part of the social state, and Tocqueville judges them
to be of secondary interest.
230. II, p. 739, note c.
For no one is less philosophical than I, who preaches to you. OCB, VI, p. 370.
231. See vol. IV, pp. 137795.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxi
Tocqueville does not like philosophy. He calls it the essence of all gib-
berish,
232
and a voluntary torment that man consented [cf. note 242 be-
low] [ . . . ] to inict on himself.
233
The matter is clear from the beginning of the work of writing the in-
troduction to Democracy. The author of this work, we read in a draft,
wanted to write a book of politics and not of philosophy.
234
The imperatives of the history of France forbidTocqueville, as politician
andas the author of Souvenirs, toforget the practical side of political theory.
Thought separated from action is philosophy. For Tocqueville, reection
joined to practice constitutes the nature of what he calls his political sci-
ence.
235
This does not prevent him, however, from falling into the trap of
the celebrated aphorism of Pascal: To mock philosophy is truly to
philosophize.
236
The philosophic aspect of Tocquevilles thought appears in the formof
anti-positivism.
237
In all human events, he writes, there is an immense
portion abandoned to chance or to secondary causes that escapes entirely
from forecasts and calculations.
238
Tocquevilles certitude about an impenetrable divine plan and his reli-
gious beliefs prevent him from falling into the sensual philosophy of the
period and into positivism.
239
He accepts the existence of absolute ideas as
232. Draft of a letter to Le Peletier dAunay, 8 November 1831, YTC, BIa2.
233. To Charles Stoffels, 22 October 1831, YTC, BIa1, and OCB, VII, pp. 8384. See
OCB, VI, p. 370.
234. YTC, CVk, 1, p. 73.
235. Tocqueville thinks that Thomas More would not have written Utopia if he had
been able to change the government of England. He also thinks that the Germans do
philosophy because they cannot generalize their ideas in politics (II, p. 727, note b).
236. Pensee 513 (Ed. Lafuma). Cited by Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento politico
de Tocqueville, p. 42.
237. The predilection of Tocqueville for Plato is symptomatic: I consider hima poor
politician, but the philosopher has always appeared to me superior to all others and his
aim, whichconsists of introducing morality as muchas possible intopolitics, admirable.
Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, p. 41. Cf. Correspondance avec Beaumont,
OC, VIII, 1, p. 292.
238. I, p. 574, note b.
239. There is nothing so difcult to appreciate as a fact. I, p. 343.
The world is a book entirely closed to man. I, p. 383, note m. Also see I, p. 574.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxii
well as their unknowable character.
240
A rst conclusion results: every sys-
tem, every man that claims to discover absolute truth is, for that reason
alone, in error; you can advance only hypotheses.
There is no maninthe worldwho has ever found, andit is nearlycertain
that none will ever be met who will nd the central ending point for, I am
not saying all the beams of general truth, which are united only in God
alone, but evenfor all the beams of a particular truth. Mengraspfragments
of truth, but never truth itself. This admitted, the result would be that
every man who presents a complete and absolute system, by the sole fact
that his system is complete and absolute, is almost certainly in a state of
error or falsehood, and that every man who wants to impose such a system
on his fellows by force must ipso facto and without preliminary exami-
nation of his ideas be considered as a tyrant and an enemy of the human
species.
241
If absolute truth existed, the constant, complex interconnections of the
elements of the motor of history would cease. The consequence of this
provisional nature of all intellectual study is doubt, which Tocqueville con-
siders characteristic of man, and in particular of philosophy.
242
On this point, he summarizes his thought in this way for Charles
Stoffels:
240. Of all beings, man is assuredly the one best known; and yet his prosperity or
miseries are the product of unknown laws of which only a few isolated and incomplete
fragments come into our view. Absolute truth is hidden and perhaps will always remain
hidden. I, p. 263.
We again see the imprint of Pascal in this attitude of Tocqueville: The nal step of
reason is to recognize that an innite number of things surpass it. It is weak only if it
does not go far enough to know that. Ed. Lafuma, pensee 373.
241. The great Newton himself resembles an imbecile more by the things that he
does not know than he differs from one by the things that he knows. II, p. 715, note f.
242. I consider this doubt as one of the greatest miseries of our nature; I place it
immediately after illnesses and death. But because I have that opinion of it, I do not
understand why so many men impose it on themselves without cause anduselessly. That
is why I have always considered metaphysics and all purely theoretical sciences, which
serve for nothing in the reality of life, as a voluntary torment that man consented to
inict on himself. Letter to Charles Stoffels, 22 October 1831, YTC, BIa1 andOCB, VII,
pp. 8384.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxiii
When I began to think, I believed that the world was full of demonstrated
truths; that it was only a matter of looking carefully in order to see them.
But when I applied myself to considering things, I no longer sawanything
except inextricable doubts. [ . . . ] I ended by convincing myself that the
search for absolute, demonstrable truth, like the search for perfect happi-
ness, was an effort toward the impossible. Not that there are nosuchtruths
that merit the entire conviction of man; but be assured that they are very
few in number. For the immense majority of points that are important
for us to know, we have only probabilities, only approximations. To de-
spair about this is to despair about being a man; for that is one of the most
inexible laws of our nature.
243
The creator of an idea, Tocqueville also believes, is always more uncer-
tain of its truth than his disciples. He knows its defects; he knows the ele-
ments that can invalidate its existence. But very few men in democratic
times can devote their life to the search for great intellectual truths; and if
they do so, they are very much required nonetheless to use general ideas to
guide their conduct.
244
It follows that the best way to avoid absolute and
excessively general ideas is to force each man to occupy himself with ideas,
with thinking, with feeling his way, and: when, tired of looking for what
makes his fellows act, he [man] tries hard at least to untangle what pushes
himself, he still does not know what to believe. He travels across the en-
tire universe and he doubts. He nally comes back toward himself, and
obscurity seems to redouble as he approaches and wants to understand
himself.
245
As this conviction about the absence of absolute, demonstrable truths
becomes deeper with Tocqueville, it seems to impose its own logic on the
243. Ibid., pp. 8283.
244. So general ideas are only means by the aid of which men advance towardtruth,
but without ever nding it. You can even say that, to a certain extent, by following this
path they are moving away from it. II, p. 728, note c.
245. II, p. 840, note v.
There is no being in the world that I know less than myself. For me, I amconstantly
an insoluble problem. I have a very cold head, and a reasoning, even calculating mind;
and next to that are found ardent passions that sweep me along without persuading me,
mastering my will, while leaving my reason free. Letter to Euge`ne Stoffels, 18 October
1831, OCB, V, p. 422.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxiv
writing of Democracy: You know that I do not take up the pen with the
settled intention of following a system and marching at random toward a
goal, he observes; I give myself over tothe natural movement of myideas,
allowing myself to be led in good faith from one consequence to another.
The result is that, as long as the work is not nished, I do not knowexactly
where I am going and if I will ever arrive.
246
The rhythm of the book
becomes in fact more and more staccato; the brief chapters of the second
Democracy turn into [ricordi, Italian for souvenirs; reference to Machi-
avellis Ricordi. ] thoughts, almost as if the presentation of a theory without
solution required a brief and fragmentary form of writing.
So Tocquevilles philosophic ideal is the man who is feeling his way, who
judges himself to be incomplete and makes doubt his natural state, while
the democratic ideal is the man who can change everything because he has
a blind faith in reason and in the philosophic method.
Regarding himself, the author will note for example:
I do not need to travel across heaven and earth to nd a marvelous subject
full of contrast, of grandeur andinnite pettiness, of profoundobscurities
and singular clarity, capable at the same time of giving birth to piety, ad-
miration, contempt, terror. I have only to consider myself. Man comes
out of nothing, passes through time, and goes to disappear forever into
the bosom of God. You see him only for a moment wandering at the edge
of the two abysses where he gets lost.
247
Tocqueville does not, however, share the anti-rationalismof conservative
theories. What he fears in democracy is not reason, but anti-rationality.
Later he will blame the philosophes for the same thing: Truly speaking,
some of these philosophes adored human reason less than their own reason.
Never did anyone show less condence in common wisdom than those
men.
248
For Tocqueville, in contrast to Guizot, the rise of the middle classes is
not the arrival of political reason, but of rational individualism, which in
246. Letter to Mill, 19 November 1836, OC, VI, 1, p. 314.
247. II, p. 840.
248. LAncien Regime et la Revolution, OC, II, 1, p. 306. We couldsay that Tocqueville
fears that the men of democracies are being transformed into little philosophes.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxv
the end equates with the absence of reason. The philosophes understood
nothing more than the voice of individual reason. As for democratic man,
he runs the danger of believing that he is following his own reason when
he is only blindly obeying the opinion of the majority.
The best way to avoid excesses in the matter of general ideas, the pre-
dominance of thought separated from action, is to force men to enter into
practice. That is the advantage of true democracy. It forces each citizen to
occupy himself in a practical way with government and moderates the ten-
dency to create the general ideas in politics that equality produces; it pro-
vokes uncertainty in this way.
Tocqueville fears in fact that history will pass from the total predomi-
nance of action, which is characteristic of barbaric peoples who knowonly
the practice of politics, to the triumph of theory separated from all forms
of practice.
249
But criticism of philosophy is not just a matter of methodology; it does
not consist solely of blaming philosophy for a lackof connectionwithprac-
tice. In the drafts of Democracy there is a detailed reection on the birth
of general ideas.
For Tocqueville, the attempt of democracies to seek general ideas in the
domain of politics arises out of an unwarranted application of the method
of Descartes and Bacon to matters for which those methods are not made;
249. And more especially, from a simplistic philosophy characteristic of an inter-
mediate period that wants to explain everything with a single principle and that is em-
bodied as much in the fatalism of the theories of democratic historians as in adminis-
trative centralization.
Simplicity of means in politics is a product of human weakness. Tocqueville wants
men to be able to combine a large number of means to reach an end. According to him,
beauty is not in simplicity of means, but in complexity, which is nothing more than
imitating God, who creates with a multiplicity of agents andplaces the idea of grandeur
and perfection not in executing a great number of things with the help of a single means,
but in making a multitude of diverse means contribute to the perfect execution of a
single thing. II, p. 740, note d.
Centralization is not at all the sign of high civilization. It is found neither at the
beginning nor at the end of civilization, but in general in the middle. II, p. 799, note
e. The idea of unity is appropriate to a middle state. The echo of Pascal and of multi-
plicity in unity is clear.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxvi
the attempt arises out of an extension of the presumption of rationality,
foreseeability, and recurrence to matters that do not have these qualities.
That is especially dangerous in the case of equality. The lack of debate
about the principle of equality (which is the principle par excellence since
it comes down to the principle of identity) ends up by imposing a structure
in which reason and confrontation are lacking. Aggravated, the individual
mind kills reasonand its relationto practice, andwithit liberty andpolitical
confrontation.
The exaltation of individual reason can break the bond between ideol-
ogy, social condition, and political organization, andleadtothe immobility
of the social system and ultimately to the end of history. For this reason,
far into the second volume and once the foundations of his criticism of
democratic thought have been explained, Tocqueville candeclare that what
he most fears in democracies is not revolutions, but apathy.
250
When the tendency to create philosophical systems that are separated
from practice becomes general, there is also the danger that theory will not
nd reality adaptable; it will become always more removed fromactionand
more utopian, and will end up by taking the place of political reality; and
men, tired of facing the difculties of action, will take refuge in theory.
251
Inthis case, political theory canlittle by little come toresemble a religion,
a doctrine applicable to all individuals and all nations, because it has con-
sidered man in an abstract way and has studied his general political rights
and duties in all periods and all countries.
252
The dream of reason lives
250. II, p. 1150, note x.
251. This is an idea that has a very important place in the explanation of the impor-
tance of intellectuals during the Revolution, but that already appears in Democracy. See
II, p. 727, note b.
252. The French Revolution created a body of independent ideas that were easy to
transmit. Tocqueville observes that it formed, above all particular nationalities, a com-
mon intellectual country in which the men of all nations could become citizens.
LAncien Re gime et la Re volution, OC, II, 1, p. 87. He also asserts that the Revolutionwas
a religious revolution because it developed a corpus of doctrines that, like a religion, can
be applied indiscriminately to all men and to all peoples, because it considered man in
the abstract, like all religions, and his general political rights and obligations. Ibid., pp.
88ff.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxvii
outside of time, and when it coincides with the predominance of equality
over liberty, it ends up by enclosing man within the solitude of his own
heart:
253
So each person withdraws narrowly into himself and claims to
judge the world from there. . . . Since they [the Americans] see that they
manage without help to solve all the small difculties that their practical
life presents, they easily conclude that everything in the world is explicable,
and that nothing goes beyond the limits of intelligence.
254
Democratic man is completely immersed in tasks of a practical type,
because democracy takes him away from theory and connes his activities
to the economic domain; he no longer believes in anything except his own
reason. This tendency, combined with the search for material well-being,
takes him away from political activity and predisposes him naturally to ac-
cept the opinion of the majority.
Tocqueville notes:
As citizens become more equal and more similar, the tendency of each
blindly to believe a certainmanor a certainclass decreases. The disposition
to believe the mass increases, and more and more it is opinion that leads
the world. . . . In times of equality, men, because of their similarity, have
no faith in each other, but this very similarity gives them an almost un-
limited condence in the judgment of the public; for it does not seem
likely to themthat, since all have similar enlightenment, truthis not found
on the side of the greatest number. When the manwho lives indemocratic
countries compares himself individually to all those who surround him,
he feels with pride that he is equal to each of them; but, when he comes
to envisage the ensemble of his fellows and to place himself alongside this
great body, he is immediately overwhelmed by his own insignicance and
weakness. This same equality that makes him independent of each one of
his fellow citizens in particular, delivers himisolated and defenseless to the
action of the greatest number.
255
253. Thus, not only does democracy make each man forget his ancestors, but it hides
his descendants from him and separates him fromhis contemporaries; it constantly leads
him back toward himself alone and threatens nally to enclose him entirely within the
solitude of his own heart. II, p. 884.
254. II, p. 701.
255. II, p. 718.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxviii
America, Tocqueville also says, has escaped these problems for the most
part, thanks to exceptional circumstances, the intellectual inuence of En-
gland, and the strength of religion.
The unusual physical conditions of the Americans, which place themin
a universe that is malleable and can be transformed at will, oftenallowthem
to avoid the intellectual tensions of European societies. An American who
is not satised with his position can always leave his home and go to the
West where he can easily create a new life for himself. That is how an idea
easily transforms reality, and why the forces that resist that transformation
are weak.
The intellectual inuence of England serves to assure the general de-
velopment of thought. Tocqueville observes that, strictly speaking, the
Americans do not have a literature and an intellectual class, but he does not
see that condition as necessarily peculiar to democracy. How can a democ-
racy be intellectual if the example of the United States proves the opposite?
Because the Americans nd their ideas and their books in Europe, just like
their philosophy and their religion. They put all of that into practice in the
NewWorld. The American intellectual class is found therefore onthe other
side of the Atlantic. The Americans are only the part of the English popu-
lation that works on the conquest of America:
256
I consider the people of
the United States as the portion of the English people charged with ex-
ploiting the forests of the NewWorld, while the rest of the nation, provided
with more leisure and less preoccupied by the material cares of life, is able
to devote itself to thought andtodevelopthe humanmindinall aspects.
257
Thus, the United States forms the non-intellectual part of a European
people and constitutes a society composed solely of representatives of the
middle class. Aristocracy remains on the European shore. In this way
Tocqueville connects theory and practice, while avoiding having the Amer-
256. American society depends therefore on the intellectual situation of England. It
follows that during its formative years, democracy in the United States does not have
the following ingredient necessary for social change: the production of new ideas.
257. II, p. 768. And more particularly of the middle class: America forms like one
part of the middle classes of England II, p. 767, note f. Also see II, p. 805, note j.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxix
icans serve as an example of the pernicious effects of democracy that his
book announces.
258
The United States certainly does not innovate in phi-
losophy, in literature, or in the aesthetic domain, but this situation is not
due to the fact that the Americans belong to a democratic society, writes
Tocqueville; the reason is that they devote themselves exclusively to busi-
ness,
259
or again, that they are showing only the interests and faults of the
middle class.
Tocqueville believes, however, in the existence of mans natural taste for
things of the mind: The mind of man left to itself leans from one side
toward the limited, the material and the commercial, the useful, from the
other it tends without effort toward the innite, the non-material, the great
and the beautiful.
260
Within the American framework, it is not impossible that an educated
and free class will come about, a class that, having the necessary time and
money, will be able to devote itself to intellectual work, to encourage and
promote literature and the arts.
261
Religion, the last element peculiar to the Americandemocraticsituation,
prevents the Americans from falling into the error of trying to apply the
principles of rationalist philosophy to matters that are not suited to such
principles.
262
For Tocqueville, philosophy is liberty, all that the individual
discovers thanks to his ownefforts; religion, whichcovers all that is accepted
without discussion, is servitude.
263
Excess of the rst leads straight to in-
tellectual individualism and to a state of permanent agitation that opens
onto anarchy. Religion, which becomes more and more necessary as phi-
losophy develops, can, by its excessive character, lead to intellectual dog-
matism and immobility.
258. Thus, in the case of America, the tension between aristocracy and democracy at
the level of general principles alsooccurs, a mechanismthat we will returnto. Tocqueville
needed England to explain how the American model combines democratic and aristo-
cratic principles.
259. II, pp. 78687, note p.
260. II, p. 769, note g. We see that here, too, Pascal is not far away.
261. II, p. 772.
262. In the intellectual world, the rivalry betweenreligionandphilosophy(authority/
liberty) is a variant of the opposition aristocracy/democracy. See II, p. 711, note b.
263. II, p. 724, note s.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxx
But even if that seems paradoxical at rst glance, religion, precisely for
this reason, is the necessary condition for man to be able to devote himself
to practical works.
264
For me, declares Tocqueville, I doubt that man can ever bear com-
plete religious independence and full political liberty at the same time; and
I am led to think that, if he does not have faith, he must serve, and, if he
is free, he must believe.
265
So if religious beliefs place man in relative ser-
vitude, they enclose him in the circle within which he is able to exercise his
reason; and, by limiting the action of his mind to the practical circle within
which it must function, they force him into action and free his intelligence
by reducing his dependence on the general ideas of the majority:
266
A religion is a power whose movements are regulated in advance and that
moves within a known sphere, and many people believe that within this
sphere its effects are benecial, andthat a dogmatic religionbetter manages
to obtain the desirable effects of a religion than one that is rational. The
majority is a [illegible word] power that moves in a way haphazardly and
can spread successively to everything. Religion is law, the omnipotence of
the majority is arbitrariness.
267
264. Man needs to believe dogmatically a host of things, were it only to have the
time to discuss a few others of them. This authority is principally called religion in aris-
tocratic centuries. It will perhaps be named majority in democratic centuries, or rather
common opinion. III, p. 720, note p.
265. III, p. 745.
266. During centuries of fervor, men sometimes happen to abandon their religion,
but they escape its yoke only to submit to the yoke of another religion. Faith changes
objects; it does not die. I, p. 485. Tocqueville fears in this sense that the opinion of the
majority will someday become a cult.
267. II, p. 721, note r.
Religion is an authority (illegible word) to humanity, but manifested by one man
or one class of men to all the others, who submit to it. Common opinion is an au-
thority that is not prior to humanity and that is exercised by the generality of men
on the individual.
The source of these two authorities is different, but their effects come together.
Common opinion, like religion, gives ready made beliefs and relieves man from the
unbearable and impossible obligationto decide everything eachday by himself. These
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxi
In the context of these ideas, Tocqueville asks himself whether Cathol-
icism is the religion that suits democratic times. He is convinced that Ca-
tholicism can be proved by the philosophical method of the eighteenth
century.
268
But he needs to assure the reader that the multiplication of re-
ligions is not going to lessen the importance of religious ideas and of their
relation to liberty. Otherwise, it would be impossible for religion to fulll
the limiting role that Tocqueville gives it. That approach produces a dif-
culty however: religion is accepted rationally, as philosophy, and not as
religion; it is not the result of an act of faith. Only the idea, rather unjus-
tied, that solely minds of the second rank will apply to religionthe prin-
ciples of the philosophy of Descartes (and this will above all be the case of
Protestantism
269
), seems to save Tocqueville from a clear misconception in
his explanations.
270
The intellectual anarchy that you could think is the necessary result of
the daily use of the Cartesian method is, on the contrary, more character-
istic of periods of revolution than of those in which democracy reigns.
271
Reason, by denition majoritarian, in the end produces characters and
opinions that coincide in a certain way.
beliefs were originally discussed, but they are no longer discussed and they penetrate
minds by a kind of pressure of all on each (II, p. 720, note p).
268. All the American sects have a core of common ideas. I, p. 473.
269. I have always believed, you know, that constitutional monarchies would arrive
at the republic; and I am persuaded as well that Protestantism will necessarily end up at
natural religion. Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 26 October 1831, YTC, BIa2.
270. Tocqueville speaks of a convention that checks the spirit of innovation at the
doors of religion. This idea is the result of a personal reection, but at the beginning of
the second volume he notes: if you look very closely, you will see that religion itself
reigns there much less as revealed doctrine than as common opinion. II, p. 720. There-
fore the foundations of religion are not religious, but philosophic, in the sense that the
author gives to that word.
The moral dominion of the majority is perhaps calledto replace religions toa certain
point or to perpetuate certain ones of them, if it protects them. But then religion would
live more like common opinion than like religion. Its strength would be more borrowed
than its own. Ibid., note p.
271. II, p. 708, note t.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxii
Here Tocqueville seems to nd in democracy a reason for optimismthat
does not well t the aristocratic vision that is sometimes imputed to him.
In order for the intellectual anarchy that he believes is revolutionary to dis-
appear, the majority of citizens must exercise their reason. But the author
himself recognizes that the power that directs the mass will always be aris-
tocratic because, as he says repeatedly, it is impossible for all men to have
the time and leisure necessary to occupy themselves with works of the
mind.
This way of seeing allows Tocqueville toavoidthe eclecticismof Cousin.
Eclecticismis the government of the middle class introducedtophilosophy.
The ideas of Tocqueville do not combine well with this philosophy of the
juste milieu. But if Tocquevilles aristocratic nature pushes him to reject
philosophic eclecticism, it does not prevent him from constructing a phi-
losophy of the middle (milieu) that is his own. He places this principle of
life in the middle between the two excesses of reason that in his view are
represented by Heliogabalus and Saint Jerome.
272
Here it was a matter of restoring man to history and society; now it is
going to be a matter of restoring him to reason.
The Reign of Total Reason
In democracies, equality reaches and penetrates every aspect of life.
273
Equality of minds, equality of conditions and sovereignty of the people
272. See II, p. 960, note k, and p. 1281, note e.
273. When Tocqueville speaks about the existence of equality in America, he means
the sentiment of not being inferior to anyone and not the equal division of wealth or
power. In an interesting commentary on American equality, placed in travel notebook
E and from which we can quote only an extract, he explains this difference: Men, in
America as with us, are ranked according to certain categories in the course of social life;
common habits, education and, above all, wealth establishes these classications; but
these rules are neither absolute, nor inexible, nor permanent. They establishtemporary
distinctions and do not form classes strictly speaking; they give no superiority, even of
opinion, to one man over another. YTC, BIIa, and Voyage (OC, V, 1), p. 280.
The explanation of the sentiment of equality that Beaumont gives in a note inMarie
(I, pp. 38390) seems equally clear on this point. But certain historians have seen in
Tocqueville the model of an egalitarian society. See particularly Edward Pessen, Jack-
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxiii
are its three constituent elements. But the reign of total reason, in which
tyranny of public opinion, the pursuit of well-being, and political apathy
combine and toward which the democratic regime seems to go, does not
cease to frighten Tocqueville.
That is because what emerges there is a world without society, an indi-
vidual without individuality, an omnipotent state that separates citizens
from each other and that promotes the absence of shared ideas and senti-
ments;
274
in other words, a new form of despotism that, if it still lacks a
name, has all the characteristics of a new state of nature.
275
In this new despotism, society disappears and loses its power as a creator
of change and protective lter of state action. The individual nds himself
isolatedinthe face of the actionof the political power that, as theexpression
of the social state, is also his master and his guardian. This political power,
by destroying every center of resistance, nishes by coinciding withsociety
and occupying its place,
276
until we are confronted only by either the iso-
lated individual or individuals as an entire group: In democracy you see
only yourself and all.
277
This despotism is not a type of government with its own form, as
Montesquieu thought. For Tocqueville, it is the negation of all politi-
cal and social forms. In this, the author recognizes his debt to Rous-
sonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1969); The
Egalitarian Myth and the American Social Reality: Wealth, Mobility and Equality inthe
Era of the Common Man, American Historical Review 76, no. 4 (1971): 898-1034; and
Tocquevilles Misreading of America, Americas Misreading of Tocqueville, Tocque-
ville Review 4, no. 1 (1982): 522; Irving M. Zeitlin, Liberty, Equality and Revolution in
Alexis de Tocqueville (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), 5762.
274. Sentiments and ideas are renewed, the heart grows larger and the human mind
develops only by the reciprocal action of men on each other. II, p. 900.
275. Referring to Hobbes, Tocqueville wonders: what is a gathering of rational and
intelligent beings bound together only by force? I, p. 389.
276. Despotism would not only destroy liberty among these people, but in a way
society. II, p. 889, note f.
277. II, p. 718, note m. Here we see Rousseaus man divided between himself and
society.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxiv
seau
278
and diverges from the main current of classical liberalism by put-
ting historical linearity in doubt. The state of nature is found as much in
a nal phase of history as in a pre-historic moment; it is at once pre- and
post-social.
But this new condition that we have compared to the state of nature is
different from the latter in an important way. By recognizing only the ca-
pacities of individual reason alone, man falls into individualistic rational-
ism; but at the same time, he has total condence in common opinion,
because he is pushed by the need for dogmatism that is inherent in his
existence:
279
Faith in common opinion is the faith of democratic nations.
The majority is the prophet; you believe it without reasoning. You follow
it condently without discussion. It exerts an immense pressure on indi-
vidual intelligence.
280
278. Here [in despotism] is the nal outcome of inequality, and the extreme point
that closes the circle and touches our starting point. This is where all individuals again
become equal, because they are nothing, and where, since the subjects have no other
rule than the will of the master and the master has no other rule than his passions,
the notions of good and the principles of justice disappear yet again. Everythinghere
leads to the law of the strongest alone and consequently to a new state of nature
different from the one where we began; the rst was the state of nature in its purity,
and the second is the fruit of an excess of corruption. Yet there is so little difference
between these two states, and the contract of government is so dissolved by despo-
tism, that the despot is the master only as long as he is the strongest; and as soon as
the despot can be driven out, he has no grounds to protest against violence. The riot
that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is an act as lawful as those by which
the day before he disposed of the lives and goods of his subjects. Force alone main-
tained him; force alone overthrows him.
J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur lorigine et les fondements de line galite , in Oeuvres comple `tes
(Paris: Pleiade, 1964), III, p. 191. See below, I, p. 231, note z.
279. If man was forced to prove to himself all the truths that he uses every day, he
would never nish doing so; he would wear himself out with preliminary demon-
strations without advancing; as he has neither the time, because of the short span of
his life, nor the ability, because of the limitations of his mind, to act in this way, he
is reduced to holding as certain a host of facts and opinions that he has had neither
the leisure nor the power to examine and to verify for himself, but that those more
clever have found or that the crowd adopts. On this foundation he builds himself
the structure of his own thoughts. It is not his will that leads him to proceed in this
manner; the inexible law of his condition compels him to do so. II, p. 714.
280. II, p. 720, note p.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxv
The commonsense of the democrat operates inthe narroweldinwhich
he has some knowledge and where he is able to put that knowledge into
practice. But, in the areas where men are not involved, they accept general
ideas that they have not thought of themselves; and in this way, the world,
except for the narrow eld in which each man is enclosed, ends up being
an insoluble problem for the man who clings to the most tangible objects
and who ends up lying down on his stomach against the earth out of fear
that he, in turn, may come to miss the ground.
281
Democratic despotism is therefore the exaltation of the individual and
of society. It is a double state of nature in which men enter into relation
with each other almost exclusively through the mathematical power of in-
terests and through the most faithful expression of that power, which is
money; in this double state of nature, society imposes its opinions on its
members with a completely unheard of force.
From another perspective, the logic of reason invades the heart of man,
eliminating many of his passions and modifying certain of his sentiments,
transforming for example his egoismintoindividualism,
282
or his generosity
into interest well understood. The State, for its part, by making use of the
rst rational principle, which is that of unitythe expression of the prin-
ciple of identity that is contained in the idea of equalityand that of cen-
tralization, imposes its forms and opinions with a speed and effectiveness
previously unknown.
Democratic despotism thus takes men away from political practice
by leading them exclusively toward the pursuit of material well-being,
which tends to separate them more and more from each other.
283
In the
281. II, p. 1370.
282. Egoism, vice of the heart. Individualism, of the mind. II, p. 882, note d.
283. Tocqueville learned from Guizot that the barbarians of the IVth century acted
in the same way: It is not by exterminating the civilized men of the IVth century that
the barbarians managed to destroy the civilization of that time. It was enough for them
to come between them so to speak and by separating them to make them like strangers
to one another. II, p. 896, note c.
There is a society only when men consider a great number of objects in the same
way; when they have the same opinions on a great number of subjects; when, nally,
the same facts give rise among them to the same impressions and the same thoughts. I,
p. 598. Also see note y on the same page.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxvi
end, men are no longer tied together except by interests and not by
ideas.
284
By separating man from his fellows, this new form of despotism brings
about a clear break inthe owof the ideas andopinions that nourishsociety
and history. For the circulation of ideas is to civilization what the circu-
lation of blood is to the human body;
285
and despotism, by interrupting
this movement, creates a society that is no longer composed of anything
except solitary social molecules.
In a society of barbarians equal to each other, recalls Tocqueville,
since the attention of each man is equally absorbed by the rst needs and
the most coarse interests of life, the idea of intellectual progress can come
to the mind of any one of them only with difculty.
286
The old despotism was realistic. Facts were its foundation, and it made
use of them. It oppressed the body, but the soul escaped its tyrannical en-
terprise. The newdespotismhas the perdious principle of leavingthebody
free and oppressing the soul.
287
While the legal and political tyranny of the
majority is the modern version of the old despotism, the new despotism is
the mental and social tyranny of the majority, which affects the social state,
habits, and mores. Thus the damage caused by the tyranny of opinion is
much greater, because this new type of despotism touches on the sources
of the movement of history and society, as well as on what is most proper
to the individual.
284. II, pp. 7089.
Dont you see, on all sides, beliefs giving way to reasoning, and sentiments, to cal-
culation? I, p. 391.
There is, however, a profound change from one Democracy to the other relating to
one passion, that of well-being. If Tocqueville asserts in 1835 that there, ambition for
power is replaced by the love of well-being, a more vulgar, but less dangerous passion
(I, p. 943), he will reveal all of its malignity in the 1840 part.
285. II, p. 886, note c.
286. II, p. 878, note g.
287. The new despotism has the same relation to the old as the slavery of antiquity
has to the enslavement of American Blacks. The Americans of the South have, if I may
express myself in this way, spiritualized despotism and violence. I, p. 579. Ancient slav-
ery bound the body and left the mind free; modern slavery prevents instruction and
controls the mind. Thus the enormous importance of liberty of the press indemocracies.
See I, pp. 29094, and II, p. 908.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxvii
In the end man could end up by no longer belonging to anything except
a quasi-society of barbarians equal to each other, thus closing the cycle of
history with a despotic regime that has become permanent.
Tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the electoral voice described in
the rst Democracy, is already the triumph of individualism, that is to say
the triumph of man without individuality and personality.
288
The moment
of election forces the abandonment of what is specic and particular to the
individual and forces him for a moment to become a unit, or, if you want,
an abstraction (one man one voice). In this way, the new form of des-
potism is entirely compatible with election. Men emerge from servitude to
elect their tyrants and return there immediately after.
289
In 1840, Tocqueville combines with the practical and legal tyranny of
the majority the spiritual and intellectual oppression of the opinion of all,
which leads in the last resort to a situation of permanent immobility and
unity. If, as he remarks, sentiments and ideas are renewed, the heart grows
larger and the human mind develops only by the reciprocal action of men
on each other,
290
then common action and vitality will disappear in
democracies:
Do you not see that opinions are dividing more quickly thanpatrimonies,
that each man is enclosing himself narrowly within his own mind, like
the farm laborer in his eld? . . . That sentiments become more individual
each day, and that soon men will be more separated by their beliefs than
they have ever been by inequality of conditions?
291
288. By saying that tyranny of the majority is the equivalent of the state of nature,
Tocqueville also repeats Madison. I, p. 425.
289. This explains why readers have been able to nd in Tocqueville a critique of
communist totalitarianism as well as mass society. The interest in Tocquevilles work
owes a great deal to the fact that democratic despotism is more social than political, and
is, inlarge measure, independent of the political form. The distinctionbetweenthe social
and the political is, however, debatable and not very clear, even if we cannot blame
Tocqueville for a lack of clarity concerning a dichotomy that we are not able to express
more clearly at the present time.
290. II, p. 900.
291. II, p. 1272, note t.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxviii
The inhabitant of America is forced, like every inhabitant of a newcoun-
try, to acquire rapidly the habit of governing himself,
292
but this habit must
be prevented from being pushed beyond its natural limits and thereby tak-
ing the form of servitude:
Will I dare to say it amid the ruins that surround me? What I dread most
for the generations to come is not revolutions.
If citizens continue to enclose themselves more and more narrowly
within the circle of small domestic interests and to be agitated there with-
out respite, you can fear that they will end by becoming as if impervious
to these great and powerful public emotions that disturb peoples, but
which develop and renew them. When I see property become so mobile,
and the love of property so anxious and so ardent, I cannot prevent myself
from fearing that men will reach the point of regarding every new theory
as a danger, every innovation as an unfortunate trouble, every social pro-
gress as a rst step toward a revolution, and that they will refuse entirely
to move for fear that they would be carried away. I tremble, I confess, that
they will nally allowthemselves to be possessed so well by a cowardly love
of present enjoyments, that the interest in their own future and that of
their descendants will disappear, and that they will prefer to follow feebly
the course of their destiny, thantomake, if needed, a suddenandenergetic
effort to redress it.
You believe that the new societies are going to change face every day,
and as for me, I fear that they will end by being too invariably xed in the
same institutions, the same prejudices, the same mores; so that humanity
comes to a stop and becomes limited; that the mind eternally turns back
on itself without producing new ideas, that man becomes exhausted in
small solitary and sterile movements, andthat, evenwhile constantlymov-
ing, humanity no longer advances.
293
Revolutions disrupt the activities of society; they suddenly make move-
ment and social changes easy and unpredictable; nally they destroy per-
sonal wealth. It seems then that only the poor, who have nothing to lose,
can court a revolution. Democracies seek the opposite, since they need a
tranquil and peaceful atmosphere in which their members can concentrate
292. I, p. 650, note l.
293. II, p. 1151.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxxxix
all their activity on the pursuit of their individual well-being and that of
their family.
294
In democracies, Tocqueville notes,
since men are no longer attached to each other by any bond of castes,
classes, corporations, families, they are only too inclined to become pre-
occupied solely with their particular interests, and are always too ready to
consider only themselves and to withdraw into a narrow individualismin
which every public virtue is suffocated. Despotism, far from struggling
against this tendency, makes it irresistible, because despotism removes
from citizens every common passion, every natural need, every need to
cooperate, every occasion to act together; it walls them, so to speak, within
private life. They already tended to separate themselves; it isolates them;
they grew cold toward one another; it turns them into ice.
295
So democratic despotism nishes by producing the greatest stability in so-
ciety, but this stability is not desirable because it announces the immobility
of death.
Equality of conditions, giving individual reason a complete indepen-
dence, must lead men toward intellectual anarchy and bring about con-
tinual revolutions in human opinions.
This is the rst idea that presents itself, the common idea, the most
likely idea at rst view.
By examining things more closely, I discover that there are limits to this
individual independence in democratic countries that I had not seen at
rst and which make me believe that beliefs must be more common and
more stable than we judge at rst glance.
That is already doing a great deal to lead the mind of the reader there.
But I want to aim still further and I am going even as far as imagining
that the nal result of democracy will be to make the human mind too
immobile and human opinions too stable.
294. Great revolutions are not more common among democratic peoples than
among other peoples; I am even led to believe that they are less so. But within these
nations there reigns a small uncomfortable movement, a sort of incessant rotation of
men that troubles and distracts the mind without enlivening or elevating it. II, p. 780.
295. LAncien Regime et la Re volution, OC, II, 1, p. 74.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxl
This ideas is so extraordinary and so removed from the mind of the
reader that I must make him see it only in the background and as an
hypothesis.
296
Tocqueville clearly perceives the radical nature of such an idea and notes
in a draft:
This idea that the democratic social state is anti-revolutionary so shocks
accepted ideas that I must win over the mind of the reader little by little,
and for that I must begin by saying that this social state is less revolutionary
than is supposed. I begin there and by an imperceptible curve I arrive at
saying that there is room to fear that it is not revolutionary enough. True
idea, but which would seem paradoxical at rst view.
297
With this last turn, Tocquevilles thought has for its part completed its
own revolution.
Dialectic of Ideas
If democratic apathy can be worse than revolutionary disorders, then the
political problem abruptly changes aspect. It becomes necessary to reintro-
duce into society change, the circulation of ideas, intellectual movement,
which does not mean revolution. It is in fact no less necessary to try toavoid
revolutions, even if, in Tocquevilles eyes, temporary anarchy is preferable
to permanent order.
298
The author distinguishes between legislative instability, which concerns
secondary laws, and the instability that affects the foundations of the con-
stitution. The latter produces revolutions and causes breaks in society;
299
the former, on the other hand, is the sign of intellectual vitality. So how is
296. IV, p. 1144, note q.
297. Ibid.
298. See IV, p. 1191, note b.
299. II, pp. 42426.
The small shake-ups that public liberty imparts constantly to the most settled so-
cieties recall everyday the possibility of reversals and keep public prudence awake.
LAncien Re gime et la Re volution, OC, II, 1, p. 197. In this way, small revolutions prevent
great ones.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxli
it possible to create this rst type of instability while avoiding the second?
How can we bring about the circulation of ideas and sentiments that are
debated and shared at the same time?
To invite mento communicate, to see eachother, toexchange ideas, such
is the main task of political philosophy: So the great object of law-makers
in democracies must be to create common affairs that force men to enter
into contact with each other. . . . For what is society for thinking beings,
if not the communication and connection of minds and hearts?
300
The struggle between opposing principles produces heat and the move-
ment of ideas. It sometimes produces disorder, but it assures the circulation
of the ideas and sentiments that nourish society.
Tocqueville wrote to Kergorlay:
I compare man inthis world to a traveler who is walking constantlytoward
anincreasingly coldregionandwho is forcedto move more as he advances.
The great sickness of the soul is cold. And to combat this fearful evil, he
must not only maintain the lively movement of his mind by work, but
also maintain contact with his fellows and with the business of this world.
Above all at this time, we are no longer allowed to live on what has already
been acquired, but must try hard to continue to acquire and not rest upon
ideas that would soon enshroud us as if we were asleep in the grave. But
we must constantly put into contact and into conict the ideas that we
adopt and those we do not, the ideas that we had in our youth and those
suggested by the state of society and the opinions of the period that has
arrived.
301
This movement and confrontation of ideas is at risk of drowning in ap-
athy, individualism, and the obsession with well-being, rst results of
democracy.
300. III, p. 891, note k.
301. Letter to Kergorlay, 3 February 1857, OC, XIII, 2, p. 325.
During the last years of his life, when he was working on Ancien Regime, Tocqueville
wrote: I ammore and more attached to my lands and my great elds, to my oceanabove
all, and to its serious beaches, and I feel that only there do I live happily. But even there,
to be happy, some great occupation must animate my mind, and only through ideas do
I see, so to speak, the physical beauties that surroundme. Letter to Freslon[?], 8October
1856, YTC, DIIIa.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxlii
The democratic monster that occupies so many pages of Democracy
is the one that has made only half a revolution, that has forgotten the prin-
ciple of liberty, and that has been entirely captivated by the rational char-
acter of the abstract principle of equality.
302
This democratic monster pro-
duces a political philosophy based precisely upon the social, material, and
political conditions that work to promote and to ensure the existence of
such a philosophy, but it does not offer the possibility of denying such a
philosophy, that is to say, by political practice.
So Tocqueville aspires, in a certain way, to completing the French Rev-
olution, to nishing it, without forgetting that fraternity is the fruit of lib-
erty and equality, as well as of a constant tension between the two, as had
been the case in 1789.
Tocqueville remarks in the Ancien Re gime:
It is 89, time of inexperience, undoubtedly, but of generosity, enthusiasm,
virility and grandeur, time of immortal memory, toward which the view
of men will turn with admiration and respect, when those who sawit and
we ourselves will have long disappeared. Then the French were proud
enough of their cause andof themselves to believe that they couldbe equal
in liberty. So everywhere in the middle of democratic institutions, they
placed free institutions.
303
For the exceptional moment represented by 1789, a momentary and
magnicent combination of liberty with equality, Tocqueville shows and
seems to have shown all his life a quasi-religious respect, a sort of faithnever
denied. In this regard, Sainte-Beuve shares with Beaumont the following
anecdote:
I have always hadgreat difculty speaking about Tocqueville, youwill have
noticed it yourself; not that I do not place him very much apart and very
high, but because he did not, in my opinion, completely fulll the whole
302. See IV, p. 1209. See Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville
with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, edited by M. C. M. Simpson (London:
H. S. King, 1872), II, pp. 9294.
303. LAncien Re gime et la Revolution, OC, II, 1, p. 247.
Democracy is liberty combined withequality. Roland-Pierre Marcel, Essai politique
sur Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 168.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxliii
idea that his friends are allowed to have and to give of him. And then,
there was always betweenhimandme, fromthe beginning andlongbefore
the most recent events, a certain kernel of separation; he was of a believing
nature, that is to say that, even in the realm of ideas, he had a certain
religion, a certain faith. One day, at a dinner at Madame Recamiers, I saw
him not being pleased with a joke about something concerning 89. I took
good note of it. That form of mind impressed me, I admit, more than it
attracted me, and despite friendly advances, I always remained with him
on a footing more of respect than of friendship.
304
History, according to Tocqueville, is dened as a struggle between the
abstract and the concrete; thus the opposition between liberty andequality.
The objective of political science is consequently to maintain these two
existing principles in constant tension in such a way that no monopoly
exists of equality over liberty, which would lead to despotism, and that
equality does not run the risk of being carried away into anarchy by the
excesses of liberty. In this sense, it is a matter of prolonging 1789.
For Tocqueville, liberty is a passion,
305
changing and impossible to de-
ne.
306
It belongs to the order of the heart. Equality, to use Pascals distinc-
tion, reigns in the order of the mind.
When he writes to John Stuart Mill, I love liberty by taste, equality by
instinct and by reason,
307
Tocqueville is only expressing in another way
the principal elements of his thought. The taste for equality is always of a
rational, mental nature. Liberty, in contrast, is a passion, a sentiment.
308
304. Letter to Beaumont, 26 November 1865. With the kind permission of the Bib-
lothe`que de lInstitut, Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.
305. Only liberty is able to suggest to us those powerful commonemotions that carry
and sustain souls above themselves; it alone can throw variety into the midst of the
uniformity of our conditions and the monotony of our mores; it alone can distract our
minds from small thoughts and elevate the goal of our desires. Discours de re ception at
the Academie franc aise. OCB, IX, p. 20.
306. Do not ask me to analyze this sublime taste; it must be experienced. LAncien
Re gime et la Re volution, OC, II, 1, p. 217.
307. Letter to John Stuart Mill, June 1835 (Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, p. 293).
Also see Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algerie, OC, V, 2, p. 91.
308. For democratic institutions I have a taste from the head, but I am aristocratic
by instinct. Quoted by Antoine Redier, Comme disait Monsieur de Tocqueville, p. 48.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxliv
Liberty is an individual, particular sentiment, impossible to communi-
cate; it represents the human because it is indenable, incomplete, always
in process, always being dened, by wagering, risking, making mistakes,
and beginning again. Liberty must be lived as you live your life, never ceas-
ing to invent. Authentic democracy is the equal participation of citizens in
the denition of liberty, a denition that is always complicated, disorderly,
and risky. God marks out the road toward equality, but liberty is a paththat
man opens and that crosses always different countries.
Equality is abstract, rational, always identical to itself; it is deductive,
while liberty is inductive, as within reach and clear as liberty is complicated
and eeting.
The despotic democratic regime produces an unbearable and unlimited
predominance of the mind over the heart, of equality over liberty. Liberty
then disappears in the face of what can be dened and what is denite, in
the face of equality; the principle of equality is allowed to reignalone. That
is what philosophy must avoid at all cost. That is also what constitutes the
ultimate objective of Democracy, as Tocqueville notes in a draft: Danger
of allowing a single social principle to take without objection the absolute
direction of society. General idea that I wanted to emerge from this
work.
309
If, in the plan of history, the principle of liberty must be introduced as
a counterbalance to that of equality, in the political world strictly speak-
ing
310
the struggle of ideas takes place between two great universal prin-
ciples that, for Tocqueville, are called democracy and aristocracy;
311
the one
309. III, p. 740, note d.
Do not adopt one social principle alone however good it seems. Do not use one form
of government alone. Stay away from unity. IV, p. 1266, note j.
In the same way, Tocqueville claims that views expressed in the Frenchparliamentary
debates have become less elevated since the victory of the liberal party and the disap-
pearance of the opposition. II, p. 284, note c.
310. If mencreate laws, womencreate mores. Agoodreader of Rousseau, Tocqueville
claims therefore that in America the women are superior to the men (for mores create
laws). See II, p. 482, note u. Woman represents the indenite, liberty, passions, while
man represents equality, the dened, the rational.
311. The democratic social state and the aristocratic social state appear with very
dened features in the letter of 1830 to Charles Stoffels. The text will be found in
appendix V.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxlv
seeks to concentrate public power, the other to scatter it.
312
Once the sen-
timent of liberty has disappeared or is in serious danger of doing so,
Tocqueville is forced to imagine institutions that can produce the condi-
tions necessary for liberty to exist; the hope is that they will give rise to the
sentiment and passion that are otherwise in danger of disappearing. In the
future, liberty, according to him, will be a product of political art. Thus,
if the social state moves men away from each other, the political state must
unite them;
313
if society destroys the passions and tends no longer to pro-
mote anything except interest, the political state must work to maintain
passions
314
and to turn away from economic well-being.
315
312. II, p. 286.
I nd that, with rare sagacity, you have indicated the conditions under which great
parties, well disciplined, can exist in a free country. As you say, each of them must
be the representative of one of the two great principles that eternally divide human
societies, and that, to be brief, can be designated by the names aristocracy and de-
mocracy (II, p. 281, note a).
313. The social state separates men, the political state must draw them closer./
The social state gives themthe taste for well-being [v: inclines themtowardthe earth],
the political state must raise them up by giving them great ideas and great emotions IV,
p. 1262, note b.
314. In a letter to Corcelle of 19 October 1839 (OC, XI, 1, p. 139), Tocqueville asks:
So will we never see the wind of true political passions rise again, my dear Corcelle,
those violent, hard, sometimes cruel, but great, disinterested, fruitful passions; those pas-
sions that are the soul of the only parties that I understand and to which I would feel
myself willingly disposed to give my time, my fortune and my life? Also see the speech
on the question of the right to work (OCB, IX, p. 542).
315. There are many examples of opposition. Political liberty, we have said, implies
religious beliefs:
In the moral world, therefore, everything is classied, coordinated, foreseen, decided
in advance. In the political world, everything is agitated, contested, uncertain; in the
one, passive though voluntary obedience; in the other, independence, scorn for ex-
perience and jealousy of all authority. Far from harming each other, these two ten-
dencies, apparently so opposed, move in harmony and seem to offer mutual support
(I, p. 70. Also see note in the same place).
Tocqueville wants to develop the sciences in aristocratic societies and the moral sci-
ences in democracies, in order, in both cases, to counter the tendencies of the social state
(III, p. 962, note n) and he wishes to promote spiritualism to stop democratic
materialism:
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxlvi
The opposition of the social power to the force of the state, the oppo-
sition of society to the political power must also exist. For Tocqueville, as
we know, the ideal instrument for achieving this situationis associations,
316
organizations of an aristocratic character that oppose the omnipotence of
the majority that characterizes democracy.
Tocquevilles ideal is not the mixed regime, however. A predominating
principle will always exist because men will always try to order society and
the state according to the same principle.
317
Nonetheless, in order to avoid
falling into despotism and omnipotence, that is to say, into the ultimate
tyranny of equality (one one), the opposite principle must always exist.
The classical mechanisms of liberalism, suchas the separationof powers,
the idea of rights, liberty of the press, and federalism, serve Tocqueville
only to the degree that they can be used to that end.
The author of Democracy wants democracies to oppose a strong legis-
lative power with a power elected for a longer period (or put in place in a
permanent way, as in monarchy); this recalls the mechanismof balance and
counterbalance inspired by Montesquieu. But Tocqueville demands that,
within each power, concentration be balanced by an action of dispersal. If
If I had been born in the Middle Ages, I would have been the enemy of superstitions,
for then the social movement led there.
But today, I feel indulgent toward all the follies that spiritualism can suggest.
The great enemy is materialism, not only because it is initself a detestable doctrine,
but also because it is unfortunately in accord with the social tendency (III, p. 956,
note d).
316. Sentiments and ideas are renewed, the heart grows larger and the human mind
develops only by the reciprocal action of men on each other. I have demonstrated that
this action is almost nil in democratic countries. So it must be created there articially.
And this is what associations alone are able to do. III, p. 900.
317. Four types of regimes (that can be despotic or free) exist: 1. Democratic social
state (social equality) and democratic political state (political equality): democracy. 2.
Democratic social state combined with an aristocratic political state. This regime tends
toward and will arrive at democracy, for the political state nishes by being the reection
of the social state. 3. Social inequality and political equality (this is, accordingtoTocque-
ville, a chimera). 4. Social inequality and political inequality: aristocracy.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxlvii
the rst chamber is elected by universal suffrage, the secondmust be formed
by indirect election. If the political power must be centralized, the admin-
istration must be decentralized to the same degree. The jury does wonders
for the education of the people, but it must be guided by the judges hand.
The excesses of the majority, a constant danger indemocracies, are opposed
by the creation of an aristocracy of associations. And in the same way,
against the associations of owners, there are the associations of workers;
against the state, the society, etc.
The examples of opposition multiply throughout the book and extend
from the purely political eld to all aspects of intellectual life. The most
favorable moment for the development of the sciences, of literature and
of the arts, Tocqueville species in this regard, is when democracy begins
to burst into the midst of an aristocratic society. Then you have movement
amid order. Then humanity moves very rapidly, but like an army in battle,
without breaking ranks and without discipline losing anything to ardor.
318
The author of Democracy found this idea in Montesquieu;
319
the idea
of the opposition of the three powers ends up by amounting to the op-
position between the legislative power and the executive power, which in
Tocqueville is the confrontation between democracy and aristocracy.
320
Nonetheless, the problem for Montesquieu, like that for all of political
philosophy before him, was purely political despotism, while Tocqueville
318. III, p. 810, note q.
The sixteenth century had formed many of those ne, proud and free minds whose
race was entirely lost in the theatrical splendor of the following century. Also you
must have noted the superiority of the writers of the rst period of the reignof Louis
XIV over those of the second. The rst were formed in that very short time in which
feudal independence was allied for a moment with modern art and taste; the one gave
grandeur, and the others the nish of details and the harmony of the whole (YTC,
CIb (thoughts collected by Mary Mottley). See IV, p. 1146, note l, in which the same
idea is found again.)
319. As Luis D ez del Corral pointed out, Tocqueville could have had this idea from
the very mouth of Guizot (El pensamiento pol tico de Tocqueville, pp. 28586, 315, 377
79). But differing fromGuizot, Tocqueville does not believe that the result of thestruggle
between the forces of society and those of the individual is the bourgeois mentality.
320. Book XI, chapter VI of Esprit des lois. Also see book I, chapter 2.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxlviii
points out for the rst time a new form of tyranny that does not have a
name, but that spreads from the political power to ideas, habits and
thoughts, invading all of private and public life.
321
There are no recipes or denitive solutions; no formula allows us to go
beyond this system of opposition. The terms are in continual tension,
changeable and alive. Tocqueville advances in this way betweentwoabysses
with the talent of a Malesherbes or of a Royer-Collard,
322
by adoptingwhat
is best in each condition, by maintaining a precarious equilibrium, bygoing
along in doubt and uncertainty.
* * * * *
The objective of political philosophy is to produce among the citizens those
passions that can destroy or save society, to produce that dialectic of ideas,
of the abstract and the concrete, of liberty and equality, of reason and of
passion, that causes small, continual revolutions.
323
According to Tocqueville, liberty certainly cannot be dened in a neg-
ative way by obedience to laws that are the result of the compromises and
struggles of two permanent and equally strong parties. The author of De-
mocracy lives in a world in which one of the two powers can disappear
completely and in which the best laws are capable of coexisting witha social
condition similar to that of the state of nature, in which legal liberty can
go hand in hand with political and intellectual despotism.
For Tocqueville, man is above all a participant in history. He is part
of a vast project that he himself must work on each day. The pilot of a
boat, even if he does not determine either the winds or the waves, can
hoist or lower the sails; he guides his ship. He is a man who looks at the
past and the future, but who cannot learn very much from history.
321. This sets him apart from Rousseau. See I, p. 406, note g, pp. 407 and 413.
322. See Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento pol tico de Tocqueville, pp. 15859, and
OCB, VI, p. 445.
323. As I grow older, I have more regard, I will almost say respect, for the passions.
I love them when they are good, and I am not even sure about detesting themwhenthey
are bad. They are power, and power, wherever it is found, appears at its best amid the
universal weakness that surrounds us. Letter to Ampe`re, 10 August 1841, OC, XI, p. 152.
Also see OCB, VI, p. 407.
edi tor s i ntroducti on cxlix
The past does not offer rules of conduct or solutions for the present;
it gives sentiments, but not reasons; it creates passions and faith, but
not laws; it develops tendencies, it calls for prudence, but does not offer
judgments.
Nor does the history of peoples offer solutions for the present, just as
Democracy in America does not claimto give to the French or to Europeans
a theory of democracy. It is not a matter of imitating America, Tocqueville
says in substance; it is a matter of understanding America. For the rest, the
destiny of man is still, and is forever, in his own hands.
Eduardo Nolla
Universidad San Pablo-CEU
Madrid
s4s4s4s4s4
volume 1
(1835)
2f2f2f2f2f
2
s4s4s4s4s4
DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA
a
a. The drafts containthe following note, probably meant toannounce the publication
of the book:
Explanatory note about my position and the principal ideas that form the heart of
the work./
In 1831, Messrs. Beaumont and Tocqueville received a mission from the French
government for the purpose of going to the United States to study the penitentiary
system there. They remained nearly one year in the United States. After returning in
1832, they published a work entitled: Of the Penitentiary System in the United States
and Its Application to France. Since then, this work has been translated in its entirety
in the United States and in Germany; a portion has been translated in England. The
French Academy believed that its authors should be awarded the annual grand prize
established for whoever publishes the most useful book.
M. de Tocqueville, one of the authors of the book mentioned above, is about to
publish this coming October a work in two volumes that also has America as the
subject. This book will be entitled Of the Dominion of Democracy in America.
The fact that most struck the author during his stay in the United States was the
fact of equality of conditions. He believed that this primary fact had exercised and
still exercised a prodigious inuence on the laws, habits, mores of the Americans and
dominated, so to speak, civil and political society in the United States. This struck
him even more because this same fact of equality of conditions is constantly devel-
oping among all the peoples of Europe in a progressive manner.
So M. de Tocqueville thought that if someone could succeed in specifying in a
very plain and very clear fashion what type of inuence this fact, establishedinAmer-
ica and half-established in Europe, really exercised on society, what necessary aspect
it gave to laws, what secret instincts to peoples, what cast it imparted to ideas and
mores, a work not only interesting, but also useful would be written; a work, though
serious inform, wouldnonetheless reachthe minds of the greatest number of readers,
because it wouldinsome place necessarily touchonthe political passions of theperiod
and all the material interests that the political passions more or less express.
The result of these reections has been the work that M. de Tocqueville is about
to publish today and for which he gathered an enormous quantity of materials during
his stay in America (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 100101, 99).
3
s4s4s4s4s4
part i
Introduction
a
[The work that you are about to read is not a travelogue,
b
<the reader can
rest easy>. I do not want him to be concerned with me. You will also not
nd in this book a complete summary of all the institutions of the United
States; but I atter myself that, in it, the public will nd some new docu-
mentation and, from it, will gain useful knowledge about a subject that is
a. Ideas of the preface./
Irresistible movement of democracy, great fact of the modern world. Importance
of this fact superior to all questions of time and of internal politics. America showing
this fact come to its completion.
Goal of this work to give accurate notions about this fact; moreover, I do not judge
this fact. I do not even believe that there is anything of an absolute goodness in in-
stitutions. Montesquieu . . .
Ease of criticizing me. I knowthat nothing will be easier thanto criticize this book,
if anyone ever thinks of examining it critically. You will have only to contrast certain
particular facts to certain of my general ideas. Nothing is easier; there are facts and
arguments for all doctrines. For you to judge me, I would like you to want to do what
I did, to see an ensemble of facts and to come to a decision based on the mass of
reasons. To whoever will do that and then does not agree with me, I am ready to
submit. For if I am sure of having sincerely sought the truth, I am far from consid-
ering myself as certain to have found it.
To contrast an isolated fact to the ensemble of facts, a detached idea to the se-
quence of ideas.
It isnt that I dont have set ideas, but they are general (for there is absolute truth
only in general ideas). I believe that tyranny is the greatest evil, liberty the rst good.
But as for knowing what is most appropriate for preventing the one and creating the
other among peoples and knowing if all peoples are made to escape tyranny, that is
where doubt begins (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 9697).
b. The criticism of this passage (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 7) made by Louis de Kergorlay
has been published in Correspondance avec Kergorlay (OC, XIII, 1, p. 367).
i ntroducti on 4
more important for us than the fate of America and no less worthy of hold-
ing our attention.
c
]
Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in
the United States, none struck me more vividly than the equality of con-
ditions.
d
I discovered without difculty the prodigious inuence that this
primary fact exercises on the march of society; it gives a certain direction
to the public mind, a certain turn to the laws; to those governing, new
maxims, and particular habits to the governed.
Soon I recognized that this same fact extends its inuence far beyond
political mores and laws, and that it has no less dominion over civil society,
than over government: it creates opinions, gives birth to sentiments, sug-
gests customs and modies all that it does not produce.
Therefore, as I studied American society, I sawmore and more, in equal-
ity of conditions, the generating fact from which each particular fact
seemed to derive, and I rediscovered it constantly before me as a central
point where all of my observations came together.
Then I turned my thought back toward our hemisphere, and it seemed
to me that I perceived something analogous to the spectacle that the New
World offered me. I saw equality of conditions that, without having
reached its extreme limits as in the United States, approached those limits
c. In a rst version of the drafts:
[In the margin: I have not said everything that I saw, but I have said everything that
I believed at the same time true and useful [v: protable] to make known, andwithout
wanting to write a treatise on America, I thought only to help my fellow citizens
resolve a question that must interest us more deeply.]
I see around me facts without number, but I notice one of them that dominates
all the others; it is old; it is stronger than laws, more powerful than men; it seems to
be a direct product of the divine will; it is the gradual development of democracy in
the Christian world. When I say democracy here I do not mean to speak only about
a political form of government, but of a social state (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 11516).
d. This rst paragraph differs a bit from the manuscript: There is a fact that more
than all the rest attracts the attention of the European upon his arrival on the shores of
the New World. A surprising equality reigns there among fortunes; at rst glance minds
themselves seem equal. I was struck, like others, at the sight of this extreme equality of
conditions and I discovered without difculty . . .
i ntroducti on 5
more each day; and this same democracy that reignedinAmericansocieties,
appeared to me to advance rapidly toward power in Europe.
e
From that moment, I conceived the idea of the book you are about to
read.
f
e. In the margin: I remember that I saw something analogous in France; I think
that you can usefully examine the effects in the two countries, and I conceive the idea
of the book. Another version is presented to the side that species: in Europe and
principally in my own country.
The version not struck out in the manuscript says: . . . appeared to me ready to take
power among us. Herve de Tocqueville remarks: The word ready does not seem good
to me. Besides, isnt it too absolute relative to what is still happening at the moment
among us and to the government that succeeded the Restoration?
Next to this observation, another is found, probably from E
douard de Tocqueville,
brother of Alexis: I also agree that this expression must be softened (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 9).
The criticisms of Herve de Tocqueville, father of Alexis, of Edouard and Hippolyte
de Tocqueville, his brothers, and those of his friends Gustave de Beaumont and Louis
de Kergorlay, made at the time of reading a copy of the manuscript of the rst Democ-
racy, are known to us thanks to a copy in Bonnels hand. The latter does not identify
the authors. Nonetheless, the written comments can be attributed to themwithout great
difculty, by taking into account tone, style, and the following facts: the observations
of Louis de Kergorlay consisted of small slips of paper insertedinto the manuscript (only
a few of them remain relating to the introduction and to the last section of chapter X
of the 1835 part); certain of his notes on the introduction have been published in the
correspondence of Tocqueville and Kergorlay (cf. OC, XIII, 1, pp. 36468; note that the
list reproduced on p. 368 is Tocquevilles, not Kergorlays); all comments using the vous
form can be attributed to Beaumont, who always used vous with Tocqueville, in dis-
tinction to the members of Tocquevilles family and Kergorlay; nally a letter included
in the critical observations (reproduced in note c for p. 142) and some sentences of the
rst readers of the manuscript inform us that the notes found alongside the commen-
taries of Herve were writtenby E
douardde Tocqueville. By elimination, someremaining

less interesting comments could be by Hippolyte, older brother of Alexis. Certain re-
ections inserted between texts seem to us to be by Alexis himself.
The whole of these commentaries are found at the Beinecke Library under the clas-
sication CIIIb. There are also a few brief commentaries by Herve de Tocqueville for
chapter IX of the second part of the rst volume of 1835 under the classication YTC,
CVh, 3, pp. 1417.
f. At the top of the sheet appears, crossed out, the beginning of the section impor-
tance of what precedes in relation to europe, the conclusion of chapter 9
of the second part of volume II, constituting at the start the conclusion of the book
(since chapter 10was addedat the last moment). This fact, as well as numerous similarities
and displacements of paragraphs between the introduction and the conclusion of chap-
ter 9, indicate that the two chapters were very likely written at the same time, probably
at the end of the spring or at the beginning of the summer of 1834.
i ntroducti on 6
A great democratic revolution is taking place
g
among us; everyone sees
it, but not everyone judges it inthe same way. Some consider it as something
new and, taking it for an accident, they hope still to be able to stop it; while
others judge it irresistible, because it seems to them the most continuous,
oldest and most permanent fact known in history.
I look back for a moment to what France was seven hundred years ago:
I nd it divided up among a small number of families who own the land
and govern the inhabitants; at that time, the right to command is passed
down with inheritances from generation to generation; men have only a
single way to act on one another, force; you discover only a single source
of power, landed property.
But then the political power of the clergy becomes established and is
soon expanding.
h
The clergy opens its ranks to all, to the poor and to the
g. In the manuscript: . . . is reaching completion among us.
Herve de Tocqueville: This sentence seems too absolute to me for the reasons that
I have just enumerated a short while ago; instead of the words reaching completion, I
would like better seems due to take place.
E
douard de Tocqueville: That is right (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 9).

h. The saints. Men committed to the moral grandeur of man.
Saints taken from all classes.
Political power of the clergy that makes menof all classes arrive at the government.
[In the margin: Ascending movement of time, descending movement of nobles. ]
Introduction of jurists into the government produces the same effect.
The Crusades that enervate the nobility and divide lands.
The nanciers. Importance that the perpetual wars of the Middle Ages give to
them. The middle classes are introduced by them into government.
Granting of freedom to the towns.
Personal estates. Tyranny toward the Jews that brings about the inventionof paper
wealth.
Instruction begun by the monks in the cathedrals. Religion awakens the arts. In-
troduction of men of letters into government. Political power of the University of
Paris.
Granting of nobility that brings commoners into the government by the nobility
(1270).
[In the margin: Equality penetrates nally into government by the nobility.]
Favoritism of the kings that brings men from nothing to power. Pierre de Brosse,
minister after having been a barber (1275).
Laws of exclusive privileges that prevent vassals from becoming too powerful.
Introduction of towns into the Estates General (1304).
Taste for literature that opens up a new importance to men of all classes. Estab-
i ntroducti on 7
rich, to the commoner and to the lord; equality begins to penetrate through
the Church into the government, and someone who would have vegetated
as a serf in eternal slavery takes his place as a priest among nobles and often
goes to take a seat above kings.
As society becomes more civilized and more stable with time, the dif-
ferent relationships among men become more complicated and more nu-
merous. The need for civil laws is intensely felt. Then jurists arise; they
emerge from the dark precinct of the courts and from the dusty recess of
the clerks ofces, and they go to sit in the court of the prince, alongside
feudal barons covered with ermine and iron.
Kings ruin themselves in great enterprises; nobles exhaust themselves in
private wars; commoners enrich themselves in commerce. The inuence
of money begins to make itself felt in affairs of State. Trade is a newsource
of power, and nanciers become a political power that is scorned and
attered.
Little by little, enlightenment spreads; the taste for literature andthe arts
reawakens; then the mind becomes an element of success; knowledge is a
means of government; intelligence, a social force; menof letters reachpub-
lic affairs.
As new roads to achieve power are found, however, we see the value of
birth fall. In the XIth century, nobility had an inestimable value; it is pur-
lishment of oral games (1324).
TN1
Discovery of rearms that equalizes the unprotected villein with the nobleman
covered in iron (1328).
The Jacquerie. The uprising of the bourgeois of Paris (1358).
Wars with the English that destroy or ruin the nobility.
Factions of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians that give importance to the peo-
ple. The nobles use them as instruments.
Beginning of heresies. Jan Huss (1414).
Institution of permanent armies that nishes undermining feudal power (1446).
Immense commercial and personal fortunes. Jacques Coeur.
End of the Eastern Empire. Increasing inuence of letters in the West (1453).
Discovery of printing toward 1440. The post in . . .
Louis XI.
Discovery of America (1492) (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 1820).
Translators Note 1: Floral games were a literary competition held annually
in Toulouse and elsewhere in France.
i ntroducti on 8
chased in the XIIIth; the rst granting of nobility takes place in 1270,
j
and
equality is nally introduced into government by aristocracy itself.
During the seven hundred years that have just passed, it sometimes hap-
pened that, in order to struggle against royal authority, or to take power
away from their rivals, the nobles gave political power to the people.
Even more often, you saw kings make the lower classes of the State par-
ticipate in government in order to humble
k
the aristocracy.
In France, kings showed themselves to be the most active and most con-
stant of levelers. When they were ambitious and strong, they worked to
raise the people to the level of the nobles, and when they were moderate
and weak, they allowed
m
the people to put themselves above kings. The
former helped democracy by their talents, the latter by their vices. Louis
XI and Louis XIV took care to equalize everything below the throne, and
Louis XV himself nally descended into the dust with his court.
n
As soon as citizens began to own the land in ways other than by feudal
tenure, and as soon as personal wealth, once known, could in turn create
inuence and confer power, no discoveries were made inthe arts, nofurther
j. The manuscript says 1370. The correct date is indeed 1270.
k. In the manuscript: . . . in order to pull down the aristocracy.
Herve de Tocqueville: Arent the words pull down too absolute here?
E
douard de Tocqueville: Perhaps humble would be better (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 10).

m. Herve de Tocqueville: I would like better: they suffered the people, etc (YTC,
CIIIb, 1, p. 10).
n. Herve de Tocqueville:
There is an error here; you undoubtedly wanted to put Louis XVI, for if Louis XV
prepared the Revolution by his debaucheries, youcannot deny that he was anabsolute
king until his last moment and his court all powerful. I do not like the word dust
which is not of a type elevated enough for the rest of the style; one says, moreover,
fall into the dust, but one does not say descend into the dust.
E
douard de Tocqueville:
I also nd this sentence leaves something to be desired. I will not, however, make the
same criticismas my father. It is indeedLouis XVwho lost the monarchy by depriving
it of all of its moral force, of its dignity and of the prestige that surrounded the
throne. Only fall into the dust expresses a physical abasement, but it is a moral abase-
ment that must be expressed here, by observing that Louis XV succeeded in killing
the aristocracy by discrediting it by the corruption of his court (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 11).
i ntroducti on 9
improvements were introduced into commerce and industry, without also
creating as many newelements of equality among men. Fromthis moment,
all processes that are found, all needs that are born, all desires that demand
to be satised, are progress toward universal leveling. The taste for luxury,
the love of war, the sway of fashion, the most supercial passions of the
human heart as well as the most profound, seem to work in concert to
impoverish the rich and to enrich the poor.
From the time when works of the mind became sources of strengthand
wealth, each development of science, eachnewelement of knowledge, each
new idea had to be considered as a germ of power put within reach of the
people. Poetry, eloquence, memory, mental graces, res of the imagination,
depth of thought, all these gifts that heaven distributes at random, proted
democracy, and even when they were in the possession of democracys ad-
versaries, they still served its cause by putting into relief the natural gran-
deur of man; so democracys conquests spread with those of civilization
andenlightenment, andliterature was anarsenal opentoall, where theweak
and the poor came each day to nd arms.
When you skim the pages of our history you do not nd so to speak any
great events that for seven hundred years have not turned to the prot of
equality.
The Crusades and the English wars decimate the nobles and divide their
lands; the institution of the towns introduces democratic liberty into the
feudal monarchy; [<the rigors enforced against the Jews bring about the
invention of paper wealth
o
>]; the discovery of rearms equalizes the villein
and the noble on the eld of battle; printing offers equal resources to their
minds; the post comes to deposit enlightenment at the threshold of the hut
of the poor as at the gate of palaces; Protestantism maintains that all men
are equally able to nd the way to heaven. America, whichcomes intosight,
presents a thousand newpaths to fortune and delivers the wealthandpower
[reserved to kings] to obscure adventurers.
If you examine what is happening in France fromthe XIthcenturyevery
o. In the margin: <Letters of exchange, the most democratic of all wealth.>
i ntroducti on 10
fty years, at the end of each one of these periods, you will not fail tonotice
that a double revolution has taken place in the state of society. The noble
will have slipped on the social ladder, the commoner will have risen; the
one descends, the other ascends. Each half-century brings them closer to-
gether, and soon they are going to touch.
And this is not only particular to France. In whatever direction we cast
our eyes, we notice the same revolution continuing in all of the Christian
universe. [Let someone cite to me a republic or a kingdom in which the
nobles of today can be compared, I would not say to the nobles of feudal
times, but only to their fathers of the last century. {If France hastened the
democratic revolutionof whichI amspeaking, France didnot give it birth}.
For seven hundred years, there is not a single event among Christians
that has not turned to the prot of democracy, not a man who has not
served its triumph. <The clergy by spreading enlightenment and by ap-
plying within its bosom the principle of Christian equality, kings by op-
posing the people to nobles, nobles by opposing the people to kings; writers
and the learned by creating intellectual riches for democracys use; trades-
men by providing unknown resources for democracys activity; the navi-
gator by nding democracy new worlds.>]
Everywhere you saw the various incidents in the lives of peoples turn to
the prot of democracy; all men aided it by their efforts:
p
those who had
in view contributing to its success and those who did not think of serving
it; those who fought for it and even those who declared themselves its en-
emies; all were pushed pell-mell along the same path, and all worked in
common, some despite themselves, others without their knowledge, blind
instruments in the hands of God.
So the gradual development of equality of conditions [{democracy}] is
a providential fact;
q
it has the principal characteristics of one: it is universal,
p. In the manuscript: The Catholic priest and the sectarian, the jurist and the poet,
the nancier and the learned man, the manufacturer and the navigator, kings, nobles
themselves, each worked for the people. The people proted from all efforts. Those who
had in view . . .
q. This sentence has not failed to provoke numerous commentaries. From it certain
commentators have been able to conclude a bit quickly that Tocqueville was fatalistic.
Thus Francois Furet (Le syste`me conceptuel de la Democratie en Ame`rique, in Mi-
i ntroducti on 11
chael Hereth and Jutta Hoffken, Alexis de Tocqueville. Zur Politik in der Demokratie,
Baden Baden: Nomos, 1981, pp. 1952, especially pp. 23 and 28) sees in Tocqueville the
development of the idea of inevitability already present in Chateaubriand. If it is in-
contestable that this paragraph acknowledges a destiny of a providential nature for the
idea of equality, the rest of the book, and all of Tocquevilles work, is no less a plea in
favor of liberty against all forms of fatalism. Marvin Zetterbaum (Tocqueville and the
Problem of Democracy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967, pp. 1519) attempted
to resolve this contradiction by attributing to Tocqueville, in this passage, motives of
the kind for persuasion and pedagogy: the latter would have insisted on the providential
character of democracy in order to take advantage of the religious sentiments of the
French aristocracy of the period and thus to persuade the French aristocracy not to op-
pose the march of democracy. Other authors, in particular Wilhelm Hennis, used a
similar argument to see in Tocqueville less of a political thinker than a rhetorician (in
the positive sense of the term). Without getting into a discussion of the rhetorical value
of Tocquevilles work (what political discourse is not rhetorical?), it is necessary, none-
theless, to point out that in other places in the book Tocqueville sees in the inevitable
character of political equality the result of social equality and of the cartesian method.
This time the argument has psychological bases. If one time, even if in the middle of
revolutionary disorders, men have had the experience of equality or have thought of
themselves as equal, it is very difcult afterward to make them accept social inequality
and political differences. So social equality is inevitable if it has existed previously, if
only for a short moment, and if you accept the principle according to which social con-
ditions determine political life.
The development of social equality remains to be explained. To understand it, it is
indispensable to refer to a little known text of Tocqueville, drafted when he worked on
Democracy: Memoire sur le pauperisme (Me moires de la socie te academique de Cher-
bourg, 1835, pp. 293344, reproduced in Commentaire XXIII (1983): 63036; XXIV,
pp. 88088). There Tocqueville sketches a general history of civilization. Almost literally
following the Rousseau of Discours sur lorigine de line galite , he offers a picture according
to which men are equal solely when, coming out of the forests, they seek to associate
together with their fellow men in order to gain sufcient food and shelter against the
elements. Inequality owes its origin to ownership of territory which, in turn, produces
the aristocracy.
If you pay attention to what is happening in the world since the origin of societies,
you will discover without difculty that equality is found only at the two ends of
civilization. Savages are equal to each other because they are all equally weak and
ignorant. Very civilized men can all become equal because they all have at their dis-
posal analogous means to attain comfort and happiness. Between these two extremes
are found inequality of conditions, the wealth, enlightenment, power of some, the
poverty, ignorance and weakness of all the others (p. 636).
The process of equality of conditions is dependent on the increase in intellectual and
material needs. Tocqueville writes again:
i ntroducti on 12
it is lasting, it escapes every day fromhuman power; all events, like all men,
serve its development.
r
Men leave the plow to take up the shuttle and the hammer; from the cottage they
pass into the factory; by acting in this way, they obey the immutable laws that preside
over the growth of organized societies. So you can no more assign a stopping point
to this movement than impose bounds on human perfectibility. The limit of the one
like that of the others is known only to God (p. 634).
Equality is consequently the direct result of a law of the evolution of intelligence, and
only intermediately, like all laws, a product of Providence. Finally, it must be recalled
that Tocqueville is content to note here what the entire book will demonstrate andmake
convincing by the development of precise arguments. (See Correspondance avec Kergor-
lay, OC, XIII, 1, p. 375; according to Andre Jardin, this letter in reality would have been
written to Euge`ne Stoffels.)
r. Democracy! Dont you notice that these are the waters of the ood? Dont you
see them advance constantly by a slow and irresistible effort? <Already they cover the
elds and the cities, they roll over the destroyed battlements of fortied castles and
come to wash against the steps of thrones.> You withdraw, the waves continue their
march. You ee, they run behind you. Here you are nally in your last refuge and
scarcely have you sat down to take a breath when the waves have already covered the
space that still separates you fromthem. So let us knowhowto face the future steadily
and with open eyes. Instead of wanting to raise impotent dikes, let us seek rather to
build the holy [v: tutelary] ark that must carry the human species over this ocean
without shores.
But this is what hardly occupies us already placed in the middle . . .
It would be very insane to believe that we have seenthe endof this great revolution.
This movement continues, no one can say where it will stop. For we are already lack-
ing terms of comparison. Conditions are more equal among us than they have ever
been in any time and in any country of the world.
Thus the very grandeur of what is done prevents us from foreseeing what can still
be done.
What will the probable consequences of this immense social revolution be? What
new order will emerge from the debris of the one that is falling? Who can say? The
men of the IVth century, witnesses to the barbarian invasions, gave themselves over,
like us, to a thousand conjectures, but no one thought to foresee the universal estab-
lishment of the feudal system that followed the ruin of Rome in all of Europe. To
discern effects without going back to causes, to judge what is without knowing what
will be, isnt that moreover the whole of human destiny? We see that the sun changes
place and that it advances constantly toward other heavens, we recognize that its
movement is regulated, we feel that it obeys the hand of the Creator, but we will not
be able to determine the force that makes it move and we are carried along with the
sun toward a still unknown point in the universe.
In the middle of this impenetrable obscurity of the future, however, the eye sees
some shafts of light. You can glimpse even now that the centuries of limited mon-
i ntroducti on 13
Would it be wise to believe that a social movement that comes from so
far could be suspended by the efforts of a generation?
s
Do you think that
archy are rapidly passing and that modern societies are carried by a force superior to
that of man either toward the republic or toward despotism and perhaps alternately
from one to the other. As for me, I admit, in this century of liberty I fear for the
future liberty of the human species. I [do not (ed.)] draw my fears from the past,
which cannot be reproduced, but from the very nature of man, which does not
change.
I see that by a strange oddity of our nature the passion for equality, which should
decrease along with inequality of conditions, on the contrary increases as conditions
become equal. In proportion [that (ed.)] the trace of hierarchies disappears, that pas-
sion alone seems to rule the human heart. Now, men [have (ed.)] two ways to be
equal. They can all have the same rights or all be equally deprived of rights, and I
tremble at the idea of the choice that they are going to make when I see the little care
that is taken to (illegible word) [instruct? (ed.)] them, when I think how much more
difcult it is to live free than to vegetate in slavery. I know that there are many honest
men who are scarcely frightened by this idea and who would ask no better than to
sleep peacefully inthe arms of despotismwhile stammeringsome words about liberty.
But my tastes, like my reason, distance me from them. Those who want thus to
achieve order by way of despots hardly know what they desire. Liberty sometimes
happens to make light of the existence of men, to be lavish with the resources of
society, to disturb souls and to make beliefs waver, but despotism attacks all these
things in their principle and in their [broken text (ed.)] (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 2730).
From the variant of this text (YTC, CVb, pp. 3032, 2631), the following details will
be retained (pp. 2930):
To claim to stop the march of democracy would be folly. God willing, there is still
time to direct it and to prevent it fromleading us to the despotismof one [v: military]
man, that is to say to the most detestable form of government that the human mind
has ever been able to imagine.
Sometimes liberty happens to make light of the existence of men, to be lavishwith
the resources of society, to disturb souls, to make beliefs waver.
But despotism attacks these very things in their principle and their essence. It pre-
vents men from multiplying, it exhausts the source of wealth and of well-being, it
confuses notions of good and evil and, by taking from man his independence [v: free
will], it removes from him as much trace as it can of his divine origin. A free man
often does things unworthy of himself, but a slave is less than a man.
To abhor despotism is not to do the work of a citizen, but the act of a man.
s. Herve de Tocqueville: The word effort that I advised deleting a bit above is found
again here. Is the word generation suitable? It includes the idea of unanimity of action
which will certainly not be found against democracy in the present generation (YTC,
CIIIb, 1, pp. 1213).
i ntroducti on 14
after having destroyed feudalism and vanquished kings, democracy will re-
treat before the bourgeois and the rich?
t
Will it stop nowthat it has become
so strong and its adversaries so weak?
So where are we going? No one can say; for we are already lacking terms
of comparison; conditions are more equal today among Christians than
they have ever been in any time or in any country in the world; thus we are
prevented by the magnitude of what is already done from foreseeing what
can still be done.
The entire book that you are about to read has been written under the
impression of a sort of religious terror produced in the soul of the author
by the sight of this irresistible revolution that has marched for so many
centuries over all obstacles, and that we still see today advancing amid the
ruins that it has made.
It isnt necessary for God himself to speak in order for us to discover
sure signs of his will; it is enough to examine the regular march of na-
ture and the continuous tendency of events; I know, without the Creator
raising his voice, that the stars in space follow the curves traced by his
ngers.
If long observations and sincere meditations led men of today to rec-
ognize that the gradual and progressive development of equality is at once
the past and the future of their history, this discovery alone would give this
development the sacred character of the will of God. To want to stop de-
mocracy would then seem to be struggling against God himself, and it
would only remain for nations to accommodate themselves to the social
state that Providence imposes on them.
u
t. In the margin: The democratic revolution that carries us along will not retreat
after having triumphed for seven hundred years over so many obstacles.
u. This paragraphandthe preceding one do not exist inthe manuscript. Intheir place,
you nd this: If, to want to stop the development of democracy, is to struggle against
God himself, what then remains for men to do if not to accommodate themselves to the
social state that Providence imposes on them?
The two new paragraphs were probably added following this suggestion by Louis de
Kergorlay:
The thought enclosed in this paragraph is very beautiful and fundamental, but un-
fortunately little infashion, little spreadamong the public whichremains morematter
of fact. I believe that to make the public see that it is a thought, that it is a sentiment,
i ntroducti on 15
Christian peoples seemto me to offer today a frightening spectacle.
v
The
movement that sweeps them along is already so strong that it cannot be
suspended, and it is not yet so rapid as to despair of directing it. Their fate
is in their hands; but soon it escapes them.
w
that it is something serious, it must be developed a bit more. It is one of the building
blocks of your introduction. I have taken the risk of drafting the following three or
four sentences as more or less encompassing what I understand as the development
of your idea. So in my mind, I put this in place of your paragraph:
Where would the hand of God be more visible than in the most immutable facts
of nature? Where does man thus nd other proofs of the existence and of the will
of the divinity, than in the works of his creator, and what more sublime work could
he examine than his own nature?
So if sincere meditations led him one day to acknowledge that the progressive
development of democracy is at once the past and the future of his history, this
discovery alone would give to this development the sacred character of the will of
our sovereign master, to all resistance against this march of our destiny that of a
struggle against God himself, and that of a duty to the search for all that can accom-
modate humanity to the new social state imposed by Providence.
I do not know if you will nd these sentences clear or vague, but what I want to
express to you is the need for a development that elevates the soul of the reader (YTC,
CIIIb, 1, pp. 2324).
v. In the manuscript: . . . offer today the most terrible of spectacles.
Herve de Tocqueville: The most terrible here is too strong an expression, since the
author says farther along that you must not yet despair of being able to direct the
movement.
E
douard de Tocqueville: The word terrible does not seem to me very good either;
this expression which prepares for something frightening is not justiedby what follows
(YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 13).
w. It would be falling into a great error to believe that the period in which we live
resembledany other andthat the habitual routine of humanpassions couldbe applied
to it equally. At the moment when I amspeaking, the destinies of the Christianworld
are in suspense and nations nd themselves in a position unique in their lives. The
movement that carries them along is already too strong to be able to hope to stop it
and not yet strong enough to despair of directing it.
At the period in which we are, what are the destinies of a man, the fortune of a
law, the successes of a party? These interests of one day disappear before an interest
a thousand times greater still, that touches all men and all parties equally and that
must be the goal of all laws. Today the question is no longer only knowing what
progress civilization will make, but what the fate of civilization will be, not what laws
will regulate property, but what the very principle of property will be. It is no longer
only a matter of regulating political rights, but civil rights, inheritance, paternity,
marriage like the right to vote [v: property qualication].
i ntroducti on 16
To instruct democracy, to revive its beliefs if possible, to purify its mores,
to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of public
affairs for its inexperience, knowledge of its true interests for its blind in-
stincts; to adapt its government to times and places; to modify it according
to circumstances and men; suchis the rst of duties imposedtodayonthose
who lead society.
Anewpolitical science
x
is needed for a world entirely new
y
[{for a unique
situation, laws without precedents are needed}].
The time has passed when you struggled to conquer or to keep, not some liberty,
but all liberties together, up to that of living.
Today, in a word, you must not forget, it is still much more a matter of the very
existence of society than of the forms of the government.
You can no longer have anything except despotism or the republic.
Despotism such as our fathers never knew in any period of history, Roman or
Byzantine despotism, mixture of corruption [v: plunder], barbarism, brutality and
subtlety, of obsequiousness and of arrogance, no more collective resistance, no more
esprit de corps, family honor, aristocratic (four illegible words). Honest menwhowant
absolute power today do not know what they want. They will no longer have the
good absolute power of the old monarchy, moderated by mores . . . but the absolute
power of the Roman Empire . . . (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 2021, 2122).
x. This afrmation is central and cannot be minimized. Criticism has too generally
put the accent on Tocqueville as a traveler, observer of mores and institutions, historian
foreshadowing the sociologist. Whereas, the objective that Tocqueville is xed upon is
above all political. The fact that this science is dened in terms that to us signal more
sociology, history, or psychology must not diminish its importance. Like all political
thinkers, like Montequieu or Rousseau, Tocqueville wants to try to rethink what he calls
political science and to redene it. He will not cease to come back to the question of
the language used to designate concepts and new realities; he will introduce neologisms.
It is also the meaning of the memorable speech delivered at the Academy of Moral and
Political Sciences inwhichthe author presents himself as a political theorist. It is precisely
his talents as a theoretician, he thinks, that have prevented him from making a political
career:
The art of writing suggests, in fact, to those who have practiced it for a long time
habits of mind little favorable to the conduct of affairs. It subjugates them to the
logic of ideas, when the crowd never obeys anything except that of passions. It gives
them the taste for the ne, the delicate, the ingenious, the original, while it is the
awful commonplaces that lead the world. (Speech delivered to the annual public
meeting of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, Se ances et travaux de
i ntroducti on 17
But that is what we scarcely consider; placed in the middle of a rapid
river, we obstinately x our eyes on some debris that we still see on the
bank, while the current carries us away and pushes us backwards toward
the abyss.
There is no people of Europe among whom the great social revolution
z
that I have just described has made more rapid progress than among us;
but here it has always marched haphazardly.
The heads of State [{legislator}] never thought to prepare anything in
advance for it; it came about despite themor without their knowledge. The
most powerful, most intelligent and most moral classes of the nation did
lAcade mie des sciences morales et politiques, XXI, 1852, p. 303; this speech has been
reproduced with some omissions in OCB, IX, pp. 11633).
For Tocqueville, political science is a science based on the faculties and eternal in-
stincts of human nature; it spreads from philosophy to the civil law, from theory to
written laws and to facts. Such an upside down pyramid is conceived so that the closer
you get to facts, the farther you get from generalities: There is no commentator who
does not often rely upon the abstract and general truths that writers on politics have
found, and the latter need constantly to base their theory on particular facts and on the
studied institutions that commentators have revealed or described (ibid., p. 305). Par-
allel to this science exists the art of governing, politics of the practical order, able to be
modied constantly. The degree of civilization of a people is always proportional to the
complexity of its political science. In other words, the more civilization, the more elab-
orate the political science; a new world demands as well a new political science:
Among all civilized peoples, the political sciences give birth or at least give form to
general ideas, from which then follow particular facts, in the middle of which poli-
ticians agitate, and the laws that they think they invent. The political sciences form
around each society something like a kind of intellectual atmosphere in which the
minds of the governed and of those who govern breathe, and fromwhichboth, often
without knowing, sometimes without wanting to know, draw the principles of their
conduct. Barbarians are the only ones where only practice is recognized in politics
(ibid., p. 306).
y. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not know if you can use the expression for a world
entirely new while speaking of old Europe. I know well that it is a matter of the political
world, but the changes there are not so abrupt that world entirely new applies very
exactly.
E
douard de Tocqueville: Current society is certainly entirely new by comparison

with that of forty years ago (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 13).
z. The French Revolution did the same good as the Nile that fertilizes the elds of
Egypt by covering them with muck (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 97).
i ntroducti on 18
not try to take hold of it in order to direct it. So democracy has been aban-
doned to its wild instincts; it has grown up like those children, deprived of
paternal care, who raise themselves in the streets of our cities, and who
know society only by its vices and miseries. We still seemed unaware of its
existence, when it took hold of power without warning. Then each person
submitted with servility to its slightest desires; it was adored as the image
of strength; when later it was weakened by its own excesses, legislators con-
ceived the imprudent plan of destroying it instead of trying to instruct and
correct it, and not wanting to teach it to govern, they thought only about
pushing it away from government.
The result was that the democratic revolution took place in the ma-
terial aspect of society without happening in the laws, ideas, habits and
mores,
a
the change that would have been necessary to make this revolu-
a. This idea is found in the fourth lecture of Guizots course on civilizationinFrance.
The revolution that the last century caused to burst forth was a social revolution; it was
much more concerned with changing the reciprocal situation of men than their internal
and personal dispositions; it wanted to reform the society rather than the individual
(Francois Guizot, Histoire de la civilisationenFrance inCours dhistoire moderne, Brussels:
Hauman, 1839, p. 160). Tocqueville attended this course on the history of civilization
in France taught by Guizot at the Sorbonne in 18291830. The notes for the course, from
11 April 1829 to 29 March 1830, are preserved. His correspondence indicates nonetheless
that he attended the course before the month of April (see Correspondance avec Beau-
mont, OC, VIII, 1, pp. 7677). Tocqueville, in a letter to Beaumont, dated 30 August
1829 (OC, VIII, 1, pp. 8081), asserts that he has already read most of Guizot and that
he found him so prodigious that he proposes to his friend to read Guizot with him
during the winter. Reading Guizot enlightenedhimnotablyabout the IVthcentury(note
r from p. 12 bears a reference to the same century). Several times, furthermore, Tocque-
ville will allude in the Democracy to the eighth lecture of the Cours. Two years later,
when he is in America, he writes to his friend and colleague Ernest de Chabrol: We
cannot nd here a book that is very necessary to us for helping us analyze American
society; this is the lectures of Guizot, including what he said and published three years
ago on Roman society and the Middle Ages (New York, 18 May 1831, YTC, BIa2). It is
following Guizot, in the fourth lecture of the Cours, that Tocqueville divides his rst
notes on American society into civil state and social state.
Guizot didnot fail to ndhimself inTocquevilles work. InDe la de mocratie enFrance
( janvier 1849) (Brussels: J. Petit, 1849), whose title alone makes explicit reference to
Tocqueville, he seems to blame the latter for having taken the concept of equality and
having transformed it into a universal process that pushes irremediably toward popular
sovereignty while making the dominion of the middle classes disappear by its momen-
i ntroducti on 19
tion
b
useful. We therefore have democracy, minus what must attenuate
its vices and bring out its natural advantages; and seeing already the evils
that it brings, we are still unaware of the good that it can give.
When royal power, supported by the aristocracy, peacefullygovernedthe
peoples of Europe, society, amid its miseries, enjoyed several kinds of hap-
piness, which are difcult to imagine and appreciate today.
The power of some subjects raised insurmountable barriers to the tyr-
anny of the prince; and kings, feeling vested in the eyes of the crowd with
a nearly divine character, drew, from the very respect that they caused, the
will not to abuse their power.
Placed an immense distance from the people, the nobles nonetheless
took the type of benevolent and tranquil interest in the fate of the people
that the shepherd
c
gives to his ock; and without seeing the poor man as
their equal, they watched over his lot as a trust put in their hands by
Providence.
Not having conceived the idea of a social state other than their own, not
imagining that they could ever be equal to their rulers, the people accepted
the benets and did not question the rights of their rulers. They lovedthem
when they were lenient and just and submitted without difculty andwith-
out servility to their rigors as to inevitable evils sent to them by the hand
of God. Custom and mores had, moreover, established limits to tyranny
and founded a kind of right in the very midst of force.
Since the noble did not think that someone would want to wrest from
him the privileges that he believed legitimate, and the serf regarded his
tum. It is not the only time, as we will see, that Tocqueville repeats an idea of Guizot
for his particular ends.
See Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento pol tico de Tocqueville (Madrid: AlianzaUni-
versidad, 1989), pp. 35391; Aurelian Craiutu, Liberalism Under Siege: The Political
Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 87122.
b. E
douard de Tocqueville: How can a revolution take place in the material aspect
of society without the ideas, laws, habits and mores seconding it? So what then do you
call the material aspect of society? (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 14).
c. Herve de Tocqueville: I am afraid that some might respond to the author that
these shepherds were really wolves. You will avoid this disadvantage by generalizing less,
by putting a portion of the nobles (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 14).
i ntroducti on 20
inferiority as a result of the immutable order of nature, it is conceivable
that a kind of reciprocal benevolence could be established between these
two classes sharing so different a fate. You then saw in society inequality,
miseries, but souls were not degraded.
It is not the use of power or the habit of obedience that depraves men;
it is the use of a power that they consider as illegitimate and obedience to
a power that they regard as usurped and oppressive.
On one side were wealth, force, leisure and with them the pursuit of
luxury, renements of taste, pleasures of the mind, devotion to the arts; on
the other, work, coarseness and ignorance.
But within this ignorant and coarse crowd, you met energetic passions,
generous sentiments, profound beliefs and untamed virtues.
The social body organized in this way could have stability, power, and
above all glory.
But ranks are merging; barriers raised between men are falling; estates
are being divided; power is being shared, enlightenment is spreading, in-
tellects are becoming equal; the social state is becoming democratic, and
the dominion of democracy is nally being established peacefully in insti-
tutions and in mores.
Then I imagine a society where all, seeing the law as their work, would
love it and would submit to it without difculty; where since the authority
of the government is respected as necessary and not as divine, the love
that is felt for the head of State would be not a passion, but a reasoned
and calm sentiment. Since each person has rights and is assured of pre-
serving his rights, a manly condence and a kind of reciprocal conde-
scension, as far from pride as from servility, would be established among
all classes.
Instructed in their true interests, the people would understand that, in
order to take advantage of the good things of society, you must submit to
its burdens. The free association of citizens would then be able to replace
the individual power of the nobles, and the State would be sheltered from
tyranny and from license.
I understand that in a democratic State, constituted in this manner, so-
ciety will not be immobile; but the movements of the social body will be
i ntroducti on 21
able to be regulated and progressive; if you meet less brilliance there than
within an aristocracy, you will nd less misery; pleasures will be less extreme
and well-being more general; knowledge not as great and ignorance more
rare; sentiments less energetic and habits more mild; there you will notice
more vices and fewer crimes.
d
If there is no enthusiasm and fervor of beliefs, enlightenment and ex-
perience will sometimes obtain great sacrices from citizens; each man,
equally weak, will feel an equal need for his fellows; and knowing that he
can gain their support only on condition of lending them his help, he will
discover without difculty that for him particular interest merges with the
general interest.
The nation taken as a body will be less brilliant, less glorious, less strong
perhaps; but the majority of citizens there will enjoy a more prosperous lot,
and the people will appear untroubled, not because they despair of being
better, but because they know they are well-off.
e
If everything was not good and useful in such an order of things, society
at least would have appropriated everything useful and good that such an
order can present; and men, while abandoning forever the social advantages
that aristocracy can provide, would have takenfromdemocracy all the good
that the latter can offer to them.
d. For nearly ten years I have been thinking a part of the things that I revealed to
you just now. I was in America only to enlighten myself on this point, Tocqueville
mentions to Kergorlay (?) in a letter dated from 1835 (?) (OC, XIII, 1, p. 374). See note
q for p. 12.
A certain number of the constituent ideas of the Democracy already appear in a letter
from Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels, dated Versailles, 21 April 1830 (that is, nearly a year
before the departure for the United States). This letter is reproduced in appendix V.
e. Mass oating in the middle, inert, egoistic, without energy, without patriotism,
sensual, sybaritic, that has only instincts, that lives from day to day, that becomes in
turn the plaything of all the others./
Moderation without virtue, nor courage; moderation that is born from cowardice
of the heart and not from virtue, from exhaustion, from fear, from egoism; tran-
quillity, that does not come about because you are well-off, but because you do not
have the courage and the energy necessary to seek something better. Debasement of
souls.
The passions of old men that end in impotence (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 3637).
i ntroducti on 22
But we, while giving up the social state of our ancestors, while throwing
pell-mell their institutions, their ideas, and their mores behind us, what
have we put in their place?
The prestige of royal power has vanished, without being replaced by the
majesty of laws; today the people scorn authority, but they fear it, and fear
extracts more from them than respect and love formerly yielded.
I notice that we have destroyedthe individual existences that couldstrug-
gle separately against tyranny [{but I do not see that we have created a col-
lective strength to fulll their function}], but I see the government that
alone inherits all the prerogatives wrenched from families, from corpora-
tions or from men; so, to the sometimes oppressive but often conservative
strength of a small number of citizens, the weakness of all has succeeded.
The division of fortunes has reduced the distance that separated the
poor fromthe rich; but by coming closer together, they seemtohave found
new reasons to hate each other, and, eyeing one another with looks full
of terror and envy, they mutually push each other away from power; for
the one as for the other, the idea of rights does not exist, and force appears
to them both as the only reason for the present and the sole guarantee of
the future.
The poor man has kept most of the prejudices of his fathers, without
their beliefs; their ignorance, without their virtues; he has accepted, as the
rule for his actions, the doctrine of interest, without knowing the science
of interest, and his egoism is as wanting in enlightenment as his devotion
formerly was.
Society is tranquil, not because it is conscious of its strengthandits well-
being, but on the contrary because it believes itself weakandfrail; it is afraid
of dying by making an effort. Everyone feels that things are going badly,
but no one has the necessary courage and energy to seek something better;
we have desires, regrets, sorrows and joys that produce nothing visible or
lasting, similar to the passions of old men that end in impotence.
Thus we have abandoned what the old state could present of the good,
without acquiring what the current state would be able to offer of the use-
ful; we have destroyed an aristocratic society, [and we do not think about
organizing on its ruins a moral and tranquil democracy] and, stopping out
i ntroducti on 23
of complacency amid the debris of the former edice, we seem to want to
settle there forever.
f
What is happening in the intellectual world is no less deplorable.
f. There are two states of society that I imagine without difculty, the one that has
been, the other that could be.
We have left the virtues of the old order without taking the ideas of the neworder.
We have thrown pell-mell behind us the vices and the virtues of our ancestors,
their habits, their ideas, their mores, and we have put nothing in their place (YTC,
CVh, 3, pp. 106107).
aristocratic and monarchical system. our fathers.
1. Love of the King.
2. (illegible word) aristocracy.
3. Individual strength against tyranny.
4. Beliefs, devotion, wild virtues, instincts.
5. Idea of duty.
6. Tranquillity of the people that arises from their not seeing anything better.
7. Monarchical immobility.
8. Strength and grandeur of the state which you reach by the constant efforts of
some.
democratic and republican system.
1. Respect for law, idea of rights.
2. Benevolence arising from equality of rights.
3. Association.
4. Interest well understood, enlightenment.
5. Love of liberty.
6. That they know that they are well-off.
7. Orderly and progressive movement of democracy.
8. Id. by the simultaneous efforts of all.
current state.
1. Fear of authority that is scorned.
2. War of the poor and the rich, individual egoism without strength.
3. Equal weakness without collective power {of association}.
4. Prejudices without beliefs, ignorance without virtues, the doctrine of interest
without the science, stupid egoism.
5. Taste for license.
6. Who do not have the courage to change, passions of old men (YTC, CVh, 3,
pp. 11011).
i ntroducti on 24
Hindered in its march or abandoned without support to its disorderly
passions, democracy in France has overturned everything that it met on its
way, weakening what it did not destroy. You did not see it take hold of
society little by little in order to establish its dominion peacefully; it has not
ceased to march amid the disorders and the agitation of battle. Animated
by the heat of the struggle, pushed beyond the natural limits of his opinion
by the opinions and excesses of his adversaries, each person loses sight of
the very object of his pursuits and uses a language that corresponds badly
to his true sentiments and to his secret instincts.
From that results the strange confusion that we are forced to witness.
I search my memory in vain; I nd nothing that deserves to excite more
distress and more pity than what is happening before our eyes;
g
it seems
that today we have broken the natural bond that unites opinions to tastes
and actions to beliefs; the sympathy that has been observed in all times
between the sentiments and the ideas of men seems to be destroyed, and
you would say that all the laws of moral analogy are abolished.
You still meet among us Christians full of zeal, whose religious souls love
to be nourished by the truths of the other life; they are undoubtedly going
to become active in favor of human liberty, source of all moral grandeur.
[<Their hearts will open without difculty to the holy love of country, this
religion of the political world so fruitful in generous devotions.>] Chris-
tianity, which has made all men equal before God, will not be loath to see
all citizens equal before the law. But, by a combination of strange events,
religion is at the moment involved amid the powers that democracy is over-
turning, and it often happens that religion rejects the equality that it loves
and curses liberty as an adversary, while, by taking liberty by the hand,
religion could be able to sanctify its efforts.
Next to these religious men, I nd others whose sights are turnedtoward
the earth rather than toward heaven; partisans of liberty, not only because
g. Herve de Tocqueville:
This expression is too strong. It takes the thought beyond the truth. What happened
at the time of the imprisonment of King Jean and under the last of the Valois was
of a nature to cause more distress than what is happening currently. So I woulddelete
the words more distress inthe sentence andI wouldput only: I ndnothing that deserves
to excite more pity (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 1516).
i ntroducti on 25
they see in it the origin of the most noble virtues, but above all because
they consider it as the source of the greatest advantages, theysincerelydesire
to secure its dominion and to have men taste its benets. I understand that
the latter are going to hasten to call religion to their aid, for they must know
that you cannot establish the reign of liberty without that of mores, nor
found mores without beliefs; but they have seen religion in the ranks of
their adversaries; that is enough for them; some attack religion and the oth-
ers dare not defend it [all lack enlightenment or courage].
Past centuries saw base and venal souls advocate slavery, while indepen-
dent spirits and generous hearts struggled without hope to save human lib-
erty. But today you often meet men naturally noble and proud whose opin-
ions are in direct opposition to their tastes, and who speak in praise of the
servility and baseness that they have never known for themselves. There are
others, in contrast, who speak of liberty as if they could feel what is holy
and great in it and who loudly claim on behalf of humanity rights that they
have always disregarded.
I notice virtuous and peaceful menplaced naturally by their pure morals,
tranquil habits, prosperity and enlightenment at the head of the popula-
tions that surround them. Full of a sincere love of country, they are ready
to make great sacrices for it. Civilization, however, often nds them to be
adversaries; they confuse its abuses with its benets, and in their minds the
idea of evil is indissolubly united with the idea of the new [and they seem
to want to establish a monstrous bond between virtue, misery and igno-
rance so that all three may be struck with the same blow
h
].
Nearby I see other men who, in the name of progress, try hard to ma-
terialize man, wanting tondthe useful without attendingtothe just, want-
h. Herve de Tocqueville: This last thought is not very clear. Would it perhaps seem
a bit gigantesque? It is a kind of irony. But is it very accurate? Who would want to strike
virtue? No one, I think.
E
douard de Tocqueville: This sentence did not fully satisfy me either. I do not see
clearly why the persons in question here would desire that virtue, misery and ignorance
be struck with the same blow (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 16).
i ntroducti on 26
ing to nd knowledge far from beliefs and well-being separate from virtue.
These claim to be champions of modern civilization and they arrogantly
put themselves at its head, usurping a place that is abandoned to them and
that their unworthiness denies to them.
j
So where are we?
Religious men combat liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion;
noble and generous spirits speak in praise of slavery, and base and servile
souls advocate independence; honest and enlightened citizens are enemies
of all progress, while men without patriotism and without mores become
the apostles of civilization and enlightenment!
Have all centuries resembled ours then? Has man always had before his
eyes, as today, a world where nothing is connected, where virtue is without
genius,
k
and genius without honor; where love of order merges with the
taste for tyrants and the holy cult of liberty with scorn for human laws;
where conscience throws only a doubtful light upon human actions; where
nothing any longer seems either forbidden, or permitted, or honest, or
shameful, or true, or false?
Will I think that the Creator made man in order to leave himto struggle
endlessly amid the intellectual miseries that surround us? I cannot believe
it; God is preparing for European societies a future more settled and more
calm; I do not knowhis plans, but I will not cease to believe inthembecause
I cannot fathom them, and I will prefer to doubt my knowledge than his
justice.
There is a country in the world where the great social revolution that I
am speaking about seems more or less to have reached its natural limits; it
came about there in a simple and easy way, or rather it can be said that this
j. In the margin: Thus some wanted virtue and misery; others, well-being without
virtue.
k. Herve de Tocqueville: This whole sentence is very beautiful and I would very
much like to let the word genius go by. But I cannot do so, because it expresses more
than is necessary. It will be asked where is the genius in France and each person will
answer: I do not know.
E
douard de Tocqueville: After long and careful reection, I do not share the opinion
of my father. Genius here means intellectual superiorities and there are always some in
a country (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 17).
i ntroducti on 27
country sees the results of the democratic revolution that is taking place
among us, without having had the revolution itself.
The emigrants who came to settle in America at the beginning of the
XVIIth century in a way freed the principle of democracy from all those
principles that it struggled against within the old societies of Europe, and
they transplanted it alone to the shores of the New World. There it was
able to growin liberty and, moving ahead with mores, todeveloppeacefully
in the laws.
It seems to me beyond doubt that sooner or later, we will arrive, like the
Americans, at a nearly complete equality of conditions. From that, I do
not conclude that one day we are necessarily called to draw from such a
social state the political consequences that the Americans have drawn from
it.
m
I am very far from believing that they have found the only form of
government that democracy may take; but in the two countries the gen-
erating cause of laws and mores is the same; that is enough for us to have
an immense interest in knowing what that generating cause has produced
in each of them.
So it is not only to satisfy a curiosity, legitimate for that matter, that I
examined America; I wanted to nd lessons there from which we would be
m. Herve de Tocqueville:
I would like the author to have added a sentence here to bring out clearly that he does
not mean that the forms of the American government can be adapted to the old
European societies whose conditions are so different. Alexis thinks that democracy
will end by dominating everywhere, while keeping at the head of government an
executive power more or less strong, more or less concentrated. He must, I think,
make that understood very clearly by his reader.
E
I nd a great deal of accuracy in this observation. You must above all inculcate clearly
in the reader the conviction that you have not returned from America with the xed
idea of adapting American institutions to Europe. So it would be good to say that
you foresee the establishment of democracy and of equality of conditions which is
the consequence of democracy, but very often with other forms and a different social
organization; the character, habits and mores of the two countries being eminently
dissimilar (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 18).
The phrase I am very far . . . that democracy may take does not appear in the
manuscript.
i ntroducti on 28
able to prot. Youwouldbe strangely mistakenif youthought that I wanted
to do a panegyric; whoever reads this book will be clearly convinced that
such was not my purpose;
n
nor was my goal to advocate any particular form
of government in general; for I am among those who believe that there is
hardly ever absolute good in laws; I did not even claim to judge if the social
revolution, whose march seems irresistible to me, was advantageous or
harmful to humanity. I have acknowledged this revolution as an accom-
plished or nearly accomplished fact, and, fromamong the peoples whohave
seen it taking place among them, I sought the people among whom it has
reached the most complete and most peaceful development, in order to
discern clearly its natural consequences and, if possible, to see the means
to make it protable to men. I admit that in America I saw more than
America;
o
I sought there an image of democracy itself, its tendencies, its
character, its prejudices, its passions; I wanted to know democracy, if only
to know at least what we must hope or fear from it.
Inthe rst part of this work, I triedtoshowthe directionthat democracy,
delivered in America to its tendencies and abandoned almost without con-
n. That governments have relative goodness. When Montesquieu . . . I admire him.
But when he portrays to me the English constitution as the model of perfection, it seems
to me that, for the rst time, I see the limit of his genius. This constitution today falls
in the same [interrupted text (ed.)] (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 91).
o. Why would I be afraid to say so? While I had my eyes xed on America, I thought
about Europe. I thought about this immense social revolution that is coming to
completion among us while we are still discussing its legitimacy and its rights. I
thought about the irresistible slope where [we (ed.)] are running, who knows, per-
haps toward despotism, perhaps also toward the republic, but denitely toward
democracy. There are men who see in the Revolution of 1789 a pure accident and
who, like the traveler in the fable, sit down waiting for the river to pass. Vain il-
lusion! Our fathers did not see it being born and we will not see it end. Its turbulent
currents will ow for still many generations. More than six hundred years ago the
rst impulse was given.
[In the margin] Some among us consider the present state as a beginning; others,
as an end. It is neither the one nor the other; it is anincident inanimmenserevolution
that began before it and has continued since (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 2223; see a more or
less identical fragment in YTC, CVh, 4, p. 1, and Souvenirs, OC, XII, p. 30).
i ntroducti on 29
straint to its instincts, gave naturally to laws, the course that it imparted to
government, and in general the power that it gained over public affairs. I
wanted to know what good and bad it produced. I sought out what pre-
cautions the Americans have used to direct it and what others they have
omitted, and I undertook to discern the causes that allow it to govern
society.
My goal was to portray in a second part [{third volume}] the inuence
that equality of conditions and the government of democracy exercise in
America on civil society, on habits, ideas and mores;
p
but I begin to feel
less enthusiasm
q
about accomplishing this plan. Before I can complete in
this way the task that I proposed for myself, my work will have become
nearly useless. Someone else will soon show readers the principal features
of the American character and, hiding the seriousness of the descriptions
behind a light veil, will lend truth charms with which I would not be able
to adorn it.
1
p. Although the second part had been published, probably on the recommendation
of Gosselin, the publisher, with the title of the rst part, Tocqueville hadat one moment
wanted to entitle it Inuence of Equality on the Ideas and Feelings of Men (See letter to
Mill of 14 November 1839, Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, 1, p. 326).
q. In the manuscript: . . . but each day I feel less enthusiasm . . .
Herve de Tocqueville: This turn of phrase seems too explicit to me; it removes in
too absolute a way the hope for a 3rd volume.
E
douard de Tocqueville: That is very true; a sentence more or less like this would
be needed: and I give up at least at present.
I also do not like my work will have become useless. We do not know if you are speak-
ing about the future work or this one. At least would become useless would be necessary
(YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 19). The manuscript says: . . . will have become nearly useless.
1. At the time when I published the rst edition of this work, M. Gustave de Beaumont,
my traveling companion in America, was still working on his book entitled Marie, or Slavery
in the United States, which has since appeared. The principal goal of M. de Beaumont was
to bring out and make known the situation of Negroes within Anglo-American society. His
work will throw a bright and new light on the question of slavery, a vital question for the
united republics. I do not know if I am wrong, but it seems to me that the book of M. de
Beaumont, after deeply interesting those who want to gather emotions and nd descriptions
there, will gain a still more solid and more lasting success among readers who, above all, desire
true insights and profound truths.
r
r. For obvious reasons, the beginning of this note was a bit different in the rst edi-
tion: M. Gustave de Beaumont, my traveling companioninAmerica, intends topublish
during the rst days of 1835, a book entitled Marie, or Slavery in the United States. The
principal goal . . .
i ntroducti on 30
I do not knowif I have succeeded in making known what I sawinAmer-
ica, but I am sure that I sincerely desired to do so, and that I never yielded,
except unknowingly, to the need to adapt facts to ideas, instead of sub-
jecting ideas to facts.
When a point could be established with the help of written documents,
I have taken care to turn to original texts and to the most authentic and
most respected works.
2
I have indicated my sources in notes, and everyone
will be able to verify them. When it was a matter of opinions, of political
customs, of observations of mores, I sought to consult the most enlight-
ened men. If something happened to be important or doubtful, I was not
content with one witness, but decided only on the basis of the body of
testimonies.
Here the reader must necessarily take me at my word. I would oftenhave
been able to cite in support of what I advance the authority of names that
are known to him, or that at least are worthy to be; but I have refrained
fromdoing so. The stranger oftenlearns by the hearthof his host important
truths, that the latter wouldperhaps conceal froma friend; withthe stranger
you ease the burdenof a forced silence; youare not afraidof his indiscretion
because he is passing through. Each one of these condences was recorded
by me as soon as received, but they will never emerge frommy manuscripts;
I prefer to detract from the success of my accounts than to add my name
2. Legislative and administrative documents have been provided to me with a kindness
the memory of which will always stir my gratitude. Among the American ofcials who have
thus favored my research, I will cite above all Mr. Edward Livingston, the Secretary of State
(now ambassador plenipotentiary to Paris). During my stay at the Congress, Mr. Livingston
was nice enough to have sent to me most of the documents that I possess relating to the federal
government. Mr. Livingston is one of those rare men whom you like by reading their writings,
whom you admire and honor even before knowing them and to whom you are happy to owe
acknowledgement.
s
s. This note does not appear in the manuscript of the book and no reference to it is
found in the other papers of Tocqueville. At the end of the year 1834, Livingston was
in Paris in a very delicate situation because of the famous affair of the American indem-
nities. It is possible that the note had been written in sympathy with the man whose
name appears several times in the drafts as a source of information. On the affair of the
indemnities and Edward Livingston, see Richard A. McLemore, Franco-American Dip-
lomatic Relations, 18161836 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1941).
i ntroducti on 31
to the list of those travelers who send sorrows and troubles in return for
the generous hospitality that they received.
I know that, despite my care, nothing will be easier than to criticize this
book, if anyone ever thinks to examine it critically.
Those who will want to look closely at it will nd, I think, in the entire
work, a generative thought that links so to speak all its parts. But the di-
versity of the subjects that I had to treat is very great, and whoever will
undertake to contrast an isolated fact to the whole of the facts that I cite,
a detached idea to the whole of the ideas, will succeed without difculty.
So I would like you to grant me the favor of reading me with the same spirit
that presided over my work, and would like you to judge this book by the
general impression that it leaves, as I myself came to a decision, not due to
a particular reason, but due to the mass of reasons.
Nor must it be forgotten that the author who wants to make himself
understood is obliged to push each of his ideas to all of their theoretical
consequences, and often to the limits of what is false and impractical;
t
for
if it is sometimes necessary to step back from the rules of logic in actions,
you cannot do the same in discourses, and man nds it almost as difcult
to be inconsistent in his words as he normally nds it to be consistent in
his actions. [<This, to say in passing, brings out one of the great advantages
of free governments, an advantage about which you scarcely think. Inthese
t. Tocqueville is eager to emphasize that the goal of his book is the description of
models, of ideal types that, by denition, do not perfectly coincide withreality. He prob-
ably borrows the concept fromMontesquieu, even if fromMontesquieu to Tocqueville,
and later to Max Weber, differences are perceptible. The use of the idea of ideal types
(aristocracy and democracy) is of a hermeneutical nature; all attempts to make it a me-
chanical and automatic process would destroy one of the most remarkable aspects of
Tocquevilles theory. For the latter, the good political regime is characterized by an eter-
nal tension between the two types, idea that points at the very same time to Pascal and
to the romanticismof the period. (See in this regard Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie
positive, lesson 47; Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu et Rousseau, pre curseurs de la sociologie,
Paris: Marcel Rivie`re, 1953, ch. III; Melvin Richter, Comparative Political Analysis in
Montesquieu and Tocqueville, Comparative Politics 1, no. 2 (1969): 12960; Pierre Birn-
baum, Sociologie de Tocqueville, Paris: PUF, 1970, pp. 2939; Gianfranco Poggi, Images
of Society, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 282). Cf. note m of p. 694 of
volume III.
i ntroducti on 32
governments, it is necessary to talk a great deal. The need to talk forces men
of State to reason, and fromspeeches a bit of logic is introducedintopublic
affairs.>]
I nish by pointing out myself what a great number of readers
u
will
consider as the capital defect of the work.
v
This book follows in no ones
train exactly; by writing it I did not mean either to serve or to combat any
party; I set about to see, not differently, but farther than parties;
w
andwhile
they are concerned with the next day, I wanted to think about the future.
x
u. In the manuscript: . . . what most readers . . .
Herve de Tocqueville: You must not put most readers. That would shock them be-
cause you seem to doubt their intelligence too much. So put some readers in place of most
readers.
E
douard de Tocqueville (?): Very right (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 1920).

v. In the margin: Why I have not put many gures and statistics. Change so rap-
idly. Insignicant.
w. I believe what I say, only advantage that I have over most of my contemporaries.
Nothing more common than to talk of liberty, but nearly everyone wants something
more or less than liberty. But I really love it and want it (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 97).
I am sure that my subject does not lack grandeur. If I fail it will be my fault and not
the fault of my subject. In any case, I will have pointed out the path (YTC, CVh, 3,
p. 98).
x. To point out if possible to men what to do to escape tyranny and debasement
while becoming democratic. Such is, I think, the general idea by which my book can be
summarized and which will appear on every page of the one I amwriting at this moment.
To work in this direction is, in my eyes, a holy occupation and one for which you must
spare neither your money, nor your time, nor your life, writes Tocqueville toKergorlay.
26 December 1836 (Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, pp. 43132).
33
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1
Exterior Conguration of
North America
North America divided into two vast regions, the one descending
toward the pole, the other toward the equator.Valley of the
Mississippi.Traces found there of global upheavals.Coast of
the Atlantic Ocean where the English colonies were founded.
Different appearance that South America and North America
presented at the time of discovery.Forests of North America.
Prairies.Wandering tribes of natives.Their outward
appearance, their mores, their languages.Traces of an
unknown people.
North America, in its exterior conguration, presents general features that
are easy to distinguish at rst glance.
A kind of methodical order presided over the separation of land and
waterways, mountains and valleys. A simple and majestic arrangement is
revealed even in the midst of the confusion of objects and among the ex-
treme variety of scenes.
Two vast regions divide North America almost equally.*
One is limited, in the North, by the Arctic pole; in the East, in the
West, by the two great oceans. Then it advances southward and forms a
triangle whose sides, irregularly drawn, nally meet below the Great Lakes
of Canada.
* See the map placed at the end of the volume. [See volume II, following p. 687. This
map was deleted after the rst editions. (ed.)]
exteri or confi gurati on 34
The second begins where the rst nishes and extends over the entire
remainder of the continent.
The one inclines slightly toward the pole; the other, toward the equator.
The lands included in the rst region descend toward the north in a
slope so slight that they could almost be said to form a plateau. In the
interior of this immense atland, there are neither high mountains nor
deep valleys.
There the waterways wind as if haphazardly. The rivers mingle, join
together, part, meet again, vanish in a thousand swamps, are lost contin-
ually within a watery labyrinth that they have created, and only after in-
numerable twists and turns do they nally reach the polar seas. The Great
Lakes, where this rst region terminates, are not, like most of the lakes
of the Old World, steeply embanked by hills and rocks; their shores are
at and rise only a few feet above sea level. So each of them forms some-
thing like a vast basin lled to the brim: the slightest changes in the struc-
ture of the globe would hurl their waters toward either the pole or the
tropical sea.
The second region is more uneven and better prepared to become the
permanent dwelling place of man; two long mountain ranges divide it
along its length: one, named the Allegheny Mountains, follows the shores
of the Atlantic Ocean; the other parallels the Pacic Ocean.
The space enclosed betweenthese two mountainranges includes 228,843
square leagues.
1
So its area is about six times greater than that of France.
2
Yet this vast territory forms only a single valley that descends from the
rounded summits of the Allegheny Mountains, and, without meeting any
obstacles, climbs again to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
At the bottom of the valley ows an immense river. Fromall directions,
waterways descending from the mountains are seen to rush toward it.
1. 1,341,649 miles. See Darbys Viewof the United States, p. 469. I have convertedmiles
into leagues of 2,000 toises.
a
a. A toise equals 1,949 millimeters.
2. France measures 35,181 square leagues.
Formerly the French called it the Saint Louis River, in memory of the
absent homeland; and the Indians, in their pompous language, named it
the Father of Waters, or the Mississippi.
The Mississippi has its source at the boundaries of the two great regions
that I spoke about above, near the top of the plateau that separates them.
Near the source of the Mississippi another river
3
arises that empties into
the polar seas. Sometimes even the Mississippi seems uncertain of the path
it should take; several times it retraces its steps, and only after slowing its
pace amidst lakes and marshes does it nally settle upon its route and set
its course slowly toward the south.
Sometimes calm within the clayey bed that nature has dug for it, some-
times swollen by storms, the Mississippi waters more than a thousand
leagues along its way.
4
Six hundred leagues
5
above its mouth, the river already has an average
depth of 15 feet, and vessels of 300 tons go up for a distance of nearly two
hundred leagues.
Fifty-seven large navigable rivers owinto it. The tributaries of the Mis-
sissippi include a river with a length of 1,300 leagues,
6
one of 900,
7
one of
600,
8
one of 500,
9
four of 200,
10
without considering aninnumerable mul-
titude of streams that rush from all directions to become lost within it.
The valley watered by the Mississippi seems to have been created for it
alone; there the river dispenses good and evil at will, and seems like a god.
Near the river, nature displays an inexhaustible fecundity. As you move
away fromits banks, plant energies fail; the soil thins; everythinglanguishes
3. The Red River.
4. 2,500 miles, 1,032 leagues. See Description of the United States, by Warden, vol. I,
p. 166.
5. 1,364 miles, 563 leagues. See id., vol. I, p. 169.
6. The Missouri. See id., vol. I, p. 132 (1,278 leagues).
7. The Arkansas. See id., vol. I, p. 188 (897 leagues).
8. The Red River. See id., vol. I, p. 190 (598 leagues).
9. The Ohio. See id., vol. I, p. 192 (490 leagues).
10. The Illinois, the Saint Peter [the Minnesota (ed.)], the Saint Francis, the Des Moines.
In the measurements above, I have taken as a measure the legal mile (statute mile) and
the postal league of 2,000 toises.
or dies. Nowhere have the great convulsions of the earth left clearer traces
than in the Mississippi Valley. The whole appearance of the country attests
to the action of water. Its sterility, like its abundance, is the work of water.
At the bottom of the valley, the waves of the early ocean built up huge
layers of vegetable matter and then wore them down over time. On the
right bank of the river you nd immense plains, made smooth like the
surface of a eld worked over by the farmworkers roller. In contrast,
the closer you get to the mountains, the more and more broken and sterile
the ground becomes; the soil is pierced, so to speak, in a thousand places;
and here and there primitive rocks appear, like the bones of a skeletonafter
time has consumed the surrounding muscles and esh. Granite sand and
stones of irregular size cover the surface of the earth; the shoots of a few
plants growwith great difculty among these obstacles; it seems like a fertile
eld covered by the ruins of some vast edice. By analyzing these stones
and this sand, it is in fact easy to notice a perfect analogy between their
materials and those that form the dry and broken peaks of the Rocky
Mountains. After pushing the earth headlong into the bottomof the valley,
the water almost certainly ended up carrying along a portion of the rocks
themselves; it rolled themalong the nearest slopes; and, after grindingthem
against each other, it scattered these fragments, torn from the summits, at
the base of the mountains.
b A
All in all, the Mississippi Valley is the most magnicent dwelling place
ever prepared by God for human habitation;
c
and yet, it can be said that it
is still only a vast wilderness.
d
On the eastern slope of the Allegheny Mountains, between the foot of
the mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, stretches a long band of rocks and
b. In the margin: For more exactitude in this picture consult and cite Volney.
Examination of trees, nature of lands, shape of the country.
c. The general population doubles in 22 years, that of the Mississippi Valley in 10
years. 3.25% for the whole, 5% in the valley. Darby, p. 446, calculates that in 1865 the
preponderance will be in the Mississippi Valley (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 63).
d. Here Tocqueville tries to convey the sense of the English word wilderness, for
which Beaumont had proposed sauvagerie. For him, throughout his book, de sert des-
ignates the virgin forest, unexplored and not cultivated. See Roderick Nash, Wilderness
and the American Mind, New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1973, pp. 17.
sand that the sea seems to have forgotten as it withdrew. This territory is,
on average, only 48 leagues wide,
11
but it is 390 leagues long.
12
The soil, in
this part of the American continent, lends itself to cultivation only with
difculty. Vegetation there is sparse and uniform.
On this inhospitable coast the efforts of human industry were rst con-
centrated. On this strip of arid land were born and grew the English col-
onies, which would one day become the United States of America. Still
today the center of power is found there, while behind, almost in secret,
gather the true elements of a great people to whom the future of the con-
tinent no doubt belongs.
When Europeans landed on the shores of the Antilles and later on the
coasts of South America, they thought themselves transported into the fa-
bled regions celebrated by poets.
e
The sea sparkled with the ery glow of
the tropics. For the rst time, the extraordinary transparency of the waters
exposed the depth of the ocean bottom to the eyes of the navigator.
13
Here
and there small perfumed islands appeared, seeming to oat like baskets of
owers on the calm surface of the Ocean. In these enchanted places, all
that came into view seemed prepared for the needs of man or planned for
his pleasures. Most of the trees were laden with nourishing fruits, andthose
least useful to man charmed his vision with the vividness and variety of
their colors. In a forest of fragrant lemon trees, of wild gs, of myrtle oaks,
of acacias and of oleanders, all intertwined by owering creepers, a mul-
titude of birds unknown in Europe ashed their wings of crimson and
11. 100 miles.
12. About 900 miles.
e. Herve de Tocqueville: Alexis thinks correctly that the descriptionof SouthAmer-
ica must be shortened a great deal, perhaps even removed entirely. 1. Because he was not
there. 2. Because South America is entirely outside of his subject (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 45).
13. The waters are so transparent in the Caribbean Sea, says Malte-Brun, vol. V, p. 726,
that corals and sh are distinguishable at a depth of 60 fathoms. The ship seems to glide on
air; a kind of vertigo grips the traveler whose view plunges beyond the crystalline uid into
the midst of underground gardens where shellsh and gilded sh shimmer among the clumps
of fucus and the thickets of marine algae.
azure and mingled the chorus of their songs with the harmonies of a nature
full of movement and life.
f B
Death was hidden under this brilliant cloak; but it was not noticed at
all at that time. Moreover, in the air of these regions, there reigned I do not
know what enervating inuence, attaching man to the present and ren-
dering him unmindful of the future.
North America presented another appearance; everything there was
grave, serious, solemn. You could have said that it had been created to be-
come the domain of the mind, as the other was to be the dwelling place of
the senses.
A turbulent and foggy ocean enveloped its coasts; granite rocks or sandy
shores girdled it; the forests that covered its banks displayed a somber and
melancholy foliage; hardly anything other than pine, larch, holmoak, wild
olive and laurel grew there.
After penetrating this rst barrier, people entered into the shade of the
central forest; there the largest trees that grow in the two hemispheres were
found mixed together. The plane tree, catalpa, sugar maple, and Virginia
poplar [eastern poplar]
[
*
]
intertwined their branches with those of the oak,
the beech and the linden.
As in forests subjected to the dominion of man, death struck here with-
out respite; but no one took responsibility for clearing the remains that
death had caused. So they piled up; time could not reduce them to dust
f. In the manuscript: The objects that caught the eye in these enchanted places ap-
peared destined to satisfy needs or to give rise to pleasures. Most of the trees produced
fruits; and all of them, owers. (The wild g, the lemon tree, the myrtle oak and the
oleander grew in dense groves. The acacia arose from the middle of the beach and scat-
tered its fragrant remains over the shores.
The bignonias, the granadillas [passion fruit], the acacias with large pods, fty species
of creepers were thrown as) species of garlands thrown from tree to tree or branch to
branch, repeating the image of the works of man in the middle of the inimitable charms
of nature. A multitude of birds unknown to Europe made these owery arches and
domes of greenery sparkle with their many colors. There you heard resounding fromall
directions the sound of a thousand living creatures.
Death was . . .
The published version is in Gustave de Beaumonts hand (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 42
43). See note e supra, in which Tocquevilles desire to shorten this description is clear.
[*]. See Tableau des Etats-Unis, by Volney, p. 9.
quickly enough to prepare new places. But in the very midst of these re-
mains, the work of reproductionwent onwithout ceasing. Climbingplants
and weeds of all types grew up through the obstacles; they crept along the
fallen tree trunks, wormed into their dust, lifted up and broke the withered
bark that still covered them, and cleared a path for their young offshoots.
Thus, in a way, death there came to the aid of life. They were face to face,
and seemed to want to mix and mingle their work.
g
These forests concealed a profound darkness. Athousand small streams,
not yet channeled by human effort, maintained an unending humidity.
Scarcely any owers, wild fruits, or any birds were seen.
Only the fall of a tree toppledby age, the cataract of a river, thebellowing
of the buffalo and the whistling of the winds disturbed the silence of
nature.
h
East of the great river, the woods partially disappeared; in their place
spread limitless prairies. Had nature, in its innite variety, denied the seeds
of trees to these fertile elds, or had the forest that once covered thembeen
destroyed long ago by the hand of man? This is something that neither
tradition nor scientic research has been able to discover.
These immense wilderness areas were not entirely without the presence
of man however; for centuries, a few small tribes wandered in the shade of
the forest or across the prairie lands. Fromthe mouthof the Saint Lawrence
to the delta of the Mississippi, fromthe Atlantic to the Pacic Ocean, these
savages shared certain similarities that testied to their commonorigin. But
they also differed from all known races.
14
They were neither white like the
g. Cf. Journey to Lake Oneida, pp. 12951302, in the fourth volume.
h. In this paragraph as in the preceding one, Tocqueville took into account the sty-
listic modications suggested by Beaumont (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 44).
14. Some similarities have since been discovered between the physical structure, the lan-
guage and the habits of the Indians of North America and those of the Tungus, Manchus,
Mongols, Tartars and other nomadic tribes of Asia. The latter occupy a position near the
Bering Strait, which allows the supposition that, at a period long ago, they were able to come
to people the empty American continent. But science has not yet succeeded in clarifying this
Europeans, nor yellow like most of the Asians, nor black like the Negroes.
Their skin was reddish; their hair, long and lustrous; their lips, thin; and
their cheekbones, very prominent. The languages spoken by the savage
tribes of America differed from each other in words, but all were bound by
the same grammatical rules. On several points, these rules deviated from
those that, until then, had seemed to govern the formation of human
language.
The idiom of the Americans seemed to result from new combinations;
it indicated on the part of its inventors an exercise of intelligence of which
the Indians of today seem little capable.
C
The social state of these peoples also differed in several respects from
what was seeninthe OldWorld: it couldhave beensaidthat theymultiplied
freely in their wilderness, without contact with more civilized races. So
among them, you found none of those doubtful and incoherent notions
of good and evil, none of that profound corruption which is usually com-
bined with ignorance and crudeness of mores among civilized nations who
have descended into barbarism again. The Indian owed nothing to anyone
except himself. His virtues, his vices, his prejudices were his own work; he
grew up in the wild independence of his own nature.
The coarseness of common men, in civilized countries, comes not only
from their ignorance and poverty, but also from their daily contact, as ig-
norant and poor men, with those who are enlightened and rich.
The sight of their misfortune and weakness, which is in daily contrast
to the good fortune and power of certain of their fellows, excites anger and
fear simultaneously in their heart; the feeling of their inferiority and de-
pendence irritates and humiliates them. This inner state of soul is repro-
duced in their mores, as well as in their language; at the very same time,
they are insolent and servile.
point. On this question, see Malte-Brun, vol. V; the works of Humboldt; Fischer, Conjectures
sur lorigine des Americains; Adair, History of the American Indians.
The truth of this is easily proved by observation. The people are more
coarse in aristocratic countries than anywhere else, and in opulent cities
more than in the countryside.
j
In these places, where men so rich and powerful are found, the weak and
poor feel as though overwhelmed by their low condition; nding no point
by which they can regain equality, they completely lose hope in themselves
and allow themselves to fall below the dignity of human nature.
This unfortunate effect of the contrast in conditions is not found in
savage life; the Indians, at the same time that they are all ignorant andpoor,
are all equal and free.
k
At the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the native of NorthAmerica
was still unaware of the value of wealth and showed himself indifferent to
the material well-being that civilized man obtains from it. He exhibited no
coarseness however; on the contrary, an habitual reserve and a kind of aris-
tocratic courtesy governed the way he behaved.
In peace, mild and hospitable, in war, merciless even beyond the known
limits of human ferocity, the Indian risked death by starvation in order to
aid a stranger who knocked at night on the door of his hut and, with his
own hands, tore apart the quivering limbs of his prisoner. The most famous
republics of antiquity never admired rmer courage, prouder souls, a more
uncompromising love of independence than what was then hidden in the
j. Herve de Tocqueville: This entire paragraph is well thought out and strikingly
true. But isnt it a little long? You could perhaps delete the section from the words cited
above [The truth of this, etc. . . . (ed.)] to these: This unfortunate effect. It seems to me
that the expression of the thought would gain in precision.
E
douard de Tocqueville: This thought is excellent. I do not know what must be

deleted or cut, but it seems to me that you must revise and rework this entire passage,
perfect in thought and uneven and not very rened in style (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 46).
Nonetheless, Tocqueville did not modify the passage, identical in the manuscript and
in the published version.
k. Note in the margin: Idea of K[ergorlay (ed.)]. What makes the lower classes
coarse is contact with the upper classes and the feeling of their low condition. All the
savages are equal and free.
wild forests of the New World.
15
The Europeans made only a small im-
pression when landing on the shores of North America; their presence gave
rise to neither envy nor fear. What hold could they have over such men?
The Indian knew how to live without needs, how to suffer without com-
plaint, and how to die singing.
16
Like all the other members of the great
human family, moreover, these savages believed in the existence of a better
world, and under different names worshipped God, creator of the universe.
Their notions about the great intellectual truths were generally simple and
philosophical.
D
15. Among the Iroquois, attacked by superior forces, says President Jefferson (Notes sur la
Virginie, p. 148), one saw old men disdain to ee or to outlive the destruction of their country
and to brave death, like the old Romans during the sack of Rome by the Gauls. Further along,
p. 150: There never was an instance known, he says, of an Indian begging his life when in
the power of his enemies; on the contrary, that he courts death by every possible insult and
provocation.
[Documents on the Indians./
See the work entitled Historical Collections of the Indians in NewEngland, by Daniel
Gookin, printed in 1792. It is found in the historical collections of Massachusetts, vol. 1, p. 141
[226 (ed.)].
Gookin says that there are people who believe that the Indians are the descendents of the
ten tribes of Israel, which explains the state of barbarism and darkness in which they are
found. But this opinion [ . . . (ed.) . . . ], says Gookin, doth not greatly obtain. [But (ed.)]
surely it is not impossible and perhaps not so improbable as many learned men think [p. 145
(ed.)].
See as well a work entitled Key into the Language of the Indians of New England by
Roger Williams, printed in London in 1643. It is found reprinted in the collection of the
historical society of Massachusetts, vol. 3, p. 203 [238 (ed.)].]
16. See Histoire de la Louisiane, by Lepage-Dupratz; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nou-
velle France; Letters of R. Hecwelder [Heckewelder (ed.)], Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, vol. I [the Voyages du baron de la Hontan; General History of
Virginia, by Captain John Smith; id., by Beverley; History of Carolina, by John Lawson;
and History of New York, by William Smith];
m
Jefferson, Notes sur la Virginie, pp. 135
90. What Jefferson says carries an especially great weight, because of the personal merit of the
writer, of his particular position and of the positive and exact century in which he wrote.
[{Perhaps put in a note here the most striking features of this portrait and the discourse
of Logan.}]
m. These works, included only in certain editions, do not appear at this place in the
manuscript. They are, however, cited elsewhere.
Yet, no matter how primitive the people whose character we are describ-
ing may appear, it cannot be doubted that they had been preceded in the
same regions by another people, more civilized and advanced in all ways.
An obscure tradition, but one widespread among most of the Indian
tribes along the Atlantic coast, teaches us that long ago the dwelling place
of these very bands was located west of the Mississippi. Mounds raised by
human hands are still found every day along the banks of the Ohio and
throughout the central valley. We are told that when you dig into the center
of these monuments, you hardly ever fail to nd human bones, strange
instruments, weapons, implements of all sorts that are made of a metal or
that recall uses unknown to the present races.
n
The Indians of today can give no information at all about the history
of this unknown people. Nor did those who lived three hundred years ago,
at the time of the discovery of America, say anything from which even an
hypothesis could be inferred. Traditions, those perishable and constantly
recurring memorials of the primitive world, furnish no light whatsoever.
It cannot be doubted, however, that thousands of people similar to us lived
there. When did they come there; what was their origin, their destiny, their
history? When and how did they perish? No one could say.
Strange thing! Some peoples have so completely disappeared from the
earth that even the memory of their name has been blotted out; their lan-
guages are lost; their glory has faded like a sound without an echo. But I
do not know if there is even one who has not at least left one tomb to mark
its passage. Thus, of all the works of man, the most durable is still the one
that best recounts his nothingness and his woes!
Although the vast country just described was inhabited by numerous
tribes of natives, you could justly say that, at the time of discovery, it was
still only a wilderness. The Indians occupied, but did not possess it. Man
appropriates the soil by agriculture, and the rst inhabitants of North
America lived by the hunt. Their implacable prejudices, their untamedpas-
n. Cf. Conversation with Mr. Houston, December 31, 1831 (Notebook E, YTC, BIIa,
and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 264). This fragment also recalls the journal sans date of the
Voyage en Ame rique of Chateaubriand (Oeuvres romanesques et voyages, Paris: Pleiade,
1969, I, pp. 71013).
sions, their vices, and perhaps even more their wild virtues delivered them
to an inevitable destruction. The ruin of these people began the day Eu-
ropeans landed on their shores; it has continued constantly since then; to-
day it reaches completion. Providence, while placing them in the midst of
the riches of the New World, seemed to have given them only a short usu-
fruct; in a way, these people were there only waiting. These coasts, so well
prepared for commerce and industry; these rivers, so deep; this inexhaust-
ible Mississippi Valley; this entire continent, appeared at that time as the
still empty cradle of a great nation.
o
That is where civilized men had to try to build society on new foun-
dations. Applying, for the rst time, theories until then unknown or con-
sidered inapplicable, civilized men were going to present a spectacle for
which past history had not prepared the world.
p
o. Cf. A Fortnight in the Wilderness (appendix II, especially p. 1354 of the fourth
volume).
p. In this place are found remarks on the Governor, reproduced in note b of pp. 140
42.
45
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2
Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance
for the Future of the Anglo-Americans
a
Usefulness of knowing the point of departure of peoples in
order to understand their social state and their laws.
America is the only country where the point of departure of
a great people could clearly be seen.How all the men who
came to populate English America were similar.How
they differed.Remark applicable to all the Europeans
who came to settle on the shores of the New World.
Colonization of Virginia.Id. of New England.
Original character of the rst inhabitants of New
England.Their arrival.Their rst laws.Social
contract.Penal code taken from the law of Moses.
Religious fervor.Republican spirit.Intimate union of
the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty.
A man is newly born; his rst years pass obscurely amid the pleasures or
occupations of childhood. He grows up; manhood begins; nally the doors
a. Point of departure./
Inuence of the point of departure on the future of society.
Homogeneous ideas, mores, needs, passions of the founders of American society.
Inuence of the extent of the territory, of the nature of the country, of its geo-
graphic situation, of its ports, of its population, immigration from Europe, and in
the West, from America itself.
The point of departure gave birth to the society as it is organized today, primitive
fact after which come the consequences, formulated as principles (YTC, CVh, 1,
p. 23).
of the poi nt of departure 46
of the world open to receive him; he enters into contact with his fellow
men. Then, for the rst time, you study him and think that the seeds of
the vices and virtues of his mature years can be seen developing in him.
b
If I am not mistaken, that is a great error.
c
Go back to the beginning; examine the child even in the arms of his
mother; see the exterior world reected for the rst time in the still dark
mirror of his intellect; contemplate the rst examples that catch his eye;
listen to the rst words that awaken his slumbering powers of thought;
nally, witness the rst struggles that he has to sustain. And only then will
you understand the origin of the prejudices, the habits and the passions
that are going to dominate his life. The whole man is there, so to speak, in
the infant swaddled in his cradle.
Something similar happens among nations. Peoples always feel the ef-
fects of their origin. The circumstances that accompanied their birth and
were useful to their development inuence all the rest of their course.
If it were possible for us to go back to the elements of societies and
examine the rst memorials of their history, I am certain that we would be
able to discover there the rst cause of the prejudices, habits, dominant
passions, of all that ultimately composes what is called the national char-
acter. [{There, no doubt, we would nd the key to more than one historical
enigma}]. There we would happen to nd the explanation for customs that
today seem contrary to the reigning mores; for laws that seem opposed to
recognized principles; for incoherent opinions found here and there in so-
ciety like fragments of broken chains that are sometimes seen still hanging
b. In the margin: It must be very much remembered that this chapter still requires
research on the laws of New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. See especially the
Town Ofcer [Isaac Goodwin, Town Ofcer: or Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Du-
ties of Municipal Ofcers, second edition, Worcester: Dorr and Howland, 1829. (ed.)].
c. In the margin:
Point common to all parts of the Union.
South.
West.
North. New England, sun, which is the source of all the rays that heat, light or at
least color everything else.
from the vaults of an old edice and that no longer hold up anything. Thus
would be explained the destiny of certain peoples who seem to be dragged
by anunknownforce towardanendunknowneventothemselves. But until
now facts have been lacking for such a study. The spirit of analysis came
to nations only as they grew older, and when, at last, they thought to con-
template their birth, time had already enveloped it in a mist; ignorance and
pride had surrounded it with fables that hid the truth.
[Human remains are said to volatilize after death. Separated from each
other, these human molecules are incorporated with other living sub-
stances. Each of us can therefore consider himself as the summary of many
other individuals of the same species who have lived before him. An anal-
ogous phenomenonoccurs againinthe history of the formationof peoples.
Moreover, since the time when the various human races began to succeed
one another and to graft together, what people of the Old World is not
today composed of the remnants of older nations? It is true that, in place
of peoples who have ceased to exist, we have seen new peoples arise who
have borrowed something from each of their precursors. From this one, its
tongue; from that one, its laws; from another, its mores; from a fourth,
certain opinions and prejudices. Because these elements already exist, only
their combination is new. Amid all this debris of societies that slides hap-
hazardly over the earth, there is no one who couldnowrecapture anoriginal
type, or who would dare to trace how time has subjected an original type
to changes by combining it with strange elements. Science, in such a lab-
yrinth, provides only incomplete conclusions and vague hypotheses.]
America is the only country where we have been able to witness the nat-
ural and tranquil development of a society and where it has been possible
to clarify the inuence that the point of departure exercised on the future
of States.
d
d. Tocqueville seems not to have been satised with the draft of this paragraph. At
the time of the correction of proofs in October 1834, he writes expressly to Beaumont
to ask him what he thinks of it (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, p. 144).
Two corrections concerning the style were certainly suggestedby Beaumont (the original
version said discern the inuence and spoke only of tranquil development ). In relation to
the same subject, Tocqueville notes in a rough draft:
At the time when European peoples descended upon the shores of the
New World, the features of their national character were already well xed;
each of them had a distinct physiognomy. And since they had already
reached the level of civilization that leads men to self-study, they have
handed down to us a faithful picture of their opinions, mores, and laws.
The men of the fteenth century are almost as well-known to us as those
of our own. So America shows us in full light what the ignorance and the
barbarism of the rst ages concealed from our view.
Close enough to the era of the founding of the American societies to
know their elements in detail, far enough from that time to be able already
to judge what these seeds produced, men in our time seem destined to see
further into human events than their predecessors. Providence has put
within our reach a light that our fathers lackedand has allowedus todiscern
the rst causes of the destiny of nations that the obscurity of the past hid
from them.
When, after attentively studying the history of America, you carefully
When the earth was given to man by the Creator, it was young, fertile, inexhaustible,
but man was weak and ignorant. When he had learned to make use of the treasures
that the earth enclosed in its bosom, he already covered the entire surface of the land,
and he had to ght to acquire the right to have a refuge and to rest there. Then he
was civilized, but the earth, like him, was old . . . Such was not the (illegible word)
destiny of the men who in the fourteenth [sic ] century found America. For themthis
land was like a new creation of a new universe suddenly emerging from the sea, all
shining with life, youth and spring-like beauty. This new creation was being offered
not to the isolated, ignorant and barbaric man of the rst ages, but to men already
(illegible word) with all the secrets of nature and art, united among themselves and
entrusted with a civilization of fty centuries (The copyist indicates that this page is
not in the handwriting of Alexis de Tocqueville. YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 5051).
In America Tocqueville found the history of the establishment of a people that Rous-
seau lacked:
In general, the most instructive part of the annals of peoples, which is the history of
their establishment, is what we lack the most. Experience teaches us every day which
causes give birth to the revolutions of empires, but because peoples are no longer
being formed, we have hardly anything except conjectures to explain how they were
formed (Du contrat social, uvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, I, book IV, chapter
IV, p. 444).
examine its political andsocial state, youfeel deeply convincedof this truth:
there is not an opinion, not a habit, not a law, I could say not an event, that
the point of departure does not easily explain. So those who read this book
will nd in the present chapter the germ of what must follow and the key
to nearly the whole book.
e
The emigrants who came at different times to occupy the territory that
the American Union covers today differed from each other in many ways;
their aim was not the same, and they governed themselves according to
various principles.
These men shared common features, however, and they all found them-
selves in an analogous situation.
The bond of language is perhaps the strongest and most durable that
can unite men. All the emigrants spoke the same language; they were all
children of the same people. They were born in a country troubled, for
centuries, by the struggle of parties, and where the factions had been
obliged, one by one, to place themselves under the protection of the laws.
Their political education was shaped in this rude school, and you sawmore
notions of rights, more principles of true liberty spread among them than
among most of the peoples of Europe. At the time of the rst migrations,
town government, this fertile seed of free institutions, had already entered
e. Circumstances without number, theory to make.
Point of departure. The most important of all in my eyes, because it is the one that
has had the most inuence on mores; I regard mores as by far the most powerful of
the three general causes. Equality. Democracy introduced in germ. Comfort, result
of the small population and the immense resources of the country.
Emigration, new resources equal to new needs.
The absence of neighbors, no war, no permanent army.
New country, no large cities, no manufacturing districts, no capital. Men are not
pressed one against the other; popular movements less electric and less destructive./
It is a land that presents itself with all the strength and fertility of youth.
The discovery of America is like the complement of creation.
America.
In this state it is presented to man, not to the ignorant and barbaric man of the
rst centuries of the world, but to man already educated by an experience of 6,000
years (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 2021).
deeply into English habits; and with it, the dogma of the sovereignty of
the people was introduced even within the Tudor monarchy.
People were then in the middle of the religious quarrels that troubled
the Christian world. England had thrown itself into this new course with
a sort of fury. The character of the inhabitants, which had always been
grave and thoughtful, had become austere and argumentative. These in-
tellectual struggles had greatly increased education and had stimulated
deeper cultivation of the mind. While people were occupied with talk of
religion, mores became more pure. All these general features of the nation
were found more or less in the physiognomy of those of its sons who had
come to seek a new future on the opposite shores of the ocean.
Moreover, a remark, which we will have the occasion to return to later,
is applicable not only to the English but also to the French, to the Spanish,
and to all the Europeans who came successively to settle the shores of the
New World. All the new European colonies contained, if not the devel-
opment, at least the germ, of a complete democracy. Two causes led to this
result. [Among the emigrants, unlike in the old societies of Europe, neither
conquerors nor conquered were seen.] It canbe said ingeneral, that, at their
departure from the mother country, the emigrants had no idea whatsoever
of any kind of superiority of some over others. It is hardly the happy and
the powerful who go into exile, and poverty as well as misfortune are the
best guarantees of equality that are known among men. It happened, how-
ever, that on several occasions great lords went to America following po-
litical or religious quarrels. Laws were made in order to establisha hierarchy
of ranks there, but it was soon noticed that the American soil absolutely
rejected territorial aristocracy. To clear that intractable land nothing less
was required than the constant and interested efforts of the proprietor him-
self. The ground prepared, it was found that production was not great
enough to enrich both a master and a tenant at the same time. So the land
was naturally divided into small estates that the proprietor cultivatedalone.
f
Now, aristocracy clings to the land; it is attached to the soil and relies upon
the soil for support. It is not privileges alone that establish it; it is not birth
f. In the margin: Put the details of this idea further along at democracy.
that constitutes it; it is landed property handed down by inheritance. A
nationmay exhibit immense fortunes andgreat misery; but if thesefortunes
are not territorial, you see poor and rich in its bosom; truly speaking, there
is no aristocracy.
g
So all the Englishcolonies, at the time of their birth, shareda great family
resemblance. All, from their beginning, seemed destined to present the de-
velopment of liberty, not the aristocratic liberty of their mother country,
but the bourgeois and democratic liberty of which the history of the world
did not yet offer a complete model.
h
Noticeable in the midst of this general coloration, however, were some
very strong nuances that must be pointed out.
In the great Anglo-American family, two principal branches can be dis-
tinguished, one in the South, one in the North; until now, they have grown
up without being completely merged.
Virginia received the rst English colony. The emigrants arrived there
in 1607. At this time, Europe was still singularly preoccupied with the idea
that mines of gold and silver constituted the wealth of peoples. This de-
structive idea has done more to impoverish the European nations that em-
braced it and, in America, has destroyed more men than war and all bad
laws put together. So it was gold seekers who were sent to Virginia,
1
men
without resources and without proper behavior, whose restless and turbu-
lent spirit troubled the early years of the colony
2
and made its progress
g. To the side, with a bracket that includes the last three sentences of the paragraph:
{Hasnt this been said a hundred times?}
h. In the margin: The great point of view of America is the development of
democracy
1. The charter granted by the English crown in 1609 included, among others, the clause
that the colonists would pay one-fth of the production of gold and silver mines to the crown.
See Life of Washington, by Marshall, vol. I, pp. 1866.
2. A great portion of the new settlers, says Stith (History of Virginia ) [pp. 16768 (ed.)],
were dissolute young men of good families, shipped off by their relatives to save them froman
ignominious fate. Former servants, fraudulent bankrupts, the debauched, and other people
of this type, more appropriate for pillage and destruction than for consolidating the settlement,
formed the rest. Seditious leaders easily led this troop into all sorts of extravagances andexcesses.
See, relative to the history of Virginia, the following works:
uncertain. Afterwards came the manufacturers and farmers, a more moral
and quieter breed, but one that in hardly any ways rose above the level of
the lower classes of England.
3
No noble thought, no plans that were not
material, directed the foundation of these new establishments. The colony
was scarcely established before slavery was introduced there;
4
that was the
capital fact that would exercise an immense inuence on the character, the
laws and the entire future of the South.
Slavery, as we will explain later, dishonors work; into society, it intro-
duces idleness, along with ignorance and pride, poverty and luxury. It en-
ervates the forces of the mind and puts human activity to sleep. The inu-
ence of slavery, combined with the English character, explains the mores
and the social state [{the character}] of the South.
j
[Even the outward appearance of the settlers assumed the imprint of
the habits of their life. The Virginian race is recognizable everywhere by
its height and by the air of nobility and command that prevails among its
features.]
In the North, completely opposite nuances were painted on this same
English background. Allow me some details here.
In the English colonies of the North, better known as the NewEngland
states,
5
were combined the two or three principal ideas that today formthe
foundations of the social theory of the United States.
The principles of New England rst spread into neighboring states;
History of Virginia from the First Settlements to the Year 1624, by Smith.
History of Virginia, by William Stith.
History of Virginia from the Earliest Period, by Beverley, translated into French in
1707.
3. It is only later that a certain number of rich English proprietors came to settle in the
colony.
4. Slavery was introduced about the year 1620 by a Dutch vessel that disembarked twenty
Negroes on the banks of the James River. See Chalmer.
j. In the travel notes and early drafts, as well as in the rst drafts of the manuscript,
Tocquevilles thinking tends to be orientedtowarda North-Southdivisionof the United
States. This understanding is modied further, particularly following the observations
made by his family. Compare this note with note h of p. 77 and p. 602.
5. The states of New England are those situated east of the Hudson; today they number
six: 1. Connecticut; 2. Rhode Island; 3. Massachusetts; 4. Vermont; 5. New Hampshire;
6. Maine.
then, one by one, they reached the most distant states and nished, if I can
express myself in this way, by penetrating the entire confederation. Now
they exercise their inuence beyond its limits, over the entire American
world. The civilization of New England has been like those res kindled
on the hilltops that, after spreading warmth around them, light the farthest
bounds of the horizon with their brightness.
The founding of New England offered a newspectacle; everythingthere
was singular and original.
[You would search the entire history of humanity in vain for an event
that presented some analogy to what we are describing.
k
]
Nearly all colonies have had as rst inhabitants either men without edu-
cation and without resources, who were pushed out of the country where
they had been born by poverty and misconduct, or avid speculators and
business agents. There are some colonies that cannot claim even such an
origin. Santo Domingo was founded by pirates; and today the English
courts of justice are in charge of peopling Australia.
m
The emigrants who came to settle the shores of New England all be-
longed to the comfortable classes of the mother country. Their gathering
on American soil presented, fromthe beginning, the singular phenomenon
of a society in which there were neither great lords,
n
nor lower classes, nei-
ther poor, nor rich, so to speak. [I have already said that, among the Eu-
ropeans who went to America, conditions were in general largely equal, but
it can be said that, in a way, these emigrants {the Puritans} carried democ-
racy even within democracy.] In proportion, there was a greater amount of
k. In the margin: Their birth has no more precedents in world history than the
social and political state that we see among them today.
m. To the side: Union of liberty and of religion, of independence of individuals
and of austerity of mores.
John Quincy Adams had conversed with Tocqueville about the differences between
the colonization of New England and of the states in the West and had also mentioned
the importance of the point of departure, of the way in which the United States was
born (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 152).
n. Herve de Tocqueville: It has been said above that great lords had come to settle
in America. Farther along, in chapter 4, it will be said that they founded the colony of
Maryland. Beware of apparent contradictions. They will be avoided by developing the
thought. This is often necessary. The author is too brief, sometimes (YTC, CIIIb, 2,
p. 104).
learning spread among these men than within any European nation of the
present day. All, perhaps without a single exception, had received a rather
advanced education; and several among themhad made themselves known
in Europe by their talents and knowledge. The other colonies had been
founded by adventurers without families; the emigrants of New England
brought with them admirable elements of order and morality; they went
to the wilderness accompanied by their wives and children. But what
distinguished them, above all, fromall the others was the very aimof their
enterprise. It was not necessity that forced themto abandontheir country;
there they left a social position worthy of regret and a secure livelihood.
Nor did they come to the New World in order to improve their situation
or to increase their wealth; they tore themselves fromthe comforts of their
homeland to obey a purely intellectual need. By exposing themselves to
the inevitable hardships of exile, they wanted to assure the triumph of an
idea.
The emigrants, or, as they so accurately called themselves, the pilgrims,
belonged to that English sect given the name Puritan because of the aus-
terity of its principles. Puritanism was not only a religious doctrine, but
also at several points it was mingled with the most absolute democratic and
republican theories. From that had come its most dangerous adversaries.
The Puritans, persecuted by the government of the mother country and,
in the strictness of their principles, offended by the daily course of the
society in which they lived, sought a land so barbarous and so abandoned
by the world that they would still be allowed to live there as they wished
and to pray to God in liberty.
Afewcitations will showthe spirit of these pious adventurers better than
anything that we could add.
Nathaniel Morton, historian of the rst years of New England, begins
in this way:
6
6. New Englands Memorial, p. 13 [1314 (ed.)], Boston, 1826. Also see the History of
Hutchinson,
o
vol. II [I (ed.)], p. 440. [Also see the work entitled An Account of the Church
of Christ in Plymouth. Collection of the Historical Society of Massachusetts, vol. IV, p. 107
[10741 (ed.)].]
o. Probably the appendix, A Summary of the Affairs of the Colony of New-Plymouth,
I have always believed, he says, that it was a sacred duty for us, whose
fathers received such numerous and memorable demonstrations of divine
goodness in the settlement of this colony, to perpetuate the memory of
them in writing. What we have seen and what we have been told by our
fathers, we must make known to our children, so that the generations to
come learn to praise the Lord [(Psalms LXXVIII, 3, 4) (ed.)]; so that the
lineage of Abraham, his servant, and the sons of Jacob, his chosen, keep
forever the memory of the miraculous works of God (Ps. CV, 5, 6). [ . . .
(ed.)
p
. . . ] They must know how the Lord brought his vine into the wil-
fromthe First Settlement until the incorporation with Massachusets-Bay &c. inone Province,
pp. 44981.
p. Tocqueville cites texts more or less freely as his times allowed. Deletions of words
or sentences are not indicated. The editor has carefully corrected most of these citations;
in certain cases judged to be of little importance, he has simply noted the deletions made
by the author.
The rst fragment from Morton says:
I have for some length of time looked upon it as a duty incumbent, especially on the
immediate successors of those that have had so large experience of those many mem-
orable and signal demonstrations of Gods goodness, viz. The rst beginners of this
plantation in New England, to commit to writing his gracious dispensations on that
behalf; having so many inducements thereunto, not only otherwise, but soplentifully
in the sacred Scriptures, that so, what we have seen, and what our fathers have told
us, we may not hide fromour children, shewing to the generations tocome the praises
of the Lord. Psal. 78.3, 4. That especially the seed of Abraham his servant, and the
children of Jacob his chosen, may remember his marvelous works (Psal. 105. 5, 6)
[ . . . (ed.) . . . ] how that God brought a vine into this wilderness; that he cast out the
heathen and planted it; and he also made room for it, and he caused it to take deep
root, and it lled the land; so that it hath sent forth its boughs to the sea, and its
branches to the river. Psal. 80, 8, 9. And not only so, but also that He hath guided
his people by his strength to his holy habitation, and planted them in the mountain
of his inheritance (Exod. 15. 13.) [ . . . (ed.) . . . ], God may have the glory of all, unto
whom it is most due; so also some rays of glory may reach the names of those blessed
saints that were the main instruments of the beginning of this happy enterprise.
The second text from Morton reads:
And the time being come that they must depart, [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] a town called Delft
Haven, [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] which had been their resting place [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] but they
knewthat they were pilgrims and strangers here below, andlookednot muchonthese
things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, where God hath
prepared for them a city, Heb. Xi, 16, and therein quieted their spirits.
When they came to the place, they found the ship and all things ready; and such
derness; how he planted it and removed the pagans; how he prepared a
place for it, put its roots down deeply, and then allowed it to spread and
cover the earth (Ps. LXXX, 15, 13 [Psalms LXXX, 8, 9 (ed.)]; and not only
that, but also how he led his people toward his holy tabernacle, and es-
tablished them on the mountain of his heritage (Exod. XV, 13). [ . . . (ed.)
. . . ] These facts must be known, so that [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] God receives the
honor he is due, and so that some rays of his glory can fall onthe venerable
names of the saints who served as his instruments.
It is impossible to read this beginning without being imbued, despite
yourself, with a religious and solemn impression; you seem to inhale an air
of antiquity and a kind of biblical perfume.
The conviction that animates the writer elevates his language. In your
eyes, as in his, it no longer concerns a small band of adventurers going to
seek their fortune across the seas; it is the seed of a great people that God
comes to set down with his own hands in a predestined land.
The author continues and depicts the departure of the rst emigrants
in this way:
7
Thus, he says, they left this city (Delft-Haven) [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] which
had been for thema place of rest; but they were calm; they knewthat they
were pilgrims and strangers here below. They were not attached to the
of their friends as could not come with them, followed after them [ . . . (ed.) . . . ].
One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment,
and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next
day [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly
doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful morning, to hear what sighs and sobs,
and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy
speeches pierced each others heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers, that stood on
the Keys as spectators, couldnot refrain fromtears. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] But the tide (which
stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loth to depart, their reverend
pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks com-
mended them with most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then
with mutual embraces, and many tears, they took their leave one of another, which
proved to be the last leave to many of them.
7. New Englands Memorial, p. 23 [24 (ed.)].
things of the earth, but raised their eyes toward heaven, their dear home-
land, where God had prepared for them his holy city. [Heb. XI, 16 (ed.)]
[ . . . (ed.) . . . ] They nally arrived at the port where the vessel awaited
them. A great number of friends who could not leave with them had at
least wanted to followthemto this port. The night went by without sleep;
it passed with outpourings of friendship, with pious speeches, with ex-
pressions full of a true Christian tenderness. The next day they went
aboard; their friends still wanted to accompany them; thenyouhearddeep
sighs, you saw tears running from all eyes, you heard long hugs and kisses
and fervent prayers that made strangers themselves feel moved. [ . . . (ed.)
. . . ] Once the signal for departure was given, they fell on their knees, and
their pastor, raising eyes full of tears toward heaven, commended themto
the mercy of the Lord. Finally they took leave of each other, and pro-
nounced this farewell that, for many among them, was to be the last.
The emigrants numbered about one hundred and fty, men as well as
women and children. Their goal was to found a colony on the banks of the
Hudson, but, after wandering a long time on the ocean, they were nally
forced to land on the arid coasts of New England, at the place where the
town of Plymouth is found today. The rock where the pilgrims landed is
still displayed.
8
Says the historian I have already quoted:
But before going further, let us consider for an instant the present con-
dition of these poor people and let us marvel at the goodness of God who
saved them.
9
They had now crossed the vast ocean, they were reaching the end of
their journey, but they sawno friends to receive them, no dwelling to offer
them shelter [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]; it was the middle of winter; and those who
knowour climate knowhowharsh the winters are andwhat furious storms
then devastate our coasts. In this season, it is difcult to traverse known
8. This rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I saw fragments of
it carefully preserved in several cities of the Union. Doesnt this show quite clearly that the
power and greatness of man is entirely in his soul? Here is a rock touched for a moment by
the feet of a few wretched individuals, and this rock becomes famous; it attracts the attention
of a great people; the remains are venerated; far away, tiny pieces are shared. What has become
of the threshold of so many palaces? Who worries about it?
9. New Englands Memorial, p. 35 [36 (ed.)].
places, even worse to settle on new shores. Around them appeared only a
hideous and desolate wilderness, full of animals and savage men whose
level of ferocity and number they did not know. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] The earth
was frozen; the land was covered with woods and thickets. Everything had
a barbarous appearance. Behind them, they saw only the immense ocean
that separated them from the civilized world. To nd a little peace and
hope, they could only turn their faces toward heaven.
q
You must not believe that the piety of the Puritans was only speculative,
or that it proved to be unfamiliar with the course of human concerns. Pu-
ritanism, as I said above, was almost as much a political theory as a religious
doctrine. So, scarcely are these emigrants disembarked on this inhospitable
coast that Nathaniel Morton has just described than their rst concern is
to organize themselves as a society. They immediately enact an agreement
[<It is the social contract in proper form that Rousseau dreamed of in the
following century>] which* reads:
10
q. The original text says:
But before we pass on, let the reader, with me, make a pause, and seriously consider
this poor peoples present condition, the more to be raised up to admirationof Gods
goodness towards them in their preservation: For being now passed the vast ocean,
and a sea of troubles before in their preparation, they had now no friends to welcome
them, no inns to entertain or refresh them [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] and, for the season it was
winter, and they that know the winters of the country, know them to be sharp and
violent, subject to cruel and erce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much
more to search unknown coasts. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and des-
olate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? And what multitudes of them
there were, they then knew not; [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] all things stand in appearance with
a weather-beaten face, and the whole country full of woods and thickets, represented
a wild and savage hue; if they looked behind them, there was the mighty oceanwhich
they had passed, and was now a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil
parts of the world.
* New Englands Memorial, p. 37 [38. Note omitted in certain editions. (ed.)].
10. The emigrants who created the state of Rhode Island in 1638, those who established
New Haven in 1637, the rst inhabitants of Connecticut in 1639, and the founders of Prov-
idence in 1640, also began by drawing up a social contract that was submitted for approval
to all those affected, Pitkins History, [vol I, (ed.)] pp. 42 [43 (ed.)] and 47.
We, whose names follow,
r
who, for the glory of God, the development
of the Christian faith and the honor of our country,
s
have undertaken to
establish the rst colony on these distant shores,
t
we covenant by these
presents, by mutual and solemn consent, and before God, to form our-
selves into a body of political society, for the purpose of governing our-
selves and working for the accomplishment of our plans; and by virtue of
this contract, we covenant to promulgate laws, acts, ordinances, and to
establish, as needed, magistrates to whom we promise submission and
obedience.
This took place in 1620. From that period on, emigration did not stop.
Each year, the religious and political passions that tore apart the British
Empire throughout the reign of Charles I drove new swarms of sectarians
to the coasts of America. In England, the center of Puritanismcontinued
to be located in the middle classes;
u
most of the emigrants came from
within the middle classes. The population of New England increased rap-
idly; and, while in the mother country men were still classed despotically
according to the hierarchy of ranks, the colony increasingly presented the
novel spectacle of a thoroughly homogeneous society. Democracy, such as
antiquity had not dared dream it, burst forth fully grown and fully armed
from the midst of the old feudal society.
Content to remove the seeds of troubles and the elements of new rev-
r. The quoted fragment reads:
We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord,
King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, De-
fender of the faith, &c. Having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement
of the Christian faith, and the honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant
the rst colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents solemnly and
mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves
together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and fur-
therance of the ends aforesaid: And by virtue hereof, do enact, constitute and frame
such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and ofcers, from time to
time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the col-
ony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
s. Omitted: our king and our country . . .
t. The text says: in the northern parts of Virginia.
u. Tocqueville uses the words class and rank indiscriminately.
olutions, the English government watched this heavy emigration with-
out distress. It even encouraged it with all of its power and seemed hardly
at all concerned with the fate of those who came to American soil seeking
a refuge from the harshness of its laws. You could have said that the En-
glish government saw New England as a region delivered to the dreams
of the imagination that should be abandoned to the free experiments of
innovators.
The English colonies, and this was one of the principal causes of their
prosperity, always enjoyed more internal liberty and more political inde-
pendence thanthe colonies of other peoples; but nowhere was this principle
of liberty more completely applied than in the states of New England.
It was then generally agreed that the lands of the New World belonged
to the European nation that had rst discovered them.
In this way, nearly the entire littoral of North America became an En-
glish possession toward the end of the sixteenth century. The means used
by the British government to populate these newdomains were of different
kinds. In certain cases, the king subjected a portion of the New World to
a governor of his choosing, charged with administering the country in his
name and under his direct orders;
11
this is the colonial system adopted by
the rest of Europe. At other times, he grantedownershipof certainportions
of the country to a man or to a company.
12
All the civil and political powers
were then concentrated in the hands of one or several individuals who,
under the inspection and control of the crown, sold the land and governed
the inhabitants. Finally, a third systemconsisted of giving a certainnumber
of emigrants the right to form a political society, under the patronage of
the mother country, and to govern themselves in everything not contrary
to its laws.
This method of colonization, so favorable to liberty, was put into prac-
tice only in New England.
13
11. This was the case for the state of New York.
12. Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey were in this case. See Pitkins
History, vol. I, pp. 1331.
13. See in the work entitled: Historical Collection of State Papers and other Authentic
Documents Intended as Materials for an History of the United States of America, by
Ebenezer Hazard, printed at Philadelphia, MDCCXCII, a very large number of precious
As early as 1628,
14
a charter of this nature was granted by Charles I to
the emigrants who came to found the colony of Massachusetts.
But, in general, charters were not granted to the colonies of New En-
gland until long after their existence had become an accomplished fact.
Plymouth, Providence, New Haven, the states of Connecticut and Rhode
Island
15
were founded without the support and, in a sense, without the
knowledge of the mother country. The new inhabitants, without denying
the supremacy of the home country, did not draw on it as the source of
powers; they incorporated themselves. And it was only thirty or forty years
after, under Charles II, that a royal charter legalized their existence.
So it is often difcult, while surveying the rst historical and legislative
memorials of New England, to see the link connecting the emigrants to
the country of their ancestors. At every moment you can see them per-
forming some act of sovereignty; they name their magistrates, make peace
and war, establish regulations for public order, provide laws for themselves
as if they were answerable only to God alone
16
[later, when the colonies
began to become powerful, the mother country raised the claim of de-
fending and directing them].
Nothing is more singular and, at the very same time, more instructive
documents valuable in their contents and authenticity, relating to the early years of the col-
onies, among others, the different charters that were granted by the English crown, as well as
the rst acts of their governments.
Also see the analysis of all these charters that Mr. Story, Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States, makes in the introduction of his Commentary on the Constitution of
the United States.
All these documents demonstrate that the principles of representative government and the
external forms of political liberty were introduced in all the colonies almost from their birth.
These principles were developed more fully in the North than in the South, but they existed
everywhere.
14. See Pitkins History, vol. I, p. 35 [36 (ed.)]. See The History of the Colony of
Massachusetts, by Hutchinson, vol. I, p. 9.
15. See id., pp. 4247 [vol. I (ed.)].
16. The inhabitants of Massachusetts, in the establishment of criminal and civil laws for
proceedings and for the courts of justice, moved away from the customs followed in England:
in1650 the name of the King still did not appear at the head of judicial orders. See Hutchinson,
vol. I, p. 452.
than the legislation of this period;
v
there, above all, is found the key to the
great social enigma that the United States presents to the world of today.
Among these memorials, we will particularly single out, as one of the
most characteristic, the law code that the small state of Connecticut gave
itself in 1650.
17
The legislators of Connecticut
18
rst take charge of the penal laws; and
to write them, they conceive the strange idea of drawing upon sacred texts:
Whoever will worship a God other than the Lord, they begin by say-
ing, will be put to death.
Ten or twelve clauses of the same nature, borrowed word for word from
Deuteronomy, Exodus and Leviticus, follow.
Blasphemy, witchcraft, adultery,
19
rape are punished with death; the
same punishment is imposed on agrant insult by a son toward his parents.
Inthis way, the legislationof a primitive andhalf-civilizedpeople was trans-
ferred to a society in which minds were enlightened and mores were mild;
so the death penalty was never so common in the laws, nor so rarely applied
to the guilty.
Above all, in this body of penal laws, the legislators are preoccupiedwith
upholding moral order and standards of good behavior; they constantly
enter, therefore, into the realm of conscience. There is hardly any sin that
v. Ask Niles about the authenticity of the blue laws (YTC, CVb, p. 33).
The laws of the rst colonists of Connecticut were called blue laws. Understood in
the broadest sense, the term designates the regulations for the strict observance of the
Sabbath, which formerly existed throughout the American territory and which partially
survive today.
Nathaniel Niles was the secretary of the American delegation in Paris from 1830 to
1833.
17. Code of 1650, p. 28 (Hartford, 1830).
18. See as well in the History of Hutchinson, vol. I, pp. 43556, the analysis of the penal
code adopted in 1648 by the colony of Massachusetts; this code is drafted on principles anal-
ogous to that of Connecticut.
19. Adultery was likewise punished by death under the law of Massachusetts, and Hutch-
inson, vol. I, p. 441, says that several persons in fact suffered death for this crime; he cites on
this subject a curious anecdote which relates to the year 1663. A married woman had relations
with a young man; she became a widow and married him; several years passed; the public
nally began to suspect the intimacy that had formerly existed between the spouses; they were
charged under the criminal law; they were imprisoned, and both were nearly condemned to
death.
they do not manage to submit to the censure of the magistrate. The reader
has been able to observe how harshly the laws punished adultery and rape.
Mere irtation between unmarried people is severely suppressed. On the
guilty, the judge has the right to inict one of three punishments: a ne, a
ogging or a wedding.
20
And if the records of the old courts of NewHaven
are to be believed, proceedings of this nature were not rare; you nd, dated
May 1, 1660, a verdict with a ne and reprimand against a young woman
accused of having uttered a few indiscreet words and of allowing herself
to be kissed.
21
The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. Laziness
and drunkenness are severely punished.
22
Innkeepers cannot provide more
than a certain quantity of wine to each consumer; a ne or a ogging cracks
down on a simple lie when it might be harmful.
23
In other places, the leg-
islator, completely forgetting the great principles of religious liberty that
he claimed in Europe, forces, by threat of nes, attendance at divine
24
wor-
ship.
w
And he goes so far as to impose severe penalties,
25
and often death,
20. Code of 1650, p. 48.
It seems that sometimes judges gave these various penalties cumulatively, as you see in a
decision rendered in 1643 (p. 114, New Haven Antiquities ), which declares that Marguerite
Bedfort [Bedforde (ed.)], convicted of having committed reprehensible acts, will suffer the
penalty of whipping and will be enjoined to marry Nicolas Jemmings [ Jennings (ed.)], her
accomplice.
21. New Haven Antiquities, p. 104 [106 (ed.)]. Also see in the History of Hutchinson,
vol. I, p. 435 [436 (ed.)], several judgments as extraordinary as the former.
22. Code of 1650, pp. 50, 57.
23. Id., p. 64.
24. Id., p. 44.
w. Cf. Beaumont, Marie, I, p. 53637, and Tocquevilles account (appendix III).
25. This was not particular to Connecticut. See among others the law of December 13,
1644, in Massachusetts, which sentences Anabaptists to banishment. Historical Collection
of State Papers, vol. I, p. 538. Also see the law published on October 14, 1656, against the
Quakers: Whereas, says the law, an accursed sect of heretics called Quakers has recently arisen
. . . Clauses follow which impose a very heavy ne on captains of vessels that bring Quakers
into the country. The Quakers who succeed in entering will be ogged and put into prison to
work. Those who defend their opinions will rst be ned, then sentenced to prison and driven
from the province. Same collection, vol. I, p. 630.
[If the Quakers banished in this way were found once again in the state, they were, once
identied, condemned to death. See same collection, vol. II, p. 456, the sentencing to death of
on Christians who want to worship God according to a creeddifferent from
his own.
26
Finally, the fervor for regulations, which possesses him, some-
times leads him to deal with concerns most unworthy of him. Thus, in the
same code, there is a law that prohibits the use of tobacco.
27
It must not
be forgotten, moreover, that these bizarre or tyrannical laws were not at all
imposed; that they were voted by the free participation of all those con-
cerned; and that the mores were still more austere and puritanical than the
laws. In the year 1649, a solemn association was formed in Boston whose
purpose was to prevent the worldly luxury of long hair.
28 E
Such errors undoubtedly shame the human spirit; they testify to the in-
rmity of our nature, which, incapable of rmly grasping the true and the
just, is most often reduced to choosing only between two excesses.
Alongside this penal legislation, so strongly stamped by narrowsectarian
spirit and by all the religious passions that were excited by persecution and
were still seething deep within souls, a body of political laws is found. The
two are, in a way, bound together. But those political laws, written two
hundred years ago, still seem very far ahead of the spirit of liberty of our
age.
The general principles on which modern constitutions rest, which most
of the Europeans of the seventeenth century scarcely understood and
which at that time triumphed incompletely in Great Britain, were all rec-
ognized and laid down by the laws of New England. There, the interven-
tion of the people in public affairs, the free vote of taxes, the responsibility
two men and a woman convicted of this crime (October 18, 1649). The woman, named Mary
Dyer, received mercy, but had to attend the execution of her two accomplices with the cord
around her neck.
Also see in the same collection, p. 573, a law of Plymouth: Whereas, says this law, the
Quakers sometimes obtain places to stay, [and (ed.)] horses by means of which they move
rapidly from place to place and escape the searches of the legal authorities, poisoning the people
with their accursed doctrines . . . [this law (ed.)] orders that the horses seized in possession of
the Quakers will be conscated.
See in general at the end of this volume the acts of the government of New Plymouth
against the Quakers.]
26. In the penal law of Massachusetts, the Catholic priest who sets foot in the colony after
being expelled is punished by death.
27. Code of 1650, p. 96.
28. New Englands Memorial, p. 316.
of the agents of power, individual liberty, and jury trial were established
without argument and in fact.
There, these generative principles receive an application and develop-
ments that not a single European nation has yet dared to give them.
In Connecticut, from the beginning, the electoral body was comprised
of all citizens, and that is understood without difculty.
29
Among this
emerging people, a nearly perfect equality of means and, even more, of
minds then reigned.
30
In Connecticut, at that time, all the agents of executive power were
elected, even the Governor of the state.
31
[In Connecticut in 1650, all] The citizens older than sixteen years of
age were obliged to bear arms; they formed a national militia that named
its ofcers and had to be ready at all times to march in defense of the
country.
32
In the laws of Connecticut, as in all those of New England, you see
arising and developing the town independence that still today constitutes
the principle and life of American liberty.
Among most European nations, political existence began in the higher
ranks of society; little by little and always incompletely, it was transmitted
to the various parts of the social body.
In America, in contrast, you can say that the town was organized before
the county; the county, before the state; the state, before the Union.
In NewEngland, as early as 1650, the town is completely anddenitively
formed. Gathered around this town individuality and strongly attached to
it are interests, passions, duties, and rights. Within the town, a real, active,
29. Constitution of 1638, p. 17 [12 (ed.)].
30. As early as 1641, the General Assembly of Rhode Island unanimously declared that the
state government consisted of a democracy and that power rested with the body of freemen
who alone had the right to make laws and to oversee their execution. Pitkins History, p. 47
[46 (ed.)].
31. Constitution of 1638, p. 12.
32. Code of 1650, p. 70.
totally democratic and republican political life reigns. The colonies still rec-
ognize the supremacy of the mother country; the monarchy is the law of
the state, but in the town, the republic is already fully alive.
The town names its magistrates of all sorts; it taxes itself; it apportions
and levies the tax on itself.
33
In the New England town, the law of repre-
sentation is not accepted. As in Athens, matters that touch the interests of
all are treated in the public square and within the general assembly of
citizens.
When you attentively examine the laws that were promulgated during
these early years of the American republics, youare struck by the legislators
knowledge of government and advanced theories.
It is evident that he had a more elevated and complete idea of the duties
of society toward its members than European legislators of that time and
that he imposed obligations on society that society still eluded elsewhere.
In the states of New England, from the start, the fate of the poor was as-
sured;
34
strict measures were taken for maintaining roads; and ofcers were
named to oversee them.
35
Towns had public records in which the results of
general deliberations, deaths, marriages, births were inscribed;
36
clerks were
appointed to maintain these records.
37
Some ofcers were charged withthe
administration of unclaimed inheritances, others, with overseeing the
boundaries of legacies. The principal function of several was to maintain
public peace in the town.
38
[The legislation of this era announces in the mass of the people and
in its leaders a civilization already well advanced; you feel that those who
make the laws and those who submit to them all belong to a race of intel-
ligent and enlightened men who have never been completely preoccupied
by the material concerns of life.]
33. Code of 1650, p. 80.
34. Code of 1650, p. 78.
35. Id., p. 49.
36. See the History of Hutchinson, vol. I, p. 455.
37. Code of 1650, p. 86.
38. Id., p. 40.
The lawgets into a thousand different details to provide for andtosatisfy
a host of social needs of which, today in France, we still have only a vague
awareness. [{Nothing then in our old Europe could give the idea of a social
organization as extensive and as perfect.}]
But it is in the prescriptions relating to public education that, from the
very beginning, you see fully revealed the original character of American
civilization.
Whereas, says the law, Satan, enemy of humanity, nds inthe ignorance
of men his most powerful weapons, and it is important that the knowledge
brought by our fathers does not remain buried in their grave;whereas the
education of children is one of the rst interests of the State, with the help
of the Lord . . .
39
Then follow the provisions that create schools in all the
towns and oblige the inhabitants, under penalty of heavy nes, totaxthem-
selves to support them. Secondary schools are established in the same way
in the most populated districts. Municipal magistrates must watchthat par-
ents send their children to school; they have the right to levy nes against
those who refuse to do so. Andif resistance continues, societythendisplaces
the family, lays hold of the child and removes from the fathers the rights
that nature had given to them, but that they knew so poorly how to use.
40
The reader will undoubtedly have noticed the preamble of these ordi-
nances: in America, it is religion that leads to enlightenment; it is the ob-
servance of divine laws that brings men to liberty.
When, after thus casting a rapid glance over American society in 1650,
you examine the state of Europe and particularly that of the continent
39. Id., p. 90 [91 (ed.)].
x
x. The code of 1650 says:
It being one chiefe project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keepe men fromthe knowl-
edge of the scriptures, as in former times, keeping them in an unknowne tongue, so
in these latter times, by perswading them from the use of tongues, so that at least,
the true sence and meaning of the originall might bee clouded with false glosses of
saint seeming deceivers; and that learning may not bee buried in the grave of our
forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our indeavors . . . (pp.
9091).
40. Code of 1650, p. 38.
around this same era, you are lled by a profound astonishment. On the
European continent, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, absolute
monarchy triumphed on all sides over the ruins of the oligarchic andfeudal
liberty of the Middle Ages. [<The topof the social edice alreadyreceived
the lights of modern civilization, while the base still remained in the dark-
ness of ignorance [v. of the Middle Ages].>] In the heart of this brilliant
and literary Europe, the idea of rights had perhaps never been more com-
pletely misunderstood; never had peoples experienced less of political life;
never had minds been less preoccupied by the notions of true liberty. And
at that time these same principles, unknown or scorned by European na-
tions, were proclaimed in the wilderness of the New World and became
the future creed [{political catechism}] of a great people. The boldest the-
ories of the human mind were reduced to practice in this society so humble
in appearance, a society in which probably not a single statesman would
then have deigned to be involved; there, the imagination of man, aban-
doned to its natural originality, improvised legislation without precedent.
Within this obscure democracy that had still not brought forth either gen-
erals, or philosophers, or great writers, a mancould stand upinthe presence
of a free people and give, to the acclamation of all, this beautiful denition
of liberty:
41
Let us not be mistaken about what we must understand by our inde-
pendence.
y
There is in fact a kind of corrupt liberty, the use of which is
common to animals as it is to man, and which consists of doing whatever
41. Mathers Magnalia Christi Americana, vol. II, p. 13 [vol. I, p. 113 (ed.)].
This speech was given by Winthrop; he was accused of having committed arbitrary acts
as a magistrate; after delivering the speech of which I have just given a fragment, he was
acquitted with applause, and from that time on he was always re-elected Governor of the
State. See Marshall, vol. I, p. 166 [167 (ed.)].
y. The original says:
Nor would I have you to mistake in the Point of your own liberty. There is a liberty
of corrupt nature, which is affected by men and beasts, to do what they list; and this
liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this liberty, Sumus
Omnes Deteriores; tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances
of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty, which is the
proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good;
for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives.
you please. This liberty is the enemy of all authority; it suffers all rules
with impatience; with it, we become inferior to ourselves; it is the enemy
of truth and peace; and God believed that he had to rise up against it! But
there is a civil and moral liberty that nds its strength in union, and that
the mission of power itself is to protect; it is the liberty to do without fear
all that is just and good. This holy liberty we must defend at all cost, and
if necessary, at risk of our life.
I have already said enough to reveal Anglo-American civilization in its
true light. It is the product (and this point of departure must always be
kept in mind) of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere are often
at odds. But in America, these two have been successfully blended, ina way,
and marvelously combined. I mean the spirit of religion and the spirit of
liberty.
The founders of New England were at the very same time ardent sec-
tarians and impassioned innovators. Restrained by the tightest bonds of
certain religious beliefs, they were free of all political prejudices. [{Religion
led them to enlightenment; the observance of divine laws brought themto
liberty.}]
Fromthat, two diverse but not opposite tendencies resultedwhose traces
can easily be found everywhere, in the mores as in the laws.
z
Some men sacrice their friends, family, and native land for a religious
opinion; you could believe that they are absorbed in the pursuit of the
intellectual good that they have come to purchase at such a high price. You
see them, however, seeking material riches and moral enjoyments with an
almost equal fervor, heaven in the other world, and well-being and liberty
in this one.
In their hands, political principles, laws, and human institutions seem
to be malleable things that can be shaped and combined at will.
The barriers that imprisoned the society where they were bornfall before
z. Variant in the margin: Extreme obedience to established rules in the moral
world, extreme independence, restless spirit of innovation in the political world, these
are the two diverse and seemingly opposing tendencies that are revealed at each step in
the course of American society.
them; old opinions that for centuries ruled the world vanish; an almost
limitless course and a eld without horizons open. The humanmindrushes
toward them, sweeping over them in all directions. But having arrived at
the limits of the political world, it stops by itself. In fear and trembling, it
sets aside the use of its most formidable abilities, abjures doubt, renounces
the need to innovate, refrains even from lifting the veil of the sanctuary,
and bows respectfully before truths that it accepts without discussion.
[After having rested awhile in the midst of the certainties of the moral
order, man begins to move again and reenters the political arena with more
fervor.]
a
In the moral world, therefore, everything is classied, coordinated, fore-
seen, decided in advance. In the political world, everything is agitated, con-
tested, uncertain; in the one, passive though voluntary obedience; in the
other, independence, scorn for experience and jealousy of all authority.
Far from harming each other, these two tendencies, apparently so op-
posed, move in harmony and seem to offer mutual support.
Religion sees in civil liberty a noble exercise of the faculties of man; in
the political world, a eld offered by the Creator to the efforts of intelli-
gence. Free and powerful in its sphere, satised with the place reserved for
it, religion knows that its dominion is that much better establishedbecause
it rules only by its own strength and dominates hearts without other
support.
Liberty sees in religion the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the
cradle of its early years, the divine source of its rights. Liberty considers
religion as the safeguard of mores, mores as the guarantee of laws and the
pledge of its own duration.
F
[Both, taking man by the hand, guide his steps and show his way in the
wilderness.]
a. In the margin: There will be many things to say about that. The American po-
litical world rests upon foundations different from ours, but just as settled and certain.
So you cannot say that there is more uncertainty and vagueness there than in the moral
world.
Reasons for Some Singularities That the Laws and
Customs
b
of the Anglo-Americans Present
Some remnants of aristocratic institutions within the most
complete democracy.Why?What is of Puritan origin and of
English origin must be carefully distinguished.
[From whatever side I envisage the laws and mores of the Anglo-
Americans, I rediscover striking traces of their origin {of the point of de-
parture}. The reading of historians, the study of legislation, the sight of
things all involuntarily lead my steps back toward the point of departure.
{But I despair of making the whole extent of my idea understood by those
who have not seen English America with their own eyes.}]
The reader must not drawfromwhat precedes consequences that are too
general and absolute. The social condition, the religion and the mores of
the rst emigrants undoubtedly exercised an immense inuence over the
destiny of their new country. It was not up to them, however, to establish
a society whose point of departure was found only within themselves; no
one can entirely free himself from the past. With ideas and customs that
were their own, they mingled, either voluntarily or unknowingly, other cus-
toms and ideas that they got from their education or from the national
traditions of their country.
So when you want to know and judge the Anglo-Americans of today,
what is of Puritanoriginor of Englishoriginmust be carefullydistinguished.
You often encounter in the United States laws and customs that contrast
with all that surrounds them. These laws seem written in a spirit opposed
to the dominant spirit of American legislation; these mores seem contrary
to the social state as a whole. If the English colonies had been founded in
a century of darkness, or if their origin was already lost in the shadows of
time, the problem would be insoluble.
b. In an early draft, the title said: . . . that the social state of the anglo-
americans presents. This section was initially at the beginning of chapter III
(YTC, CVh, 3, p. 82).
I will cite a single example to make my thought understood.
The civil and criminal legislation of the Americans knows only two
means of action: prison or bail.
c
The rst action in proceedings consists of
obtaining bail from the defendant or, if he refuses, of having him incar-
cerated; afterwards the validity of the evidence or the gravity of the charges
is discussed.
Clearly such legislation is directed against the poor and favors only the
rich.
A poor man does not always make bail, even in civil matters, and if he
is forced to await justice in prison, his forced inactivity soon reduces him
to destitution.
d
A wealthy man, on the contrary, always succeeds in escaping impris-
onment in civil matters; even more, if he has committed a crime, he easily
evades the punishment awaiting him: after providing bail, he disappears.
So it can be said that for him all the penalties of the law are reduced to
nes.
42
What is more aristocratic than such legislation?
e
In America, however, it is the poor who make the law, and usually they
reserve the greatest advantages of society for themselves.
It is in England where the explanation for this phenomenon must be
found: the laws I amspeaking about are English.
43
The Americans have not
changed them, even though they are repugnant to their legislation as a
whole and to the mass of their ideas.
The thing that people change the least after their customs is their civil
c. Ask Mr. Livingston about prisons and bail (YTC, CVb, p. 33). Probably Edward
Livingston. See note 2 of Tocquevilles introduction (p. 30).
d. For prison ruins him by preventing him from working and bail makes him give
up the fruit of his work.
To develop. Opinion of Mr. Duponceau.
Little guarantee that the poor have against the oppression of municipal magistrates.
Unwritten law that puts justice into the hands of the privileged class of lawyers
(YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 45). The conversation with Mr. Duponceau is found in portable
notebook 3 (YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 182); see the conversation with [Al-
exander] Everett (ibid., p. 95).
42. There are certainly crimes for which there is no bail, but they are very fewin number.
e. Cf. Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 197, 36770.
43. See Blackstone and Delolme, book I, chap. X.
legislation. The civil laws are familiar only to jurists, that is, to those who
have a direct interest in keeping them as they are, good or bad, because they
knowthem. The bulk of the nation knows themhardly at all; they see them
in action only in individual cases, grasp their tendency only with difculty,
and submit to them without thinking about it.
I have cited an example; I could have pointed out many others.
The picture that American society presents is, if I can express myself in
this way, covered by a democratic layer beneath which from time to time
you catch a glimpse of the old colors of the aristocracy.
74
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 3
Social State of the Anglo-Americans
[Denition of the words social state.
a
/
I will speak so frequently about the social state of the Anglo-Americans
that, rst and foremost, I need to say what I mean by the words social state.
In my view, the social state is the material and intellectual condition in
which a people nds itself in a given period.]
The social state is ordinarily the result of a fact, sometimes of laws, most
often of these two causes together. But once it exists, it can itself be con-
sidered the rst cause of most of the laws, customs and ideas that regulate
the conduct of nations; what it does not produce, it modies.
b
So to know the legislation and the mores of a people, it is necessary to
begin by studying its social state.
c
a. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not know if this denition is very useful. It slows the
transition from the second to the third chapter.
In any case, mores should be put before the other causes that modify social state.
Mores come before the fact whatever it may be. They precede laws. Example: Puritan
mores precede and lead to the fact of emigration.
E
douard de Tocqueville: I do not share this opinion (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 92).

b. Among a people property is divided in a certain way, enlightenment is more or
less equal, morality is more or less high, that is what I call its social state./
In general the social state is the result of a fact predating the laws, but the laws
develop its consequences and modify it (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 9).
The social state according toTocqueville recalls Montesquieus concept of thegeneral
spirit of the nation (cf. Lesprit des lois, book XIX, chapters IV and V). On this question,
see Anna Maria Battista, Lo stato sociale democratico nella analisi di Tocqueville, Pen-
siero Politico 4, no. 3 (1973): 33695.
c. In the margin, in pencil: Vague, indeterminate. Perhaps examples instead of
denitions.
s oci al s tate of the anglo- ameri cans 75
That the Salient Point of the Social State of the
Anglo-Americans Is to Be Essentially Democratic
First emigrants of New England.Equal among themselves.
Aristocratic laws introduced in the South.Period of the
Revolution.Change in the inheritance laws.Effects produced
by this change.Equality pushed to its extreme limits in the new
states of the West.Intellectual equality.
Several important remarks about the social state of the Anglo-Americans
could be made, but one dominates all the others.
d
The social state of the Americans is eminently democratic. It has had
this character since the birth of the colonies; it has it even more today.
e
[As soon as you look at the civil and political society of the United
States, you discover two great facts that dominate all the others and from
d. Causes of the social state and current government of America:
1. Their origin: excellent point of departure. Intimate mix of religion and of the
spirit of liberty. Cold and rational race.
2. Their geographic position: no neighbors.
3. Their commercial and industrial activity. Everything, eventheir vices, is favorable
to them now.
4. The material good fortune that they enjoy.
5. The religious spirit that reigns: republican and democratic religion.
6. The diffusion of useful knowledge.
7. Very pure morals.
8. The division into small States. They prove nothing for a large one.
9. The absence of a great capital where everything is concentrated. Care to avoid it.
10. Commercial and provincial activity that means that each person nds some-
thing to do at home (Alphabetic Notebook A, YTC, BIIa and Voyage, OC, V, 1,
p. 207).
e. Herve de Tocqueville:
This is too absolute. At least you should say nearly all the colonies, in order to be in
agreement with page 128 (chap. 4), where you speak about the aristocratic inuence
long exercisedtothe southandwest of the Hudson. This difcultyarises fromchapter
2 where Alexis recognized only two political divisions of the territory, which forced
him to generalize too much. Another division and a few sentences added, and every-
thing will be ne (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 92). Page 128 of the copy read by Herve and the
other critics corresponds to pages 5051 of this edition.
which the others are derived. Democracy constitutes the social state; the
dogma of the sovereignty of the people, the political law.
These twothings are not analogous. Democracy is societys wayof being.
Sovereignty of the people, a form of [v. the essence of ] government. Nor
are they inseparable, because democracy
f
is even more compatible withdes-
potism than with liberty.
But they are correlative. Sovereignty of the people is always more or less
a ction wherever democracy is not established.]
g
I said in the preceding chapter that a very great equality reigned among
the emigrants who came to settle on the shores of New England. Not even
the germ of aristocracy was ever deposited in that part of the Union. No
inuences except intellectual ones [{a kindof intellectual patronage}]could
ever be established there. The people got used to revering certain names,
as symbols of learning and virtue. The voice of certain citizens gained a
power over the people that perhaps could have been correctly called aris-
tocratic, if it could have been passed down invariably from father to son.
This happened [{north}] east of the Hudson; [{south}] southwest of this
river, and as far down as Florida, things were otherwise.
f. With a reminder in the margin, in pencil: Explain what is understood by democ-
racy.
Tocqueville never arrived at a satisfactory denition of democracy. He always used
the term in different senses. Harold Laski, in his introduction to Democracy in America
(OC, I, p. xxx), distinguishes four; James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocquevilles De-
mocracy in America (pp. 26374), identied as many as eight: inevitable development
or tendency, social condition, popular sovereignty, government of the people, mobility,
middle classes, equality of conditions, open society. Jean-Francois Sutter, in Tocque-
ville et le proble`me de la democratie (Revue internationale de philosophie 49 (1959): 330
40), examined the reason why Tocqueville did not manage to give one single denition
of democracy. Cf. the revealing letter of Louis de Kergorlay, dated January 6, 1838, a
letter that Tocqueville kept with the early drafts of the second part of his book (YTC,
CVg, 2, published in Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 2, pp. 1617).
g. In the margin: Note that in this chapter the social state must never be confused
with the political laws that follow from it; equality or inequality of conditions, which
are facts, with democracy or aristocracy, which are laws. Reexamine from this point of
view.
In most of the States situated southwest
h
of the Hudson, great English
landholders had come to settle. Aristocratic principles, and with them En-
glish laws of inheritance, had been imported.
[
*
]
I have shown the reasons
that prevented a powerful aristocracy from ever being established in Amer-
ica. But these reasons, though existing southwest
j
of the Hudson, had less
power there than [{north}] east of this river. To the south, one man alone
could, with the help of slaves, cultivate a large expanse of land. So in this
part of the continent wealthy landed proprietors were seen; but their in-
uence was not precisely aristocratic, as understoodinEurope, becausethey
had no privileges at all, and cultivation by slaves gave them no tenants and
therefore no patronage. Nonetheless, south of the Hudson, the great land-
holders formed a superior class, with its own ideas and tastes and generally
concentrating political activity within its ranks. It was a kind of aristocracy
not much different from the mass of the people whose passions and inter-
ests it easily embraced, exciting neither love nor hate;
k
in sum, weak and
h. This word is added later. At rst, the word was south.
[*]. Note from Jefferson.
j. Herve de Tocqueville:
Here again the drawback of only two divisions. Alexis nds himself forced to jump
abruptly from the Southwest to the South, without the connection of ideas being
clear, and the differences between this Southwest and the South remain unknown.
Does slavery also exist in the Southwest? Is this part entirely homogeneous with the
South? If it is, why speak successively of the West and the South? If it is not, why
take his example from the South alone? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 93).
k. Herve de Tocqueville:
I do not know what that means in a country where there was no people. Alexis un-
doubtedly meant to say an aristocracy whose habits resembled the democratic habits
of other parts of the Union. The expression does not seem right, nor do those that
follow: an aristocracy that embraces the passions and interests of the people cannot
remain indifferent to the people. Therefore, it is not right to say that it excited neither
love nor hate. You would have to say that it excited no jealousy at all in the other
classes. Proof that it was not indifferent is that two lines lower Alexis says that it
furnished all of the great men of the Revolution. But when the leaders are takenfrom
one class of citizens, you cannot say that it inspires neither love nor hate.
not very hardy. It was this class that, in the South, put itself at the head of
the insurrection; the American Revolution owed its greatest men to it.
In this period, the entire society was shaken.
m
The people, in whose
name the struggle was waged, the peoplenow a powerconceived the
desire to act by themselves; democratic instincts awoke.
n
By breaking the
yoke of the home country, the people acquired a taste for all kinds of in-
dependence. Little by little, individual inuences ceased to make them-
selves felt; habits as well as laws began to march in unison toward the same
end.
But it was the law of inheritance that pushed equality to its last
stage.
o
E
douard de Tocqueville: I agree with my father only for the last paragraph, which
must absolutely be revised. How can a weak and not very hardy class lead an insurrec-
tion? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 9394). The author paid no attention to these criticisms; the
published version is identical to that in the manuscript.
This still seems to me too absolute. Society in the South had certainly been shaken,
but that of NewEngland where democracy already existed did not needto be shaken.
Perhaps you should put: the entire society received a new impulse. Next I wonder where
these people were who became a power. I see the effect perfectly without seeing the
cause as clearly as I would like. It would seem from what Alexis says, page 130, that
democratic instincts had won everywhere, even among those whose position should
have set themmost apart. Perhaps the aristocratic and rich leaders of the insurrection
thought that they should recompense those who had fought under their command
by granting them political rights or by extending those they already had. Once down
this path, as always happens, one is not able to stop.
E
douard de Tocqueville: Apt observation. This rst paragraph must be reworked a

bit (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 94).
n. In the margin: It was the aristocracy, if this name can be given to what was then
at the head of society in America, which had armed the people and led themonthe elds
of battle.
o. Give me, for thirty years, a law for equal division of inheritance and liberty of
the press and I will bring you a republic (YTC, Cve, p. 63).
Tocqueville gives a privileged position to the structure of landed property in his the-
ory. In his Me moire sur le paupe risme (Commentaire, XXIII, 1983, p. 633), he repeats that
it is the concentration of land that provoked the concentration of power and the birth
of the aristocracy. The same idea often appears in the notes taken during his journey in
America (conversations with Livingston, Clay, Latrobe, Sparks in YTC, BIIa, and Voy-
age, OC, V, 1, pp. 59, 8788, 102, 109, 11113), as well as during his journey in England
I am astonished that ancient and modern political writers have not at-
tributed a greater inuence on the course of human affairs to the laws of
landed inheritance.
1
These laws belong, it is true, to the civil order; but they
should be placed at the head of all political institutions, for they have an
incredible inuence on the social state of peoples, political laws being just
the expression of the social state. In addition, the laws of inheritance have
a sure and uniform way of operating on society; in a sense they lay hold of
generations before their birth. Through them, manis armedwithanalmost
divine power over the future of his fellows. The law-maker regulates the
inheritance of citizens once, and he remains at rest for centuries: his work
put inmotion, he cankeephis hands off; the machine acts onits ownpower,
and moves as if self-directed toward an end set in advance.
Constituted in a certain way, the law of inheritance reunites, concen-
trates, gathers property and, soon after, power, around some head; in a way
it makes aristocracy spring from the soil. Driven by other principles and
set along another path, its action is even more rapid; it divides, shares, dis-
(Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algerie, OC, V, 2, pp. 52, 28, 4142). In a letter
to Kergorlay of June 29, 1831 (Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, pp. 23133),
he explains that it is one of the particulars of American society that most surprised him.
Moreover, his interest in this question predates the journey to America. The division of
the land is already mentioned in the notes of the journey in Sicily in 1827 (Voyage, OC,
V, 1, pp. 43, 45). The same idea reappears in his article on the social and political state of
France before and after the Revolution of 1789, and in LAncien Regime et la Revolution.
We know that the social consequences of the inheritance laws have been considered
by Aristotle inthe Politics (1266b8). Montesquieutookupthe questionagaininDe lesprit
des lois (book V, chapters V and VIII). Afterward the question occupied a central place
in the political considerations of the revolutionary era. The beginning of the nineteenth
century still had in mind the posthumous speech of Mirabeau (Discours de M. de Mir-
abeau laine sur le galite des partages dans les successions en ligne directe, Imprimerie Na-
tionale, Paris, 1791, 23 p.). Even the father of the author had treated it in one of his
publications (De la charte provinciale, Paris: J. J. Blaise, 1829, 62p., pp. 1213).
1. By the inheritance laws, I understand all the laws whose principal end is to regulate the
disposition of property after the death of the owner.
The law of entail is among this number. It is true that it also has the result of preventing
the owner from disposing of his property before his death; but it imposes the obligation on
him of keeping it only with the view of having it go intact to his inheritor. So the principal
end of the law of entail is to regulate the disposition of property after the death of the owner.
All the rest is the means used.
seminates property and power. Sometimes people are then frightened by
the rapidity of its march. Despairing of stopping its movement, they seek
at least to create difculties and obstacles before it; they want to counter-
balance its actionwithopposing efforts; useless exertions! It crushes or sends
ying into pieces all that gets in its way; it constantly rises and falls on the
earth until nothing is left in sight but a shifting and intangible dust
p
on
which democracy takes its seat.
When the law of inheritance allows and, even more, requires the equal
division of the fathers property among all the children, its effects are of
two sorts; they should be carefully distinguished, even though they lead to
the same end.
Due to the law of inheritance, the death of each owner leads to a rev-
olution in property; not only do the holdings change masters, but so to
speak, they change nature; they are constantly split into smaller portions.
[The generations grow poorer as they succeed each other.]
That is the direct and, in a sense, the material effect of the law.
q
So in
countries where legislation establishes equal division, property and par-
ticularly territorial fortunes necessarily have a permanent tendency to grow
smaller. Nonetheless, if the law were left to itself, the effects of this legis-
lation would make themselves felt only over time. Because as long as the
family includes not more than two children (and the average for families
in a populated country like France, we are told, is only three),
r
these chil-
p. In the margin in pencil: This image of dust is exaggerated and lacks precision.
q. To the side in an earlier draft: Explanatory note and on Rodat.
Is this Rodat Claude Raudot, magistrate and friend of Tocqueville and Beaumont?
We can hardly think that the author would misspell the name of someone that he knew
so well. Bonnel notes Rodat at two places in the drafts (see note s infra). In any case,
no one of this name is found in the papers and correspondence of Tocqueville.
r. Herve de Tocqueville: Isnt Alexis considerably underestimating the family av-
erage? At least, 4 should be put in place of 3, father, mother and two children. I do not
know if the law of averages should be invoked here. The family that has only one de-
scendant escapes from the law of division. But the family that has 5 or 6! What a pro-
gression of division of the land! (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 95).
dren, sharing the wealth of their father and their mother, will be no less
wealthy than each parent individually.
But the lawof equal division exerts its inuence not on the fate of prop-
erty alone; it acts on the very soul of the proprietors, and calls their passions
to its aid. These indirect effects rapidly destroy great fortunes and, above
all, great estates.
s
Among peoples for whom the inheritance law is based on the right of
primogeniture, landed estates most often pass from generation to gener-
ation without being divided. That causes family spirit to be, in a way,
embodied in the land. The family represents the land; the land represents
the family; the land perpetuates its name, origin, glory, power andvirtues.
s. Law of inheritance./
Effect of the law of inheritance.
1. Divides fortunes naturally. But this not very rapid, average number of children,
to divide two fortunes, that of the father and that of the mother.
2. Prevents the desire to keep them. Great effect. Destroys family spirit and sub-
stitutes individual egoism, leads to selling the land in order to have income, favors
the taste for luxury, the land passes into the hands of the peasants and doesnt come
out again. Conversation with Rodat (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 9).
Law of inheritance. Its direct effects, its indirect effects (Rodat).
So greater equality not only among peoples of European races, but also among all
peoples, in all times.
However manufacturing (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 8).
Tocqueville will devote a chapter in the second part of his book to the manufacturing
aristocracy (chapter XXof volume III). On this point, this note and note d of p. 85 attest
to an interest well before the voyage to England in 1835. Tocqueville had briey visited
England in 1833, but the notes of this rst journey carry no trace of a particular attention
to the problem of industry. It is generally agreed that his visit to Manchester, Liverpool
and Birmingham in 1835 is at the origin of this interest (Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande,
Suisse et Alge rie, OC, V, 2, pp. 67, 81).
During a conversationwithTocqueville inthe UnitedStates, Robert Vauxhadalready
referred to the effects of manufacturing on the population (non-alphabetic notebooks
2 and 3, YTC, BIIa and Voyage, OC, V, p. 104). Beaumont, for his part, will not hesitate
to afrm in the novel that he would publish in 1835: In truth there exists in America
something that resembles the feudal aristocracy. The factory is the manor; the manu-
facturer, the sovereign lord; the workers are the serfs (Marie, I, pp. 24142).
It is an undying witness to the past and a precious guarantee of life to
come.
t
When the inheritance law establishes equal division, it destroys the in-
timate connection that existed between family spirit and keeping the land;
the land ceases to represent the family, for the land, inescapably divided
after one or two generations, clearly must shrink continually and disappear
entirely in the end. The sons of a great landed proprietor, if they are few,
or if fortune favors them, can maintain the hope of not being poorer than
their progenitor, but not of owning the same lands as he; their wealth will
necessarily consist of other elements than his.
u
Now, fromthe moment youtake away fromlandedproprietors anygreat
interestarising fromsentiment, memory, pride, or ambitioninkeeping
the land, you can be sure that sooner or later they will sell it. They have a
great pecuniary interest in selling, since movable assets produce more in-
come than other assets and lend themselves much more easily to satisfying
the passions of the moment.
v
Once divided, great landed estates are never reassembled; for the small
landholder gains proportionately more revenue from his eld
2
than the
large landholder; so he sells it at a much higher price than the large land-
holder. Thus the economic calculations that brought a rich man to sell vast
properties, will prevent him, with all the more reason, from buying small
properties in order to reassemble large estates.
w
What is called family spirit is often based on an illusion of individual
t. Ask Livingston if in the United States there is still the possibility of establishing
entails [in English in the text (ed.)] (YTC, CVb, p. 33).
u. See the conversation with Mr. Latrobe (YTC, BIIa and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 109).
v. In LIrlande, Beaumont will recommend the law of equal division as the way to
divide property and socially weaken the English aristocracy of Ireland (see especially vol.
II, pp. 191200). Beaumont, like Tocqueville, had also observed in the United States the
effects of the inheritance law (cf. in particular two letters, dated respectively July 4 and
September 31, 1831, Lettres dAme rique, pp. 80 and 147).
2. I do not mean that the small landholder cultivates better, but he cultivates with more
enthusiasm and care, and gains by work what he lacks in skill.
w. In the margin: The inheritance law acts much more forcefully on the destruc-
tion of landed fortunes than of fortunes in general.
egoism.
x
Aperson seeks to perpetuate and, in a way, to immortalize himself
in his great-nephews.
y
Where family spirit ends, individual egoism reverts
to its true inclinations. Since the family no longer enters the mind except
as something vague, indeterminate, and uncertain, each man concentrates
on present convenience; he considers the establishment of the generation
immediately following, and nothing more.
So a person does not try to perpetuate his family, or at least he tries to
perpetuate it by means other than landed property.
Thus, not only does the inheritance law make it difcult for families to
keep the same estates intact, but also it removes the desire to try and leads
families, in a way, to cooperate in their own ruin.
The law of equal division proceeds in two ways: by acting on the thing,
it acts on the man; by acting on the man, it affects the thing.
In these two ways it succeeds in profoundly attacking landed property
and in making families as well as fortunes rapidly disappear.
3
Surely it is not up to us, the French of the nineteenth century, daily
witnesses to the political and social changes that the inheritance lawbrings
about, to question its power. Each day we see it constantly move back and
forth over our soil, toppling in its path the walls of our dwellings and de-
x. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not believe that the word egoism is the right wordhere.
Egoism is only concerned with the present and does not rush toward the future. The
word pride would seem more suitable to me.
E
douard de Tocqueville: I nd the word egoism good (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 95).

y. Note inpencil inthe manuscript that seems tospeakabout a rst versionthat lacked
the sentence to which this note refers: Think about this. A bad inference could be
drawn from it, too generalized.
3. Since land is the most secure property, there are, from time to time, wealthy men who
are inclined to make great sacrices to acquire it and who willingly lose a considerable portion
of their income in order to assure the rest. But these are accidents. The love of landed property
is no longer usually found except among the poor. The small landholder, who is less enlightened
and who has less imagination and fewer passions than the large landholder, is generally pre-
occupied only with the desire to enlarge his domain; and it often happens that inheritance,
marriage or turns of fortune in trade provide him the means little by little.
So alongside the tendency that brings men to divide the land, there exists another that
brings them to consolidate it. This tendency, which is enough to prevent property from being
innitely divided, is not strong enough to create great territorial fortunes, nor above all to keep
them in the same families.
stroying the hedges of our elds. But if the inheritance law has already
accomplished much among us, much still remains for it to do. Our mem-
ories, opinions, and habits present it with powerful obstacles.
z
In the United States, its work of destruction is nearly nished. That is
where its principal results can be studied.
English legislation on the transmission of property was abolished in
nearly all the states at the time of the Revolution.
The lawof entail was modied so as to interfere only imperceptiblywith
the free circulation of property.
a G
z. Herve de Tocqueville:
What are these obstacles? I do not know them. In France there are scarcely 2,000
families who give a double portion to the eldest son, and each day that becomes rarer.
Equality of affection toward the children predominates. The law of primogeniture
revolted even those who beneted from it. It was one of the most active causes of
the July Revolution. So you should say what these obstacles are, because the truth of
the phrase is not apparent (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 96).
a. [Note] Here citation of Kent and analysis of Lippitt and then a remark on how
the French laws on inheritance and entail are more democratic than the American
laws. Cf. note G.
In 1834, Tocqueville felt the need to have help in the organization and reading of
American books, brochures and codes. The following advertisement is found in one of
the notebooks of the copyist Bonnel:
Looking for an American fromthe UnitedStates who has receiveda liberal education,
who would like to do research in the political laws and the historical works of his
country and who, for two months, could sacrice two or three hours of his time each
day for this work. Choice of hours would be left to him.
Apply to M. A[lexis (ed.)]. de T[ocqueville (ed.)]. rue de V[erneuil (ed.)]. n. 49,
before ten in the morning or in the afternoon between two and four.
Five copies (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 85).
This advertisement seems not to have been published. Francis Lippitt states that he
was hired on the recommendation of the American delegation in Paris by Nathaniel
Niles or EdwardLivingstonprobably. Ina letter to Daniel Gilman(reproducedinDaniel
C. Gilman, Alexis de Tocqueville and his book on America, sixty years after, The Cen-
tury Illustrated Monthly Magazine, 56, MayOctober 1898, pp. 70315), Francis Lippitt
asserts that his work consisted of reading and summarizing books, newspaper clippings
and legal collections. Theodore Sedgwick, another Americanwho hadhelpedthe author,
unquestionably had a more important role. His conversations seem to have been useful
The rst generation disappeared; landed estates began to divide. As time
went by, the movement became more and more rapid [as a stone thrown
fromthe top of a tower accelerates as it moves through space]. Today, when
hardly sixty years have gone by, the appearance of society is already unrec-
ognizable; the families of the great landed proprietors are almost entirely
engulfed by the common mass. In the state of New York, which had a very
large number of such families, two barely stay aoat above the abyss ready
to swallow them.
b
Today, the sons of these opulent citizens are business-
men, lawyers, doctors. Most have fallen into the most profound obscurity.
The last trace of hereditary rank and distinction is destroyed; the law of
inheritance has done its leveling everywhere.
c
It is not that there are no rich in the United States as there are elsewhere;
I do not even know of a country where the love of money holds a greater
place in the human heart and where a deeper contempt is professed for the
theory of the permanent equality of property.
d
But wealth circulates there
with incredible rapidity, and experience teaches that it is rare to see two
generations reap the rewards of wealth.
e
[{The people are like the divinity
of this new world; everything emanates from and returns to them.}]
to Tocqueville while drafting certain points of the book. (Also see, George W. Pierson,
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 73134.)
b. [Note] The Livingstons and the Van Rensselaers.
c. At the time of his voyage, Tocqueville met Charles Carroll, signatory of the Dec-
laration of Independence and one of the wealthiest Americans of the time. On No-
vember 8, 1831, Tocqueville, in a draft of a letter to an unidentied recipient, noted
concerning him: [Charles Carroll], a little old man of 95 years, straight as an arrow,
. . . saw all the great families disappear as a result of the new inheritance law. For sixty
years he has seen their descendants grow poorer, the noble families disappear, and the
democracy take hold of the power that the great landholders held in his time (YTC,
BIa2).
d. In the margin: Put here, I think, the inequality arising from the accumulation
of the personal wealth of manufacturing.
e. Democracy./
What is most important for democracy, is not that there are no great fortunes; it
is that great fortunes do not rest in the same hands. In this way, there are the rich,
but they do not form a class.
Commerce, industry perhaps create larger individual fortunes in America now
than sixty years ago. However, the abolition of primogeniture and entail make de-
This picture, however colored you think it is, still gives only an in-
complete idea of what is happening in the new states of the West and
Southwest.
f
At the end of the last century, hardy adventurers began to penetrate the
valleys of the Mississippi. This was like a new discovery of America: soon
the bulk of emigration went there; you saw unknown societies suddenly
emerge from the wilderness. States, whose names did not even exist a few
years before, took a place within the American Union. [<Hardly a year
passed without the republic being forced to have some new star attached
to its ag.>] In the West democracy can be observed carried to its extreme
limit. In these states, in a way improvised by chance, the inhabitants arrived
but yesterday on the soil they occupy. They scarcely know each other, and
each one is unaware of the history of his closest neighbor. So in this part
of the American continent, the population escapes not only from the in-
uence of great names and great wealth, but also from the natural aristoc-
racy that arises from enlightenment and virtue. There, no one exercises the
power that men grant out of respect for an entire life spent in doing good
before their eyes. The new states of the West already have inhabitants; so-
ciety still does not exist.
mocracy, its passions, interests, maxims, tastes more powerful in our time than sixty
years ago.
Furthermore, equality of political rights has introduced a powerful new element
of democracy.
American societies had always been democratic by their nature; the Revolution
made democratic principles pass into the laws (YTC, CVe, pp. 6061).
f. Herve de Tocqueville:
This transition needs revision. The picture that precedes relates to the effect of the
law of equal division and has no relation whatsoever to the new states of the West.
I think that you should say: what we have said about the equality of fortunes and
rank in the East and in the South gives only an incomplete idea of the way it is
established in the new states, etc. Here I offer a thought. The author must not be
afraid of sometimes saying a few words that recall what precedes. These are resting
points for the imagination, which put it back on track, and ease the work of com-
paring ideas already expressed with those which are being presented (YTC, CIIIb, 2,
p. 97).
But not only fortunes are equal in America; to a certain degree, equality
extends to minds themselves.
I do not think there is any country in the world where, in proportion to
the population, there exist so small a number of ignorant and fewer learned
men than in America.
There primary education is available to every one; higher education is
hardly available to anyone.
This is easily understood and is, so to speak, the necessary result of what
we advanced above.
Nearly all Americans live comfortably; so they can easily gain the pri-
mary elements of human knowledge.
In America, there are few rich [and the rich do not form a class apart.
The consequences of this fact in relation to education are of several
kinds.]; nearly all Americans need to have an occupation. Now, every
occupation requires an apprenticeship. So Americans can devote only the
rst years of life to general cultivation of the mind; at age fteen, they
begin a career; most often, therefore, their educationconcludes whenours
begins. If pursued further, it is directed only toward a specialized and
lucrative eld; they study a eld of knowledge in the way they prepare for
a trade; and they take only the applications recognized to have immediate
utility.
In America, most of the rich began by being poor; nearly all the men
of leisure were busy men in their youth. The result is that when they
could have the taste for study, they do not have the time to devote them-
selves to it; and when they have gained the time, they no longer have the
taste.
So in America no class exists that honors intellectual work and in which
the penchant for intellectual pleasures is handed down with afuence and
hereditary leisure.
Both the will and the power to devote oneself to this work are therefore
missing.
In America a certain middling level of human knowledge is established.
All minds have approached it; some by rising, others by falling.
So you meet a great multitude of individuals who have about the same
number of notions in matters of religion, history, the sciences, political
economy, legislation, and government.
Intellectual inequality comes directly from God, and man cannot pre-
vent it from always reappearing.
But it follows, at least from what we have just said, that minds, while
still remaining unequal as the Creator intended, nd equal means at their
disposal. Thus, today in America, the aristocratic element, always feeble
since its birth, is, if not destroyed, at least weakened further; so it is difcult
to assign it any inuence whatsoever in the course of public affairs.
Time, events, and the laws have, on the contrary, made the democratic
element not only preponderant but also, so to speak, unique. No family or
group inuence can be seen; often not even an individual inuence, no
matter how ephemeral, can be found.
[{Society there [is (ed.)] profoundly and radically democratic in its re-
ligion, ideas, habits, and passions.
g
}
For a people that has reached such a social state, mixed governments
are more or less impractical; hardly any choice exists for them other than
absolute power or a republic [v: sovereignty of the people].
America found itself in circumstances fortunate for escaping despotism
and favorable for adopting a republic.]
So America presents, in its social state, the strangest phenomenon.
There, men appear more equal in fortune and in mind or, in other words,
more equal in strength than they are in any other country in the world and
have been in any century that history remembers.
g. In the margin, with a bracket uniting this paragraph with the two preceding ones:
To sacrice, I think, because all of that implies something more than the social state.
Ask G[ustave (ed.)]. and L[ouis (ed.)].
Political Consequences of the Social State
of the Anglo-Americans
The political consequences of such a social state are easy to deduce.
It is impossible to think that, in the end, equality would not penetrate
the political world as it does elsewhere. You cannot imagine men, equal in
all other ways, forever unequal to each other on a single point; so in time
they will become equal in all ways.
Now I know only two ways to have equality rule in the political world:
rights must either be given to each citizen or given to no one [and apart
from the government of the United States I see nothing more democratic
than the empire of the great lord].
TN2
For peoples who have arrived at the same social state as the Anglo-
Americans, it is therefore very difcult to see a middle course between the
sovereignty of all [v: of the people] and the absolute power of one man [v:
of a king].
[So peoples who have a similar social state are faced with a frightening
alternative; they must choose between the sovereignty of the people and
the absolute power of a king].
We must not hide fromthe fact that the social state I have just described
lends itself almost as easily to the one as to the other of these two
consequences.
There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that incites
men to want to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the
small to the rank of the great. But in the human heart a depraved taste for
equality is also found that leads the weak to want to bring the strong down
to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to
inequality in liberty. Not that peoples whose social state is democratic nat-
urally scorn liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it.
But liberty is not the principal and constant object of their desire; what
they love with undying love is equality; they rush toward liberty by rapid
impulses and sudden efforts, and if they miss the goal, they resign them-
Translators Note 2: Here Tocqueville probably means the Sultan.
selves; but without equality nothing can satisfy them, and rather than lose
it, they would agree to perish.
h
On the other hand, when citizens are all more or less equal, it becomes
difcult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of
power. Since none among them is then strong enough to struggle alone
with any advantage, it is only the combination of the strength of all that
can guarantee liberty. Now, such a combination is not always found.
j
Peoples can therefore draw two great political consequences from the
same social state; these consequences differ prodigiously, but they botharise
from the same fact.
The rst to be subjected to this fearful alternative that I have just de-
scribed, the Anglo-Americans have been fortunate enough to escape ab-
solute power. Circumstances, origin, enlightenment, and above all, mores
have allowed them to establish
k
and to maintain the sovereignty of the
people.
m
h. Herve de Tocqueville:
All of this paragraph is extremely obscure. I do not know if I understood it, but it
does not seem very correct to me. Men want to be equal not in order to be strong
and respected, but out of human pride, out of a more or less well understood sen-
timent of human dignity. Nor is it because the weak want to draw or rather lower
the strong to their level that servitude is established. Servitude is a state of degradation
that is never the choice of any nation or any fragment of a nation. It results fromthe
vices of the nation from which liberty is escaping because the nation did not know
how to use liberty or is cowardly enough not to know how to rid itself of a tyrant.
Fatigue or cowardice, degradation or disgust, such are the causes of servitude; it does
not come about because men prefer equality in servitude to inequality in liberty.
Among them, it is not preference, but objection (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 9899).
j. In the version put at the disposal of the family, the sentence continues as follows:
. . . such a combination is not always found. It happens that they resign themselves
without difculty to servitude (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 100101).
k. In another version, in the margin: . . . mores, this hidden will of God that is
called chance, have allowed them . . .
m. Herve de Tocqueville: Erase the word establish. The sovereignty of the aggre-
gation of all the individuals of a nation that is called the people is not established, for
this sovereignty exists by itself and everywhere. Even in Turkey, it strangles the sultan;
in Spain, the Cortes is needed to sanction a change in the inheritance of the throne
(YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 99).
91
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 4
Of the Principle of the Sovereignty
of the People in America
It dominates all of American society.Application that the
Americans already made of this principle before their
Revolution.Development that the Revolution gave to it.
Gradual and irresistible lowering of the property qualication.
When you want to talk about the political laws of the United States, you
must always begin with the dogma of the sovereignty of the people.
a
The principle of the sovereignty of the people, which is more or less
always found at the base of nearly all human institutions, ordinarily re-
mains there as if buried. It is obeyed without being recognized, or if some-
times it happens, for a moment, to be brought into the full light of day,
people soon rush to push it back into the shadows of the sanctuary.
The national will is one of those terms abused most widely by schemers
of all times and despots of all ages. Some have seen it expressed in votes
bought from the brokers of power; others in the votes of an interested or
fearful minority. There are even some who have discovered it fully for-
mulated in the silence of the people and who have thought that from the
fact of obedience came, for them, the right of command.
b
In America, the principle of the sovereignty of the people is not hidden
or sterile as it is incertainnations [a vainshowanda false principle as among
a. Sovereignty of the people and democracy are two perfectly correlative words; the one
represents the theoretical idea, the other its practical realization (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 22).
b. In the margin, with a bracket enclosing the entire paragraph: {This seems trite
to me.}
of the s overei gnty of the people 92
certain others; it is a legal and omnipotent fact that rules the entire society;
that spreads freely and reaches its fullest consequences without obstacles];
it is recognized by the mores, proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely and
reaches its fullest consequences without obstacles.
If there is a single country inthe worldwhere the true value of the dogma
of the sovereignty of the people can hope to be appreciated, where its ap-
plication to the affairs of society can be studied and where its advantages
and dangers can be judged, that country is assuredly America.
I said before that, from the beginning, the principle of the sovereignty
of the people had been the generative principle of most of the English
colonies of America.
It then fell far short, however, of dominating the government of society
as it does today.
Two obstacles, one external, one internal, slowed its invasive march.
It could not appear openly in the laws because the colonies were still
forced to obey the home country; so it was reduced to hiding in the pro-
vincial assemblies and especially in the town. There it spread in secret.
American society at that time was not yet ready to adopt it in all its
consequences. For a long time, learning in New England and wealth south
of the Hudson, exercised, as I showed in the preceding chapter, a sort of
aristocratic inuence that tended to conne the exercise of social powers
to a few hands. It still fell far short of electing all public ofcials and of
making all citizens, voters. Everywhere the right to vote was restricted to
certain limits and subordinated to the existence of a property qualication
which was very low in the North and more considerable in the South.
c
The American Revolution broke out. The dogma of the sovereignty of
the people emerged from the town and took over the government;
d
all
c. To the side, with a note: {Know exactly the state of things on this point.}
d. The manuscript says: {and occupied the throne}. A note in pencil in the margin
species: The word throne does not seem to me the right word since it concerns a
republic.
classes took risks for its cause; they fought and triumphed in its name; it
became the law of laws.
e
e. Of the sovereignty of the people./
I draw a great difference between the right of a people to choose its government,
and the right that each individual among this people would have to take part in the
government.
The rst proposition seems to me to contain an incontestable truth; the second,
a manifest error.
I cannot acknowledge the absolute right of each man to take an active part in the
affairs of his country, and I am astonished that this doctrine, so contradictory to the
ordinary course of human affairs, could be proposed.
What is more precious to man than his liberty? It is recognized, however, that
society can take liberty away from one of its members who makes poor use of it.
What is more natural [than (ed.)] to manage your own property? All peoples have
recognized, however, that, before a certain age and in certain [missing word (ed.)],
this control could be withdrawn, because it was thought [that (ed.)] these individuals
either did not yet have or had never had the judgment necessary to make good use
of this power. And would this faculty of judgment that some individuals are found
to lack for conducting themselves then be granted to everyone for conducting the
affairs of society? The constitutions that have apparently been founded on the doc-
trine that I am combating have never dared to admit all of its consequences. Even in
the United States the poor man who pays no taxes obeys laws to which he has con-
sented neither directly nor indirectly. How does that happen if the right to be in-
volved in the affairs of government is a right inherent in the nature of man?
So all questions of democracy and aristocracy (aristocracy as a ruling body), of
monarchy and republic, are not questions of right, but questions of fact, or rather
the question of fact always precedes the other. Show me a people in which all the
citizens may be involved in the government and, in my eyes, this people will have the
right to govern itself democratically. Imagine another, if you can, in which no class
or citizen may have the required capacity; and although I hardly like the power of
one man alone, I will grant that it is legitimate and will take care to live elsewhere.
[In the margin: How so? If you recognize that some of the individuals who com-
pose a people are incapable of taking part in its government, how even more would
they be able to make a good choice? Now, if you remove some from this choice, it
is no longer the people who choose. Moreover, from the moment you recognize that
some can be incapable of choosing well, you must imagine a social state where no
one could choose well; and then you are moving even further from the maxim that
all people have the right to choose their government. Everything is reduced to this:
to choose a government and to take part in government, these are two analogous
products of human judgment. It is difcult entirely to concede the one while entirely
refusing the other.
A change almost as rapid was carried out within the interior of society.
The law of inheritance completed the dismantling of local inuences.
At the moment when this effect of the laws and of the revolutionbegan
to be evident to all, victory had already been irrevocably declared in favor
of democracy. Power was in fact in its hands. Even struggling against it was
no longer permitted. So the upper classes submitted without a murmur and
without a ght to an evil henceforth inevitable. What usually happens to
powers that are in decline happened to them: individual egoism took hold
of the members of the upper classes.
f
Since force couldnolonger be wrested
from the hands of the people and since they did not detest the multitude
enough to take pleasure in defying it, they came to think only of winning
Response:
Judgment is necessary to choose a good government. But only intelligence and
experience are needed to nd that an existing government is not suitable and that it
should be changed.] (YTC, CVh, 5, pp. 46). Cf. Guizot, tenth lecture, entitled De
la repre sentation, in Journal des cours publics de jurisprudence, histoire et belles-lettres
(Paris: au bureau du journal, 18211822, vol. II, especially pages 13133). Also see note
c of pp. 99100.
I do not know if Alexis has grasped all the causes of this phenomenon. I indicated
one in the remarks on the preceding chapter that I ask him to think about. To know
if the necessity to recompense soldiers has not obligated leaders to grant themrights;
perhaps even a sentiment more noble than necessity, gratitude. Afterwards, demo-
cratic appetites have grown. I see in note 2 of chapter III that only in 1786 has equal
division been established in New York, from where it has spread throughout the
Union. Nor do I know if individual egoism can suddenly dominate an entire class
in such a way as to make it give up its most precious advantages. Something else is
involved there other than just the desire to please the multitude. There is always in
my mind a difculty that I do not believe I have expressed clearly enough. In the
beginning the position of the settlers in each state was identical, whether it appeared
aristocratic or democratic. There was no people; how was the people formed so
that there was a mass demanding concessions alongside a mass that granted them? I
believe that Alexis should have said something about it in the rst chapter.
E
douardde Tocqueville: Doesnt inequality come fromthe lackof inheritancelaws?

(YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 8990).
Was Herve thinking here of Montesquieu? Cf. Considerations sur la cause de la gran-
deur des Romains et de leur de cadence, in uvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade, 1951), II,
chapter XIII, p. 142.
its good will at any cost. [Moreover, men have at their disposal such a
deep reservoir of baseness, that it is always found more or less the same in
the service of all despots, whether people or king.] In an effort to outdo
each other, the most democratic laws were then voted by the men whose
interests were most damaged by them. In this way, the upper classes didnot
incite [{implacable}] popular passions against themselves; but they them-
selves hastened the triumph of the neworder. So, a strange thing! The dem-
ocratic impulse showed itself that much more irresistible inthe states where
aristocracy had more roots.
The state of Maryland, which had been founded by great lords, was the
rst to proclaim universal suffrage
1
and introduced the most democratic
forms into its whole government.
g
When a people begins to tamper with the electoral qualication, youcan
foresee that, after a more or less long delay, it will make that qualication
disappear completely. That is one of the most invariable rules that govern
societies. As the limit of electoral rights is pushed back, the need grows to
push it further; for, after each new concession, the forces of democracy
increase and its demands grow with its new power. [It is the history of the
Romans buying peace with gold.
h
] The ambition of those left below the
electoral qualication is aroused in proportionto the great number of those
who are found above. Finally, the exception becomes the rule; concessions
1. Amendments made to the constitution of Maryland in 1801 and 1809.
g. Herve de Tocqueville
The history of the great lords who founded the colony of Maryland bothers me be-
cause it implies a contradiction with what Alexis says about the original equality that
was established at rst in the states of the Union. I know that this contradiction is
only apparent, but it leaves some suspicion in the mind. Alexis must clearly explain
howand why the ideas, pretensions, etc. of these great lords were absorbedright away
by the inuence of the spirit of equality spread throughout the Union (YTC, CIIIb,
2, p. 108).
h. Herve de Tocqueville: The example does not seem to me to relate to the subject
(YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 90). These are the very words of Montesquieu. Conside ration sur les
causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur de cadence, in uvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade,
1951), II, chapter XVIII, p. 171.
follow one after the other without letup, and there is no more stopping
until universal suffrage is reached.
j
Today in the United States the principle of the sovereignty of the people
has attained all the practical developments that imagination can conceive.
It has been freed fromall the ctions that have beencarefully placedaround
it elsewhere; it is seen successively clothed in all forms according to the
necessity of the case. Sometimes the people as a body make the laws as at
Athens; sometimes the deputies created by universal suffrage represent the
people and act in their name under their almost immediate supervision.
There are countries where a power, in a way external to the social body,
acts on it and forces it to follow a certain path.
There are others where force is divided, being simultaneously inside and
outside the society. Nothing of the sort is seen in the United States; there
society acts by itself andonitself. Power exists only inside it;
k
hardlyanyone
may even be found who dares to conceive and especially to express the idea
of seeking power elsewhere. The people participate in the composition of
j. In a letter to an unknown recipient, Tocqueville again takes up some arguments
expressed at the time of a conversation with Charles Carroll:
But, I replied, the Revolution over, what forced you to destroy English institutions
and to establish democracy among yourselves?We were divided after the victory,
responded Ch[arles (ed.)]. Carroll. Each party wanted to use the people and, to gain
their adherence, granted them new privileges, until nally the people became our
master and showed us all the door.
What do you think of this apology? Doesnt it have the air of being said in Paris
toward the end of 1830 or at the very least in the course of the year of grace 1831? I
am, however, a very faithful narrator (Draft of a letter of Tocqueville dated Novem-
ber 8, 1831, YTC, BIa2).
k. A symbol in the text refers to the following note: Place a chapter here explaining
what is called a constitution in America. Say that it is only a changing expression of the
sovereignty of the people, that has nothing of the perpetual, that binds only until it is
amended. Difference from what is understood by constitution in Europe, even in
England.
[In the margin: Ask advice here.]
the laws
m
by the choice of the legislators, intheir applicationbythe election
of the agents of executive power. It can be said that they governthemselves,
so weak and restricted is the part left to the administration, so much does
the administration feel its popular origin and obey the power from which
it emanates. The people rule the American political world as God rules the
universe. They are the cause and the end of all things; everything arises
from them and everything is absorbed by them.
H
m. In the manuscript: The people enter into the composition of the laws . . .
Herve de Tocqueville:
I keep repeating the same objection, for it strikes me at every step. What is the
people in a society where, as much as possible, ranks, fortunes, and minds approach
the level of equality? Assuredly, in the New World the word people has none of the
same meaning as among us. I believe that a sense of this must be given somewhere.
Otherwise, the chapter moves along very well.
E
douard de Tocqueville: I understand the preceding objection when it involved ex-

plaining the successive formation of American society; but here it isnt the same thing
anymore. Alexis describes the government of democracy, andin this case the wordpeople
is appropriate and is perfectly understood. This entire passage seems remarkable to me
(YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 90).
98
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 5
Necessity of Studying What Happens in the
Individual States before Speaking about the
Government of the Union
a
The following chapter is intended to examine what form government
founded on the principle of sovereignty of the people takes in America,
what its means of action, difculties, advantages and dangers are.
b
Arst difculty arises: the United States has a complex constitution. You
notice two distinct societies there, bound together and, if I can explain it
in this way, nested like boxes one inside the other. Two completely separate
and nearly independent governments are seen: the one, habitual and un-
dened, which answers to the daily needs of the society; the other, excep-
tional and circumscribed, which applies only to certain general interests.
They are, ina word, twenty-four small sovereignnations, that togetherform
the great body of the Union.
To examine the Union before studying the state is to embark on a path
strewn with difculties. The form of the federal government in the United
States appeared last; it was only a modication of the republic, a summary
of political principles spread throughout the entire society before the fed-
eral government existed, and subsisting there independently of it. As I have
just said, the federal government is, moreover, only an exception; the gov-
ernment of the states is the common rule. The writer who would like to
a. According to a rough draft (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 83), this section would at rst have
constituted an independent chapter.
b. In the margin: Perhaps immediately after having treated the sovereignty of the
people, it would be necessary to talk about election, which is its rst and most complete
application to the government of society.
government of the s tates 99
show such a picture as a whole before pointing out its details would nec-
essarily lapse into obscurities and repetitions.
There can be no doubt that the great political principles that govern
American society today arose and developed in the state. So to have the key
to all the rest, the state must be understood.
The states that make up the American Union today all look the same
with regard to the external appearance of institutions. Political and ad-
ministrative life there is found concentrated in three centers of action that
could be compared to the various nerve centers that make the human body
move.
At the rst level is found the town;
TN 3
higher, the county; nally, the
state.
Of the Town System in America
c
Why the author begins the examination of political institutions
with the town.The town is found among all peoples.
Difculty of establishing and maintaining town liberty.
Translators Note 3: I have translated commune, when it refers to America, as
town rather than township. Town is, by far, the more common termin the UnitedStates,
especially in New England. And American historians almost unanimously use the term
town. When commune refers to France, I have usually left it in French, italicized.
c. When he starts on the study of the American administration, Tocqueville realizes
that he hardly knows that of his own country. In the month of October 1831, he asks
his father and two of his colleagues, Ernest de Chabrol and Ernest de Blosseville, todraw
up for him a summary sketch of the French administration. Tocqueville writes to his
father:
Nothing would be more useful to me for judging America well than to knowFrance.
But it is this last point that is missing; I knowingeneral that amongus the government
gets into nearly everything; a hundred times people have blared into my ears the word
centralization, without explaining it to me. . . . If you could, my dear papa, analyze
for me this word centralization, you would help me immensely (letter to his father,
New York, 7 October 1831, YTC, BIa2).
In reply, Herve de Tocqueville sends his son a long report bearing the title Coup doeil
sur ladministration franc aise [Brief Viewof the French Administration]. There the former
prefect develops several of the ideas presented in De la charte provinciale (Paris: J. J.
Blaise, 1829, 62 pp.). After several pages devoted to description of the administration,
Its importance.Why the author has chosen the town
organization of New England as the principal object of
his examination.
Not by chance do I rst examine the town.
[The town is the rst element of the societies out of which peoples
take form; it is the social molecule; if I can express myself in this way, it is
the embryo that already represents and contains the seed of the complete
being.]
the author considers in detail the problem of centralization and the way to lessen its
abuses. Herve de Tocqueville, who fears that the autonomy of the French communes
[towns] will divide the country into a multitude of small republics, insists a great deal
on the fact that the King must exercise the administration and have the right to dissolve
the conseils communaux [town councils]. But he recognizes, nonetheless, the extreme
slowness of an excessively centralized administration and recommends the creation of
special juries for the purpose of deciding administrative questions as the most effective
means to accelerate decision making. In his response, Chabrol considers, above all, the
question of administrative jurisdiction. Macarel had in fact pointed out to him that the
majority of trials between the administration and individuals that were judged by the
conseils municipaux [municipal councils] were trials of an ordinary type that could have
been judged according to the forms of the ordinary judicial system. Chabrol also points
out that a large part of the administration still carries the trace of the centralizing con-
cepts of the Napoleonic administration. The report of Blosseville, shorter andless precise
than the other two, allows for the shift of administrative trials to ordinary jurisdiction,
in agreement with Chabrol. (A copy of the three reports is found at Yale, under the
classication CIIIa).
For the preparation of this chapter, the report on the local administration of New
England, written by Jared Sparks for Alexis de Tocqueville, also has considerable im-
portance. On this document and Brief View of the French Administration, see George
W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 40313. Finally, there is a note
by Beaumont that relates an interesting conversation with Sparks (in Beaumont, Lettres
dAme rique, pp. 15254). The questions posed by Tocqueville to Jared Sparks and the
responses of the latter have been published by H. B. Adams in Jared Sparks and Alexis
de Tocqueville, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, XVIth
series, n. 12, 1898. Arough draft withseveral notes for this chapter alsocontains numerous
references to the report of Sparks (YTC, CVb, p. 17). It is Jared Sparks who points out
to Tocqueville that Nathaniel Niles, Secretary of the American delegation in Paris and
native of New England, can be useful to himfor the chapter on the town administration
of this part of the United States. It seems that, following this suggestion, Tocqueville
contacted the latter (see note v for p. 62).
The town is the only association that is so much a part of nature that
wherever men are gathered together, a town takes shape by itself.
Town society exists therefore among all peoples no matter what their
customs and their laws; it is man who establishes kingdoms and creates
republics; the town seems to come directly from the hands of God. [The
town is not only the rst of social elements, but also the most important
of all.] But if the town has existed ever since there have been men, town
liberty is something rare and fragile.
d
A people can always establish great
political assemblies, because it usually contains a certain number of men
among whom, to a certain degree, enlightenment takes the place of the
practice of public affairs. The town is made up of crude elements that often
resist the action of the legislator. Instead of diminishing as nations become
more enlightened, the difculty of establishing town independence in-
creases withtheir enlightenment. Ahighly civilizedsociety tolerates thetrial
efforts of town liberty only with difculty; it rebels at the sight of its nu-
merous errors and despairs of success before having reached the nal result
of the experiment.
Of all liberties, town liberty, which is so difcult to establish, is also
the most exposed to the encroachments of power. Left to themselves,
town institutions could scarcely resist a strong and enterprising govern-
ment; to defend themselves successfully, they must have reached their
d. In the margin:
Cause of its little importance. The coarse elements that it brings intouse. It canhardly
arise except during little developed centuries when individuality is the rst need.
The town puts liberty and government within the grasp of the people; it gives
them an education or creates great national assemblies.
A town system is made only with the support of mores, laws, circumstances and
time.
Town liberty is the most difcult to suppress, the most difcult to create.
It is in the town that nearly all the strength of free peoples resides./
It is in the town that the liberty of peoples resides. Makes kingdoms and creates
republics. Cf. conversation with Mr. Gray (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3,
YTC, BIIa and Voyages, OC, V, 1, pp. 9495).
fullest development and be mingled with national ideas and habits. Thus,
as long as town liberty has not become part of the mores, it is easy to
destroy; and it can become part of the mores only after existing in the
laws for a long time.
Town liberty therefore escapes human effort so to speak. Consequently
it is rarely created;
e
in a sense it arises by itself. It develops almost in secret
f
withina semi-barbaric society. The continuous actionof laws andof mores,
circumstances, and above all time succeed in its consolidation. You can say
that, of all the nations of the European continent, not a single one knows
town liberty.
The strength of free peoples resides in the town, however. Town in-
stitutions are to liberty what primary schools are to knowledge; they put
it within the grasp of the people; they give them a taste of its peaceful
practice and accustom them to its use. Without town institutions, a na-
tion can pretend to have a free government, but it does not possess the
spirit of liberty.
g
Temporary passions, momentary interests, the chance
of circumstances can give it the external forms of independence; but des-
e. In his report on Algeria to the Chamber of Deputies (Rapport fait par M. de
Tocqueville sur le projet de loi relatif aux credits extraordinaires demandes pour
lAlgerie and discussions on Algeria, Moniteur universel, 24, 25 May, 1, 9, 10, 11, 12 June
1847, reproduced in OCB, IX, pp. 423512 and in E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1,

pp. 308409), Tocqueville insists, nonetheless, on the necessity of creating town insti-
tutions in Algeria. He sees it as a condition of the French colonial presence in that coun-
try (E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, p. 352). See Seymour Drescher, Dilemmas of
Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1968), p. 61.
f. Herve de Tocqueville: This does not seem to me to agree very well with what
precedes. How does it develop almost in secret, if it has subsisted for a long time in the
laws? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 84).
g. In his notes on the government of India, Tocqueville sees in the permanence and
power of the town the reason for the survival of Hindu culture through revolution and
the lack of interest in general politics: The entire political life of the Indians withdrew
into the town; the entire administration was concentrated there. As long as the town still
existed, who controlled the empire was of little importance to the inhabitants. They
hardly noticed the change of masters (E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, p. 450).

potism, driven back into the interior of the social body, reappears sooner
or later at the surface.
To make the reader understand well the general principles on which the
political organization of the town and the county inthe UnitedStates rests,
I thought that it was useful to take one state in particular as a model, to
examine in detail what happens there, and then to cast a quick glance over
the rest of the country.
I have chosen one of the states of New England.
The town and the county are not organized in the same way in all the
parts of the Union; it is easy to recognize, however, that throughout the
Union the same principles, more or less, have presided over the formation
of both.
[The town institutions of New England were the rst to reach a state
of maturity. They present a complete and uniform whole. They serve as a
model for the other parts of the Union and tend more and more to become
the standard to which all the rest must sooner or later conform.]
Now, it seemed to me that in New England these principles were con-
siderably more developed and had attained further consequences thanany-
where else. So they are, so to speak, more evident there and are thus more
accessible to the observation of the foreigner.
The town institutions of New England form a complete and regular
whole. They are old; they are strong because of the laws, stronger still be-
cause of the mores; they exercise a prodigious inuence over the entire
society.
In all these ways, they merit our attention.
Town District
The town in New England (Township) falls between the canton and the
commune [town] in France. Generally it numbers from two to three thou-
sand inhabitants.
1
So it is not too extensive for all its inhabitants to share
1. In 1830, the number of towns, in the State of Massachusetts, was 305; the number of
inhabitants 610,014; this gives an average of about 2,000 inhabitants per town.
nearly the same interests; and on the other hand, it is populated enough to
assure that elements of a good administration are always found within it.
Town Powers in New England
The people, source of all powers in the town as elsewhere.
There they deal with principal matters by themselves.
No town council.The largest part of town authority
concentrated in the hands of the selectmen.How the selectmen
function.General assembly of the inhabitants of the town
(Town Meeting).Enumeration of all the town ofcers.
Ofces mandatory and paid.
In the town as everywhere else, the people are the source of social powers,
but nowhere else do they exercise their power more directly. In America,
the people are a master who has to be pleased to the greatest possible degree.
In New England, the majority acts through representatives when the
general affairs of the state must be dealt with. This was necessary; but in
the town, where legislative and governmental action is closer to the
governed, the law of representation is not accepted.
h
There is no town
council; the body of voters, after naming their magistrates, directs themin
everything that is not the pure and simple execution of the laws of the
state.
2
h. For Tocqueville, the lack of representation is the principal characteristic of the
town; he gives the town a role similar to that of the small republic in the thought of
Rousseau. If here he asserts that the lack of representation is a characteristic of the town
across the Atlantic, in the Ancien Re gime et la Re volution (OC, II, 1, pp. 11920), he will
admit that in the parish of the old regime he found the lack of political representation
and other traits that he had formerly judged as belonging only to North America.
2. The same rules do not apply to the large towns.
j
These generally have a mayor and a
municipal body divided into two branches; but that is an exception that must be authorized
by a law. See the law of 22 [23 (ed.)] February 1822, regulating the powers of the city of
Boston. Laws of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 588. This applies to large cities. It also frequently
This state of things is so contrary to our ideas, and so opposed to our
habits, that it is necessary to provide a few examples here for it to be well
understood.
Public ofces are extremely numerous and highly divided in the town,
as we will see below. The largest part of administrative powers is concen-
trated, however, in the hands of a small number of individuals elected an-
nually who are called selectmen.
3
The general laws of the state have imposed a certain number of obli-
gations on the selectmen. To fulll themthey do not needthe authorization
of those under their jurisdiction, and they cannot avoid their obligations
without engaging their personal responsibility. State law charges them, for
example, with drawing up the electoral lists in their town; if they fail to do
so, they make themselves guilty of a misdemeanor. But in all things that
are left to the direction of the town authority, the selectmen are the exec-
utors of the popular will, as with us the mayor is the executor of the de-
liberations of the town council. Most often they act on their private re-
sponsibility and, in actual practice, only carry out the implications of
principles previously set down by the majority. But if they want to intro-
duce any change whatsoever inthe establishedorder, if they desire topursue
a new undertaking, they must return to the source of their power. Suppose
that it is a question of establishing a school: the selectmen convoke on a
happens that the small cities are subject to a special administration. In 1832, the State of New
York numbered 104 towns administered in this way ( Williams Register).
j. Herve de Tocqueville:
Delete the note and transfer it to the end of the chapter. This note, while teaching
us that the large towns have a different municipal system, interrupts, diminishes, and,
in order to bring an imperfectly stated difference to our attention, diverts our interest.
At the end of the chapter, a section on the municipal system of the large towns is
needed. That is indispensable for the unity of the work and the satisfaction of the
reader (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 84).
3. Three are elected in the smallest towns; nine, in the largest. See The Town Ofcer, p.
186. Also see the principal laws of Massachusetts relative to the selectmen:
Law of 20 February 1786, vol. I, p. 219;24 February 1796, vol. I, p. 488;7 March
1801, vol. II, p. 45;16 June 1795, vol. I, p. 473;12 March 1808, vol. II, p. 186;28 Feb-
ruary 1787, vol. I, p. 302;22 June 1797, vol. I, p. 539.
given day, in a place specied in advance, the whole body of voters; there,
they set forth the need that is felt; they show the means to satisfy it, the
money that must be spent, the location that should be chosen. The assem-
bly, consulted on all those points, adopts the principle, determines the lo-
cation, votes the tax and puts the execution of its will into the hands of
the selectmen.
Only the selectmen have the right to call the town meeting, but they can
be made to do so. If ten property owners conceive a new project and want
to submit it for approval by the town, they call for a general convocation
of the inhabitants; the selectmen are obliged to agree to the call and only
retain the right to preside over the meeting.
4
Without a doubt, these political mores, these social customs are very far
from us. At this moment I want neither to judge them nor to show the
hidden causes that produce and animate them; I am limiting myself to
presenting them.
The selectmen are elected annually in the month of April or May. At
the same time the town meeting chooses a host of other town magistrates,
5
appointed for certain important administrative tasks.
k
Some, known as as-
sessors, must determine the tax; others, known as collectors, must collect
it. One ofcer, called the constable, is charged with keeping the peace, su-
pervising public places and assuring the physical execution of the laws. An-
other, named the town clerk, records all deliberations; he keeps minutes of
the acts of the civil registry. A treasurer keeps the town funds. Add to these
ofcers an overseer of the poor, whose duty, very difcult to fulll, is to
enforce the laws relative to the poor; school commissioners, whodirect pub-
lic education; road surveyors, who are responsible for all the routine tasks
relating to the roadways, large and small; and you will have the list of the
principal agents of town administration. But the division of ofces does
4. See Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 250; law of 23 March 1786.
5. Ibid.
k. In the margin: What makes town spirit powerful./
Independence of the town.
Importance of the town.
Constant political life.
Division of town powers.
not stop there. You still nd, among the town ofcers,
6
parish commis-
sioners who must regulate church expenses;
m
inspectors of various kinds,
some charged with directing the efforts of citizens in case of re; others,
with overseeing the harvest; these, with temporarily relieving difculties
that canarise fromfencing; those, withsupervisingwoodallotments or with
inspecting weights and measures.
In all, principal ofces in the town number nineteen. Each inhabitant
is obligated, under penalty of a ne, to accept these different ofces; but
also most of these ofces are paid,
n
so that poor citizens can devote their
time to themwithout suffering a loss. The Americansystem, moreover, does
not give any xed salary to ofcers. In general, each act of their adminis-
tration has a value, and they are remunerated only in proportion to what
they have done.
o
6. All these magistrates actually exist in practice.
To know the details of the duties of all of these town magistrates, see the book entitled
Town Ofcer, by Isaac Goodwin, Worcester 1829; and the collection of the general laws of
Massachusetts in 3 vols., Boston, 1823.
m. Tocqueville learned fromGoodwin that in the UnitedStates the towninhabitants
were obliged to contribute to the support of a Protestant minister. This seems to him
nearly the sign of a State religion, and he says so to Sparks. Apparently in agreement,
Sparks answers him: It is one of those cases in which early prejudice, habit, and acci-
dental causes, may pervert the sense of a majority and operate against the equal rights
of the whole (H. B. Adams, Jared Sparks and Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 25).
n. The manuscript says: paid, little it is true, but enough, however, so that poor
citizens . . .
o. I found myself in a Boston salon behind two respectable gentlemen who appeared
to treat an important subject with interest:
How much will that gain you much [sic ]? said one.
Its a fairly good business, answered the other, about one hundred dollars is
given for each.
As you say, replied the rst, that truly is a good business.
Now, it concerned nothing less than two pirates who were to be hanged the next
day. One of these speakers, who was the City Marshal, was obliged by his position
to be present at the execution and to see that everything was done according to order.
The law allocated to him for his right to be present one hundred dollars for each one
hanged; and he spoke of these two condemned men like a pair of cattle that he had
to sell the next day at the market.
Told by the consul (alphabetic notebook B, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1,
p. 241).
Of Town Life
Each person is the best judge of what concerns only himself
alone.Corollary of the principle of sovereignty of the people.
Application that the American towns make of these doctrines.
The New England town, sovereign in everything that concerns
only itself, subject in everything else.Obligation of the
town toward the state.In France, the government lends
its agents to the town.In America, the town lends its to
the government.
I said previously that the principle of sovereignty of the people hovers over
the entire political system of the Anglo-Americans. Each page of this book
will show some new applications of this doctrine.
Among nations where the dogma of the sovereignty of the peoplereigns,
each individual forms an equal portion of the sovereign power, and par-
ticipates equally in the government of the state.
Each individual is therefore considered to be as enlightened, as virtuous,
as strong as any of his fellows.
So why does he obey society, and what are the natural limits of this
obedience?
He obeys society, not at all because he is inferior to those who direct it,
or less capable than another man of governing himself; he obeys society
because union with his fellows seems useful to him and because he knows
that this union cannot exist without a regulatory power.
So in all that concerns the mutual duties of citizens, he has become a
subject. In all that concerns only himself, he has remained the master; he
is free and is accountable for his actions only to God. Thus this maxim,
that the individual is the best as well as the only judge of his particular
interest and that society has the right to direct his actions only when it feels
harmed by them, or when it needs to call for his support.
This doctrine is universally accepted in the United States. Elsewhere I
will examine what general inuence it exercises over even the ordinary acts
of life; but at this moment I am talking about the towns.
The town, taken as a whole and in relation to the central government,
is only an individual like any other to whomthe theory I have just indicated
applies.
Town liberty in the United States follows, therefore, from the very
dogma of the sovereignty of the people. All the American republics have
more or less recognized this independence; but among the people of New
England, circumstances have particularly favored its development.
In this part of the Union, political life was born very much within the
towns; you could almost say that at its origin each of them was an inde-
pendent nation. When the Kings of England later demanded their share
of sovereignty, they limited themselves to taking central power. They left
the town in the situation where they found it; now the towns of New En-
gland are subjects; but in the beginning they were not or were scarcely so.
They did not therefore receive their powers; on the contrary, they seem to
have relinquished a portion of their independence in favor of the state; an
important distinction which the reader must keep in mind.
p
In general the towns are subject to the states only when an interest that
I will call social is concerned, that is to say, an interest that the towns share
with others.
q
For everything that relates only to them alone, the towns have remained
independent bodies. No one among the inhabitants of New England, I
think, recognizes the right of the state government to intervene in the di-
rection of purely town interests.
r
So the towns of New England are seen to buy and sell, to sue and to
defend themselves before the courts, to increase or reduce their budget
p. In the margin: The dogma of sovereignty of the people, it must not be forgot-
ten, has as its end not to make the people do all that they should want, but all that they
do want.
q. Cf. conversations with Sparks and Mr. Gray (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3,
YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, p. 90, 96). See also H. B. Adams, Jared Sparks and Alexis de
Tocqueville, p. 18.
r. Earlier draft: I do not believe anyone has ever dared to profess that the duty and
the right of a government was to watch over the governed in such a paternal way that
they could not even do what can be of harm only to themselves.
without any administrative authority whatsoever thinkingtoopposethem.
7
[<This right has only a single limit. That is found in the institution of
the judicial power, but we will examine it later.>]
As for social duties, they are required to fulll them. Thus, if the state
needs money, the town is not free to grant or to deny its cooperation.
8
If
the state wants to open a road, the town does not have the right to close
its territory. If it establishes a regulationconcerning public order, the town
must execute it. If it wants to organize education according to a uniform
plan throughout the country, the town is required to create the schools
desired by the law.
9
We will see, when we talk about administration in the
United States, how and by whom the towns, in all these different cases,
are forced to obey. Here I only want to establish the existence of the ob-
ligation. This obligation is strict, but the state government, while impos-
ing it, only enacts a principle; for carrying out the principle, the town
generally recovers all its rights of individuality. Thus, it is true that the
tax is voted by the legislature, but it is the town that apportions and col-
lects it; a school is prescribed, but it is the town that builds, funds and
directs it.
In France the tax collector of the State levies the taxes of the town; in
America the tax collector of the town raises the tax of the state.
With us, therefore, the central government lends its agents to the town;
in America, the town lends its ofcers to the government. That alone makes
clear to what degree the two societies differ.
Of Town Spirit in New England
Why the New England town attracts the affections of those who
live there.Difculty met in Europe in creating town spirit.
Town rights and duties that work together in America to
form this spirit.The native land has a more distinctive
7. See Laws of Massachusetts, law of 23 March 1786, vol. I, p. 250.
8. Ibid., law of 20 February 1786, vol. I, p. 217.
9. See the same collection, law of 2 June 1789, and 8 [10 (ed.)] March, 1827, vol. I, p. 367,
and vol. III, p. 179.
physiognomy in the United States than elsewhere.How town
spirit is shown in New England.What fortunate effects
it produces there.
[Laws act on mores; and mores, on laws. Wherever these two things do
not lend each other mutual support, there is unrest, revolutiontearingapart
the society.
The legislation of NewEngland constitutedthe town. Habits have com-
pleted the establishment of a true town spirit there.
The town is a center around which interests and passions gather and
where real and sustained activity reigns.]
In America not only do town institutions exist, but also a town spirit
that sustains and animates them.
s
The New England town brings together two advantages that, wherever
they are found, strongly excite the interest of mennamely, independence
and power. It acts, it is true, within a circle that it cannot leave, but within
that circle its movements are free. This independence alone would already
give the town real importance even if its population and size would not
assure its importance.
You must realize that in general the affections of men go only where
strength is found. Love of native landdoes not reignfor long ina conquered
country.
t
The inhabitant of New England is attached to his town, not so
much because he was born there as because he sees in this town a free and
strong corporate body to which he belongs and which merits the trouble
of trying to direct it.
In Europe the very people who govern often regret the absence of town
spirit; for everyone agrees that town spirit is a great element of order and
public tranquillity; but they do not know how to produce it. By making
the town strong and independent, they fear dividing social power and ex-
posing the State to anarchy. Now, take strength and independence away
s. In the margin: <The person who focuses his affections and his hopes on the town,
who knows how to take his place there and to participate in its governance, that person
possesses what I call town spirit.>
t. In the margin, in pencil, on a paper glued into place: I do not knowif this thought
is very accurate. Witness, Poland.
from the town, and you will forever nd there only people who are ad-
ministered, not citizens.
Note, moreover, an important fact. The New England town is so con-
stituted that it can serve as a center of strong affections, and at the same
time there is nothing nearby that strongly attracts the ambitious passions
of the human heart.
The ofcials of the county are not elected and their authority is limited.
The state itself has only a secondary importance; its existence is indistinct
and tranquil. To gain the right to administer it, few men agree to distance
themselves from the center of their interests and to disrupt their existence.
The federal government confers power and glory on those who direct it;
but the number of men who are able to inuence its destiny is very small.
The presidency is a highofce that canhardly be attainedexcept after reach-
ing anadvanced age. Whensomeone reaches other highlevel federal ofces,
it is by chance in a way and after already becoming famous by pursuing
another career.
u
Ambition cannot make these high ofces the permanent
aimof its efforts. [{The Unionis a nearly ideal beingthat nothingrepresents
to the mind.}]
v
It is in the town, at the center of the ordinary relations of
life, that the desire for esteem, the need for real interests, the taste for power
and notice are focused. These passions, which so often trouble society,
change character when they can operate thus near the domestic hearthand,
in a way, within the family.
See with what art, in the American town, care has been taken to scatter
power, if I can express myself in this way, in order to interest more people
in public life. Apart from the voters called from time to time to perform
the acts of government, how many diverse ofces, how many different
magistrates, who all, in the circle of their attributions, represent the
powerful corporate body in whose name they act! How many men thus
u. The drafting of this sentence, and of the preceding one, is by Beaumont (YTC,
CIIIb, 2, pp. 6869). In this chapter, Tocqueville seems to have largely taken into ac-
count numerous stylistic suggestions made by Beaumont.
v. In pencil in the margin: There again, an idea that is a bit undeveloped and that
consequently lacks clarity.
exploit the power of the town for their prot and are interested in it for
themselves!
Nor is the American system, even as it divides municipal power among
a great number of citizens, afraid to multiply town duties. In the United
States people think rightly that love of country is a kind of religious cult
that attaches men by observances.
In this way, town life makes itself felt at every moment as it were; it
manifests itself every day by the accomplishment of a duty or by the
exercise of a right. This political existence imparts a continual, but at
the same time peaceful, movement to society that agitates without trou-
bling it.
w
The Americans are attached to the city by a reason analogous to the one
that makes mountain dwellers love their country. Among them the native
land has marked and characteristic features; it has a more distinctive phys-
iognomy than elsewhere.
In general the New England towns have a happy existence. Their gov-
ernment suits their taste and is their choice as well. Within the profound
peace and material prosperity that reign in America, the storms of munic-
ipal life are few. Leadership of towninterests is easy. The political education
of the people, moreover, was done a long time ago, or rather they arrived
already educatedonthe soil they occupy. InNewEngland, divisionof ranks
does not exist even in memory; so there is no portion of the town tempted
to oppress the other, and injustices, which strike only isolated individuals,
are lost in the general contentment. Should the government exhibit some
faults, and certainly it is easy to point them out, they are not obvious to
view, because the government truly derives from the governed. And it is
sufcient for town government to operate, whether well or poorly, for it
to be protected by a kind of paternal pride. The Americans, moreover,
have no point of comparison. England once ruled the colonies as a whole,
but the people have always directed town affairs. So sovereignty of the
w. Rights and duties are multiplied inthe towninorder to attachmanby its benets,
like religion by its observances. Town life makes itself felt at every moment. Duty, ex-
ible and easy to fulll; social importance that that scatters (YTC, CVb, p. 17).
people in the town is not only a long-standing condition, but alsoanorigi-
nal one.
The inhabitant of New England is attached to his town, because it is
strong and independent; he is interested in it, because he participates in its
leadership; he loves it, because he has nothing to complain about in his lot.
In the town he places his ambition and his future; he joins in each of the
incidents of town life; in this limited sphere, accessible to him, he tries his
hand at governing society. He becomes accustomed to the forms without
which liberty proceeds only by revolutions, is infused with their spirit, ac-
quires a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and nally
gathers clear and practical ideas about the nature of his duties as well as the
extent of his rights.
Of the County in New England
The county in New England, analogous to the arrondissement
in France.Created for a purely administrative interest.
Has no representation.Administered by
non-elective ofcials.
The American county is very analogous to the French arrondissement. As
for the latter, an arbitrary circumscription was drawn for the former; it
forms a body whose different parts have no necessary bonds witheachother
and for whom neither affection nor memory nor shared existence serve as
attachments. It is created only for a purely administrative interest.
The town was too limited in area ever to contain the administration of
justice. The county is, therefore, the primary judicial center. Each county
has a court of justice,
10
a sheriff to execute the decisions of the courts, a
prison that must hold the criminals.
There are needs that are felt in a more or less equal way by all the towns
of a county; it was natural that a central authority was charged with pro-
viding for them. In Massachusetts, this authority resides in the hands of a
10. See the law of 14 February 1821, Laws of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 551.
certain number of magistrates, appointed by the Governor of the state,
with the advice
11
of his council.
12
The county administrators have only a limited and exceptional power
that applies only to a very small number of cases provided for in advance.
The state and the town are sufcient for the ordinary course of things.
These administrators only prepare the county budget; the legislature votes
it.
13
There is no assembly that, directly or indirectly, represents the county.
So truly speaking, the county has no political existence.
x
A double tendency is noticeable in most American constitutions, which
leads the law-makers to divide executive power and to concentrate legis-
lative power. The New England town by itself has a principle of existence
that is not stripped away fromit. But this existence wouldhave tobe created
articially in the county, and the usefulness of doing so has not been felt.
All the towns united together have only a single representative, the state,
y
center of all national powers;
z
apart from town and national action, you
could say that there are only individual powers.
Of Administration in New England
a
In America, you do not see the administration.Why.
Europeans believe they are establishing liberty by taking away
some of the rights belonging to the social power; Americans, by
11. See the law of 20 February 1819, Laws of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 494.
12. The Governors Council is an elected body.
13. See the law of 2 November 1781, Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 61.
x. In a working note for the draft of Ireland, Beaumont will write:
In Ireland political life is in the county, because Ireland is aristocratic.
In America, in the town, because America is democratic.
Among us, in the State, because France, still monarchical (Beaumont, YTC, CX).
y. In a rst draft, this section was followed by that which treats the state.
z. The style of the last three sentences had been modied following remarks by Beau-
mont (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 70).
a. The manuscript mentions the following titles: of administration in the
united states, what is meant in the united states by administration
and government. their means of action and their elements, and of
executive power in the united states. of government and adminis-
tration.
dividing their exercise.Nearly all of the administration strictly
speaking contained in the town, and divided among town
ofcers.No trace of an administrative hierarchy is seen, either
in the town or above it.Why it is so. How the state happens,
however, to be administered in a uniform way.Who is charged
with making the town and county administrations obey the
law.Of the introduction of the judicial power into the
administration.Result of extending the elective principle to all
ofcials.Of the justice of the peace in New England.
Appointed by whom.Administers the county.Ensures the
administration of the towns.Court of sessions.The way in
which it acts.Who apprises it.The right of inspection and of
complaint, scattered like all administrative functions.
Informers encouraged by sharing nes.
What most strikes the European who travels across the United States is the
absence of what among us we call government or administration. InAmer-
ica, you see written laws; you see their daily execution; everything is in
motion around you, and the motor is nowhere to be seen. The hand that
runs the social machine escapes at every moment.
But just as all peoples, in order to express their thoughts, are obliged
to resort to certain grammatical forms that constitute human languages,
all societies, in order to continue to exist, are compelled to submit to a
certain amount of authority; without it, they fall into anarchy. This au-
thority can be distributed in different ways; but it must always be found
somewhere.
There are two means to diminish the strength of authority
b
in a nation.
The rst is to weaken power in its very principle, by taking fromsociety
the right or the capacity to defend itself in certain cases; to weaken au-
b. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not like the word authority here very much. It seems
too generic to me to apply to the species; there is the authority of laws that cannot be
diminished, nor that of the magistrates. I would prefer power. It would be dropped in
the following sentence (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 86 prima).
thority in this way is what, in Europe, is generally called establishing
liberty.
c
[{This method has always seemed to me barbaric and antisocial.}]
There is a second means to diminish the action of authority. This one
consists not of stripping society of some of its rights or paralyzing its ef-
forts, but of dividing the use of its powers among several hands; of mul-
tiplying ofcials while attributing to each all the power needed to carry out
what he is meant to do. There are peoples who can still be led to anarchy
by this division of the social powers; in itself, however, it is not anarchic.
By sharing authority in this way, its action is made less irresistible and less
dangerous, it is true; but authority is not destroyed.
The Revolution in the United States was produced by a mature and
thoughtful taste for liberty, and not by a vague and undened instinct for
independence. It was not based upon passions for disorder; onthe contrary,
it proceeded with love of order and of legality.
d
So in the United States, the Americans did not claimthat, in a free coun-
try, a man had the right to do everything; on the contrary, social obligations
more varied than elsewhere were imposed on him. They did not have the
idea of attacking the power of society in its principle and of contesting its
rights; they limited themselves to dividing power in its exercise. In this way
they wanted to make authority great and the ofcial small, so that society
might continue to be well regulated and remain free.
There is no country in the world where the law speaks a language as
c. E
I cannot understand this. How can someone think to establish liberty by taking from
society the right to defend itself? Fine, if you had said: by taking from the government
which represents society, etc. You wanted to say, I think, that someone thought to
establish liberty by weakening the government, the governmental power. Well! That
is badly expressed, for to weaken the government of a society or to weakenthis society
are two very different things. French society was not weak under the Convention,
but the old government had just been destroyed (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 8182).
d. In the margin of another version: When democracy comes with mores and be-
liefs, it leads to liberty.
When it comes with moral and religious anarchy, it leads to despotism.
absolute as in America, nor is there one where the right to apply the law is
divided among so many hands.
Administrative power in the United States presents nothing either cen-
tralized or hierarchical in its constitution; that is why you do not see it.
Power exists, but you do not know where to nd its representative.
We saw above that the New England towns were not subordinate. So
they take care of their own individual interests.
It is also the town magistrates who are usually charged with seeing to
the execution of the general laws of the state or with executing them
themselves.
14
Apart from the general laws, the state sometimes makes general regu-
lations concerning public order. But ordinarily it is the towns and the town
ofcers who, jointly with the justices of the peace and according to the
needs of the localities, regulate the details of social existence and promul-
gate prescriptions relating to public health, good order and the morality of
citizens.
15
Finally it is the municipal magistrates who, by themselves and without
needing to wait for outside initiative, provide for the unexpectedneeds that
societies often feel.
e 16
14. See The Town Ofcer, particularly the words Selectmen, Assessors, Collectors,
Schools, Surveyors of Highways . . . Example among many others: the state forbids unnec-
essary travel on Sunday. It is the tythingmen, town ofcers, who are especially charged with
using their authority to enforce the law.
See the law of 8 March 1792, Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 410.
The selectmen draw up the electoral lists for the election of the Governor and forward the
result of the vote to the secretary of the republic. Law of 24 February 1796, id., vol. I, p. 488.
15. Example: the selectmen authorize the construction of sewers, designate the locations
where slaughterhouses can be built, and where certain types of business whose proximity is
harmful can be established.
See the law of 7 June 1785, vol. I, p. 193.
e. In the rst draft: The administration in societies where the legislative and ex-
ecutive powers are not concentrated in the same hands {where the principle of sover-
eignty of the people reigns} has only two obligations:
1. To execute the existing laws.
2. To provide for the unforeseen accidents of social life.
16. Example: the selectmen attend to public health in case of contagious diseases, and
As a result of what we have just said, administrative power in Massa-
chusetts is almost entirely contained within the town;
17
but it is divided
there among many hands.
In the French town there is in fact only a single administrative ofcial,
the mayor.
f
We have seen that there were at least nineteen in the NewEnglandtown.
The nineteen ofcers do not generally depend on each other. The law
has carefully drawn a circle of action around each of these magistrates.
Within this circle, they have all the power needed to fulll the duties of
their ofce and are not under any town authority.
If you look above the town, you see scarcely a trace of an administrative
hierarchy. Sometimes county ofcials correct a decision made by the towns
or by the town magistrates,
18
but in general you can say that the adminis-
trators of the county do not have the right to direct the conduct of the
administrators of the town.
19
The former have authority over the latter only
in things that concern the county.
jointly with the justices of the peace, take necessary measures. Law of 22 June 1797, vol. I,
p. 539 [549 (ed.)].
17. I say almost, because there are several incidents of town life that are regulated, either
by a justice of the peace in their individual capacity, or by the justices of the peace assembled
as a body at the county-seat. Example: it is the justices of the peace who grant licenses. See the
law of 28 February 1787, vol. I, p. 297.
f. Initially, Tocqueville wrote more specically: In the French town the mayor is
only the representative of an ofcial at a higher level than he; his power is only the
reection of a superior power, a delegation of authority; the representative must always
disappear before the one who gave the mandate.
18. Example: a license is granted only to those who present a certicate of good conduct
given by the selectmen. If the selectmen refuse to give this certicate, the person can complain
to the justices of the peace assembled in the court of sessions, and they can grant the license.
See the law of 12 March 1808, vol. II, p. 186. The towns have the right to make regulations
(bylaws) and to require the observation of these bylaws by nes the level of which are xed;
but these bylaws must be approved by the court of sessions. See the law of 23 March 1786, vol.
I, p. 254.
19. In Massachusetts, the county administrators are often called to assess the acts of the
town administrators; but we will see later that they engage in this examination as a judicial
power, and not as an administrative authority.
The town magistrates and those of the county are required, in a very
small number of cases stipulated in advance, to report the result of their
actions to the ofcers of the central government.
20
But the central govern-
ment is not represented by one man charged with making general regula-
tions concerning public order or ordinances for the execution of the laws,
with communicating routinely with the administrators of the county and
town, with examining their conduct, with directing their actions and pun-
ishing their mistakes.
So there is no center where the lines of administrative power come
together.
Then how do you manage to run society according to a more or less
uniform plan? How can counties and their administrators, towns and their
ofcers be made to obey?
g
In the states of New England, the legislative power extends to more ob-
jects than with us. The legislator penetrates in a way to the very heart of
the administration; the law gets into the smallest details. It simultaneously
prescribes the principles and the means to apply them; thus it encloses the
secondary bodies and their administrators within a multitude of strict and
rigorously dened obligations.
As a result, if all the secondary bodies and all the ofcials followthe law,
all parts of society proceed in a uniform way. But there still remains the
20. Example: the town school committees are bound to make an annual report on the state
of the school to the secretary of the republic. See the law of 10 March 1827, vol. III, p. 183.
g. Administrative and judicial powers./
Among all nations there are two methods of executing the laws:
The administrative method.
The judicial method.
The administrative method always addresses the cause; the other, the effect. The
one is direct; the other, indirect.
Example: a town makes an illegal decree.
The executive power quashes it. The judicial power prevents it from having any
effects and protects those who resist it.
An obstruction arises on the public road. The executive power has it removed; the
judicial power gets to the same end indirectly by ning those who caused it (YTC,
CVb, pp. 1920).
question of knowing how the secondary bodies and their ofcials can be
forced to follow the law.
In a general way you can say that society nds at its disposal only two
means to force ofcials to obey the laws.
It can entrust to one of the ofcers the discretionary power to direct all
the others and to remove them from ofce in case of disobedience.
Or it can charge the courts with imposing judicial penalties on those
who break the law.
h
You are not always free to choose one or the other of these means.
The right of directing an ofcial assumes the right to remove him from
ofce, if he does not follow the orders given to him, or to promote him if
he zealously fullls all of his duties. Now, an elected magistrate can be nei-
ther removed nor promoted. Elective ofces are by nature irrevocable until
the end of the term. In reality, the elected magistrate has nothing either to
hope or to fear except from the voters.
j
So when all public ofces result
from election, there can be no true hierarchy among ofcials, since both
the right to command and the right to quell disobedience effectivelycannot
be given to the same man; and the power to command cannot be joined
with that of rewarding and punishing.
h. Centralization. Town liberties.
In France there are two means available against the decisions of the Administra-
tion, an administrative means and a judicial means.
When an agent of the administration orders something contrary to the law, you
can apply to his superior and have his decision changed.
In the same situation, you can refuse to obey, and then the question comes before
the courts that decide indirectly if the ofcial had the right to issue the order. See a
discussion where these ideas are treated by Odilon Barrot. Debats [ Journal des debats
(ed.)] of 1 March 1834 (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 2627).
Tocquevilles papers contain an article clipped from the Journal des de bats of the same
date, relating to the discussionon28 February 1834 onthe municipal law(copiedinYTC,
CVj, 2, pp. 2746). On the occasion of the debate, Barrot defends the independence of
the French towns against Thiers and the government, which took a position in favor of
a strict control of the mayor by the prefect.
j. Where there is election, the supervision by the superior ofcial of his inferior is
less necessary. Elections deal with negligence; the courts, with misdeed.
Be careful to distinguish carefully what is judicial from what is administrative. Nearly
all the administration strictly speaking is concentrated in the towns; it is only a matter of
having them fulll their obligations (YTC, CVb, p. 6).
People who introduce election into the secondary mechanisms of their
government are therefore led necessarily to make heavy use of judicial pen-
alties as a means of administration.
This is not obvious at rst glance. Those who govern see making ofces
elective as a rst concession, and submitting elected magistrates to the de-
cisions of judges as a second concession. They dread these two innovations
equally; and because they are requested to do the rst more thanthe second,
they grant the election of the ofcial and leave him independent of the
judge. One of these two measures, however, is the only counterbalancethat
can be given to the other. We should be very careful about this; an elective
power not submitted to a judicial power escapes sooner or later from all
control or is destroyed. Between the central power and elected administra-
tive bodies, only the courts can serve as an intermediary. They alone can
force the elected ofcial to obey without violating the right of the voter.
So in the political world, the extension of judicial power must be cor-
relative with the extension of elective power. If these two things do not go
together, the State ends by falling into anarchy or servitude.
k
It has been noted in all times that judicial habits prepared men rather
poorly for the exercise of administrative power.
The Americans took from their fathers, the English, the idea of an in-
stitution that has no analogy whatsoever with what we know on the con-
tinent of Europe: the justices of the peace.
The justice of the peace holds a middle place between a public gure
and the magistrate, administrator and judge. The justice of the peace is an
enlightened citizen, but not necessarily one who is versed in knowledge of
the laws. Consequently, he is charged only with keeping order in society,
something that requires good sense and uprightness more thanknowledge.
The justice of the peace brings to administration, when he takes part in it,
a certain taste for forms and for publicity that makes him a highly trou-
k. Herve de Tocqueville: This sentence is abstract.
E
douard de Tocqueville: It is very concise. I do not nd it obscure (YTC, CIIIb,

2, p. 87).
Gustave de Beaumont: Excellent sentence. Do not listen to paternal advice (YTC,
CIIIb, 2, p. 72).
blesome instrument to despotism. But he does not appear to be a slave to
those legal superstitions that make magistrates
m
little capable of governing.
The Americans appropriated the institution of justices of the peace, all
the while removing the aristocratic character that distinguished it in the
mother country.
The Governor
n
of Massachusetts
21
appoints, inall the counties, a certain
number of justices of the peace, whose term in ofce lasts seven years.
22
Among these justices of the peace, moreover, he designates three of them
who form in each county what is called the court of sessions.
The justices of the peace individually take part in public administration.
Sometimes, along with the elected ofcials, they are charged with certain
administrative acts;
23
sometimes they form a court before which the mag-
m. E
douard de Tocqueville: I would like there: that generally make magistrates little
capable, etc. . . . No one must be hurt, and by allowing for exceptions, everyone applies
the exceptiontohimself; besides, I believe that there really are some(YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 82).
n. E
douard de Tocqueville (?):

We have not yet heard about a governor. The reader is even totally unaware what
this pompous label corresponds to in a republican country. Astonishment is redou-
bled when he learns that in the same country where the principle of informing [del-
egation? (ed.)] has penetrated everywhere, the governor appoints, in all the counties,
a certain number of justices of the peace, etc.
I know that further along, on page 229, you explain what the functions of the
governor are, but it appears indispensable to me that you say a word about it here,
since the reader is bewilderedwhenreading this paragraph. Youcould, I believe, begin
this paragraph more or less like this: There is in each county a magistrate who has the
title of governor. I will say further on how he gets his powers and what his attributions
are. Or better still, this could be put in a note at the bottom of the page, or simply
in a note at the word governor: head of the executive power of the county (YTC, CIIIb,
2, pp. 8283).
Note 21 does not exist in the manuscript.
21. We will see further on what the Governor is; I must say at this moment that the Gov-
ernor represents the executive power of the whole state.
22. See the Constitution of Massachusetts, chap. II, section I, paragraph 9; chap. III, par-
agraph 3.
23. Example among many others: a stranger arrives in a town, coming from a country
ravaged by a contagious disease. He falls ill. Two justices of the peace, with the advice of the
selectmen, can order the county sheriff to transport him elsewhere and to watch over him.
Law of 22 June 1797, vol. I, p. 540.
In general, the justices of the peace intervene in all the important acts of administrative
life and give them a semi-judicial character.
istrates summarily charge the citizen who refuses to obey, or the citizen
denounces the crimes of the magistrates. But it is in the court of sessions
that the justices of the peace exercise the most important of their admin-
istrative functions.
The court of sessions meets twice a year at the county seat. In Massa-
chusetts it is charged with upholding the obedience of most
24
of the public
ofcials.
25
Careful attentionmust be paidto the fact that inMassachusetts the court
of sessions is simultaneously an administrative body strictly speaking and
a political court.
[The administrative and judicial functions of the court of sessions are
so often confused in practice, that it is difcult to separate them even in
theory. But it is useful to do so.
<The court of sessions has attributions of two kinds. It administers the
county and ensures the administration of the towns.>]
24. I say most because in fact certain administrative crimes are referred to the ordinary
courts. Example: when a town refuses to raise the funds needed for its schools, or to appoint
the school committee, a very considerable ne is imposed. The court called supreme judicial
court or the court of common pleas pronounces this ne. See the law of 10 March 1827, vol.
III, p. 190. Id. When a town fails to make provision for war supplies. Law of 21 February
1822, vol. II, p. 570.
25. The justices of the peace, in their individual capacity,
o
take part in the government
of the towns and counties. The most important acts of town life are generally undertakenonly
with the support of one of them.
o. Herve de Tocqueville:
I do not believe that the word capacity exactly expresses the thought of the author.
Care must be taken about using words whose specic expression is made uncertain
by their multiple meanings. It seems to me that, from page 189 to 193, Alexis does
not say enough about how the justices of the peace participate in town administra-
tion. He must not lose sight of the fact that America is something new for most of
his readers, and that they will be looking in his book still more for instructions than
for reections. I admit that here, being uninformed, my curiosity is not satised. I
feel humiliated by my lack of knowledge, and I am annoyed that the author has
assumed that I ammore informed than I am. These pages must be reviewedandmore
precise details given about the administrative actionof the justices of the peace, when
they act outside of the court of sessions. Most readers do not even know how they
act in England.
E
douard de Tocqueville: Quite right. It seems to me that here the word capacity
means attribution. This word would be better I believe (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 8788).
We said that the county
26
had only an administrative existence. It is the
court of sessions by itself that is in charge of the small number of interests
that relate to several towns at the same time or to all the towns of the county
at once, interests that consequently cannot be entrusted to any single town
in particular.
When it concerns the county, the duties of the court of sessions are
therefore purely administrative, and if it often introduces judicial forms
into its way of proceeding, it is only as a means to inform itself,
27
and as a
guarantee given to the citizens. But when the administration of the towns
must be ensured, the court of sessions almost always acts as a judicial body,
and only in a few rare cases, as an administrative body.
The rst difculty that presents itself is making the town itself, a nearly
independent power, obey the general laws of the state.
We have seen that each year the towns must appoint a certain number
of magistrates who, as assessors, apportion taxes. A town tries to evade the
obligation to pay the tax by not appointing the assessors. The court of
sessions imposes a heavy ne.
28
The ne is raised by head on all the inhab-
itants. The county sheriff, ofcer of the law, executes the decision. In this
way, in the United States, power seems eager to hide itself carefully from
sight. Administrative command is almost always veiled there as a judicial
mandate; as such it is only more powerful, having in its favor the almost
irresistible strength that men grant to legal forms.
This procedure is easy to follow and is easily understood. What is re-
quired of the town is, in general, clear and dened; it consists of a simple
and uncomplicated act, of a principle, and not a detailed application.
29
But
26. The things relating to the county and that the court of sessions attends to canbe reduced
to these:
1. The building of prisons and courts of justice; 2. The proposed county budget (it is the
state legislature that votes on it); 3. The apportionment of these taxes thus voted; 4. The
distribution of certain licenses; 5. The establishment and repair of county roads.
27. When it is a matter of a road, this is the way that the court of sessions, with the help
of the jury, settles nearly all the difculties of execution.
28. See the law of 20 February 1786, vol. I, p. 217.
29. There is an indirect way to make the town obey. The towns are compelled by law to
keep their roads in good condition. If they neglect to vote the funds required for this main-
the difculty begins when it concerns securing the obedience, not of the
town any longer, but of the town ofcers.
All the reprehensible actions that a public ofcial can commit fall den-
itively into one of these categories:
He can do, without enthusiasm and without zeal, what the law requires
of him.
He cannot do what the law requires of him.
Finally, he can do what the law forbids.
A court can get at the conduct of an ofcial only in the last two cases.
A positive and appreciable act is needed as grounds for judicial action.
Thus, if the selectmen fail to fulll the formalities required by law in
the case of town elections, they can be ned.
30
But when the public ofcial fullls his duty without intelligence, when
he obeys the instructions of the law without enthusiasm and without zeal,
he is entirely beyond the reach of a judicial body.
In this case, the court of sessions, even when vested with its adminis-
trative attributions, is impotent to force him to fulll all of his obligations.
Only fear of removal can prevent these quasi-failings; and the court of
sessions does not hold within itself the source of town powers; it cannot
remove ofcials that it does not appoint.
p
In order to make certain, moreover, that there is negligence or lackof zeal,
the subordinate ofcial would have to be put under constant supervision.
Now, the court of sessions meets only twice a year; it does not conduct in-
spections; it judges only the reprehensible acts that are brought before it.
tenance, the town magistrate responsible for the roads is then authorized, as a matter of course,
to raise the needed money. Since he is himself responsible to individuals for the bad condition
of the roads, and can be sued by them before the court of sessions, it is assured that he will
exercise against the town the extraordinary right given to himby the law. Thus, by threatening
the ofcer, the court of sessions forces the town to obey. See the law of 5 March 1787, vol. I,
p. 305.
30. Laws of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 45.
p. Herve de Tocqueville: Que, qui, que within a fewlines. I do not knowwhy, when
the thought is powerful, the style drags. It comes from repeated use of cest que, il ny a
que; you must ght to the death against them. In a work of this type a concise and
dogmatic sentence is better than a drawn-out sentence. Example: Montesquieu (YTC,
CIIIb, p. 109).
Only the discretionary power to remove public ofcials can guarantee
the kind of enlightened and active obedience on their part that judicial
suppression cannot impose.
In France we seek this last guarantee in administrative hierarchy; in
America, they seek it in election.
Thus to summarize in a few words what I have just explained:
Should the public ofcial inNewEnglandcommit a crime inthe exercise
of his duties, the ordinary courts are always called to bring him to justice.
Should he commit an administrative fault, a purely administrative court
is charged with punishing him, and when the matter is serious or urgent
the judge does what the ofcial should have done.
31
Finally, should the same ofcial be guilty of one of those intangible fail-
ings that human justice can neither dene nor assess, he appears annually
before a tribunal from which there is no appeal, that can suddenly reduce
him to impotence [{remove him from power without even telling him
why}]. His power is lost with his mandate.
Certainly this systemencompasses great advantages,
q
but inits execution
a practical difculty is encountered that must be noted.
I have already remarked that the administrative tribunal that is called
the court of sessions did not have the right to inspect the town magistrates;
following a legal term, it can only act when it is apprised. But that is the
delicate point of the system.
The Americans of New England have not established a public prose-
cutor attached to the court of sessions,
32
and you must understand how
31. Example: if a town stubbornly persists in not naming assessors, the court of sessions
names them, and the magistrates chosen in this way are vested with the same powers as the
elected magistrates. See the law already cited of 20 February 1787.
q. In the margin: Perhaps enumerate them at this time.
Human dignity.
Legal, not arbitrary habits.
People at their business.
32. I say attached to the court of sessions. There is a magistrate, attached to the ordinary
courts, who fullls several of the functions of the public prosecutors ofce.
difcult it would have been for them to establish one. If they had limited
themselves to placing a prosecutor at each county seat, and if they had not
given him agents in the towns, why would this magistrate have been more
informed about what was happening in the county than the members of
the court of sessions themselves? If he had been given agents in each town,
the power most to be feared,
[
*
]
that of administering through the courts,
wouldhave beencentralizedinhis hands. Laws are, moreover, thedaughters
of habits, and nothing similar existed in English legislation.
So the Americans have divided, like all other administrative functions,
the right of inspection and the right of complaint.
Under the terms of the law, the members of the grand jury must notify
the court, to which they are attached, of crimes of all kinds that might be
committed in their county.
33
There are certain great administrative crimes
that the ordinary public prosecutor must pursue as a matter of course.
34
Most often, the obligation to have the offenders punished is imposed on
the scal ofcer, charged with collecting the proceeds of the ne; thus the
town treasurer is charged with pursuing most of the administrative crimes
that are committed in his sight.
But above all, American legislation appeals to individual interest;
35
that
is the great principle found constantly when you study the laws of the
United States.
[*]. <Far from wanting to create a magistrate of this kind, the Americans have, on
the contrary, such a great fear of combining too much administrative power in the same
hands, that when they assign responsibility to someone for suing for administrative
crimes, they hardly ever choose the most important ofcials.
Should a town refuse to raise the state tax, it is not the Governor who noties the
court of sessions, it is the state Treasurer. L[aws (ed.)] of M[assachusetts (ed.)], vol. I,
p. 209.
Should an assessor refuse to accept the functions that are granted to him, it is not the
selectmen who sue, it is the town treasurer. Id., vol. I, p. 218.>
33. Grand juries are obliged, for example, to inform the courts about the bad condition
of the roads. Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 308 [307308 (ed.)].
34. If, for example, the county treasurer does not provide his books. Laws of Massachu-
setts, vol. I, p. 406.
35. Example among many: an individual damages his vehicle or is hurt on a poorly main-
tained road; he has the right to ask the town or the county responsible for the road for damages
before the court of sessions. Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 309 [307308 (ed.)].
American legislators show little condence in human honesty; but they
always assume an intelligent man. So most often they rely on personal in-
terest for the execution of laws.
Indeed, when an individual is positively and presently hurt by an ad-
ministrative crime, it is understood that personal interest guarantees the
lodging of a complaint.
But it is easy to foresee that, if it concerns a legal prescription that has
no utility felt by an individual at the moment, even though the legal pre-
scription is useful to society, each person will hesitate to come forward as
accuser. In this way, by a kind of tacit agreement, the laws could fall into
disuse.
Thrown into this extremity by their system, the Americans are forced to
interest informers by calling them in certain cases to share in the nes.
36
Dangerous measure that assures the execution of laws by debasing
mores.
Above the county magistrates, there is truly no other administrative
power, only a governmental power.
General Ideas on Administration in the United States
How the states of the Union differ among themselves, by the
system of administration.Town life less active and less complete
36. In case of invasion or insurrection, when the town ofcers neglect to provide the militia
with necessary equipment and supplies, the town may be ned 200 to 500 dollars (1000 to 2700
[2500 (ed.)] francs). It can easily be imagined that, in such a case, it could happen that no
one would have either the interest or the desire to take the role of accuser. Consequently, the
law adds: [the ne is] to be sued for and recovered by any person, who may prosecute
for the same, [ . . .(ed.). . . ] one moiety to the prosecutor. See the law of 6 March 1810,
vol. II, p. 236.
The same arrangement is found very frequently reproduced in the laws of Massachusetts.
Sometimes it is not the individual that the law incites in this way to sue public ofcials;
it is the ofcial who is encouraged to have the disobedience of particular individuals punished.
Example: an inhabitant refuses to do the share of work assigned to him on a major roadway.
The surveyor of roads must sue him; and if the surveyor has him found guilty, half of the
ne comes to him. See the laws already cited, vol. I, p. 308.
as you move toward the south.The power of the magistrate
then becomes greater; that of the voter smaller.Administration
passes from the town to the county.State of New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania.Administrative principles applicable to all the
Union.Election of public ofcials or xed term of their
ofces.Absence of hierarchy.Introduction of judicial means
into the administration.
I previously announced that, after having examined in detail the consti-
tution of the town and county in New England, I would cast a general
glance over the rest of the Union.
There are towns and town life in each state; but in none of the confed-
erated states do you nd a town identical to the New England town.
As you move toward the south, you notice that town life becomes less
active; the town has fewer magistrates, rights and duties; the population
there does not exercise so direct aninuence ontownaffairs; townmeetings
are less frequent and involve fewer matters. The power of the elected mag-
istrate is therefore comparatively greater andthat of the voter, smaller; town
spirit there is less awake and less powerful.
37
You begin to see these differences in the state of New York; they are
already very apparent in Pennsylvania; but they become less striking when
you move toward the Northwest. Most of the emigrants whogotoestablish
the states of the Northwest come from New England, and they bring the
37. See, for detail, The Revised Statutes of the State of New York, at part I, chap. XI,
entitled: Of the Powers, Duties and Privileges of Towns, vol. I, pp. 33664.
See in the collection entitled: Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania, the words Assessors,
Collectors, Constables, Overseers of the Poor, Supervisors of highways. And in the col-
lection entitled: Acts of a General Nature of the State of Ohio, the law of 25 February
1824, relating to the towns, p. 412. And next, the particular arrangements relative to the
diverse town ofcers, such as: Townships Clerks, Trustees, Overseers of the Poor, Fence
Viewers, Appraisers of Property, Townships Treasurers, Constables, Supervisors of
Highways.
administrative habits of their mother land to their adopted country. The
Ohio town has much in common with the Massachusetts town.
We have seen that in Massachusetts the principle of public administra-
tion is found in the town. The town is the center where the interests and
affections of menconverge. But it ceases to be so the more youmove toward
the states where enlightenment is less universally spread and where, con-
sequently, the town offers fewer guarantees of wisdom and fewer elements
of administration. So as you move away from New England, town life
passes in a way to the county. The county becomes the great administrative
center and forms the intermediate power between the [central] govern-
ment and the ordinary citizens.
I said that in Massachusetts county matters were directed by the court
of sessions. The court of sessions is made up of a certain number of mag-
istrates appointed by the Governor and his council. The county has no
representation, and its budget is voted by the national [sic: state] legislature.
In the large state of New York, on the contrary, in the state of Ohio and
in Pennsylvania, the inhabitants of each county elect a certain number of
deputies; these deputies meet together to form a representative county
assembly.
38
The county assembly possesses, within certain limits, the right to tax
the inhabitants; in this regard, it constitutes a true legislature. It simul-
taneously administers the county, directs the administration of the towns
in several instances, and limits their powers much more strictly than in
Massachusetts.
r
These are the principal differences presented by the constitution of the
town and county in the various confederated states. If I wanted to get into
38. See Revised Statutes of the State of New York, part I, chap. XI, vol. I, p. 340. Id.
chap. XII; id., p. 366. Id., Acts of the State of Ohio, law of 25 February 1824, relating to
the county commissioners, p. 263. See Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania, the words
County Rates, and Levies, p. 170.
In the state of New York, each town elects a deputy, and this deputy participates at the
same time in the county administration and in that of the town.
r. Inthe margin: AskL[ouis (ed.)] andB[eaumont (ed.)] if it is necessarytosupport
these generalities with notes. Here either very minutely detailed notes are needed or
nothing.
the details of the means of execution, there are still many other dissimi-
larities that I could point out. But my goal is not to give a course in Amer-
ican administrative law.
I have said enough about it, I think, to make the general principles that
administration in the United States rests upon understood. These princi-
ples are applied in different ways; they have more or less numerous con-
sequences depending on the place; but fundamentally they are the same
everywhere. The laws vary; their physiognomy changes; the same spirit an-
imates them.
The town and county are not constituted in the same way everywhere;
but you can say that everywhere in the United States the organization of
the town and county rests on the same idea: that each person is the best
judge of what concerns himself alone, and the one most able to provide
for his individual needs. So the town and county are charged with looking
after their special interests. The state governs and does not administer. Ex-
ceptions to this principle are found, but not a contrary principle.
s
The rst consequence of this doctrine has been to have all the adminis-
trators
t
of the town and county chosen by the inhabitants themselves, or at
least to choose these magistrates exclusively from among the inhabitants.
[
*
]
[The second, to put into their hands the administration [v. direction]
of nearly all the interests of the town and county.
The state has retained the power to impose laws on all the towns and
counties, but it has not put into the hands of any ofcial the power todirect
the administration in a general way.]
s. To place.
Jealousy of legislatures against intermediate bodies.
In New England the justice of the peace prepares the county budget; it is the legis-
lature that votes on it. In the state of New York it is a representation of the county that
votes on the tax, but its power is conned to very narrow limits (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 13).
t. Herve de Tocqueville: It seems to me that you cannot say as positively that these
administrators are chosen by the inhabitants since you have taught us that the justices
of the peace are chosen by the Governor (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 111). Cf. note 48.
[*]. I say this because inthe laws of Tennessee, whichare probably those foundamong
all those of Virginian descent, the justices of the peace or magistrates composing the
county court (who hold their ofces during good behavior) are in charge of the entire
administration. I believe that it is purely and simply the English system.
Since administrators everywhere are elected or at least irrevocable, the
result has been that rules of hierarchy have not been able to be introduced
anywhere. So there are nearly as many independent ofcials as ofces. Ad-
ministrative power nds itself scattered among a multitude of hands.
Since administrative hierarchy exists nowhere and administrators are
elected and irrevocable until the end of their term, the obligationfollowed
to introduce courts, more or less, into the administration. Fromthat comes
the system of nes, by means of which the secondary bodies and their
representatives are forced to obey the law. This system is found from one
end of the Union to the other.
The power of suppressing administrative crimes or of taking adminis-
trative actions as needed has not beengranted, moreover, tothe same judges
in all the states.
The Anglo-Americans have drawn the institution of the justices of the
peace from a common source; it is found in all the states. But they have not
always taken advantage of it in the same way.
Everywhere the justices of the peace take part in the administration of
the towns and counties,
39
either by administering them directly or by sup-
pressing certain administrative crimes committed in them. But in most
states, the most serious of these crimes are submitted to ordinary courts.
Election of administrative ofcials, or irremovability from ofce, lack
of administrative hierarchy, and introduction of judicial measures into the
government of society at the secondary level are, therefore, the principal
39. There are even states in the South where the magistrates
u
of the county courts are
charged with all details of the administration. See The Statutes of the State of Tennessee,
the art. Judiciary, Taxes . . .
u. Herve de Tocqueville: If there are states where the court of sessions is charged
with all details of the administration, what becomes in these states of the town spirit so
praised by the author ?
It would seem, from the end of the chapter, that certain states are beginning to feel
the disadvantage of excessive decentralization. This consideration must be weighed by
the author in the following chapter (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 77).
characteristics by which American administration, from Maine to Florida,
is recognized.
v
There are some states where signs of administrative centralization be-
gin to be seen. The state of New York is the most advanced along this
path.
In the state of New York, ofcials of the central government exercise,
in certain cases, a kind of supervision and control over the conduct of the
secondary bodies.
40
In certain other cases, they form a type of court of
appeal for deciding matters.
41
In the state of New York, judicial penalties
v. No hierarchy and no centralization, character of American administration. So in
the town, more powers andmore magistrates thaninthe Frenchtown, but all independent.
Division of powers among those charged with making them fulll their duties. Fi-
nally, when they are concentrated, it is in a judicial body, that is to say, legal and far from
arbitrary [v: slave to forms] (YTC, CVb, p. 16).
40. Example: the running of public education is centralized in the hands of the govern-
ment. The legislature appoints the members of the university, called regents; the Governor
and the Lieutenant-Governor of the state are members ex ofcio. (Revised Statutes, vol. I,
p. 456). The regents of the university visit the colleges and universities each year and submit
an annual report to the legislature; their supervision is not illusory, for the following particular
reasons: the colleges, in order to become corporations that canbuy, sell andown, needacharter;
but this charter is granted by the legislature only on the advice of the regents. Each year the
state distributes to the colleges and academies the interest from a special fund created to en-
courage education. It is the regents who are the distributors of this money. See chap. XV,
Public Education, Revised Statutes, vol. I, p. 455.
Each year, the boards of public schools are required to send a report on conditions to the
superintendent of the Republic, Id., p. 488.
A similar report on the number and condition of the poor must be made annually to him.
Id., p. 631.
41. When someone believes himself wronged by certain acts coming from the school com-
missioners (these are town ofcers), he can appeal to the superintendent of primary schools
whose decision is nal. Revised Statutes, vol. I, p. 487.
You nd here and there, in the laws of the state of New York, provisions analogous to
those I have just cited as examples. But in general these tentative efforts at centralization are
weak and not very productive. While the highest ofcials of the state were given the right to
supervise and direct inferior agents, they were not given the right to reward or punish them.
The same man is hardly ever charged with giving the order and with suppressing disobedience;
so he has the right to command, but not the ability to make himself obeyed.
In 1830, the superintendent of schools, in his annual report to the legislature, complained
that several school commissioners, despite notice from him, had not forwarded the accounts
are used less than elsewhere as an administrative measure. There, the right
to bring proceedings against administrative crimes is also placed in fewer
hands.
42
The same tendency is slightly felt inseveral other states.
43
But, ingeneral,
you can say that the salient characteristic of public administration in the
United States is to be prodigiously decentralized.
Of the State
I have talked about the towns and about administration; I still have to talk
about the state and about government.
Here, I can move faster without fear of being misunderstood; what I
have to say is found all sketched out in written constitutions that anyone
can easily obtain.
44
These constitutions rest on a simple and rational theory.
Most of the forms that they prescribe have been adopted by all peoples
who have constitutions; they have therefore become familiar to us.
So I have only to do a brief overview here. Later I will try to judge what
I am about to describe.
they owed him. If this omission occurs again, he added, I will be reduced to prosecuting them
to the full extent of the law before the courts of competent jurisdiction.
42. Example: the district attorney in each county is charged with suing for the recovery of
all nes above 50 dollars, as long as this right has not been expressly granted by law to another
magistrate. Revised Statutes, part I, chap. XII, vol. I, p. 383.
43. There are several signs of administrative centralization in Massachusetts. Example:
the town school boards are charged with making an annual report to the Secretary of State.
Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I, p. 367.
44. See the text of the constitution of New York.
w
w. Reproduced as an appendix in the rst editions.
Legislative Power of the State
Division of the legislative body into two houses.
Senate.House of representatives.
Different attributions of these two bodies.
The legislative power of the state is entrusted to two assemblies; the rst is
generally called the senate.
The senate is normally a legislative body; but sometimes it becomes an
administrative and judicial body.
It takes part in administration in several ways depending onthe different
constitutions;
45
but ordinarily it enters into the sphere of executive power
by taking part in the choice of ofcials.
It participates in judicial power by judging certain political crimes and
sometimes as well by ruling on certain civil actions.
46
Its members are always few in number.
The other branch of the legislature, usually called the house of repre-
sentatives, participates innothing relatedtoadministrative power, andtakes
part in judicial power only when accusing public ofcials before the senate.
The members of the two houses are subject almost everywhere to the
same conditions of eligibility. Both are elected in the same way and by the
same citizens.
The only difference that exists between them is due to the fact that the
mandate of senators is generally longer than that of representatives. The
second rarely remain in ofce more than a year; the rst ordinarily hold
their seats two or three years.
By granting senators the privilege of being named for several years, and
by replacing them by cohort, the law has taken care to maintain, among
the legislators, a nucleus of men, already used to public affairs, who can
exercise a useful inuence over the newcomers.
45. In Massachusetts, the Senate is vested with no administrative function.
46. As in the state of New York.
x
x. See conversation with Mr. Spencer (non-alphabetic notebook 1, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 68).
So by the division of the legislative body into two branches, the Amer-
icans did not want to create one hereditary assembly and another elective
one; they did not intend to make one into an aristocratic body, and the
other into a representative of the democracy. Nor was their goal to make
the rst into a support for the governing power, while leaving the interests
and passions of the people to the second.
y
To divide legislative power, to slowinthis way the movement of political
assemblies, and to create a court of appeal for the revision of laws, such are
the only advantages that result from the current constitution of the two
houses in the United States.
Time and experience have shown the Americans that, reduced to these
advantages, the division of legislative powers is still a necessity of the rst
order.
Pennsylvania alone, among all the united republics, tried at rst to estab-
lish a single assembly. Franklin himself, carried away by the logical conse-
quences of the dogma of sovereignty of the people, had worked toward this
measure. The law soon had to be changed and two houses established. The
principle of the division of legislative power thus received its nal consecra-
tion; henceforththen, the necessity todivide legislative activityamongseveral
bodies can be considered a demonstrated truth. This theory, more or less
unknown in the ancient republics, introduced into the world almost by
chance, like most great truths, misunderstood among several modern peo-
ples, has nally passed as an axiom into the political science of today.
z
y. Division of administrative power, concentration of legislative power. American
principle (important).
The legislature most often appoints special agents to enforce its will. Thus, power
not even regular or necessary executor of the laws.
The Governors veto is not a barrier to the democracy, the Governor emanating
entirely from it. Only the judges are a real barrier.
Not only is power divided among several hands, but the exercise of power is di-
vided. The Governor cannot appoint the ofcial and direct him at the same time.
Subtle and dubious.
The institution of the senate is a barrier to the democracy because named for a
longer time; they [sic ] are not as immediately subject to the fear of not being reelected
(YTC, CVb, pp. 1516).
z. Tocqueville, it must be remembered, was part of the commission charged with
drafting the constitution of 1848. There, he defended the division of legislative power
into two branches. This idea came to nothing. In his Souvenirs (OC, XII, pp. 14887),
he gives some details about it. The notes taken by Beaumont during the work of the
commission offer in this regard some interesting, previously unpublished details (YTC,
DIVk). Beaumont notes as follows, ina rapidandnecessarily schematic fashion, Tocque-
villes answers to the proposal of Marrast concerning the creation of a single chamber
(25 May 1848):
Tocqueville.Recognizes that the cause of two chambers is lost. The state of minds
is such that it would be almost dangerous to insist upon a systemthat [illegible word]
in itself is bad only in the circumstances.
But, necessary to show how two chambers are the only institution that can per-
haps make the republic viable.
History!
The United States. The Constitution of the United States must be set aside;
take the thirty democratic constitutions of the United States that have same social
and political state as we.
Now, in these 30 states the question of two chambers is an accomplished fact
and an uncontested truth.
Is it [that this (ed.)] historical tradition is English?
No. Instead of following the English tradition, they broke with it. Congress
began with a single assembly. Those of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in the same
way (for thirteen years in Pennsylvania); and at the end of thirteen years with a single
assembly, Pennsylvania changed the system of a single assembly and adopted two
chambers.
So in France what made opinion so hostile to single chambers?
It is a misunderstanding. Until now in Europe the systemof two chambers was
to give a special expression to two different elements, the aristocrat andthe democrat;
fromthat it was concluded that the establishment of two chambers was anaristocratic
principle. This natural conclusion is correct, if it was a question of introducing the
slightest element of aristocracy into the government.
But is the existence of two chambers in itself a fact aristocratic by nature?
How so! The two chambers in America are from the aristocracy!! What is it
then? The two chambers are chosen by the same electors, for the same time, in the
same conditions, more or less.
Objection that if the second chamber has no use as a counterbalance to the
democracy, what purpose does it serve? Then it is a superuity.
No.
Even logically, it can be sustained. What is logical is that the nation be all pow-
erful; but what [more (ed.)] contrary to logic than that the sovereignty of the nation
have one or two agents.
Now logically what purpose do two chambers serve?
Of the Executive Power of the State
What the Governor is in an American state.What position
he occupies vis-a`-vis the legislature.What his rights and
duties are.His dependency on the people.
The executive power of the state is represented by the Governor.
[
*
]
[Not
only is the Governor of each state an elected magistrate, but also he is gen-
erally elected only for a year; in this way he is tied by the shortest possible
chain to the body from which he emanates.]
Three principal uses.
1. Necessity in France of giving the executive power great force. But, certain con-
siderable matters cannot be absolutely conducted by the executive power without any
everyday control. In the United States, the Senate assists the President in certainacts,
or rather controls him; treaties, choice of high ofcials. Body small enough to be able
to act in concert with the executive power and strong because it comes from the
people. This could be done, it is true, by [the (ed.)] Conseil dE
tat.
2. Driving impulses of democracies. Perilous and untenable situation of the ex-
ecutive power, in the eternal head to head of this one man and this single assembly;
eternal conict between two wills face to face. The only means for no conict is
that the man always gives way to the assembly. Then no struggle.
3. The great disease of democracies is legislative intemperance, violence in pro-
ceedings, rapidity in actions. The advantage of two chambers is not to prevent
violent revolutions, but to prevent the bad government that ends up leading to
revolution.
What means to combat the inherent vices of this single body? It is to di-
vide it.
Two chambers drawn from the same elements can have different thoughts
however.
Difculty for two or three mento dominate a country whenthere are twocham-
bers. Very easy when there is only one chamber.
Utility of two considerations of a question. But there are two considerations
only when there are two assemblies. Two readings do not mean two considerations.
It is resubmitting a judgment to those who have made it, and who will only repeat
what they judged (YTC, DIVk).
The papers of Beaumont, which contain innumerable notes on the American consti-
tutions, are there to witness to the importance given to American constitutional history
during the discussions of the constitutional commission of 1848.
[*]. See the Constitution of Massachusetts, chap. I, part II, chap 11.
It is not by chance that I have used the word represents. The Governor
of the state in effect represents the executive power; but he exercises only
some of its rights.
The supreme magistrate, who is called the Governor, is placed alongside
the legislature as a moderator and adviser. He is armed with a qualiedveto
that allows him to stop or at least to slow the legislatures movements as he
wishes. To the legislative body, he sets forth the needs of the country and
makes known the means that he judges useful to provide for those needs;
for all enterprises that interest the entire nation [sic: state], he is the natural
executor of its will.
47
In the absence of the legislature, he must take all
proper measures to protect the state from violent shocks and unforeseen
dangers.
The Governor combines in his hands all of the military power of the
state. He is the commander of the militia and chief of the armed forces.
When the power of opinion, which men have agreed to grant to the law,
is not recognized, the Governor advances at the head of the physical force
of the state; he breaks down resistance and reestablishes customary order.
The Governor, moreover, does not get involved in the administration
of the towns and counties, or at least he participates only very indirectly
by the appointment of the justices of the peace whom he cannot thereafter
remove.
48
The Governor is an elected magistrate. Care is even taken, generally, to
elect him only for one or two years; in this way, he always remains narrowly
dependent
a
on the majority that created him.
b
47. In practice, it is not always the Governor who carries out the enterprises conceived by
the legislature; often, at the same time that the latter votes a principle, it names special agents
to oversee its execution.
48. In several states, the justices of the peace are not appointed by the Governor.
a. The manuscript says: . . . he is tied by the shortest possible chain to the body
from which he emanates.
E
douard de Tocqueville: This sentence is absolutely unintelligible. Why? What do

you mean by the body from which he emanates? From what body does he emanate? And
how is he tied to this body by the shortest possible chain by the fact that he is named
for only two years? I repeat, I do not understand this paragraph at all (YTC, CIIIb, 2
p. 112).
b. In the manuscript, at the end of the rst chapter, is a cover sheet with the title:
Of the real inuence that the President exercises in the conduct of public affairs [in
the margin: Real and habitual inuence in foreign affairs, almost entirely personal in-
uence in domestic affairs./Study to do.]; in it, the following fragment on the Gov-
ernor is found:
[The beginning is missing] The rst of these two obligations is marked out in a clear
and precise manner.
The second depends essentially on the circumstances that give it birth.
Among most nations, the same man or at least the same authority is charged with
fullling these two obligations. He sees to it by himself or through his agents that
order reigns, and when order begins to be disturbed, by some violent shock, some
unforeseen event, he is still the one who temporarily takes the place of the missing
national will and takes charge of remedying the evil.
InAmerica, it is rarely so; the Governor is only occasionallychargedwiththepeace-
ful execution of the laws. His functions consist, above all, of overseeing in a general
manner the state of society, of enlightening the legislative body with his advice and
of providing for the accidental needs of the state.
[In the margin: in a way, the Governor participates in legislative power by the veto.
In executive power by the administrative council.
In France it is the same man who is charged.
Start with the extreme concentration of powers.
There are some countries where the legislative, administrative and judicial powers
are united.
There are some others where the legislative power is separate from the other two.
There are still others.]
Thus, it is not the Governor who is charged with using his authority to see that
the towns execute their duties faithfully and punctually. If the legislature orders the
opening of a canal or road, it is not generally the Governor who is charged with
supervising the projects. The legislative power, at the same time it votes the principle,
appoints special agents to supervise the execution.
But if an unforeseen danger emerges, if an enemy appears, if an armed revolt
breaks out, then the Governor truly represents the executive power of the State. He
commands and directs the police force.
In the accidental cases that I have just enumerated, the concentration of power
on a single head is an indispensable condition for the existence of societies; thus the
Governor of a state in America is the sole and absolute leader of the armed force.
But as for the daily, peaceful execution of the laws, powers are still divided to a
degree that our imagination can scarcely conceive.
[In the margin: Only it is not judicial strength that comes to add to administrative
strength. It is administrative strength that comes to join with judicial strength; now,
liberty never has to fear judicial strength./
Concentration of powers and administrative hierarchy are two synonymous words,
for where there is hierarchy you necessarily arrive at unity by moving upward.
Concentration of power is not a necessity so absolute./
Of the Political Effects of Administrative
Decentralization in the United States
c
Distinction to establish between governmental centralization and
administrative centralization.In the United States, no
I am beginning to believe that it is denitively the judicial power that administers.
InAmerica, therefore, youarrive, ina roundabout way, at the unionof administrative
and judicial powers.]
In order to understand this part of my subject well, I take the most robust indi-
vidual with whom the state would have to deal, that is to say the town, and I ask how
the town is made to obey the laws.
Here reread my town notes.
c. Letter of E
douard de Tocqueville to his brother, Alexis:

St Germain, 15 June [1834 (ed.)]./
I have read and examined your chapter very attentively, my dear friend; I sendyou
the notes and remarks that I have made about it, as well as some observations that I
have added to those of your father. All that you say about centralizationis remarkable
and well considered, but this chapter, the last in this thick folder, will be the subject
of the most serious criticism from me.
The general tone of your work is serious, impartial, philosophical. You see things
there in too lofty a way for your expressions to reveal passion. We guess your opinion,
your sympathies, but you leave the need to conclude to the reader; you just accu-
mulate enough facts and reasons, leading to the conclusion you desire, to carry the
reader there inevitably; that is what a tightly reasoned work should do. The author
shouldstay behindthe curtainandbe content toproduce convictionwithout insisting
upon it and saying: as for me, here is the conclusion that I draw from all this. This
personal opinion adds nothing to the strength of reasoning, and can harm it to the
extent that this perfect impartiality that inspires condence is no longer seen in the
author. I nd, therefore, that in this last chapter you are too much on stage; you enter
the lists armed with your personal opinion; you apply your principles to France; you
enter into politics; it is no longer simply logical, clear and profound deduction from
facts and institutions attentively studied that you present to the reader, but your own
ideas about these facts, these institutions, about their consequences and their appli-
cation. You judge, when the reader must be allowed to judge; you must only put all
the pieces of evidence before him. His good sense must do the rest, and it will do so
if your book is good.
Consider carefully that your book must not carry the date 1834, nor even the colors
of France; to live in posterity, it must be removed from the inuences of time and
place.
To conclude: I believe that this chapter will be entirely as strong and stronger,
when you have cut from it all that reveals the polemical and when you content your-
administrative centralization, but very great governmental
centralization.Some unfortunate effects that result in the
United States from the extreme administrative
decentralization.Administrative advantages of this order of
things.The force that administers society, less steady, less
enlightened, less skillful, very much greater than in Europe.
Political advantages of the same order of things.In the United
States, country makes itself felt everywhere.Support that the
governed give to the government.Provincial institutions more
necessary as the social state becomes more democratic.Why.
Centralization is a word repeated constantly today, and, in general, no one
tries to clarify its meaning.
Two very distinct types of centralization exist, however, that are impor-
tant to know well.
Certain interests are common to all parts of the nation, such as the for-
mation of general laws and the relationships of the people with foreigners.
Other interests are special to certain parts of the nation, such as town
enterprises, for example.
To concentrate in the same place or inthe same hands the power todirect
the rst is to establish what I will call governmental centralization.
d
self with saying what centralization or rather decentralization is in America; what its
effects, its action, its consequences are, without explaining what centralization has
been, is still, and what has produced and produces it in France. Certainly, it is a great
and interesting question, admirable to treat from the rostrum when you climb up
there, but your book, which raises a host of these questions, does not argue any of
them; why make an exception for this one?
Weigh these considerations.
Adieu, my dear friend, I embrace you with all my heart. Embrace maman for us.
Alexandrine and the children are very well (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 6365).
d. The power to have men and money, such in sum is governmental centralization
(YTC, CVb, p. 12).
Beaumont thus summarizes the interventionof Tocqueville infavor of governmental
centralization during the session of the constitutional commission on 31 May 1848:
Tocqueville. Impossible to touchon centralizationinits constituent andgeneral prin-
ciples.It is centralization that has saved France. Centralization is the power given
To concentrate in the same way the power to direct the second is to
establish what I will name administrative centralization.
e
There are points at which these two types of centralization merge. But
by taking, as a whole, the matters that fall more particularly in the domain
of each of them, we easily manage to distinguish them.
f
It is understood that governmental centralization acquires immense
strength when it is joined with administrative centralization. In this way,
it accustoms mento making a complete andcontinuous abstractionof their
will, to obeying, not once and on one point, but in everything and every
day. Then, not only does it subdue them by force, but also it captures them
by their habits; it isolates them and then, within the common mass, catches
hold of them, one by one.
These two types of centralization lend each other mutual aid, attract
each other; but I cannot believe that they are inseparable.
Under Louis XIV, France saw the greatest governmental centralization
that could be imagined, since the same man made general laws and had the
power to interpret them, represented France to the outside world and acted
in its name. LEtat, cest moi, he said; and he was right.
g
to the State, the duty to do everything inside and outside that is of general interest
and is therefore in the interest of the State. The State must do everything in the
country that matters strongly to it, either in the department or in the town.
The State must not intervene in what interests only the locality (YTC, DIVk).
e. Administrative centralization does not create strength within a nation, but des-
potism (YTC, CVb, p. 25).
f. Variant: <The rst, which I will call governmental centralization, is the concen-
tration in a single hand or in the same place of the great social powers. The power to
make the general laws and the strength to force obedience to them. The direction of the
foreign affairs of the State and the means to succeed in them.
The second type of centralization, which I will name administrative centralization,
is the concentration in a single hand or in the same place of the power to regulate the
ordinary affairs of society, to rule the diverse parts of the State in the direction of their
special affairs and to be in charge of the daily details of their existence.>
g. In France the administrative power has been placed at the center, not because it
was in itself more useful there, perhaps the opposite, but in order to increase political
power, which is different (YTC, CVb, p. 10).
Under Louis XIV, however, there was much less administrative central-
ization than today.
h
h. In the essay on the French administration drafted in response to the request for
information from his son, Herve de Tocqueville remarks:
In the state of things as set up by the charter of 1814, the King is present everywhere.
He has command over individual wills in order to unite them against the common
danger. His action makes itself felt in all parts of the administration. Without him,
it can do nothing; it moves if he allows; it stops when he so commands. We still do
not know what the consequences will be of the notable changes that have takenplace
since 1830. Will not the principle of election introduced into the formation of all the
conseils inspire in the provincial bodies pretensions of independence that are difcult
to suppress; and will not this same principle applied to the nomination of ofcers of
the national guard harmthe passive obedience imposed on this armedforce for public
security? The newspapers that call themselves royalist ask for the reestablishment of
the old provinces and insist daily on the creation of provincial assemblies that would
be chargedwiththe directionof local affairs. It is probable that these assemblieswould
tend constantly to increase their own power and that France would soon be no more
than a vast federation, the weakest of governments, in the middle of the compact
monarchies that surround it (YTC, CIIIe, pp. 3839).
After having praised the effects of centralization on the accountability of the French
towns, he adds:
The tutelage of the King is excellent because it prevents poorly plannedundertakings,
useless or superuous expenditures and the waste of funds. But one wonders if it has
not gone too far, or rather if it is not surrounded by too many formalities. It seems
that a part of the things that must be submitted to the ministry of the interior could
be decided by the provincial authority (Ibid., p. 40).
And further along:
It will be concluded from what precedes that, if centralization has become a little too
extensive in the relations between superior and inferior authorities, it becomes dif-
cult to bear, above all, when it is exerted over the portion of private interests that
are discussed and regulated administratively. In summary, it is useful to keep the
tutelage of the administration in what concerns administrative expenditures. . . .
Royal intervention in the affairs of the towns should be limited to the authorization
to sell, acquire, exchange and borrow. Then again, small loans could be authorized
by the prefect (Ibid., pp. 4142).
It is difcult to establish the precise inuence that the report of the authors father,
the letters of Chabrol and Blosseville, the conversations andcorrespondence withSparks
had on the formation of Tocquevilles ideas on centralization. If all of this material was
able to help him clarify several points, it seems that his ideas on centralization date at
least from the rst days of his journey on American territory.
In a letter to his father of 3 June 1831, that is, four months before asking for help,
Inour time, we see a power, England, where governmental centralization
is carried to a very high degree; the State there seems to move like a single
man; at will, it rouses immense masses, gathers and delivers, wherever it
wants, the utmost of its strength.
England, which has done such great things for the last fty years, does
not have administrative centralization.
For my part, I cannot imagine that a nation could live or, above all,
prosper without strong governmental centralization.
Tocqueville already referred to centralization: All that there is of good in centralization
seems to be as unknown as what there is of bad; no central idea seems to regulate the
movement of the machine (OCB, VII, p. 21). The theme is found again a month later
in a letter also addressed to his father:
Here, moreover, the central government is hardly anything. It is involved only with
what relates to the state as a whole; the localities arrange their affairs all by themselves.
That is howthey have made the republic practicable. Everywhere individual ambition
nds a small center of action at hand where its activity is exercised without danger
for the state. I imagine that if the Bourbons, instead of fearing the organization of
the towns, had sought little by little, from the beginning of the Restoration, to give
importance to the localities, they would have had less difculty struggling against the
mass of passions that were raised against them (Albany, 4 July 1831, YTC, BIa2).
Two months before meeting Sparks, 29 June 1831, he hadwrittentoLouis de Kergorlay
in nearly identical terms (Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, I, pp. 23334). See
George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont inAmerica, p. 363; andJames T. Schleifer,
The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America, pp. 12223. See note q for p. 150.
Tocqueville returns to this subject in his report on Algeria (E
crits et discours politiques,

OC, III, 1, especially pp. 33138). There he denounces an excess of administrative cen-
tralization and a lack of political centralization. Algeria opens to Tocqueville a potential
for political creativity in which he envisions using the theoretical tools forgedinAmerica.
More than once, Tocqueville encounters in French Africa situations entirely similar to
those at the beginning of the American colonies. His intervention in parliament retains
a certain transatlantic avor easy to detect. The project of buying land in Algeria with
Kergorlay, which would come to nothing, is there to attest to his interest in the colony.
See the reports and parliamentary interventions, published in the Moniteur Universel,
24 and 25 May, and 1, 9, 10, 11, and 12 June 1847 (reproduced in OCB, IX, pp. 423512,
and in E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, pp. 308409). His travel notes and other
writings on Algeria also contain numerous references to centralization and to other
American subjects. Cf. note f for p. 1210 of volume II.
But I think that administrative centralization is suitable only to enervate
the peoples who submit to it, because it constantly tends to diminish the
spirit of citizenship in them.
j
Administrative centralization, it is true, suc-
ceeds in gathering at a given time and in a certain place all the available
forces of a nation, but it is harmful to the multiplication of those forces.
It brings the nation victory on the day of battle and over time reduces its
power. So it can work admirably toward the passing greatness of a man,
not toward the lasting prosperity of a people.
k
[]
You must be very careful; when someone says that a State is unable to
act because it has no centralization, he is, without knowing it, almost always
talking about governmental centralization.
m
The German empire, it is said
repeatedly, has never been able to gain all that it possibly could from its
forces. Agreed. But why? Because national force has never been centralized
there; because the State has never been able to compel obedience to its gen-
eral laws; because the separate parts of this great body have always had the
right or the possibility to refuse their support to the agents of the common
authority, even in what concerned all citizens; in other words, because there
was no governmental centralization. The same remark applies to the Mid-
dle Ages. What produced all the miseries of feudal society was that the
power, not only to administer, but also to govern, was divided among a
thousand hands and fragmented in a thousand ways; the absence of any
governmental centralization then prevented the nations of Europe from
moving with energy toward any goal.
j. In the manuscript: . . . to diminish the number of citizens. . . .
k. In the manuscript: . . . the greatness of a man, but not that of the State.
Gustave de Beaumont:
False idea. Administrative centralization, by the effects that are concerned here, can
work toward the greatness of the State just as toward that of a man, for this greatness
can depend on a great battle that might have been lost without administrative cen-
tralization. Only, it is an obstacle to lasting greatness. As I do not know if the author
agrees and do not know what idea he will adopt, I am not occupying myself with the
writing (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 76).
m. The same idea appears in Beaumont, Irlande, vol. II, pp. 15759.
[Moreover, like nearly all the harmful things of this world, adminis-
trative centralization is easily established and, once organized, can hardly
ever be destroyed again except with the social body itself.
n
When all the governmental force of a nation is gathered at one point, it
is always easy enough for an enterprising genius to create administrative
centralization. We ourselves have seen this phenomenon take place before
our eyes. The Convention had centralized government to the highest de-
gree, and Bonaparte needed only to will it in order to centralize the ad-
ministration. It is true that for centuries in France our habits, mores and
laws had always worked simultaneously toward the establishment of an
intelligent and enlightened despotism.
[
*
]
Once administrative centralization has lasted for a time, should the
power that established it sincerely desire to destroy it, that same power al-
most always nds itself unable to bring about its ruin.
In fact, administrative centralization assumes a skillful organization of
authority; it forms a complicated machine in which all the gears t together
and offer mutual support.
When the law-maker undertakes to scatter this administrative power
that he has concentrated in a single place, he does not knowwhere to begin,
because he cannot remove one piece of the mechanism without disrupting
the whole thing. At each moment, he sees that either nothing must be
changed or everything; but what hand, so foolhardy, would dare to smash
with one blow the administrative machinery of a great people?
To attempt it would be to invite disorder and confusion into the State.
The art of administration is assuredly a science, and peoples do not have
more innate knowledge thanindividuals do. Deliveredtoitself without any
transition, society would almost entirely cease to be administered.
Moreover, one of the greatest misfortunes of despotism is that it creates
in the soul of the men submitted to it a kind of depraved taste for tran-
quillity and obedience, a sort of self-contempt, that ends by making them
n. In the margin: Perhaps all of that to delete as irrelevant.
[*]. Truthfully, inFrance, the provinces have never administered themselves; it was
always the authority of one man that was exercised and that regulated, directly or in-
directly, all the affairs of society. Only, the administrative range was limited; the Rev-
olution of 1789 just extended it.
indifferent to their interests and enemies of their own rights. In nothing,
however, is it more necessary for the governed themselves to showa denite
and sustained will.
Nearly all the passionate and ambitious men who talk about centrali-
zation lack a real desire to destroy it. What happened to the Praetorians
happens to them; they willingly suffer the tyranny of the emperor in the
hope of gaining the empire. So decentralization, like liberty, is something
that the leaders of the people promise, but that they never deliver. In order
to gain and keep it, nations can count only on their own efforts; and if they
themselves do not have a taste for it, the evil is without remedy.
Surprisingly, the same corporations, in whose name the power of self-
administration has beenpassionately claimed, are oftenseentoaccept with-
out enthusiasm the portion of power granted to them and to show them-
selves almost eager to lay it down again, like a useless and heavy burden.]
o
We have seen that in the United States no administrative centralization
existed. Scarcely a trace of hierarchy is found there. Decentralizationthere
has been carried to a point that no European nation could bear, I think,
without a profound uneasiness, and that, even in America, produces un-
fortunate effects. But, in the United States, governmental centralization
exists to the highest degree. It would be easy to prove that national [sic:
state] power is more concentrated there than it has been in any of the old
monarchies of Europe. Not only is there just a single body in each state
that makes laws; not only is there just a single power able to create political
life around it; but in general, the Americans have avoided bringingtogether
numerous district or county assemblies for fear that these assemblies would
be tempted to move beyond their administrative attributions and hinder
the movement of the government. In America the legislature of each state
is faced by no power capable of resisting it. Nothing can stop it inits tracks,
neither privileges, nor local immunity, nor personal inuence, not eventhe
authority of reason, for it represents the majority that claims to be the only
o. In the margin: <{To review the part on centralization and perhaps shorten it.
Advice of Beau[mont (ed.)].}>
instrument of reason. So it has no limit to its action other than its own
will. Next to it and close at hand is found the representative of the executive
power who, with the aid of physical force, has to compel the discontent to
obey.
p
Weakness is found only in certain details of governmental action.
The American republics do not have a permanent armed force to sup-
press minorities, but up to now minorities there have never been reduced
to starting a war; and the need for an army has not yet been felt.
q
Most
often, the state uses town or county ofcials to act upon the citizens. Thus,
for example, in New England, it is the town assessor who apportions the
tax; the town tax collector levies it; the town treasurer makes sure that the
tax revenue goes into the public treasury; and complaints that arise are sub-
mitted to the ordinary courts. Such a way to collect taxes is slow and awk-
ward; at every instant it would hinder the movement of a government that
had great pecuniary needs. In general, for everything essential to its exis-
p. In the manuscript: Next to it and close at hand is found an executive power,
absolute head of physical force, to compel the minorities to obedience.
q. In a letter to Ernest de Chabrol, Tocqueville explained:
All the ofces, like all the registers, have been open to us, but as for the government,
we are still looking for it. It does not really exist at all. The legislature regulates ev-
erything that is of general interest; the municipalities have the rest.
The advantage of this arrangement is to interest each locality very actively in its
own affairs and greatly to feed political activity. But the disadvantage, even in Amer-
ica, seems to me to be to deprive the administration of any kind of uniformity, to
make general measures impossible and to give to all useful enterprises a character of
instability that you cannot imagine.
We are, above all, in a position to notice these effects of the lack of centralization
in what relates to the prisons: nothing xed, nothing certain in their discipline; men
replace each other; with them, the systems; the methods of administration change
with each administrator, because no central authority exists that can give everything
a common direction.
The United States must thank heaven that until nowthey have beenplacedinsuch
a way that they have no need for standing armies, for police or for skillful and sus-
tained foreign policy. If one of these three needs ever presents itself, you can predict
without being a prophet that they will lose their liberty or concentrate power more
and more (Auburn, 16 July 1831, YTC, BIa2).
tence, you would want the government to have ofcials of its own, chosen
and removable by it, and to have ways to move ahead rapidly; but it will
always be easy for the central power, organized as it is in America, to in-
troduce more energetic and effective means of action, as needed.
[
*
]
So it is not, as is often repeated, because there is no centralization in the
United States, that the republics of the New World will perish.
r
It can be
assertedthat the Americangovernments, very far fromnot beingcentralized
enough, are centralized too much; I will prove it later. Each day the legis-
lative assemblies devour some of the remains of governmental powers; they
tend to gather them all unto themselves, just as the Convention did.
s
The
social power, thus centralized, constantly changes hands, because it is sub-
ordinate to popular power. Often it happens to lack wisdom and foresight,
because it can do everything. That is where the danger to it is found. So it
is because of its very strength, and not as a result of its weakness, that the
social power is threatened with perishing one day.
t
[*]. The creation of paid and standing military bodies to suppress or to prevent in-
surrections has already happened in Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania. See Federalist,
p. 115 [No. 28 (ed.)].
r. Variant in a draft: . . . but because the central power is constantly in different
hands and is subordinated to popular power, a power eminently variable by nature and,
for this reason, incapable of governing society for long (YTC, CVb, p. 1).
s. In a rst version, under a paper glued into place: {Executive power is nothingwhile
remaining in their hands. This is, moreover, an inherent weakness in completely [un-
certain reading (ed.)] democratic government. See the Federalist, p. 213 [No. 48 (ed.)].}
t. In the margin:
When a people renounces the centralization of power, the need for administrative
courts is felt; now, I admit that it is always with terror that I see the administration
and the judicial system concentrated in the same hands. Of all tyrannies, the worst
is the one that covers itself in legal forms. Administrative courts, once subservient,
seem to me one of the most fearsome instruments of despotism.
Recall the words of Montesquieu: No tyranny is more cruel thanthe one youexercise
under the cloak of the laws and with the colors of justice: when, so to speak, you drown
the unfortunate on the very plank on which they were saved. Conside rations sur les causes
de la grandeur des Romains et de leur de cadence, in uvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade, 1951),
II, chapter XIV, p. 144. Cf. note o for p. 1228 of the fourth volume.
Administrative decentralization produces several diverse effects in
America.
We have seen that the Americans had almost entirely isolated adminis-
tration from government; in that, they seem to me to have gone beyond
the limits of healthy reason, because order, even in secondary things, is still
a national interest.
49
The state has no administrative ofcials of its own, who are placed in
permanent posts at different points of the territory and to whomit cangive
a common impulse; the result is that it rarely attempts to establish general
rules of public order. Now, the need for these rules makes itself sharply
felt. The Europeanoftennotices their absence. This appearanceof disorder,
which reigns on the surface, persuades him, at rst view, that there is com-
plete anarchy in the society; it is only by examining things in depth that he
corrects his error.
[This absence of national (v: central) administration often prevents the
different states from engaging in certain undertakings of a general interest,
the execution of which would present great difculties if handed over to
the localities and left to temporary and special agents. Besides, it is always
to be feared that, without a permanent authority tocentralize andsupervise,
the work, once done, might self-destruct.
As for differences that would make themselves felt between the admin-
istrative principles of one portion of the territory and those of another,
differences that would be very great in Europe are not noticeable in Amer-
ica. The states are not so vast as to present examples; and above all, their
population is too perfectly homogeneous and too enlightened for these dif-
ferences to be lasting. All the counties, moreover, are forced to obey general
laws that are the same for each of them.
49. The authority that represents the state, even when it does not itself administer, must
not, I think, relinquish the right to inspect local administration. I suppose, for example, that
a government agent, placed at a set post in each county, might refer crimes that are committed
in the towns and in the county to the judiciary. In this case, would not orderly organization
be more uniformly followed without compromising the independence of the localities? Now,
nothing like this exists in America. Above the county courts, there is nothing; and in a way,
only by chance are these courts made ofcially aware of administrative crimes that they must
suppress.
I recognize as well that in America the views that direct the adminis-
tration are rarely permanent. It is difcult to decentralize administrative
power without putting a portion of it back into the hands of the people;
and the people never proceed except by momentary efforts and sudden
impulses.
I come to the great objection that has been made fromtime immemorial
to the system of administrative decentralization, the objectionthat encom-
pass [sic ] all of the others.
The partisans of centralization in Europe . . . ]
Certain enterprises interest the entire state and yet cannot be carried out
because there is no national [sic: state] administrationtodirect them. Aban-
doned to the care of the towns and counties, left to elected and temporary
agents, they lead to no result or produce nothing lasting.
The partisans of centralization in Europe maintain that governmental
power administers the localities better than they would be able to admin-
ister themselves. Perhaps that is true, whenthe central power is enlightened,
and the localities are not; when it is active, and they are passive; when it is
in the habit of taking action, and they are in the habit of obeying. You can
even understand that the more centralization increases, the more this dou-
ble tendency grows; and the capacity of the one and incapacity of the other
become more striking.
But I deny that this is so when the people are enlightened, alert to their
interests, and accustomed to consider them as they do in America.
I am persuaded, on the contrary, that in this case the collective strength
of the citizens will always be more powerful for producing social well-being
than the authority of the government.
I admit that it is difcult to indicate with certainty how to awaken a
people who are asleep, how to give them the passions and enlightenment
that they lack. To persuade men that they should take charge of their own
affairs is, I am aware, a difcult enterprise. Often it would be less awkward
to interest them in the details of court etiquette than in the repair of their
townhall [{and I would conclude, if youwant, that there are certainnations
[v: peoples] who cannot do without despotism.}].
But I also think that when the central administration claims to replace
completely the free participation of those who have the primary interest,
it is mistaken or wants to deceive you.
A central power, as enlightened, as skillful as can be imagined, cannot
by itself encompass all the details of the life of a great people. It cannot,
because such a task exceeds human power. When, on its own, it wants to
create and put into operation so many different mechanisms, it either con-
tents itself with a very incomplete result or exhausts itself in useless efforts.
Centralization easily manages, it is true, to subject the outward actions
of men to a certain uniformity that is ultimately loved for itself, apart from
the things to which it is applied; like the devout who worship the statue,
forgetting the divinity it represents. Centralization succeeds without dif-
culty in imparting a steady appearance to everyday affairs; in skillfully
dictating the details of social order; in suppressing slight disturbances and
small transgressions; in maintaining society in a status quo which is not
exactly either decadence or progress; in keeping a kind of administrative
somnolence in the social body that administrators customarily call good
order and public tranquillity.
50
In a word, it excels at preventing, not at
doing. When it is a matter of profoundly shaking society or moving it rap-
idly, centralization loses its strength. As soon as its measures need the sup-
port of individuals, you are totally surprised by the weakness of this im-
mense machine; it suddenly nds itself reduced to impotence.
Then sometimes centralization, in desperation, tries to call citizens to its
aid. But it says to them: You will act as I want, as long as I want, andexactly
in the way that I want. You will take charge of these details without aspiring
to direct the whole; you will work in the shadows, and later you will judge
my work by its results. Under such conditions you do not gainthe support
50. China seems to me to offer the most perfect symbol of the type of social well-being that
can be provided by a very centralized administration to the people who submit to it. Travelers
tell us that the Chinese have tranquillity without happiness, industry without progress, sta-
bility without strength, physical order without public morality. Among them, society functions
always well enough, never very well. I imagine that when China opens to Europeans, the latter
will nd there the most beautiful model of administrative centralization that exists in the
universe.
of human will, which requires liberty in its ways, responsibility in its ac-
tions. Man is made so that he prefers remaining immobile to moving with-
out independence toward an unknown end.
u
[During the almost forty years that we in France have completed the
system of administrative centralization, what great improvement has been
introduced into the state of the civilizationof the people? Whowouldcom-
pare our social progress to that of the English during the same period? But,
centralization does not exist in England.]
I will not deny that in the United States you often regret the lack of
those uniform rules that seem constantly to watch over each of us.
Fromtime to time, great examples of unconcernandof social negligence
are found there. Here and there crude blemishes appear that seem com-
pletely at odds with the surrounding civilization.
Useful undertakings that require constant care and rigorous exactitude
in order to succeed often end up being abandoned; for in America, as else-
where, the people proceed by momentary efforts and sudden impulses.
v
The European, accustomed to nding an ofcial constantly at handwho
gets involved in nearly everything, becomes used to these different mech-
anisms of town administration with difculty. In general it can be said that
the small details of social order that make life pleasant and easy are ne-
glected in America; but the guarantees essential to maninsociety exist there
as much as everywhere else. Among the Americans, the force that admin-
isters the State is much less stable, less enlightened, less skillful, but is one
hundred times greater than in Europe. When all is said and done, there is
no country in the world where men make as many efforts to create social
well-being. I know of no people who have managed to establish schools so
numerous andso effective; churches more appropriate tothe religious needs
of the inhabitants; town roads better maintained. So, in the United States,
do not look for uniformity and permanence of views, minute attention to
u. To the side, in the manuscript: Louis advises placing this elsewhere, but
where?
v. In the margin: {The small details of} social {order} are generally neglected, but
in short the guarantees essential to man in society exist as muchinAmerica as everywhere
else.
details, perfection in administrative procedures.
51
What is found there is
the image of strength, a little wild, it is true, but full of power; of life,
accompanied by accidents, but also by activities and efforts.
x
I will admit, moreover, if you want, that the villages and counties of the
United States would be administered more protably by a central authority
that was located far from them and remained unknown to them, than by
ofcials drawn from within. I will acknowledge, if you insist, that more
security would reign in America, that wiser and more judicious use of social
resources would be made there, if the administration of the entire country
were concentrated in a single hand. The political advantages that the Amer-
icans gain from the system of decentralization would still make me prefer
it to the opposite system.
51. A talented writer who, in a comparison between the nances of the United States and
those of France, proved that the mind could not always make up for knowledge of facts, rightly
reproaches the Americans for a type of confusion that prevails in their town budgets; and,
after giving the model of a departmental budget inFrance, he adds: Thanks tocentralization,
admirable creation of a great man [which is slandered without knowing it (ed.)], municipal
budgets, from one end of the kingdom to the other, those of the largest cities, like those of the
most humble towns, show the same order and method.
w
That, certainly, is a result that I
admire; but I see most of these French towns, whose accounts are so perfect, plunged into a
profound ignorance of their true interests and givenover to anapathy so invincible, that society
there seems rather to vegetate than to live; on the other hand, I notice in these same American
towns, whose budgets are not drawn up according to methodical or, above all, uniformplans,
an enlightened, active, enterprising population; there I gaze upon a society always at work.
This spectacle astonishes me; for in my eyes the principal end of a goodgovernment is to produce
the well-being of peoples and not to establish a certain order in the midst of their misery. So
I wonder if it would not be possible to attribute to the same cause the prosperity of the Amer-
ican town and the apparent disorder of its nances, the distress of the French town and the
perfection of its budget. In any case, I distrust a good that I nd intermingled with so much
evil, and I am easily consoled about an evil that is offset by so much good.
w. Sebastien L. Saulnier, Nouvelles observations sur les nances des E
tats-Unis, en
reponse a` une brochure publie par le General La Fayette, Revue Britannique, n. s., 8,
October 1831, pp. 195260), p. 239. On this article and the polemic over American -
nances, see note j for pp. 34550.
x. The admirable effect of republican governments (where they can subsist) is not
to present a glimpse of regularity, of methodical order in the administration of a people,
but the picture of life. Liberty does not carry out each of its enterprises with the same
perfection as intelligent despotism, but in the long run, it produces more thanintelligent
despotism (pocket notebook 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 184).
So what, after all, if there is an authority always at the ready, [{that muz-
zles dogs [v: waters public walkways] during the heat wave, that breaks up
river ice during the winter}] that makes sure that my pleasures are peaceful,
that ies before my steps to turn all dangers aside without the need for me
even to think about them; if this authority, at the same time that it removes
the smallest thorn from my route, is absolute master of my liberty and life;
if it monopolizes movement and existence to such a degree that everything
around it must languish when it languishes, sleep when it sleeps, perish if
it dies?
There are such nations inEurope where the inhabitant considers himself
a sort of settler, indifferent to the destiny of the place where he lives. The
greatest changes occur in his country without his participation; he does not
even know precisely what happened; he surmises; he has heard about the
event by chance. Even more, the fortune of his village, the policing of his
street, the fate of his church and his presbytery have nothing to do with
him; he thinks that all these things are of no concern to him whatsoever,
and that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. [v: At
each moment, you think you hear him say: what concern is this to me; it
is the business of the authorities to provide for all of this, not mine.] As
for him, he enjoys these benets like a usufructuary, without a sense of
ownership and without ideas of any improvement whatsoever. This dis-
interestedness in himself goes so far that if his own security or that of his
children is nally compromised, instead of working himself to remove the
danger, he crosses his arms to wait until the entire nation comes to his aid.
Moreover, this man, even though he has so completely sacriced his own
free will, likes to obey no more than anyone else. He submits, it is true, to
the will of a clerk; but, like a defeated enemy, he likes to defy the law as
soon as power withdraws. Consequently, you see him oscillate constantly
between servitude and license.
When nations have reached this point, they must modify their laws and
mores or perish, for the source of public virtues has dried up; subjects are
still found there, but citizens are seen no more.
I say that such nations are prepared for conquest. If they do not vanish
from the world stage, it is because they are surrounded by similar or inferior
nations. It is because within them there still remains a kind of indenable
patriotic instinct, I do not know what unthinking pride in the name that
the nation carries. It is because there still remains I do not knowwhat vague
memory of past glory, not precisely linked to anything, but enough to im-
part an impulse of preservation as needed.
You would be wrong to reassure yourself by thinking that certainpeoples
have made prodigious efforts to defend a native land where, so to speak,
they lived as strangers. Be very careful here, and you will see that in that
case religion was almost always their principal motive.
For them, the duration, glory or prosperity of the nation had become
sacred dogmas, and by defending their native land, they also defended this
holy city in which they were all citizens.
The Turkish populations have never taken any part in the direction of
the affairs of society; they accomplished immense enterprises, however, as
long as they saw the triumph of the religion of Mohammed in the con-
quests of the Sultans. Today religion is disappearing; despotism alone re-
mains for them; they are in decline.
y
y. Original version in one of the drafts:
There are peoples living under despotism who have a great sentiment of nationality,
however; you see them making immense sacrices to save a native land where they
live without interests and without rights.
But then be very careful here; for them, it is always religion which takes the place
of patriotism.
For them, the duration, glory or prosperity of the nation is a religious dogma. By
defending their country, they defend this holy city in which they are all citizens.
The Turkish populations have never taken any part in the direction of the affairs
of society. They accomplished immense things, however, as long as they saw the
triumphof the religionof Mohammedinthe conquests of the Sultan. Todayreligion
is disappearing; only despotism remains for them, and they are in decline.
The Russian, who does not even have an interest in the land on whichhe was born,
is one of the bravest soldiers of Europe; and he burns his house and harvest to ruin
the enemy. But it is the Holy Empire that he defends, and when he dies for his coun-
try, heaven opens and his reward is ready.
Despotic governments are made formidable whenthe peoples they direct are trans-
formed by a religious enthusiasm. Then the unity of power, instead of harming the
social power, does nothing more than direct it; nations in this condition have the
strength of free peoples, without the disadvantages of liberty. Forces are combined
and there is a single direction. Their impact is nearly irresistible. . . . Then a strange
thing happens: the harder and more oppressive the government, the more it does
Montesquieu, by giving despotisma strength of its own, gave it, I think,
an honor that it did not deserve. Despotism, all by itself, can sustain noth-
ing lasting. When you look closely, you notice that what made absolute
governments prosper for a long time was religion, and not fear.
No matter what, you will never nd true power among men except in
the free participation of wills.
z
Now, in the world, only patriotism or re-
great things; the more unfortunate the nation, the more it makes the effort to protect
a soil that it does not possess; the less these men cling to life, the better they defend
it. It is not with this world in view that religious people act in this way; and the more
miserable they are, the more easily they die. . . .
Montesquieu, by giving despotism a lasting strength, gave it an honor that it does
not deserve. Despotism is something so bad by nature that, all by itself, it can neither
create nor maintain anything. Fear, all by itself, can only serve for a while.
When you look closely, you notice that what makes absolute governments last and
act is religion, and not fear; religion, principle of strength that they use, but that is
not in them. When a nation still enslaved ceases to be religious, there is no human
means to keep it bundled together for long.
In summary, I am profoundly convinced that there is no lasting strength except
in the collaboration of human wills. So to apply this force to the preservation of
societies, men must have an interest in this world or the other (YTC, CVe, pp. 55
57).
Tocqueville defends the preeminence of social and intellectual habits over laws; it is
therefore inevitable that he nds Montesquieus idea of despotism based far too much
on legal criteria. The author seems to be more concerned with the problems envisioned
by Montesquieu than with the solutions he proposes, which does not, for all that, reduce
the inuence of the author of Esprit des lois. Nonetheless, Kergorlay denies a stylistic
inuence of Montesquieu on his friend (E
tude litteraire sur Alexis de Tocqueville,

Correspondant 52 (1861): 75859): I would not go so far as to say that Tocqueville never,
at any period of his literary life, sought in Montesquieu some models to follow. But it
was only in a quite secondary manner, not very lasting and not very effective. On the
other hand, Kergorlay recognizes the inuence of Pascal, Voltaire and La Bruye`re. On
the inuence of Montesquieu, see Melvin Richter, Modernity and Its Distinctive
Threats to Liberty: Montesquieu and Tocqueville on New Forms of Illegitimate Domi-
nation, in Michael Hereth and Jutta Hoffken, eds., Alexis de Tocqueville. Zur Politik in
der Demokratie, Baden Baden: Nomos, 1981, pp. 36298.
z. E
douard de Tocqueville: How did Louis XIV, Peter the Great, Frederick, Bon-
aparte, not give great power to their nations? And with them what became of the free
collaboration of wills? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 113).
ligion can make the totality of citizens march for long toward the same
goal.
It does not depend on the laws to revive beliefs that are fading; but it
does depend on the laws to interest men in the destinies of their country.
It depends on the laws to awaken and to direct that vague patriotic instinct
that never leaves the human heart, and, by linking it to thoughts, passions,
daily habits, to make it into a thoughtful and lasting sentiment. And do
not say that it is too late to try; nations do not grow old in the same way
that men do. Each generation born within the nation is like a new people
who comes to offer itself to the hand of the law-maker.
What I admire most in America are not the administrative effects of
decentralization, but its political effects. In the United States, country
makes itself felt everywhere. It is an object of solicitude fromthe village to
the whole Union. The inhabitant becomes attached to each of the interests
of his country as to his very own. He glories in the glory of the nation; in
the successes that it achieves, he believes that he recognizes his own work,
and he rises with them; he rejoices in the general prosperity that benets
him. For his country, he has a sentiment analogous to that you feel for your
family, and it is even by a kind of egoism that he is interested in the State.
Often the European sees in the public ofcial only force; the American
sees the law. So it can be said that in America, a man never obeys a man,
but obeys justice or the law.
Consequently, he has conceived an often exaggerated, but almost always
salutary opinion of himself. Without fear, he relies on his own powers that
seem to him all sufcient. An individual conceives the idea of some enter-
prise; even if this enterprise has some direct connectionwiththe well-being
of society, it does not occur to him to address himself to public authority
to gain its support. He makes his plan known, offers to carry it out, calls
other individual powers to his aid, and struggles hand-to-hand against all
obstacles. Often, doubtlessly, he succeeds less than if the State took his
place; but in the long run the general result of all of these individual un-
dertakings surpasses by a great deal what the government would be able to
accomplish.
a
a. The example was provided to Tocqueville by Mr. Quincy, President of Harvard
Since administrative authority is placed next to the administered, and
ina way represents them, it excites neither jealousy nor hate. Since its means
of action are limited, each person feels that he cannot rely on it alone.
So when the administrative power intervenes within the circle of its at-
tributions, it does not nd itself alone, as in Europe. No one believes that
the duties of individuals have ceased because the public representative hap-
pens to act. Onthe contrary, each personguides, supports andsustains him.
By joining the action of individual powers with the actionof social pow-
ers, you often succeed in doing what the most concentrated and energetic
administration would be unable to carry out.
I
I could cite many facts to support what I am advancing; but I prefer to
present only one and to choose the one I know best.
In America, the means put at the disposal of authority to uncover crimes
and to pursue criminals are few.
Police control does not exist; passports are unknown. Ofcers of the
court in the United States cannot be compared to ours. The agents of the
public prosecutors ofce are few; [they do not communicate with each
other;] they do not always have the right to initiate legal proceedings; pre-
liminary investigationis rapidandoral. I doubt, however, that, inanycoun-
try, crime as rarely escapes punishment.
The reason for it is that everyone believes himself interestedinproviding
proof of the crime and in catching the offender.
I saw, during my stay in the United States, the inhabitants of a county,
where a great crime had been committed, spontaneously form committees
for the purpose of pursuing the guilty party and delivering him to the
courts.
In Europe, the criminal is an unfortunate who is ghting to hide from
the agents of power; the population in a way helps inthe struggle. InAmer-
ica, he is an enemy of the humanspecies, and he has all of humanityagainst
him.
University, 20 September 1831 (non-alphabetic notebooks 1 and 2, YTC, BIIa, and Voy-
age, OC, V, 1, pp. 8990).
I believe provincial institutions useful to all peoples; but none seems to
me to have a more real need for these institutions than the one whose social
state is democratic.
In an aristocracy, a certain order is sure to be maintained in the midst
of liberty.
Since those who govern have a great deal to lose, order has a great interest
for them.
In an aristocracy, it can be said as well that the people are sheltered from
the excesses of despotism, because organized forces are always found, ready
to resist the despot.
A democracy without provincial institutions possesses no guarantee
against similar evils.
How can a multitude that has not learned how to make use of liberty
in small things, be made to support it in larger ones?
How to resist tyranny in a country where each individual is weak, and
where individuals are united by no common interest?
So those who are afraid of license and those who fear absolute power
must equally desire the gradual development of provincial liberties.
b
I am convinced, moreover, that there are no nations more at risk of fall-
ing under the yoke of administrative centralization than those whose social
state is democratic.
Several causes lead to this result, but among others, these:
The permanent tendency of these nations is to concentrate all govern-
mental power in the hands of the single power that directly represents the
people, because, beyond the people, nothing more is seen except equal in-
dividuals merged into a common mass.
b. Once a man has contracted the habit of obeying a foreign and arbitrary will in
nearly all the actions of his life, and notably in those that come closest to the human
heart, how do you expect him to conceive a true taste for great political liberty and
independence in general actions?
Town institutions not only give the art of using great political liberty, but they bring
about the true taste for liberty. Without them, the taste for political liberty comes over
peoples like childish desires or the hotheadedness of a young man that the rst ob-
stacle extinguishes and calms (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 12; the same fragment is found,
almost word for word, in YTC, CVe, p. 61).
Now, when the same power is already vested with all the attributes of
government, it is highly difcult for it not to try to get into the details of
administration [{so you often see democratic peoples simultaneously es-
tablish liberty and the instruments of despotism}]; and it hardly ever fails
to nd eventually the opportunity to do so. We have witnessed it among
ourselves.
[If we shift our view to times closer to us, we see a strange confusion
prevailing in most of the States of Europe. Kings descend into the admin-
istration of {the narrowest communal interests}.]
c
In the French Revolution,
d
there were two opposing movements that
must not be confused: one favorable to liberty, the other favorable to
despotism.
e
c. In the margin: That is, you have wanted to make a city without citizens, a re-
public with subjects [v: servants] submitted to a clerk [v: and transform servants of a
clerk into republicans] [v: and place the spirit of liberty in the very midst of servitude].
On the idea of citizenship as participation, see Doris S. Goldstein, Alexis de Tocque-
villes Concept of Citizenship, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 108, no.
1 (1964): 3953.
d. Ask Mr. Feuillet if there is a book that can give basic ideas about the French
constitution in 1789 (YTC, CVb, p. 33). Feuillet was the librarian at the Bibliothe`que
Royale. See note v for pp. 111013 of the fourth volume.
e. Of centralization./
When you speak about centralization you are constantly struggling inthe shadows
because you have not made the distinction that I established above between govern-
mental centralization and administrative centralization.
You blame or praise without knowing why.
There are people who cite as one of the advantages of centralization the estab-
lishment of the present system where everything ends at a supreme court. As one of
the proofs of the evils caused by decentralization, they cite the old system of parle-
ments. They do not see that the system of parlements was a gross abuse and not a
natural consequence of the system of decentralization. If there is one thing in the
world that is a national necessity, it is the unity of law. For the law to be one, two
things are needed: 1. that it comes from a single authority, 2. that it is interpreted by
a single authority. For to interpret the law is, in a way, to make it again. That is how
all the American republics have understood it.
A judicial system where seventeen sovereign courts can interpret the same law at
the same time, on the same question, in seventeen different ways is a political mon-
strosity.
1
For a nation to bear such a division of the judicial system without itself
dividing, all the real power in the nation must be in hands other than judicial ones.
That is what happened in France, where the King easily made his will prevail over
the courts in all things that essentially concerned politics and acutely interested the
State, and where he let anarchy reign only on secondary points that did not matter
much to the general course of public affairs. That was a necessary cure, but one almost
as bad as the illness. Interpretation, instead of being made by a central judicial power,
was made by a (illegible word) council [v: power]. France of the old regime, already
much too centralized relative to several objects, was evidently not centralizedenough
on the former. And when the partisans of decentralization stand on this ground, they
are wrong. They defend what they should concede at the beginning.
What has caused our greatest misfortunes in France is that there is a host of ex-
cellent principles that we have never known and felt except by their exaggerated con-
sequences. Strange thing! We have often experienced the abuse of the thing, without
knowing the thing itself.
2
Decentralization is among this number. Apart from our continental situation,
which has always made us feel more acutely the need for the concentration of power,
decentralizationhas never appearedtous other thanas a divisionof the essential rights
of sovereignty, that is, as the most active agent of oppression and anarchy. Today,
we have not learned better; the word decentralization represents in our mind only a
multitude of small sovereigns, judging with sovereignty, dispensing justice, coining
money. And for us, it is even quite difcult to place this power, divided in this way,
in hands other than those of an envious, haughty, exclusive aristocracy. Iudex irae.
England, on the contrary, alone among all the peoples of Europe, had the good for-
tune that, from the beginning, the part of the central power was largely established.
In that country, the system of decentralization, contained right away within true
limits, awakens only ideas of order, prosperity and glory. The system of decentrali-
zationmade andstill makes the strengthof England. Englandhadstronganddespotic
kings at a time when royalty was too crude to want to take charge of everything. The
kings created governmental centralization; the mores and the social state, adminis-
trative decentralization.
Moreover, we must not be mistaken about this. It is democratic governments that
arrive most quickly at administrative centralization while losing their political liberty.
Aristocracies struggle an innitely longer time, because the power of resistance is
greater in each of the parts of the social body organized in this way.
1. The American Union, which is a confederation, is more centralizedonthis point
than was the absolute monarchy of France.
2. Thus in France, when the King intervened in the administration of justice, the
abuse of governmental centralization was pointed out; when, on the contrary, the
courts were free to establishjudicial anarchy, all minds felt the abuse of administrative
decentralization. But no one perceived the precise limits of the one and the other
(YTC, CVe, pp. 5760, and BIIb, pp. 68).
In the old monarchy, the King alone made the law.
Below the sovereign power were found some remnants, half destroyed,
of provincial institutions. These provincial institutions were incoherent,
poorly ordered, often absurd. In the hands of the aristocracy, they had
sometimes been instruments of oppression.
The Revolution has declared itself against royalty and provincial insti-
tutions at the same time. It has mingled in the same hatred all that had
preceded it, absolute power and what could temper its rigors; it has been
simultaneously republican and centralizing.
This double character of the French Revolution is a fact that the friends
of absolute power have laid hold of with great care. When you see them
defend administrative centralization, do you think that they are working
in favor of despotism? Not at all; they are defending one of the great con-
quests of the Revolution.
K
In this way, they can remaina manof the people
and an enemy of the rights of the people, secret servant of tyranny, and
declared friend of liberty.
f
I have visited the two nations that have developed the system of pro-
vincial liberties to the highest degree, and I have heard the voice of the
parties dividing these nations.
In America, I found men who secretly longed to destroy the democratic
institutions of their country. In England, I found others who openly at-
tacked the aristocracy; I did not meet a single one who did not view pro-
vincial liberty as a great good.
g
In these two countries, I saw the ills of the State imputed to an innity
of diverse causes, but never to town liberty.
I heard citizens attribute the greatness or the prosperity of their native
land to a multitude of reasons; but I heard all of themput provincial liberty
in the rst rank and list it at the head of all the other advantages.
When men, who are naturally so divided that they do not agree oneither
religious doctrines or on political theories, fall into agreement on a single
f. The manuscript indicates that Tocqueville at one moment considered the possi-
bility of placing here a section entitled of the excellence of town institu-
tions.
g. To the side: Aristocrats and democrats, royalists and republicans.
fact, a fact that they can best judge, since it occurs everyday before their
eyes, am I to believe that this fact might be wrong?
Only peoples who have only a few or no provincial institutions deny
their utility; that is, only those who do not know the thing at all, speak ill
of it.
167
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 6
a
Of the Judicial Power in the United States
and Its Action on Political Society
b
The Anglo-Americans have kept all the characteristics that
distinguish the judicial power among other peoples.They have,
a. This chapter and the following one are not found in the copy read by friends and
family, which suggests that they were included belatedly in the project. From the begin-
ning of the voyage, Tocqueville, as a lawyer, showeda lively interest inhowthe American
judicial power functioned. Notebook F of his travel notes is devoted exclusively to civil
and criminal law in America (YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 296335); and in
the rst plans of the book (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 2031) the judicial power, as well as the
civil and criminal laws, occupy an important place. Beyond the notebook cited, a great
number of commentaries on the American judicial power appear in the other notebooks
of the travel diaries and in the correspondence. There are certain indications that
Tocqueville had in particular asked his friend, E
lie de Beaumont, judge at Versailles, for

information about the French judicial power. We recall that Tocqueville used this
method of comparing the situation in France with that in the United States when he
considered centralization. A letter from Tocqueville to another magistrate, Ernest de
Chabrol, dated November 26, 1831 (YTC, BI a2) contains, along with a description of
the American jurisdictional organization, a reference to an earlier note on justices of the
peace; the note was a reection made in a letter (apparently lost) addressed to E
lie de
Beaumont. Another possible source of informationis mentionedina roughdraft: Speak
to Mr. Livingston about the American judicial system (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 10).
b. Judicial power./
The most original and most difcult part to understand of all the American con-
stitution. Elsewhere there have been confederations, a representative system, a de-
mocracy; but no where a judicial power organized as that of the Union.
How the judicial power of the Union is conservative without harming that great
principle of the necessity of a single dominating principle in constitutions. It slows,
it cannot stop the people, because the latter by changing the constitution can always
arrive at what they desire.
How all the laws that challenge the judicial power in America are truly destructive
of order and of liberty (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 40).
of the j udi ci al power 168
however, made it into a great political power.How.
How the judicial system of the Anglo-Americans differs
from all others.Why American judges have the right to
declare laws unconstitutional.How American judges
exercise this right.Precautions taken by the law-maker
to prevent abuse of this right.
I have thought that a separate chapter must be devotedtothe judicial power.
Its political importance is so great that it seemed to me that talking about
it in passing would diminish it in the eyes of readers.
There have beenconfederations elsewhere thaninAmerica; we have seen
republics in places other than on the shores of the New World; the rep-
resentative system is adopted in several States in Europe; but I do not think
that until now any nation in the world has constituted the judicial power
in the same way as the Americans.
c
[The Americans have established the judicial power as counterbalance
and barrier to the legislative power. They have made it a political power of
the rst order.]
What is most difcult for a foreigner to understand in the United States
is the judicial organization. There is, so to speak, no political event inwhich
he does not hear the authority of the judge invoked; and he naturally con-
cludes that in the United States the judge is one of the premier political
powers. Then when he comes to examine the constitution of the courts,
he discovers at rst view only judicial attributions and habits. In his eyes,
the magistrate seems never to get into public affairs except by chance; but
this very chance recurs daily.
Whenthe Parlement of Paris made remonstrances andrefusedtoregister
an edict, when on its own it summoned a corrupt ofcial to appear before
it, the political action of the judicial power could be recognized. But noth-
ing similar is seen in the United States. [{The American judge never enters
c. In my eyes, the constitution of the judicial power forms the newest and most
original portionof the entire political systemof the Americans (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 16
17).
into direct conict [v: is never found battling] with the political powers
strictly dened.}]
The Americans have kept all the characteristics by which the judicial
power is customarily recognized. They have enclosed it exactly within the
circle where it habitually moves.
The rst characteristic of the judicial power, among all peoples, is to
serve as arbiter. For the courts to take action, a case must be brought. For
there to be a judge, there must be proceedings. As long as a law does not
give rise to a case, the judicial power has no occasion to get involved with
it. The judicial power is there, but it doesnt see the law. When a judge, as
part of a trial, attacks a law relating to the trial, he extends the circle of his
attributions, but he does not go beyond them, since in a way he must judge
the law in order to be able to judge the trial. When he delivers a verdict on
a law, outside of a trial, he goes completely beyond his sphere and enters
into that of the legislative power.
The second characteristic of the judicial power is to deliver a verdict
concerning particular cases and not concerning general principles. Should
a judge, while deciding a particular question, make it certain that each of
the consequences of the same principle is struck down in the same way, the
principle becomes sterile. While destroying the general principle in this
way, he remains within the natural circle of his action. But should a judge
directly attack the general principle and destroy it without having a partic-
ular case in view, he goes beyond the circle where all peoples have agreed
to enclose him; he becomes something more important, perhaps more use-
ful than a magistrate, but he ceases to represent the judicial power.
The third characteristic of the judicial power is to be able to act only
whenit is calledupon, or, following the legal expression, whenit is apprised.
This characteristic is not found as generally as the other two. I believe, how-
ever, that, despite exceptions, it can be considered as essential. By its nature,
the judicial power is passive; to stir, it must be put in motion. Someone
denounces a crime before it and it punishes the guilty; someone calls upon
it to redress an injustice and it redresses it; someone submits an act to it
and it interprets it; but it does not go on its own to pursue criminals, seek
out injustice and examine facts. In a way the judicial power would do vi-
olence to this passive nature if it took initiative on its own and set itself up
as censor of the laws.
[<Two things must not be confused. The same man can be vested with
political and judicial powers without thereby minglingpolitical andjudicial
power. The mind sees them as distinct in the very midst of the confusion
of actions. When the Parlement of Paris issued decisions, registered edicts
and made regulations for public order, it formed only a single body; but
within it three different powers were easily distinguished>.]
The Americans have kept these three distinctive characteristics for the
judicial power. The American judge can deliver a verdict only when there
is a lawsuit. He can never get involved except in a particular case; and to
act he must always wait to be apprised.
So the American judge perfectly resembles the magistrates of other na-
tions. He is vested, however, with an immense political power [that the
latter do not have. His power forms the most formidable barrier to the
encroachments of the legislature].
What causes that? He moves within the same circle and uses the same
means as other judges; why does he possess a power that the latter do not
have?
The cause is this single fact: the Americans have recognized the right of
judges to base their decisions on the constitution rather than on the laws.
In other words, they have allowed themnot to apply laws that wouldappear
unconstitutional to them.
I know that a similar right has sometimes been claimed by the courts of
other countries; but it has never been granted to them. In America, it is
recognized by all powers; no party, not even a man is met who contests it.
The explanationfor this must be foundinthe very principle of American
constitutions.
In France, the constitution is, or is considered to be, an immutable
work.
d
No power can change anything in it; such is the accepted theory.
e L
d. In the margin: The oath is therefore a very rational consequence of very absurd
principles.
e. In the margin, with a mark: Is this true?
In England, Parliament is recognized to have the right to modify the
constitution. InEngland, therefore, the constitutioncanchangeconstantly,
or rather it does not exist at all. Parliament is, at the same time, thelegislative
body and the constituent body.
M
In America, political theories are simpler and more rational.
An American constitution is not considered to be immutable, as in
France; it cannot be modied by the ordinary powers of society, as in En-
gland. It forms a work apart that, representing the will of all the people,
binds legislators as well as ordinary citizens; but it can be changed by the
will of the people following established forms and in cases for which pro-
visions have been made.
So in America, the constitution can vary; but as long as it exists, it is the
source of all powers. Predominant force resides in it alone.
It is easy to see how these differences must inuence the position and
rights of the judicial body in the three countries that I have cited.
If, in France, the courts could disobey the laws on the grounds that they
found them unconstitutional, the constituent power would actually be in
their hands, since they alone wouldhave the right tointerpret a constitution
whose terms no one could change. They would therefore take the place of
the nation and would dominate society, at least in so far as the inherent
weakness of the judicial power would allow them to do so.
f
f. If the French judge had the right to disregard the laws on the grounds that they
are unconstitutional, not only would he usurp the constituent power, but also he
would escape from all constraint, for in France the courts are answerable only to
themselves. Political jurisdiction is introduced only against the principal organs of
the government. Therefore the judge, while becoming a political power, would con-
tinue to be answerable only to a judicial power, which implies an obvious confusion
in all ideas.
In America the judge interprets the constitution, but his opinion is not necessarily
followed; he takes a place naturally among the principal political powers, but he an-
swers for his actions to a central political court. He cannot shield either his actions
[v. opinions] or his person from the control of society.
In the United States political jurisdiction is a weaponalways hanging over the head
of the magistrate, a weapon all the more formidable because by his positionthe judge
is the habitual censor of those who are called to deliver his decision.
So the high prerogatives granted to American magistrates never put them beyond
I knowthat by denying judges the right to declare laws unconstitutional,
we indirectly give the legislative body the power to change the constitu-
tion, since it no longer encounters a legal barrier that stops it. But better
to grant the power to change the constitution of the people to men who
imperfectly represent the will of the people, than to others who represent
only themselves.
It would be still more unreasonable to give English judges the right to
resist the will of the legislative body, because Parliament, which makes the
law, makes the constitution as well, and because, as a result, a law cannot
the reach of the majority; and their independence is not such that there is not always
a single dominant power in society before which all must denitively submit. Judicial
power slows the people; it cannot stop them.
When you examine the constitution of the different powers that govern society,
you easily discover that the weakest of all is the judiciary when it nds itself aban-
doned solely to it ownresources.
1
The legislature relies onthe moral force that belongs
to the whole nation; the executive power has its right to initiate and the physical
strength of its agents; but the magistracy represents only the authority of reason. The
judicial power only becomes formidable when united with another power. There is
no more powerful agent of tyranny in the world than the body of magistrates when
it joins its action with that of a despot. Because it then delivers to him the only thing
that force alone cannot create: the support of the law [in the margin, with a bracket:
a commonplace]. Then human liberty does not know where to ee and comes to
expire at the very door of the temple of laws. In America the magistrate cannot seek
the principle of power outside of himself. The executive power wouldwillinglycome
to his aid; but it [is (ed.)] without inuence. The people would be able to offer him
more real help, but the people often see him only as an inconvenient censor. The
American judge is therefore isolated among the crowd. To the passions that swirl
around him, to the impetus of public opinion, he can only oppose his word; he com-
mands only as long as they want to obey.
It must be remarked, moreover, that in the United States the judge could only get
involved in politics through the unconstitutionality of laws. When the people act
within the circle drawn by the constitution, whatever the nature of their acts, the
judge is reduced to silence. Actually the American magistrates do not have the right
to constrain the will of the people; they can only force the people not to be unfaithful
to their will and not to fall into self-contradiction.
If, against the view of the majority and after public opinion has had the time to
come to a decision, the magistrate persists in his refusal, the people can always change
or clarify the terms of the constitution. And immediately resistance ceases alongwith
the motive or the pretext that gave it birth.
1. Dont I previously say the opposite? (YTC, CVh, 5, pp. 1619).
in any case be called unconstitutional when it issues fromthe three powers.
Neither of these two arguments applies to America.
In the United States, the constitution dominates the legislators as well
as ordinary citizens. It is, therefore, the highest law and cannot be mod-
ied by a law. So it is right that the courts obey the constitution in pref-
erence to all laws [and by doing so, they do not make themselves masters
of society since the people, by changing the constitution, can always re-
duce the judges to obedience. So American judges refuse without hesi-
tation to apply laws that seem to them contrary to the constitution]. This
follows fromthe very essence of the judicial power: to choose fromamong
legal provisions those that bind him most strictly is in a way the natural
right of the magistrate.
In France, as well, the constitution is the highest law, and judges have
an equal right to base their decisions on it. But by exercising this right, they
would not be able to avoid encroaching uponanother right still more sacred
thantheirs: that of the society inwhose name they act. Here ordinaryreason
must yield to reason of state.
g
InAmerica, where the nationcanalways reduce magistrates toobedience
by changing its constitution, a similar danger is not to be feared. On this
point, therefore, politics and logic are in agreement, and the people as well
as the judges equally retain their privileges.
When a law that the judge considers contrary to the constitution is in-
voked before the courts of the United States, he can refuse to apply it. This
power is the only one particular to the American magistrate, but a great
political inuence follows from it.
There are, infact, very fewlaws that canby nature escape judicial analysis
for long, for there are very few of them that do not harm an individual
interest, and that litigants cannot or must not cite before the courts.
Now, from the day when the judge refuses to apply a law in a trial, it
g. In France {during the Restoration}, we have often seen the executive power seek
to reduce judicial authority, while the democratic party sought with all its efforts to raise
it up. It seems to me that on both sides they acted against themselves (YTC, CVh, 5,
pp. 2627).
instantly loses part of its moral force. Those who have been wronged by
the law are then alerted that a way exists to escape the obligation to obey
it; trials multiply, and it becomes powerless. Then one of these two things
happens: the people change the constitution or the legislature revokes its
law.
So the Americans have given their courts an immense political power;
but by forcing them to challenge laws only by judicial means, they have
greatly diminished the dangers of this power.
If the judge had been able to challenge laws in a theoretical and general
fashion; if he had been able to take the initiative and censure the legislator,
he wouldhave burst uponthe political scene. Havingbecome thechampion
or the adversary of one party, he would have called upon all the passions
that divide the country to join in the struggle. But when the judge chal-
lenges a law in an obscure debate and on a particular application, he par-
tially conceals the importance of the challenge from the eyes of the public.
His decision intends only to strike an individual interest; the lawis harmed
only by chance.
The law censured in this way, moreover, is not destroyed; its moral force
is lessened, but its material effect is not suspended. Only little by little, and
under the repeated blows of jurisprudence, does it nally succumb. [{If the
law were challenged directly it would triumph or succumb in a day.}]
Furthermore, it is easily understood that by charging individual interest
with provoking the censure of laws, by intimately linking the trial of the
law to the trial of a man, you assure that legislation will not be lightly chal-
lenged. Inthis systemlegislationis no longer exposedtothe daily aggression
of parties. By pointing out the mistakes of the legislator, you obey a real
need; you start with a denite and appreciable fact, since it must serve as
the basis for a trial.
I do not know whether the way in which the American courts act, at the
same time that it is most favorable to public order, is not most favorable to
liberty as well.
If the judge could challenge the legislators only head on, there are times
when he would be afraid to do so; there are other times when partisanspirit
would push him daily to dare to do so. Thus the laws would be challenged
when the power from which they came was weak, and you would submit
to them in silence when that power was strong. That is to say that the laws
would often be challenged when respect for them would be most useful,
and would be respected when oppression in their name would become
easy.
h
But the American judge is led onto political terrain despite himself. He
judges the law only because he has a trial to judge and cannot avoidjudging
the trial. The political question that he must resolve is linked with the in-
terest of the litigants, and he cannot refuse to settle it without committing
a denial of justice. By fullling the strict duties imposed on the profession
of magistrate, he performs the act of a citizen. It is true that judicial censure,
exercised by the courts on legislation, cannot be extended in this way to all
laws without distinction, for there are some that can never give rise to this
kind of clearly formulated dispute that is called a trial. And when such a
dispute is possible, it is still conceivable that there will be no one who wants
to submit it to the courts.
The Americans have often felt this drawback, but they have left the rem-
edy incomplete for fear of making it dangerously effective in all cases.
Enclosed within its limits, the power granted to the American courts to
rule on the unconstitutionality of laws still forms one of the most powerful
barriers that has ever beenraised against the tyranny of political assemblies.
j
h. Note: This is what happened particularly at the time of the constitution of the
year VIII. The senate was established as overseer of the other powers, and it had to
denounce to the legislative bodies attacks against the constitution. We know that it re-
frained from doing so on any occasion. Under Napoleons son, this very senate could
perhaps have hindered the legal course of government.
j. The absence of administrative centralization is more a fortunate circumstance
than the result of the wisdom of the law-maker. But the judicial power in the United
States is a barrier raised by design against the omnipotence of the majority. It can be
consideredas the only powerful or real obstacle that the Americanlaws have placedbefore
the steps of the people (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 1617).
Judicial power in general./
Utility of the judicial power to oppose the encroachments of popular power. See
Kent, vol. 1, p. 275 (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 41).
Other Powers Granted to American Judges
In the United States, all citizens have the right to accuse public
ofcials before ordinary courts.How they exercise this right.
Art. 75 of the French constitution of the year VIII.
The Americans and the English cannot understand
the sense of this article.
I do not know if I need to say that among a free people, like the Americans,
all citizens have the right to accuse public ofcials before ordinary judges,
and that all judges have the right to condemn public ofcials, it is so natural
a thing.
To allow the courts to punish agents of the executive power when they
violate the law is not giving the courts a particular privilege. To forbidthem
to do so is taking away a natural right.
It did not appear to me that in the United States, by making all of-
cials responsible to the courts, the forces of government had been weak-
ened.
It seemed to me, on the contrary, that the Americans, by acting in this
way, had increased the respect that is owed to those who govern, the latter
being much more careful to avoid criticism.
Nor did I observe in the United States that many political trials were
instituted, and it is easily explained. A trial is always, whatever its nature,
a difcult and costly enterprise. It is easy to accuse a public man in the
newspapers, but it is not without grave motives that someone decides to
bring him before the law. So to bring legal proceedings against an ofcial,
it is necessary to have just grounds of complaint; and ofcials hardly pro-
vide such grounds when they fear having proceedings brought.
This does not result from the republican form that the Americans have
adopted, for the same experience can occur every day in England.
These two peoples did not believe that their independence had been
assured by allowing the principal agents of power tobe put ontrial. Instead,
they thought that they succeeded in guaranteeing liberty, much more by
small trials, placed daily within the reach of the least citizen, than by great
proceedings that were never used or were used too late.
In the Middle Ages, when it was very difcult to reach criminals, judges,
when they got hold of some of them, often inicted terrible punishments
on these unfortunates; this did not reduce the number of those guilty. Since
then, we have discovered that by making justice both more certain and
milder, we have made it more effective at the same time.
The Americans and the English think that arbitrariness and tyranny
must be treated like theft: make it easier to take legal action and make the
penalty more mild.
In the year VIII of the French Republic, a constitution appeared whose
article 75 was worded thus: The agents of the government, other than the
ministers, cannot have legal proceedings instituted against them for facts
relating to their functions, except by virtue of a decision of the Conseil
dE
tat; in this case, the proceedings take place before the ordinary courts.
The constitution of the year VIII passed from the scene, but not this
article, which remained after it [{and we are still so inexperienced in the art
of [being (ed.)] free.}]; and it is still used every day to oppose the just com-
plaints of citizens.
[{But this is particular to France.}]
I have often tried to explain the sense of this art. 75 to some Americans
or Englishmen, and it has always been very difcult for me to succeed in
doing so.
What they noticed rst was that the Conseil dE
tat, in France, was a high

court seated at the center of the kingdom; there was a kind of tyranny in
sending all complainants before it as a preliminary step.
But when I tried to make themunderstand that the Conseil dE
tat was not

a judicial body at all, in the ordinary sense of the term, but anadministrative
body, whose members were dependent on the King; and that the King, as
sovereign, after ordering one of his servants, calledprefect, tocommit awrong-
ful act, could order, as sovereign, another of his servants, called councilor of
the Conseil dE
tat, to prevent someone from having the rst punished; when

I showed them the citizen harmed by the order of the prince, reduced to
asking the prince himself for the authorization to seek justice, they refused
to believe in such enormities and accused me of lying and of ignorance.
Often, in the old monarchy, the parlement ordered the arrest of the pub-
lic ofcial who made himself guilty of a crime. Sometimes the royal au-
thority, intervening, had the procedure annulled. Despotism then showed
itself openly, and people, while obeying, submitted only to force.
So we have retreated far from the point reached by our fathers; for we
allow, under the color of justice, and consecrate, in the name of law, deeds
that violence alone imposed on them.
179
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 7
Of Political Jurisdiction in the United States
TN4
What the author understands by political jurisdiction.How
political jurisdiction is understood in France, England and the
United States.In America, the political judge concerns himself
only with public ofcials.He orders dismissals rather than
punishments.Political jurisdiction, customary method of
government.Political jurisdiction, as understood in the United
States, is, despite its mildness, and perhaps because of it, a very
powerful weapon in the hands of the majority.
[Political jurisdiction is a violation of the great principle of the separation
of powers; you resort to it as an extreme measure to reach certain guilty
individuals.]
I understand by political jurisdiction the decisiondelivered by a political
body temporarily vested with the right to judge.
In absolute governments, it is useless to give judgments extraordinary
forms. The prince, in whose name the accused is prosecuted, is master of
the courts as of everything else, and he has no need to seek a guarantee
beyond the idea that is held of his power.
a
The only fear that he canimagine
Translators Note 4: For this chapter, there is no totally satisfactory way to
translate jugement politique. The most direct translation, political judgment, is extremely
ambiguous. For want of a better alternative, I have decided to use the traditional trans-
lation, political jurisdiction, since the chapter has to do with the right of a political body,
in particular circumstances, to bring to trial, to judge and to punish a public gure.
a. In the margin:
It was necessary to give the superior political power control of all powers for the unity
of government, and for that it was necessary to give the legislature the entirely ad-
ministrative power to dismiss or the entirely judicial power to judge.
of poli ti cal j uri s di cti on i n the uni ted s tates 180
is that not even the external appearances of justice are kept, and that his
authority is dishonored in the desire to assert it.
But inmost free countries, where the majority cannever act onthe courts
as anabsolute prince would, judicial power is sometimes placedtemporarily
in the hands of the very representatives of society. Temporarily mixing
powers in this way is preferred to violating the necessary principle of the
unity of government. England, France and the United States have intro-
duced political jurisdiction into their laws; it is curious to examine how
these three great peoples have turned it to good account.
In England and in France, the chamber of peers forms the highest crim-
inal court
1
of the nation. It does not judge all political crimes, but it can
do so.
Alongside the chamber of peers is another political power, vested with
the right to accuse. On this point, the only difference that exists between
the two countries is this: in England, the members of the House of Com-
mons can accuse whomever they choose before the Lords; while in France
the deputies can only prosecute the ministers of the King in this way.
b
Inthese two countries, moreover, the chamber of peers nds all the penal
laws at its disposal for striking the delinquents.
In the United States, as in Europe, one of the two branches of the leg-
islature is vested with the right to accuse, and the other with the right to
judge. The representatives denounce the guilty party; the Senate punishes
him.
But a matter can be referred to the Senate only by the representatives; and
before the Senate, the representatives canaccuse only public ofcials. There-
fore the Senate has a more limited competence than the French court of
On the other hand, it was very dangerous to liberty and humanity to vest a political
power with the most formidable rights of a judicial body.
From that the mixed American system. Political jurisdiction more than dismissal,
less than a ruling.
1. The court of Lords in England furthermore forms the last appeal in certaincivil matters.
See Blackstone, book III, chap. IV.
b. In the margin: I ndnothing inBlackstone that justies this distinction. However
I think it is correct.
the peers, and the representatives have a broader right to accuse than our
deputies.
But here is the greatest difference that exists between America and Eu-
rope. In Europe, political courts can apply all the provisions of the penal
code. In America, when they have removed fromthe guilty party the public
character with which he was vested, and have declared him unworthy to
hold any political ofces whatsoever in the future, their right is exhausted,
and the task of the ordinary courts begins.
I suppose that the President of the United States has committed a crime
of high treason.
The House of Representatives accuses him; the senators decide his re-
moval. Afterward he appears before a jury that alone can take away life or
liberty.
This succeeds in throwing a bright light on the subject that occupies us.
By introducing political jurisdiction into their laws, Europeans wanted
to reach great criminals whatever their birth, rank or power in the State.
To achieve that, they temporarily united, within a great political body, all
the prerogatives of the courts.
The legislator is then transformed into a magistrate; he can establish the
crime, classify and punish it. By giving him the rights of the judge, the law
imposed all of the judges obligations on him, and bound him to the ob-
servation of all the forms of justice.
When a political court, French or English, has a public ofcial as a de-
fendant and delivers a verdict condemning him, by doing so, it removes
him from ofce and can declare him unworthy to hold any ofce in the
future. But here the dismissal and political interdiction are a consequence
of the decision and not the decision itself.
So in Europe, political jurisdiction is more a judicial act than an ad-
ministrative measure.
The opposite is seen in the United States, and it is easy to be persuaded
that political jurisdiction there is more an administrative measure than a
judicial act.
It is true that the decision of the Senate is judicial in form; to make it,
the senators are obliged to conform to the solemnity and customs of the
procedure. It is also judicial by the grounds on which it is based; the Senate
is, in general, obliged to base its decision on a crime of the common law.
But it is administrative in its objective.
If the principal aim of the American law-maker had really been to arm
a political body with a great judicial power, he would not have restricted
its action to the circle of public ofcials, for the most dangerous enemies
of the State may hold no ofce at all. This is true above all in republics,
where the favor of parties is the rst of powers, and where someone is often
much stronger when not legally exercising any power.
If the Americanlaw-maker hadwantedtogive society itself, likejudges,
the right to prevent great crimes by fear of punishment, he would have
put at the disposal of the political courts all the resources of the penal
code. But he only provided them with an incomplete weapon that cannot
reach the most dangerous of criminals. For what use is a judgment of
political interdiction against someone who wants to overturn the laws
themselves?
The principal aim of political jurisdiction in the United States is, there-
fore, to withdraw power from someone who is making poor use of it, and
to prevent the same citizen from being vested with power in the future.
That, as we see, is an administrative act that has been given the solemnity
of a judgment.
So in this matter, the Americans have created something mixed. They
have given all the guarantees of political jurisdiction to administrative dis-
missal, and they have removed from political jurisdiction its greatest rigors.
This point settled, everything closely follows; we then discover why
the American constitutions submit all civil ofcials to the jurisdiction of
the Senate, and exempt the military whose crimes are, however, more to
be feared [{in republics}]. In the civil order, the Americans have, so to
speak, no removable ofcials; some are irremovable; others hold their
rights by a mandate that cannot be abrogated. So to remove them from
power, they must all be judged.
c
But military ofcers depend on the head
c. To the side: Action of the two systems.
French system more effective, more dangerous.
American system more just, more rational in the separation of power. Less effective
in times of crisis, more everyday.
of State, who himself is a civil ofcer. By reaching the head of State, they
strike them all with the same blow.
2
Now, if we come to compare the European and American systems inthe
effects that each produces or can produce, we discover differences no less
noticeable.
In France and in England, political jurisdiction is considered as an ex-
traordinary weapon that society should use only to save itself in moments
of great peril.
We cannot deny that political jurisdiction, as understood in Europe,
violates the conservative principle of the separation of powers and con-
stantly threatens the life and liberty of men.
Political jurisdiction in the United States strikes only an indirect blow
at the principle of separation of powers. It does not threaten the existence
of citizens; it does not, as in Europe, hang over all heads, since it strikes
only those who, by accepting public ofces, subject themselves to its rigors
in advance.
It is simultaneously less to be feared and less effective.
Moreover, the law-makers of the United States did not consider it as an
extreme remedy for the great ills of society, but as a customary means of
government.
Fromthis point of view, it perhaps exercises more real inuence over the
social body in America than in Europe. You must not in fact be fooled by
the apparent mildness of the American legislation regarding political ju-
risdiction. It must be noted, in the rst place, that in the United States the
court that delivers these judgments is composed of the same elements and
is subject to the same inuences as the body charged with accusing; this
gives an almost irresistible impulse to the vindictive passions of parties. If
political judges, in the United States, cannot order punishments as severe
as those ordered by political judges in Europe, there is less chance of being
acquitted by them as a result. Conviction is less to be feared and more
certain.
Europeans, by establishing political courts, had as their principal object
2. Not that his rank can be taken from an ofcer, but he can be removed from his
command.
to punish the guilty; Americans, to remove them from power. Political ju-
risdiction in the United States is a preventive measure in a way. So judges
there must not be bound by very exact criminal denitions.
Nothing is more frightening thanthe vagueness of Americanlaws, when
they dene political crimes strictly speaking. The crimes that will justify
the conviction of the President, says the Constitution of the UnitedStates,
section IV, art. I [sic: Article II, Section 4], are Treason, Bribery, or other
high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Most of the state constitutions are even
more obscure.
Public ofcials, says the constitution of Massachusetts,
d
will be con-
demned for their culpable behavior and for their bad administration.
3
All
ofcials who put the State in danger by bad administration, corruption or
other misdemeanors, says the constitution of Virginia, are impeachable by
the House of Delegates. There are constitutions that, in order to let an
unlimited responsibility weigh upon the public ofcials, specify no crime.
4
But what makes the American laws in this matter so formidable arises,
I dare say, from their very mildness.
We have seen that in Europe the dismissal of an ofcial, and his political
interdiction, were consequences of the penalty, and that in America it was
the penalty itself. The result is this. InEurope, the political courts are vested
with terrible rights that sometimes they do not know how to use; and it
happens that they do not punish for fear of punishing too much. But in
America, they do not back away from a penalty that humanity does not
bemoan. To condemn a political enemy to death, in order to remove him
from power, is in everybodys eyes a horrible assassination. To declare an
adversary unworthy to possess this same power and to take it away from
him, while leaving himhis life andliberty, canappear as the honest outcome
of the struggle.
d. The Massachusetts Constitution reads: The senate shall be a court with full au-
thority to hear and determine all impeachments made by the house of representatives,
against any ofcer or ofcers of the commonwealth, for misconduct and mal-adminis-
tration in their ofces.
3. Chap. 1, sect. II, 8.
4. See the constitutions of Illinois, Maine, Connecticut and Georgia.
Now, this judgment, so easy to decide, is nonetheless the height of mis-
fortune for the ordinary man among those to whom it is applied. Great
criminals will undoubtedly defy its empty rigors; ordinary men will see in
it a decision that destroys their position, stains their honor, and that con-
demns them to a shameful inaction worse than death.
So the less formidable political jurisdiction in the United States seems,
the greater the inuence it exercises on the course of society. It does not
act directly on the governed, but it makes the majority entirely master of
those who govern. It does not give the legislature an immense power that
could be exercised only in a day of crisis; it allows the legislature to have a
moderate and regular power that can be used every day. If the power is less,
on the other hand, its use is more convenient and its abuse easier.
By preventing political courts from ordering judicial punishments, the
Americans seem to me therefore to have avoided the most horrible con-
sequences of legislative tyranny, rather than tyranny itself. And all things
considered, I do not know if political jurisdiction, as it is understood in
the United States, is not the most formidable weapon ever put in the hands
of the majority.
When the American republics begin to degenerate, I believe that it will
be easy to recognize; it will be enough to see if the number of cases of
political jurisdiction increases.
N
186
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 8
Of the Federal Constitution
Until now I have considered each state as forming a complete whole, and
I have shown the different mechanisms that the people put inmotionthere,
as well as the means of action that they use. But all these states that I have
envisaged as independent are, in certain cases, forced to obey a supreme
authority, which is that of the Union. The time has come to examine the
portion of sovereignty that has been conceded to the Union, and to cast a
rapid glance over the federal constitution.
1
Historical Background of the Federal Constitution
a
Origin of the rst Union.Its weakness.Congress
summons the constituent power.Interval of two years that
1. See the text of the federal Constitution. [In Appendix in the rst editions (ed.)]
a. In the margin: Where to nd the outline of the rst federation?
Bad result of the rst federation. See Federalist, p. 60 [No. 15 (ed.)].
The Federalist is, without any doubt, the work that Tocqueville cites most often. Its
decisive inuence on the drafting of this chapter must be recognized, even if such an
inuence on the whole book is difcult to dene and remains to be determined. When
Tocqueville reads the Federalist, he certainly has in mind, and at hand, Montesquieu
and Rousseau. He rediscovers many of their ideas in the American work. An initial ex-
amination of the citations taken fromthe work seems to indicate that, above all, Tocque-
ville found in it a conrmation of his own ideas. This does not mean, as has often been
asserted, that he intentionally omitted citations of the text in other chapters. If unde-
niable similarities exist between the American text and the Democracy, they demonstrate
the result of a shared origin of ideas between the two texts more than a direct inuence
of the rst book on the second. Another important work concerning information on
the political organization of the United States is the commentaries on the Constitution
by Justice Joseph Story. In a letter to Francis Lieber of May 9, 1840, Story, apparently
federal cons ti tuti on 187
passes between this moment and that when the
new Constitution is promulgated.
[I am not among those who profess a blind faith in legal prescriptions
and who think that it is sufcient to change the laws of a people in order
to modify easily their social and political state. Laws act only in two ways,
either by their long duration, when a power superior to society manages to
impose them over many years, or by their perfect harmony with the mores,
habits and civilization of the people. In this last case, the laws are only the
conspicuous and legal manifestation of a preexistent fact.
b
But I admit that when laws are found to be in harmony with the needs
{the social state} of a country, its mores and its habits, their effect is often
something of a miracle.
unable to recognize the signicance of the Democracy, judges that Liebers knowledge
of the American political system is much superior to that of Tocqueville; according to
Story, Tocqueville simply took his ideas from the Federalist and from Storys own book
on the American Constitution (Life and Letters of Joseph Story, Boston: Charles C. Little
and James Brown, 1851, vol. II, p. 330). John W. Henry Canoll (The Authorship of
Democracy in America, Historical Magazine 8, no. 9 (1864): 33233), who reports the
words of Mgr. Alexander Vattemare, asserts that the American author who had a direct
inuence on Tocquevilles thought is JohnC. Spencer. According toCanoll, Tocqueville
would have shown Spencer a plan of his work; the latter would have reviewed and criti-
cized it and, after numerous interviews, would have given the canvas of the Democracy
to the author.
b. In the margin:
The government of the United States is not truly speaking a federal government,
it is a national government whose powers are limited. Important./
Mixture of national and federal in the constitution. See Federalist, p. 166 [No. 28
(ed.)]./
The Union enters most profoundly into the government of the United States by
the right to invalidate laws that are contrary to vested rights. Note that it is the federal
judicial power alone that acts in this case./
[To the side: I am not among those who believe that there is a force in the laws
that commands obedience to such an extent that all the present and all the future of
a people depend on its legislation./
You could deal with the principles of union, fromcomplete independence, league,
confederation, to nally national government.]
No country on earth more than America has ever givena greater example
of the power of laws on the life of political society.]
The thirteen colonies that simultaneously threwoff the yoke of England
at the end of the last century had, as I have already said, the same religion,
the same language, the same mores, nearly the same laws; they struggled
against a common enemy. So they must have had strong reasons to unite
closely together, and to be absorbed into one and the same nation.
But each of them, having always had a separate existence and a govern-
ment close at hand, had created particular interests as well as customs; and
each found repugnant a solid and complete union that would have made
its individual importance disappear within a common importance. From
that, two opposing tendencies: one that led the Anglo-Americans to unite;
the other that led them to separate.
As long as the war with the mother country lasted, necessity made the
principle of union prevail. And, although the laws that constituted the
union were defective, the common bond continued to exist in spite of
them.
2
But as soon as peace was concluded, the vices of the legislation
c
became
clear; the State seemed to dissolve all at once. Each colony, having become
an independent republic, seized full sovereignty. The federal government,
condemned by its very constitution to weakness, and no longer supported
by the feeling of public danger, saw its ag abandoned to the outrages of
the great peoples of Europe. At the same time, it could not nd sufcient
resources to stand up to the Indian nations and to pay the interest on debts
contracted during the war for independence. About to perish, it ofcially
declared its own impotence and summoned the constituent power.
3
2. See the articles of the rst confederation formed in 1778. This federal constitution was
adopted by all the States only in 1781.
Also see the analysis that the Federalist makes of this constitution, from No. 15 to No. 22
inclusive, and Mr. Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,
pp. 85 [84 (ed.)]115.
c. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not know if you shouldnt say: of the constitution
(YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 910).
3. Congress made this declaration on February 21, 1787.
If ever America was capable of rising for a fewmoments to the highlevel
of glory that the proud imagination
d
of its inhabitants would like con-
stantly to show us, it was at this supreme moment when the national power
had, in a way, just abdicated authority.
For a people to struggle energetically to conquer its independence is a
spectacle that every century has been able to provide. The efforts made by
the Americans to escape from the yoke of the English have, moreover, been
much exaggerated. Separated fromtheir enemies by 1,300 leagues of ocean,
aided by a powerful ally, the United States owed their victory to their po-
sition much more than to the merit of their armies or to the patriotism of
their citizens.
e
Who would dare to compare the American war to the wars
of the French Revolution, and the efforts of the Americans toours? France,
the object of attacks from the whole of Europe, without money, credit,
allies, threw one-twentieth of its population before its enemies, with one
hand putting out the conagration that devoured its bowels and with the
other carrying the torch abroad.
f
But what is new in the history of societies
is to see a great people, warnedby its legislators that the gears of government
are grinding to a halt, turn its attention to itself, without rushing and with-
out fear; sound the depth of the trouble; keep self-control for two whole
years, in order to take time to nd the remedy; and, when this remedy is
indicated, voluntarily submit to it without costing humanity either a tear
or a drop of blood.
When the insufciency of the rst federal constitution made itself
felt, the excitement of the political passions that had given birth to the
revolution was partially calmed, and all the great men that it had created
still lived. This was double good fortune for America. The small as-
d. The manuscript says: . . . that the vain imagination . . .
Herve de Tocqueville: I would cross out the word vain in order not to shock the
Americans among whom the book should have a great deal of success (YTC, CIIIb, 3,
p. 10).
e. In the margin: If you want to know what a people can do for its independence,
it is not America that you must look at.
f. Herve de Tocqueville: If you keep this paragraph, you must suppress this last
sentence which is declamatory, vague and could be interpreted as praise for violence in
the manner of Thiers (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 10).
sembly,
4
which charged itself with drafting the second constitution, in-
cluded the best minds and most noble characters that had ever appeared
in the New World. George Washington presided over it.
h
This national commission, after long and mature deliberations, nally
offered to the people for adoptionthe body of organic laws that still governs
the Union today. All the states successively adopted it.
5
The new federal
government began to operate in 1789, after two years of interregnum. So
the American Revolution nished precisely at the moment when ours
began.
4. It was composed of only 55
g
members. Washington, Madison, Hamilton, the two Mor-
rises were part of it.
g. The manuscript says 39, whichindicates the number of delegates tothe convention
approving the proposed constitution on September 17, 1787.
h. Great men of the early times of the republic./
Their enlightenment. Their true patriotism. Their high character. Convention
that made the federal Constitution. Few prejudices that were met there; constant
struggle against provincial prejudices. Sincere love of republican liberty, but coura-
geous and constant struggle against the bad passions of the people.
Character of Washington. Still more admirable for his courage in struggling
against popular passions than for what he did for liberty. The gods are disappearing!
A separate chapter on Washington. Washington has been admired for not having
wanted to become a dictator, for having returned to the crowd. . . . Ignorance about
the true state of things; historical memories badly applied.
Cincinnatus. Washington could not reasonably think to dominate. But admirable
in his resistance to the exaggerations of popular opinion; there is his superiority; there
is the culminating point.
Washington could not rise by arms (absurd), but by popular favor. And he did
not seek it out for a moment.
Why did Washington, who inthe endduring his lifetime lost the majority, become
more than a man after his death? (YTC, CVe, pp. 6162).
In a bundle of notes where Tocqueville had gathered information for new chapters, the
following title is found: Of the Great Men of America and of Washington
in Particular (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 1).
5. It was not the legislators who adopted it. The people named deputies for this ex-
press purpose. In each of these assemblies the new Constitution was the object of thorough
discussion.
Summary Picture of the Federal Constitution
j
Division of powers between federal sovereignty and that of the
states.The government of the states remains the normal law;
the federal government, the exception.
A rst difculty must have presented itself to the minds of the Americans.
It was a question of sharing sovereignty in such a way that the different
states that formed the Union continued to govern themselves ineverything
that related only to their internal prosperity, and that the whole nation,
represented by the Union, did not cease to be a body and to provide for all
its general needs. A complex question, difcult to resolve.
k
It was impossible to set in advance, in an exact and complete manner,
the portion of power that had to revert to each of these two governments
that were going to share sovereignty.
Who would be able to anticipate in advance all the details of the life of
a people?
The duties and rights of the federal government were simple and easy
enough to dene, because the Union had been formed for the purpose of
meeting a number of great general needs. The duties and rights of the
government of the states were, onthe contrary, numerous andcomplicated,
because this government penetrated into all the details of social life.
So the attributions of the federal government were dened with great
care,
m
and everything that was not included in the denition was declared
to be part of the attributions of the government of the states. Thus, the
j. Union./
The Union has an articial sovereignty; the states, a natural sovereignty; cause of
difference in real strength (perhaps subtle)./
Power of the Union in what concerns it: The Union has more extensive and more
essential prerogatives, in what concerns it, than a number of States forming only a
single body have had (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 51).
k. In the margin: I believe that the principle of the unity of the American people
regarding the matters provided for in the Constitutionprinciple rich in consequences
and which you come back to constantlymust be placed at the beginning of this part
(I do not know where).
m. Here there was a principle that was supposed to dominate the whole matter:
government of the states remained the normal law; the federal government
was the exception.
6
But it was anticipated that, in practice, questions could arise relative to
the exact limits of this exceptional government, and that it would be dan-
gerous to abandon the solution of these questions to the ordinary courts
established in the different states, by the states themselves. So a high federal
court,
7
a single tribunal, was created; one of its attributions was tomaintain
the division of powers between the two rival governments as the Consti-
tution had established it.
8
The Union has only a circumscribed sovereignty, but within this circle it forms
only one and the same people.
1
(You could dene the Union as a people who does not enjoy all the rights of
sovereignty.) Within this circle the Union is sovereign. This set forth and accepted,
the rest is easy; for from the origin of societies, this point is agreed: that a people has
the right to have all that involves its security and independence judged by its own
courts.
Now, since the Union, for the particular matters indicated by the Constitution,
forms only one people, the above rule was as applicable to it as to all others.
Nothing more was involved than determining what its interests were within the
circle of its existence, traced by the Constitution.
1. Some restriction has indeed been put on these principles by introducing the
states as independent powers in the Senate and by making them vote separately in
the House of Representatives in the case of election of the President. But these are
exceptions. The opposite principle predominates (YTC, CVb, p. 20).
6. See amendments to the federal Constitution. Federalist, No. 32. Story[ Commentaries
(ed.)], p. 711. Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 364.
Note indeed that, whenever the Constitution has not reserved to Congress the exclusive
right to regulate certain matters, the states can do so, while waiting for Congress to choose to
take charge of them. Example: Congress has the right to pass a general bankruptcy law; it
doesnt do so; each state could pass one in its own way. This point was established, moreover,
only after discussion before the courts. It is only jurisprudence.
7. The action of this court is indirect, as we will see later.
8. This is how the Federalist, in No. 45 [p. 200], explains this division of sovereignty
between the Union and the particular states:
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and
dened. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indenite.
The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation,
and foreign commerce. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] The powers reserved to the several states will
Attributions of the Federal Government
Power granted to the federal government to make peace, war, to
establish general taxes.Matter of internal political policy with
which it can be involved.The government of the Union, more
centralized on some points than was the royal government under
the old French monarchy.
Peoples in relation to one another are only individuals. Above all, a nation
needs a single government to appear with advantage in regard to foreigners.
So the Union was granted the exclusive right to make war and peace; to
conclude treaties of commerce; to raise armies, to equip eets.
9
The necessity of a national government does not make itself as strongly
felt in the direction of the internal affairs of society.
Nonetheless, there are certain general interests for which only a general
authority can usefully provide.
The Union was left the right to regulate all that relates to the value of
money; it was charged with the postal service; it was given the right to open
extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties,
and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the
state.
I will often have the occasion to cite the Federalist in this work. When the proposal that has
since become the Constitution of the United States was still before the people, and submitted
for adoption, three men who were already celebrated and have since become evenmore famous,
John Jay, Hamilton and Madison, joined together for the purpose of making the advantages
of the proposal clear to the nation. With this idea, they published, in the formof a newspaper,
a series of articles that together form a treatise. They gave the newspaper the name Federalist,
which has remained the title of the work.
The Federalist
n
is a ne book that, though particular to America, should be familiar to
the statesmen of all countries.
n. James T. Schleifer has identied the English edition used by Tocqueville. It was
the one published in Washington by Thomson &Homans, in1831. Inhis notes, Tocque-
ville also cites a French edition of 1792 (probably that of Buisson, Paris).
9. See Constitution, sect. VIII. Federalist, Nos. 41 and 42. Kents Commentaries, vol.
I, p. 207 and following. Story [ Commentaries (ed.)], pp. 35882; id., pp. 40926.
the great avenues of communication that had to unite the various parts of
the territory.
10
The government of the different states was generally considered free in
its sphere, but it could abuse this independence and compromise the se-
curity of the entire Union through imprudent measures. For these rare
cases, dened in advance, the federal government was permitted to inter-
vene in the internal affairs of the states.
11
That explains how, while still
recognizing in each of the confederated republics the power to modify and
change its legislation, each was, nevertheless, forbidden to make retroactive
laws and to create bodies of noblemen within its midst.
12
Finally, since the federal government had to be able to fulll the obli-
gations imposed on it, it was given the unlimited right to levy taxes.
13
When you pay attention to the division of powers as the federal con-
stitutionhas establishedit; when, onthe one hand, youexamine the portion
of sovereignty that the particular states have reserved to themselves and, on
the other, the share of power that the Union took, it is easily discovered
that the federal law-makers had formed very clear and very sound ideas
about what I earlier called governmental centralization.
o
The United States forms not only a republic, but also a confederation.
p
But the national authority there is, inseveral respects, more centralizedthan
it was in the same period under several of the absolute monarchies of Eu-
rope. I will cite only two examples.
10. There are also several other rights of this type, such as that to pass a general law on
bankruptcy, to grant patents. . . . What made the intervention of the whole Union necessary
in these matters is felt well enough.
11. Even in this case, its intervention is indirect. The Union intervenes through its courts,
as we will see further on.
12. Federal Constitution, sect. X, art. 1.
13. Constitution, sect. VIII, IX and X. Federalist, Nos. 3036, inclusive. Id., 41, 42, 43,
44. Kents Commentaries, vol. I, pp. 207 and 381. Story, id., pp. 329514.
o. In a variant of the manuscript: You can even say that the necessity of govern-
mental centralization was better understood by them than it was in several of the mon-
archies of Europe.
p. Throughout the book, Tocqueville uses the words federation and confederation
with not much precision.
France counted thirteen sovereign courts that, most often, had the right
to interpret the law without appeal. It possessed, in addition, certain prov-
inces called pays dE
tats that could refuse their support, after the sovereign

authority, charged with representing the nation, had ordered the raising of
a tax.
The Union has only a single court to interpret the law, as well as a single
legislature to make the law; a tax voted by the representatives of the nation
obligates all the citizens. So the Union is more centralized on these two
essential points than the French monarchy was; the Union, however, is only
a collection of confederated republics.
In Spain, certain provinces
q
had the power to establish their own cus-
toms system, a power that, by its very essence, stems from national sover-
eignty.
In America, Congress alone has the right to regulate commerce among
the states. So the government of the confederation is more centralized on
this point than that of the kingdom of Spain.
It is true that, in the end, you arrived at the same point, since in France
and in Spain the royal power is always able to execute, by force if necessary,
what the constitution of the kingdom denied it the right to do. But I am
talking here about theory.
Federal Powers
After having enclosed the federal government within a clearly drawn circle
of action, it was a matter of knowing how to make it work.
q. In the manuscript: each province.
Legislative Powers
r
[difference between the constitution of the senate and
that of the house of representatives]
Division of the legislative body into two branches.Differences
in the way the two houses are formed.The principle of the
independence of the state triumphs in the formation of the
Senate.The dogma of national sovereignty, in the composition
of the House of Representatives.Singular effects that result
from this, that constitutions are logical only when peoples
are young.
In the organization of the powers of the Union, the plan that was traced
in advance by the particular constitution of each of the states was followed
on many points.
The federal legislative body of the Union was composed of a Senate and
a House of Representatives.
The spirit of conciliation caused different rules to be followed in the
formation of each of these assemblies.
I brought out above that, when the Americans wanted to establish the
federal constitution, two opposing interests found themselves face to face.
These two interests had given birth to two opinions.
Some wanted to make the Union a league of independent states, a sort
of congress where the representatives of distinct peoples would come to
discuss certain points of common interest.
Others wanted to unite all the inhabitants of the old colonies into one
and the same people, and give them a government that, although its sphere
would be limited, would be able to act within this sphere, as the one and
only representative of the nation. The practical consequences of these two
theories were very different.
Thus, if it was a matter of organizing a league and not a national gov-
ernment, it was up to the majority of the states to make laws, and not up
r. In the manuscript: legislative power.
to the majority of the inhabitants of the Union. For each state, large or
small, would then conserve its character of independent power and would
enter into the Union on a perfectly equal footing.
On the contrary, from the moment when the inhabitants of the United
States were considered to form one and the same people, it was natural that
only the majority of the citizens of the Union made the law.
Understandably, the small states could not consent to the applicationof
this doctrine without completely abdicating their existence in what con-
cerned federal sovereignty; for, from co-regulating power, they would be-
come an insignicant fraction of a great people. The rst system would
have granted them an unreasonable power; the second nullied them.
In this situation, what almost always happens wheninterests are opposed
to arguments happened: the rules of logic were made to bend. The law-
makers adopted a middle course that forced conciliation of two systems
theoretically irreconcilable.
The principle of the independence of the states triumphed in the for-
mation of the Senate;
s
the dogma of national sovereignty, in the compo-
sition of the House of Representatives.
t
s. Senate./
The constitution of the Senate is the least logical and the least rational part of the
Constitution of the United States. That is what Hamilton remarks in the Federalist.
All of his discussion on this point shows great distress to see this system introduced,
though he considers it a necessity given the state of opinion.
The equal representation of the states in the Senate goes directly against the prin-
ciple of the Constitution to create a national, not a federal government.
In practice, however, I believe few disadvantages result from this anomaly. Once
the majority is well and constitutionally established in the House of Representatives,
a power enormously popular by its nature, the Senate is forced to go along.
You could be astonished to see the Senate charged with participating in a treaty.
. . . But this power, though not expressed in all constitutions, exists in fact among all
free peoples, even in monarchies.
In America, as among us, all the preliminary negotiations are done, moreover, by
the executive power acting alone. It is the treaty itself that needs the support of the
Senate (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 4243).
t. Political assemblies./
The more numerous they are, the more prone they are to the oligarchical direction
of some members. See Federalist, p. 235 [No. 58 (ed.)].
Each state had to send two senators to Congress and a certain number
of representatives,
u
in proportion to its population.
14
Today, as a result of this arrangement, the state of New York has forty
representatives in Congress and only two senators; the state of Delaware,
two senators and only one representative. So in the Senate, the state of
Delaware is the equal of the state of New York, while the latter has, in the
House of Representatives, forty times more inuence than the rst. Thus,
it can happen that the minority of the nation, dominating the Senate, en-
tirely paralyzes the desires of the majority, represented by the other cham-
ber; this is contrary to the spirit of constitutional governments.
All this shows clearly how rare and difcult it is to link all the parts of
legislation together in a logical and rational manner.
In the long run, time always gives birth to different interests and con-
secrates diverse rights in the same people. Then, when it is a question of
establishing a general constitution, each of these interests and rights serves
as so many natural obstacles that are opposed to following all of the con-
sequences of any one political principle. So only at the birth of societies
can you be perfectly logical in the laws. When you see a people enjoy this
advantage, do not rush to conclude that they are wise; instead, think that
they are young.
January 30, 1832, Washington. Small number of the members of Congress (YTC,
CVe, p. 51; this note is not reproduced in Voyage, OC, V, 1).
u. Ask Mr. Livingston or other Americans at the nomination of the King what the
current rule of apportionment for the representatives is (YTC, CVb, p. 34).
14. Every ten years, Congress again xes the number of deputies that each state must send
to the House of Representatives. The total number was 69 [65 (ed.)] in 1789; it was 240 in
1833. (American Almanac, 1834, p. 194 [124 (ed.)].)
The Constitution had said that there would not be more than one representative for 30,000
inhabitants; but it did not set a lower limit. Congress has not believed that it had to increase
the number of representatives in proportion to the growth of the population. By the rst law
that dealt with this subject, April 14, 1792 (see Laws of the United States by Story, vol. I,
p. 235), it was decided that there would be one representative for 33,000 inhabitants. The last
law, which occurred in 1832, set the number at 1 representative for 48,000 inhabitants. The
population represented is composed of all free men and three-fths of the number of slaves.
At the time whenthe federal Constitutionwas formed, onlytwointerests
positively opposed to each other existed among the Anglo-Americans: the
interest of individuality for the particular states, and the interest of union
for the whole people. It was necessary to come to a compromise.
You must recognize, nonetheless, that up to now this part of the Con-
stitution has not produced the evils that could be feared.
All the states are young;
v
they are near each other; they have homoge-
neous mores, ideas and needs; the difference that results from their greater
or lesser size is not sufcient to give them strongly opposed interests. So
the small states have never been seen to join together in the Senate against
the plans of the large. There is, moreover, such an irresistible force in the
legal expression of the will of an entire people that, when the majority
expresses itself in the organ of the House of Representatives, the Senate,
facing it, nds itself quite weak.
Beyond that, it must not be forgotten that it did not depend on the
American law-makers to make one and the same nation out of the people
to whom they wanted to give laws. The aim of the federal Constitution
was not to destroy the existence of the states, but only to restrain it. So,
from the moment when a real power was left to those secondary bodies
(and it could not be taken from them), the habitual use of constraint to
bend them to the will of the majority was renounced in advance. This said,
the introduction of the individual strengths of the states into the mecha-
nism of the federal government was nothing extraordinary. It only took
note of an existing fact, a recognized power that had to be treated gently
and not violated.
v. Herve de Tocqueville: I would prefer new, for if they are young in terms of es-
tablishment, they are old in terms of civilization (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 12).
Another Difference between the Senate and the
House of Representatives
w
The Senate named by the provincial legislators.
The representatives, by the people.Two levels of election
for the rst.A single one for the second.Length of the
different mandates.Attributions.
The Senate differs from the other chamber not only by the very principle
of representation, but also by the mode of election, by the length of man-
date and by the diversity of attributions.
The House of Representatives is named by the people; the Senate, by
the legislators of each state.
The one is the product of direct election; the other, of indirect election.
The mandate of representatives lasts only two years; that of the senators,
six.
The House of Representatives has only legislative functions; it partici-
pates in judicial power only by accusing public ofcials. The Senate par-
ticipates in the making of laws; it judges political crimes that are referred
to it by the House of Representatives; it is, in addition, the great executive
council of the nation. Treaties, concluded by the President, must be vali-
dated by the Senate; his choices, to be denitive, need to receive the ap-
proval of the same body.
15
w. In the manuscript: other differences between . . .
15. See Federalist, Nos. 5266, inclusive. Story [ Commentaries (ed.)], pp. 199314. Con-
stitution, sect. II and III.
Of Executive Power
16
Dependence of the President.Elective and accountable.
Free in his sphere; the Senate oversees him and does not direct
him.The salary of the President xed at his entry into
ofce.Qualied veto.
The American law-makers had a difcult task to fulll: they wanted to cre-
ate an executive power that depended on the majority and yet was strong
enough by itself to act freely in its sphere.
x
The maintenance of the republicanformrequiredthat therepresentative
of the executive power be subject to the national will.
The President is an elective magistrate. His honor, goods, liberty, life
answer continually to the people for the good use that he will make of his
power. While exercising his power, moreover, he is not completely inde-
pendent. The Senate watches over himin his relations with foreignpowers,
as well as in the distribution of positions; so he can be neither corrupted
nor corrupt.
The law-makers of the Union recognized that the executive power could
not fulll its task usefully and with dignity, if they did not succeedingiving
it more stability and strength than it had been granted in the particular
states.
16. Federalist, Nos. 6777, inclusive. Constitution, art. 2. Story [ Commentaries (ed.)],
p. 315, pp. 51580. Kents Commentaries [vol. I (ed.)], p. 255 [235 (ed.)].
x. The President and in general the executive power of the Union./
Some advantages of a strong executive power:
1. It executes the constitutional desires of the legislatures with more skill and sa-
gacity than they would be able to do themselves.
2. It is a barrier against the abuse of their power; it prevents their omnipotence
from degenerating into tyranny (see, on the subject of the requisite conditions for
the creation of a sufcient executive power, the Federalist, pp. 301 and 316 [No. 70
(ed.)]).
To divide the executive power, to subordinate its movements to the desires of a
council, is to diminish its accountability.
It was necessary to liberty that the President depended on the national will. He is
elective, not inviolable (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 53).
The President was named for four years and could be re-elected. With
a future, he had the courage to work for the public good and the means to
implement it.
The President was made the one and only representative of the executive
power of the Union. Care was even taken not to subordinate his will to
those of a council: a dangerous measure that, while weakening the action
of the government, lessens the accountability of those who govern. The
Senate has the right to strike down some of the acts of the President, but
it can neither force him to act, nor share the executive power with him.
The action of the legislature on the executive power can be direct; we
have just seen that the Americans took care that it was not. It can also be
indirect.
The chambers, by depriving the public ofcial of his salary, take away
a part of his independence; it must be feared that, masters of making laws,
they will little by little take away the portionof power that the Constitution
wanted to keep for him.
This dependence of the executive power is one of the vices inherent in
republican constitutions. The Americans have not been able to destroy the
inclination that leads legislative assemblies to take hold of government,
y
but they have made this inclination less irresistible.
y. In the manuscript: The Americans have not been able to destroy the inclination
[v: tendency], but they have made it less irresistible [v: rapid].
On this page there is an error of style. Executive power is taken here in a double sense;
rst, as presenting the idea of the persons who govern, and then, as including the
idea of the administration itself. This word can indeed be used in this double sense,
but not in places so close together, because it sows confusion in the mind. That is so
true that, when we read: The Americans have not been able to destroy the inclination
to drag the executive power into the legislative assemblies . . . , we think we are going
to see the President of the United States brought into the House of Representatives,
because you were speaking about him a moment before under the name executive
power. This is certainly not the thought of the author, since he means, on the con-
trary, that the legislative assemblies are always led toward taking holdof the executive
power. I would put: The Americans have not been able to destroy the inclination that
leads legislative assemblies to take hold of power, but . . . (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 5152).
The salary of the President is xed, at his entry into ofce, for the entire
time that his leadership lasts. In addition, the President is armed with a
qualied veto that permits him to stop the passage of laws that would be
able to destroy the portion of independence that the constitution left to
him. There can only be an unequal struggle, however, between the Presi-
dent and the legislature, since the latter, by persevering in its intentions,
always has the power to overcome the resistance that opposes it. But the
qualied veto at least forces it to retrace its steps; it forces the legislature to
consider the question again; and this time, it can no longer decide except
with a two-thirds majority of those voting. The veto, moreover, is a kind
of appeal to the people; the executive power pleads its cause and makes its
reasons heard. Without this guarantee, it could be oppressed in secret. But
if the legislature perseveres in its intentions, can it not always overcome the
resistance that opposes it? To that I will answer that in the constitution of
all peoples, no matter what its nature, there is a point where the law-maker
is obliged to rely on the good sense and virtue of the citizens. This point
is closer and more visible in republics, more removed and more carefully
hidden in monarchies; but it is always found somewhere. There is no coun-
try where the law can foresee everything and where the institutions must
take the place of reason and mores.
How the Position of the President
of the United States Differs from That of
a Constitutional King in France
The executive power, in the United States, limited and
exceptional, like the sovereignty in the name of which it acts.
The executive power in France extends to everything, like the
sovereignty there.The King is one of the authors of the law.
The President is only the executor of the law.Other differences
that arise from the duration of the two powers.The President
hampered in the sphere of executive power.The King is free
there.France, despite these differences, resembles a republic
more than the Union does a monarchy.Comparison of the
number of ofcials who depend on the executive power
in the two countries.
The executive power plays such a great role in the destiny of nations that
I want to stop for an instant here in order to explain better what place it
occupies among the Americans.
In order to conceive a clear and precise idea of the position of the Pres-
ident of the United States, it is useful to compare it to that of the King in
one of the constitutional monarchies of Europe.
z
z. Dissimilarity and similarity between the President and the King of England. Fed-
eralist, pp. 295 and 300 [No. 69 (ed.)].
America.
1. Elective magistrate.
2. Subject to the courts, accountable.
3. Qualied veto.
4. Commands the militia, but only in time of war.
5. Cannot pardon in case of impeachment.
6. He cannot adjourn the legislature except in a case allowed.
7. He can make treaties only with two-thirds of the Senate.
8. He can only appoint to ofce with the advice and consent of the Senate.
9. He can prescribe no rule concerning commerce and monetary system of the
country.
10. He has no ecclesiastical jurisdiction whatsoever.
In this comparison, I will attach little importance to the external signs
of power; they fool the observer more than they help.
When a monarchy is gradually transformedintoa republic, the executive
power there keeps titles, honors, respect, and even money, long after it has
lost the reality of power. The English, after having cut off the head of one
of their kings and having chased another from the throne, still knelt to
speak to the successors of these princes.
On the other hand, when republics fall under the yoke of one man,
power continues to appear simple, plain and modest in its manners, as if
it had not already risen above everyone. When the emperors despotically
disposed of the fortune and the life of their citizens, they were still called
Caesar when spoken to, and they went informally to have supper at the
homes of their friends.
So we must abandon the surface and penetrate deeper.
Sovereignty, in the United States, is divided between the Union and the
states; while among us, it is one and compact. Fromthat arises the rst and
greatest difference that I notice between the President of the United States
and the King in France.
In the United States, executive power is limited and exceptional,
a
like
England.
1. Hereditary.
2. Inviolable.
3. Absolute veto.
4. At all times and throughout the kingdom.
5. In all cases.
6. He can always prorogue and dissolve Parliament.
7. He alone makes treaties. He is the only representative of England abroad.
8. He appoints to all ofces, even creates ofces, and beyond that can confer a mul-
titude of graces, either honorary or lucrative.
9. On certain points he is the arbiter of commerce; he can establish markets, regulate
weights and measures, strike money, set an embargo.
10. He is the head of the national church (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 5859).
a. E
How is the sovereignty represented by the executive power (that is the national sov-
ereignty) limited and exceptional? That can only be applied to the executive power,
which is in fact very limited.
Upon reection, I understand the thought. As we saw in the preceding chapter,
the very sovereignty in whose name it acts; in France, it extends to every-
thing, like the sovereignty there.
The Americans have a federal government; we have a national
government.
This is a primary cause of inferiority that results from the very nature
of things; but it is not the only one. The second in importance is this:
strictly speaking, sovereignty can be dened as the right to make laws.
The King, in France, really constitutes one part of the sovereign power,
since laws do not exist if he refuses to sanction them. In addition, he exe-
cutes the law.
The President also executes the law, but he does not really take part in
making the law, since, by refusing his consent, he cannot prevent it from
existing. So he is not part of the sovereign power; he is only its agent.
Not only does the King, in France, constitute one portion of the sov-
ereign power, but he also participates in the formation of the legislature,
which is the other portion. He participates by naming the members of one
chamber and by ending at his will the term of the mandate of the other.
The President of the United States takes no part in the composition of the
legislative body and cannot dissolve it.
The King shares with the Chambers the right to propose laws.
The President has no similar initiative.
The King is represented, within the Chambers, by a certain number of
agents who set forth his views, uphold his opinions and make his maxims
of government prevail.
The President has no entry into Congress; his ministers are excluded as
he is, and it is only by indirect pathways that he makes his inuence and
his opinion penetrate this great body.
the Union was granted, by the Constitution, only a limited power, very dened and
perhaps exceptional. But, it seems to me, the President does not represent only this
portion of sovereignty that has been attributed to the federal government; he also
represents the entire sovereignty of the country, its internal as well as external will;
in a word, he is the instrument of national sovereignty (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 12).
So the King of France operates as an equal with the legislature, which
cannot act without him, as he cannot act without it.
The President is placed beside the legislature, as an inferior and depen-
dent power.
In the exercise of executive power strictly speaking, the point on which
his position seems closest to that of the King in France, the President still
remains inferior due to several very great causes.
First, the power of the King in France has the advantage of duration
over that of the President. Now, duration is one of the rst elements of
strength. Only what must exist for a long time is loved and feared.
The President of the United States is a magistrate elected for four years.
The King in France is a hereditary leader.
In the exercise of executive power, the President of the United States is
constantly subject to jealous oversight. He prepares treaties, but he does not
make them; he designates people for ofces, but he does not appoint
them.
17
The King of France is the absolute master in the sphere of executive
power.
The President of the United States is accountable for his actions. French
law says that the person of the King of France is inviolable.
But above the one as above the other stands a ruling power, that of public
opinion. This power is less dened in France than in the United States; less
recognized, less formulated in the laws; but, in fact, it exists there. InAmer-
ica, it proceeds by elections and by decisions; in France, by revolutions.
Hence France and the United States, despite the diversity of their consti-
tutions, have this point in common: public opinion is, in effect, the dom-
inant power.
b
So the generative principle of the laws is, in actual fact, the
17. The Constitution had left it doubtful whether the President was required to ask the
advice of the Senate in the case of removal, as in the case of nomination of a federal ofcial.
The Federalist, in No. 77, seemed to establish the afrmative; but in 1789, Congress decided
with all good reason that, since the President was accountable, he could not be forced to use
agents that did not have his condence. See Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 289.
b. In the margin: This fact, the sovereignty of the people, the capital point com-
mon to the two countries, gives a similarity to their constitutions despite the diversity
of the laws.
same among the two peoples, although its developments are more or less
free, and the consequences that are drawn from it are often different. This
principle, by its nature, is essentially republican. Consequently, I thinkthat
France, with its King, resembles a republic more than the Union, with its
President, resembles a monarchy.
In all that precedes, I have been careful to point out only the mainpoints
of difference. If I had wanted to get into details, the picture would have
been still more striking. But I have too much to say not to want to be brief.
I remarked that the power of the President of the United States, in his
sphere, exercises only a limited sovereignty, while that of the King, in
France, acts within the circle of a complete sovereignty.
I could have shown the governmental power of the King in France sur-
passing evenits natural limits, however extensive theywere, andpenetrating
into the administration of individual interests in a thousand ways.
To this cause of inuence, I could join that which results fromthe great
number of public ofcials, nearly all of whom owe their mandate to the
executive power. This number has surpassed all known limits among us;
it reaches 138,000.
18
Each of these 138,000 nominations must be consid-
ered as an element of strength. The President does not have an absolute
right to appoint to public positions, and those positions hardly exceed
12,000.
19
18. The sums paid by the State to these various ofcials amount annually to 200,000,000
francs.
19. Each year in the United States an almanac, called the National Calendar, is pub-
lished; the names of all the federal ofcials are found there. The National Calendar of 1833
furnished me with the gure I give here.
It would follow from what precedes that the King of France has at his disposal eleventimes
more places than the President of the United States, although the population of France is only
one and a half times greater than that of the Union.
Accidental Causes That Can Increase
the Inuence of the Executive Power
External security that the Union enjoys.Cautious policy.
Army of 6,000 soldiers.Only a few ships.The President
possesses some great prerogatives that he does not have the
opportunity to use.In what he does have the opportunity
to execute, he is weak.
If the executive power is less strong in America than in France, the cause
must be attributed to circumstances perhaps more than to laws.
It is principally in its relations with foreigners that the executive power
of a nation nds the opportunity to deploy skill and force.
If the life of the Union were constantly threatened, if its great interests
were found involved daily in those of other powerful peoples, you would
see the executive power grow in opinion by what would be expected of it
and by what it would execute.
The President of the United States is, it is true, the head of the army,
but this army is composed of 6,000 soldiers;
c
he commands the eet, but
the eet numbers only a few vessels; he directs the foreign affairs of the
Union, but the United States has no neighbors. Separated from the rest of
the world by the ocean, still too weak to want to dominate the sea, they
have no enemies; and their interests are only rarely in contact with those
of the other nations of the globe.
This demonstrates well that the practice of government must not be
judged by theory.
The President of the United States possesses some nearly royal prerog-
atives that he does not have the opportunity to use; and the rights that, up
to now, he is able to use are very circumscribed. The laws allow him to be
strong; circumstances keep him weak.
On the contrary, circumstances, still more than the laws, give royal au-
thority in France its greatest strength.
c. 4,000 in the manuscript.
In France, the executive power struggles constantly against immense ob-
stacles and disposes of immense resources to overcome them. It increases
with the greatness of the things that it executes and with the importance
of the events that it directs, without thereby modifying its constitution.
Had the laws created it as weak and as circumscribed as that of the
Union, its inuence would soon become very much greater.
Why the President of the United States,
to Lead Public Affairs, Does Not Need
to Have a Majority in the Chambers
It is an established axiom in Europe that a constitutional King cannot gov-
ern when the opinion of the legislative chambers is not in agreement with
his.
Several Presidents of the UnitedStates have beenseentolose the support
of the majority of the legislative body, without having to leave power, nor
without causing any great harm to society.
I have heard this fact cited to prove the independence and strength of
the executive power in America. Afewmoments of reectionare sufcient,
on the contrary, to see there the proof of its weakness.
A European King needs to obtain the support of the legislative body to
fulll the task that the constitution imposes on him, because this task is
immense. A European constitutional King is not only the executor of the
law; the care of its execution so completely devolves onto him that, if
the law is against him, he would be able to paralyze its force. He needs the
chambers to make the law; the chambers need him to execute it; they are
two powers that cannot live without each other; the gears of government
stop at the moment when there is discord between them.
In America, the President cannot stop the making of laws; he cannot
escape the obligation to execute them. His zealous and sincere support is
undoubtedly useful, but it is not necessary to the course of government.
In everything essential that he does, he is directly or indirectly subject to
the legislature; where he is entirely independent of it, he can hardly do
anything. So it is his weakness, and not his strength, that allows himto live
in opposition to the legislative power.
In Europe, there must be agreement between the King and the Cham-
bers, because there can be a serious struggle between them. In America,
agreement is not required, because the struggle is impossible.
Of the Election of the President
The danger of the system of election increases in proportion to the
extent of the prerogatives of the executive power.The
Americans can adopt this system because they can do without a
strong executive power.How circumstances favor the
establishment of the elective system.Why the election of the
President does not make the principles of government change.
Inuence that the election of the President exercises on the
fate of secondary ofcials.
The system of election, applied to the head of the executive power among
a great people, presents some dangers that experience and historians have
sufciently pointed out.
Consequently, I do not want to talk about it except in relation to
America.
The dangers feared from the system of election are more or less great,
depending on the place that the executive power occupies and its impor-
tance in the State, depending on the method of election and the circum-
stances in which the people who elect are found.
Not without reason, the elective system, applied to the head of State, is
criticized for offering such a great lure to individual ambitions andinaming
them so strongly in the pursuit of power that often, when legal means are
no longer sufcient, they appeal to force when right happens to desert them.
It is clear that the greater the prerogatives of the executive power, the
greater the lure; also, the more the ambition of the pretenders is excited,
the more it nds support among a host of men of lesser ambition who
hope to share power after their candidate has triumphed.
d
d. The wording of this paragraph is a bit different in the manuscript. The published
version was suggested by Beaumont (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 5253).
The dangers of the elective systemincrease therefore indirect proportion
to the inuence exercised by the executive power in the affairs of the State.
The Polish revolutions should not be attributed only to the elective sys-
tem in general, but to the fact that the elected magistrate was the head of
a large monarchy.
e
So before discussing the absolute goodness of the elective system, there
is always an intervening question to resolve, that of knowing if the geo-
graphic position, laws, habits, mores and opinions of the people among
whomyouwant to introduce it allowyoutoestablisha weakanddependent
executive power. To want the representative of the State to be simulta-
neously armed with great power and elected is, to my mind, to express two
contradictory desires. For my part, I knowonly one way to make hereditary
royalty change to a state of elected power. Its sphere of action must be
contracted in advance; its prerogatives gradually reduced; andlittle by little,
the people accustomed to living without its aid. But the republicans of
Europe are hardly concerned with this. Since many among them hate tyr-
anny only because they are the objects of its rigors, the extent of executive
power does not offend them; they attack only its origin, without noticing
the tight bond that links these two things.
No one has yet been found who cared about risking his honor and his
life to become President of the United States, because the President has
only a temporary, limited and dependent power. Fortune must put an im-
mense prize at stake in order for desperate players to enter the lists. [For
my part, I would prefer to be Premier Ministre in France than President of
the Union.] No candidate, until now, has been able to raise ardent sym-
pathies and dangerous popular passions in his favor.
f
The reason is simple.
Once at the head of the government,
g
he can distribute to his friends nei-
e. Cf. Rousseau, Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, chapters VIII andXIV.
f. Herve de Tocqueville: Carefully check if this paragraph agrees well with what the
author says in the chapters on the crisis [of election] and on re-election. You must be
careful about even the appearance of contradiction. Later youtalk about intrigues, about
the efforts of the President to get himself re-elected and about the development of his
power in this regard (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 13).
g. In the manuscript: . . . the President has only a few places . . .
Herve de Tocqueville: These sentences are in clear opposition to what the author
ther much power, nor much wealth, nor much glory; and his inuence in
the State
h
is too weak for factions to see their success or their ruin in his
elevation to power.
Hereditary monarchies have a great advantage. Since the particular in-
terest of a family is continually tied in a close way to the interest of the
State, there is never a single moment when the latter is left abandoned to
itself. I do not know if in these monarchies public affairs are better con-
ductedthanelsewhere; but at least there is always someone whotakes charge
for good or ill, depending on his capacity.
j
In elective States, on the contrary, at the approach of the election and a
long time before it happens, the gears of government no longer function,
in a way, except by themselves. The laws can undoubtedly be put together
so that the election takes place at one go and rapidly, and the seat of ex-
ecutive power never remains vacant so to speak; but no matter what is done,
an empty place exists mentally despite the efforts of the law-maker.
At the approach of the election, the head of the executive power thinks
only of the struggle to come; he no longer has a future; he can undertake
nothing, and pursues only languidly what someone else perhaps is going
to achieve. I am so near the moment of my retirement, wrote President
Jefferson on 21 [28 (ed.)] January 1809 (six weeks before the election), that
I no longer take part in public affairs except by expressing my opinion. To
me, it seems just to leave to my successor the initiation of measures that he
will have to execute and for which he will have to bear responsibility.
On its side, the nation has its eyes focused only on a single point; it is
occupied only with overseeing the birth about to take place.
says on pages 346 and 347. Moreover, can one say that a man has only a few places to
distribute when 20,000 nominations depend on himin a machine as simple as the Amer-
ican organization? (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 14).
h. Cf. non-alphabetic notebook 1, conversation with John (?) Livingston(YTC, BIIa,
and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 60).
j. In France, for society to work, social power must be not only centralized, but also
stable.
Power can be centralized in an assembly; then it is strong, but not stable. It can be
centralized in a man. Then it is less strong, but more stable (YTC, Cve, p. 64).
The more vast the place occupied by the executive power in the lead-
ership of public affairs, the greater and more necessary is its habitual action,
and the more dangerous such a state of things is. Among a people whohave
contracted the habit of being governed by the executive power, and with
even more reason, of being administered by it, election cannot help but
produce a profound disturbance.
In the United States, the action of the executive power can slow down
with impunity, because this action is weak and circumscribed.
When the head of government is elected, a lack of stability in the in-
ternal and external policies of the State almost always follows. That is one
of the principal vices of this system.
But this vice is felt more or less, depending on the portion of power
granted to the elected magistrate. In Rome, the principles of government
never varied, although the consuls were changed annually, because the Sen-
ate was the directing power; and the Senate was anhereditary body. Inmost
of the monarchies of Europe, if the King were elected, the kingdomwould
change faces with each new choice.
In America, the President exercises a fairly great inuence on affairs of
State, but he does not conduct them; the preponderant power resides in
the whole national representation. Therefore, the mass of people must be
changed, and not only the President, in order for the maxims of policy to
change. Consequently, in America, the system of election, applied to the
head of the executive power, does not harm the steadiness of government
in a very tangible way.
The lack of steadiness is an evil so inherent in the elective system, more-
over, that it still makes itself keenly felt in the Presidents sphere of action,
no matter how circumscribed.
Mr. Quincy Adams, when he took power, dismissed most of those ap-
pointed by his predecessor; and of all the removable ofcials that the federal
administration uses, I do not know of a single one who was left in ofce
by General Jackson in the rst year that followed the election.
k
k. This paragraph, whichdoes not appear inthe manuscript, is includedinthe edition
of 1835 and eliminated from the sixth and later editions, following a letter from John
Quincy Adams, dated June 12, 1837:
The Americans thought correctly that the head of the executive power,
in order to fulll his mission and bear the weight of full responsibility, had
to remain free, as much as possible, to choose his agents himself and to
remove them at will;
m
the legislative body watches over rather than directs
The truth is that I never dismissed a single individual named by my predecessor. It
was a principle of my administration to dismiss no person from ofce but for mis-
conduct, and there were in the course of four years that I presided, only two persons
dismissed from civil executive ofce, both of them for gross ofcial misdemeanors.
My successor it is true did pursue a different principle. He dismissed many subor-
dinate ofcer executive [sic ] not however so generally as the remainder of the para-
graph in your book, which I have cited, supposes. He left in ofce many of those
who had been appointed by his predecessors, and would probably have left many
more but for the inuences by which he was surrounded (YTC, CId).
On December 4, 1837, Tocqueville answers from Paris:
I receive with great pleasure the complaint that you very much wanted to address to
me relating to a sentence in my book that concerns you. You can be assured that this
sentence will disappear in the sixth edition which is supposed to appear, I believe,
this winter. I am delighted that you have given me this occasion to please you and to
correct an error that I regret having made. The fact you complain about and that you
say is inaccurate had been afrmed to me in America itself (my notes prove it) by a
man on whose veracity I thought I could count (YTC, CId, and OC, VII, pp. 67
68). See, in the non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, the second conversation with Mr.
Walker (YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 130).
m. In the manuscript:
The legislative body therefore interferes only very little inthe choices of mentowhom
public positions are entrusted. It limits itself to supervising the President; it does not
direct him. What is the result? At each election, a complete replacement takes place
in the federal administration. [In the margin: This happened only under Quincy
Adams and under Jackson.] There is not an employee so lowly who can claim to
escape from the result of the vote. His place belongs in advance to the friends of the
newpower. People inthe constitutional monarchies of Europe complainabout seeing
the fate of the secondary employees of the administration depend on the fate of the
ministers. It is still much worse in States where the head of government is elected.
Of the [blank (ed.)] revocable ofcials employed by the federal administration, I do
not think that there was a single one that General Jackson left in place the rst year
that followed his election. The reason for this difference is easily understood. Inmon-
archies, the ministers, in order to come to power and remain there, have no need to
extend the circle of their inuence very far; as long as they obtain the majority in the
chambers, it is enough. But to bring about his election or reelection, the President
needs to reach the popular masses; and inorder to succeedinthat, he must not neglect
the President. From that it follows that at each new election, the fate of all
federal employees is as if in suspense.
a single means of action. Each election, therefore, brings to public affairs a new ad-
ministration whose education is completed at the expense of the administered. As
for the individual misfortunes that result . . .
(In the margin) False, for to bring about election and reelection of the deputies,
the ministers need the same means.
Here is a piece that Alexis proposes to delete. But it contains views and a fact worth
keeping; perhaps it could be modied in the following way:
After the sentence: The legislative body therefore interferes only very little in, I would
like a short note that explained how the legislative body intervenes in nominations.
The aw in this explanation is that something is missing.
A complete replacement takes place in the administration. Here a note at the bottom
of the page where you will say that, because this replacement has taken place at the
election of the last two Presidents, it may be believed that this precedent will be
followed by their successors (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 14).
I would very much hesitate to delete the piece crossed out. Possibly it contains some
ideas and opinions that need to be revised and modied. But as a whole it is very
interesting and will be especially for the public, because it touches on a question
extremely exciting to the personal interests of all public ofcials.
The contrast between the President and the ministers does not exist; they are in an
analogous positioninthe sense that the ministers of a Frenchmonarchyhave aninterest
in bringing their weight to bear on the least agents, in order to gain the majority in the
chambers from the electoral body. And they cannot remain ministers if they do not
have this majority, just as the President will not be elected if he does not gain it.
But here is the difference: a minister cannot think of dismissing everyone in order
to remain minister; and if he wanted to do it, he would not be able to do so. Because
public opinion, on which he depends, would never understand that the end justied
the means. It is the opposite when it is a matter, for a man, of being head of the State
(YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 5354).
E
Whatever your decision regarding this piece, I will make several observations; rst
this sentence: to remove them at will is trite. But the most serious aw in this piece
is to present a striking contradiction to what you said a few sentences earlier. Here
you say that all the employees are replaced at the coming into ofce of the President
and that he is obligated, in the machinery he puts in motion, to reach the popular
masses, without neglecting a single means of action. While you say, p. 324, that no
one cares about risking his honor and his life to become President, that no candidate
In the constitutional monarchies of Europe, the complaint is that the
destiny of the obscure agents of the administration often depends on the
fate of the ministers. It is even worse in States where the head of govern-
ment is elected. The reason for this is simple. In constitutional monarchies,
ministers replace each other rapidly; but the principal representative of the
executive power never changes, which contains the spirit of innovation
within certain limits. So administrative systems there vary in the details
rather than in the principles; one cannot be suddenly substituted for an-
other without causing a kind of revolution. In America, this revolution
takes place every four years in the name of law.
As for the individual misfortunes that are the natural consequence of
such legislation, it must be admitted that the lack of stability in the lot of
ofcials does not produce in America the evils that would be expected else-
where. In the United States, it is so easy to make an independent living that
to remove an ofcial from an ofce that he holds sometimes means taking
away the comforts of life, but never the means to sustain it.
I said at the beginning of this chapter that the dangers of the mode of
election, applied to the head of the executive power, were more or less great,
depending on the circumstances in which the people who elect are found.
Efforts to reduce the role of the executive power are made in vain. There
is something over which this power exercises a great inuence, whatever
the place that the laws have given it. That is foreign policy; a negotiation
can hardly be started and successfully carried through except by a single
man. [{Physical force can only be adequately put in motion [v: directed]
by a single will.}]
The more precarious and perilous the position of a people, the more the
need for consistency andstability makes itself felt inthe directionof foreign
has been able to raise ardent sympathies in his favor and that he can attach to his
cause neither personal interest nor party interest, that he has only a few places to
distribute to his friends.
Howthendoyousay afterwards, p. 330, that the place of the lowliest employeebelongs
in advance to the friends of the new power, and that General Jackson did not leave a
single ofcial in place? And again, page 346, the positions he has at his disposal, etc.
(YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 3).
affairs, and the more dangerous the system of election of the head of State
becomes.
The policy of the Americans in relation to the whole world is simple;
you would almost be able to say that no one needs them, and that they need
no one. Their independence is never threatened.
So among them, the role of executive power is as limited by circum-
stances as by laws. The President can frequently change his views without
having the State suffer or perish.
Whatever the prerogatives with which the executive power is vested, the
time that immediately precedes the election and the time while it is taking
place can always be considered as a period of national crisis.
The more the internal situation of a country is troubled and the greater
its external perils, the more dangerous this moment of crisis is for it. Among
the peoples of Europe, there are very few who would not have to fear con-
quest or anarchy every time that they chose a new leader.
In America, society is so constituted that it can maintain itself on its
own and without help; external dangers are never pressing. The electionof
the President is a cause for agitation, not for ruin.
Mode of Election
Skill which the American law-makers have demonstrated in the
choice of the mode of election.Creation of a special electoral
body.Separate vote of special electors.In what case the House
of Representatives is called to choose the President.What has
happened in the twelve elections that have taken place since the
Constitution has been in force.
Apart fromthe dangers inherent in the principle, there are many others that
arise from the very forms of election and that can be avoided by the care
of the law-maker.
n
n. The draft of this passage has beencorrectedby Gustave de Beaumont (YTC, CIIIb,
3, p. 55).
When a people gather in arms in the public square to choose a leader, it
exposes itself not only to the dangers presented by the elective systemitself,
but also to all those of civil war which arise fromsuch a methodof election.
When Polish laws made the choice of the king depend on the veto of a
single man, they invited the murder of this man or created anarchy in
advance.
As you study the institutions of the United States and look more atten-
tively at the political and social situation of this country, you notice a mar-
velous accord there between fortune and human efforts. America was a new
country; but the people wholivedthere hadalready long made use of liberty
elsewhere: two great causes of internal order. Furthermore, America had
no fear of conquest. The American law-makers, taking advantage of these
favorable circumstances, had no difculty in establishing a weak and de-
pendent executive power; having created it so, they could make it elective
without risk.
Nothing remained for them to do except to choose, from among the
different systems of election, the least dangerous; the rules that they drew
up in this respect completed admirably the guarantees that the physical and
political constitution of the country already provided.
The problem to solve was to nd a mode of election that, while still
expressing the real will of the people, little excited their passions and
kept the people in the least possible suspense. First, they granted that a
simple majority would make the law. But it was still very difcult toobtain
this majority without having to fear delays that they wanted to avoid
above all.
It is rare, in fact, to see a man get the majority of votes on the rst try
from among a large population. The difculty increases still more in a re-
public of confederated states where local inuences are much more devel-
oped and more powerful.
A way to obviate this second obstacle presented itself: to delegate the
electoral powers of the nation to a body that represented it.
This mode of election made a majority more probable; for the fewer the
electors, the easier it is for themto agree among themselves. It alsopresented
more guarantees for a good choice.
But should the right to elect be entrusted to the legislative body itself,
the usual representative of the nation; or, on the contrary, must anelectoral
college be formed whose sole purpose would be to proceed to the naming
of the President?
o
The Americans preferred this last option. They thought that the men
sent to make ordinary laws would only incompletely represent the wishes
of the people relating to the election of the rst magistrate. Being elected,
moreover, for more than a year, they could represent a will that had already
changed. They judged that, if the legislature was charged with electing the
head of the executive power, its members would become, long before the
election, the objects of corrupting maneuvers and the playthings of in-
trigue; while special electors, like jurors, would remain unknown in the
crowd until the day when they must act and would only appear at one
moment to deliver their decision.
So they established that each state would name a certainnumber of elec-
tors,
20
who would in turn elect the President. And, since they had noticed
that assemblies charged with choosing heads of government in elective
countries inevitably became centers of passions and intrigue, that some-
times they took hold of powers that did not belong to them, and that often
their operations, and the uncertainties that followed, lasted long enoughto
put the State in danger, they decided that the electors would all vote on a
set day, but without meeting together.
21
The mode of election in two stages made a majority probable, but did
not guarantee it, for it could be that the electors would differ among them-
selves as those who named them would have differed.
In this case, the Americans were led necessarily to take one of three mea-
sures: it was necessary to have new electors named, or to consult once again
those already named, or nally to refer the choice to a new authority.
o. Gustave de Beaumont: 335, 336, 337, 338, etc. . . . All these pages seem excellent
to me and I very strongly urge the author not to make the corrections that are advised
by imprudent friends (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 5556).
20. As many as the members they send to Congress. The number of electors for the election
of 1833 was 288 ( The National Calendar [1833] [p. 19 (ed.)]).
21. The electors of the same state meet; but they send to the seat of the central government
the list of individual votes and not the result of the majority vote.
The rst two methods, apart from the fact that they were not very cer-
tain, led to delays and perpetuated an always dangerous excitement.
So they settled on the third and agreed that the votes of the electors
would be transmitted in secret to the president of the Senate. He would
count the votes on the day xed and in the presence of the two houses. If
no candidate had gained a majority, the House of Representatives would
itself proceed immediately to the election; but they took care to limit its
right. The Representatives could only elect one of the three candidates who
had obtained the largest number of votes.
22
As you see, only in a rare case, difcult to foresee in advance, is the elec-
tion left to the ordinary representatives of the nation; and even then, they
can only choose a citizen already designated by a strong minority of the
special electors; a happy combination, that reconciles the respect owed to
the will of the people with the rapidity of execution and the guarantees of
order required by the interest of the State. Yet, by making the House of
Representatives decide the question, in case of division, the complete so-
lution of all difculties had still not been achieved; for the majority in the
House of Representatives could inturnbe doubtful, andthis time the Con-
stitution offered no remedy. But by establishing required candidates, by
restricting their number to three, by relying on the choices of some en-
lightened men, it had smoothed all the obstacles
23
over which it could have
some power; the others were inherent in the elective system itself.
p
22. In this circumstance, it is the majority of the states, and not the majority of the mem-
bers, that decides the question. So that New York does not have more inuence on the delib-
eration than Rhode Island. Thus the citizens of the Union, considered as forming one and
the same people, are consulted rst; and when they cannot agree, the division by states is
revived, and each of the latter is given a separate and independent vote.
That again is one of the strange things that the federal constitution presents and only the
clash of opposing interests can explain.
23. In 1801, however, Jefferson was named only on the thirty-sixth ballot.
p. Tocqueville writes to Corcelle:
There is a piece of your work that particularly pleased me a great deal. It is where
you indicate, as a remedy for the excesses of democracy, election by stages. In my
opinion that is a capital idea that must be introduced very prudently and that is very
During the forty-ve years the federal Constitution has existed, the
United States has already elected its President twelve times.
Ten elections were done immediately, by the simultaneous vote of the
special electors seated at different points of the territory.
The House of Representatives has used the exceptional right withwhich
it is vested in case of division only twice. The rst, in 1801, was at the time
of the election of Jefferson; and the second, in 1825, when Quincy Adams
was named.
Election Crisis
The moment of the election of the President can be considered a
moment of national crisis.Why.Passions of the people.
Preoccupation of the President.Calm which follows the
agitation of the election.
I have talked about the favorable circumstances in which the United States
was found for adopting the elective system, and I have shown the precau-
tions taken by the law-makers to reduce its dangers. The Americans are
used to having all kinds of elections. Experience has taught themwhat level
of agitation they can reach and where they must stop. The vast extent of
their territory and the distribution of the inhabitants make a collision
important to introduce gradually to the thinking of those who love liberty and the
equality of men. I rmly believe, without yet saying it as strongly as I think it, that
different stages of election form the most powerful and perhaps the only means that
democratic peoples have to give the direction of society to the most skillful, without
making themindependent of everyone else (Letter of October 1835 (?) Correspondance
avec Corcelle, OC, XV, I, p. 57. Cf. Souvenirs, OC, XII, pp. 18890).
In the report that he did as a member of the Commission charged with the revision
of the constitution (Rapport fait a` lAssemblee legislative au nom de la Commission
chargee dexaminer les propositions relatives a` la revision de la constitution . . . , Mon-
iteur Universel, July 9, 1851, pp. 19431945, and OCB, IX, pp. 574606), Tocqueville
praises the American system of indirect election of the President. He sees there a way
to avoid revolutions as well as the temptation to resort to dictatorship. In a letter of 1853
(partially reproduced in OCB, VI, pp. 21220), he will share with W. R. Greg, English
essayist and ardent defender of free trade, extremely lucid views on French electoral laws
under the monarchy and the republic.
among the different parties less probable and less perilous than anywhere
else. Until now, the political circumstances in which the nation has found
itself during elections have not presented any real danger. [<Finally, the
power of the President is so dependent and so limited that the passions of
the candidates and those of their partisans can never be either very ardent
or very long-lasting.>]
But the moment of the election of the President of the United States
can still be considered a period of national crisis.
The inuence that the President exercises on the course of public affairs
is undoubtedly weak and indirect, but it extends over the entire nation; the
choice of President has only a moderate importance for each citizen, but
it matters to all citizens. Now, an interest, however small, assumes a char-
acter of great importance from the moment it becomes a general interest.
Compared to a king of Europe, the President has certainly few means
to create partisans for himself; nonetheless, the places he has at his disposal
are numerous enough
q
for several thousands of the voters to be either di-
rectly or indirectly interested in his cause.
In the United States as elsewhere, moreover, parties feel the need to
gather around a man, in order to be more easily understood by the crowd.
So they generally use the name of the candidate for President as a symbol;
in him, they personify their theories. Thus, parties have a great interest in
determining the election in their favor, not so much for making their doc-
trines triumph with the help of the elected President, as for showing, by
his election, that these doctrines have won the majority.
Long before the xed moment arrives, the election becomes the greatest
and, so to speak, the sole matter that preoccupies minds. Factions redouble
their ardor [the administration nds itself attacked from all directions;
{slanders, insults, rantings of all types are thrown lavishly against it}]; all
the articial passions that can be imagined, in a happy and tranquil coun-
try, are stirred up at this moment in full view.
q. Herve de Tocqueville: Check if that agrees with page 324 where it is said: no
candidate, until now, has been able to raise, etc. (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 15).
On his side, the President is absorbed by the care to defend himself. He
no longer governs in the interest of the State, but in that of his re-election;
he grovels before the majority; and often, instead of resisting its passions,
as his duty requires, he runs ahead of its caprices.
As the election approaches, intrigues become more active; agitation,
more intense and more widespread. The citizens divide into several camps,
each taking the name of its candidate. The entire nation falls into a feverish
state; the election is then the daily story of the public papers, the subject
of individual conversations, the goal of all moves, the object of all
thoughts, the sole interest of the moment. [The danger certainly is more
apparent than real.]
It is true that as soon as fortune has decided, this ardor dissipates; ev-
erything becomes calm, and the river, once overowing, retreats peacefully
to its bed. But shouldnt we be astonished that the storm could arise? [<For
the choice that so strongly preoccupied the nation can inuence its pros-
perity and its dreams only in a very indirect way; the passions that arose
did not nd their source in those real interests and penchants [doubtful
reading (ed.)] that so profoundly trouble the human heart [v: society] [v:
stirring the deepest levels of the human heart and turning society upside
down to be satised]. For the election of the President of the UnitedStates
cannot put into play any of those dangerous human passions that ndtheir
source in profound beliefs or in great positive interests.>]
Of the Re-election of the President
When the head of the executive power is eligible for re-election, it
is the State itself that schemes and corrupts.Desire to be re-
elected that dominates all the thoughts of the President of the
United States.Disadvantage of re-election, special to
America.The natural vice of democracies is the gradual
subservience of all powers to the slightest desires of the
majority.The re-election of the President favors this vice.
Were the law-makers of the United States wrong or right to allow the re-
election of the President?
r
To prevent the head of the executive power frombeing re-electedseems,
at rst glance, contrary to reason.
s
We know what inuence the talents or
character of one manexercise over the destiny of anentire people, especially
in difcult circumstances and in times of crisis. Laws that forbid citizens
to re-elect their primary magistrate would deny them the best means of
ensuring the prosperity of the State or of saving it. You would, moreover,
arrive at this bizarre result, that a man would be excluded from the gov-
ernment at the very moment when he would have nally proved that he
was capable of governing well.
t
These reasons are certainly powerful; but cant they be opposed by still
stronger ones?
u
r. In the Souvenirs, Tocqueville reproaches himself for having supported, inthe com-
mittee to draft the Constitution of 1848, Beaumonts proposal that urgedthat a president
leaving ofce not be re-elected. On this occasion, we both fell into a great error that, I
am very afraid, will have very damaging consequences, wrote Tocqueville inMarch1851
(Souvenirs, OC, XII, p. 190). The impossibility of being re-elected was, we know, one
of the reasons that pushed Louis Napoleon to the coup de tat.
s. In the margin: Eight years, term indicated by experience. See note y p. 229.
t. In the margin: 1. The great end of the laws is to mingle individual interest and
State interest.
2. Weakening of the executive power, capital vice to avoid in republics.
u. Variant:
<The great object of the laws [v: of the law-maker] must always be intimately to
mingle individual interest and State interest. Certainly laws can never reach such a
Intrigue and corruption are the natural vices of elective governments.
But when the head of the State can be re-elected, these vices spread indef-
initely and compromise the very existence of the country. When an ordi-
nary candidate wants to succeed by intrigue, his maneuvers can only be
degree of perfection, but it can be said that the more difcult it is to separate these
two interests, the better the laws.
If the President were not eligible for re-election, he would have only one goal, to
leave a great recollection in the memory of men and to return to private life sur-
rounded by the respect as well as the love of his fellow citizens. To obtain this goal,
he could hardly follow another path than to govern well; for at the bottom of the
human heart, there is a secret instinct that constantly calls out that the approval of
the present [v: the sincere approval of contemporaries] and the admiration of pos-
terity belong to virtue alone.
In place of this entirely non-material and distant interest, the American laws have
given the President a positive and current interest that, if not contrary to, is at least
distinct from that of the State.
The President has naturally two goals topursue: togovernwell andtobe re-elected.
I know you will stop me here by saying: the two interests are the same, for the only
way to be re-elected is to govern well. This argument is far from satisfying to me; it
goes back to the argument that the majority is not subject to error, that it has neither
prejudice to be attered nor passions to be inamed, that favor [added: and intrigue]
have no hold on it, a proposition that cannot be sustained and that does not merit
the effort to refute. It is incontestable that there are two ways for the President to be
re-elected. The rst, it is true, consists of governing well, but that is within reach of
only great souls. Even then, success is always uncertain. Washington had lost the
majority when he voluntarily removed himself from public activities. The second,
easier and more within the reach of ordinary minds, is to buy partisans at any cost,
to make ofces the recompense for services rendered to the President, not to the
country, to exploit public power in favor of individual interests, and to turn all laws
into a combination of personal and party interests.
It is impossible to examine the ordinary course of public affairs inthe UnitedStates
without noticing that the desire to be re-elected dominates the thoughts of the Pres-
ident, that the entire policy of his administration focuses on this point, that his
slightest declarations are subordinated to this end, that above all, as the moment of
crisis nears, the interest of the State becomes more and more incidental to him and
re-election becomes his principal interest.
By allowing re-election of the President, the Americans introduced intrigue and
corruption [v: a new element] into government.>
That is still not the most frightening result of the system of re-election. Certain
physicians believe that when each man comes into the world, he already has the seed
of the illness that one day will kill him. This remark may be appliedto government.
Each government . . .
extended over a circumscribed space. When, on the contrary, the head of
the State himself gets into the fray, he borrows for his own use the strength
of the government.
v
In the rst case, it is one man with his limited means; in the second, it
is the State itself with its immense resources that schemes and corrupts.
The ordinary citizen who uses reprehensible maneuverings to gain
power can harm public prosperity only in an indirect manner; but if the
representative of the executive power enters the lists, concern for the gov-
ernment becomes, for him, something of secondary interest; the main in-
terest is his election. Negotiations, like laws, are, for him, nothing more
than electoral schemes; positions become recompense for services rendered,
not to the nation, but to its leader. Even if the action of the government
would not always be contrary to the interest of the country, it would at
least no longer serve it. Yet the action of the government is undertaken for
its use alone.
It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United
States, without noticing that the desire to be re-elected dominates the
thoughts of the President; that the entire policy of his administrationleads
to this point; that his smallest steps are subordinated to this end; that above
all, as the moment of crisis approaches, individual interest replaces general
interest in his mind.
So the principle of re-election makes the corrupting inuence of elective
government more widespread and more dangerous. It tends to degrade the
political morality of the people and to replace patriotism with cleverness.
In America, it attacks the sources of national existence even more
fundamentally.
Every government carries within itself a natural vice that seems attached
to the very principle of its life; the genius of the law-maker is to discern
v. Herve de Tocqueville: Isnt Alexis drawing too excited a picture there, relative to
what precedes? He tried hard in several places to show us that the President has only
limited means at his disposal. Here he exalts his strength and his immense resources.
Perhaps the imagination of the author has sought to prove too much, for fear of not
proving enough (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 16).
this well.
w
A State can overcome many bad laws, and the evil they cause is
oftenexaggerated. But every lawwhose effect is todevelopthis seedof death
cannot miss becoming fatal in the long run, even if its bad effects do not
immediately make themselves felt.
The principle of ruin in absolute monarchies is the unlimited and un-
reasonable expansion of royal power. A measure that removes the coun-
terweight that the constitution left to this power would therefore be radi-
cally bad, even if its effects seemed unnoticeable for a long time.
In the same way, in countries where democracy governs and where the
people constantly draw everything to themselves, laws which make their
action more and more immediate and irresistible attack, in a direct way, the
existence of the government.
The greatest merit of the American law-makers is to have seen this truth
clearly and to have had the courage to put it into practice. [{The greatest
glory of this people is to have known how to appreciate it and to submit
themselves to it.}]
They understood that beyond the people there needed to be a certain
number of powers that, without being completely independent of the peo-
ple, nonetheless enjoyed in their sphere a fairly large degree of liberty; so,
though forced to obey the permanent direction of the majority, they could
nevertheless struggle against its caprices and refuse its dangerous demands.
To this effect, they concentrated all the executive power of the nation
in one pair of hands; they gave the President extensive prerogatives, and
armed him with a veto, to resist the encroachments of the legislature.
x
w. Cf. Montesquieu, De lesprit des lois, particularly books II and VIII.
x. Herve de Tocqueville:
This locution seems contradictory to what has been said and repeated earlier about the
slight power of the President. Isnt it to be feared that Alexis will be accusedof reducing
or augmenting this power as his theory requires? Perhaps this chapter has the fault of
not coming to a conclusion. It is clear that the author blames re-election, and I believe
he is right. What would he want in its place? Four years in ofce are very few.
E
It doesnt seem to me that there is a contradiction here. They armed the President
with great power and took from him the will to make use of it. That is why this power,
strong in appearance, is weak in reality.
But by introducing the principle of re-election, they have partially de-
stroyed their work. They have granted great power to the President, and
have taken from him the will to use it.
Not re-eligible, the President was not independent of the people, for he
did not cease being responsible to them; but the favor of the people was
not so necessary to him that he had to bend in all cases to their will.
Re-eligible (and this is true above all in our time when political morality
is becoming lax and when men of great character are disappearing), the
President of the United States is only a docile instrument in the hands of
the majority. He loves what it loves, hates what it hates; he ies ahead of
its will, anticipates its complaints, bends before its slightest desires. The
law-makers wanted him to lead the majority, and he follows it.
Thus, in order not to deprive the State of the talents of one man, they
have rendered his talents almost useless; and to arrange for a resource in
extraordinary circumstances, they have exposed the country to daily
dangers.
y
Of the Federal Courts
24
Political importance of the judicial power in the United
States.Difculty in treating this subject.Utility of the
judicial system in confederations.What courts could the Union
Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. Here Alexis presents those of the
principle of election, without claiming, by doing so, that it must be destroyed(YTC,
CIIIb, 3, pp. 1718).
y. In my opinion the President of the United States should be chosen for a longer
term and not be re-eligible (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 58).
24. See ch. VI entitled Of the Judicial Power in the United States. This chapter
shows the general principles of the Americans in the matter of the judicial system. Also see the
federal Constitution, art. 3.
See the work with the title: The Federalist, Nos. 7883 inclusive. Constitutional Law,
Being a View of the Practice and Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States, by
Thomas Sergeant.
See Story [ Commentaries (ed.)], pp. 13462, 489511, 581668. See the organic law of
September 24, 1789, in the collection entitled: Laws of the United States, by Story, vol. I,
p. 53.
[Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 275 [273 (ed.)] and following.]
use?Necessity of establishing federal courts of justice.
Organization of the federal judicial system.The Supreme
Court.How it differs from all the courts of justice that we know.
I have examined the legislative power and the executive power of the
Union. It still remains for me to consider the judicial power.
Here I must reveal my fears to readers.
The judicial institutions exercise a great inuence on the destiny of the
Anglo-Americans; they hold a very important place among political insti-
tutions properly so called. From this point of view, they particularly merit
our attention.
But howto make the political actionof the Americancourts understood,
without entering into some of the technical details of their constitution
and of their forms; and how to get into the details without discouraging,
by the natural dryness of such a subject, the curiosity of the reader? How
to remain clear and still be concise?
[<So I have said only what I believed indispensable for someone tojudge
the political action of courts within the confederation.> So often, I have
assumed the readers pre-existent ideas on the administration of justice
among the people of the English race; even more often I counted on him
searching in the sources that I point out in order to ll out my ideas. In a
word, I have said only what I believed indispensable for someone to be able
to understand the political action of the federal courts.]
I do not atter myself that I have escaped these different dangers. Men
of the world will still nd that I go on too long; legal specialists will think
that I am too brief. But that is a disadvantage connected to my subject in
general and to the special matter that I am treating at this moment.
The greatest difculty was not to know how the federal government
would be constituted, but how obedience to its laws would be assured.
Governments generally have only two means to overcome the efforts of
the governed to resist them: the physical force that they nd within them-
selves; the moral force that the decisions of the courts bestow on them.
A government that would have only war to enforce obedience to its laws
would be very close to its ruin. One of two things would probably happen
to it. If it were weak and moderate, it would use force only at the last ex-
tremity and would let a host of incidents of partial disobedience go by
unnoticed; then the State would fall little by little into anarchy.
If it were audacious and powerful, it would resort daily to the use of
violence, and soon you would see it degenerate into pure military despo-
tism. Its inaction and its action would be equally harmful to the governed.
The great object of justice is to substitute the idea of law for that of
violence; to place intermediaries between the government and the use of
physical force.
The power of opinion generally granted by men to the intervention of
the courts is something surprising. This power is so great that it is still at-
tached to judicial form when the substance no longer exists; it gives esh
to the shadow.
The moral force with which the courts are vested renders the use of
physical force innitely rarer, substituting for it in most cases; and when,
nally, physical force must be exerted, its power is doubled by the moral
force that is joined with it.
A federal government, more than another government, must desire to
obtain the support of the judicial system, because it is weaker by its nature;
and efforts at resistance can more easily be organized against it.
25
If it always
and immediately had to resort to the use of force, it would not be adequate
to its task.
z
25. It is federal laws that most need courts, and yet federal laws have least accepted them.
The cause is that most confederations have been formed by independent states that had no
real intention of obeying the central government; and, while giving it the right to command,
they carefully reserved to themselves the ability to disobey.
z. The great interest of the law-maker is to substitute as many intermediaries as pos-
sible between man and the use of physical force. All men have known propensities,
based on known needs, interests and passions. The natural inclination of man will
always be to gain for himself what he desires, or to avoid what displeases him, by the
shortest and most effective of all means: physical force. It does not depend on the
laws to prevent men, absolutely and in all cases, fromusing physical force. But it does
depend on them to reduce the occasions greatly. For that, the legal means of action
and of resistance must be multiplied. Reduced in this way to using force only in
extremely rare circumstances, or for satisfying clearly evil passions, manwill renounce
the use of violence almost completely. That is why, where the agents of the admin-
istration are open to attack before the courts, administrative power is more respected
within the circle of its attributions, and revolts are more rare.
To make citizens obey its laws, or to repel the aggressions that would be
directed against it, the Union therefore had a particular need for courts.
But what courts could it use? Each state already had a judicial power
organized within it. Would it be necessary to resort to these courts? Would
it be necessary to create a federal judicial system? It is easy to prove that the
Union could not adapt to its use the judicial power established inthe states.
It is undoubtedly important to the security of each person and to the
liberty of all that the judicial power should be separated fromall the others;
but it is no less necessary to national existence that the different powers of
the State have the same origin, follow the same principles and act in the
same sphere, in a word, that they are correlative and homogeneous. No one,
I imagine, has ever thought to have crimes committed in France judged by
foreign courts in order to be more certain of the impartiality of the
magistrates.
The Americans form only a single people, in relation to their federal
government. But in the midst of this people, political bodies, dependent
on the national government on certain points and independent on all the
others, have been allowed to continue to exist; they have their particular
origins, their own doctrines and their special means of action. To entrust
the enforcement of the laws of the Union to courts instituted by these
political bodies, was to deliver the nation to foreign judges.
When the American Union had only war to make the different states obey, it
was not obeyed at all; and if the Union had wanted to be, it would have enveloped
America in a series of violent scenes. From the moment when it was able to use the
courts [text interrupted (ed.)] There is such a social state
1
where power, to exist,
needs the prompt and passive obedience of its agents. (This is the case of several
European nations.) Then, it avoids the legal impediments that would hamper its
march and prefers to risk insurrections more than trials. But the closer you get to this
situation, the further you get fromcivilization. In Turkey, where there is only a single
intermediary between obedience and revolt, either you submit to the Sultan or you
strangle him.
1. There are governments for which the rapidity of enforcement is a condition of
life (YTC, CVb, pp. 2122).
Cf. note m for p. 90, where Herve de Tocqueville also refers to strangling the Sultan of
Turkey. For Montesquieu and his entire period, the government of this country was the
best possible example of oriental despotism.
Even more, each state is not only a foreigner in relation to the Union,
but it is also a daily adversary, since the sovereignty of the Union can only
be lost to the prot of that of the states.
So by having the laws of the Union applied by the courts of the indi-
vidual states, the nation would be delivered, not only to foreign judges, but
also to partial judges.
It was not their character alone, moreover, that made the state courts
incapable of serving a national end; it was above all their number.
At the moment when the federal Constitution was formed, there were
already in the United States thirteen supreme courts of justice fromwhich
there was no appeal. Today they number twenty-four. How to accept that
a State can endure when its fundamental laws can be interpreted and ap-
plied in twenty-four different ways at once! Such a system is as contrary to
reason as to the lessons of experience.
So the law-makers of America agreed to create a federal judicial power,
in order to apply the laws of the Union and to decide certain questions of
general interest which were carefully dened in advance.
All of the judicial power of the Union was concentrated in a single tri-
bunal called the Supreme Court of the United States. But to facilitate the
dispatch of affairs, inferior courts were added to assist and were charged
with judging with sovereign power cases of little importance or with ruling
on more important disputes in the rst instance. The members of the Su-
preme Court were not elected by the people or the legislature; the President
of the United States had to choose them with the advice of the Senate.
In order to make themindependent of the other powers, they were made
irremovable, and it was decided that their salary, once xed, would be be-
yond the control of the legislature.
26
26. The Union was divided into districts; in each
[
*
]
of these districts a federal judge was
seated. The court where this judge presided was called the district court.
In addition, each of the judges of the Supreme Court must travel annually over a certain
part of the territory of the Republic, in order to decide certain more important cases on site;
the court over which this magistrate presides was given the name circuit court.
It was easy enough to proclaim the establishment of a federal judicial
system in principle, but a host of difculties arose the moment its attri-
butions had to be set.
Way of Determining the Jurisdiction
TN5
of the Federal Courts
Difculty of determining the jurisdiction of the various courts in
confederations.The courts of the Union given the right to
determine their own jurisdiction.Why this rule attacks the
portion of sovereignty that the individual states reserved to
themselves.The sovereignty of these states limited by laws and
Finally, the most serious matters must come, either directly or onappeal, before the Supreme
Court where all the judges of the circuit courts gather once each year to hold a formal session.
The jury system was introduced in federal courts, in the same way as in state courts, and
in similar cases.
There is hardly any analogy at all, as you see, between the Supreme Court of the United
States and our Cour de cassation. The Supreme Court can be apprised of a case in the rst
instance, and the Cour de cassation can be only in the second or third instance.
a
The
Supreme Court indeed forms, like the Cour de cassation, a single court charged with
establishing a uniform jurisprudence; but the Supreme Court judges fact as well as law,
and decides itself, without sending the matter to another court; two things that the cour de
cassation cannot do.
See the organic law of September 24, 1789, Laws of the United States, by Story, vol. I,
p. 53.
[*]. See, for the organization, the organic law of 1789, Kents Commentaries, vol.
I, p. 273 and following. Sargents [sic: Sergeants ] Constitutional Law.
a. In the manuscript: only in the third instance.
This is inexact. The Cour de cassation can be apprised of any judgment or decision
made in the last resort; and many judgments are made inthe last resort without having
been appealed. Such are judgments about simple offenses, judgments of the justices
of the peace not exceeding 50 francs; id. of courts of the rst instance not exceeding
1,000 francs, etc. You must say in the second or third instance (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 28
29).
Translators Note 5: Compe tence, in relation to the courts, has a more narrowly
legal, a more restricted meaning in French than competence would have in English; the
English word jurisdiction is closer to the meaning.
by the interpretation of laws.The individual states thus risk a
danger more apparent than real.
A rst question arose. The Constitution of the United States set up, face
to face, two distinct sovereignties, represented in terms of judicial structure
by two different court systems; no matter what care was taken to establish
the jurisdiction of each of these two court systems, you could not prevent
frequent conicts between them. Now, in this case, who would have the
right to establish jurisdiction?
Among peoples who form only one and the same political society, when
a question of jurisdiction arises between two courts, it is usually brought
before a third that serves as arbiter.
This is easily done because, among these peoples, questions of judicial
jurisdiction do not have any relation to questions of national sovereignty.
But above the highest court of an individual state and the highest court
of the United States, it was impossible to establish any kind of court that
was not either one or the other.
So one of these two courts had to be given the right to judge in its own
case andto take or accept cognizance of the matter indispute. This privilege
could not be granted to the various courts of the states; that would have
destroyed the sovereignty of the Union in fact, after having established it
in law; for interpretation of the Constitution would soon have given back
to the individual states the portion of independence that the terms of the
Constitution took away from them.
By creating a federal court, the desire hadbeento remove fromthe courts
of the states the right to settle, each in its own way, questions of national
interest and, by doing so, to succeed in shaping a uniform body of juris-
prudence for the interpretation of the laws of the Union. The goal would
not have been reached at all if the courts of the individual states, while
abstaining from judging cases considered federal, had been able to judge
them by pretending that they were not federal.
The Supreme Court of the United States was therefore vested with the
right to decide all questions of jurisdiction.
27
27. Moreover, to make the cases of jurisdiction less frequent, it was decided that, in a very
That was the most dangerous blow brought against the sovereignty of
the states. It thus found itself limited not only by the laws, but also by the
interpretation of the laws; by a known limit and by another that was un-
known; by a xed rule and by an arbitrary one. It is true that the Consti-
tution had set precise limits to federal sovereignty; but each time this sov-
ereignty is in competition with that of the states, a federal court must
decide.
The dangers, moreover, with which this way of proceeding seemed to
menace the sovereignty of the states were not as great in reality as they
appeared to be.
We will see further along that, in America, real strength resides more in
the provincial governments than in the federal government. Federal judges
sense the relative weakness of the power in whose name they act; and they
are more likely to abandon a right of jurisdictionincases where it is granted
to them by law, than they are led to claim it illegally.
Different Cases of Jurisdiction
The matter and the person, bases of federal jurisdiction.
Proceedings against ambassadors,against the Union,against
an individual state.Judged by whom.Proceedings that arise
from the laws of the Union.Why judged by the federal
courts.Proceedings relating to breach of contracts judged by the
federal judicial system.Consequence of this.
After having recognized the means to set federal jurisdiction, the law-
makers of the Union determined the cases in which that jurisdiction must
be exercised.
large number of federal cases, the courts of the individual states would have the right to decide
concurrently with the courts of the Union; but then the losing party would always have the
right to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court of Virginia
contested the right of the Supreme Court of the United States to hear an appeal of its decisions,
but unsuccessfully. See Kents Commentaries, vol. I, pp. 300, 370, and following. See Storys
Commentaries, p. 646, and the organic law of 1789, Laws of the United States, vol. I,
p. 53.
They acknowledged that there were certain litigants who could only be
judged by the federal courts, no matter what the subject of the proceedings.
They then established that there were certain proceedings that could
only be decided by these same courts, no matter what the qualication of
the litigants.
So the person and the matter became the two bases of federal juris-
diction.
Ambassadors represent nations friendly to the Union; everything that
involves ambassadors involves in a way the entire Union. When an am-
bassador is party to a legal proceeding, the proceeding becomes an affair
that touches on the welfare of the nation; it is natural that a federal court
decides.
The Union itself can be the subject of proceedings; in this case, it would
have been contrary to reason as well as to the custom of nations, to bring
it for judgment before courts representing a sovereignty other thanits own.
It is for the federal courts alone to decide.
When two individuals, belonging to two different states, have a legal
proceeding, you cannot, without disadvantage, have them judged by the
courts of one of the two states. It is safer to choose a court that cannot
incite the suspicion of any of the parties, and the court that very naturally
presents itself is that of the Union.
When the two litigants are no longer isolated individuals, but states, this
reason for equity is joined by a political reason of the rst order. Here the
status of the litigants gives a national importance to all proceedings; the
smallest litigious issue between two states involves the peace of the entire
Union.
28
Often the very nature of the proceedings must serve as a rule of juris-
28. The Constitution says as well that the proceedings that can arise between a state and
the citizens of another state will be under the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Soon the
question arose of knowing if the Constitution meant all proceedings that can arise between
a state and the citizens of another state, whether the ones or the others were plaintiffs. The
Supreme Court decided afrmatively; but this decision alarmed the individual states who
feared being brought despite themselves, for the slightest reason, before the federal court system.
So an amendment was introduced to the Constitution, by virtue of which the judicial power
of the Union could not extend to judging the cases that had been initiated against one of the
United States by the citizens of another. See Storys Commentaries, p. 624.
diction. Thus all questions that are related to maritime commerce must be
settled by federal courts.
29
The reason is easy to point out: nearly all these questions get into an
estimation of the law of nations. From this perspective, they essentially
involve the whole Union in relation to foreigners. Since the sea, moreover,
does not fall into one judicial circumscription rather than another, only the
national court system can have a claim on legal proceedings that have a
maritime origin.
The Constitution has enclosed in a single category nearly all the pro-
ceedings that, by their nature, must be under the jurisdiction of the federal
courts.
In this regard, the rule that it indicates is simple, but it comprises initself
alone a vast system of ideas and a multitude of facts.
The federal courts, it says, must judge all proceedings that arise in the
laws of the United States.
Two examples will make the thought of the law-maker perfectly clear.
The Constitution forbids the states the right to make laws on the cir-
culation of money; despite this prohibition, a state makes such a law. In-
terested parties refuse to obey it, understanding that it is contrary to the
Constitution. The matter must be brought before a federal court, because
the grounds for the case are drawn from the laws of the United States.
Congress establishes a tariff law. Difculties arise over theunderstanding
of this law. Again, the matter must be presented before the federal courts,
because the cause for the proceeding is in the interpretation of a law of the
United States.
This rule is in perfect agreement with the bases adopted for the federal
Constitution.
The Union, as constituted in 1789, had, it is true, only a limited sov-
ereignty, but the desire was that, within this circle, the Unionformedonly
one and the same people.
30
Within this circle, it is sovereign. This point
29. Example: all acts of piracy.
30. A few restrictions were certainly placed on this principle by introducing the individual
states as independent powers in the Senate, and by having them vote separately in the House
of Representatives in the case of election of the President; but these are exceptions. The opposite
principle is the dominant one.
set forth and accepted, all the rest becomes easy; for if you recognize that
the United States, within the limits posed by their Constitution, form
only one people, the rights belonging to all peoples must surely be granted
to them.
Now, since the origin of societies, this point is agreed upon: each people
has the right to have all questions relating to the enforcement of its own
laws judged by its courts. But you answer: the Union is in the singular
position that it forms one people only relative to certain matters; for all
others, it is nothing. What is the result? At least for all the laws that relate
to these matters, the Unionhas the rights that wouldbe grantedtocomplete
sovereignty. The real point of difculty is knowing what those matters are.
This point settled (and we have seen above, while treating jurisdiction, how
it was settled), no question truly speaking remains; for once you have es-
tablished that a proceeding was federal, that is, came within the portion of
sovereignty reserved to the Unionby the Constitution, it naturallyfollowed
that a federal court alone would decide.
So whenever someone wants to attack the laws of the United States, or
invoke them in self-defense, it is the federal courts that must be addressed.
Thus, the jurisdiction of the courts of the Union expands or contracts
depending on whether the sovereignty of the Union itself expands or
contracts.
We have seen that the principal aim of the law-makers of 1789 had been
to divide sovereignty into two distinct portions. In one, they placed the
directionof all the general interests of the Union; inthe other, the direction
of all the interests particular to some of its parts.
Their principal concern was to arm the federal government withenough
power for it to be able to defend itself, within its sphere, against the en-
croachments of the individual states.
As for the latter, the general principal adopted was to leave them free in
their sphere. Within that sphere, the central government can neither direct
them nor even inspect their conduct.
I have indicated in the chapter on the division of powers that this last
principle had not always been respected. There are certain laws that an in-
dividual state cannot enact, even though the laws apparently involve only
that state.
When a state of the Union enacts a law of this nature, the citizens who
are harmed by the execution of this law can appeal to the federal courts.
b
Thus, the jurisdiction of the federal courts extends not only to all the
proceedings that have their source in the laws of the Union, but also to all
those that arise in the laws that the individual states have enacted uncon-
stitutionally.
The states are forbidden to promulgate ex post facto laws incriminal mat-
ters; the man who is sentenced by virtue of a law of this type can appeal
to the federal judicial system.
The Constitution also forbids the states to make laws that can destroy
or alter rights acquired by virtue of a contract (impairing the obligations
[sic: obligation] of contracts ).
31
From the moment when an individual believes that he sees a law of his
state that harms a right of this type, he can refuse to obey and appeal to
the federal justice system.
32
b. Other defect of federal jurisdiction. The federal courts can only be apprised by
an individual interest. Now, what would happen if a state passed an unconstitutional
act that harmed only the sovereignty of the Union? Nearly impossible case (YTC, CVh,
1, pp. 5051).
31. It is perfectly clear, says Mr. Story, p. 503, that every law that expands, contracts or
changes in whatever way the intention of the parties, such as result from the stipulations
contained in a contract, impairs this contract. In the same place, this same author carefully
denes what federal jurisprudence understands by a contract. The denition is very broad. A
concession made by a state to an individual and accepted by him is a contract, and cannot be
taken away by the effect of a newlaw. Acharter granted by the state to a company is a contract,
and binds the state as well as the concessionary. The article of the Constitution that we are
speaking about therefore assures the existence of a great portion of vested rights, but not all.
I can very legitimately own a property without its having passed into my hands by a contract.
Its possession is for me a vested right, and this right is not guaranteedby the federal constitution.
32. Here is a remarkable example cited by Mr. Story, p. 508. Darmouth [ Dartmouth
(ed.)] College, in New Hampshire, had been founded by virtue of a charter granted to certain
individuals before the American Revolution. Its administrators formed, by virtue of this char-
ter, a constituted body, or, following the American expression, a corporation. The legislature
of New Hampshire believed it necessary to change the terms of the original charter and trans-
ferred to new administrators all the rights, privileges and immunities that resulted from this
charter. The former administrators resisted and appealed to the federal court, which agreed
to hear the case, understanding that, since the original charter was a true contract between
the state and the concessionaries, the new law could not change the disposition of this charter
without violating the vested rights of a contract and consequently violating article I, section
X, of the Constitution of the United States.
To me, this disposition seems to attack the sovereignty of the state more
profoundly than all the rest.
c
The rights granted to the federal government, for ends clearly national,
are dened and easy to understand. Those that are indirectly conceded to
it by the article that I have just cited are not easily felt, and their limits are
not easily traced. There is, in fact, a multitude of political laws that act
upon the existence of contracts, and that could therefore furnish grounds
for encroachment by the central power.
The Federal Courts Way of Proceeding
Natural weakness of the judicial system in confederations.
Efforts that law-makers must make to place, as much as possible,
only isolated individuals and not states before the federal
courts.How the Americans succeeded in doing this.Direct
action of the federal courts on ordinary individuals.Indirect
attack against states that violate the laws of the Union.The
decision of the federal judicial system does not destroy provincial
law; it enervates it.
I have made known the rights of the federal courts; it is no less important
to know how they are exercised.
The irresistible strength of the judicial system, in countries where sov-
ereignty is not divided, comes from the fact that, in those countries, the
courts represent the entire nation in a contest with a single individual who
has been struck by a judgment. To the idea of law is joined the idea of the
force that supports the law.
But in countries where sovereignty is divided, it is not always so. There,
the judicial system most often nds itself facing, not an isolatedindividual,
c. In a rst version: . . . than all the rest. But it is so difcult to calculate inadvance
the impact of laws, that it is not unusual to see the most numerous assemblies consecrate
long discussions to uninteresting points, while an article that will lead to the most char-
acteristic effect of the law is precisely the one that passes unnoticed and is revealed only
by experience.
but a fraction of the nation. Its moral power and its physical power are
diminished as a result.
So in federal States, the judicial system is naturally weaker; and the one
subject to trial, stronger.
The law-maker, in confederations, must constantly work to give the
courts a position analogous to the one they occupy among peoples who
have not divided sovereignty. Inother words, his most constant efforts must
strive toward having the federal judicial system represent the nation, and
having the one subject to trial represent an individual interest.
Agovernment, whatever its nature, needs to act onthe governedinorder
to force themto give the government what it is owed; it needs to take action
against them in order to defend itself from their attacks.
As for the direct action of the government on the governed, in order to
force them to obey the law, the Constitution of the United States saw to
it that the federal courts, acting in the name of these laws, never had any
dealing except with individuals (and that was its highest achievement). In
fact, since it had been declared that the confederation formed only one and
the same people within the circle drawn by the Constitution, the govern-
ment, created by this Constitution and acting within its limits, was, as a
result, vested with all the rights of a national government, the principal one
being to have its injunctions reach ordinary citizens without an interme-
diary. So when the Union levied a tax, for example, it did not have to apply
to the states to collect it, but to each American citizen, according to his
share. In turn, the federal judicial system charged with assuring the en-
forcement of this law of the Union, had to condemn not the recalcitrant
State, but the taxpayer. Like the judicial system of other peoples, it found
only an individual facing it.
d
Note that here the Union itself has chosen its adversary. It has chosen a
weak one; it is entirely natural that he succumbs.
But when the Union, instead of attacking, is reduced to defendingitself,
the difculty increases. The Constitution recognizes the power of the states
d. In the margin: In this, the judicial power only follows the laws of its nature
whichleadit to judge only onparticular cases. Only a political court canbreakalegislative
measure.
to make laws. These laws can violate the rights of the Union. Here, nec-
essarily, the Union nds itself in conict with the sovereignty of the state
that enacted the law. Nothing remains except to chose, from among the
means of action, the least dangerous. This means was indicated in advance
by the general principles that I stated before.
33
You see that, in the case that I have just supposed, the Unionwouldhave
been able to cite the state before a federal court that would have declared
the law void; this would have followed the most natural course of ideas.
But, in this way, the federal judicial systemwould have found itself directly
facing a state, something it wanted to avoid as much as possible.
The Americans have thought that it was nearly impossible for a newlaw,
in its execution, not to harm some individual interest.
It is onthis individual interest that the authors of the federal constitution
rely to attack a legislative measure about which the Union could complain.
To this individual interest, they offer a protection.
A state sells lands to a company; one year later, a new law disposes of
the same lands in another way, and thus violates the part of the Consti-
tutionwhich forbids changing rights vestedby contract. Whenthe one who
bought by virtue of the new law presents himself in order to take posses-
sion, the owner, who holds his rights from the former law, brings an action
before the courts of the Union and has the title of the newowner voided.
34
Therefore, in reality, the federal judicial system is grappling with the sov-
ereignty of the state; but it attacks that sovereignty only indirectly and on
an application of detail. It thus strikes the law in its consequences, not in
its principle. It does not destroy the law; it enervates it.
A nal hypothesis remained.
Each state formed a corporation that had a separate existence and sepa-
rate civil laws; consequently, it could sue or be sued before the courts. A
state could, for example, bring suit against another state.
In this case, it was no longer a matter for the Union of attacking a pro-
vincial law, but of judging a case in which a state was a participant. It was
33. See the chapter entitled: Of the Judicial Power in America [in the United States
(ed.)].
34. See Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 387.
a case like any other; only the status of the litigants was different. Here the
danger noted at the beginning of this chapter still exists. But this time it
cannot be avoided; it is inherent in the very essence of federal constitutions
that they will always result in creating, in the midst of the nation, individ-
uals powerful enough to make it difcult to use the judicial systemagainst
them.
Elevated Rank That the Supreme Court Occupies
among the Great Powers of the State
No other people have constituted a judicial power as great as the
Americans.Extent of its attributions.Its political
inuence.The peace and the very existence of the Union
depend on the wisdom of seven federal judges.
When, after examining the organization of the Supreme Court in detail,
you come to consider all of the attributions that it has beengiven, youeasily
discover that never has a more immense judicial power been constituted
among any people.
The Supreme Court is placed higher than any known court, both by the
nature of its rights and by the type of those subject to trial.
In all the civilized nations of Europe, the government has always shown
a great reluctance to allow the ordinary judicial system to decide ques-
tions that involve the government itself. This reluctance is naturally
greater when the government is more absolute. As liberty increases, on
the contrary, the circle of the attributions of the courts is always going to
widen; but not one of the European nations has yet thought that every
judicial question, of no matter what origin, could be left to judges of
ordinary law.
In America, this theory has been put in practice. The Supreme Court
of the United States is the one and only national court.
It is charged with the interpretation of laws and of treaties; questions
relating to maritime trade, and all those generally relating to the law of
nations, are exclusively within its competence. You can even say that its
attributions are almost entirely political, althoughits constitutionis entirely
judicial. Its unique purpose is to have the laws of the Union enforced. And
the Union determines only the relations of the government with the gov-
ernedandof the nationwithforeigners; nearly all of the relations of citizens
among themselves are governed by the sovereignty of the states.
To this rst cause of importance, another still greater must be added. In
the nations of Europe, only individuals are subject to trial before the courts;
but you can say that the Supreme Court of the United States makes sov-
ereigns appear before it. When the bailiff, climbing the steps of the court,
comes to proclaim these few words: The State of New York versus the
State of Ohio, you feel that you are not within the realm of an ordinary
court of justice. And when you consider that one of these litigants repre-
sents a million men, and the other, two million, you are astonished at the
responsibility that weighs upon the seven judges whose decision is going to
delight or sadden such a large number of their fellow citizens.
In the hands of seven federal judges rest unceasingly the peace, pros-
perity, the very existence of the Union. Without them, the Constitutionis
a dead letter. To them, the executive power appeals in order to resist the
encroachments of the legislative body; the legislature, to defend itself
against the undertakings of the executive power; the Union, to make the
states obey; the states, to repulse the exaggerated pretensions of the Union;
public interest against private interest; the spirit of conservation against
democratic instability. Their power is immense; but it is a power of opinion.
They are omnipotent as long as the people consent to obey the law; they can
do nothing once the people scorn the law. Now, the power of opinion is the
most difcult one to exercise, because it is impossible to know its limits ex-
actly. Often it is as dangerous to fall short, as to go beyond those limits.
So the federal judges must be not only good citizens, learnedandupright
men, qualities necessary for all magistrates, but they must alsobe statesmen;
they must knowhowto discernthe spirit of the times, tobrave the obstacles
that can be overcome, and to change direction when the current threatens
to carry away, with them, the sovereignty of the Union and the obedience
due to its laws.
The President can fail without having the State suffer, because the Pres-
ident has only a limited duty. Congress can go astray without having the
Union perish, because above Congress resides the electoral body that can
change the spirit of Congress by changing its members.
But if imprudent or corrupt men ever came to compose the Supreme
Court, the confederation would have to fear anarchy or civil war.
But make no mistake; the root cause of the danger is not in the consti-
tution of the court, but in the very nature of federal governments. We have
seen that nowhere is it more necessary to constitute a strong judicial power
than among confederated peoples, because nowhere are individual exis-
tences, which can struggle against the social body, greater and in better
condition to resist the use of the physical force of the government.
Now, the more necessary it is that a power be strong, the more scope
and independence it must be given. The more extensive and independent
a power, the more dangerous is the abuse that can be made of it. So the
origin of the evil is not in the very constitution of this power, but in the
very constitution of the State that necessitates the existence of such a
power.
How the Federal Constitution Is Superior
to the State Constitutions
How the Constitution of the Union can be compared to those
of the individual states.The superiority of the federal
Constitution must be attributed particularly to the wisdom of the
federal law-makers.The legislature of the Union less
dependent on the people than those of the states.The executive
power freer in its sphere.The judicial power less subject to the
desires of the majority.Practical consequences of this.The
federal law-makers have mitigated the dangers inherent in
democratic government; the law-makers of the states have
heightened these dangers.
The federal Constitution differs essentially from the constitutions of the
states in the purpose that it intends, but it is highly similar in the means to
achieve this purpose. The object of government is different, but the forms
of government are the same. From this special point of view, they can use-
fully be compared.
I think that the federal Constitution is superior to all of the state con-
stitutions. This superiority stems from several causes.
The present Constitution of the Union was formed only after those of
most of the states; so the Union could prot from acquired experience.
You will be convinced, nonetheless, that this cause is only secondary, if
you consider that, since the establishment of the federal Constitution, the
American confederation has increased by eleven new states, and that these
new states have nearly always exaggerated rather than mitigated the defects
existing in the constitutions of their precursors.
The great cause of the superiority of the federal Constitution is in the
very character of the law-makers.
At the time when it was formed, the ruin of the Americanconfederation
seemed imminent; it was obvious to all, so to speak. In this extremity, the
people chose, perhaps not the men they loved most, but those they re-
spected most.
I have already pointed out above that nearly all the law-makers of the
Union had been remarkable by their enlightenment and more remarkable
still by their patriotism.
They had all risen in the midst of a social crisis, during which the spirit
of liberty had constantly to struggle against a strong and dominating au-
thority. When the struggle ended, and while the excited passions of the
crowd were, as usual, still xed on combating dangers that for a long time
no longer existed, these men had stopped; they had cast a calmer and more
penetrating eye on their country; they had seen that a denitive revolution
was accomplished, and that henceforththe perils that threatenedthe people
could only arise from the abuses of liberty.
e
What they thought, they had
the courage to say, because deep in their hearts they felt a sincere and pas-
sionate love for this very liberty; they dared to speak of limiting it, because
they were certain of not wanting to destroy it.
35
e. In the manuscript: of their power {of their liberty}.
35. In this period, the celebrated Alexander Hamilton, one of the most inuential framers
of the Constitution, was not afraid to publish the following in the Federalist, No. 71 [p. 307].
He said:
Most of the constitutions of the states give a term of one year to the
house of representatives and two years to the senate. In this way the mem-
bers of the legislative body are tied constantly and in the closest way to the
slightest desires of their constituents.
The law-makers of the Union thought that this extreme dependence of
the legislature distorted the principal effects of the representative system,
by placing in the people themselves not only the source of powers, but also
the government.
They increased the length of the electoral mandate in order to allowthe
deputy greater use of his free will.
The federal Constitution, like the different constitutions of the states,
divided the legislative body into two branches.
But in the states, these two parts of the legislature were composed of
the same elements and followed the same mode of election. As a result, the
There are some, he said, who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the
executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best
recommendation. But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for
which government was instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may
be promoted.
The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should
govern the conduct of those to whom they entrust the management of their affairs; but it
does not require an unqualied complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every
transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who atter their
prejudices to betray their interests.
It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the public good. This often
applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should
pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it. They know from
experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do,
beset as they continually are by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the
ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artices of menwho possess their condence
more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.
When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance
with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the
guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give themtime
and opportunity for more cool and sedate reection. Instances might be cited in which a
conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mis-
takes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage
and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.
passions and will of the majority emerged as easily and found an organand
an instrument as rapidly in one as in the other of the houses. This gave a
erce and hasty character to the making of laws.
The federal Constitution also had the two houses come out of the votes
of the people; but it varied the conditions of eligibility and the mode of
election. So, if one of the twolegislative branches didnot represent interests
different from those represented by the other, as in certain nations, at least
it represented a higher wisdom.
To be a Senator you had to have reached a mature age; and a small as-
sembly, itself already elected, was charged with the election.
Democracies are naturally led to concentrate all social force in the hands
of the legislative body. The latter, being the power that comes most directly
from the people, is also the one that most partakes of the omnipotence of
the people.
So, in the legislative body, you notice an habitual tendency that leads it
to gather all kinds of authority within itself.
This concentration of powers, at the same time that it singularly harms
the good management of public affairs, establishes the despotism of the
majority.
The law-makers of the states have frequently surrendered to these dem-
ocratic instincts; those of the Union always fought courageously against
them.
In the states, executive power is placed in the hands of a magistrate who
appears to be placed alongside the legislature, but who, in reality, is only a
blind agent and passive instrument of its will. From where would he draw
his strength? In the length of his term in ofce? Generally, he is named for
only one year. In his prerogatives? He has, so to speak, none at all. The
legislature can reduce him to impotence by granting the execution of its
laws to special committees drawn from its midst. If it wanted, it could, in
a way, nullify him by taking away his salary.
The federal Constitution has concentrated all the rights of the executive
power, as well as all of its responsibility, ina single man. It gave the President
a four-year term; it assured him his salary during the entire length of his
termin ofce; it created a group of supporters for himand armed himwith
a qualied veto. In a word, after carefully drawing the sphere of executive
power, it sought, within this sphere, to give the executive power as strong
and as free a position as possible.
The judicial power, of all the powers, is the one that, in the state con-
stitutions, remained least dependent on the legislative power.
Nonetheless, in all the states, the legislature retained the authority to set
the salaries of judges, which necessarily subjected the former to immediate
legislative inuence.
In certain states, judges are appointed only for a time, which again re-
moves a large part of their strength and freedom.
In others, legislative and judicial powers are entirely mixed. The Senate
of NewYork, for example, serves as the highest court of the state for certain
trials.
The federal Constitution has, on the contrary, carefully separated the
judicial power from all the others. In addition, it made judges independent
by declaring their salaries xed and making their ofce irrevocable.
The practical consequences of these differences are easy to see. It is clear
to all attentive observers that the affairs of the Union are conducted in-
nitely better than the particular affairs of any state.
The federal government is more just and more moderate in its action
than the state governments. There is more wisdom in its views, more con-
tinuity and intelligent design in its projects, more skill, steadiness andrm-
ness in the execution of its measures.
A few words sufce to summarize this chapter.
Two principal dangers menace the existence of democracies:
The complete subservience of the legislative power to the will of the
electoral body.
The concentration, in the legislative power, of all the other powers of
government.
The law-makers of the states favored the development of these dangers.
The law-makers of the Union did what they could to make them less to
be feared.
What Distinguishes the Federal Constitution
of the United States of America from
All Other Federal Constitutions
The American confederation outwardly resembles all
confederations.Its effects are different, however.
What causes that?How this confederation stands apart
from all others.The American government is not
a federal government, but an incomplete
national government.
f
The United States of America has not presented the rst and only example
of a confederation. Without mentioning antiquity, modernEuropehas fur-
nished several. Switzerland, the German Empire, the Dutch Republic have
been or still are confederations.
When you study the constitutions of these different countries, you no-
tice with surprise that the powers they confer on the federal government
are more or less the same as those granted by the American Constitution
to the government of the United States. Like the latter, they give the central
power the right to make war or peace, the right to raise an army, to levy
taxes, to provide for general needs and to regulate the common interests of
the nation.
Among these different peoples, however, the federal government has al-
most always remaineddecient andweak, while that of the Unionconducts
public affairs with vigor and ease.
Even more, the rst AmericanUnioncouldnot continue toexist because
of the excessive weakness of its government. Yet this government, so weak,
f. In the margin: Temporary alliance, league.
Lasting alliance, confederation.
Limited [v: incomplete] national government.
Complete national government.
The Union is not a confederation [v: federal government], but an incomplete na-
tional government.
had received rights as extensive as the federal government of today. Youcan
even say that in certain respects its privileges were greater.
g
So several new principles are found in the current Constitution of the
United States that are not striking at rst, but make their inuence pro-
foundly felt.
This Constitution, which at rst sight you are tempted to confuse with
previous federal constitutions, rests as a matter of fact on an entirely new
theory that must stand out as a great discovery in the political science of
today.
In all the confederations that have preceded the Americanconfederation
of 1789, peoples who combined for a common purpose agreed to obey the
injunctions of a federal government; but they retained the right to com-
mand and to supervise the execution of the laws of the Union at home.
The American states that united in 1789 agreed not only that the federal
government could dictate laws to them, but also that the federal govern-
ment itself would execute its laws.
In the two cases, the right is the same; only the exercise of the right is
different. But this single difference produces immense results. [Such is the
power of laws over the fate of societies.]
h
In all the confederations that have preceded the American Union of to-
day, the federal government, in order to provide for its needs, applied to
the individual governments. In the case where the prescribed measure dis-
pleased one of them, the latter could always elude the need to obey. If it
was strong it appealed to arms; if it was weak, it tolerated a resistance to
the laws of the Union that had become its own, pretended weakness and
resorted to the power of inertia.
Consequently, one of these two things has constantly happened: the
g. The old constitution gave Congress great power to command the different states
(illegible word) in order to compel them other than by war. It establisheda league among
independent states, not a federal government (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 47).
h. Herve de Tocqueville: I believe that this paragraph could be deleted. It develops
an idea that springs from what precedes and comes naturally to the mind of the reader.
By removing it, the pace will be faster. Be careful about slowing the pace by reections,
when they are not absolutely necessary. The last sentence of the paragraph is a useless
commonplace (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 22).
most powerful of the united peoples, taking holdof the rights of the federal
authority, has dominated all the others in its name;
36
or the federal gov-
ernment has been left to its own forces. Then anarchy has become estab-
lished among the confederated peoples, and the Union has fallen into
impotence.
37
In America, the Union governs not the states, but ordinary citizens.
When it wants to levy a tax, it does not apply to the government of Mas-
sachusetts, but to each inhabitant of Massachusetts. Former federal gov-
ernments faced peoples; the Union faces individuals. It does not borrowits
strength, but draws upon its own. It has its own administrators, courts,
ofcers of the law, and army.
Certainly the national [sic: state] spirit, collective passions, provincial
prejudices of each state still strongly tend to diminish the extent of federal
power so constituted, and to create centers of resistance to the will of the
federal power. Limited in its sovereignty, it cannot be as strong as a gov-
ernment that possesses complete sovereignty; but that is an evil inherent in
the federal system.
In America, each state has far fewer opportunities and temptations to
resist; and if the thought occurs, the state can act on it only by openly
violating the laws of the Union, by interrupting the ordinary course of
justice, and by raising the standard of revolt. In a word, it must suddenly
take an extreme position, something men hesitate to do for a long time.
In former confederations, the rights granted to the Union were causes
of war rather than of power, since these rights multipliedits demands with-
out augmenting its means of enforcing obedience. Consequently, the real
weakness of federal governments has almost always been seen to grow in
direct proportion to their nominal power.
36. This is what was seen among the Greeks under Philip, when this prince took charge
of enforcing the decree of the Amphictyons. This is what happened to the republic of the
Netherlands, where the province of Holland has always made the law. The same thing is still
going on today among the Germans. Austria and Prussia are the agents of the Diet and, in
its name, dominate the entire confederation.
37. It has always been so for the Swiss confederation.Were it not for the jealousy of its
neighbors, Switzerland, for several centuries, would no longer exist.
This is not so for the AmericanUnion; the federal government, like most
ordinary governments, can do everything that it has the right to do.
The human mind invents things more easily than words; this is what
causes the use of so many incorrect terms and incomplete expressions.
j
Several nations form a permanent league and establish a supreme au-
thority that, without acting on ordinary citizens as a national government
could, nonetheless acts on each of the confederated peoples, taken as a
group.
This government, so different from all the others, is given the name
federal.
Next, a form of society is found in which several peoples truly blend
together as one for certain common interests, and remain separate andonly
confederated for all the others.
Here the central power acts without intermediary on the governed, ad-
ministering and judging them as national governments do, but it acts this
way only within a limited circle. Clearly that is no longer a federal govern-
ment; it is an incomplete national government. So a form of government,
neither precisely national nor federal, is found. But here things have
stopped, and the new word needed to express the new thing does not yet
exist.
k
Because this new type of confederation was unknown, all unions have
arrived at civil war, or slavery, or inertia. The peoples who composed them
have all lacked either the enlightenment to see the remedy to their ills, or
the courage to apply them.
j. Herve de Tocqueville: In my opinion, this paragraph and the four following must
be deleted and replaced by one or two sentences. It is long and a bit heavy; its importance
does not justify its defects. I therefore advise pruning the grammatical discussion and
quickly going straight to the paragraph: Because this new type of confederation was un-
known . . .
E
douard de Tocqueville: I cannot share this opinion. This reection seems very
profound to me. Moreover, if you went to the paragraph beginning Because this newtype
. . . , it would have absolutely no sense, since it relates only to the deleted paragraph
(YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 22).
k. In the margin: The thing is new [v: other], but an old word is still needed to
designate it.
The rst American Union had also lapsed into the same faults.
But in America, the confederated states, before achieving independence,
had been part of the same empire for a long time; so they had not yet
contracted the habit of complete self-government, and national prejudices
had not been able to become deeply rooted. Better informed than the rest
of the world, they were equal to each other in enlightenment; they only
weakly felt the passions that ordinarily, among peoples, resist the extension
of federal power; and these passions were fought against by the greatest
citizens. The Americans, at the same time that they felt the evil, resolutely
envisaged the remedy. They corrected their laws and saved the country.
Of the Advantages of the Federal System in General,
and of Its Special Utility for America
m
Happiness and liberty that small nations enjoy.Power of large
nations.Large empires favor the developments of
civilization.That strength is often the rst element of
prosperity for nations.The purpose of federal systems is to
combine the advantages that peoples gain from the largeness and
the smallness of their territory.Advantages that the United
States derives from this system.The law yields to the needs of
the populations; the populations do not yield to the necessities of
the law.Activity, progress, taste for and practice of liberty
among the American peoples.The public spirit of the Union is
only the sum of provincial patriotism.Things and ideas
circulate freely within the territory of the United States.
The Union is free and happy, like a small nation;
respected, like a large one.
Among small nations, society keeps its eye on everything; the spirit of im-
provement gets down to the smallest details. Since the weakness of the
people profoundly tempers their ambition, their efforts and resources are
m. In the margin: Perhaps this chapter should be shifted to the place where I will
talk about the future of the Union.
almost entirely focused on their internal well-being and are not likely to be
wasted on the empty illusion of glory. Since the capacities of each one are
generally limited, desires are limited as well. The mediocrity of wealth
makes conditions nearly equal; and mores have a simple and peaceful air.
Thus, considering everything and taking into account various degrees of
morality and enlightenment, more comfort, populationandtranquillityare
usually found in small nations than in large ones.
When tyranny establishes itself within a small nation, it is more trou-
blesome than anywhere else; acting inside a smaller circle, it extends to ev-
erything within this circle. Unable to undertake some great objective, it is
busy with a multitude of small ones; it appears both violent and meddle-
some. From the political world, which is strictly speaking its domain, it
penetrates into private life. After dictating actions, it aspires todictatetastes;
after governing the State, it wishes to govern families. But that rarely hap-
pens; as a matter of fact, liberty forms the natural condition of small so-
cieties. There, government offers too little attraction to ambition, and the
resources of individuals are too limited, for sovereign power to be easily
concentrated in the hands of one man.
n
Should it happen, it is not difcult
for the governed to unite together and, by a common effort, to overthrow
the tyrant and the tyranny at the same time. [Liberty is, moreover, some-
thing so natural and so easy within a small nation that abuse can hardly be
brought about.]
So small nations have at all times been the cradle of political liberty. It
has happened that most of them have lost this liberty by growing larger,
which clearly reveals that liberty is due to the small size of a people and not
to the people themselves.
The history of the world provides no example of a large nation that
remained a republic for long;
38
this has led men to say that the thing was
impractical. As for me, I think that it is very imprudent for man to want
to limit the possible and to judge the future; the real and the present elude
n. In the margin: The power of one man easily succeeds in putting itself above
the law and the interest of all.
38. I am not speaking here about a confederation of small republics, but of a large con-
solidated republic.
him every day, and he nds himself constantly surprised by the unexpected
in the things he knows best. What can be said with certainty is that the
existence of a large republic will always be innitely more at risk than that
of a small one.
o
All the passions fatal to republics grow with the extent of the territory,
while the virtues that serve to support them do not increase in the same
measure.
p
The ambition of individuals increases with the power of the State; the
strength of parties, with the importance of the end that they have in mind;
but love of country, which must combat these destructive passions, is not
stronger in a vast republic than in a small one. It would even be easy to
prove that love of country there is less developed and less powerful. Great
riches and profound poverty, large cities, depravity of mores, individual
egoism, complexity of interests are so many perils that almost always result
from the large size of the State. Several of these things do not harm the
existence of a monarchy; some can even work toward its duration. Inmon-
archies, moreover, government has a strength of its own; it makes use of
the people and does not depend on them; the more numerous the people,
the stronger the prince. But to these dangers, republican government can
oppose only the support of the majority. Now, this element of strength is
not proportionately more powerful in a vast republic than in a small one.
Thus, while the means of attack constantly increase in number and power,
the strength of resistance remains the same. It can even be said that it de-
creases, for the more numerous the people and the more varied the nature
o. I suspect that this doctrine that presents small States to us as the only ones that
are suitable for republican forms will be refuted by experience. Perhaps it will be
recognized that in order to establish a republic in which justice reigns, the republic
must be large enough so that local egoismis never able to harmthe whole, nor corrupt
the major part of those who lead it; so that on every question you will always be sure
to nd in the councils a majority free of particular interests and capable of making
solely the principles of justice prevail.
Jefferson to Davernois [dIvernois (ed.)], 6 February 1795. (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 2).
Citation from Louis P. Conseil, editor. Me langes politiques et philosophiques extraits
des me moires et de la correspondance de Thomas Jefferson (Paris: Paulin, 1833), vol. I,
pp. 4079.
p. The wording of this sentence comes from Beaumont (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 34).
of minds and interests, the more difcult it is, as a result, to forma compact
majority.
[Republican government is fragile by nature. It lasts much more be-
cause of the weakness of the attacks directed against it than because of a
strength of its own [v: its own power]. It relies only on a certainsentiment
of order, virtue and moderation on the part of the governed. The im-
moderate desires of parties, great riches and great poverty, vast cities,
and the profound corruption of mores that they engender, constantly
threaten the existence of republics. Now, all of these things are foundonly
among large nations alone. A government that has the source of its power
outside of the people can continue to exist for a long time, whatever the
opinions of the people; but a republican government has strength only
in the support of the majority; the more numerous the people, the harder
to form a majority. Here my reasoning is based only upon a numerical
calculation.]
We have been able to note, moreover, that human passions acquired in-
tensity, not only from the greatness of the end that they wanted to attain,
but also from the multitude of individuals who felt them at the same time.
There is no one who does not nd himself more moved in the middle of
an agitated crowd that shares his emotion than if he were to feel it alone.
In a large republic, political passions become irresistible, not only because
the objective that they pursue is immense, but also because millions of men
experience those political passions in the same way and at the same
moment.
So it is permissible to say that, in general, nothing is so contrary to the
well-being and to the liberty of men as large empires.
Large States have particular advantages, however, that must be recog-
nized.
In them, the desire for power is more passionate among common men
than elsewhere. So too the love of glory there is more developed among
certain souls who nd in the applause of a great people an objective that is
worthy of their efforts and appropriate for raising them, in a way, above
themselves. There, thought in all elds is given a more rapid and powerful
impetus; ideas circulate more freely; large cities are like vast intellectual cen-
ters where all the lights of the human mind come to shine and combine.
This fact explains for us why large nations bring more rapid progress to
enlightenment and to the general cause of civilization than small ones.
q
It
must be added that important discoveries often require a development of
national strength of which the government of a small people is incapable;
among large nations, the government has a greater number of general ideas;
it is more completely free from the routine of antecedents and from local
egoism. There is more genius in its conceptions, more boldness in its ways
of doing things.
Internal well-being is more complete and more widespread among small
nations as long as they remain at peace; but a state of war is more harmful
to them than it is to large nations. In the latter, great distance from the
borders sometimes allows most people to remain far from danger for cen-
turies. For them, war is more a cause of discomfort than of ruin. [Large
nations are at war more than small ones, but all things considered, among
the large ones, there are more men at peace.]
Moreover, in this matter as in many others, there is a consideration that
predominates over all the rest: that of necessity.
If there were only small nations and not any large ones, humanity would
certainly be freer and happier; but the existence of large nations cannot be
avoided.
This introduces into the world a new element of national prosperity,
which is strength. What good is it for a people to present a picture of com-
fort and liberty, if they are exposed each day to devastation or conquest?
What good is it that they have manufacturing and commerce, if another
people commands the seas and establishes the law for all markets? Small na-
tions are often miserable, not because they are small, but because they are
weak; large nations prosper, not because they are large, but because they are
strong. So for nations, strength is often one of the rst conditions of hap-
piness and even of existence. Because of that, barring particular circum-
stances, small peoples always end up being violently united with large ones
or uniting with them on their own. I knowof no condition more deplorable
than that of a people able neither to defend itself nor to be self-sufcient.
q. This sentence and the preceding one have been corrected by Beaumont (YTC,
CIIIb, 3, pp. 3435).
The federal system has been created to unite the various advantages that
result from the large and the small sizes of nations.
r
It is enough to look at the United States of America to see all the good
that comes to those who adopt this system.
Among large centralized nations, the legislator is forced to give laws a
uniform character that does not allow for the diversity of places andmores;
never learning about individual cases, he can only proceed by general rules.
Men are then obliged to bend to the necessity of legislation, for legislation
cannot adapt to the needs and mores of men; this is a great cause of trouble
and misery.
s
This disadvantage does not exist in confederations. The congress regu-
lates the principal actions of social existence; all the detail is left to the
provincial legislatures.
You cannot imagine to what degree this division of sovereignty serves
the well-being of each of the states that compose the Union. In these small
societies, not preoccupied by the need to defend themselves or to expand,
all public power and all individual energy are turned toward internal im-
provements.
t
The central government of each state, situated close to the
governed, is alerted daily to needs that make themselves felt. Consequently,
each year newplans are presented; these plans, discussedintownassemblies
or the state legislature and then reproduced in the press, excite universal
r. Rousseau made the following recommendation to the Poles: Apply yourselves
to expanding and perfecting the system of federative governments, the only one that
unites the advantages of large and small States (Considerations sur le gouvernement de
Pologne, chapter V, in uvres comple `tes, III, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, p. 971). The same
idea is set forth at the beginning of Jugement sur le projet de paix perpe tuelle, and it
appears in a note at the end of chapter XV of book III of the Contrat social (ibid.,
p. 431). The advantages of the federal form had been equally praised by Montesquieu
in the rst chapter of book IX of Esprit des lois (in Oeuvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade,
1951, II, p. 369).
s. Cf. conversation with Mr. Bowring (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, p. 35).
t. Nevertheless, the greatest difculty is not to nd some peoples who know how
to manage their own affairs, but to nd some with this habit who can understandfederal
sovereignty and submit to it (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 4).
interest and the zeal of the citizens. This needtoimprove agitates the Amer-
ican republic constantly and does not trouble them; there, ambition for
power is replaced by the love of well-being, a more vulgar, but less dan-
gerous passion. It is an opinion generally shared in America that the exis-
tence and duration of republican forms in the New World depend on the
existence and the durationof the federal system. Agreat part of the miseries
engulng the new States of South America is attributed to the desire to
establish large republics there, instead of dividing sovereignty.
u
As a matter of fact, it is incontestable that in the United States the taste
and the practice of republican government were born in the towns and
within the provincial assemblies. In a small nation such as Connecticut,
v
for example, where the important political matter is opening a canal or
laying out a roadway, where the state has no army to pay nor war to sustain,
and where the state can give to those who lead it neither wealth nor much
glory, you can imagine nothing more natural and more appropriate to the
nature of things than a republic. Now, this same republican spirit, these
mores and these habits of a free people, after being born and developing
in the various states, are then applied easily to the whole country. In a way,
the public spirit of the Union is itself only a summary of provincial pa-
triotism. Each citizen of the United States transfers, so to speak, the interest
inspired in him by his small republic to the love of the common native
land. By defending the Union, he defends the growing prosperity of his
district, the right to direct its affairs, and the hope of winning acceptance
there for the plans for improvement that are toenrichhimhimself: all things
that ordinarily touch men more than the general interests of the country
and the glory of the nation.
u. Herve de Tocqueville: All that precedes is very good. A thought however: Isnt
the well-being that, for the states of the Union, results from the division of sovereignty
disturbed by the vices of their democratic organization that Alexis had pointed out?
E
douard de Tocqueville: It seems to me that this can only be related to the whole.
It is certain that the United States, as they are constituted, enjoy anenormous prosperity,
and that the nations of the South are in anarchy (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 24).
v. In the rst version, the state cited was Massachusetts.
On the other hand, if the spirit and the mores of the inhabitants make
them more suitable than others to cause a large republic to prosper, the
federal system has made the task much less difcult. The confederation of
all the American states does not show the usual disadvantages of numerous
human agglomerations. The Union is a large republic in terms of expanse;
but in a way, it can be likened to a small republic, because of the small
number of matters that concern its government. Its acts are important, but
rare. Since the sovereignty of the Union is hindered and incomplete, the
use of this sovereignty is not dangerous to liberty. Nor does it excite those
immoderate desires for power and reputation that are so deadly to great
republics. Since everything there does not necessarily end up at a common
center, you see neither vast cities,
w
nor enormous wealth, nor great poverty,
nor sudden revolutions. Political passions, instead of spreading instanta-
neously like a restorm over the whole surface of the country, are going to
break against the individual passions and interests of each state.
Within the Union, however, ideas and things circulate freely, as among
one and the same people. Nothing stops the rise of the spirit of enterprise.
Its government draws upon talents and enlightenment. Withinthe bound-
aries of the Union, as within the interior of a country under the same em-
pire, a profound peace reigns. Outside, the Union ranks among the most
powerful nations of the world; it offers to foreign trade more than eight
hundred leagues of coastline. Holding in its hands the keys to a whole
world, it enforces respect for its ag in the far reaches of the seas.
x
w. Herve de Tocqueville: And New York which is so large?
E
douard de Tocqueville: New York, it seems to me, is only a large city and not a
metropolis, in the true meaning of this word (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 24).
x. Herve de Tocqueville: This peroration is beautiful, but isnt Alexis making Amer-
ica into too much of an El Dorado? It must not be forgotten that he thinks himself
obliged to disenchant us in the following chapters. Two sentences here appear toostrong
to me: that of the profound peace that reigns within the interiortwo recent examples
have shown that this peace is easily troubledand that of respect for the ag, which
exists only because the European nations wish it or do not agree to humiliate it. Not
with its small eet would America force the maritime powers to respect its ag.
E
douard de Tocqueville: Alexis shows in several places what the future dangers of
the American government are, and what its weak side is at the present time. But, if one
judges it now as a whole, one can say, as in the last sentence, The Union is free and happy,
etc. (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 2425).
The Union is free and happy like a small nation, glorious and strong like
a large one.
y
What Keeps the Federal System from Being within
the Reach of All Peoples; And What Has Allowed
the Anglo-Americans to Adopt It
There are, in all federal systems, inherent vices that the law-
maker cannot ght.Complication of all federal systems.
It requires from the governed the daily use of their intelligence.
Practical knowledge of the Americans in the matter of
government.Relative weakness of the government of the
Union, another vice inherent in the federal system.The
Americans have made it less serious, but have not been able to
destroy it.The sovereignty of the individual states weaker in
appearance, stronger in reality than that of the Union.Why.
So among confederated peoples, there must be natural causes of
union, apart from the laws.What these causes are among the
Anglo-Americans.Maine and Georgia, 400 leagues apart, more
naturally united than Normandy and Brittany.That war is
the principal danger to confederations.This proved by the very
example of the United States.The Union has no great wars to
fear.Why.Dangers that the peoples of Europe would run by
adopting the federal system of the Americans.
[Of all beings, man is assuredly the one best known; and yet his prosperity
or miseries are the product of unknown laws of which only a few isolated
and incomplete fragments come into our view. Absolute truth is hidden
and perhaps will always remain hidden.] The law-maker sometimes suc-
ceeds, after a thousand efforts, in exercising an indirect inuence on the
destiny of nations, and then his genius is celebrated. While often, the geo-
y. See the conversation with Mr. MacLean (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC
BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 127).
graphic position of the country, over which he has no inuence; a social
state that was created without his support; mores and ideas, whose origin
is unknown to him; a point of departure that he does not know, impart to
society irresistible movements that he struggles against in vain and that
carry him along as well.
The law-maker resembles a man who plots his route in the middle of the
sea. He too can navigate the ship that carries him, but he cannot change its
structure, raise the wind, or prevent the ocean from heaving under his feet.
I have shown what advantages the Americans gain from the federal sys-
tem. It remains for me to explain what allowed them to adopt this system;
for not all peoples are able to enjoy its benets.
Accidental vices arising from the laws are found in the federal system;
these can be corrected by law-makers. Others are encountered that are in-
herent in the system; these could not be destroyedby the peoples whoadopt
it. So these peoples must nd within themselves the strength to withstand
the natural imperfections of their government.
Among the vices inherent to all federal systems, the most visible of all
is the complication of means that they use. This system necessarily brings
two sovereignties face to face. The law-maker succeeds inmaking the move-
ments of these two sovereignties as simple and as equal as possible, and he
can enclose both of them within clearly dened spheres of action. But he
cannot make it so that there is only one of them, nor prevent them from
being in contact at some point.
[The federal systemof the United States consists of combining twogov-
ernments: one, provincial; the other, national.
It is already not so easy to nd a people who have the taste and, above
all, the habit of provincial government. I have already remarkedearlier that,
among enterprises that can be attempted, certainly one of the most difcult
was to persuade men to attend to their ownaffairs. It follows that the federal
system is hardly ever established except among nations who, independent
of one another for a long time, have naturally contractedthis taste andthese
habits to a high degree. Notably, this is what happenedinthe UnitedStates.
Before the Revolution, they all recognized the authority of the mother
country, but each of them had its individual government as well and did
not depend on its neighbor.
Nonetheless, the great difculty is not nding some peoples who know
how to run their own affairs, but nding some who can understand federal
sovereignty and submit to it.]
So no matter what is done, the federal system rests on a complicated
theory whose applicationrequires, inthe governed, the daily use of the light
of their reason.
z
In general, only simple conceptions take hold of the mind of the peo-
ple. An idea that is false, but clear and precise, will always have more power
in the world than a true, but complicated, idea. It follows that parties,
which are like small nations within a large one, are always quick to adopt,
as a symbol, a name or a principle that often represents only very incom-
pletely the end that they propose and the means that they employ. But
without this symbol, they would be able neither to subsist nor to stir.
Governments that rest only on a single idea or single sentiment, easy to
dene, are perhaps not the best, but they are assuredly the strongest and
the most durable.
On the contrary, when you examine the Constitution of the United
States, the most perfect of all known federal constitutions, you are alarmed
by the many varieties of knowledge and by the discernment that it assumes
among those whom it must govern. The government of the Union rests
almost entirely on legal ctions. The Union is an ideal nation that exists
only in the mind so to speak; intelligence alone reveals its extent and its
limits.
Once the general theory is well understood, the difculties of applica-
tion remain; they are innumerable, for the sovereignty of the Union is so
entangled with the sovereignty of the states that it is impossible at rst
z. In the fourth lecture of his course on civilization in Europe, Guizot insistedonthis
point:
The federative system, logically the most simple, is in fact the most complex; inorder
to reconcile the degree of independence, of local liberty, that it allows, withthedegree
of general order, of general submission that it requires and assumes in certain cases,
a very advanced civilization is clearly required. . . . The federative system is therefore
the one that clearly requires the greatest development of reason, of morality, of civ-
ilization, in the society to whichit applies (Histoire ge ne rale de la civilisationenEurope,
Brussels, Societe belge de Librairie, 1839, lesson IV, p. 41).
glance to perceive their limits. Everything is by convention and by artice
in such a government, and it can only suit a people accustomed, for a long
time, to running their own affairs, a people among whom political knowl-
edge has penetrated to the lowest levels of society. I have never admiredthe
good sense and practical intelligence of the Americans more than in the
way in which they escape the innumerable difculties that arise from their
federal constitution. I almost never met a common man in America who
did not, with surprising ease, discriminate between the obligations arising
from the laws of Congress and those originating in the laws of his state,
and who, after distinguishing the matters that were among the general at-
tributions of the Union fromthose that the local legislature hadtoregulate,
could not indicate the point at which the jurisdiction of the federal courts
began and the limit at which that of the state courts ended.
The Constitution of the United States resembles those beautiful crea-
tions of human industry that shower glory and wealth on those who invent
them, but that remain sterile in other hands.
This is what Mexico has demonstrated in our times.
The inhabitants of Mexico, wanting to establish the federal system, took
as a model and almost completely copied the federal constitution of the
Anglo-Americans, their neighbors.
39
But while importing the letter of the
law, they could not at the same time import the spirit that gives it life. So
they are seen constantly encumbered by the mechanism of their double
government. The sovereignty of the states and that of the Union, leaving
the circle that the constitution had drawn, penetrate each other daily. Still
today, Mexico is constantly dragged from anarchy to military despotism,
and from military despotism to anarchy.
[But even if a people were advanced enough in civilization and versed
enough in the art of government to submit intelligently to so complicated
a political theory, it would still not mean that the federal systemcouldmeet
all their needs.
There is, in fact, a vice inherent in this system that will manifest itself
no matter what is done. That is the relative weakness of the government
of the Union.]
39. See the Mexican constitution of 1824.
The second and more destructive of all the vices, which I regard as in-
herent inthe federal systemitself, is the relative weakness of thegovernment
of the Union.
The principle on which all confederations rest is the division of sover-
eignty. Law-makers make this division hardly noticeable; they even hide it
from view for awhile, but they cannot keep it from existing. Now, divided
sovereignty will always be weaker than complete sovereignty.
In the account of the Constitution of the United States, we saw how
artfully the Americans, while enclosing the power of the Union within the
limited circle of federal governments, succeeded ingiving it the appearance
and, to a certain extent, the strength of a national government.
By acting in this way, the law-makers of the Union reduced the natural
danger of confederations; but they were not able to make it disappear
entirely.
The American government, it is said, does not address itself to the states;
it applies its injunctions directly to the citizens and bends them, separately,
to the work of the common will.
But if federal law collided with the interests and prejudices of a state,
should it not be feared that each of the citizens of this state would believe
himself interested in the cause of the man who refuses to obey? When all
the citizens of the state found themselves thus harmed at the same time
and in the same way by the authority of the Union, the federal government
would seek in vain to isolate them in order to combat them. They would
instinctively feel that they must unite to defend themselves, and in the por-
tion of sovereignty left for their state to enjoy, they would nd an orga-
nization already prepared. Fiction would then disappear and give way to
reality, and you would be able to see the organized power of one part of
the territory joining battle with the central authority.
[This is, moreover, the spectacle most recently presented by SouthCaro-
lina. The regulations of the United States concerning the tariff hadbecome
completely unpopular in Carolina; the state legislature took the initiative
and suspended the enforcement of the federal law. This result is inevitable.
When the interest or passions of men are left a powerful means of satis-
faction, you can be assured that legal ctions will not long prevent them
from noticing and making use of that means. This is so well understood
even in America that, no matter how large certain states already are, care
has been taken not to create district assemblies that could represent a col-
lective resistance. The legislature never has to make anything obey, other
than towns, without links to each other.
Former federal constitutions obliged the states to act. The Constitution
of the United States only obliges them to allow action, an essential differ-
ence that makes resistance very rare; for it is very much easier to refuse to
act than to prevent someone else from acting. But once what you resolved
simply to endure reaches a certain level of pain, the reluctance that men
have to take initiative does not take long to disappear, and the precaution
of the law-maker is found wanting.
The principle of federal law is that the Court of the United States must
endeavor to judge only individuals. In this way, it does [not (ed.)] generally
attack the laws of the states, whichreduces the danger of a collisionbetween
the two sovereignties. But if, in a particular interest, it violates animportant
state law, or harms a general state principle or interest, the precautions of
the law-maker are again useless; and the struggle, real if not obvious, is
between the harmed state, represented by a citizen, and the Union, rep-
resented by its courts. The Constitution gives the Union . . . [text of note
40 (ed.)].
It is enough, moreover, to see in what a persuading and conciliatory
manner the federal government calls for the execution of laws, in order to
judge that, despite appearances and the efforts of the law-maker, the federal
government constantly nds itself facing not individuals, but sovereigns.
It is even easy to go further, and it must be said with the famous Ham-
ilton in the Federalist that of the two sovereignties, the stronger is assuredly
the sovereignty of the state.
You can even go further . . . [cf. infra (ed.)] . . . ]
I will say as much about the federal judicial system. If, in a particular
trial, the courts of the Union violated an important state law, the real, if
not obvious, struggle would be between the harmed state, represented by
a citizen, and the Union, represented by its courts.
40
40. Example: The Constitution gave the Union the right to have unoccupied lands sold
for its benet. I suppose that Ohio claims this same right for those that are enclosed within its
You must have little experience in the ways of this world to imagine that,
after leaving the passions of men a means of satisfaction, you will always
prevent them, with the aid of legal ctions, from noticing and making use
of that means.
So the American law-makers, while making the struggle between the
sovereignties less probable, did not destroy the causes.
You can even go further and say that they were not able to secure pre-
ponderance to the federal power in case of conict.
a
They gave the Union money and soldiers, but the states retain the love
and the prejudices of the people.
The sovereignty of the Union is an abstract thing connected to only a
small number of external matters. The sovereignty of the states is felt by
all the senses; it is understood without difculty; every moment, it is seen
in action. One is new; the other was born with the people themselves.
The sovereignty of the Union is a work of art. The sovereignty of the
states is natural; it exists by itself, without effort, like the authority of the
father of a family.
The sovereignty of the Union touches men only through a few general
interests; it represents an immense and distant country, a vague and indef-
inite sentiment. The sovereignty of the states envelops each citizenina way
and catches him every day by details. It is the state that takes responsibility
borders, under the pretext that the Constitution only meant territory not yet submitted to the
jurisdiction of any state; and that consequently Ohio itself wanted to sell the lands. The
judicial question would be posed, it is true, between the buyers who held their title from the
Union and the buyers who held their title from the state, and not between the Union and
Ohio. But if the court of the United States ruled that the federal buyer was in possession, and
the courts of Ohio maintained the holdings of his competitor, then what would become of
the legal ction?
a. With a bracket that goes from this paragraph to the one that ends with the words
that carry them toward peace:
To note.
I say the same thing with more development in the last chapter on the future. Ask
for advice?
Herve de Tocqueville: Do not put it here. One can do without it.
E
douard de Tocqueville: The more I reread the passage, the more I regret that
there is a question of deleting it, even more because I have not read the one that it
repeats (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 25).
for guaranteeing his prosperity, his liberty, his life; at every moment, it in-
uences his well-being or his misery. The sovereignty of the states rests on
memories, on habits, on local prejudices, on the egoism of province and
of family; in a word, on all the things that make the instinct for native land
so powerful in the heart of man. How can its advantages be doubted?
Since the law-makers cannot prevent the occurrence of dangerous col-
lisions between the two sovereignties that are brought face to face by the
federal system, their efforts to turn confederated peoples away from war
must be joined with particular dispositions that carry them toward peace.
It follows that the federal pact cannot exist for long if, among the peoples
to whom it applies, a certain number of conditions for union are not
found that make this common life easy for them and facilitate the task of
government.
Thus, to succeed, the federal system needs not only good laws, but also
favorable circumstances.
All peoples who have been seen to form a confederation have had a cer-
tain number of common interests that serve as the intellectual bonds of
the association.
But beyond material interests, man still has ideas and sentiments. For a
confederation to last for a long time, there must be no less homogeneity in
the civilization than in the needs of the diverse peoples who constitute it.
The civilization of a canton in Vaud compared with that of a canton in Uri
is like the XIXth century compared withthe XVth; soSwitzerlandhas never
truly had a federal government. The union among the different cantons
exists only on the map; and that would be clearly seen if a central authority
wanted to apply the same laws over the whole territory.
b
b. Before the 1836 visit, Tocqueville probably went to Switzerland in 1829 and 1832
(Cf. Luc Monnier, Tocqueville et la Suisse, inAlexis de Tocqueville. Livre ducentenaire,
Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S., 1960, pp. 10113).
Andre Jardin indicates that in his view Tocqueville must have visited Switzerland at
least ve times between 1823 and 1836. The notes of the voyage to Switzerland in 1836
are known to us thanks to the text published in the Oeuvres comple `tes, Beaumont edition.
Andre Jardin (Tocqueville et la decentralisation, in La de centralisation, VI colloque
dhistoire, Aix-en-Provence: Publication des Annales de la Faculte des Lettres, 1961,
pp. 89117, 97) has nonetheless remarked that certain similarities between these notes
[There are men who pretend that one of the advantages of federal con-
stitutions is to allow each portion of the same empire to live entirely in its
own way, without ceasing to be united. That is true, if confederationmeans
a kind of offensive and defensive league, by means of which different peo-
ples unite to repel a common danger and remain strangers to each other
for everything else. But if, among confederated peoples, you want to create
a common existence and a true national government, it is absolutely nec-
essary that their civilization be homogeneous in nature. This necessity
makes itself felt even much more in confederations than in monarchies,
because in order to be obeyed, government has much more need for the
support of the governed in the rst than in the second.
The federal system allows and favors diversity in laws dealing with spe-
cics, which is a great good; but it often resists uniformity in general laws,
which is a great evil.]
In the United States there is a fact that admirably facilitates the existence
of the federal government. The different states not only have more or less
the same interests, the same origin and the same language, but also the same
degree of civilization; this almost always makes agreement among them
easy. I do not know if there exists any European nation, however small,
that, in its different parts, does not present a less homogeneous face than
the American people whose territory is as large as half of Europe.
From the state of Maine to the state of Georgia, there are about four
hundred leagues. However, less difference exists between the civilizationof
Maine and that of Georgia than between the civilizationof Normandyand
that of Brittany. So Maine and Georgia, placed at two extremities of a vast
and Democracy lead to the thought that these texts, published by Beaumont as dating
from1836, are perhaps the fruit of an earlier voyage (Voyages enAngleterre, Irelande, Suisse
et Alge rie, OC, V, 2, pp. 17388). In his Rapport fait a` lAcademie des sciences morales
et politiques sur louvrage de M. Cherbuliez, entitled De la de mocratie en Suisse (Seances
et travaux de lAcade mie des sciences morales et politiques, XII, 1848, pp. 97119, reproduced
as an appendix to Democracy beginning withthe twelfthedition), Tocquevillecomments
on the Swiss confederation in terms entirely similar to those of this chapter, and con-
cludes that Switzerland possesses the most ineffective federal constitution that could
exist.
empire, naturally nd more real ease in forming a confederation, thanNor-
mandy and Brittany, which are separated only by a stream.
With these opportunities, which the mores and habits of a people offer
to the American law-makers, are joined others that arise from the geo-
graphic position of the country. It is principally to the latter that the adop-
tion and maintenance of the federal system must be attributed.
c
[Despite all these obstacles, I believe federal governments still more ap-
propriate for maintaining internal peace and for favoring, over a vast em-
pire, the peaceful development of social well-being, thanfor strugglingwith
advantage against foreign enemies.
It is the difculty that confederations nd in sustaining great wars that
makes so many peoples incapable of enduring federal government.]
The most important of all the actions that can mark the life of a people
is war. In war, a people acts as a single individual vis-a`-vis foreign peoples;
it ghts for its very existence.
As long as it is only a question of maintaining peace within the interior
of a country and of favoring prosperity, skill in the government, reason
among the governed, and a certain natural attachment that men almost
always have for their country can easily sufce. But for a nation to be able
to wage a great war, the citizens must impose numerous and painful sac-
rices on themselves. To believe that a large number of men will be capable
of submitting themselves to such social exigencies, is to know humanity
very badly. [Were the necessity of war to be universally acknowledged, the
natural inclination of the human mind is to reject the annoying conse-
c. In the margin:
General ideas./
Insular position of the Union.
Indians, nothing. 4,000 soldiers. Attacked from a distance, defended close by./
Impossibility of taxes. Federalist./
Difculties over the militias in the War of 1812./
Inability of the large nations of Europe to live federally./
Fortunate Americans.
quences of the principle that it previously accepted. So once the principle
of war is accepted, an authority capable of forcing individuals to bear its
consequences must be found somewhere.]
It follows that all peoples who have had to wage great wars have been
led, almost despite themselves, to augment the forces of the government.
Those who have not been able to succeed in doing so have beenconquered.
A long war almost always puts nations in this sad alternative; their defeat
delivers them to destruction, and their triumph, to despotism.
[There is a great nation in Europe where the forces of society [v: gov-
ernmental forces] are centralized in such a way that in case of war, a drum-
beat assembles the entire nation, so to speak, around its leader, like the
inhabitants of a village. This nation, apart from its courage, must have a
great advantage over others for waging war; on several occasions, therefore,
we have seen it dominate all of Europe by force of arms.
The fact is that to draw from people the enormous sacrices of men and
money that war requires and to concentrate, in one place and at a given
time, all national forces, nothing less is requiredthanthe efforts of complete
sovereignty.
Now, the inevitable evil of confederations, I have already said, is the
division of sovereignty. In the federal system, not only is there no admin-
istrative centralization or anything approaching it, but also governmental
centralization itself exists only very incompletely. That is always a great
cause of weakness when it is a question of defense against peoples among
whom governmental centralization exists.
In the federal Constitution of the United States . . . [cf. infra (ed.)]].
So, in general, it is during a war that the weakness of a government is
revealed in a most visible and dangerous manner; and I have shown that
the inherent vice of federal governments was to be very weak.
In the federal system, not only is there no administrative centralization
or anything approaching it, but also governmental centralization itself ex-
ists only incompletely. That is always a great cause of weakness, when de-
fense is necessary against peoples among whom governmental centraliza-
tion is complete.
In the federal Constitution of the United States, of all federal consti-
tutions, the one where the central government is vested with the most real
strength, this evil still makes itself acutely felt. [The law gives Congress, it
is true, the right to take all measures required by the interest of the country,
but the difculty is to exercise such a right. If Congress, pressed by urgent
needs, comes to impose on the governed sacrices equal to the dangers, the
discontent of those individuals who suffer does not fail to nd a place of
support in the sovereignty of the states, or at least in the ambition of those
who lead the states and who, in turn, want the support of the malcontents.
The states that do not want to wage war, or to whom the war is useless or
harmful, easily nd in the interpretation of the Constitution the means to
refuse their support. The physical and, above all, the moral force of the
nationis considerably reducedby it, for eventhe possibility of suchanevent
renders the federal government weak and slowto act; it lls the government
with hesitations and fears and prevents it from even attempting all that it
could do.
It is evident, says Hamilton in the Federalist, no. 12, from the state
of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have
had on the point itself that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable
sums by direct taxation. The direct tax is in fact the most visible and bur-
densome of taxes; but at the same time, it is the only one that can always
be resorted to during a war.]
A single example will allow the reader to judge.
The Constitution gives Congress the right to call the state militias into
active duty when it is a matter of suppressing an insurrection or repelling
aninvasion. Another article says that inthis case the President of theUnited
States is the Commander in Chief of the militia.
At the time of the War of 1812, the President ordered the militias of the
Northtomove towardthe national borders; Connecticut andMassachusetts,
whose interests were harmed by the war, refused to send their contingents.
The Constitution, they said, authorizes the federal government to use
the militias in cases of insurrection or invasion; but in the present situation
there was neither insurrectionnor invasion. They addedthat the same Con-
stitution that gave the Union the right to call the militias into active service,
left the states the right to appoint the ofcers. It followed, according to
them, that even in war, no ofcer of the Union had the right to command
the militias, except the President in person. But this was a matter of serving
in an army commanded by someone other than him.
These absurd and destructive doctrines received not only the sanction
of the Governors and the legislature, but also that of the courts of justice
of these two states; and the federal government was forcedtondelsewhere
the troops that it needed.
41
[A fact of this nature proves, better than all that I could say, the inability
the American Union would have to sustain a great war, even with the im-
proved organization that the 1789 Constitution gave it.
Allow for a moment the existence of such a nation in the midst of the
aggressive peoples of Europe where sovereignty is unied and omnipotent,
and the relative weakness of the American Union will become for you a
proven and plain truth.]
So how is it that the American Union, all protected as it is by the relative
perfection of its laws, does not dissolve in the middle of a great war? It is
because it has no great wars to fear.
e
[In general, we must give up citing the example of the United States to
prove that confederations can sustain great wars, for the Union has never
had a single one of this nature.
Even that of 1812, which the Americans speak about with such pride,
was nothing compared to the smallest of those that the ambition of Louis
XIV or the French Revolution brought about in Europe. The reason is
simple.]
Placed in the center of an immense continent, where human industry
41. Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 244. Note that I have chosen the example citedabove
from the time after the establishment of the current Constitution. If I had wanted to go back
to the period of the rst confederation, I would have pointed out even more conclusive facts.
[{Nothing more miserable can be imagined than the way the central government conducted
the War of Independence and yet}] Then true enthusiasm reigned in the nation; the Revo-
lution was represented by an eminently popular man; and yet, in that period, Congress had
no resources at all, so to speak. Men and money were needed at every moment; the best laid
plans failed in the execution; and the Union, always at the brink of perishing, was savedmuch
more by the weakness of its enemies than by its own strength.
d
d. At rst, the text of this note was found before [In general . . . ].
e. In the beginning, note 41 was found at this place in the manuscript.
can expand without limits, the Union is almost as isolated from the world
as if it were enclosed on all sides by the ocean.
f
Canada numbers only a million inhabitants; its population is divided
into two enemy nations. The rigors of climate limit the extent of its ter-
ritory and close its ports for six months of the year.
FromCanada to the Gulf of Mexico, there are still a few, half-destroyed,
savage tribes that six thousand soldiers
g
drive before them.
In the South, the Union at one point touches the empire of Mexico;
probably great wars will come from there one day [if the Anglo-Americans
and the Mexicans eachcontinue toforma single, uniednation. InMexico,
in fact, there is a numerous population that, different from its neighbors
by language, religion, habits and interest [broken text (ed.)]]. But, for a
long time still, the little developed state of its civilization, the corruption
of its mores and its poverty will prevent Mexico from taking an elevated
rank among nations. As for the great powers of Europe, their distance
makes them little to be feared.
O
So the great happiness of the United States is not to have found a federal
constitution that allows it to sustain great wars, but to be so situated that
there are none to fear.
No one can appreciate more than I the advantages of the federal system.
There I see one of the most powerful devices favoring prosperity and hu-
man liberty. I envy the fate of nations permitted to adopt it. But I refuse,
nonetheless, to believe that confederated republics could struggle for long,
with equal strength, against a nation where governmental power would be
centralized.
The people who, in the presence of the great military monarchies of
Europe, would come to divide sovereignty, would seem to me to abdicate,
by this fact alone, its power and perhaps its existence and its name.
Admirable position of the New World where man has only himself as
an enemy. To be happy and free, he only has to want to be.
f. In the margin, with a bracket that includes this paragraph and the two following:
To note.
I also say part of all of this at the future. Quid?
g. The gure 4,000 appears in the manuscript as well as in a few other places.
DEMOCRACY
I N AMERICA
s4s4s4s4s4
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viii
Contents
Key Terms xxvi
Foreword xxviii
(1835)
v ol ume i
Introduction 3
Part I
contents ix
in America 91
the Union 98
Town District 103
Of Town Life 108
Of the State 135
United States 142
Federal Powers 195
contents x
Election Crisis 222
of the State 244
v ol ume i i
Part II
contents xi
of That Right 309
of Ofcials 340
to Economy 343
Those of France 349
and Those Vices 356
contents xii
United States 427
contents xiii
United States 465
United States 472
Threaten It? 582
of Lasting? 627
United States 637
Conclusion 649
Notes 658
xiv
(1840)
v ol ume i i i
contents xv
Often Bombastic 843
in Civil Life 895
contents xvi
and Newspapers 905
a Spiritualism 939
Public Affairs 948
Harm Well-Being 963
contents xvii
v ol ume i v
Become Equal 987
of the Wife 1048
contents xviii
contents xix
Have to Fear 1245
Notes 1286
Appendixes 1295
Edition 1373
Bibliography 1396
Index 1499
277
s4s4s4s4s4
part ii
Until now, I have examined the institutions, I have surveyed the written
laws, I have depicted the current forms of political society in the United
States.
But above all institutions and beyondall forms resides a sovereignpower,
that of the people, which destroys or modies institutions and forms as it
pleases.
I have yet to make known by what paths this power, which dominates
the laws, proceeds; what its instincts, its passions are; what secret motivating
forces push, slow or direct it in its irresistible march; what effects its om-
nipotence produces, and what future is reserved for it.
a
a. In the margin:
Of freedom of the press.
Of associations.
Of parties.
Of elections. Democratic choices. Electoral mores.
Democratic omnipotence, omnipotence of the majority.
Its tyrannical effects. Political demoralization.
Its counterweights in the laws,
1
in the mores and in the local circumstances.
Jury.
1. Judicial power, above all that of the Union, in that it prevents retroactive laws.
Lack of administrative centralization.
278
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1
How It Can Be Strictly Said That in the
United States It Is the People Who Govern
In America, the people name the one who makes the law and the one who
executes it; the people themselves form the jury that punishes infractions
of the law. Institutions are democratic not only in their principle, but in
all their developments as well; thus the people name their representatives
directly and generally choose them every year, in order to keep them more
completely dependent. So it is really the people who lead, and, although
the form of the government is representative, clearly the opinions, preju-
dices, interests, and even the passions of the people cannot encounter any
lasting obstacles that can prevent them from appearing in the daily lead-
ership of society.
In the United States, as in all countries where the people rule, the ma-
jority governs in the name of the people.
b
This majority is composed principally of peaceful citizens who, either
by taste or by interest, sincerely desire the good of the country. In con-
stant motion around them, parties seek to draw them in and gain their
support.
c
b. In the margin: An action external to society exercised on society resembles the
medicine that often aids nature but still more often harms it. Despotism often appears
useful, but I mistrust its benets.
c. Cf. note a of p. 402.
279
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2
Of Parties in the United States
A great division among parties must be made.Parties that
differ among themselves like rival nations.Parties strictly
speaking.Difference between great and small parties.In
what times they arise.Their different characters.America
had great parties.It no longer has them.Federalists.
Republicans.Defeat of the Federalists.Difculty of
creating parties in the United States.What is done to
succeed in creating them.Aristocratic or democratic
character that is found in all parties.Struggle of
General Jackson against the Bank.
First I must establish a great division among parties.
There are countries so vast that the different populations living there,
though united under the same sovereignty, have contradictoryinterests that
give rise to a permanent opposition among them. Then, the various por-
tions of the same people do not form parties strictly speaking, but distinct
nations; and if civil war happens to break out, there is a conict between
rival peoples rather than a struggle between factions.
[What I call truly a party is a gathering of men who, without shar-
ing the bond of a common birth, view certain points in a certain
way.]
But when citizens differ among themselves on points that interest
all portions of the country equally, such as the general principles of
government, for example, then what I will call truly parties are seen to
arise.
of parti es i n the uni ted s tates 280
Parties are an evil inherent in free governments; but they do not have
the same character and the same instincts in all periods of time.
There are periods of time when nations feel tormented by such great ills
that the idea of a total change in their political constitution occurs to their
mind. There are other periods when the malaise is even more profoundand
when the social state itself is compromised. That is the time of great rev-
olutions and great parties.
Between these centuries of disorders and miseries, you nd others when
societies are at rest and when the human race seems to catch its breath. In
truth, that is still only outward appearance. The march of time does not
stop for peoples any more than for men; both advance each day toward an
unknown future; and when we believe them stationary, it is because their
movements escape us. They are men who are walking; to those who are
running, they seem immobile.
[<Similar to the hand that marks the hours; everyone can tell the path
it has already followed, but the hand must be watched for a long time to
discover that it is moving.>]
Be that as it may, there are periods when the changes that take place in
the political constitution and social state of peoples are so slow and so im-
perceptible, that men think they have arrived at a nal state; the human
mind then believes itself rmly seated on certain foundations and does not
look beyond a certain horizon.
This is the time of intrigues and of small parties.
What I call great political parties are those that are attached to principles
more than to their consequences, to generalities and not to particular cases,
to ideas and not to men. In general, these parties have more noble traits,
more generous passions, more real convictions, a more candid and bold
appearance than the others. Here, particular interest, which always plays
the greatest role in political passions, hides more cleverly behind the veil of
public interest; sometimes it even manages to hide from the view of those
whom it arouses and brings into action.
Small parties, on the contrary, are generally without political faith. Since
they do not feel elevated and sustained by great objectives, their character
is stamped by an egoism that occurs openly in each of their acts. They get
worked up from a cold start; their language is violent, but their course is
timid and uncertain. The means they use are miserable, like the very end
that they propose. That is why, when a time of calm follows a violent rev-
olution, great men seem suddenly to disappear and souls withdraw into
themselves.
Great parties turn society upside down; small ones trouble it; the ones
tear it apart and the others deprave it. [<Both have a common trait, how-
ever: to reach their ends, they hardly ever use means that conscience ap-
proves completely. There are honest men in nearly all parties, but it can be
said that no party should be called an honest man.>] The rst sometimes
save society by shaking it up; the second always disturb it to no prot.
America had great parties; today they no longer exist. From that it has
gained a great deal in happiness, but not in morality.
a
a. The ideas of this paragraph and the three preceding ones are found again almost
literally in a note of 14 January 1832 from Notebook E of the American journey (YTC,
BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 26061) and in a nearly identical note frompocket note-
books 4 and 5 (YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 19798). The last paragraph con-
tinues in this way:
I do not know of a more miserable and more shameful spectacle in the world than
the one presented by the different coteries (they do not deserve the name parties) that
divide the Union today. Within them, you see stirring, in full view, all the petty and
shameful passions that ordinarily take care to hide deep within the human heart. As
for the interest of the country, no one considers it; and if someone speaks about it,
it is a matter of form. The parties put it at the head of their articles of association,
just as their fathers did, in order to conform to long-standing usage. It has no more
relation to the rest of the work than the license of the king that our fathers printed
on the rst page of their books.
It is pitiful to see what a ood of coarse insults, what petty, malicious gossip, and
what coarse slanders ll the newspapers that all serve as organs of the parties; with
what shameless contempt for social proprieties, they bring the honor of families and
the secrets of the domestic hearth before the court of opinion each day.
In a letter dated 1 October 1858 and addressed to William R. Greg (OCB, VI, pp. 455
56), Tocqueville comments on an article by the latter on political parties (The State of
the Parties, National Review 7, no. 13 (1858): 22043). He notes as well another danger
tied to the absence of great political parties:
When there are no more great parties, well bound together by shared interests and
passions, foreign policy hardly ever fails to become the primary element of parlia-
mentary activity. . . . Now, I regard such a state of things as contrary to the dignity
When the War of Independence nally ended and it was a matter of
establishing the foundations of the new government, the nation found it-
self divided betweentwo opinions. These opinions were as oldas the world,
and they are found under different forms and given various names in all
free societies. One wanted to limit popular power; the other, to expand it
indenitely.
Among the Americans, the struggle between these two opinions never
took on the violent character that has often marked it elsewhere. In Amer-
ica, the two parties were in agreement on the most essential points. Neither
one had to destroy an old order or turn an entire social state upside down
in order to win. Consequently, neither one bound a large number of in-
dividuals lives to the triumphof its principles. But they toucheduponnon-
material interests of the rst order, such as love of equality and of inde-
pendence. That was enough to arouse violent passions.
The party that wanted to limit popular power sought, above all, to apply
its doctrines to the Constitution of the Union, which earned it the name
Federalist.
The other, which claimed to be the exclusive lover of liberty, took the
title Republican.
b
andsecurity of nations. Foreignaffairs, more thanall other matters, needtobe treated
by a small number of men, with consistency, in secret.
And further on he adds:
I nd that, with rare sagacity, you have indicated the conditions under which great
parties, well disciplined, can exist in a free country. As you say, each of them must be
the representative of one of the two great principles that eternally divide human so-
cieties, and that, to be brief, can be designated by the names aristocracy anddemocracy.
b. The history of the Federalists and the Republicans owes a great deal to a conver-
sation with Mr. Biddle, President of the Bank of the United States (non-alphabetic
notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 12223). The idea that, in
America, there are no real parties had already appeared in April 1831, in a conversation
with Mr. Schermerhorn on the Havre, during the crossing of the Atlantic (notebook E,
YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 29293). Beaumont will report this conversation
to his father in a letter of 16 May 1831 (Lettres dAme rique, p. 40), and will mention it in
Marie (I, p. 360).
On Tocquevilles theory of parties, see especially Nicola Matteucci, Il problema de
partito politico nelle riessioni dAlexis de Tocqueville, Pensiero politico 1, no. 1 (1968):
America is the land of democracy. So the Federalists were always a mi-
nority; but they counted in their ranks nearly all the great men who had
emerged from the War of Independence, and their moral power was very
extensive. Circumstances, moreover, favored them. The ruin of the rst
confederation made the people afraid of falling into anarchy, and the Fed-
eralists proted fromthis temporary frame of mind. For tenor twelve years,
they led affairs and were able to apply, not all of their principles, but some
of them; for, day by day, the opposing current became too violent for any-
one to dare to struggle against it.
In 1801, the Republicans nally took possession of the government.
Thomas Jefferson was named President; he brought them the support of
a celebrated name, a great talent, and an enormous popularity.
The Federalists had only survived thanks to articial means and with
the aid of temporary resources; the virtue or talents of their leaders, as
well as the good fortune of circumstances, had brought them to power.
When the Republicans, in turn, gained power, the opposing party was as
if enveloped by a sudden ood. An immense majority declared against it,
and the party found itself at once in such a small minority that it im-
mediately gave up hope. From that moment, the Republican or Demo-
cratic party has marched from conquest to conquest and has taken pos-
session of the entire society.
The Federalists, feeling defeated, without resources, and nding them-
selves isolated within the nation, divided; some joined the victors; others
put down their banner and changed their name. They entirely ceased to
exist as a party a fairly great number of years ago.
The transitional period when the Federalists held power is, in my opin-
ion, one of the most fortunate events that accompanied the birth of the
great American union. The Federalists struggled against the irresistible in-
clination of their century and country. Their theories, however excellent
or awed, had the fault of being inapplicable as a whole to the society that
the Federalists wanted to govern; so what happened under Jeffersonwould
3992; and Gerald M. Bonetto, Alexis de Tocquevilles Concept of Political Parties,
American Studies, 22, no. 2 (1981): 5979.
have happened sooner or later. But at least their government let the new
republic have time to get established and allowed it afterward to bear, with-
out difculty, the rapid development of the doctrines that they had fought.
Agreat number of their principles ended up, moreover, being acceptedinto
the creed of their adversaries; and the federal Constitution, whichstill con-
tinues to exist in our time, is a lasting monument to their patriotism and
wisdom.
c
So today great political parties are not seen in the United States. Parties
that threaten the future of the Union abound there; but none exist that
appear to attack the present form of government and the general course of
society. The parties that threaten the Union rest, not on principles, but on
material interests. In the different provinces of so vast an empire, these
interests constitute rival nations rather thanparties.
d
That is howthe North
c. Parties./
.-.-.- great parties that shared the rst times of the Union .-.-.- but their principles
are found again. That one of the two, it is true, attained an immense superiority.
That from there came the miserable party spirit of today. Principles no longer being
in question, but men, or at least principles forced to hide behind interests and men.
Analogous example in France. There was grandeur in the struggle of the liberal party
with the royalist party. But since the rst triumphed, there is only pettiness in the
debates that stir within it (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 35).
d. Gustave de Beaumont:
Is this a theory safe from criticism? So you call great parties only those that rest on a
political theory, and you deny this name to those that have immense interests for their
base. That is arbitrary.
I see clearly that the moral and political consequences of the different parties are
not the same. They are parties nonetheless.
Do you get out of it well by saying: these are rival nations rather than parties?
But the parties concerned (for example, those for and against free trade) are not
only from province to province, but also in each province, from citizen to citizen.
It would have been more correct, I believe, to establish a distinction between great
parties that have political theories as objectives and great parties that are tied to ma-
terial interests. Certainly America, turned upside down and threatened with disso-
lution by the question of free trade, has within it great parties; though different from
ours, they are no less great. Note that these parties would be powerful among us, if
we did not have others. After all, the developments of the author lead to the same
result (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 5758).
was recently seento upholdthe systemof commercial tariffs, andtheSouth,
to take arms in favor of free trade. The sole reason is that the Northengages
in manufacturing and the South in agriculture,
e
and the restrictive system
works to the prot of the one and to the detriment of the other.
For lack of great parties, the United States swarms with small ones, and
public opinion splinters innitely on questions of details. The pain that is
taken there to create parties cannot be imagined; it is not an easy thing to
do in our time.
f
In the United States, there is no religious hatred, because
religionis universally respectedandnoone sect is dominant; noclass hatred,
because the people are everything and no one still dares to struggle against
them; nally there are no public miseries to exploit, because the material
state of the country offers such an enormous scope to industry that leaving
man to himself is enough for him to work wonders. But [particular] am-
bition must indeed succeed in creating parties, because it is difcult to
throw someone who holds power out of ofce for the sole reason that you
want to take his place. So all the skill of politicians consists of forming
parties. A politician, in the United States, seeks rst to discern his interest
and to see what analogous interests could be grouped around his; then he
busies himself nding out if, by chance, a doctrine or principle exists in
the world that could be placed conveniently at the head of the new asso-
ciation, to give it the right to come into being and to circulate freely. It
amounts to what would be called the license of the king that our fathers
used to print on the rst sheet of their works and incorporated into the
book, even though it was not part of it.
g
e. The manuscript says: . . . and the South only in producing and the restrictive
system . . .
E
douard de Tocqueville: Economists will nd that this term only in producing is

incorrect. Manufacturers being producers, like farmers or makers of sugar (YTC, CIIIb,
2, p. 51).
f. Cite the birth of the masons and the anti-masons to show how parties form and
recruit in the United States (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 35). See the story of the freemason Mor-
gan in Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 35355.
g. In the manuscript: . . . had no relation to the object of the book.
Gustave de Beaumont: I beg your pardon; all the licenses of the king were related
to the book and to its objective. So say: that our fathers used to print on the rst sheet of
their works and incorporated into the book, even though it was not part of it (YTC, CIIIb,
2, p. 59).
This done, the new power is introduced into the political world.
To a foreigner, nearly all the domestic quarrels of the Americans seem,
at rst view, incomprehensible or childish, and you do not know if you
should pity a people who seriously keeps itself busy with such miseries or
envy it the good fortune of being able to keep busy in that way.
But when you come carefully to study the secret instincts that govern
factions in America, you easily discover that most of them are more or less
linked with one or the other of the two great parties that have divided men
since free societies have existed. As you enter more profoundly into the
intimate thought of these parties, you notice that some of them work to
narrow the use of public power, others, to expand it.
I am not saying that American parties always have as their open aim, or
even as their hidden aim, making aristocracy or democracy prevail in the
country. I amsaying that aristocratic or democratic passions are easilyfound
at the bottomof all the parties, and, although hidden fromview, they form
the tender spot and the soul of the parties.
I will cite a recent example. The President attacks the Bankof the United
States. The country is arousedanddivided; the enlightenedclasses generally
side with the Bank; the people favor the President. Do you think that the
people knew how to discern the reasons for their opinion in the middle of
the twists and turns of such a difcult question, where experienced men
hesitate? Not at all. But the Bank is a great establishment that has an in-
dependent existence; the people, who destroy or raise all powers, can do
nothing to it; that astonishes them. Amid the universal movement of so-
ciety, this immobile point shocks their sight, and they want to see if they
cannot succeed in getting it moving like the rest.
Of the Remnants of the Aristocratic Party
in the United States
Secret opposition of the rich to democracy.They withdraw into
private life.Taste that they show inside their residences for
exclusive pleasures and luxury.Their simplicity outside.
Their affected condescension for the people.
Sometimes among a people divided by opinions, when the equilibrium
among parties is broken, one of them acquires an irresistible preponder-
ance. It crushes all obstacles, overwhelms its adversary and exploits the en-
tire society to its prot. The vanquished, then despairing of success, hide
or fall silent. Auniversal immobility and silence develop. The nationseems
united by the same idea. The conquering party stands up and says: I have
brought peace to the country; you owe me thanks.
But beneath this apparent unanimity, profound divisions and a real op-
position are still hidden.
This is what happened in America. When the democratic party gained
preponderance, you saw it take exclusive possession of the leadership of
public affairs. Since then, it has not ceased to model the mores and laws
after its desires.
h
Today you can say that, in the United States, the wealthy classes of so-
ciety are almost entirely out of public affairs, andthat wealth, far frombeing
a right, is a real cause of disfavor and an obstacle to reaching power.
So the rich prefer abandoning the contest to sustaining anoftenunequal
struggle against the poorest of their fellow citizens. Not being able to take
a rank in public life analogous to the one they occupy in private life, they
h. There is an often very effective means to reestablish peace in a country divided by
opinion; it is to give so complete a preponderance to one of the parties that the other
disappears or falls into silence. Experience has proved that this was buying peace at
a high price. When Ferdinand and Isabella chased the Moors from Spain, they made
a great cause of internal troubles disappear; but they impoverished the country and
delivered a blow to its industry from which it has never recovered.
The democratic party acted in the same way in America. Once in power, it took
exclusive possession of the leadership of public affairs and modeled the mores and
laws after its desires (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 4041).
abandon the rst in order to concentrate on the second. In the middle of
the State, they form something like a society apart with its own tastes and
enjoyments.
The rich mansubmits to this state of things as to anevil without remedy;
with great care, he even avoids showing that it wounds him. So you hear
him publicly praise the sweet pleasures of republican government and the
advantages of democratic forms. For, next to hating their enemies, what is
more natural to men than attering them?
Do you see this opulent citizen? Wouldnt you say, a Jew of the Middle
Ages who is afraid of arousing suspicion of his wealth? His attire is simple;
his gait is modest. Within the four walls of his dwelling, he adores luxury;
into this sanctuary, he lets only a few chosen guests that he arrogantly calls
his equals. You meet no nobleman in Europe who appears more exclusive
in his pleasures than he, more envious of the slightest advantages that a
privileged position assures. But here he is, leaving his house, to go to work
in a tiny, dusty room that he occupies in the business center of the city,
where everyone is free to come to meet him. Along his path, his shoemaker
happens by, and they stop. They begin to converse with each other. What
can they be saying? These two citizens are dealing with the affairs of the
State, and they will not part without shaking hands.
At the bottom of this enthusiasm for convention and in the midst of
these obsequious forms toward the dominant power, it is easy to notice in
the rich a great disgust for the democratic institutions of their country. The
people are a power that they fear and despise. If, one day, the bad govern-
ment of democracy led to a political crisis, if monarchy ever presenteditself
in the United States as something feasible, you would soon discover the
truth of what I am advancing.
The two great weapons that parties use to succeed are newspapers and
associations.
j
j. General picture. A mass, not impassioned, wanting the good. In the middle of it,
parties that seek to create a majority to legalize their ideas (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 40).
289
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 3
Of Freedom of the Press in the United States
Difculty of limiting freedom of the press.Particular reasons
that certain peoples have for valuing this liberty.Freedom of
the press is a necessary consequence of the sovereignty of the
people as it is understood in America.Violence of the language
of the periodical press in the United States.The periodical press
has its own instincts; the example of the United States proves
it.Opinion of the Americans about the judicial suppression of
the crimes of the press.Why the press is less powerful in the
United States than in France.
Freedom of the press not only makes its power felt over political opinions,
but also over all of the opinions of men. It modies not only laws, but also
mores. In another part of this work, I will seek to determine the degree of
inuence that freedom of the press has exercised over civil society in the
United States; I will try to discern the direction it has given to ideas, the
habits it has imparted to the mind and sentiments of the Americans.
a
For
now, I only want to examine the effects produced by freedom of the press
in the political world.
[{The greatest problem of modern societies is to know how to use free-
dom of the press.} I love freedom of the press enough to have the courage
to say everything that I think about it.]
I admit that to freedom of the press I do not bring that complete and
instantaneous love that is given to things supremely good by their nature.
a. See chapter VI of the second part of the third volume.
of freedom of the pres s i n the uni ted s tates 290
[I do not see freedomof the press in the same way that I consider patriotism
or virtue, for example.]
b
I love it much more fromconsiderationof the evils
it prevents than for the good things that it does.
c
If someone showed me an intermediate position where I could hope to
stand rm between complete independence and total subservience of
thought, I would perhaps take my position there; but who will nd this
intermediate position?
d
You start from license of the press, and you march
in rank order; what do you do? First, you submit writers to juries. But the
juries acquit them, and what was only the opinion of an isolated man be-
comes the opinion of the country. So you have done too much and too
little. You have to move further. You deliver authors to permanent magis-
trates; but judges are obliged to hear before condemning. What someone
was afraid to avow in a book, is proclaimed with impunity in the defense
plea. Thus, what was said obscurely in one account is found repeated in a
thousand others. The expression is the external form, and, if I can express
myself in this way, the body of the thought; but it is not the thought itself.
Your courts arrest the body, but the soul escapes them and subtly slips
through their hands. So you have done too much and too little; you must
b. Gustave de Beaumont: Patriotism is a virtue, so there is no alternative. Moreover,
why compare a political institution to a virtue? If you want to make your comparison
with a political institution that you consider as essentially and absolutely good, begin by
searching your mind. Is there a principle, an institution that appears so to you? Why
dont you take individual liberty? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 60).
c. Herve de Tocqueville:
In general the author should stay in the background in order to allow only his book
to speak. His opinions should be appreciated by the reader because of a deduction
of the ideas that the work develops. If you depart from this rule, it must at least be
in the briefest possible way. I believe that the two paragraphs, the one beginning with
the words I admit, the second with the words I love it, could be deleted. They have
the disadvantage of delineating the author too openly, but without giving this picture
very clear contours. There is a bit of obscurity both in the thought and in its ex-
pression. My proposition accepted, you will pass immediately to the paragraph that
begins with the words: if someone (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 4243).
The phrasing of the last sentence of this paragraph is by Beaumont (YTC, CIIIb, 2,
p. 60). In the manuscript, it nishes this way: . . . from consideration of the evils that
follow its ruin than for the good things that it does.
d. The manuscript says a marker. Beaumont suggested putting an intermediate po-
sition (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 60).
continue to move.
e
Finally you abandon writers to censors. Very good; we
are getting closer. But isnt the political rostrum free? So you still havent
done anything. I am wrong; you have made things worse. Would you, by
chance, take thought for one of those material powers that grow with the
number of their agents? Would you count writers like soldiers in an army?
Incontrast to all material powers, the power of thought oftenincreases with
the small number of those who express it. The spoken word of a powerful
man, which spreads alone through the passions of a silent assembly, has
more power than the confused cries of a thousand orators. And if only
someone can speak freely in a single public place, it is as if he has spoken
publicly in each village. So you must destroy the freedom to speak as well
as to write. This time, here you are at your destination: everyone is quiet.
But where have you arrived? You began from the abuses of liberty, and I
nd you under the feet of a despot.
You have gone fromextreme independence to extreme servitude without
nding, on such a long journey, a single place where you could rest.
Some peoples, apart from the general reasons that I have just set
forth, have particular reasons that must attach them to freedom of the
press.
In certain nations claiming to be free, each of the agents of power can
violate the law with impunity, and the constitution of the country does not
give the oppressedthe right tocomplaintothe judicial system. Amongthese
peoples, the independence of the press must no longer be consideredas one
of the guarantees, but as the sole remaining guarantee for liberty and for
the security of the citizens.
So if the men who govern these nations spoke about taking indepen-
dence away from the press, the whole people could respond to them: Allow
e. This reectionis similar tothe one that appears inthe discussionabout Malesherbes
and freedom of the press in Essai sur la vie, les e crits et les opinions de M. de Malesherbes
(Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, 18191821, I, pp. 17983) of Count Boissy-dAnglas. On the
general ideas of this chapter, see the conversation with Spencer (non-alphabetic note-
book 1, YTC, BIIa, andVoyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 6970), andBeaumont, Lettres dAme rique,
p. 101.
us to prosecute your crimes before ordinary judges, and perhaps then we
will consent not to appeal to the court of opinion.
f
Ina country where the dogma of sovereignty of the people openlyreigns,
censorship is not only a danger, but also a great absurdity.
g
When you grant each person a right to govern society, you must rec-
ognize his capacity to choose between the different opinions that trouble
his contemporaries and to appreciate the different facts, the knowledge of
which can guide him.
So sovereignty of the people and freedom of the press are two entirely
correlative things. Censorship and universal suffrage are, on the contrary,
two things that contradict eachother and that cannot exist together for long
in the political institutions of the same people. Among the twelve million
men who live within the territory of the United States, not a single one has
yet dared to propose limiting freedom of the press.
When I arrived in America, the rst newspaper that came before my eyes
contained the following article, which I translate faithfully:
Throughout the whole of this affair, the tone and language of Jackson
[the President] was that of a heartless despot, alone intent on preserving
his power. Ambition is his crime and will yet prove his curse. Intrigue is
his vocation, and will yet overthrow and confound him. Corruption is his
element and will yet react upon him to his utter dismay and confusion.
He has been a successful as well as a desperate political gangster, but the
hour of retribution is at hand; he must disgorge his winnings, throwaway
his false dice, and seek the hermitage, there to blaspheme and execrate his
folly, for to repent is not a virtue within the capacity of his heart to obtain
(Vincennes Gazette ).
f. Freedom of the press is the sole guarantee for a people who cannot attack the
agents of power through the courts, something seen among us. If the men who govern
us allow us to prosecute their misdeeds and crimes before ordinary judges, perhaps we
will consent not to attack their absurdities and their vices before the court of public
opinion (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 93).
g. In the margin: After the people themselves, the press is the most irresistible
power that exists in America.
Many men in France imagine that the violence of the press among us is
due to the instability of the social state, to our political passions and to the
general malaise that follows. So they are constantly waiting for a time when,
after society has regained a tranquil footing, the press in turn will become
calm. As for me, I would willingly attribute the extreme ascendancy that
the press has over us to the causes indicated above; but I do not think that
these causes inuence its language much. The periodical press seems to me
to have its own instincts and passions, apart from the circumstances in
which it works. What happens in American really proves it for me.
America is perhaps at this moment the country inthe worldthat contains
within it the fewest seeds of revolution. In America, nevertheless, the press
has the same destructive tastes as in France, and the same violence without
the same reasons for anger. [<Most often it feeds on hate and envy; it
speaks more to passions than to reason; it spreads falsehood and truth all
jumbled together.>] InAmerica, as inFrance, the press is anextraordinary
power, a strange mixture of good and evil; liberty cannot live without it
and order can hardly be maintained with it.
h
What must be said is that the press has much less power in the United
States thanamong us. Nothing, however, is rarer inthat countrythanseeing
a judicial proceeding directed against the press. The reason is simple: the
Americans, while accepting among themselves the dogma of sovereignty
of the people, have applied it sincerely. They did not have the idea of es-
tablishing, with elements that change every day, constitutions that endured
forever. So to attack existing laws is not criminal, as long as you do not want
to evade them by violence.
They believe, moreover, that the courts are powerless to moderate the
press; that because the exibility of human languages constantly escapes
judicial analysis, crimes of this nature in a way slip out of the hand that
reaches out to seize them. They think that to be able to act effectively on
the press, a court would have to be found that was not only devoted to the
h. Variant: The American press, like ours, is a power that you can speak ill of in
quiet and that you bowbefore in public, that you can ght by surprise, but that nopower
can attack head on Cf. note o of p. 78.
existing order, but was also able to stand above the public opinion that
stirs around it, a court that judged without allowing publicity, ruledwith-
out justifying its decisions, and punished the intention even more than
the words. Whoever had the power to create and to maintain such a court
would waste his time pursuing freedom of the press; for then he would
be absolute master of society itself and would be able to rid himself of
writers and their writings at the same time. In the matter of the press,
therefore, there is really not a middle ground between servitude and li-
cense. To reap the inestimable advantages that freedom of the press as-
sures, you must know how to submit to the inevitable evils that it pro-
duces. Wanting to gain the rst while escaping from the second is to give
yourself over to one of these illusions that usually delude sick nations
when, tired by struggles and exhausted by efforts, they seek the means to
allow hostile opinions and opposite principles to coexist at the same time
on the same soil.
The little power of newspapers in America is due to several causes; here
are the principal ones:
The freedom to write, like all other freedoms, is that much more to be
feared, the newer it is. A people who has never heard the affairs of State
treated in front of it believes the rst popular orator who appears.
Among the Anglo-Americans, this liberty is as old as the founding of
the colonies. Moreover, the press, which knows so well how to iname
human passions, cannot create those passions by itself. [{What feeds
freedom of the press, what gives it a hold on human will are political
passions.}] Now, in America, political life is active, varied, even agitated,
but it is rarely troubled by profound passions; rarely do the latter arise
when material interests are not jeopardized, and in the United States
these interests prosper. To judge the difference that exists on this point
between the Anglo-Americans and us, I have only to glance at the news-
papers of the two peoples. In France, the commercial advertisements
occupy a very limited space; even the news items are few; the vital part of
a newspaper is where the political discussions are found. In America,
three quarters of the immense newspaper put before your eyes are lled
by advertisements; the rest is usually occupied by political news or simple
stories; only now and then, in an obscure corner, do you notice one
of those heated discussions that among us are the daily food of the
reader.
Every power augments the action of its forces as their control is cen-
tralized; that is a general law of nature that examination demonstrates to
the observer and that an even more certain instinct has always shown to
the least of despots.
In France, the press combines two distinct types of centralization.
Nearly all of its power is concentrated in the same place and, so to speak,
in the same hands, for the organs of the press are very few in number.
Constituted in this way, in the middle of a skeptical nation, the power
of the press is necessarily almost without limit. It is an enemy with which
a government can reach a shorter or longer truce; but it is difcult for a
government to live in confrontation with the press for long.
Neither one nor the other of the two types of centralization that I have
just spoken about exists in America.
The United States has no capital.
j
[In America the press is even less
centralized than the government it attacks.] Enlightenment, like power,
is disseminated in all the parts of this vast country. There, the beams of
human intelligence, instead of coming from a common center, cut across
each other in all directions; the Americans have placed the general direction
of thought nowhere, any more than they have that of public affairs.
That is due to local circumstances that do not depend on men. But here
are the ones that come from the laws:
In the United States, there are no licenses for printers, no stamps or
registration for newspapers; the rule of surety bonds is unknown.
As a result, the creation of a newspaper is a simple and easy undertak-
ing; a few
k
subscribers sufce for the journalist to cover his expenses. The
j. In the manuscript: is fortunate enough not to have a capital.
Herve de Tocqueville: I would remove fortunate enough. With a single phrase, the
author comes to a decision offhandedly on a question that is very susceptible to contro-
versy. That is at least unnecessary (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 45).
k. In the manuscript a blank indicates that Tocqueville thought about putting here
the precise number of subscribers. Following this sentence you nd: The most reliable
reports put it at [blank (ed.)] in 1832.
number of periodical or semi-periodical writings in the United States
therefore surpasses all belief. The most enlightened Americans attribute
the little power of the press to this incredible scattering of its forces. It is
an axiom of political science in the United States that the only means to
neutralize the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number. I cannot
imagine that a truth so obvious has not yet become more commonamong
us. I understand without difculty that those who want to make revolu-
tions with the aid of the press try to give it only a few powerful organs;
but what I absolutely cannot conceive is that the ofcial partisans of the
established order and the natural supporters of existing laws believe that,
by concentrating the press, its action can be attenuated. The governments
of Europe seem to me to act toward the press in the same way that knights
used to act toward their enemies. They had noticed from their own ex-
perience that centralization was a powerful weapon, and they wanted to
provide it to their enemy, most probably to gain more glory in resisting
him.
In the United States, there is hardly any small town without its news-
paper. It can be easily understood that, among so many combatants, nei-
ther discipline nor unity of action can be established. Therefore each one
raises his banner. Not that all the political newspapers of the Union are
lined up for or against the administration; but they attack and defend it
in a hundred different ways. So in the United States newspapers cannot
establish those great waves of opinions that rise up or overwhelmthe most
powerful dikes. This division of the forces of the press produces still other
no less remarkable effects. Because the creation of a newspaper is so easy,
everyone can do it. On the other hand, competition means that a news-
paper cannot hope for very great prots; this prevents great industrial tal-
ents from getting involved in enterprises of this type. Even if newspapers
were a source of riches, they are so excessively numerous that there would
not be enough talented writers to run them. So in general journalists in
the United States do not have a very high [social] position; their education
is only rudimentary; and the turn of their ideas is often vulgar. Now, in
all things the majority makes the law; it establishes certain behaviors to
which each person then conforms. The ensemble of these commonhabits
is called a spirit;
m
there is the spirit of the bar, the spirit of the court. The
spirit of the journalist, in France, is to discuss in a violent, but elevated
and often eloquent way, the great interests of the State; if this is not always
so, it is because every rule has its exceptions. The spirit of the journalist,
in America, is to attack in a coarse way, unaffectedly and without art, the
passions of those whom he addresses, to leave principles behind in order
to grab men, to follow men in their private life, and to lay bare their weak-
nesses and their vices [treat the secrets of the domestic hearth and the
honor of the marital bed].
Such an abuse of thought must be deplored. Later I will have the op-
portunity to inquire into what inuence newspapers have on the taste and
morality of the American people; but I repeat that at the moment I amonly
dealing with the political world. You cannot hide from the fact that the
political effects of this license of the press contribute indirectly tothe main-
tenance of public tranquillity. The result is that men who already have an
elevated position in the opinion of their fellow citizens do not dare to write
in the newspapers; and they thereby lose the most formidable weapon that
they could use to stir popular passion to their prot.
1
The result is, above
all, that the personal views expressed by journalists have no weight, so to
speak, inthe eyes of readers. What readers seek ina newspaper is knowledge
of facts; only by altering or misrepresenting these facts can a journalist gain
some inuence for his opinion.
Reduced to these resources alone, the press still exercises an immense
power in America. It makes political life circulate in all parts of this
vast territory. Always watchful, the press constantly lays bare the secret
m. In the manuscript: what is called a spirit.
I do not like that. Here is how I would conceive the sentence: I would delete what is
called a spirit, which is certainly bad (there are many other things that are called a
spirit, without counting the author) and I would say: in all, there is what is called the
spirit of the thing. There is the spirit of the bar, the spirit of the court. Journalismalso
has its own. In France it consists . . . (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 62).
1. They write in newspapers only in the rare cases when they want to address the people
and speak in their own name; when, for example, slanderous charges have been spread about
them, and they want to reestablish the true facts.
motivating forces of politics and compels public men, one by one, to ap-
pear before the court of opinion. It rallies interests around certain doc-
trines and formulates the creed of parties. Through the press, interests
speak together without seeing each other, agree without having contact.
When a large number of the organs of the press manage to follow the
same path, their inuence eventually becomes nearly irresistible; andpub-
lic opinion, always struck from the same side, ends by yielding to their
blows.
In the United States, each newspaper individually has little power; but
the periodical press, after the people, is still the rst of powers.
A
That the Opinions Established under the Dominion
of Freedom of the Press in the United States Are
Often More Tenacious Than Those That Are Found
Elsewhere under the Dominion of Censorship.
n
In the United States, democracy constantly leads newmentothe leadership
of public affairs; so the government has little coherence and order in its
measures. But the general principles of government there are more stable
than in many other countries, and the principal opinions that rule society
are more lasting. When an idea, whether sound or unreasonable, takes hold
of the mind of the American people, nothing is more difcult thantoerad-
icate it.
The same fact has been observed in England, the European country in
which, for a century, the greatest freedom of thought and the most invin-
cible prejudices have been seen.
I attribute this effect to the very cause that, at rst view, shouldseemingly
prevent it, freedom of the press. Peoples among whom this freedomexists
are attached to their opinions by pride as much as by conviction. They love
them because they seem sound to them, and also because they have chosen
n. In the margin: But this is due to the political institutions and not to freedom
of the press.
them. And they hold them not only as something true, but also as some-
thing of their own.
There are still several other reasons.
A great man has said that ignorance is at the two ends of knowledge.
o
Perhaps it would have been more true to say that deep convictions are
found only at the two ends, and that doubt is in the middle. In fact, you
can consider human intelligence in three distinct and often successive
states.
Amanstrongly believes, because he adopts a belief without goingdeeper.
When objections appear, he doubts. Often he succeeds inresolving all these
doubts; and then he begins to believe again. This time, he no longer grasps
truth haphazardly and in the shadows; but he faces it and walks directly
toward its light.
2
When freedom of the press nds men in the rst state, it leaves them
for yet a long time with this habit of believing strongly without reection;
only it changes the object of their unthinking beliefs each day. So, over the
whole intellectual horizon, the mindof mancontinues tosee onlyonepoint
at a time; but this point is constantly changing. This is the time of sudden
revolutions. Woe to the generations that are the rst suddenly to allowfree-
dom of the press!
Soon, however, the circle of new ideas is nearly covered. Experience ar-
rives, and man is plunged into doubt and a universal distrust.
You can be assured that the majority of men will always stop at one of
these two states. The majority will believe without knowing why, or will
not know exactly what should be believed.
As for the other type of thoughtful and self-condent conviction that is
born out of knowledge and arises from the very midst of the agitations of
doubt, it will never be granted except in response to the efforts made by a
very small number of men to attain it.
o. Pascal, Pensees, number 83 in Lafuma edition.
2. Still, I do not know if this thoughtful and self-condent conviction ever elevates man
to the degree of ardor and devotion that dogmatic beliefs inspire.
Now, it has been observed that, in centuries of religious fervor, men
sometimes changed belief; while incenturies of doubt, eachone stubbornly
kept his belief. This is how things happen in politics, under the rule of
freedom of the press. Since all social theories, one by one, have been con-
tested and fought, those who are attached to one of them keep it, not so
much because they are sure that it is good, as because they are not sure that
there is a better one.
In these centuries, you do not risk death as easily for your opinions; but
you do not change them. And, at the very same time, fewer martyrs and
fewer apostates are found.
To this reason, add another still more powerful. When opinions are
doubted, men end up being attached solely to instincts and to material
interests, which are much more visible, more tangible and more permanent
by their nature than opinions are.
To know whether democracy or aristocracy governs better is a very dif-
cult question to decide. But clearly democracy hinders one man and ar-
istocracy oppresses another.
p
That is a self-evident truth; there is no need to discuss it; you are rich
and I am poor.
[When, as often happens, freedom of the press is combined with sov-
ereignty of the people, the majority is sometimes seen to decide clearly in
favor of an opinion. Then, the opposite opinion no longer has a way to be
heard; those who share it fall silent, while their adversaries triumph out
loud.
Suddenly there is an unimaginable silence of which we Europeans can
have no idea. Certain thoughts seem suddenly to disappear fromthe mem-
ory of men. Thenfreedomof the press exists inname, but infact censorship
p. In the manuscript: that democracy hinders you and aristocracy oppresses me.
Gustave de Beaumont: It is not the authors intention to enter onstage andtoappear
as a proletarian crushed by the aristocrats. So this form must be dropped; say: But clearly
democracy hinders one man and aristocracy oppresses another. Then you could nish by
saying: You are rich and I am poor. Why? Because then it is clearly seen that this is only
a convention of language (YTC, CIIIb, e, pp. 63, 54).
reigns, a censorship a thousand times more powerful than that exercisedby
power./
Note. I know of no country where freedom of the press exists less than
in America on certain questions. There are few despotic countries where
censorship does not concern the formrather thanthe substance of thought.
But in America there are subjects that cannot be touched upon in any
way].
302
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 4
Of Political Association in the United States
Daily use that the Anglo-Americans make of the right of
association.Three types of political associations.How the
Americans apply the representative system to associations.
Dangers that result for the State.Great convention of 1831
relating to the tariff.Legislative character of this
convention.Why the unlimited exercise of the right of
association is not as dangerous in the United States as
elsewhere.Why it can be considered necessary there.
Utility of associations among democratic peoples.
Of all the countries in the world, America has taken greatest advantage of
association and has applied this powerful means of action
a
to the greatest
variety of objectives.
Apart from permanent associations created by the law, known as towns,
cities and counties, a multitude of others owe their birth and development
only to individual wills.
The inhabitant of the United States learns from birth that he must de-
pend on himself in the struggle against the ills and difculties of life; he
looks upon social authority only with a deant and uneasy eye, and calls
upon its power only when he cannot do without it. This begins to be no-
ticed as early as school where children, even in their games, submit to their
a. Variant: Of all the countries in the world, America is where government is least
centralized. It is also the one that has taken greatest advantage of association. There is a
correlation between these two things.
of poli ti cal as s oci ati on 303
own rules and punish their own infractions.
b
The same spirit is found in
all the actions of social life. An obstruction occurs on the public road; the
way is interrupted; trafc stops; the neighbors soon get together as a delib-
erative body; out of this improvised assembly will come anexecutive power
that will remedy the difculty, before the idea of an authority pre-dating
that of those interested has occurred to anyones imagination. If it is a
matter of pleasure, the Americans will associate to give more splendor and
order to the festival. Lastly, they unite to resist entirely intellectual enemies:
together they ght intemperance. In the United States, they associate for
purposes of public security, commerce and industry, [pleasure], morality
and religion. There is nothing that human will despairs of achieving by the
free action of the collective power of individuals.
Later I will have the opportunity to speak about the effects that associ-
ation produces in civil life.
c
At the moment, I must stay within the political
world.
[After the press, association is the great means that parties use to get
into public affairs and to gain the majority.
In America the freedom of association for political ends is unlimited.
The freedom of assembly in order to discuss together the views of the as-
sociation is equally unlimited.]
Once the right of associationis recognized, citizens canuse it indifferent
ways.
An association consists only of the public support that a certain num-
ber of individuals give to such and such doctrines and of the promise
that they make to work in a particular way toward making those doc-
trines prevail. Thus the right to associate almost merges with freedom to
b. So how to move hearts and develop love of country and its laws? Dare I say?
By the games of children; by institutions, pointless in the eyes of supercial men, but
which form cherished habits and invincible attachments (Rousseau, Conside rations
sur le gouvernement de Pologne, chapter I, in uvres comple `tes [Paris: Pleiade, 1964],
III, p. 955).
c. In the margin: Perhaps the chapter should begin here and what precedes should
be kept for the chapter on ordinary associations?
write;
d
but the association already has more power than the press. When
an opinion is represented by an association, it is forced to take a clearer and
more precise form. It counts its partisans and involves them in its cause.
The latter learn to know each other, and their ardor increases with their
number. The association gathers the efforts of divergent minds into a net-
work and vigorously pushes them toward a single, clearly indicated goal
[<even if it did not provide material means of action, its moral force would
still be very formidable>].
The second level in the exercise of the right of association is the power
to assemble. When a political association is allowed to locate centers of
action at certain important points of the country, its activity becomes
greater and its inuence more extensive. There, men see each other; the
means of action combine; opinions are expressed with the force and heat
that written thought can never attain.
Finally, in the exercise of the right of association in political matters,
there is a last level. The partisans of the same opinion canmeet inelectoral
colleges and name representatives to go to represent them in a central as-
sembly. Strictly speaking, this is the representative system applied to a
party.
So, in the rst case, men who profess the same opinion establish a purely
intellectual bond among themselves; in the second, they meet in small as-
semblies that represent only a fraction of the party; nally, inthe third, they
form, so to speak, a separate nation within the nation, a government within
the government.
e
Their representatives, similar to the representatives of the
majority, represent in themselves alone the whole collective force of their
partisans; just like the representatives of the majority, they arrive with an
d. In the manuscript: This type of association almost merges with freedom of the
press.
Herve de Tocqueville: This sentence lacks clarity. The idea is not well developed,
andits expressionis not good. What is anassociationthat merges witha liberty, a material
thing with something not material? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 48).
e. Note in the margin: Government within the government. Printing there [illeg-
ible word (ed.)]. See conversation with Ingersol [Ingersoll (ed.)]. It concerns Charles
J. Ingersoll. See George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 48082.
appearance of nationhood and all the moral power that results from that.
It is true that, unlike the representatives of the majority, they do not have
the right to make laws; but they have the power to attack the laws that exist
and to formulate in advance those that should exist.
I assume a people who is not perfectly used to the practice of liberty or
among whom deep political passions are stirring. Alongside the majority
that makes the laws, I put a minority that only attends to preambles and
stops at plans of action; and I cannot keep myself frombelieving that public
order is exposed to great hazards [<for man is made in such a way that,
in his mind, there is only a step, the easiest of all to take, between proving
that something is good and doing it.>]
Betweenproving that one lawis better initself thananother, andproving
that it must be substituted for the other, there is certainly a great distance.
But where the minds of enlightened men see a great distance remaining,
the imaginationof the crowd no longer sees any. There are times, moreover,
when the nation is almost equally divided between two parties, each claim-
ing to represent the majority. If, next to the governing power, a power arises
whose moral authority is almost as great, can we believe that it will limit
itself for long to speaking without acting?
Will it always stop before the metaphysical consideration that the pur-
pose of associations is to lead opinions and not to force them, to recom-
mend law and not to make it?
The more I contemplate the principal effects of the independence of
the press, the more I am convinced that among modern peoples indepen-
dence of the press is the capital and, so to speak, the constituent element
of liberty. So a people who wants to remain free has the right to require that
the independence of the press be respected at all cost. But the unlimited
freedom of association in political matters cannot be completely confused
withthe freedomto write. The rst is bothless necessary andmoredangerous
than the second. A nation can set limits on the rst without losing control
over itself; sometimes it must set limits in order to continue to be in control.
In America, the freedom of association for political ends is unlimited.
An example will show, better than all I could add, the degree to which
it is tolerated.
You recall how the question of the tariff or free trade has stirred minds
up in America. The tariff favored or attacked not only opinions, but also
very powerful material interests. The Northattributeda portionof its pros-
perity to the tariff; the South, nearly all of its misfortunes. It can be said
that, for a long time, the only political passions that have agitatedtheUnion
have arisen from the tariff.
In 1831, when the quarrel was most bitter, an obscure citizen of Mas-
sachusetts thought to propose, in the newspapers, that all the enemies of
the tariff send deputies to Philadelphia, in order to consult together about
the ways to reestablish free trade. In a few days, the proposal circulated
from Maine to New Orleans due to the power of the printed word. The
enemies of the tariff adopted it ardently. They met everywhere and
named deputies. Most of these were men who were known, and some of
them were famous. South Carolina, seen afterward to take up arms in the
same cause, sent sixty-three delegates on its behalf. The rst of October
1831, the assembly, which, following the American habit, had taken the
name convention, formed in Philadelphia; it numbered more than two
hundred members. The discussions were public and, from the rst day,
took on an entirely legislative character. The deputies examined the ex-
tent of congressional powers, the theories of free trade, and nally the
various provisions of the tariff. At the end of ten days, the assembly dis-
persed after having drafted an address to the American people. This ad-
dress stated: 1. that Congress did not have the right to pass a tariff and
that the existing tariff was unconstitutional; 2. that the lack of free trade
was not in the interest of any people, and particularly not the American
people.
It must be recognized that, until now, unlimited freedom of association
in political matters has not produced, in the United States, the harmful
results that could perhaps be expected elsewhere. There, the right of as-
sociation is an English import, and it has existed in America since the be-
ginning. Today, the use of this right has passed into the habits and into the
mores. [{perhaps today it has even become a necessary guarantee against
parliamentary tyranny as well}].
In our time, freedom of association has become a necessary
f
guarantee
against the tyranny of the majority.
g
In the United States, once a party has
become dominant, all public power passes into its hands; its particular
friends hold all posts and have the use of all organized forces. Not able to
break through the barrier that separates them from power, the most distin-
guished men of the opposite party must be able to establish themselves
outside of it; with its whole moral strength, the minority must resist the
material power that oppresses it. So one danger is set against another more
to be feared.
The omnipotence of the majority appears to me to be such a great peril
for the American republics that the dangerous means used to limit it still
seem good to me.
Here I will express a thought that will recall what I said elsewhere about
town liberties. There are no countries where associations are more neces-
sary, to prevent the despotism of parties or the arbitrariness of the prince,
than those where the social state is democratic. Among aristocratic nations,
secondary bodies form natural associations that stop the abuses of power.
h
In countries where such associations do not exist, if individuals cannot ar-
ticially and temporarily create something that resembles those natural as-
sociations, I no longer see any dike against any sort of tyranny; and a great
people can be oppressed with impunity by a factious handful of individuals
or by a man.
[There is a cause that is hardly suspected and that, in my view, renders
political associations less dangerous in America than elsewhere; it is uni-
f. The manuscript reads almost necessary.
g. Cf. note a for p. 402.
h. Aristocracy to democracy./
Aristocracies are natural associations that need neither enlightenment nor calcu-
lations to resist the great national association that is called the government. As a result
they are more favorable to liberty than democracy is. It is possible for associations to
be formed in a democracy, but by dint of enlightenment and talents; and they are
never enduring. In general, when an oppressive government has been able to form
in a democracy, it nds itself facing only isolated men andno collective forces. Hence
its irresistible strength. What gives the judicial system that immeasurable force over
the person on trial? It has the use of the forces of the entire society against one man.
Extreme example of the power of association and the weakness of isolation (YTC,
CVh, 1, p. 82).
versal suffrage. In Europe, associations act in two ways: by the material
strength that their organizationbrings to them, or by the moral power given
to them by the support of the majority that they always claim to represent.
In the United States this last element of strength is lacking. In countries
where universal suffrage is allowed, there is never a doubtful majority, be-
cause no party can establish itself as the representative of those who did
not vote.
Thus, in America, associations can never pretend to represent the ma-
jority; they only aim to convince it. They do not want to act, but to per-
suade; in that, above all, they are different from the political associations
of Europe.]
The meeting of a great political convention (for there are conventions
of all types) can often become a necessary measure. Even in America, such
a meeting is a serious event, one that the friends of their country can only
contemplate with fear.
This was seen very clearly in the convention of 1831, where all the efforts
of the distinguished men who were part of the assembly tended to mod-
erate its language and to limit its objectives. Probably, the convention of
1831 exercised, in fact, a great inuence on the mind of the discontented
and prepared them for the open revolt that took place in 1832 against the
commercial laws of the Union.
You cannot conceal the fact that, of all liberties, the unlimited freedom
of association, in political matters, is the last one that a people can bear.
j
If unlimited freedom of association does not make a people fall into an-
archy, it puts a people on the brink, so to speak, at every moment. This
j. Nations are not able in all periods of their history to bear the same degree of
freedom of association. You nd some peoples among whom the relative positions
and the strength of parties make certain associations dangerous; among others, des-
potism has taken care to keep men in such great ignorance that they do not under-
stand what can be done by associating together. Only time and the gradual devel-
opment of free institutions can teach them.
The society that cannot take the right of association away from citizens without
destroying itself is, therefore, sometimes required to modify it, depending on the
times and mores (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 9293).
See Jose Mar a Sauca Cano, La ciencia de la asociacion de Tocqueville (Madrid: Centro
de Estudios Constitucionales, 1995).
liberty, so dangerous, offers guarantees on one point, however; incountries
where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America, there
are agitators, but not conspirators.
Different Ways in Which the Right of Association Is
Understood in Europe and in the United States, and
the Different Use That Is Made of That Right
After the liberty of acting alone, the liberty most natural to man is to com-
bine his efforts with the efforts of his fellows and to act in common. So to
me, the right of association seems almost as inalienable by nature as indi-
vidual liberty. The legislator would not want to destroy it without attacking
society itself. But if there are some peoples among whomthe libertytounite
together is only benecial and fruitful in prosperity, there are also others
who, by their excesses, distort it and turn an element of life into a cause of
destruction. It seemed to me that a comparison of the different paths that
associations follow, incountries where the liberty is understoodandinthose
where this liberty turns into license, would be useful both to governments
and to parties.
Most Europeans still see the association as a weapon that is hastily made
to try out immediately on the eld of battle.
They join together for the purpose of talking, but the next thought, that
of acting, preoccupies all minds. An association is an army; they talk in
order to take stock and to come to life; and then they march on the enemy.
In the eyes of those who compose the association, legal resources canappear
to be means, but they are never the only means of success.
That is not the way the right of association is understood in the United
States. In America, citizens who form the minority join together, rst, to
determine their number and, in this way, to weaken the moral dominion
of the majority; the second objective of those associated is to test and, in
this way, to discover the arguments most suitable for making animpression
on the majority; for they always hope to attract the majority and then, in
its name, to have the use of power. [So in America, the purpose of as-
sociations is to convince and not to compel.]
Political associations in the United States therefore are peaceful in their
objective and legal in their means; and when they claimto want to triumph
only through law they are, in general, speaking the truth.
On this point the noticeable difference between the Americans and us
is due to several causes.
In Europe parties exist that differ so much from the majority that they
can never hope to gain their support; and these very parties believe they are
strong enough by themselves to struggle against the majority. When a party
of this type forms an association, it does not want to convince, but to ght.
In America, men
k
who are so removed from the majority by their opinion
can do nothing against the power of the majority; all others hope to win
it over.
So the exercise of the right of association becomes dangerous in pro-
portion to how impossible it is for great parties to become the majority. In
a country like the United States, where opinions differ only by nuances,
the right of association can, so to speak, remain unlimited.
What still leads us to see, in freedom of association, only the right to
make war against those governing, is our inexperience in liberty. When a
party gains strength, the rst idea that comes to its mind, as to that of a
man, is the idea of violence. The idea of persuasion only comes later; it
arises from experience.
The English, who are divided among themselves in so profound a way,
rarely abuse the right of association, because they have used it longer.
In addition, among us, such a passionate taste for war exists that no un-
dertaking, however insane, evenif it must turnthe State upside down, lacks
adherents who see themselves as glorious for dying on the eld of battle.
But of all the causes in the United States that work together to moderate
the violence of political association, perhaps the most powerful is universal
suffrage. In countries where universal suffrage is accepted, the majority is
never in doubt, because no party can reasonably set itself up as the repre-
sentative of those who have not voted. So the associations know, and ev-
eryone knows, that they do not represent the majority. This results from
k. The manuscript reads: the parties.
the very fact of their existence; for, if they represented the majority, they
would change the law themselves instead of asking for its reform.
The moral force of the government they are attacking is greatly in-
creased; theirs, much weakened.
InEurope, there is hardly any associationthat does not claimtorepresent
or believe it represents the will of the majority. This claim or this belief
prodigiously increases their strength, and serves marvelously to legitimate
their actions. For what is more excusable than violence in order to gain
victory for the oppressed cause of right?
Thus, in the immense complication of human laws, sometimes extreme
liberty corrects the abuses of liberty, and extreme democracy prevents the
dangers of democracy.
In Europe, associations consider themselves, in a way, the legislative
and executive council of the nation that cannot speak for itself; starting
from this idea, they act and command. In America, where, in everyones
eyes, associations represent only a minority of the nation, they talk and
petition.
The means used by associations in Europe agree with the end that they
propose.
Since the principal end of these associations is to act and not to talk,
to ght and not to persuade, they are led naturally to adopt an organi-
zation that is not at all civil and to introduce military habits and maxims.
Thus you can see them centralize the control of their forces, as much as
possible, and deliver the power of all into the hands of a very small num-
ber of men.
m
The members of these associations respond to an order like soldiers at
war; they profess the dogma of passive obedience, or rather, by uniting
together, they have at one stroke made the complete sacrice of their judg-
ment and free will. Thus, within these associations, a tyranny often reigns
that is more unbearable than the one exercised within the society in the
name of the government that is attacked.
This greatly diminishes their moral force. Inthis way, they lose the sacred
m. In the margin: They use legal resources as a stopgap means and not as the
means.
character attached to the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors.
For how can he who, in certain circumstances, consents to obey slavishly
a few of his fellows, to surrender his will to them and to submit even his
thoughts to them, how can that man possibly claim that he wants to be
free?
The Americans have also established a government within associations.
But, if I can express myself in this way, it is a civil government. Individual
independence plays a role. As in society, all men there march at the same
time toward the same end. But no one is forced to march exactly in the
same path. No one sacrices his will and his reason; but his will and his
reason are applied to making the common enterprise succeed.
313
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 5
Of the Government of
Democracy in America
I know that I am walking here on ery ground. Each of the words of this
chapter must in some respects offend the different parties dividing my
country. I will, nonetheless, express my whole thought.
In Europe, we have difculty judging the true character and permanent
instincts of democracy, because in Europe there is a struggle between two
opposite principles. And we do not know precisely what should be attrib-
uted to the principles themselves or to the passions that the conict has
produced.
It is not the same in America. There, the people dominate without ob-
stacles; there are no dangers to fear or wrongs to revenge.
So, in America, democracy is given over to its own inclinations. Its pace
is natural, and all its movements are free. That is where it must be judged.
And for whom would this study be interesting and protable, if not for us,
who are draggedalong eachday by anirresistible movement andwhomarch
blindly, perhaps toward despotism, perhaps toward the republic, but def-
initely toward a democratic social state?
Of Universal Suffrage
I said previously that all the states of the Union had allowed universal
suffrage. It is also found among populations situated at different levels of
[{civilization}] the social scale. I have had the opportunity to see its ef-
fects in various places and among races of men made nearly strangers to
each other by their language, their religion, or their mores, in Louisiana
as in New England, in Georgia as in Canada. I noted that, in America,
of the government of democracy 314
universal suffrage was far from producing all the good and all the evil that
are expected in Europe, and that, in general, its effects were other than
those supposed.
a
Of the Choices of the People and of the Instincts of
American Democracy in Its Choices
In the United States the most outstanding men are rarely called
to the leadership of public affairs.Causes of this
phenomenon.The envy that animates the lower classes in
France against the upper classes is not a French sentiment, but
democratic.Why, in America, distinguished men often move
away on their own from political careers.
Many people in Europe believe without saying, or say without believing,
that one of the great advantages of universal suffrage is to call men worthy
of public condence to the leadership of public affairs.
b
It is said that a
people cannot govern itself, but always sincerely wants the good of the
State, and its instinct hardly ever fails to point out those who are animated
by the same desire and who are most capable of holding power.
c
I must say that, for me, what I saw in America does not authorize me to
think that this is so. Upon my arrival in the United States, I was struck
a. Marginal note: For that I do not know what to do. The interests that divide
men are innumerable, but truth is singular and has only one way to come about.
b. What is most important to a nation is not that those who govern are men of
talent, but that they have no interests contrary to the mass of their fellow citizens
(YTC, CVh, 4, p. 90).
c. Repetition of an argument from Montesquieu, who asserts in chapter II of book
II of the Esprit des lois:
The people are admirable for choosing those to whom they must entrust some part
of their authority. In order to decide they have only things that they cannot ignore
and facts that are tangible. . . . But would they be able to conduct a matter, to know
the places, the occasions, the moments, how to prot from them? No, they will not.
. . . The people, who have enough capacity to understand the management of others,
are not t to manage by themselves (uvres comple `tes [Paris: Pleiade, 1951], II,
pp. 24041. Cf. note e for p. 93).
with surprise to nd out how common merit was among the governed and
how uncommon it was among those governing.
d
Today it is a constant fact
in the United States that the most outstanding men are rarely called to
public ofce, and we are forced to recognize that this has occurred as de-
mocracy has gone beyond all its former limits. Clearly the race of American
statesmen has grown singularly smaller over the past half century.
Several causes of this phenomenon can be indicated.
It is impossible, no matter what you do, to raise the enlightenment of
the people above a certain level. Whatever you do to make human learning
more accessible, improve the methods of instruction and make knowledge
more affordable, you will never be able to have men learn and develop their
intelligence without devoting time to the task.
So the greater or lesser facility that the people have for living without
working sets the necessary limit to their intellectual progress. This limit is
further away in certain countries, closer in certain others; but for there to
be no limit, it would be necessary for the people not to have to be occupied
with the material cares of life; that is, for them no longer to be the people.
e
So it is as difcult to imagine a society inwhichall menare veryenlightened,
as a State in which all citizens are rich; these are two correlative difculties.
I will admit without difculty that the mass of citizens very sincerely wants
the countrys good. I go even further, and I say that, in general, the lower
classes of society seem to me to mingle fewer calculations of personal in-
terest with this desire than do the upper classes; but what they always more
or less lack is the art of judging the means while sincerely desiring the end.
d. Why, when civilization spreads, do prominent men decline in number? Why,
when learning becomes the privilege of all, do great intellectual talents become more
rare? Why, when there are no more lower classes, are there not more upper classes?
Why, whenunderstanding of government reaches the masses, are great geniuses miss-
ing from the leadership of society? America clearly poses these questions. But who
will be able to resolve them? (pocket notebook 3, 6 November 1831, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 188).
e. As the cares of material life demand less time, the development of the intelligence
of the people will be greater. The one concerned with none of these cares will always
have an intellectual advantage over those who are obliged to be concerned with them
(YTC, CVh, 4, p. 37).
What long study, what diverse notions are necessary to get an exact idea of
the character of a single man! There the greatest geniuses go astray, and the
multitude would succeed! The people never nd the time and the means
to give themselves to this work. They must always judge in haste and attach
themselves to the most salient objects. As a result, charlatans of all types
know very well the secret of pleasing the people, while their true friends
most often fail. [<In most of the states of the Union I saw positions oc-
cupied by men who had succeeded in gaining them only by attering the
slightest passions and bowing before the smallest caprices of the people.>]
Moreover, it is not always the capacity to choose men of merit that de-
mocracy lacks, but the desire and the taste.
The fact must not be concealed that democratic institutions developthe
sentiment of envy in the human heart to a very high degree, not so much
because they offer each person the means to become equal to others, but
because these means constantly fail those who use them. Democratic in-
stitutions awaken and atter the passion for equality without ever being
able to satisfy it entirely. Every day, at the moment when people believe
they have grasped complete equality, it escapes from their hands and ees,
as Pascal says,
f
in an eternal ight. People become heated in search of this
good, all the more precious since it is close enough to be known, but far
enough away not to be savored. The chance to succeed rouses the people;
the uncertainty of success irritates them. They get agitated, grow weary,
become embittered. Then, everything that is in some way beyond them
seems an obstacle to their desires, and there is no superiority, however le-
gitimate, that they do not grow tired of seeing.
Many people imagine among us that the secret instinct that leads the
lower classes to keep the upper classes away from the leadership of public
affairs as much as they can is found only in France. That is an error: the
instinct that I am speaking about is not French, it is democratic. Political
circumstances have been able to give it a particular character of bitterness,
but they did not give birth to it.
In the United States, the people have no hatred for the upper classes of
society; but they feel little goodwill toward them and carefully keep them
f. Pense es, number 390 in the Lafuma edition.
out of power; they do not fear great talents, but they appreciate themlittle.
g
Ingeneral, younotice that everything that arises without their support gains
their favor with difculty.
While the natural instincts of democracy lead the people to keep dis-
tinguished men away frompower, an instinct no less strong leads the latter
to remove themselves from a political career in which it is so difcult for
them to remain entirely themselves, and to operate without debasing
themselves. This thought is very ingenuously expressed by Chancellor
Kent. The celebrated author about whomI amspeaking, after givinggreat
praise to the part of the Constitutionthat grants the nominationof judges
to the executive power, adds: The ttest men would probably have too
much reservedness of manners, and severity of morals, to secure an elec-
g. Here Tocqueville seems to invoke the difference that Guizot and most of the Doc-
trinaires establish between democracy, the political form that destroys the legitimate
inequality of intelligence and virtue existing among men and that leads to the despotism
of the greatest number, and representative government that divides power according to
reason. Representative government therefore is not that of the numerical majority pure
and simple, it is that of the majority of those who are capable (des capables ), writes
Francois Guizot ( Journal des cours publics, Paris: au bureau du journal, 18211822, vol.
I, lecture 7, p. 98). If Tocqueville radically rejects Guizots conclusion that makes the
middle class the most capable class, his problem remains nonetheless the same: how to
make the best govern? This question, which marks the entire history of political thought,
had been explained in this way by Tocqueville to Louis de Kergorlay: The most rational
government is not the one in which all those interested take part, but the one that the
most enlightened and most moral classes of society lead (Letter from Yonkers, 29 June
1831, Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, p. 234). Four years later, just after the
publication of the rst part of his book, Tocqueville wrote to Mill:
It is much less a matter for the friends of democracy to nd the means to make the
people govern than to make the people choose those most capable of governing, and
to give the people enough authority over the latter for the people to be able to direct
the whole of their conduct and not the detail of actions or the means of execution.
That is the problem. I am deeply persuaded that on its solution depends the future
fate of modern nations (letter of 3 December 1835, Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI,
1, pp. 3034).
Tocqueville, however, seems only to repeat what Mill had written in his review of the
rst part of Democracy: The best government [ . . . ] must be the government of the
wisest ( John Stuart Mill, De Tocqueville on Democracy in America, London and
Westminster Review, 30, 1835, pp. 11011). See Luiz D ez del Corral, Tocqueville andthe
Political Thought of the Doctrinaires, Alexis de Tocqueville. Livre du centenaire (Paris:
Editions du CNRS, 1960), pp. 5770.
tion resting on universal suffrage (Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 272[273
(ed.)].) This was published without contradiction in America in the year
1830.
This demonstrated to me that those who regard universal suffrage as a
guarantee for good choices are under a complete illusion. Universal suffrage
has other advantages, but not that one.
Of the Causes That Can Partially Correct
These Democratic Instincts
Opposite effects produced on peoples as on men
by great perils.Why America saw so many remarkable men
at the head of its public affairs fty years ago.
Inuence that enlightenment and mores exercise on the choices of
the people.Example of New England.States of
the Southwest.How certain laws inuence the choices of
the people.Indirect election.Its effects on the
composition of the Senate.
When great perils threaten the State, you often see people happily choose
the citizens most appropriate to save them.
It has been remarked that, in pressing danger, man rarely remains at his
usual level; he rises well above, or falls below. The same thing happens to
peoples themselves. Extreme perils, instead of elevating a nation, some-
times nish demoralizing it; they arouse its passions without guiding
them; and, far from enlightening its mind, they trouble it. The Jews still
slit their own throats amid the smoking ruins of the Temple. But, among
nations as among men, it is more common to see extraordinary virtues
arise from very present dangers. Then great characters appear like those
monuments, hidden by the darkness of night, that suddenly stand out
against the glow of a re. Genius is no longer averse to reappearing on its
own, and the people, struck by their own dangers, temporarily forget their
envious passions. Then, it is not uncommon to see celebrated names
emerge from the electoral urn. I said above that in America the statesmen
of today seem
h
greatly inferior to those who appeared at the head of
public affairs fty years ago. This is due not only to laws, but also to
circumstances. When America fought for the most just of causes, that of
one people escaping from the yoke of another people; when it was a mat-
ter of having a new nation emerge in the world, all souls rose to reach the
lofty goal of their efforts. In this general excitement, superior men courted
the people and the people, embracing them, placed themat their head. But
such events are rare; judgment must be based on the ordinary course of
things.
If temporary events sometimes succeed in combating the passions of
democracy, enlightenment and, above all, mores exercise a no less powerful
and more enduring inuence on its inclinations. This is clearly noticed in
the United States.
In New England, where education and liberty are the daughters of mo-
rality and religion, where society, already old and long settled, has beenable
to form maxims and habits, the people, while escaping from all the supe-
riorities that wealth and birth have ever created among men, have become
used to respecting and submitting to intellectual and moral superiorities
without displeasure; consequently, you see democracy in New England
make better choices than anywhere else.
In contrast, as you descend toward the south, in the states where the
social bond is less ancient and less powerful, where instruction is less wide-
spread, and where the principles of morality, religion, and liberty are less
happily combined, you notice that talents and virtues become more and
more rare among those governing.
When, nally, youenter the newstates of the Southwest, wherethesocial
body, formed yesterday, still presents only an agglomerationof adventurers
or speculators, you are astounded to see what hands hold the public power,
and you wonder by what force independent of legislationandmenthe State
can grow and society prosper there.
h. The manuscript says were.
There are certain laws of a democratic nature, however, that succeed in
partially correcting these dangerous democratic instincts.
When you enter the House chamber in Washington, you feel struck by
the vulgar aspect of the great assembly. Often your eye searches in vain for
a celebrated man within the assembly. Nearly all its members are obscure
persons, whose names bring no image to mind. They are, for the most part,
village lawyers, tradesmen, or even men belonging to the lowest classes. In
a country where instruction is nearly universal, it is said that the represen-
tatives of the people do not always know how to write correctly.
j
[<If they speak, their language is usually without dignity and the ideas
they express are devoid of scope and loftiness.>]
Two steps fromthere opens the Senate chamber, whose narrowenclosure
contains a large portion of the famous men of America. You notice hardly
a single man there who does not evoke the idea of recent celebrity. They
are eloquent lawyers, distinguished generals, skilled magistrates, or known
statesmen. All the words that issue from this [august] assembly would do
honor to the greatest parliamentary debates of Europe.
What causes this bizarre contrast? Why is the nations elite found in this
chamber rather than in the other? Why does the rst assembly gather so
many vulgar elements, while the second seems to have a monopoly of tal-
ents and enlightenment? Both come from the people, however; both are
j. The manuscript says: the representatives of the people do not know . . .
Elections./
When the right to vote is universal, and deputies are paid by the State, the choices
of the people can descend and stray to a singular degree.
Two years ago, the inhabitants of the district in which Memphis is the capital,
sent to the House of Representatives of Congress an individual namedDavidCrock-
ett, who has no education, can scarcely read, has no property, no xed abode, but
spends his life hunting, selling his game to make a living, and living constantly in the
woods. His competitor was a man of talent and moderate wealthwho lost. Memphis,
20 December 1831 (YTC, BIIa, notebook E, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 27475).
the result of universal suffrage, and, until now, no voice has been raised in
America to maintain that the Senate might be the enemy of popular in-
terests. So what causes such an enormous difference? I see only a single fact
that explains it. The election that produces the House of Representatives
is direct; the one producing the Senate is subject to two stages. The uni-
versality of citizens names the legislature of each state, andthe federal Con-
stitution, transforming each of these legislatures into electoral bodies,
draws from them the members of the Senate. So the Senators express the
result of universal suffrage, though indirectly. For the legislature, which
names the Senators, is not an aristocratic or privileged body that derives its
electoral right from itself; it is essentially dependent on the universality of
citizens. In general it is elected by themannually, and they canalways direct
its choices by remaking it with new members. But it is sufcient for the
popular will to pass through this chosen assembly in order, in a sense, to
be transformed and to emerge clothed in more noble and more beautiful
forms. So the men elected inthis way always represent exactlythe governing
majority of the nation; but they represent only the elevated thoughts that
circulate in its midst, the generous instincts that animate it, and not the
small passions that often trouble it and the vices that dishonor it.
It is easy to see a moment in the future when the American republics
will be forced to multiply the use of two stages in their electoral system,
under pain of getting miserably lost among the pitfalls of democracy.
k
I will have no difculty in admitting it; I see in indirect election the only
means to put the use of political liberty within reach of all classes of the
people. Those who hope to make this means the exclusive weapon of one
party, and those who fear this means, seem to me to be equally in error.
k. On the contrary, the seventeenth amendment to the American Constitution, ap-
proved 31 May 1913, establishes direct election of Senators, by regularizing in large part
a preexisting situation, by whichthe secondvoters committedthemselves toscrupulously
following the desires expressed by the votes of the rst voters.
Inuence That American Democracy
Has Exercised on Electoral Laws
m
The rarity of elections exposes the State to great crises.
Their frequency keeps it in a feverish agitation.
The Americans have chosen the second of these two evils.
Variableness of the law.Opinion of Hamilton,
Madison and Jefferson on this subject.
When election recurs only at long intervals, the State runs the risk of up-
heaval at each election.
Parties
n
then make prodigious efforts to grasp a fortune that comes so
rarely within reach; and since the evil is almost without remedy for can-
didates who fail, everything must be feared from their ambition driven to
despair. If, in contrast, the legal struggle must soon be renewed, those who
are defeated wait.
When elections follow one another rapidly, their frequency maintains a
feverish movement in society and keeps public affairs in a state of constant
change.
Thus, on the one hand, there is a chance of uneasiness for the State; on
the other, a chance of revolution; the rst system harms the goodness of
government, the second threatens its existence.
The Americans have preferred to expose themselves tothe rst evil rather
than to the second. In that, they have been guided by instinct much more
than by reasoning, since democracy drives the taste for variety to a passion.
The result is a singular mutability in legislation.
Many Americans consider the instability of the laws as a necessary con-
sequence of a system whose general effects are useful.
o
But there is no one
m. In the margin: I believe this small chapter decidedly bad. Hackneyed ideas.
n. Political men in the manuscript. The change was suggested by Beaumont (YTC,
CIIIb, 2, p. 30).
o. Democracy-Aristocracy./
Legislative instability in America./
I have just found one of the strongest proofs of this instability in the laws of
Massachusetts (the most stable state in the Union).
in the United States, I believe, who pretends to deny that this instability
exists or who does not regard it as a great evil.
Hamilton, after having demonstrated the utility of a power that could
prevent or at least slowthe promulgationof badlaws, adds: It may perhaps
be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing
good ones. . . . But this objection will have little weight with those who can
properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the
laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our gov-
ernments (Federalist, No. 73.)
p
[The] facility and excess of lawmaking, says Madison, seemto be the
diseases to which our governments are most liable (Federalist, No. 62).
Jefferson himself, the greatest democrat who has yet emerged from
within the American democracy, pointed out the same perils.
The instability of our laws is really a very serious disadvantage, he says.
I think that we will have to deal with that by deciding that there would
always be an interval of a year between the proposal of a law and the
denitive vote. It would then be discussed and voted, without being able
to change a word, and if circumstances seemed to require a more prompt
resolution, the proposed law could not be adopted by a simple majority,
but by a two-thirds majority of both houses.
1
From 1803 to 1827, the administrative attributions of the Court of Sessions were
changed many times in order to convey them to the Court of Common Pleas. See
Laws of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 98 (YTC, CVb, p. 24). The quotations included in
the text follow.
p. This paragraph and the one preceding belonged to chapter VII of this second part
(p. 407).
1. Letter to Madison, 20 December 1787, translation of Mr. Conseil.
q
q. The second sentence reads differently inthe Frenchtranslationof Conseil (volume
I, pp. 31018; the citation is found on page 318).
Of Public Ofcials under the Dominion
of American Democracy
Simplicity of American ofcials.Lack of ofcial dress.All
ofcials are paid.Political consequences of this fact.In
America, there is no public career.What results from that.
Public ofcials in the United States remain mixed within the crowd of
citizens; they have neither palaces, nor guards, nor ceremonial dress [but
they are all paid]. This simplicity of those who govern is due not only to
a particular turn of the American spirit, but also to the fundamental prin-
ciples of the society.
In the eyes of the democracy, government is not a good, but a necessary
evil. A certain power must be accorded to ofcials; for, without this power,
what purpose would they serve? But the external appearances of power are
not indispensable to the course of public affairs; they needlessly offend the
sight of the public.
Ofcials themselves are perfectly aware that, by their power, they have
not obtained the right to put themselves above others, except on the con-
dition of descending, by their manners, to the level of all.
I can imagine nothing plainer in his ways of acting, more accessible to
all, more attentive to demands, andmore civil inhis responses, thana public
gure in the United States.
I like this natural look of the government of democracy;
r
inthis internal
r. In the manuscript: I like this simple look . . .
I amafraid that a bit of the enthusiasmof a young manmay be seeninthis admiration
for American simplicity. In our old Europe, there is often a need to catch the imag-
ination by a certain pomp, and the simplicities of Louis-Philippe have attracted as
much scorn as his villainies. The author is bold to pronounce himself categorically
against one of the most general ideas. When you have this boldness, you must at least
try to justify your opinion by an example whose truth is striking and perceptible to
everyone. At the end of the second paragraph, which nishes with the words solely
to his own merit, the example would have to be cited of jurors in tail coats who are
more imposing than magistrates in red robes (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 2425).
strength that is attached more to the ofce than to the ofcial, more to the
man than to the external signs of power, I see something manly that I
admire.
As for the inuence that ofcial dress can exercise, I believe that the
importance that it must have ina century suchas ours is greatlyexaggerated.
I have not noticed that in America the ofcial, by being reduced solely to
his own merit, was greeted with less regard and respect in the exercise of
his power.
s
From another perspective, I strongly doubt that a particular garment
leads public mento respect themselves whenthey are not naturallydisposed
to do so; for I cannot believe that they have more regard for their outt
than for their person.
When, among us, I see certain magistrates treat parties brusquely or ad-
dress themwith false courtesy, shrug their shoulders at the means of defense
and smile with complacency at the enumeration of charges, I would like
someone to try to remove their robe, in order to discover if, nding them-
selves dressed as simple citizens, they would not be reminded of the natural
dignity of the human species.
t
No public ofcial in the United States has anofcial dress, but all receive
a salary.
u
Still more naturally than what precedes, this follows from democratic
principles. A democracy can surround its magistrates with pomp and cover
them with silk and gold without directly attacking the principle of its ex-
istence. Such privileges are temporary; they are attached to the position,
and not to the man. But to establish unpaid ofces is to create a class of
rich and independent ofcials, to form the kernel of an aristocracy. If the
s. In the margin: I do not even know if a particular costume does not make what
is lacking in the one wearing it, more salient in the eyes of the public.
t. Herve de Tocqueville: I believe this paragraph should be removed. It would be
good if the book were to be read only by the French; but as it will probably be sought
out by foreigners, I do not know if it is suitable to expose our base acts to them (YTC,
CIIIb, 2, p. 25).
u. This paragraph is missing in the 1835 edition. It appears in the manuscript, but the
wording is a bit different.
people still retain the right to choose, the exercise of the right then has
necessary limits.
When you see a democratic republic make paid ofcials unsalaried, I
believe that youcanconclude that it is moving towardmonarchy. Andwhen
a monarchy begins to pay unsalaried ofces, it is the sure sign that you are
advancing toward a despotic state or toward a republican state.
v
So the substitution of salaried ofces for unpaid ofces seems to me to
constitute, in itself alone, a true revolution.
I regard the complete absence of unpaid ofces as one of the most visible
signs of the absolute dominion that democracy exercises in America. Ser-
vices rendered to the public, whatever they may be, are paid there; more-
over, each person has, not only the right, but also the possibility of ren-
dering them.
If, in democratic States, all citizens can gain positions, not all are
tempted to try to obtain them. It is not the conditions of candidacy, but
the number and the capacity of the candidates that often limit the choice
of the voters.
w
For peoples among whom the principle of election extends to every-
thing, there is no public career strictly speaking. Ina way menreachofces
only by chance, and they have no assurance of remaining there. That is
true above all when elections are annual. As a result, in times of calm,
v. Public ofces./
Little power of ofcials, their large number, their dependence on the people, little
stability in their position, the mediocrity of their emoluments, the ease of making a
fortune in another way, fact that few capable persons aspire to the leadership of so-
ciety, except in times of crisis.
Disposition that tends to make government less skillful, but that assures liberty./
Every position that demands a certain apprenticeship and a special knowledge
must usually be poorly lled in America. Who would want to prepare at length to
gain what a caprice or even the ordinary order of things can take away fromyou from
one moment to another? (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 45).
w. This paragraph does not appear in the manuscript. The following note is found
in the margin: Inuence of election and of repeated election on the personnel of
ofcials. More public careers in ordinary times. Example of the Romans ready for any-
thing because elected.
public ofces offer little lure to ambition. In the United States, it is men
of moderate desires who commit themselves to the twists and turns of
politics. Great talents and great passions generally move away frompower,
in order to pursue wealth; and often someone takes charge of leading the
fortune of the State only when he feels little capable of conducting his
own affairs.
The great number of vulgar men who occupy public ofces must be
attributed to these causes as much as to the bad choices of democracy.
In the United States, I do not know if the people would choose superior
men who bid for their votes, but it is certain that the latter do not bid for
them.
Of the Arbitrariness of Magistrates
2
under the
Dominion of American Democracy
x
Why the arbitrariness of magistrates is greater under
absolute monarchies and in democratic republics than
in limited monarchies.Arbitrariness of magistrates
in New England.
There are two types of government in which a great deal of arbitrariness
is joined with the action of magistrates; it is so under the absolute govern-
ment of one man and under the government of democracy.
y
2. Here, I understand the word magistrate in its broadest sense; I apply it to all those who
are charged with executing the laws.
x. Put this chapter next to the one that deals with the despotism of the majority.
Despotism and arbitrariness are two. For this chapter, see pocket notebook number 3,
p. 15. All the main ideas are there. To nd examples (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 74). See the note
for 14 October 1831, pocket notebook 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 183.
y. Herve de Tocqueville: Yes, there can be a great deal of arbitrariness under the
absolute government of one man. Under the regular government of democracy there is
free will and not arbitrariness, which is very different. I observe that despotism as the
author depicts it exists only in Turkey, but is found to this extent in no other European
State (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 27). Herve repeats this same observation about arbitrariness
in other places (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 27 and 34).
This same result comes from almost analogous causes.
In despotic States, no ones fate is assured, not that of public ofcials
any more than that of simple individuals. The sovereign, always holding
in his hand the life, fortune and sometimes the honor of the men he em-
ploys, thinks that he has nothing to fear from them; and he leaves them
great freedom of action, because he thinks he is assured that they will never
use that freedom against him.
In despotic States, the sovereign is so in love with his power that he fears
the constraint of his own rules; and he loves to see his agents go more or
less haphazardly in order to be sure never to nd among them a tendency
contrary to his desires.
Nor indemocracies does the majority fear that power will be usedagainst
it, because every year it canremove power fromthe hands of those towhom
power has been conded. Able at every moment to make its will known to
those who govern, the majority prefers to abandonthemtotheir ownefforts
rather than to bend them to an invariable rule that, by limiting those who
govern, would in a sense limit the majority itself.
You even discover, looking closely, that under the dominion of democ-
racy, the arbitrariness of the magistrate must be still greater thanindespotic
States.
This entire chapter is very obscure and the mind must work to followthe connection
of ideas. That comes about partly because the author sometimes used certain words
that do not exactly have the meaning that he wants to give them. Starting with the
title, the word arbitrariness loses meaning, because arbitrariness is commonly un-
derstood as the action of a power that is placed or puts itself above the law, and acts
without concern for legal prescriptions. Such is not the type of action of magistrates
in America. The law leaves innitely more to their judgment than anywhere else. But
there is no arbitrariness there. I propose to put, in place of arbitrariness, the free will
of magistrates, etc. Next, I do not know why the author struggles so much to tell us
about despotic government, which is not in his subject, and throws himself into
abstract thoughingenious denitions inorder to tell us a truththat couldbe expressed
with less difculty, to knowthat the Americans leave great latitude andgreat freedom
of action to their magistrates, because frequent elections banish all fear of the abuse
that they could make of it (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 2627).
In these States, the sovereign can punish in a moment all the misdeeds
that he notices, but he cannot atter himself that he notices all the misdeeds
that he should punish. In democracies, on the contrary, the sovereign is
simultaneously omnipotent and omnipresent. You see, therefore, that
American ofcials are much freer within the circle of action that the law
traces for them than any ofcial in Europe. Often the Americans limit
themselves to showing ofcials the end toward which they must aim, leav-
ing them with the authority to choose the means.
In NewEngland, for example, the duty to drawupthe jury list is referred
to the selectmen of each town. The only rule that is stipulated is this: they
must choose the jurors from among those citizens who enjoy the right to
vote and who are of good reputation.
3
In France, we would believe the lives and liberty of men at risk if we
conded the exercise of so fearsome a right to an ofcial, whoever he was.
In New England, these same magistrates can have the names of drunk-
ards posted in taverns and, by penalty of a ne, prevent the occupants from
providing them with wine.
4
Such a censorial power would outrage people in the most absolute mon-
archy; here, however, people submit without difculty.
Nowhere has the law left a larger portion of arbitrariness than in dem-
ocratic republics, because there does not seem to be any reason to fear ar-
bitrariness. You can even say that, as the right to vote expands and as the
term in ofce becomes more limited, the magistrate becomes freer.
3. See the law of 27 February 1813. General Collection of the Laws of Massachusetts,
vol. II, p. 331. It must be said that afterward the jurors are drawn by lot from the lists.
4. Law of February 28, 1787. See General Collection of the Laws of Massachusetts,
vol. I, p. 302. Here is the text:
That the selectmen in each town shall cause to be posted up in the houses and shops of all
taverners, innholders and retailers [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] a list of the names of all persons reputed
common drunkards, [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] or common gamesters, misspending their time and
estate in such houses. And every keeper of such house or shop, after notice given him, as
aforesaid, that shall be convicted, [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] of entertaining or suffering any of the
persons, in such a list, to drink or tipple, or game, in his or her house, [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] or
of selling them spirituous liquor, as aforesaid, shall forfeit and pay [the sum of thirty
shillings (ed.)].
That is why it is so difcult to have a democratic republic become a
monarchy. The magistrate, while ceasing to be elective, usually keeps the
rights and preserves the customs of the elected magistrates. Thenyouarrive
at despotism.
z
Only inlimited monarchies does the law, while drawing a circle of action
around public ofcials, still take care at the same time to guide themat each
step. The reason for this fact is easy to state.
In limited monarchies, power is divided between the people and the
prince. Both are interested in having the position of the magistrate stable.
The prince does not want to put the fate of ofcials back into the hands
of the people, for fear that the ofcials will betray his authority; on their
side, the people are afraid that the magistrates, placed in absolute depen-
dence on the prince, will help to crush liberty; so, in a way, the magistrates
are made to depend on no one.
The same reason that leads the prince and the people to make the ofcial
independent, leads them to seek guarantees against the abuse of his inde-
pendence, so that he does not turn against the authority of the one or the
liberty of the other. Both agree, therefore, on the need to trace in advance
a line of conduct for the public ofcial, andndit intheir interest toimpose
rules on him that are impossible for him to evade.
z. This idea is found in Montesquieu, who asserts: There is no authority more ab-
solute than that of a prince who succeeds the republic: for he nds himself with all the
power of the people who were not able to limit themselves (Conside rations sur les causes
de la grandeur des Romains et de leur de cadence, chapter XV, in Oeuvres comple `tes, Paris:
Pleiade, 1951, II, p. 150). In the Republic (Book VIII, 564), Plato had already noted that
extreme liberty would necessarily be followed by extreme subjection.
Administrative Instability in the United States
In America, the actions of society often leave fewer traces than
the actions of a family.Newspapers, the only historical
memorials.How extreme administrative instability
harms the art of governing.
Men hold power only for an instant and then are lost in a crowd that, itself,
changes face every day; as a result, the actions of society in America often
leave less trace than the actions of a simple family.
a
Public administration
there is, in a way, oral and traditional. Nothing is put in writing, or what
is put in writing ies away with the slightest wind, like the leaves of the
Sybil, and disappears forever.
The only historical memorials of the United States are newspapers. If
an issue happens to be missing, the chain of time is as if broken: present
and past are no longer joined. I do not doubt that in fty years it will be
more difcult to gather authentic documents about the details of the social
existence of the Americans of today, than about the administration of the
French of the Middle Ages; and if an invasion of barbarians happened to
surprise the United States, it would be necessary, in order to know some-
thing about the people who live there, to resort to the history of other
nations.
Administrative instability began by entering into habits; I could almost
say that today each person has ended up by acquiring the taste for it. No
one is worried about what was done before. No method is adopted; no
collection is assembled; no documents are gathered, even when it would be
easy to do so. When by chance someone has them in his possession, he
hardly holds onto them. Among my papers, I have original pieces that were
given to me in the ofces of the public administration in order to answer
some of my questions. In America, society seems to live from day to day,
like an army inthe eld. Yet, the art of administrationis denitely a science;
a. Variant: <. . . a singular instability in the course of administrative affairs. No
one nishes what he began; no one hopes to nish what he begins.>
and all sciences, to progress, need to link together the discoveries of dif-
ferent generations as they succeed each other. One man, in the short space
of a life, notices a fact, another conceives anidea; this one invents a method,
that one nds a formula; humanity gathers along the way these various
fruits of individual experiences and forms the sciences. It is very difcult
for American administrators to learn anything from one another. There-
fore, they bring to the conduct of society the knowledge that they nd
widespread in society, but not the learning that is their own.
b
Sodemocracy,
pushed to its extreme limits, harms progress in the art of governing.
c
From
this perspective, it is better suited to a people whose administrative edu-
cation is already formed than to a people who are inexperienced novices in
public affairs.
This, moreover, does not relate uniquely to administrative science.
d
Democratic government, which is based upon such a simple and natural
idea, always supposes the existence of a very civilized and learned society.
5
At rst you would think it contemporaneous with the earliest ages of the
world; looking more closely, you easily discover that it could have come
about only during the last.
e
[If nations had begun with democratic government, I doubt they would
ever have become civilized.]
b. In the margin: Dem[ocratic (ed.)] government, the chef-doeuvre of civilization
and enlightenment.
c. Legislative instability in America, its effects, its causes./
Mutability of public ofcials. Madison proves very ingeniously that this mutability,
apart from its recognized ill effects, diminishes the responsibility of ofcials. Newprop-
osition, Federalist, p. 271 [No. 63 (ed.)] (YTC, CVb, p. 25).
After the electoral system, a small chapter onlegislative andadministrativeinstability
in America is absolutely necessary. Show how, since nothing has any follow-up, no one
can nish what he began. In this way responsibility diminished instead of increased, as
is believed (Federalist, p. 268 [No. 62 (ed.)]) (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 27).
d. On Tocqueville and the science of administration, see Roland Drago, Actualite
de Tocqueville (Tocqueville et ladministration), Revue des sciences morales et politiques,
139, 1984, pp. 63349.
5. It is unnecessary to say that here I am talking about democratic government applied to
a people and not to a small tribe.
e. In the margin: Is this clear and developed enough? Ask G[ustave (ed.)] and
L[ouis(ed.)]?
Of Public Expenses under the Dominion
of American Democracy
In all societies, citizens are divided into a certain
number of classes.Instinct that each of these classes brings to
the management of the nances of the State.Why public
expenses must tend to increase when the people govern.
What renders the lavish expenditures of democracy less to fear in
America.Use of public monies under democracy.
Is democratic government economical? First of all, we must know to what
we mean to compare it.
The question would be easy to resolve if we wanted to establisha parallel
between a democratic republic and an absolute monarchy [v: despotic
State]. We would nd that public expenditures in the rst are more con-
siderable than in the second.
f
But this is the case in all free States, compared
to those that are not free. It is certain that despotism ruins men more by
preventing them from being productive, than by taking the fruits of pro-
duction from them; it dries up the source of wealth and often respects ac-
quired wealth. Liberty, in contrast, gives birth to a thousand times more
goods than it destroys, and, among nations that knowliberty, the resources
of the people always increase faster than taxes.
g
f. In chapter VIII of book III of the Social Contract (Contrat social ), Rousseau had
asserted, on the contrary, that the democratic form was the least costly.
g. E
This entire paragraph seems to me to leave much to be desired. The rst sentence
presents, with the tone of afrmation, a proposition that is in no way evident; there
have been and there still are very economical absolute monarchies; witness Austria,
Prussia today. What I criticize most in this piece is that you seem to confuse two
perfectly distinct things: the comparatively high level of public expenses and the
sources of wealth; it is certain that generally the latter must increase with liberty; as
for the reduction of public expenses, that is less sure. All that one can say is that, with
an absolute government, economy can never be permanent because a prodigal prince
may succeed an economical prince, but this economical prince can be found and is
found often enough. So I would propose softening the beginning of this paragraph
What is important to me at this moment is to compare free peoples, and
among the latter to note what inuence democracy exercises onthe nances
of the State.
Societies, just as organized bodies do, follow certain rules in their for-
mation that they cannot evade. They are composedof certainelements that
are found everywhere and in all times.
It will always be easy to divide each people ideally into three classes.
The rst class will be composed of the rich. The second will include
those who, without being rich, live well-off in all things. The third will
contain all those who have only few or no properties and who live particu-
larly from the work provided to them by the rst two classes.
The individuals included in these different categories canbe more or less
numerous, depending on the social state [added: and the laws]; but you
cannot make these categories cease to exist.
It is evident that each of these classes will bring its own distinctive in-
stincts to the handling of the nances of the State.
Suppose that the rst makes the laws. Probably it will be little concerned
with economizing public monies, because a tax that happens to strike a
considerable fortune only takes what is superuous and produces an effect
that is little felt.
h
and nishing the rst page as follows: Still this principle can have some exceptions,
but what is beyond doubt is that despotism ruins peoples much more by preventing them
from being productive than by taking the fruits of production from them. That way the
two ideas are distinct (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 67).
h. E
This proposition can be and will be contested; in most States, the rich are not so rich
as to be indifferent to the total amount of the tax that strikes their fortune. I do not
even know if they have ever been seen to be so; and in France in the time of the great
lords and great fortunes, it was the rich who screamed the most when taxes were
increased. So this paragraph is applicable only to the class of courtiers that one tried
hard to confuse with all of the nobility, but that had never been more than a very
small portion. All the nobles of the provinces and the rich who did not dissipate their
income at the court desired economy in nances and saw public expenses increase
with great disgust (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 7).
Assume, on the contrary, that the middle classes alone make the law. You
can count on the fact that they will not be lavish with taxes, because there
is nothing so disastrous as a heavy tax that happens to strike a small
j
fortune.
It seems to me that, among free governments, the government of the
middle classes must be,
k
I will not say the most enlightened, nor, especially,
the most generous, but the most economical.
m
Now I suppose that the last class is exclusively charged with making the
law; I clearly see the chance for public expenses to increase instead of de-
crease, and this for two reasons.
Since the greatest portion of those who in that case vote the law have
no taxable property, all the money expended in the interest of society seems
to be only to their prot, never to their harm; and those who have some
bit of property easily nd the means to x the tax so that it hits only the
rich and prots only the poor, something that the rich cannot do in their
case when they are in control of the government.
So countries in which the poor
6
would exclusively be charged with mak-
j. Herve de Tocqueville: The word small is badly used applying to the middle class.
Mediocre or something equivalent should be used (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 11).
k. In the manuscript: . . . the government of the middle classes is the most eco-
nomical . . .
Gustave de Beaumont: I nd the assertion presented in much too strong a form.
Theoretically that appears true to me. And yet it is only a theory. I would put seems to
be so by its nature (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 2021).
The assertion of the author is contradicted by the example of France. Never has more
been wasted, never have there been larger budgets than since the middle class has
governed. I will observe in passing that the government of the middle class is, at
bottom, only a small aristocracy on a larger scale. Attached to democracy by number,
to aristocracy by the insolence and harshness of the parvenu, this government would
be well able to have the vices of both. I urge Alexis to reect on this again (YTC,
CIIIb, 2, p. 11).
6. You clearly understand that here, as in the rest of the chapter, the word poor has a
relative sense and not an absolute meaning. The poor of America, compared with those of
Europe, could frequently appear rich; you can correctly call them the poor, however, when
you contrast them to those of their fellow citizens who are richer than they.
n
ing the law could not hope for great economy in public expenditures; these
expenditures will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot reach
those who vote, or because they are xed so as not to reach them. In other
words, the government of democracy is the only one in which the one who
votes the taxes can escape the obligation to pay them.
You will object in vain that the well understood interest of the people
o
is to handle the fortune of the rich carefully, because it would not take long
for the people to feel the effects of any difculties caused. But isnt it also
the interest of kings to make their subjects happy, and that of the nobles
to know how to open their ranks opportunely? If long-term interest could
prevail over the passions and needs of the moment, there would never have
been tyrannical sovereigns or exclusive aristocracies.
You will stop me here, saying: Who ever imagined charging the poor
alone with making the law? Who! Those who have established universal
suffrage. Is it the majority or the minority that makes the law? Undoubtedly
the majority; and if I prove that the poor always make up the majority,
wont I be correct to add that in countries where the poor are called to vote,
they alone make the law?
Now, it is certain that until now, among all the nations of the world, the
greatest number has always been composed of those who had no property,
or of those whose property was too limited for them to be able to live com-
fortably without working. So universal suffrage really gives the government
of society to the poor.
The poor must be deleted everywhere; on the one hand, it does not present a suf-
ciently clear idea and, onthe other hand, does not agree withthe conditioninAmerica
of the class that the author wants to indicate. He says further along that this class
lives in afuence, and an effort must always be made to connect ideas to America.
Without that, there would be no unity in the composition. I would put here in place
of poor, the country in which the last class that I named, etc.
To the side, in the handwriting of Alexis de Tocqueville according to the copyist: The
wordpoor has a relative, not anabsolute meaning. The Americanpoor couldoftenappear
rich compared to those of Europe. But they [above: count as] are always the poor [above:
the class of the poor] if you compare themto those of their fellowcitizens who are richer
than they (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 12).
o. The manuscript says the lower classes.
The unfortunate inuence that popular power can sometimes exercise
over the nances of the State made itself clear in certain democratic re-
publics of antiquity, in which the public treasury was exhausted to help
indigent citizens, or to give games and spectacles to the people.
It is true to say that the representative system was almost unknown in
antiquity.
p
Today, popular passions arise with more difculty in public af-
fairs; you can, however, count on the fact that, in the long run, the delegate
will always end by conforming to the spirit of his constituents and by mak-
ing their propensities as well as their interests prevail.
[This same tendency is even more noticeable in England with the poor
tax, the only tax that is established by the people, that prots only them,
and that has a democratic origin and object.]
The profusions of democracy are, moreover, less to be feared the more
people become property owners, because then, on the one hand, the people
have less need for the money of the rich and, on the other hand, they en-
counter more difculties establishing a tax that does not hit them. From
this perspective, universal suffrage would be less dangerous in France than
in England, where nearly all taxable property is gathered in a few hands.
America, where the great majority of citizens own property, is in a more
favorable situation than France.
Still other causes can raise the sum of public expenditures in democ-
racies.
q
When the aristocracy governs, the men who conduct State affairs escape
all needs by their very position; content with their lot, they ask above all
p. Of the principle of representation./
It is the principle of representation that eminently distinguishes modernrepublics
from ancient republics.
Partially known in antiquity however. See Federalist, p. 273 [No. 63 (ed.)].
Superiority that it gives to the modern ones, practicability of the republic.
It tends to be weakened more and more in America.
Frequency of elections. Dependence of power on the people. Binding mandates.
Public vote (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 56).
q. In the manuscript, what follows forms a section entitled: other causes that
make public expenditures rise higher under democratic government
than under others.
for power and glory from society; and, placed above the anonymous crowd
of citizens, they do not always see clearly howthe general welfarenecessarily
works toward their own grandeur. It is not that they see the sufferings of
the poor without pity; but they cannot feel the miseries of the poor as
though they shared them themselves. As long as the people seem to be con-
tent with their own fortune, these men consider themselves satised and
expect nothing more from the government. Aristocracy thinks more about
maintaining than improving.
r
When, on the contrary, public power is in the hands of the people, the
sovereign power seeks everywhere for something better, because it has a
sense of unease.
The spirit of amelioration then extends to a thousand different objects;
it gets down to innite details and is applied, above all, to types of ame-
lioration that cannot be achieved except by paying; for it is a matter of
improving the condition of the poor who cannot help themselves.
In addition there exists in democratic societies an agitation without a
specic aim; a sort of permanent fever reigns there that turns toward all
kinds of innovation, and innovations are nearly always costly.
r. In the manuscript: When the aristocracy governs society, the only necessary care
it has for the people is to prevent an uprising against it.
This sentence is harsh though true. But let us not forget that the violent acts of the
Revolution came from the fact that this truth had penetrated the people too deeply.
Let us not once again put on the foreheads of the upper classes this mark that has
been so deadly to them. It is more than useless for Alexis to alienate himself from
these classes. So this sentence must be cut or softened. It can be cut without disad-
vantage to what follows. Then the chapter would begin in this way: When the gov-
erning power is placed in the people, the spirit of amelioration is extended to a host of
objects.
If Alexis absolutely does not want to sacrice it, this must be inserted: The aris-
tocracy has often been reproached for not having a care for the people, etc. Then it is not
he who pronounces and condemns; he is only reporting an opinion current in the
world.
E
douard de Tocqueville: This observation seems just to me (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 13

14).
Gustave de Beaumont: Idea much too absolute that is suitable to modify (YTC,
CIIIb, 2, p. 21).
In monarchies and in aristocracies, the ambitious atter the natural taste
that carries the sovereign power toward fame and power, and they often
push it therefore toward great expenditures.
In democracies, where the sovereign power is needy, you can hardly gain
its good will except by increasing its well-being; that can hardly ever be
done except with money.
s
Moreover, when the people themselves begin to reect ontheir position,
a host of needs arises that they had not felt at rst and that can only be
satised by turning to the resources of the State. As a result, public expenses
seem generally to increase with civilization, and you see taxes rise as en-
lightenment spreads.
t
Finally, a last cause often makes democratic government more expensive
than another. Sometimes the democracy wants to economize on its expen-
ditures, but it cannot succeed in doing so, because it does not have the art
of being economical.
As the democracy frequently changes views and, still more frequently,
changes agents, it happens that enterprises are poorly conducted or remain
incomplete. In the rst case, the State makes expenditures disproportionate
s. In the margin: Isnt this subtle?
t. In the manuscript, this paragraph nishes in this way: . . . taxes generally increase
with enlightenment; and public expenses with civilization whichshouldseeminglymake
them almost unnecessary.
Herve de Tocqueville: This is nothing less than clear [sic ]. I do not understand why
civilization should make public expenses nearly unnecessary.
E
douard de Tocqueville: Nor do I (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 14).

Here are two divisions of the chapter devoted to generalities. But the author comes
to no conclusion, and the reader will not fail to complain about it. He proves very
well that democratic government is and must be expensive. But he does not arrive at
the application that is indispensable to justify a theory. Is American democratic gov-
ernment proportionately more expensive than another; are public expenditures
higher there? Not only must the author say so, but he must also explain why, give
certainexamples. If he has refrainedbecause he is going todosolater, he must indicate
it here. It is impossible for this division to end in this way, in a vague way.
E
douard de Tocqueville: That is very true (YTC, CIII b, 2, p. 14).

to the grandeur of the end that it wishes to achieve; in the second, it makes
unproductive expenditures.
Of the Instincts of American Democracy in
Determining the Salaries of Ofcials
In democracies, those who institute large salaries
do not have the chance to prot from them.Tendency of the
American democracy to raise the salaries of secondary ofcials
and to lower those of principal ofcials.Why this is so.
Comparative picture of the salary of public ofcials in the
United States and in France.
One great reason leads democracies, ingeneral, to economize onthe salaries
of public ofcials.
In democracies, since those who institute the salaries are very numerous,
they have very little chance ever to get them.
In aristocracies, on the contrary, those who institute large salaries almost
always have a vague hope to prot fromthem. These salaries are capital that
they create for themselves, or at the very least resources that they prepare
for their children.
It must be admitted, however, that democracy appears to be very par-
simonious only toward its principal agents.
In America, ofcials of secondary rank are paid more than elsewhere,
but high ofcials are paid much less. [{There are states in which the Gov-
ernor receives less money as a salary than one of our sub-prefects.}]
These opposite effects are produced by the same cause; the people, in
both cases, set the salaries of public ofcials. They think about their own
needs, and this comparison guides them. Since they themselves live ingreat
comfort, it seems natural to them that those who are serving them share
it.
7
But when it is time to set the lot of the great ofcers of the State, this
rule escapes them, and they proceed only haphazardly.
7. The comfort in which secondary ofcials live in the United States is also due to another
The poor man does not have a clear idea of the needs that the superior
classes of society may feel. What would appear to be a modest sum to a
rich man, appears to be a prodigious sum to the poor man who contents
himself with whats necessary; and he considers that the Governor of the
state, provided with his two thousand e cus, should still be happy and excite
envy.
8
If you try to make him understand that the representative of a great
nation must appear with a certain splendor in the eyes of foreigners, he will
understand you at rst. But when, thinking about his simple dwelling and
about the modest fruits of his hard labor, he thinks about all that he could
do with this very salary that you judge insufcient, he will nd himself
surprised and almost frightened by the sight of such riches.
Add that the secondary ofcial is nearly at the level of the people, while
the other towers above them. So the rst can still excite their interest, but
the other begins to arouse their envy.
This is seen very clearly in the United States, where salaries seem in a
way to decrease as the power of the ofcials grows greater.
9
cause. This one is foreign to the general instincts of democracy: every type of private career is
highly productive. The State would not nd secondary ofcials if it did not agree to pay them
well. So it is in the position of a commercial enterprise, obliged, whatever its tastes for economy,
to sustain a burdensome competition.
8. The state of Ohio, whichhas a millioninhabitants, gives the Governor only 1,200dollars
in salary or 6,504 francs.
9. To make this truth clear to all, it is sufcient to examine the salaries of some of the
agents of the federal government.
u
I thought the salary attached, in France, to the analogous
ofce should be placed in juxtaposition, in order for the comparison to enlighten the reader.
United States
Treasury Department
Attendant 3,734 fr.
The lowest paid clerk 5,420 fr.
The highest paid clerk 8,672 fr.
Chief Clerk 10,840 fr.
Secretary of State [sic: of the Treasury] 32,520 fr.
The President 135,000 fr.
Under the dominion of aristocracy, onthe contrary, highofcials receive
very large emoluments, while lower level ones often have hardly enoughon
which to live. It is easy to nd the reason for this fact in causes analogous
to those that we have indicated above.
w
If the democracy does not imagine the pleasures of the rich man or
envies them, the aristocracy from its perspective does not understand the
miseries of the poor man; or rather it is unaware of them. The poor man
is not, strictly speaking, similar to the rich man; he is a being of another
species. So the aristocracy worries very little about the fate of its lower level
agents. It raises their salaries only when they refuse to serve for too small a
price.
The parsimonious tendency of democracy toward principal ofcials has
caused great economical propensities to be attributed to democracy that it
does not have.
It is true that democracy gives scarcely what is needed to live honestly
to those who govern it, but it spends enormous sums to relieve the needs
France
Ministry of Finance
Attendant of the Minister 1,500 fr.
The lowest paid clerk 1,000 to 1,800 fr.
The highest paid clerk 3,200 to 3,600 fr.
Chief Clerk 20,000 fr.
Minister 80,000 fr.
The King 12,000,000 fr.
Perhaps I was wrong to take France as the point of comparison. In France, where, daily,
democratic instincts increasingly penetrate the government, you already notice a strong ten-
dency that leads the Chambers to raise small salaries and above all to lower the large ones.
v
Thus the Minister of Finance, who, in 1834, receives 80,000 fr., received 160,000 under the
Empire; the general directors of nance, who receive 20,000, then received 50,000.
u. In various articles about public expenditures in the United States and in France,
which we will speak about later (see note j for p. 349), comparisons of this type abound.
v. Ask Mr. Livingstonif apart fromthe clerks inthe AmericanTreasuryDepartment,
there are still lower paid employees (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 11).
w. Herve de Tocqueville: I ask for the deletion of this paragraph and the following
for the reason that I gave on page 135. They are, moreover, superuous and entirely
unnecessary, because the author is not treating aristocracy. In addition, they are written
with a bitterness against the aristocracy that cannot come from the pen of Alexis and
that will bring his impartiality into question (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 15). Cf. note r for p. 338.
or to facilitate the pleasures of the people.
10
That is a better use of the tax
revenue, not an economy.
In general, democracy gives little to those who govern and a great deal
to the governed. The opposite is seen in aristocracies where the money of
the State prots above all the class that leads public affairs.
Difculty of Discerning the Causes That Lead the
American Government to Economy
x
[In the silence of his study, the observer draws up general rules, and he
believes that he has grasped the truth. But a fact, the rst cause of which
is often lost in the night, appears in his thoughts, and it seems to him that
truth is escaping from him.]
The man who searches among facts for the real inuence exercised by
laws on the fate of humanity is exposed to great errors, for there is nothing
so difcult to appreciate as a fact.
One people is naturally thoughtless and enthusiastic; another, reective
10. See among other items, in American budgets, what it costs for the support of the poor
and for free education.
In 1831, in the state of New York, the sum of 1,200,000 francs was spent for the support
of the poor. And the sum devoted to public education was estimated to amount to 5,420,000
francs at least (Williams New York Annual Register, 1832, pp. 205 and 243).
The state of New York in 1830 had only 1,900,000 inhabitants, which is not double the
population of the departement du Nord.
x. Former title: that reasons taken from the mores of a people often
disrupt or modify general arguments.
The title [This concerns the denitive title (ed.)] of this division does not seemgood
to me for two reasons. First, it establishes a sort of contradiction with the preceding
chapters, which established that democratic government is not economical; then the
difculty is suddenly resolvedinthe chapter. I propose changing this title andputting:
of the causes for the economy of the american government for cer-
tain objects. As for the rest, the chapter is very good. I will make only one ob-
servation to which I do not attach great importance; the author assumes preliminary
knowledge in his reader. He reasons as if the reader already knewthat the Americans
like neither the luxury of festivals, nor that of buildings (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 16).
and calculating. This is due to their physical constitution itself or todistant
causes that I do not know.
y
Yousee peoples who love show, noise andpleasure, andwhodonot regret
spending a million that goes up in smoke. You see others who value only
solitary pleasures and who seem ashamed to appear contented.
In certain countries, a great price is attached to the beauty of buildings.
In certain others, no value whatsoever is placed on objects of art, and what
has no return is scorned. Finally, there are some in which fame is loved, and
others in which money is placed before all else.
Apart from the laws, all these causes inuence in a very powerful way
the management of the nances of the State.
If the Americans have never happened to spend the peoples money on
public festivals, it is not only because, among them, the people vote the tax;
it is because the people do not like to enjoy themselves.
If they reject ornament in their architecture and prize only material and
real advantages, it is not only because they are a democratic nation, but also
because they are a commercial people.
The habits of private life are continued in public life; and among the
Americans the economies that depend on institutions and those that follow
from habits and mores must be clearly distinguished.
z
y. Fragment of a rst version in the manuscript:
There is indeed in the bent of the ideas and tastes of a people a hidden force that
struggles with advantage against revolutions and time. This intellectual physiognomy
of nations, which is called their character, is found throughout all the centuries of
their history and amid the innumerable changes that take place in the social state,
beliefs and laws. A strange thing! What is least perceptible and most difcult todene
among a people is at the same time what you nd most enduring among them. Ev-
erything changes among them except the character, which disappears only with na-
tions themselves.
z. In the margin: The beginning of the chapter does not exactly correspond to the
end. The beginning contains a general idea on national character; the end contains a
clear and precise observation on what gives the Americans their character.
[Inuence of the Government of
Democracy on the Tax Base
{and on the Use of the Tax Revenues}]
a
[The form of government greatly inuences the tax base. The instinct of
the aristocracy
b
leads it to handle the producer carefully {and to burdenthe
consumer} because the aristocracy holds the sources of wealth. It is the
opposite for the democracy, which willingly takes onthe producer andhan-
a. The advice of L[ouis (ed.)]. is that the ideas of this chapter are questionable, that
in any case they are presented too succinctly and in a supercial way (YTC, CVh, 3,
p. 90).
A rst version of this part is found in YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 7480; it presents numerous
differences from the manuscript version. Notably, the opening of this draft states:
I knowthat minds are much preoccupied with comparing the expenses of the United
States with ours. If such were not the disposition of the public, I would not have
done this chapter. For I am convinced that such a comparison is necessarily incom-
plete and, consequently, unproductive and that, were it complete, the truth would
not be self-evident. It canbe useful only tothose whoare lookingfor gures tosupport
their ideas and not to those who want truth to emerge from gures (p. 74).
b. Herve de Tocqueville:
I do not believe the word aristocracy is very applicable here. The same thing would
happen in a democracy in which the governing party was, in the majority, composed
of owners of landed properties, large or small.
This division has the same fault as one of the preceding ones; it leaves the reader
almost completely wanting in terms of facts. We see clearly that the Americans have
not wanted one tax, but you do not say what taxes they do want. A detailed account
of this subject would be useless. But at least it would be necessary to tell us the nature
of the taxes and to justify, with examples, the truth of the theory that the author is
establishing. If by chance in America there was no contribution based on land, as I
believe, andthe producer was thus treatedvery carefully, thenthe chapter wouldcome
crashing down and it would have to be revised. I have a vague memory of having
heard that there were only indirect taxes in America, and we knowthat indirect taxes
weigh particularly on the consumer. I believe that the customs duties are the principal
revenue of the American government (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 1617).
dles the consumer carefully, because the resources of the people
c
scarcely
reach the level of the ordinary prices of objects of consumption.
Among the English, land has not been taxed and indirect taxes have
been multiplied. All the exemptions have been made in favor of the rich,
while taxes that hit only the poor have always continued to grow. In
America, when the legislature attempted to establish a tax on fermented
liquors, a revolt ensued and in 1794 the legislature was forced to repeal
the law.
[
*
]
Only the despotism of one man is indifferent to the tax base. Its in-
stinct leads it only to strike the taxpayer most able to give and least able
to resist.]
d
[Inuence of Democratic Government
on the Use of Tax Revenues]
[The partisans of democracy claim that the government of democracy is
more economical than any other, and I think they are mistaken. If they
said, instead, that, of all governments, democratic government is the one
that generally makes best use of tax revenues, they would put themselves,
I believe, on their true ground.
c. E
This sentence is completely unintelligible to me; the resources of the people hardly
reach the level of the price of the most ordinary objects of consumption would seem
understandable, but the thought still would not seem sound to me. Here you fall, I
think, into the fault, almost inevitable for a European, of using the word people for
lowpeople or populace. Well, even in France the resources of the people, of the mass,
often reach beyond the price of ordinary consumer objects, that is to say, food and
clothing; with greater reason, can you say that in America, where the greatest comfort
reigns for the mass, in such a country can you say that the people willingly take on
the producer? I do not believe it, for they wouldbe takingonthemselves as consumers.
The more economical the price of production, the more the objects of consumption
fall within reach of the people; and when the latter have tasted these consumer ob-
jects, the objects become needs for them (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 9).
[*]. See Marshall, Life of Washington, and Pitkin.
d. Cf. Montesquieu, De lesprit des lois, book XIII, chapter XIV, in Oeuvres comple`tes
(Paris: Pleiade, 1951), II, pp. 46768, and Rousseau, Discours sur le conomie politique, in
Oeuvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade, 1964), III, pp. 24178.
I spoke above about the squanderings of democracy {bread and spec-
tacles the Romans of the decline would say}, but such excesses are rare and
are ordinarily found during the centuries when enlightenment is weak and
corruption very great. If the government of democracy levies more con-
siderable sums on society than another government, it generally uses public
monies for objects of a more certain and more extensive utility and uses
them to relieve more real needs.
e
Incontestably, democracies have never
built the palace of Versailles, nor based the political world on money as the
aristocracy of England has done.
f
Apart from its direct inuence on the object of public expenditures, the
government of democracy exercises still another inuence, no less great,
on howthey are handled. Democratic institutions tend to make habits sim-
pler and to remove, if not the taste for luxury and ostentation, the usual
appendage to the inequality of fortunes, at least the possibility of indulging
in that taste. As a result of this general spirit of the nation, expenditures
are made on more modest and more economical plans.
g
e. In the margin, under a paper glued into place: It uses it for schools, for roads,
for measures of order and health.
f. To the side:
Democracy shows itself parsimonious toward its agents.
This is due to two causes.
The rst is that the poor man, who then makes the law, measures by his own scale
the needs of those who serve him. What appears to be a modest sum to a rich man,
appears to be a prodigious sum to him who has nothing; and he feels that a public
ofcial [v: the Governor of the state], with his puny salary, should still be happy and
excite envy. The secondis that since those who institute the salaries are verynumerous
under the dominion of democracy, they have very little chance to get them.
This parsimony of democracy for the principal ones among its agents gives an
illusion about its economical inclinations. But if it limits itself to giving public of-
cials what is neededto live, it spends enormous sums to relieve the needs {toestablish
free schools} or to facilitate the pleasures of the people {to aid the poor}. It is a better
use of the tax revenue, but not an economy. In general, democracy gives little tothose
who govern and a great deal to the governed, against aristocratic governments where
the money .-.-.-.- above all the class that .-.-.-.- public affairs.
g. In the margin, under a paper glued into place: Perhaps put at the end of the
chapter, the chapter on mores placed above.
In all that precedes I have kept to subjects as a whole and not to details.
I happened to notice many times in America that public expenditures were
not applied to the most useful objects or that they were made without econ-
omy; but it appeared to me that these were particular cases and that they
should be blamed much less on a natural tendency of the government of
democracy than on the poor choice of its agents. For, of all masters, the
people are assuredly the worst served.]
h
h. Herve de Tocqueville:
I do not believe this idea developed enough. This last division of the chapter presents
a great imperfection in my eyes. The good faith of the author leads himto admit that
several facts in America contradict his theory. In several of the preceding divisions,
facts, unstated, did not support the theory. Here, in certain respects, they are opposed
to it. Alexis has too much wisdom not to sense that by operating thus, he gives a wide
scope to criticism. Overall, he has changed his way of writing, and I regret it. In the
rst volume, facts led naturally to theory that seemed a natural consequence. Here
theory precedes facts, and sometimes does without them; that is dangerous. The
reader willingly submits to the authors opinion when it seems to be a deduction, so
to speak, from facts, because then the author does not seem to want to impose his
opinion. It would be otherwise if it preceded facts and, above all, if facts were lacking
to support it. Then the intelligence of the author exercises over that of the reader a
sway to which the latter does not always adapt and against which he sometimes takes
a strong stand. I acknowledge with great pleasure that this last chapter is very well
written and that it contains new and ingenious insights. But this merit does not com-
pensate for the disadvantage of the absence of facts to support the theory.
In my opinion, every time Alexis is led to develop general insights, he must hasten
to connect them to America. Without that, his work would lose its unity of com-
position, which is a major disadvantage in works of the mind. The reader glimpses
in this case two aims without being able to set exactly the limits of each of the things
that relate to each other; and a kind of confusion arises in his mind that forces him
to a tedious effort that displeases him.
I have conscientiously examined if the paragraphs on aristocracy are necessary to
establish a useful parallel between it and democracy. I am convinced of the opposite.
Not only are they unnecessary, but they come as irrelevant, because aristocracy is in
no way within the authors subject. There is no point, without a pressing need, in
turning the upper classes against him. Alexis has been carried away by his natural
frankness and also by a generous sentiment, that of knowing how to put himself
above the prejudices of his class. All that he says was appropriate whenthe aristocracy
was powerful. At present, I believe that one must abstain from doing it. I do not need
to expand on the reasons.
Can the Public Expenditures of the United States
Be Compared with Those of France
j
Two points to be established in order to appreciate the extent of
public expenses: national wealth and taxation.Fortune and
expenses in France are not known exactly.Why you cannot
hope to know fortune and expenses in the Union.Research of
the author to learn the total amount of taxes in Pennsylvania.
General signs by which you can recognize the extent of the
expenses of a people.Result of this examination for the Union.
Some have been much occupied recently with comparing the public ex-
penditures of the United States with ours. All of these efforts have been
without result, and a few words will sufce, I believe, to prove that it must
be so.
To the side, written by Alexis, according to the copyist: and that it (three illegible
words) it would not have (illegible word) at State expense to buy the younger branches
of certain families as the English aristocracy did (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 1719).
E
General observation. This entire chapter needs, in my opinion, to be altered. Eco-
nomic questions are not treated in it with enough assurance; there are several prop-
ositions that can be questioned. Certain thoughts are inadequately developed. All in
all, I do not nd this chapter at the same level as the preceding ones. The author here
does not seem to be as perfectly in control of his subject (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 10).
j. This section does not exist in the manuscript; it does not appear in the criticisms
of family andfriends. It seems tohave beenincludedfollowinga polemic onthe economy
of republican government, in which the United States was generally taken as the ex-
ample. In September 1831, Sebastien L. Saulnier, ofcial voice of the government, prefect
of police and editor of the Revue Britannique, published Rapprochements entre les
depenses publiques de la France et celles des E
tats-Unis (Revue Britannique, n.s., VI,

1831, pp. 272324, reprintedinvarious publications), inwhichhe claimedthat theUnited
States had an extremely expensive form of government and that American nances were
consequently in chaotic condition. Since the moment for discussion in the Chamber of
Deputies of the proposed budget for 1832 was at hand, Lafayette saw in this article an
attempt on the part of the government to inuence the parliamentary debate. He solic-
ited the opinions of James Fenimore Cooper and of General Bernard, following which
In order to be able to appreciate the extent of public expenses among a
people, two operations are necessary: rst, you must learn the wealth of
this people, and then what portion of this wealth they devote to State ex-
penditures. The person who researches the total amount of taxes without
showing the extent of the resources that must provide them, would be pur-
suing unproductive work; for it is interesting to knownot the expenditure,
but the relation of the expenditure to the revenue.
The same tax that a wealthy taxpayer easily bears will succeedinreducing
a poor man to poverty.
The wealthof peoples is made upof several elements: real estateholdings
form the rst, personal property constitutes the second.
k
he published a brochure that circulated among the deputies (Le ge ne ral Lafayette a` ses
colle `gues de la Chambre des de pute s, Paris: Paulin, 1832, 68 pp.) The letter of Cooper had
been published separately, in English (Letter of J. Fenimore Cooper to Gen. Lafayette, on
the expenditure of the United States of America, Paris: Baudry, December 1831, pp. 50, iii,
and also in the Revue des deux mondes, n.s., V, January 1832, pp. 14582). Saulnier an-
swered with two new writings: Nouvelles observations sur les nances des E
tats-Unis,
en reponse a` une brochure publiee par le General Lafayette (Revue Britannique, n.s.,
VIII, pp. 195260), and a letter to the editor of the same review (n.s., IX, November
1833, pp. 16494). In 1834, Francisque de Corcelle published an article, Administration
nancie`re des E
tats-Unis (Revue des deux mondes, 3rd series, I, 1834, pp. 56184), with
new statistics obtained from an inquiry into the American nancial system done by Ed-
wardLivingston. Newdata, Corcelle argued, woulddemonstrate that the Americans paid
lower taxes than the French. The article by Corcelle had probably attractedTocquevilles
attention, because he wrote to D. B. Warden on 21 July 1834 (YTC, CId), asking him
for the brochures of Bernard, Lafayette and Cooper. Regarding this, the following
note is also found in the drafts: Brochure of General Bernard and of Mr. Cooper on
the nances of the United States appeared in the middle of 1831. I believe that General
Lafayettes aide-de-camp published something on the same subject (YTC, CVh, 4,
pp. 2122). See note 51 for p. 156.
k. In the 1835 edition: The wealth of peoples is made up of several elements: popu-
lation is the rst; real estate holdings form the second, and personal property constitutes
the third.
Of these three elements, the rst is easily discovered. Among civilized peoples you
can easily reach an exact count of the citizens; but it is not the same with the other two.
It is difcult to . . .
The correction is probably due to a criticism from Nassau William Senior in a letter
to Tocqueville of 17 February 1835:
I cannot think that population is an element of wealth. It may rather be said to be
an element of poverty. The wealth or poverty of the people of a country depends on
It is difcult to know the extent of land suitable for cultivation that a
nation possesses and its natural or acquired value. It is still more difcult
to estimate all of the personal property that a people has at its disposal.
Personal property, because of its diversity and amount, eludes almost all
efforts of analysis.
Consequently we see that the oldest civilized nations of Europe, even
those in which the administration is centralized, have not yet established
the state of their wealth in any precise way.
InAmerica, no one has evenconceivedthe idea of trying. Andhowcould
you think to succeed in this new country where society has not yet peace-
fully and nally settled down, where the national government does not nd
at its disposal, as ours does, a multitude of agents whose efforts can be
simultaneously commanded and directed; where, nally, statistics are not
studied, because no one is found who has the power to gather the docu-
ments or the time to look through them?
So the constituent elements of our calculations cannot be obtained. We
do not know the comparative wealth of France and of the Union. The
wealth of the one is not yet known, and the means to establish that of the
other do not exist.
But, for a moment, I agree to put aside this necessary term of compar-
ison; I give upknowing the relationshipof tax torevenue, andI limit myself
to wanting to establish what the taxes are.
The reader is going to recognize that by narrowing the circle of my re-
search, I have not made my task easier.
I do not doubt that the central administration of France, aided by all
the ofcials at its disposal, might succeed in discovering exactly the total
amount of direct or indirect taxes that weigh upon the citizens. But this
the proportion between their numbers and the aggregate wealth of that country.
Diminish their numbers, the wealth remaining the same, and they will be, individ-
ually, richer. The people of Ireland, and indeed of England, would be richer if they
were fewer. I do call a country like China, where there is an immense population,
individually poor, a rich country, though the aggregate wealth of China is greater
than the aggregate wealth of Holland, where the population is, comparatively, in-
dividually rich (Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville withNassau
William Senior, London: Henry S. King & Co., 1872, I, p. 4).
work, which an individual cannot undertake, the French government itself
has not yet nished, or at least it has not made the results known. We know
what the State expenses are; the total of the departmental expenses is
known; we do not know what happens in the French towns. So no one can
say, as of now, what amount public expenditures in France total.
If I now return to America, I notice difculties that become more nu-
merous and more insurmountable. The Union makes public the exact
amount of its expenses; I can obtain for myself the individual budgets of
the twenty-four states that constitute the Union; but who will teach me
what the citizens spend for the administration of the county and of the
town?
11
Federal authority cannot extend to forcing the provincial governments
to enlighten us on this point; and if these governments themselves wanted
to lend us simultaneously their support, I doubt that they would be able
to satisfy us. Apart from the natural difculty of the enterprise, the political
11. The Americans, as you see, have four types of budgets: The Union has its; the states,
counties, and towns have theirs as well. During my stay in America, I did extensive research
to know the total amount of public expenditures in the towns and in the counties of the
principal states of the Union. I was able easily to obtain the budget of the largest towns, but
it was impossible for me to get that of the small towns. So I cannot form any exact idea of
town expenditures. For what concerns the expenditures of the counties, I possess some docu-
ments that, though incomplete, are perhaps the kind that are worthy of the readers curiosity.
I owe to the goodness of Mr. Richards, former
m
mayor of Philadelphia, the budgets of thirteen
counties of Pennsylvania for the year 1830, those of Lebanon, Center, Franklin, Fayette,
Montgomery, Luzerne, Dauphin, Butler, Alleghany [Allegheny (ed.)], Columbia, North-
umberland, Northampton, Philadelphia. In 1830, there were 495,207 inhabitants. If you cast
your eyes on a map of Pennsylvania, you will see that these thirteen counties are dispersed in
all directions and subject to all the general causes that can inuence the state of a country; so
that it would be impossible to say why they would not provide an exact idea of the nancial
state of the counties of Pennsylvania. Now, these very counties spent, during the year 1830,
1,808,221 francs, which yields 3.64 fr. per inhabitant. I calculated that each of the same in-
habitants, during the year 1830, devoted to the needs of the federal Union 12.70 fr., and 3.80
fr. to those of Pennsylvania; the result is that in the year 1830 the same citizens gave to society,
to meet all public expenditures (except town expenditures), the amount of 20.14 fr. This result
is doubly incomplete, as you see, because it applies only to a single year and to one part of
public expenses; but it has the merit of being certain.
m. The word former appears only after the rst editions.
organization of the country would still conict with the success of their
efforts. The magistrates of the town and of the county are not appointed
by administrators of the state, and do not depend on them. So it may be
believedthat if the state wantedtoobtainthe informationwe need, it would
meet great obstacles in the carelessness of the lower level ofcials it would
be forced to use.
12
Useless, moreover, to try to nd out what the Americans would be able
to do in such a matter, because certainly until nowthey have done nothing.
So today in America or in Europe not a single man exists who can teach
us what each citizen of the Union pays annually to meet the expenses of
society.
13
12. Those who have wanted to establish a parallel between the expenditures of the Amer-
icans and ours have clearly felt that it was impossible to compare the total of the public ex-
penditures of France to the total of the public expenditures of the Union; but they have sought
to compare detached portions of these expenditures. It is easy to prove that this second way of
operating is no less defective than the rst.
To what will I compare, for example, our national budget? To the budget of the Union?
But the Union is occupied with far fewer objects than our central government, and its expenses
must naturally be much less. Will I contrast our departmental budgets to the budgets of the
individual states that make up the Union? But in general the individual states attend to more
important and more numerous interests than the administration of our departments; so their
expenditures are naturally more considerable. As for the budgets of the counties, you nd
nothing in our system of nance that resembles them. Will we add expenditures made there
to the budget of the state or to that of the towns? Town expenditures exist in the two countries,
but they are not always analogous. In America, the town assumes several needs that in France
are left to the department or to the State. How, moreover, must town expenditures inAmerica
be understood? The organization of the town differs depending on the states. Will we take as
the rule what happens in New England or in Georgia, in Pennsylvania or in the state of
Illinois?
It is easy to see, between certain budgets of two countries, a sort of analogy; but since the
elements that constitute them always differ more or less, you cannot establish a serious com-
parison between them.
13. Should you succeed in knowing the precise sum that each French or American citizen
pays into the public treasury, you would still have only one part of the truth.
Governments ask not only money from the taxpayers, but also personal efforts that have a
monetary value. The State raises an army; apart from the balance that is charged to the entire
nation to supply it, the soldier must still give his time, which has a greater or lesser value
depending on the use that he would make of it if he remained free. I will say as much about
the service of the militia. The man who is part of the militia temporarily devotes a precious
Let us conclude that it is as difcult to compare fruitfully the social ex-
penditures of the Americans with ours, as it is to compare the wealth of
the Union to that of France. I add that it would even be dangerous to
attempt it. When statistics are not based on rigorously true calculations,
they mislead rather than guide. The mind is easily led astray by the false
air of exactitude that statistics conserve even in their discrepancies, and it
rests untroubled in the errors that it thinks are cloaked in the mathematical
forms of truth.
So let us abandon numbers and try to nd our proof elsewhere.
Does a country present an aspect of material prosperity; after paying the
State, does the poor man still have resources and the rich man superuity;
do both appear satised with their lot, and do they still seek to improve it
each day, so that industry never lacks capital and capital in turn does not
lack industry? Lacking positive documents, it is possible to resort to such
indicators to know if the public expenses that burden a people are pro-
portionate to its wealth.
The observer who kept to this evidence would undoubtedly judge that
the Americanof the UnitedStates gives tothe State a less signicant portion
of his income than the Frenchman.
But how could you imagine that it would be otherwise?
time to public security, and really gives to the State what he fails to acquire for himself. I have
cited these examples; I would have been able to cite many others. The government of France
and that of America collect taxes of this nature; these taxes burden the citizens. But who can
appreciate with exactitude their total amount in the two countries?
This is not the last difculty that stops you when you want to compare the public expen-
ditures of the Union to ours. The State has certain obligations in France that it does not
assume in America, and reciprocally. The French government pays the clergy; the American
government leaves this concern to the faithful. In America, the State takes care of the poor;
in France, it leaves them to the charity of the public. We give all our ofcials a xed salary;
the Americans allow them to collect certain fees. In France, service charges occur only on a
small number of roads; in the United States, on nearly all roads. Our roads are open to
travelers who can travel on them without paying anything; in the United States there are
many toll roads. All these differences in the way in which the taxpayer acquits himself of the
expenses of the society make comparison between the two societies very difcult; for there are
certain expenditures that the citizens would not make or that would be less, if the State did
not take it upon itself to act in their name.
One part of the French debt is the result of two invasions; the Union
has nothing to fear about that. Our position obliges us as a rule to keep a
numerous army under arms; the isolation of the Union allows it to have
only 6,000 soldiers. We maintainnearly 300ships; the Americans have only
52
14
of them. How could the inhabitant of the Union pay to the State as
much as the inhabitant of France?
So there is no parallel to establish between the nances of countries so
differently placed.
It is by examining what happens in the Union, and not by comparing
the Union with France, that we can judge if American democracy is truly
economical.
I cast my eyes on each of the various republics that form the confeder-
ation, and I discover that their government often lacks perseverance in its
designs, and that it does not exercise continuous surveillance over the men
it employs. From this I naturally draw the conclusion that it must often
spend the money of the taxpayers uselessly, or devote more of their money
than necessary to its undertakings.
I see that, faithful to its popular origin, it makes prodigious efforts to
satisfy the needs of the lower classes of society, to open the paths to power
to them, and to spread well-being and enlightenment among them. It sup-
ports the poor, distributes millions each year to the schools, pays for all
services, and generously recompenses its least important agents. If such a
means of governing seems useful and reasonable to me, I am forced to rec-
ognize that it is expensive.
I see the poor man who leads public affairs and has national resources
at his disposal; and I cannot believe that, proting fromState expenditures,
he does not often drag the State into new expenditures.
So I conclude, without resorting to incomplete gures and without
wanting to establish risky comparisons, that the democratic government
of the Americans is not, as is sometimes claimed, an inexpensive govern-
14. See the detailed budgets of the Ministry of the Navy in France, and for America, the
National Calendar of 1833, p. 228.
n
n. The budget of the American navy is found on pages 29091. On page 228, the list
of warships is found; the total is 53 (Tocqueville seems to have eliminated from the list
a barge, a small unarmed galley with about twenty oars aboard).
ment; and I am not afraid to predict that, if great difculties came one day
to assail the peoples of the United States, you would see taxes among them
rise as high as in most of the aristocracies or monarchies of Europe.
Of the Corruption and Vices of Those Who Govern
in Democracy; Of the Effects on Public Morality
That Result from That Corruption and Those Vices
In aristocracies, those who govern sometimes seek to corrupt.
Often, in democracies, they prove to be corrupt themselves.In
the rst, vices directly attack the morality of the people.In the
second, vices exercise an indirect inuence on the morality of the
people that is still more to be feared.
Aristocracy and democracy mutually reproach each other with facilitating
corruption; it is necessary to distinguish.
In aristocratic governments, the men who come to public affairs are rich
men who only want power. In democracies, the statesmen are poor and
have their fortune to make.
It follows that, in aristocratic States, those who govern are not very open
to corruption and have only a very moderate taste for money, while the
opposite happens among democratic peoples.
But, in aristocracies, since those who want to arrive at the head of public
affairs have great riches at their disposal, and since the number of those
who can make them succeed is often circumscribed within certain limits,
the government nds itself, in a way, up for sale.
o
In democracies, on the
It is clear that in this picture the author has England in view, but all aristocracies are
not like that of England, which, however omnipotent it is, needs the people. There
were other aristocracies, such as that of Venice and I believe that of Berne, that were
self-sufcient, the people remaining outside; was corruption at work in the last ones?
The author cites a mixed government rather than a clear-cut aristocracy. Some would
probably object to him about it; to avoid it I would like him to put: in aristocracies
in which the popular vote is necessary (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 5).
contrary, those who aspire to power are hardly ever rich, and the number
of those who contribute to gaining power is very great. Perhaps, in de-
mocracies, men are for sale no less, but there are hardly any buyers, and,
besides, too many people would have to be bought at once to achieve the
end. [As a result of this difference, in democracies corruption acts upon
those who governand in aristocracies uponthe governed. Inthe one, public
ofcials are corrupted; in the other, the people themselves.
Thus, corruptionnds some way tobe exercisedinthe twogovernments:
its object alone varies.]
Among the men
p
who have occupied power in France during the past
forty years, several have been accused of having made a fortune at the ex-
pense of the State andits allies; a reproachthat was rarely made tothe public
men of the old monarchy. But, in France, there is almost no example of
someone buying the vote of an elector for money,
q
while this is notoriously
and publicly done in England.
[In aristocracies corruption is generally exercised in order to gain power.
In democracies it is linked to those who have gained power. So in demo-
p. In the manuscript: Nearly all the men . . .
E

That reproach was not addressed to anyone during the fteen years of the Restora-
tion. I do not know if it was generally addressed to Bonapartes ministers, M. de
Talleyrand excepted, although it was addressed to his generals. So we are left then
with the ministers of the Republic and, above all, those of the Directory. A great
number of the ministers of the Restoration entered power poor and still remain so.
So you cannot with justice say: during the past forty years nearly all the men, etc.
Couldnt you say: Nearly all the men who have occupied power after the establish-
ment of the French republic and during its existence, that is to say, when citizens,
until then obscure and poor, suddenly found themselves carried to the headof public
affairs, nearly all these men, I say, have been accused . . .? (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 4).
Herve de Tocqueville: In this paragraph what Alexis says is not true. Most of the min-
isters since the Directory were beyond suspicion of mischief, and several ministers under
the old regime were regarded as great knaves (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 5).
q. Herve de Tocqueville: It is true that they are rarely bought for cash money, but
often enough by the lure of places or other advantages, which is a corruption that differs
only by the means. The government candidate at Cherbourg had promised the same
place of juge de paix to 15 persons (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 6).
cratic States corruption harms the public treasury more than the morality
of the people. It is the opposite in aristocracies.]
I have never heard it said that in the United States someone used his
riches to win over the governed; but I have oftenseenthe integrity of public
ofcials called into question. Still more often I have heard their success
attributed to low intrigues or to guilty maneuvers.
[It must be said, moreover, that the result is not as fearsome in America
as it would be in Europe.
Great robberies can only be practiced among powerful democratic na-
tions in which the government is concentrated in few hands and in which
the State is charged with executing immense enterprises.]
r
So if the menwho leadaristocracies sometimes seektocorrupt, theheads
of democracies are corrupted themselves. In the one, the morality of the
people is directly attacked; in the other, an indirect action is exerted on the
public conscience that must be feared even more.
Among democratic peoples, those who head the State are almost always
exposed to deplorable suspicions; so they give the support of the govern-
ment, in a way, to the crimes of which they are accused. Thus they present
dangerous examples to still struggling virtue, and provide glorious com-
parisons to hidden vice.
You would say in vain that dishonest passions are met at all levels; that
they often accede to the throne by the right of birth; that deeply despicable
men can thus be found at the head of aristocratic nations as well as within
democracies.
This response does not satisfy me. In the corruption of those who gain
power by chance, something crude and vulgar is disclosed that makes it
contagious to the crowd; on the contrary, there reigns, even in the deprav-
r. E
douardde Tocqueville (?): What, sothe UnitedStates is not a powerful democratic

nation? And then the word robbery seems inadmissible to me in an elevated style; great
misappropriations or great embezzlements is needed. Finally, how can power be concen-
trated in few hands in a democratic nation? That to me would seem impossible. This
small paragraph must be revised (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 45).
What follows this paragraph, until the end of the section, does not exist in the
manuscript.
ities of great lords, a certain aristocratic renement, an air of grandeur that
often prevents its spread.
s
The people will never penetrate the dark labyrinth of court spirit; it will
always be difcult for them to discover the baseness hidden beneath the
elegance of manners, the pursuit of taste, and the grace of language. But
to rob the public treasury or to sell State favors for money, that the rst
wretch understands and can claim to be able to do in turn.
What is to be feared, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immor-
ality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness. In democracy,
simple citizens see a man who emerges from their ranks and who in a few
years achieves wealth and power; this spectacle excites their surprise and
envy; they try to nd out how the one who was their equal yesterday is
today vested with the right to lead them. To attribute his elevation to his
talents or his virtues is uncomfortable, for it means admitting that they
themselves are less virtuous and less skillful than he. So they place the prin-
cipal cause in some of his vices, and often they are right to do so. In this
way, I do not knowwhat odious mixture of the ideas of baseness andpower,
of unworthiness and success, of utility and dishonor comes about.
s. There, I confuse two things: corruption and embezzlements.
There is corruption when you seek to obtain something which is not your due
by sharing some stake with the one who gives it.
There is corruption on the part of the candidate who pays for the votes of the
voter.
There is corruption on the part of the individual who obtains a favor from an
ofcial for money.
But when ofcials draw for their own account from the State treasury, it is not
corruption; it is theft (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 88).
Of What Efforts Democracy Is Capable
The Union has fought for its existence only a single time.
Enthusiasm at the beginning of the war.Cooling at the end.
Difculty of establishing conscription or registration of sailors in
America.Why a democratic people is less capable than another
of great sustained efforts.
I forewarn the reader that here I am speaking about a government that
follows the real will of the people, and not about a government that restricts
itself only to commanding in the name of the people.
There is nothing so irresistible as a tyrannical power that commands in
the name of the people, because, while vested with the moral power that
belongs to the will of the greatest number, it acts at the same time with the
decisiveness, promptitude and tenacity that a single man would have.
It is quite difcult to say what degree of effort a democratic government
is capable of in time of national crisis.
A great democratic republic has never been seen until now. It would be
an insult to republics to give this name to the oligarchy that reigned over
France in 1793.
t
The United States alone presents this new spectacle.
Now, since the Union was formed a half-century ago, its existence has
been put in question only once, at the time of the War of Independence.
At the beginning of this long war, there were extraordinary acts of en-
thusiasm for serving the country.
15
But as the struggle continued, you
saw individual egoism reappear. Money no longer arrived at the public
treasury; men no longer presented themselves for the army; the people
still wanted independence, but they drew back from the means to obtain
t. Variant in the margin, under a paper glued into place: The name republic given
to the oligarchy of 1793 has never been anything except a bloody veil behind which was
hidden the tyranny of some and the oppression of all.
15. One of the most singular, in my opinion, was the resolution by which the Americans
temporarily renounced the use of tea. Those who know that men generally cling more to their
habits than to their life will undoubtedly be astonished by this great and obscure sacrice
obtained from an entire people.
it.
[
*
]
[This languor of public spirit, the only motivating force [doubtful
reading (ed.)] of democracies, put the liberty of America indanger several
times, and yet the nature of the country alone and its expanse made con-
quest impossible.] Tax laws have in vain been multiplied; newmethods
to enforce the collection have in vain been tried, says Hamilton in the
Federalist (No. 12):
the public expectationhas beenuniformly disappointed, andthe treasuries
of the States have remainedempty. The popular systemof administration,
inherent in the nature of popular government, coinciding with the real
scarcity of money incident to a languid and mutilated state of trade, has
hitherto defeated every experiment for extensive collections, and has at
length taught the different legislatures the folly of attempting them.
Since this period, the United States has not had to sustaina single serious
war.
To judge what sacrices democracies know how to impose on them-
selves, we must therefore await the time when the American nation will be
forced to put into the hands of its government half of the revenue of its
property, like England, or must throw one twentieth of its population all
at once onto the eld of battle, as France did.
In America, conscription is unknown; men are enrolled there for money.
Forced recruitment is so contrary to the ideas and so foreign to the habits
of the people of the United States that I doubt that anyone would ever
dare to introduce it in the laws. What is called conscription in France as-
suredly is the heaviest of our taxes; but, without conscription, how would
we be able to sustain a great continental war?
The Americans have not adoptedEnglishimpressment. Theyhavenoth-
ing that resembles our registration of sailors. The navy, like the merchant
marine, recruits by voluntary enlistments.
Now, it is not easy to conceive that a people could sustain a great mar-
itime war without resorting to one of the two means indicated above. Con-
sequently, the Union, which has already fought with glory at sea, has never
[*]. See the Life of Washington by Marshall.
had large eets, and the cost of manning the small number of its ships has
always been very expensive.
I have heard American statesmen admit that the Union will have dif-
culty maintaining its rank on the seas, if it does not resort to impressment
or to registration of sailors; but the difculty is to force the people, who
govern, to bear impressment or registration of sailors.
u
Incontestably, free peoples, when in danger, generally display an in-
nitely greater energy than those who are not free, but I am led to believe
that this is true, above all, for free peoples among whom the aristocratic
element predominates.
v
Democracy seems to me much more appropriate for leading a peaceful
society, or for making a sudden and vigorous effort as needed, than for
braving for a long time the great storms in the political lives of peoples.
The reason for it is simple. Men expose themselves to dangers and priva-
tions out of enthusiasm, but they remain exposed for a long time only from
reection. In what is called instinctive courage itself, there is more calcu-
lation than we think; and although, in general, passions alone bring about
the rst efforts, efforts continue with the result in mind. You risk a portion
of what is dear in order to save the rest.
w
u. On the back of the page: Difculty of establishing conscription as in France.
Even impressment does not exist, though of English origin. Impossibility, however, of
navy without impressment. See opinion Gallatin, non-alphabetic notebook 1, p. 25.
See YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 62.
v. In a rst version: It is not that the rst impulse of democracy is often to assist the
evil. Nothing is more impetuous than the movements of democracy, but enthusiasm,
like all the other passions, soon burns itself out. In men [who (ed.)] expose themselves
to dangers for a long time and submit to great sacrices to attain an end, there is a great
mixture of passion and calculation.
w. Herve de Tocqueville:
The entire paragraph preceding these words is very well put, and yet I have an ob-
servation to make that does not seem unimportant. Free countries make more ef-
forts when in danger, because love of country predominates there more than in
monarchies; this point granted, it seems that the devotion to public things should
be greater in democracies than in aristocracies, for the author has proved well in
the preceding chapters that democratic government is the one in which the people
Now, this clear perception of the future, based on learning and expe-
rience, must often be missing in democracy. The people feel much more
than they reason; and if the present difculties are great, the fear is that
they will forget the greater difculties that perhaps await them in case of
defeat.
Still another cause must make the efforts of a democratic government
less long-lasting than the efforts of an aristocracy.
The people not only see less clearly than the upper classes what can be
hoped or feared in the future, but the people also suffer the troubles of the
present quite differently fromthe upper classes. The nobleman, byexposing
his person, runs as many chances for glory as perils. By giving the State the
greater part of his income, he temporarily deprives himself of some of the
pleasures of his wealth. But, for the poor man, death has no prestige, and
the tax that bothers the rich man often attacks the poor mans sources of
life.
This relative weakness of democratic republics intime of crisis is perhaps
the greatest obstacle opposing the establishment of such a republic in Eu-
rope. For the democratic republic to survive without difculty among a
European people, it would have to be established at the same time among
all the other European peoples.
I believe that the government of democracy must, in the long run, in-
crease the real forces of society; but it cannot assemble all at once, at one
place, and at a given moment, as many forces as an aristocratic government
or an absolute monarchy. If a democratic country remained under repub-
lican government for a century, you can believe that at the end of the cen-
tury it would be richer, more populated and more prosperous than neigh-
boring despotic States; but during this century, it would have run the risk
several times of being conquered by them.
are attached to the State by the most bonds; I know that there is nothing to bring
up against the fact. But here the fact appears to me in contradiction withthe theory,
and the author, with Montesquieu. Perhaps it would be necessary for him to de-
velop his idea a bit more. The following paragraph begins, moreover, to explain it
well (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 110).
Of the Power That American Democracy
Generally Exercises over Itself
That the American people only go along with something in the
long run, and sometimes refuse to do what is useful for their
well-being.Ability that the Americans have to make mistakes
that can be corrected.
This difculty that democracy has in vanquishing passions and silencing
the needs of the moment withthe future inmindis noticeable inthe United
States in the smallest things.
The people, surrounded by atterers [and sycophants], succeedwithdif-
culty intriumphing over themselves. Every time youwant themtoimpose
a privation or discomfort on themselves, even for an end their reason ap-
proves, they almost always begin by refusing. The obedience that Ameri-
cans give to laws is rightly praised. It must be added that in America leg-
islation is made by the people and for the people. So in the United States,
the laws appear favorable to those who, everywhere else, have the greatest
interest in violating it. Thus, it may be believed that a bothersome law,
which the majority felt had no present utility, would not be put into effect
or would not be obeyed.
In the United States, no legislation exists relating to fraudulent bank-
ruptcies. Would it be because there are no bankruptcies? No, on the con-
trary, it is because there are many of them. The fear of being prosecuted
as a bankrupt surpasses, in the mind of the majority, the fear of being ru-
ined by bankruptcies; andinthe public conscience there is a sort of culpable
tolerance for the crime that each person condemns individually.
In the newstates of the Southwest, the citizens almost always take justice
into their own hands, and murders
x
happen constantly. That stems from
the habits of the people being too rough and enlightenment being spread
x. In the manuscript: are more frequent than stghts among us. The expression
had been unanimously rejected by the readers: YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 107 (E
douard de
Tocqueville?), p. 105 (Gustave de Beaumont), and CIIIb, 2, p. 1 (Herve de Tocqueville).
too little in these wilderness areas for anyone to feel the utility of giving the
law some force. There they still prefer duels
y
to trials.
Someone
z
said to me one day, in Philadelphia, that nearly all crimes in
America were caused by the abuse of strong liquors that the lower classes
could use at will, because it was sold to them at a very low price. Why, I
asked, dont you put a duty on brandy? Our legislators have often con-
sidered it, he replied, but it is a difcult undertaking. They fear a revolt;
and besides, the members who voted for such a law would very surely not
be reelected. So, I responded, among you, drinkers are the majority,
and temperance is unpopular.
When you point out these things to statesmen, they simply respond: Let
time pass; feeling the evil will enlightenthe people andwill showthemwhat
they need. This is often true. If democracy has more chances to make a
mistake than a king or a body of nobles, it also has more chances to return
to the truth, once enlightenment comes; within a democracy there are gen-
erally no interests that are contrary to the interest of the greatest number
and that ght reason. But democracy can only gain the truth by experience,
and many peoples cannot wait for the results of their errors without
perishing.
Sothe great privilege of the Americans is not only tobe more enlightened
than others, but also to have the ability to make mistakes that can be
corrected.
Add that, in order to prot easily from the experience of the past, de-
mocracy must already have reached a certain degree of civilization and
enlightenment.
We see some peoples whose rst education has been so perverted, and
whose character presents such a strange mixture of passions, of ignorance
and erroneous notions about everything, that they cannot by themselves dis-
cern the cause of their miseries; they succumb to evils that they do not know.
y. E
douard de Tocqueville (?): The word duel does not apply well to a half-civilized
people. Couldnt you say: the majority still prefers ghts to trials? (YTC, CIIIb, 1,
pp. 1078).
z. Mr. Washington Smith (in pocket notebook 3, 25 October 1831, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 184). See George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America,
p. 459.
I have traveled across vast countries formerly inhabited by powerful In-
dian nations that today no longer exist; I have lived among already muti-
lated tribes that, everyday, see their number decline and the splendor of
their savage glory disappear; I have heard these Indians themselves foretell
the nal destiny reserved to their race. There is no European, however, who
does not see what would have to be done to preserve these unfortunate
peoples from inevitable destruction. But they do not see it; they feel the
misfortunes that, each year, accumulate on their heads, and they will perish
to the last man while rejecting the remedy. Force would have to be used to
compel them to live.
We are astonished to see the new nations of South America stir, for a
quarter century, amid constantly recurring revolutions; and each day we
expect to see them recover what is called their natural state. But who can
assert that today revolutions are not the most natural state of the Spanish
of South America? In this country, society struggles at the bottom of an
abyss from which it cannot escape by its own efforts.
The people who inhabit this beautiful half of a hemisphere seem ob-
stinately bound to eviscerate themselves; nothing can divert them. Ex-
haustion makes themcome to rest for an instant, and rest soon brings them
back to new furies. When I consider them in this alternating state of mis-
eries and crimes, I am tempted to believe that for them despotism would
be a benet.
But these two words will never be found united in my thought.
Of the Manner in Which American Democracy
Conducts the Foreign Affairs of the State
Direction given to the foreign policy of the United States by
Washington and Jefferson.Nearly all the natural defects of
democracy make themselves felt in the conduct of foreign affairs,
and its qualities are felt little there.
We have seen that the federal Constitutionplaces the permanent leadership
of the foreign interests of the nation in the hands of the President and of
the Senate,
16
which to a certain extent puts the general policy of the Union
outside of the direct and daily inuence of the people. So we cannot say
in an absolute manner that, in America, it is democracy that conducts the
foreign affairs of the State.
There are two men who gave the policy of the Americans a direction
that is still followed today; the rst is Washington, and Jefferson is the
second.
Washington said, in this admirable letter addressed to his fellowcitizens
that forms the political testament of this great man:
The great rule of conduct for us inregardto foreignnations is, inextending
our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection
as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be
fullled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.
Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very
remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the
causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore
it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by articial ties, in the or-
dinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and col-
lisions of her friendships, or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a
different course. If we remain one People, under an efcient government,
the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external
annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality
we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when bel-
ligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us,
will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose
peace or war, as our interest guided by justice shall Counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our
ownto standuponforeignground? Why, by interweavingour destinywith
16. [The President], says the Constitution, art. 2, sect. II, paragraph 2, shall have
Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties. The reader
must not lose sight of the fact that the term of Senators lasts six years, and that, chosen by the
legislators of each state, they are the result of indirect election.
that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils
of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?
Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances with any por-
tion of the foreign world. So far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it;
for let me not be understoodas capable of patronizing indelitytoexisting
engagements (I hold the maximno less applicable to public thanto private
affairs, that honesty is always the best policy). I repeat it, therefore, let those
engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is
unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them. Taking care always to
keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectable defensive
posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies.
Previously Washington had expressed this excellent and sound idea:
The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an
habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or
to its affection.
The political action of Washington always aimed to follow his maxims.
He succeeded in keeping his country at peace, when all the rest of the uni-
verse was at war, and he established as a point of doctrine that the well
understood interest of Americans was never to take part in the internal
quarrels of Europe.
Jefferson went still farther, and he introduced to the policy of the Union
this other maxim: That the Americans should never ask for privileges from
foreign nations, so that they are never obligated themselves to grant such
privileges.
[
*
]
These two principles, which due to their obvious soundness were easily
grasped by the crowd, have extremely simplied the foreign policy of the
United States.
Not mixing into Europes affairs, the Union has, so to speak, no foreign
interests to discuss, for it does not yet have powerful neighbors in America
[{it had to be grossly and groundlessly provoked in 1812 for it to consider
taking up arms}]. Placed by its situation as much as by its will outside the
[*]. Washington had already indicated this maxim, but Jefferson put it into practice
and introduced it into the ideas and mores of his country.
passions of the Old World, the Union does not have to protect itself from
themanymore than to espouse them. As for the passions of the NewWorld,
they are still hidden in the future.
[The Union grows constantly larger; it appears different each year, for
its prosperity has something revolutionary about it. So the clear interest of
the Union, whichchanges daily, is not tocreate lastingties. Ties useful today
could soon hamper its course and compromise its future.]
The Union is free from previous commitments; so it prots from the
experience of the old peoples of Europe, without being obliged, like them,
to make use of the past and to adapt the past to the present;
a
it is not forced,
as they are, to accept an immense heritage handed down by its fathers, a
mixture of glory and misery, of national friendships and hatreds. The for-
eign policy of the United States is eminently one of wait-and-see; it consists
much more of refraining from action than of doing.
So it is very difcult to know, for now, what skill American democracy
will develop in the conduct of the foreign affairs of the State.
b
On this
point, its adversaries as well as it friends must suspend their judgment.
As for me, I will have no difculty in saying: it is in the leadership of
the foreign interests of society that democratic governments seem to me
decidedly inferior to others.
[
*
]
In democracy, experience, mores, and edu-
a. In the margin: America appears amid the civilized world with the strength of
{youth and the experience of mature age.} Cf. conversation with Mr. Latrobe, 3
November 1831 (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIc, and Voyage, OC, V, 1,
p. 120).
b. To the side: So we must wait until matters become complicated and difculties
appear in order to be able to judge the degree to which American democracy will be
capable of conducting the public affairs of society.
Tocquevilles short experience at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from
June to October 1849, conrmed his fears about the inferiority of democracies inforeign
affairs (see his Souvenirs,OC, XII, p. 246). On this question, see Stephen A. Garrett,
Foreign Policy and the Democracies: De Tocqueville Revisited, Virginia Quarterly
Review 48, no. 4 (1972): 481500.
[*]. Note, moreover, that the federal Constitution places the permanent leadership
of the foreign interests of the nation in the hands of the President and the Senate, which
to a certain extent places the general policy of the Union outside the daily inuence of
the democracy.
cation almost always end by creating the sort of everyday practical wisdom
and the skill in the small events of life that is called good sense. Good sense
sufces for the ordinary routine of society; and among a people whose edu-
cation is already accomplished, democratic liberty applied to the internal
affairs of the State produces greater good than the evil that can be caused
by the errors of democratic government. But it is not always so in the re-
lations of one people with another.
Foreign policy requires the use of almost none of the qualities that be-
long to democracy and, on the contrary, demands the development of
nearly all those qualities that it lacks. Democracy favors the growth of the
internal resources of the State; it spreads comfort, develops public spirit;
strengthens respect for law in the different classes of society; all things that
have only an indirect inuence onthe positionof a people vis-a`-vis another.
But only with difculty can democracy coordinate the details of a great
undertaking, settle on one plan and then follow it stubbornly across all
obstacles. It is little capable of devising measures in secret and patiently
awaiting their result. These are the qualities that belong most particularly
to a man or to an aristocracy. Now, in the long run it is precisely these
qualities that make a people, like an individual, predominate in the end.
If, on the contrary, you pay attention to the natural defects of aristoc-
racy,
c
you will nd that the effect that these defects can produce can be felt
hardly at all in the leadership of the foreign affairs of the State. The capital
vice for which the aristocracy is reproached is to work only for itself alone
c. Herve de Tocqueville:
It is absolutely necessary to add the words in internal administration in order to es-
tablish clearly the division between internal and external, so that the author cannot
be accused of praising here the institution that he blamed above. In fact, history
proves that the aristocracy, very strong externally, because it is ledsolely bythe interest
of the State, commits many mistakes internally, because its personal interest misleads
it. The aristocracy of Rome had been absolute in regard to the plebeians. That of
France committed enormous mistakes, and that of England for fty years has not
been much wiser (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 3).
and not for the mass. In foreign policy, it is very rare for the aristocracy to
have an interest distinct from that of the people.
The inclination that leads democracy in policy matters to obey senti-
ments rather than reasoning, and to abandon a long developed plan for the
satisfactionof a momentary passion, clearly revealeditself inAmericawhen
the French Revolution broke out. The simplest insights of reason would
sufce then, as today, to make the Americans understand that it was not in
their interest to get engaged in the struggle that was going to cover Europe
in blood, and from which the United States could suffer no harm.
The sympathies of the people in favor of France came out with such
violence, however, that nothing less was required to prevent a declaration
of war against England than the unyielding character of Washington and
the immense popularity that he enjoyed.
d
And yet, the efforts made by the
austere reason of this great man to combat the generous but unthinking
passions of his fellow citizens very nearly deprived him of the only rec-
ompense that he had ever expected, the love of his country. The majority
pronounced against his policy; now, the whole people approve it.
17
If the Constitution and public favor had not givenWashingtonthe lead-
ership of the foreign affairs of the State, the nation would certainly have
done then precisely what it condemns today.
e
d. In the margin: {see the History of Pitkin.}
17. See the fth volume of the Life of Washington by Marshall. In a government es-
tablished as that of the United States, he says, page 314, the chief executive, whatever his
rmness, cannot long present a barrier to the torrent of popular opinion; and the popular
opinion that then prevailed seemed to lead to war. In fact, in the session of Congress held at
this time, it was seen very frequently that Washington had lost the majority in the House of
Representatives. Outside, the violence of the language used against him was extreme; in a
political meeting, some were not afraid to compare him indirectly with the traitor Arnold
(p. 265). Those who belonged to the opposing party, says Marshall again (p. 353), claimed
that the partisans of the administration were an aristocratic faction that was submissive to
England and, wanting to establish a monarchy, was therefore the enemy of France; a faction
whose members constituted a kind of nobility, that had shares of the Bank as titles, and that
was so afraid of any measure that could inuence its capital, that it was insensitive to the
insults that both the honor and the interest of the nation demanded to be rejected.
e. Cf. note h for p. 190.
Nearly all the peoples who have acted strongly on the world, those who
have conceived, followed and executed great designs, from the Romans to
the English, were led by an aristocracy; and how can you be surprised
[when you see the part that must be attributed to the continuous effect
of the same will in human events]?
In this world, what is most steady in its views is an aristocracy. The mass
of people can be seduced by its ignorance or its passions. You can catch the
mind of a king unawares and make him vacillate in his plans; and, besides,
a king is not immortal. But an aristocratic body is too numerous to be won
over, too few in number to yield easily to the intoxication of unthinking
passions. An aristocratic body is a rm and enlightened man who does
not die.
f
f. The Pennsylvania Historical Society retains a commentary by Tocqueville on the
question of French indemnities in the United States and American foreign policy. (This
document had been catalogued by mistake as belonging to Democracy in America. ) The
reference to the correspondence of Livingston and the possibility that the latter had not
yet left France when Tocqueville wrote his commentary led to the thought that these
pages date from April or the beginning of May 1835, that is, a few months after the
publicationof the rst part of the book. Nor is there any indicationinthe YaleCollection
that allows a relationship to be established between these pages and the manuscript of
the work. Perhaps documents in the hands of the Commission charged with the edition
of Tocquevilles works would be able to offer some decisive information as to the origin
of this commentary. This text, to an unknown recipient, is part of the collection of man-
uscripts of Ferdinand Dreer, even though the catalogue of the collection, edited by Dreer
himself (ACatalogue of the Collectionof Autographs formedby FerdinandJulius Dreer, Phila-
delphia: printed for private distribution, 1890, 2 vols.), mentions no document of Tocque-
ville. This unedited manuscript had been utilized by William E. Lingelbach, in his com-
mentary American Democracy and European Interpreters, Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography 61, no. 1 ( January 1937): 125 (in pages 8 and 9).
Here is the text:
First here is what the Constitution says. Then I will examine the commentaries and
the practice.
The second section of Article II of the constitution reads: [The President] shall
have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided
two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the
Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors.
In section three of the same Article, you read: [The President] shall receive Am-
bassadors and other public Ministers./
Commentaries.
I consulted the three most respected commentaries. They are the Federalist, work
published by three of the principal draftsmen of the federal Constitution, the com-
mentaries of Chancellor Kent, and those of Justice Story.
[In the margin: Federalist, No. 4364, vol. 2.
Storys Commentaries, pp. 556 and 576.]
Here are the doctrines that result. I will put my authorities in the margin.
The Senate of the United States is an assembly vested with a double character; it
is at the same time a legislative body and an administrative body. In the rst case, its
deliberations are public; they are secret in the other case. The Senate in its quality of
administrative body is charged jointly with the President with making treaties. As
such it would clearly have the right to take part in negotiations,
1
but it has beenwisely
admitted in practice that the Senate had to leave to the President, sole intermediary
of the nation with foreign ministers, the right to start, direct, and provisionally con-
clude treaties. They are afterward submitted to the Senate, which approves, rejects
or modies them, depending on its views.
It was a great question in the United States to know if a treaty concluded in this
way still had to be submitted to Congress or if it bound the nation ipso facto.
The House of Representatives declared in 1796
2
that when the enforcement of
certain clauses required the passage of a law, Congress had the right, in regard to this
law, to deliberate on the treaty itself. Washington in a message that same year refused
to recognize such a power in Congress.
This opinion of Washington, says Kent, seems to have become the prevailing one in
America. The House of Representatives in 1816 had the occasion to show that it shared it.
To a certain degree, this opinion explains the language of General Jackson; it served
him as pretext and support for saying [that (ed.)] France would fail to meet its agree-
ments if the Chamber of Deputies rejected the treaty.
It is clear to me from the texts, and from the commentaries that I have just cited,
as well as from what I learned myself in America, that the Constitution and practice
made the President of the United States the usual and sole representative of the na-
tion vis-a`-vis foreigners. Ministers address themselves to him alone; all words and all
pieces pass through him to reach the Senate.
Now, if President Jackson by his message, which is after all only the speech of
an ofcial, did not involve the American nation in a quarrel with the Frenchnation,
at least it is certain that, as an individual, he gravely offended France. Can France,
respecting its honor, continue to accept this man as the sole and necessary interme-
diary between itself and the American nation, at least until this man has givensome
honorable explanations? I do not think so, neither as an individual, nor as a
Frenchman.
Far from President Jackson appearing disposed during three months to retract his
outrageous insinuations, his conduct has continued to be more and more arrogant.
His letter to Mr. Livingston indicated that with pleasure he would have seen the
Ambassador of the United States immediately leave France at the moment when
passports had been offered to him.
In summary, I think that the Chamber, by adopting the principle of the law, by
agreeing to separate (which is not already to act like Louis XV) the American nation
from its President, the Chamber, I say, can do nothing less than declare that it only
acted in this way because it was persuaded that the ministers will not accredit any
diplomatic agent close to the President of the United States except in the case that
the latter would give a satisfactory explanation for his words.
By acting in this way, only a temporary embarrassment inrelations canresult, since
the term of the President expires in two years.
1. Mr. Story says, p. 558: The Senate has very rarely, if ever, been consultedbefore
the clauses of the treaty were settled; the treaty was then submitted to the Senate for
ratication.
2. See Kents Commentaries, vol. I, p. 267.
With the kind permission of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.
The edition of the Federalist cited here by Tocqueville is probably the French trans-
lation, in two volumes, published by Buisson, which appeared in Paris in 1792. See note
n for p. 193.
375
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 6
a
What Are the Real Advantages That
American Society Gains from the
Government of Democracy?
[Before beginning this chapter I feel the need to explain myself. I do not
want my thought enclosed within limits that I have not set.
When I speak generally about the advantages of {that a country cangain
from} the government of democracy, I am not talking only about the gov-
ernment that democracy has provided for itself in America, but about all
types of government that emanate from democracy.
Every time that the government of a people is the sincere andpermanent
a. E
I criticize this whole chapter for being very favorable to the government of democracy
at the expense of other governments. It seems to me that America is too young, that
its society is too new and, you could even say, still too incomplete to drawarguments
so positively advantageous tothe government that it is attempting; it cannot bedenied
that the basis of your thought in this chapter seems to be sympathetic to American
institutions; now, it would be unfortunate if someone were to believe that you came
back fromAmerica American, following the usual inclinationof men, andof French-
men above all, who greatly admire what they go to seek far away, while deprecating
what is found at home. So I believe it would perhaps be good to show democratic
government a little less favorably and make a bit more use of the dubitative form,
perhaps to be a bit more severe as well about the bad things and the vicious aspects
of this government, which would make your impartiality emerge more fully; nally,
remove all the expressions that seem like those of a young man and that do not con-
stitute true warmth of style (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 1012).
advantages of democracy 376
expression of the will of the greatest number, that government, whatever
the forms, is democratic.
b
So democracy can rule over a unied nation as over a confederation, in
a monarchy as in a republic.
I admit that of all governments the one that seems to me most natural
to democracy is republican government. When the social state of a people
turns toward democracy, the republic becomes for them a probable con-
sequence of this social state; but I do not believe that it is a necessary
consequence.
If the majority of all the citizens do violence to the instincts of equality
that are natural to them and, favoring order and governmental stability,
consent to vest the attributes of executive power in a family or a man who,
while still leading, depends on them, there is nothing in that that shocks
reason. So the rule of all and the government [v: the administration] of
one man can be seen at the same time. I confess that this much reduces
royal majesty, but the time is coming when, if kings do not want to take
the places left [v: still offered] to them, they will no longer ndany totake.]
c
Before beginning the present chapter, I feel the needtoremindthe reader
of what I have already pointed out several times in the course of this book.
The political constitution of the United States seems to me one of the
forms that democracy can give to its government; but I do not consider
American institutions as either the only or the best that a democratic people
should adopt.
So by making known what good things the Americans gain from the
government of democracy, I am far from claiming or thinking that such
advantages can only be obtained with the help of the same laws.
b. To the side: To retouch all of this small chapter. According to L[ouis (ed.)], my
purpose is not seen clearly enough. One doesnt know if this isnt a carefully phrased
remark in favor of despotism or of L[ouis (ed.)]. P[hilippe (ed.)].
c. This fragment also appears in YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 3839, accompanied (p. 38) by the
following comment in the margin: All of this preamble seems to me of questionable
utility, because the thought that led to writing it does not emerge clearly. As I am going
to say things favorable to democracy, I am afraid that someone might suppose that I
wanted to praise the American republic, and given this fear, I wanted to extend what I
said about America to democracy in general. But I do not know if my intention is
grasped.
Of the General Tendency of Laws under the
Dominion of American Democracy, and Of the
Instinct of Those Who Apply Them
The vices of democracy are immediately apparent.Its
advantages are seen only in the long run.American democracy
is often clumsy, but the general tendency of its laws is
benecial.Public ofcials, under American democracy, have no
permanent interests that differ from those of the greatest
number.What results from that.
The vices and weaknesses of the government of democracy are easily
seen; they are demonstrated by obvious facts, while its salutary inuence
is exerted in an imperceptible and, so to speak, hidden way. Its draw-
backs are striking at rst sight, but its qualities are revealed only in the
long run.
The laws of American democracy are often defective or incomplete; it
happens that they violate vested rights or sanction dangerous ones. Were
they good, their frequency would still be a great evil. All of this is seen at
rst glance.
So why do the American republics live on and prosper?
In laws, the end that they seek must be carefully distinguished fromthe
way in which they move toward that end; their absolute goodness, from
goodness that is only relative.
d
d. In legislation, three things must be carefully discerned: 1. its general tendency, 2.
its perfection (once its direction is given), and 3. the manner in which it is executed.
A perfect lawwould be the one that would have the most useful tendency, that would
move toward this end by the most skillful and most effective provisions, and that
would be executed by the best agents. But this perfection is hardly ever found.
The laws of democracy are decidedly defective in the last two objects. But I am
tempted to believe that they are superior in the rst, and in this way I explain their
general result, which often seems in general contradiction to reason and daily expe-
rience. See the example of England (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 7778).
I suppose that the purpose of the legislator is to favor the interests of
the few at the expense of those of the many; his measures are devised in a
way to obtain the result that he wants in the least time and with the least
possible effort. The law will be well made; its aim, bad. It will be dangerous
in proportion to its very effectiveness.
The laws of democracy tend, in general, toward the good of the greatest
number, for they emanate from the majority of all citizens; the majority
can be mistaken, but cannot have an interest against itself.
Those of aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to monopolize wealth and
power in the hands of the few, because the aristocracy by its nature always
forms a minority.
So we can say, in a general way, that the purpose of democracy, in its
legislation, is more useful to humanity than the purpose of aristocracy in
its legislation.
But its advantages end there.
Aristocracy is innitely more skillful in the science of lawmaking than
democracy can be. Having self-control, aristocracy is not subject to passing
impulses; it has long-term plans that it knows how to develop until the
favorable opportunity presents itself. Aristocracy proceeds skillfully; it
knows the art of bringing together at the same time, towardthe same point,
the collective force of all its laws.
Not so with democracy; its laws are nearly always defective or ill-timed.
[In the eyes of the world, laws badly made or made at the wrong time
discredit the legislative spirit of democracy.]
e
e.
democracy.
Imperfect laws. Succession of laws, a
great evil.
Incapable or vice-ridden ofcials, but
not having an interest contrary to the
greatest number.
Laws badly made or made [v: inter-
preted] wrong on purpose, that is what
discredits the legislative spirit of
democracy.
aristocracy.
Tendency of laws contrary to the in-
terests of the greatest number.
Capable and honest ofcials, but hav-
ing an interest contrary to the greatest
number and acting either with their con-
sent or without their knowledge.
Less wisdom in each effort, but a
greater result produced by the sum of
efforts.
So the means of democracy are more imperfect thanthose of aristocracy.
Democracy, without wanting to, often works against itself; but its end is
more useful.
Imagine a society that nature, or its constitution, had organized in a way
to bear the transient effect of bad laws, a society that, without perishing,
can await the result of the general tendency of the laws;
f
and you will un-
derstand that, of all governments, the government of democracy, despite
its aws, is still the most appropriate to make this society prosper.
This is precisely what happens in the United States; here I repeat what
I have already expressed elsewhere: the great privilege of the Americans is
to be able to make mistakes that can be corrected.
I will say something analogous about public ofcials.
It is easy to see that American democracy is often wrong in its choice of
the men to whom it condes power; but it is not as easy to say why the
State prospers in their hands.
Note rst that, in a democratic State, if those who govern are less honest
or less capable, the governed are more enlightened and more attentive.
In democracies, the people, constantly occupied as they are with their
affairs and jealous of their rights, prevent their representatives from de-
parting from a certain general line drawn by the interest of the people.
If democracy could direct the spirit of legislation and aristocracy could make the
laws.
This tie that binds men with or without their knowledge to the consequences of
the principle that they accepted is one of the greatest miseries and greatest humilia-
tions of our nature (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 75).
If a society made only bad laws, the effect of these laws would be to bring about bad
tendencies, and everything would go to the devil.
This subject is extremely abstract, and needs to be reviewed and considered again.
I believe that the difculty comes from the fact that Alexis seems to assume that most
of the American laws are bad; I imagine that it is the opposite. Without that, the
system that the author puts forth would not be tenable (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 93).
Note too that if the democratic magistrate exercises power worse than
another, he generally holds it for less time.
g
But there is a more general and more satisfying reason than the latter.
It is undoubtedly important for the good of nations that those who gov-
ern have virtues and talents; but perhaps it is even more important to them
that those who govern have no interests contrary to the mass of the gov-
erned; for, in this case, virtues could become nearly useless, and talents,
destructive.
I said it was important that those who govern have no interests contrary
to or different fromthe mass of the governed; I did not say it was important
that they had interests similar to those of all the governed, for I am not
aware that such a thing has yet been seen.
The political form has not yet been found that equally favors the de-
velopment and the prosperity of all the classes that make up society. These
classes have continued to form like so many distinct nations in the same
nation, and experience has proved that it was nearly as dangerous to put
the fate of the others completely in the hands of any one of them as to
make one people the arbiter of the destiny of another people. When the
rich alone govern, the interest of the poor is always in danger; and when
the poor make the laws, the interest of the rich runs great risks. So what is
the advantage of democracy? The real advantage of democracy is not, as
some have said, to favor the prosperity of all, but only to serve the well-
being of the greatest number.
Those charged, in the United States, with leading public affairs are often
In my view, that is the true, often noted reason why, in the republics of antiquity,
the more clearly it was noticed that ofcials abused their power, the more the term
of ofce was shortened. Thus, in Athens the archons for life were reduced to ten
years, and then to one year. In Rome, the power of the consuls, which lasted only
one year, was much less dangerous than that of the tribunes, which lasted ve years;
the dictatorship, despite its omnipotence, only became dangerous to liberty when it
dared to go beyond the limit of six months that had been set by law (YTC, CIIIb, 1,
p. 94).
Here, as elsewhere, Herve uses arguments taken from Montesquieu (cf. chapter III of
book II of Lesprit des lois ).
inferior in capacity and morality to the men whom aristocracy wouldbring
to power; but their interest merges and is identied with that of the ma-
jority
h
of their fellow citizens. So they can commit frequent indelities and
serious errors, but they will never systematically follow a tendency hostile
to this majority; and they can never impart an exclusive and dangerous
direction to the government.
The bad administration of a magistrate, under democracy, is moreover
an isolated fact that has inuence only during the short term of the ad-
ministration. Corruption and incompetence are not commoninterests that
can bind men together in a permanent way.
A corrupt or incompetent magistrate will not combine his efforts with
another magistrate for the sole reason that the latter is, like him, incom-
petent and corrupt; and these two men will never work in unison to make
corruption and incompetency ower among their descendants. On the
contrary, the ambitionandthe maneuvering of the one will serve tounmask
the other. Indemocracies, the vices of the magistrate are, ingeneral, entirely
personal.
But public men, under the government of aristocracy, have a class in-
terest that, if it sometimes merges with the interest of the majority, often
remains distinct from it. This interest forms a common and lasting bond
among these public men; it invites them to unite and to combine their
efforts toward an end that is not always the happiness of the greatest num-
ber. It not only links those who govern with each other; it also links them
with a considerable portion of the governed, for many citizens, without
holding any ofce, are part of the aristocracy.
So the aristocratic magistrate nds a constant support in society, at the
same time that he nds one in government.
This common objective that, in aristocracies, unites magistrates withthe
interest of a part of their contemporaries, also identies them with and, so
to speak, subjects them to future races. They work for the future as well as
for the present. So the aristocratic magistrate is pushed simultaneously to-
ward the same point, by the passions of the governed, by his own, and I
could almost say by the passions of his posterity.
h. In the manuscript: of the greatest number.
How can we be surprised if he doesnt resist? Consequently, in aristoc-
racies we often see even those not corrupted by class spirit dragged along
by it and unknowingly made to adapt society little by little to their own
use and to prepare it for their descendants.
I do not know if an aristocracy has ever existed as liberal as that of En-
gland, and that has, without interruption, provided the government of the
country with men as worthy and as enlightened.
It is easy to recognize, however, that in English legislation the good of
the poor has often ended by being sacriced to that of the rich,
j
and the
j. This sentence provoked the immediate reaction of two English readers. In a letter
of 17 February 1835, Nassau Senior remarked:
I do not think that in England the wealth of the poor has been sacriced to that of
the rich. As far as my investigations extend, the wages of the English labourer are
higher than those of any labourer. He has no landed property, because it is more
protable to him to work for another than to cultivate; but this depends on the same
ground which makes it more protable to work for a cotton manufacturer than to
make stockings for his own use. It is a part of the division of labour, of which la
grande culture is only an instance (Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de
Tocqueville and Nassau WilliamSenior, London: Henry S. King &Co., 1872, I, pp. 4
5).
Tocqueville replied:
It seems to me that you give to the expression le bien du pauvre a conned sense that
was not mine: you translate it wealth, a word especially applied to money. I meant
by it all that contributes to happiness: personal consideration, political right, easy
justice, intellectual enjoyments, and many other indirect sources of contentment. I
shall believe, till I have proof of the contrary, that in England the rich have gradually
monopolized almost all the advantages that society bestows upon mankind. Taking
the question in your own restricted sense, and admitting that a poor man is better
paid when he works on another mans land than when he cultivates his own, do you
not think that there are political, moral, and intellectual advantages, whichare a more
than sufcient and, above all, a permanent compensation for the loss that you point
out? (letter of 21 February 1835, ibid., p. 7).
He replied in slightly different terms to Basil Hall, ofcer in the English navy andauthor
of the controversial work on the United States Travels in North America in the Years 1827
and 1828:
You reproach me for having said that the interests of the poor were sacriced in England
to those of the rich. I confess that this thought, exposed in so few words, thrown out
in passing, without commentary, naturally tends to present a meaning much more
absolute than what I intended to give it, and my intention has always been to modify
rights of the greatest number to the privileges of a few. Therefore, within
England today all the greatest extremes of fortune are present together, and
miseries are found there that nearly equal its power and glory.
k
In the United States, where public ofcials have no class interest to
insist upon, the general and continuous course of government is bene-
cial, even though those who govern are often lacking in skill and some-
times contemptible.
So there is, at the heart of democratic institutions, a hidden tendency
that oftenmakes menwork towardthe general prosperity, despite their vices
or errors, while in aristocratic institutions a secret inclination is sometimes
uncovered that, despite talents and virtues, carries them toward contrib-
uting to the miseries of their fellows. In this way, in aristocratic govern-
ments, public men can do evil without wanting to do so, and in democ-
racies, they can produce good without thinking to do so.
m
it when I would be able to revise my work. What I principally wanted to say is that
England is a country where wealth is the necessary preliminary to a multitude of things
that elsewhere can be obtained without it. So that in England there is a multitude of
careers that are much more closed to the poor than they are in several other countries.
This would still require a great number of explanations to be well understood. I am
obliged to postpone them until the moment when I will have the pleasure of seeing
you again. Chateau de Baugy, 19 June 1836. With the kind permission of the library
of Princeton University (General Manuscripts [MISC] Collection, Manuscripts Di-
vision, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections). See note d for pp. 819
21 of volume III.
k. In the manuscript: Thus England today has reached a level of misery that nearly
equals its power . . .
Herve de Tocqueville: The word England presents too absolute an idea that reason
immediately contests. I believe that it wouldbe necessary to put: the lower class inEngland
has reached, etc. (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 95).
m. The world is a book entirely closed to man.
So there is at the heart of democratic institutions a hidden tendency that carries
men toward the good [v: to work toward general prosperity] despite their vices and
errors; while in aristocratic institutions a secret inclination is sometimes uncovered
that, despite talents and virtues, leads them to contribute to the miseries of the great-
est number of their fellows.
If a hidden force independent of men did not exist in democratic institutions, it
would be impossible to explain satisfactorily the peace and prosperity that reign
within certain democracies (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 76).
[If it were not so, who could understand what happens among men?
We would see some peoples enjoy a greater mass of well-being and
prosperity than other peoples and, when we came to examine the detail
of their government, we would nd something to correct in each of its
actions.
Other peoples would have something more than the usual state of hu-
man miseries as their share, and their public affairs would seem wisely
conducted.
So is prosperity in the world the reward of error and folly; are miseries
the recompense for skill and wisdom?/
This involuntary obedience of man to his own laws seems to me one of
the great miseries of our nature.
Who could say within what narrow limits what we call our free will is
exercised? Man obeys rst causes of which he is unaware, secondary causes
that he cannot foresee, a thousand caprices of his fellows; in the end, he
puts himself in chains and binds himself forever to the fragile work of his
hands.]
n
Of Public Spirit in the United States
o
Instinctive love of country.Thoughtful patriotism.Their
different characters.That peoples must tend with all their
might toward the second when the rst disappears.Efforts that
the Americans have made to succeed in doing so.The interest of
the individual intimately bound to that of the country.
There exists a love of country that has its source principally in the unthink-
ing, disinterested and indenable sentiment that binds the heart of the man
to the places where the man was born. This instinctive love is mingledwith
n. In the rst chapter of the Social Contract, Rousseau asserts that if man is bornfree,
he nds himself everywhere in chains. The image is customary at that time.
o. To the side: {Mr. Parier [?(ed.)] will leave blank what I} enclosed in lines. (It
probably involves the copyist of the manuscript. Here and there fragments in his hand
are found in the manuscript.)
the taste for ancient customs, with respect for ancestors, and the memory
of the past; those who experience it cherish their country as one loves the
paternal home. They love the tranquillity that they enjoy there; they are
fond of the peaceful habits that they contracted there; they are attached to
the memories that it offers, andevenndsome sweet pleasure inlivingthere
in obedience. Often this love of country is intensied even more by reli-
gious zeal, and then you see it accomplish miracles. It is itself a kind of
religion; it does not reason, it believes; it feels; it acts. Some peoples have
beenfoundwhohave, insome way, personiedthe countryandhavecaught
sight of it in the prince. So they have transferred to him a part of the sen-
timents that compose patriotism; they have boastedabout his triumphs and
have been proud of his power. There was a time, under the old monarchy,
when the French felt a sort of joy in feeling themselves given, without re-
course, to the arbitrariness of the monarch, and said with pride: We live
under the most powerful king in the world.
p
Like all unthinking passions, this love of country encourages great ep-
isodic efforts rather than continuity of efforts. After saving the State in
time of crisis, it often leaves it to decline amid peace. [This love of coun-
try is found in the cradle of societies; it presides during the early ages of
peoples.]
When peoples are still simple in their mores and rm in their beliefs;
when society rests gently upon an old order of things, whose legitimacy is
uncontested, you see this instinctive love of country reign.
q
There is another love of country more rational than that one; less gen-
erous, less ardent perhaps, but more fruitful and more durable; this one
arises from enlightenment; it develops with the help of laws; it grows with
the exercise of rights; and it ends up merging, in a way, with personal in-
terest. A man understands the inuence that the well-being of the country
has on his own; he knows that the law allows him to contribute to bringing
p. Herve de Tocqueville: All of this piece is charming; nonetheless the words caught
sight of are not good (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 95).
q. If God had granted me the power to change societies at will, and if I found along
my way a people who had remained in this state, I would hesitate a long time, I admit,
before trying to draw them out of that state (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 5).
this well-being into being, and he interests himself in the prosperity of his
country, rst as something useful to him and then as his work.
But sometimes, in the life of peoples, a moment occurs when ancient
customs are changed, mores destroyed, beliefs shaken, the prestige of mem-
ories has vanished, yet when enlightenment has remained incomplete and
political rights poorly guaranteed or limited. Then men no longer see the
country except in a weak and doubtful light; they no longer locate it either
in the soil, which in their eyes has become an inanimate land, or in the
customs of their ancestors, which they have been taught to regard as a bur-
den; or in religion, which they doubt; or in the laws, which they do not
make, or in the legislator, whomthey fear and scorn. So they see it nowhere,
not under its own features any more than under any other, and they with-
draw into a narrow and unenlightened egoism. These men escape preju-
dices without recognizing the empire of reason; they have neither the in-
stinctive patriotism of monarchy, nor the thoughtful patriotism of the
republic; but they have stopped between the two, in the middle of con-
fusion and misery.
What is to be done in such a state? Go back. But peoples do not return
to the sentiments of their youth any more than men to the innocent tastes
of early years; they can regret them, but not make them come again. So it
is necessary to move ahead and hasten to unite, in the eyes of the people,
individual interest and the interest of the country, for disinterested love of
country ies away never to return.
r
r. I see in Europe an innumerable multitude that nds itself entirely excluded from
the administration of its country. I think at rst that these men, seeing themselves
reduced to such a state [v: bondage] are going to become indignant, but no, they
rejoice in it.
For my part, what I most reproach despotism for are not its rigors. I wouldpardon
it for tormenting men if it did not corrupt them. Despotism creates in the soul of
those who are subjected to it a blind passion for tranquillity, a kind of depraved taste
for obedience, a sort of inconceivable self-contempt that ends up making them in-
different to their interests and enemies of their own rights.
Then they wrongly persuade themselves that by losing in this way all the privileges
of civilized man, they escape all his burdens and evade all his duties. So they feel free
and count in society like a lackey [v: valet] in the house of his master; and think that
they have only to eat the bread that is left for them, without concerning themselves
about the cares of the harvest.
I am surely far from claiming that to reach this result we must suddenly
grant the exercise of political rights to all men; but I say that the most
powerful means, and perhaps the only one remaining to us, to interest men
in the fate of their country, is to make them participate in its government.
Today, civic spirit seems to me inseparable from the exercise of political
rights; and I think that from now on, we will see the number of citizens in
Europe increase or decrease in proportion to the extension of these rights.
How is it that in the United States, where the inhabitants arrived yes-
terday on the soil that they occupy, where they brought neither customs,
nor memories; where they meet for the rst time without knowing each
other; where, to put it in a word, the instinct for native land can hardly
exist; how is it that each person is involved in the affairs of his town, of his
district, and of the entire State as his very own? Because each person, in his
sphere, takes an active part in the government of society.
The common man in the United States has understood the inuence
that general prosperity exercises over his own happiness, an idea so simple
and yet so little known by the people. He has, moreover, become accus-
tomed to regarding this prosperity as his work. So, in public fortune, he
sees his own, and he works for the good of the State, not only by duty or
by pride, but I would almost dare to say by cupidity.
When a man has reached this point, I will call him, if you want, a peaceful in-
habitant, an honest settler, a good family man. I am ready for everything, provided
that you do not force me to give him the name of citizen.
I am surely far from claiming that the exercise of political rights can be suddenly
granted to all men. But I say that civic spirit is nearly inseparable from the exercise
of political rights. So the number of citizens always increases or decreases ina coun-
try in proportion to the extension of these rights, and where the exercise can be
granted to all, the development of civic spirit is nearly without limits (YTC, CVh,
1, pp. 24).
A note dated 1840, when Tocqueville was a deputy and was occupied in the Chamber
withthe electoral issue, specied, however: As for electoral reform, here is mysentiment.
The mode of election: I absolutely refuse all lowering of the electoral qualication or
equivalent additions.I do not want a more radical election law, but a more moral
onean electoral system that makes corruption by patronage more difcult1840.
Note reproduced in Pierre Roland-Marcel, Essai politique sur Alexis de Tocqueville, Paris:
Felix Alcan, 1910, p. 211.
[He values his rights as a citizen as his rights as a proprietor, and he takes
an interest in the State as in his cottage or in the eld that his labors have
made fruitful.]
It is not necessary to study the institutions and the history of the Amer-
icans to know the truth of the preceding; the mores alert you to it well
enough. The American, taking part in all that is happening in this country,
believes it is in his interest to defend all that you criticize there; for it is not
only his country that you then attack, it is himself. Consequently, you see
his national pride resort to all the artices and descend to all the puerilities
of individual vanity.
[AnAmericaninhis country resembles a lover of gardens onhis grounds.
Dont you admire this rock? Is there anything more graceful than the con-
tour of this stream? Arent these trees planted well and to good effect?
Whatever you say, do not hope to satisfy him. The reason is simple. You
admire what is good, and he admires his work.]
There is nothing more annoying in the experience of life than this ir-
ritable patriotism of the Americans. The foreigner would gladly agree to
praise a great deal in their country; but he would want them to allow him
to nd fault with something, and that is what they absolutely refuse.
So America is a country of liberty, where, to hurt no one, the foreigner
must not speak freely about individuals, nor the State, nor the governed,
nor those who govern, nor public enterprises, nor private enterprises, about
nothing in fact that you nd there, except perhaps for climate andsoil; even
then you nd some Americans ready to defend the one and the other as if
they had taken part in their formation.
s
Today it is necessary to know how to make up your mind and dare to
s. American patriotism is already mentioned in the rst letter that Tocqueville sent
to his family during his voyage to the United States: These people seem to me to stink
of national pride; it pokes through all of their politeness (Letter to his mother, 26 April
1831, YTC, BIa2; this sentence does not appear in the edition of Tocquevilles works
done by Beaumont). Beaumont, on his side, writes in his novel: The writers, in the
United States, who want to nd readers are obliged to praise all that belongs to the
Americans, even their rigorous climate, about which they can assuredly change nothing.
In this way, Washington Irving, despite all of his intelligence, believes himself forced to
admire the temperate heat of the summers and the mildness of the winters in North
America (Marie, I, pp. 36061).
choose between the patriotism of all and the government of a few, for you
cannot at the same time combine the social strength and activity given by
the rst with the guarantees of tranquillity sometimes provided by the
second.
Of the Idea of Rights in the United States
There are no great peoples without the idea of rights.What is
the way to give the people the idea of rights.Respect for rights
in the United States.What gives rise to it.
After the general idea of virtue, I do not know any more beautiful thanthat
of rights, or rather, these two ideas merge. The idea of rights is nothing
more than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world.
With the idea of rights, menhave denedwhat license andtyrannywere.
Enlightened by it, each person has been able to show himself independent
without arrogance and submissive without servility. The man who obeys
violence yields and abases himself; but when he submits to the right of
command that he acknowledges in his fellow, he rises, in a way, above even
the one commanding him. There are no great men without virtue; without
respect for rights, there is no great people. You can almost say that there is
no society; for what is a gathering of rational and intelligent beings bound
together only by force?
t
t. In the world there are two kinds of respect for rights that must not be confused;
one, unthinking, arises from custom and grows stronger in ignorance. What for a
long time has been powerful and strong is respected, and the right to command is
judged by the fact of command. This respect for rights only guarantees the existence
of the strong, not that of the weak. Where it reigns, there is tranquillity, but there
is no liberty; neither prosperity nor independence is found.
Authority based on this instinctive respect for (illegible word) [v: {for rights}] is
absolute as long as no one contests its right; the day it is disputed, it is reducedalmost
to nothing.
There is another kind of respect for rights. The latter is reciprocal and guarantees
the privileges of the subject as well as those of the prince. This respect for rights was
based on reason and experience. Once it reigns in society, it is very difcult to
destroy it.
I wonder what way there is today to inculcate men withthe idea of rights
and to make it apparent to their senses, so to speak; and I only see a single
one; it is to give all of them the peaceful exercise of certain rights. You see
that clearly with children, who are men, except for strengthandexperience.
When a child begins to move among external objects, instinct leads him to
put everything that comes within reach to his own use; he has no idea of
the property of others, not even that of existence; but as he is informed
about the cost of things and as he discovers that things can, in turn, be
taken from him, he becomes more circumspect and ends by respecting in
his fellows what he wants them to respect in him.
What happens to the child concerning toys, happens later to the man
concerning all the objects belonging to him. Why in America, country of
democracy par excellence, does no one raise against property in general the
complaints that often resound in Europe? Is it necessary to say? In America
there are no proletarians. Each person, having an individual possession to
defend, recognizes in principle the right of property.
In the political world, it is the same. In America the common man has
conceived a high idea of political rights, because he has political rights; he
does not attack the rights of others, so that no one violates his. And while
in Europe this same man has no regard even for the sovereign authority,
the American submits without murmuring to the power of the least of his
magistrates.
This truthappears eveninthe smallest details of the existence of peoples.
In France, there are few pleasures exclusively reserved for the upper classes
of society; the poor man is admitted almost everywhere the rich manis able
[In the margin: The one is a sentiment rather than an idea. The other is based on
an idea rather than on a sentiment. The one is instinctive; the other is rational.]
But there are centuries when peoples, having lost the habit of respecting what they
do not know, still have not learned to know what they must respect. Then peoples
are tormented by a profound illness, tossing and turning without rest, like a sick man
stretched out aboard ship on his unsteady sickbed; there are even some who perish
during this transition [from (ed.)] custom to reason.
[In the margin: You could more easily turn a river back upon its source than make
this instinctive respect for rights reappear.]
I wonder what the way is . . . (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 1113).
to enter. Consequently you see him conduct himself with decency and re-
spect all that is useful for the enjoyments that he shares. In England, where
wealth has the privilege of pleasure, like the monopoly of power, the com-
plaint is that when the poor man succeeds in getting furtively into the place
destined for the pleasures of the rich man, he loves to cause pointless dam-
age. Why be astonished by this? Care has been taken so that he has nothing
to lose.
The government of democracy makes the idea of political rights descend
to the least of citizens, as the division of property puts the idea of the right
of property in general within reach of all men. That is one of its greatest
merits in my view.
I am not saying that it is an easy thing to teach all men to use political
rights; I am only saying that, when it is possible, the effects that result are
great.
And I add that if there is a century when such an enterprise must be
attempted, that century is our own.
Dont you see that religions are growing weaker and that the divine no-
tion of rights is disappearing? Dont you nd that mores are becoming
corrupted and that, with them, the moral notion of rights is fading away?
Dont you see, on all sides, beliefs giving way to reasoning, and senti-
ments, to calculation? If, in the midst of this universal disturbance, you do
not succeed in linking the idea of rights to personal interest, which offers
itself as the only xed point in the human heart, what will you have left
for governing the world, if not fear?
u
u. It is because I see the rights of governments disputed, that I think it necessary to
hasten to give rights to those governed.
It is because I see democracy triumphing, that I want to regulate democracy.
[In the margin: If morality was strong enough by itself, I would not regard it as
so important to rely on what is useful.
If the idea of what is just was more powerful, I would not speak so much about
the idea of what is useful.]
You say to me that, since morality has become lax, new rights will be new items
for the passions of today; that since governments are already weak, new rights will
give new weapons to their enemies to use against them; that democracy is already too
strong in society without further introducing it into government.
So when you say to me that laws are weak, and the governed, turbulent;
that passions are intense, and virtue, powerless, and that in this situation
you must not think about increasing the rights of democracy, I answer that,
because of these very things, I believe you must think about it; andintruth,
I think that governments have still more interest in it than society does, for
governments perish, and society cannot die.
v
However, I do not want to
abuse the example of America.
In America, the people were vested with political rights in a periodwhen
it was difcult for them to make poor use of those rights, because the cit-
izens were few and had simple mores. While growing, the Americans have
not increased the powers of democracy; rather they have extended its
sphere. [That is an invaluable advantage.]
It cannot be doubted that the moment when political rights are granted
to a people who have, until then, been deprived of them is a moment of
crisis, a crisis often necessary, but always dangerous.
The child inicts death when he is unaware of the value of life; he takes
property from others before knowing that someone can rob him of his.
The common man, at the moment when he is granted political rights, nds
himself, in relation to his rights, in the same position as the child vis-a`-vis
all of nature. In this case the celebrated phrase [of Hobbes] applies to him:
Homo puer robustus.
w
I will answer that it is because I see that morality is weak that I want to put it under
the safeguard of interest; it is because I see governments impotent that I would like
to accustom the governed to respecting them; it is [broken text (ed.)] (YTC, CVh,
4, p. 30).
v. To the side: I am not saying that political rights must be granted as of today to
the universality of citizens; I am saying the unlimited extension of rights is the end
toward which you must always tend.
w. Tocqueville cites De Cive (see the critical edition of Howard Warrender, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 33), but what precedes the citation is more similar to Discours
sur lorigine de line galite (Oeuvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, III, pp. 15354), in
which Rousseau, who cites the same fragment, reproaches Hobbes for not knowing that
ethical values are born with society and are not a product preceding society. Tocqueville
pointed out in this same part of the chapter that a society cannot survive if its only bond
is force and its only government, fear; on this point, this also makes him closer to Rous-
seau than to Hobbes. This proximity of ideas must not hide divergences on the concept
of rights, which has scarcely any place in the theory of Rousseau.
This truth is even revealed in America. The states in which citizens have
enjoyed their rights for the longest time are those inwhichthe citizens know
best how to make use of their rights.
It cannot be said too much. There is nothing more fruitful in wonders
than the art of being free; but there is nothing harder than apprenticeship
in liberty. It is not the same with despotism. Despotismoftenpresents itself
as the repairer of all the misfortunes suffered; it is the support of legitimate
rights, the upholder of the oppressed, and the founder of order. Peoples
fall asleep amid the temporary prosperity that it brings forth; and when
they awaken, they are miserable. Liberty, in contrast, is usually born amid
storms; it is established painfully in the midst of civil discord, and only
when it is already old can its benets be known.
Of the Respect for the Law in the United States
x
Respect of the Americans for the law.Paternal love that
they feel for it.Personal interest that each one nds in
increasing the power of the law.
It is not always possible to call the whole people, either directly or indirectly,
to the making of the law; but it cannot be deniedthat, whenit is practicable,
the law thereby acquires a great authority. This popular origin, whichoften
harms the goodness and wisdom of the legislation, contributes singularly
to its power.
y
In the expression of the will of an entire people, there is a prodigious
strength. When it comes clearly to light, even the imaginationof those who
would like to ght against it is as though overwhelmed.
x. Title in the manuscript: of the point of view from which the people
consider the law in the united states.
y. In the margin: There are two types of moral force:
The one because the law conforms to justice and to reason.
The other because it conforms to the will of the greatest number./
The law draws its moral force from two sources.
The one is reason; the other is the consent of the greatest number.
The truth of this is well known by parties.
Consequently, you see them contest the majority wherever they can.
When they lack the majority of those who voted, they place it among
those who have abstained from voting; and when, even there, the ma-
jority escapes them, they nd it among those who do not have the right
to vote.
In the United States, except for slaves, servants, and the poor provided
for by the towns, there is no one who is not a voter and who, as such, does
not indirectly contribute to the law. So those who want to attack the laws
are reduced to doing conspicuously one of two things; they must either
change the opinion of the nation, or trample its will underfoot.
Add to this rst reason another more direct and more powerful, that in
the United States each person nds a kind of personal interest in having
everyone obey the laws; for the one who is not part of the majority today
will perhaps be among its ranks tomorrow; and this respect that he now
professes for the will of the legislator, he will soon have the occasion to
demand for his own will. So, however annoying the law, the inhabitant of
the United States submits without trouble, not only as a work of the great-
est number, but also as his own; he considers it from the point of view of
a contract to which he would have been a party.
So in the United States, you do not see a numerous and always turbulent
crowd who, seeing the law as a natural enemy, only looks upon it with fear
and suspicion. On the contrary, it is impossible not to see that all classes
show a great condence in the legislation that governs the country and feel
a kind of paternal love for it.
I am wrong in saying all classes. In America, since the European scale of
powers is reversed, the rich nd themselves in a position analogous to that
of the poor in Europe; they are the ones who often distrust the law. I have
said it elsewhere: the real advantage of democratic government is not to
guarantee the interests of all, as has sometimes been claimed, but only to
protect those of the greatest number. In the United States, where the poor
mangoverns, the richhave always tofear that he will abuse his power against
them.
This disposition of the mind of the rich can produce a muted discon-
tent; but society is not violently troubled by it; for the same reason that
prevents the rich man from giving his condence to the legislator prevents
him from defying his commands. He does not make the law, because he is
rich; and he does not dare to violate it, because of his wealth. In general,
among civilized nations, only those who have nothing to lose revolt. There-
fore, if the laws of democracy are not always respectable, they are nearly
always respected; for those who generally violate the laws cannot fail toobey
the laws that they have made and from which they prot, and the citizens
who could have an interest in breaking them are led by character and by
position to submit to whatever the will of the legislator is. Moreover, the
people, in America, not only obey the law because it is their work, but also
because they can change it when by chance it injures them; they submit to
it rst as an evil that they imposed on themselves, and then as a temporary
evil.
Activity That Reigns in All Parts of the
Political Body in the United States;
Inuence That It Exercises on Society
It is more difcult to imagine the political activity that reigns in
the United States than the liberty or equality that is found
there.The great movement that constantly agitates the
legislatures is only an episode, a prolongation of this universal
movement.Difculty that the American has occupying himself
only with his own affairs.Political agitation spreads into civil
society.Industrial activity of the Americans coming in part
from this cause.Indirect advantages that society gains from the
government of democracy.
When you pass from a free country into another that is not, you are struck
by a very extraordinary spectacle: there, everything is activity and move-
ment; here, everything seems calmandimmobile. Inthe one, the onlyques-
tion is improvement and progress; you would say that society, in the other,
having gained all good things, aspires only to rest in order to enjoy them.
The country that gets so workedupto be happy is, however, generallyricher
and more prosperous than the one that seems so satised with its lot. And
in considering the one and the other, you have difculty imagining howso
many new needs make themselves felt each day in the rst, while so few
seem to be experienced in the second.
z
If this remark is applicable to free countries that have retained monar-
chical form and to those in which aristocracy dominates, it is very much
more applicable to democratic republics. There, it is no longer a portion
of the people that sets out to improve the state of society; the whole people
take charge of this concern. It is a matter of providing for the needs and
conveniences not only of a class, but of all classes at the same time.
a
It is not impossible to imagine the immense liberty that the Americans
enjoy. You can also have an idea of their extreme equality, but what you
cannot understand, without having already witnessed it, is the political ac-
tivity that reigns in the United States.
Scarcely have you landed on American soil than you nd yourself in the
middle of a sort of tumult; a confused clamor arises on all sides; a thousand
voices reach your ear at the same time; each one expresses various social
needs. Around you, everything stirs: here, the people of a neighborhood
have gathered to know if a church should be built; there, some are working
on choosing a representative; farther along, the deputies of a district go as
fast as they can to the city, in order to see to certain local improvements;
in another place, it is the farmers of the village who abandon their elds to
go to discuss the plan of a road or of a school. Some citizens assemble for
the sole purpose of declaring that [{freemasonry menaces the security of
the State}] they disapprove of the governments course; while others gather
z. In the margin: <What is even much more surprising is that often [v: sometimes]
the people who do nothing to improve their lot, nd themselves as satised with their
destiny as the people who stir themselves to make theirs better. The second wonders that
one can be so happy in the midst of so much misery; and the rst, that one can go to so
much trouble to become happy.>
a. In the margin: A European would be very unhappy if you forced him to pursue
well-being with so much effort.
It is difcult to believe that menare happy whenthey make somucheffort tobecome
happier.
It is the story of the rich tradesman who dies of boredom when he is forced to
abandon his business.
to proclaim that the men in ofce are the fathers of the country. Here are
still others who, seeing drunkenness as the principal source of the evils of
the State, come to pledge solemnly to give an example of temperance.
1
The great political movement that constantly agitates American legis-
latures, the only one that is noticed outside, is only an episode and a sort
of prolongation of the universal movement that begins in the lowest ranks
of the people and then reaches, one by one, all classes of citizens. You can-
not work harder to be happy.
It is difcult to say what place political concerns occupy in the life of
a man in the United States. To get involved in the government of society
and to talk about it, that is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only
pleasure that an American knows. This is seen even in the smallest habits
of his life; women themselves often go to public assemblies and, by lis-
tening to political speeches, relax from household cares. For them, clubs
replace theatrical entertainments to a certain point. AnAmericandoes not
know how to converse, but he discusses; he does not discourse, but he
holds forth. He always speaks to you as to an assembly; and if he happens
by chance to get excited, he will say: Gentlemen, while addressing his
interlocutor.
In certain countries, the inhabitant accepts only with a kind of re-
pugnance the political rights that the law grants him; dealing with
common interests seems to rob him of his time, and he loves to enclose
himself within a narrow egoism exactly limited by four ditches topped by
hedges.
In contrast, from the moment when the American would be reduced to
attending only to his own affairs, half of his existence would be takenaway
1. Temperance societies
b
are associations whose members pledge to abstain from strong
liquor. At the time of my visit to the United States, temperance societies already countedmore
than 270,000 members, and their effect had been to diminish, in the state of Pennsylvania
alone, the consumption of strong liquors by 500,000 gallons annually.
b. See chapter V of this part (p. 365) and E
crits sur le syste `me pe nitentiaire en France

et a` le tranger (OC, IV, 1), pp. 32728, appendix VII of Syste `me pe nitentiaire.
from him; he would feel an immense emptiness in his days, and he would
become unbelievably unhappy.
2
I am persuaded that if despotism ever succeeds in becoming established
in America, it will have even more difculties overcoming the habits that
liberty has engendered than surmounting the love of liberty itself.
This constantly recurring agitation that the government of democracy
has introduced into the political world passes afterward into civil society.
Everything considered, I do not know if that is not the greatest advantage
of democratic government, and I praise it much more for what it causes to
be done than for what it does.
Incontestably the people often direct public affairs very badly; but the
people cannot get involved in public affairs without having the circle of
their ideas expand, and without seeing their minds emerge from their or-
dinary routine. The common man who is called to the government of so-
ciety conceives a certain esteem for himself. Since he is then a power, very
enlightened minds put themselves in the service of his. People speaktohim
constantly in order to gain his support, and by seeking to deceive him in a
thousand different ways, they enlighten him. In politics, he takes part in
enterprises that he did not conceive, but that give him a general taste for
enterprises. Every day new improvements to make to common property
are pointed out to him, and he feels the desire to improve his personal prop-
erty arise. Perhaps he is neither more virtuous nor more happy, but he is
more enlightened and more active than his predecessors. I do not doubt
that democratic institutions, joinedwiththe physical nature of the country,
are the cause, not direct, as so many people say, but indirect of the prodi-
gious movement of industry that is noticed in the United States. It is not
the laws that give birth to it, but the people learn to produce it by making
the law.
d
2. The same fact was already observed in Rome under the rst Caesars.
Montesquieu remarks somewhere
c
that nothing equaled the despair of certain Roman
citizens who, after the agitations of a political existence, returned suddenly to the calm of
private life.
c. Probably in Conside rations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur de ca-
dence, chapter XI, in uvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1951, II, p. 131.
d. In the margin: Superiority of the strength of the people which is worth more
When the enemies of democracy claim that one man does what he un-
dertakes better than the government of all, it seems to me that they are
right. The government of one man, supposing equality of enlightenment
on both sides, brings more consistency to its enterprises than that of the
multitude; it shows more perseverance, more of an idea of the whole, more
perfection in details, a more correct discernment in the choice of men. [{So
a republic is not administered as well as a monarchy, supposing equality of
enlightenment on both sides.}] Those who deny these things have never
seen a democratic republic, or have judged only on a small number of ex-
amples. Democracy, even when local circumstances and the dispositions of
the people allow it to persist, does not offer the sight of administrative
regularity and methodical order in government; that is true. Democratic
liberty does not execute each of its enterprises with the same perfection as
intelligent despotism; often it abandons them before gaining the fruit, or
chances dangerous ones; but in the long run it produces more than des-
potism; it does not do each thing as well, but it does more things. Under
its dominion, it is, above all, not what the public administration executes
that is great, but what is executed without it and outside of it. Democracy
does not give the people the most skillful government, but it does what the
most skillful government is oftenimpotent to create; it spreads
e
throughout
the social body a restless activity, a superabundant force, an energy that
never exists without it and that, if only circumstances are favorable, can
bring forth wonders. Those are its true advantages.
In this century, when the destinies of the Christian world appear to be
in suspense, some hasten to attack democracy like a powerful enemy, while
it is still growing; others already adore it as a new god coming out of noth-
ingness; but both know only imperfectly the object of their hate or their
desire; they ght in the shadows and strike only at random.
than the government. It is difcult to make the people listen to reason, but when they
hear it, they advance toward reason with a much stronger step and with a much more
powerful effort. Criminal investigation in America. Smuggling.
e. The manuscript adds: in a way unknowingly.
What do you ask of society and its government? We must understand
one another.
Do you want to give the human spirit a certain nobility, a generous fash-
ion of envisioning the things of this world? Do you want to inspire in men
a sort of contempt for material goods? Do you desire to bring about or to
maintain profound convictions and prepare great devotions?
Is it a matter for you of polishing mores, of elevating manners, of mak-
ing the arts shine? Do you want poetry, fame, and glory?
Do you claim to organize a people in a way to act strongly on all others?
Do you intend it to attempt great undertakings, and, whatever the result
of its efforts, to leave an immense trace in history?
If such, in your view, is the principal object that men must propose for
themselves in society, do not opt for the government of democracy; it
would not lead you surely to the goal.
But if it seems useful to you to divert the intellectual and moral activity
of man toward the necessities of material life, and to use it to produce well-
being; if reason appears to you more protable to men than genius; if your
object is not to create heroic virtues, but peaceful habits; if you like to see
vices more than crimes, and prefer to nd fewer great actions, on the con-
dition of encountering fewer cases of heinous crimes; if, instead of acting
within the bosom of a brilliant society, it is enough for you to live in the
midst of a prosperous society; if, nally, in your view, the principal object
of a government is not to give the entire body of the nation the most
strength or the most glory possible, but to provide for each of the individ-
uals that make up the society the most well-being and to avoid the most
misery; then equalize conditions and constitute the government of
democracy.
f
If there is no more time to make a choice, and a force superior to men
is already carrying you, without consulting your desires, toward one of
f. See appendix V of this edition, particularly pp. 136971.
these two governments, seek at least to derive from it all the good that it
can do; and knowing its good instincts, as well as its bad inclinations, en-
deavor to limit the effect of the second and to develop the rst.
g
g. Note in the manuscript at the end of the chapter: Perhaps, in place of these
generalities, it would be better to develop this single idea that if the government of
democracy is not favorable to the rst part of the picture, it has the advantage of serving
the well-being of the greatest number.
Perhaps put all this at the end of the advantages of democracy like a kind of
summary.
402
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 7
Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the
United States and Its Effects
a
a. Herve de Tocqueville:
Before beginning the notes on this chapter, I want to make two general reections:
1. Isnt there a kind of contradiction between this chapter and the last paragraph
of page 3 of the second volume, where the author expresses himself this way: In the
United States, as in all countries where the people rule, the majority governs in the
name of the people. This majority is composed principally of a mass of men who,
either by taste or by interest, sincerely desire the goodof the country; agitatingaround
this quite peaceful mass, parties work to draw it toward them and gain its support?
2. I do not know if this chapter is well placed in the book. In one of the preceding
chapters, entitled Of the Right of Association, the author says, p. 67: In our time, the
right of association has become a guarantee against the tyranny of the majority.
The logical order of ideas demands that the disadvantages be cited before the rem-
edy. I observe, moreover, that the author must revise the sentence I have just tran-
scribed and make it less absolute, if he does not want it to harm singularly the effect
of the chapter on omnipotence (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 8183).
It seems that the idea of the tyranny of the majority is mentioned for the rst time
on the occasion of a conversation with Sparks, 29 September 1831 (non-alphabetic note-
books 1 and 2, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 96). John Stuart Mill, following
Tocqueville, will take up this expression again and use it in his famous essay On Liberty.
Nonetheless, as Joseph Hamburger points out (Mill and Tocqueville on Liberty, in
John M. Robson and M. Laine, eds., James and John Stuart Mill. Papers of the Centenary
Conference, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976, pp. 11125), if Mill uses the
term, the consequences he derives from it are quite far removed from those of Tocque-
ville. H. O. Pappe as well is skeptical about the possible inuence of Tocqueville onMill
(Mill and Tocqueville, Journal of the History of Ideas 25, no. 2 (1964): 21744).
Ludovic, the protagonist in Marie, also insists on the sway of opinion in America (I,
pp. 165, 17274, and 203).
the omni potence of the maj ori ty 403
Natural strength of the majority in democracies.Most of the
American constitutions have articially increased this natural
strength.How.Binding mandates.Moral dominion of the
majority.Opinion about its infallibility.Respect for its
rights.What augments it in the United States.
The very essence of democratic governments is that the dominion of the
majority be absolute; for, in democracies, nothing outside of the majority
can offer resistance.
Most of the American constitutions have also sought to augment this
natural strength of the majority articially.
1
Of all political powers, the legislature is the one that most willinglyobeys
the majority. The Americans have wanted the members of the legislature
to be named directly by the people, and for a very short term, in order to
force them to submit not only to the general views, but also to the daily
passions of their constituents.
They have taken the members of the two houses from the same classes
and named them in the same way; in this way, the movements of the leg-
islative body are almost as rapid and no less irresistible thanthose of a single
assembly.
c
1. We have seen, at the time of the examination of the federal Constitution, that the law-
makers of the Union made contrary efforts.
b
The result of these efforts was to make the federal
government more independent in its sphere than the government of the states. But the federal
government is scarcely in charge of anything except foreign affairs; the state governments really
run American society.
b. So in democratic republics the majority forms a true power. And after it, the
body that represents it. The political body that best represents the majority is the
legislature. To augment the prerogatives of this body is to augment the power of the
majority.
Nonetheless, this power of the majority can be moderated in its exercise by the
efforts of the law-maker. The authors of the federal Constitution worked in this
direction. They sought to hinder the march of the majority. In the individual states,
one tried hard, in contrast, to make the march of the majority more rapid and more
irresistible (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 14).
c. Herve de Tocqueville: If this is so, we do not see clearly why the American con-
stitutions created two houses; it is probable that there is something too absolute in the
authors phrasing (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 83).
Within the legislature thus constituted, the Americans gatheredtogether
nearly the entire government.
At the same time that the law increased the strength of powers that were
naturally strong, it weakened more and more those that were naturally
weak. It gave to the representatives of the executive power neither stability
nor independence; and, by subjecting them completely to the caprices of
the legislature, it took from them the little inuence that the nature of
democratic government would have allowed them to exercise.
d
In several states, the law delivered the judicial power to election by the
majority; and in all, it made the existence of the judicial power dependent,
in a way, on the legislative power, by leaving to the representatives the right
to x the salaries of judges annually.
e
Customs have gone still further than the laws.
In the United States, a custom is spreading more and more that will end
by making the guarantees of representative government empty; it happens
very frequently that the voters, while naming a deputy, trace a plan of con-
duct for him and impose on him a certain number of denite obligations
from which he cannot deviate in any way. Except for the tumult, it is as if
the majority itself deliberated in the public square.
Several particular circumstances in America also tend to make the power
of the majority not only predominant, but irresistible.
The moral dominion of the majority is based in part on the idea that
there is more enlightenment and wisdom in many men combined than in
one man alone, more in the number than in the choice of legislators. It is
the theory of equality applied to minds. This doctrine attacks the pride of
d. In America executive power is nothing and can do nothing. The entire strength
of government is entrusted to society itself, organized under the most democratic form
that has ever existed. In America all danger comes from the people; it is never born
outside (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 21).
e. Importance of the judicial power as barrier to democracy, its weakness. See Fed-
eralist, p. 332 [No. 78 (ed.)].
In most states, judges are dependent upon the legislature for their salaries; inseveral,
elected by the legislature or by the people. Growing causes of tyranny (YTC, CVe,
p. 64). Cf. conversations with Mr. Storer, Spencer, and Judge MacLean(non-alphabetic
notebooks 1, 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 69, 124 and 127).
man in its last refuge. Consequently the minority admits it with difculty
and gets used to it only with time. Like all powers, and perhaps more than
any other, the power of the majority thus needs to last in order to seem
legitimate. When it is beginning to be established, it makes itself obeyed
by force; only after living under its laws for a long time do you begin to
respect it.
The idea that the right to governsociety belongs tothe majoritybecause
of its enlightenment was carried to the soil of the United States by the
rst inhabitants. This idea, which alone would be enough to create a free
people, has today passed into the mores, and you nd it in the least habits
of life.
The French, under the old monarchy, held as a given that the king could
do no wrong;
f
and whenhe happenedtodosomething wrong, theythought
that the fault was with his advisors. This facilitated obedience marvelously.
You could murmur against the law, without ceasing to love and respect the
law-maker. Americans have the same opinion about the majority.
The moral dominion of the majority is based as well on the principle
that the interests of the greatest number must be preferred to those of the
few. Now, it is easily understood that the respect professed for this right of
the greatest number naturally increases or decreases depending on the state
of the parties. When a nation is divided among several great irreconcilable
interests, the privilege of the majority is often unrecognized, because it be-
comes too painful to submit to it.
If a class of citizens existed in America that the legislator worked to
strip of certain exclusive advantages, held for centuries, and that he
wanted to bring down from an elevated position and restore to the ranks
of the multitude, it is probable that the minority would not easily submit
to his laws.
But since the United States was populated by men equal to each other,
f. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not know why Alexis applies to the old monarchy the
principle that the king could do no wrong. The Charter of 1814 and that of 1830 have
this principle as a basis (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 83).
no natural and permanent dissidence is yet found among the interests of
the various inhabitants.
g
There is such a social state in which the members of the minority cannot
hope to attract the majority because to do so it would be necessary to aban-
don the very object of the struggle that the minority wages against the ma-
jority. An aristocracy, for example, cannot become a majority while pre-
serving its exclusive privileges, and it cannot allowits privileges to slip away
without ceasing to be an aristocracy. [In these countries, it is almost im-
possible for the moral power of the majority ever to succeed in being rec-
ognized by all.]
In the United States, political questions cannot be posed in as general
and absolute a way, and all parties are ready to recognize the rights of the
g. Majority./
The moral dominion of the majority is established with more difculty than an-
other because it is based upon ideas of equality shocking to many minds that have
not become accustomed to it.
Like all other empires, it is lost by abuse. Tyranny of the majority leads to appeals
by minorities to physical force. From that, confusion, anarchy and the despotism of
one man. The American republics, far from raising the fear of anarchy at the present
moment, raise only the fear of despotism of the majority; anarchy will come only as
a consequence of this tyranny.
There is such a social state in which the minorities can never become majorities,
without losing enormously or even ceasing to be. In these countries, the dominion
of the majority can only be established with great difculty and can only be main-
tained with even more difculty. France in this case./
In America, the dominion of the majority will be overturned not because it lacks
strength, but wisdom. The government is centralizedinsucha way that the governing
majority is omnipotent. It will lack not physical force, but moral force. In all power
exercised by the people, there is something variable, something of scant wisdom.
I would like someone to explain to me what is meant when this banal phrase is
put forth: that an entire people cannot completely go beyond the limits of reason.
It is undoubtedly rare for an entire people to go beyond those limits. But what
generally does the will of the people mean? A majority; but what is a majority taken
as a whole if not an individual who has opinions and, most often, interests contrary
to another individual called the minority?
Now, if you admit that an individual vested with omnipotence canabuse it against
his adversaries, why would you not admit the same thing for the majority? As for me,
I see only God who can be vested with omnipotence without disadvantage (YTC,
CVj, 2, pp. 23).
majority, because all hope one day to be able to exercise those rights to their
prot.
So in the United States the majority has an immense power in fact and
a power of opinion almost as great; and once the majority has formed on
a question, there is, so to speak, no obstacle that can, I will not say stop,
but even slow its course and leave time for the majority to hear the cries of
those whom it crushes as it goes.
The consequences of this state of affairs are harmful and dangerous
h
for
the future.
How the Omnipotence of the Majority in America
Increases the Legislative and Administrative
Instability That Is Natural to Democracies
How the Americans increase legislative instability,
which is natural to democracy, by changing the legislator
annually and by arming him with an almost limitless power.
The same effect produced in the administration.In America a
force innitely greater, but less sustained than in Europe is
brought to social improvements.
I spoke previously of the vices that are natural to the government of de-
mocracy; there is not one of them that does not grow at the same time as
the power of the majority.
And, to begin with the most obvious of all.
Administrative instability is an evil inherent in democratic government,
because it is in the nature of democracies to bring new men to power. But
this evil is greater or lesser depending on the power and the means of action
granted to the legislator.
In America sovereign power is handed over to the authority that makes
the laws. That authority can rapidly and irresistibly abandon itself to each
of its desires, and every year it is given other representatives. That is to say,
what has been adopted is precisely the combination that most favors dem-
h. The manuscript says: . . . very harmful and highly dangerous for the future.
ocratic instability and that allows democracy to apply its changeable will
to the most important objects. [We have seen under the National Assem-
bly and the Convention how, by granting omnipotence to the legislative
body, the natural instability of law in republics increased more. These ex-
treme consequences of a bad principle cannot recur in the same way in
America because American society is not in revolution as French society
then was and because there has been a long apprenticeship in liberty in
America.]
America today is, therefore, the country in the world where laws have
the shortest duration. Nearly all the American constitutions have been
amended during the last thirty years. So, during this period, there is no
American state that has not modied the principle of its laws.
j
As for the laws themselves, it is sufcient to glance at the archives of the
different states of the Union to be persuaded that in America the activity
of the legislator never ags.
k
Not that the American democracy is by nature
more unstable than another, but in the formation of the laws, it has been
given the means to follow the natural instability of its inclinations.
2
The omnipotence of the majority and the rapid and absolute manner
in which its will is executed in the United States not only make the law
unstable, but also exercise the same inuence on the execution of the law
and on the action of public administration.
Since the majority is the only power important to please, the works that
it undertakes are ardently supported; but from the moment when its at-
j. In this place in the manuscript three paragraphs are found that Tocqueville will
later add to chapter V of this second part. (It concerns the passage that begins with:
Many Americans consider . . . and that concludes with the citation of Number 73 of
the Federalist, pp. 15556.)
k. To the side: The omnipotence of the majority is not the rst cause of the evil,
but it innitely increases it.
2. The legislative acts promulgated in the state of Massachusetts alone, from1780 to today,
already ll three thick volumes. It must be noted as well that the collection of which I speak
was revised in 1823, and that many former or pointless laws were discarded. Now, the state
of Massachusetts, which is no more populated than one of our departments, can pass for the
most stable state in the entire Union, and the one that puts the most coherence and wisdom
into its enterprises.
tentiongoes elsewhere, all efforts cease; whereas inthe free States of Europe,
in which administrative power has anindependent existence andanassured
position, the will of the legislator continues to be executed, even when he
is occupied by other objects.
In America, much more zeal and activity is brought to certain improve-
ments than is done elsewhere.
InEurope, aninnitely smaller, but more sustainedsocial force is applied
to the same things.
[I saw some striking examples of what I am advancing in a matter that
I had particular occasion to examine in the United States.]
Several years ago some religious men undertook to improve the condi-
tion of prisons. The public was roused by their voice, and the regeneration
of criminals became a popular undertaking.
Then new prisons arose. For the rst time, the idea of reforming the
guilty penetrated the jail at the same time as the idea of punishing him.
But the happy revolution that the public joined with so much fervor and
that the simultaneous efforts of citizens made irresistible could not be ac-
complished in one moment.
Alongside some new penitentiaries, the development of which was has-
tened by the desire of the majority, the old prisons still existed and contin-
ued to house a great number of the guilty. The latter seemed to become
more unhealthy and more corrupting as the new ones became more re-
forming and healthier. This double effect is easily understood: the majority,
preoccupied by the idea of founding the new establishment, had forgotten
the one that already existed. By eachpersonaverting his eyes fromthe object
that no longer attracted the regard of the master, supervision had ceased.
At rst the salutary bonds of discipline were seen to relax and then, soon
after, to break. And alongside the prison, lasting monument of the mildness
and enlightenment of our time, was found a dungeon that recalled the
barbarism of the Middle Ages.
[In France, it would be very difcult to nd prisons as good and as bad
as in the United States.]
Tyranny of the Majority
m
How the principle of sovereignty of the people must be
understood.Impossibility of conceiving a mixed government.
The sovereign power must be somewhere.Precautions that must
be taken to moderate its action.These precautions have not
been taken in the United States.What results.
I regard as impious and detestable this maxim that in matters of govern-
ment the majority of a people has the right to do anything, and yet I con-
sider that the will of the majority is the origin of all powers. Do I contradict
myself?
A general law exists that has been made, or at least adopted, not only by
the majority of such or such people, but by the majority of all men. This
law is justice.
So justice forms the limit of the right of each people [to command].
A nation is like a jury charged with representing universal society and
with applying justice, which is its law. Should the jury, which represents
society, have more power than the very society whose laws it applies?
n
So when I refuse to obey an unjust law, I am not denying the right of
the majority to command; I am only appealing from the sovereignty of the
people to the sovereignty of the human race.
m. Title in the manuscript: tyrannical effects of the omnipotence of
the majority.
Concerning the idea of tyranny of the majority, Morton Horwitz (Tocqueville and
the Tyranny of the Majority, Reviewof Politics, 28, 1966, pp. 293307) defends the idea
that Tocqueville, when speaking of the majority in numerical terms, is thinking about
France, not about America, and that he thinks about America only when he considers
the moral tyranny of the majority. Also see David Spitz, On Tocqueville and the Tyr-
anny of Public Sentiment, Political Science 9, no. 2 (1957): 313.
n. In the margin: Its effects:
on actions,
on words,
on character and thoughts.
That it is by the abuse of the strength of their government and not by its weakness
that the American republics are threatened with perishing.
There are men who are not afraid to say that, in objects that concern
only itself, a people could not go entirely beyond the limits of justice and
reason, and that we should not be afraid, therefore, to give all power to the
majority that represents a people. But that is the language of a slave.
So what is a majority taken as a whole, if not an individual who has
opinions and, most often, interests contrary to another individual called
the minority. Now, if you admit that an individual vested with omnip-
otence can abuse it against his adversaries, why would you not admit the
same thing for the majority? Have men, by gathering together, changed
character? By becoming stronger, have they become more patient in the
face of obstacles?
3
As for me, I cannot believe it; and the power to do
everything that I refuse to any one of my fellows, I will never grant to
several.
o
Not that I believe that, to preserve liberty, several principles canbe mixed
together in the same government, in a way that truly opposes them to each
other.
The government called mixed has always seemed to me a chimera. Truly
3. No one would want to maintain that a people is not able to abuse strength vis-a`-vis
another people. Now, parties are like small nations within a large one; in relation to each
other, they are like foreigners.
If you agree that a nation can be tyrannical toward another nation, how can you deny
that a party can be so toward another party?
o. Democracy./
Tyranny of democracy. Confusion of all powers in the hands of the assemblies.
Weakness of the executive power to react against these assemblies of which it is only
an instrument. See very curious article of the Federalist on this subject, p. 213 [No.
48 (ed.)]; id., p. 205 [No. 46 (ed.)]; id., p. 224 [No. 51 (ed.)]./
Moreover, that is a required result of the rule of democracy. There is strengthonly
in the people; there can only be strength in the constitutional power that represents
the people./
In America the executive and judicial powers are absolutely dependent upon the
legislative power. It xes their salaries in general, modies their organization; and
nothing is provided for them to be able to resist its encroachments [word in English
in the original (ed.)]. Federalist, p. 205 [No. 46 (ed.)]./
Necessity of taking measures to avoid the abuse of all powers, eventhose that seem
most legitimate. Federalist, p. 223 [No. 51 (ed.)] (YTC, CVb, pp. 2526).
speaking, there is no mixed government (in the sense that is given to this
term), because, in each society, you eventually discover a principle of action
that dominates all the others.
England of the last century, which was particularly cited as an ex-
ample of this sort of government, was an essentially aristocratic State,
although some large elements
p
of democracy were found within it; for
the laws and the mores there were established in such a way that eventually
the aristocracy would always predominate and lead public affairs as it
willed.
The error arose because, seeing the interests of the great constantly in
conict with those of the people, only the struggle was considered, instead
of paying attention to the result of this struggle, which was the important
point. When a society truly comes to have a mixed government, that is a
government equally divided among contrary principles, it enters into rev-
olution or dissolves.
q
So I think that a social power superior to all others must always be
placed somewhere, but I believe liberty is in danger when this power en-
counters no obstacle that can check its course
r
and give it time tomoderate
itself.
Omnipotence in itself seems to me something bad and dangerous.
s
Its
p. The manuscript says, on the other hand: some democratic institutions.
This paragraph makes direct reference to Montesquieu. Cf. note n of p. 28.
q. If here Tocqueville denies the existence of mixed government, he is, nonetheless,
about to explain in the following paragraphs his theory of a social and political organi-
zation in which every principle must necessarily be opposed by another. (The idea has
been mentioned in the editors introduction.)
r. In the manuscript: that can, if not entirely stop, at least check its course . . .
s. Despotism is at the two ends of sovereignty, when one man rules and when the
majority governs. Despotism is attached to omnipotence, whoever the representative
may be (YTC, CVe, p. 65).
Guizot defends a similar idea:
The partisans of divine right had said: there is only one God; so there should be only
one king, and all power belongs to him because he is the representative of God. The
partisans of sovereignty of the people have said: there is only one people; so there
should be only one legislative assembly; for it represents the people. In both cases the
error is the same, and it leads equally to despotism. There is only one God and there
exercise seems to me beyond the power of man, whoever he may be; and
I see only God who can, without danger, be all powerful, because his wis-
dom and his justice are always equal to his power. So there is no authority
on earth so respectable in itself, or vested with a right so sacred, that I would
want to allow it to act without control or to dominate without obstacles.
So when I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to whatever
power, whether called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether
exercised in a monarchy or a republic, I say: the seed of tyranny is there
and I try to go and live under other laws.
What I most criticize about democratic government as it has been or-
ganized in the United States, is not its weaknesses as many people inEurope
claim, but on the contrary, its irresistible strength.
t
And what repels me the
is only one people, that is certain; but this God is nowhere on earth, for neither one
man nor the whole people is God, knows his law perfectly and wants it constantly.
So no de facto power should be unique, for unity of the de facto power assumes com-
plete de jure power which no one possesses or can possess ( Journal des cours publics,
Paris: au bureau du Journal, 18211822, II, p. 293).
In another place, Guizot refers to Pascal for his argument: Unity that is not multiple,
says Pascal, is tyranny. From that follows the necessity for two chambers (ibid, p. 17).
The principle of Guizots representative system is nothing other than the destructionof
all absolute power. This principle requires the provisionof the jury, freedomof the press,
the division of powers and the organization of the legislative power into two chambers.
These elements are repeated in Tocquevilles theory.
t. Howdemocracy leads to tyranny and will succeedindestroying liberty inAmerica.
See the beautiful theory presented on this point in the Federalist, p. 225 [No. 51 (ed.)].
It is not because powers are not concentrated; it is because they are too concentrated
that the American republics will perish. The tyranny of one man will appear more
tolerable than the tyranny of the majority.
Agood government implies two things: rst, delity to the object of government,
which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which
that object can be best attained. Some governments are decient in both these qual-
ities; most governments are decient in the rst. [I (ed.)] Scruple not to assert that,
inthe Americangovernments, too little attentionhas beenpaidtothe last. Thefederal
Constitution avoids this error. Federalist, p. 268 [No. 62 (ed.)].
Tendency of republics to make the executive power only a passive agent, without
any strength whatsoever, id., p. 207 [No. 47 (ed.)] (YTC, CVb, p. 26).
most in America is not the extreme liberty that reigns there; it is the slight
guarantee against tyranny that is found.
u
When a man or a party suffers from an injustice in the United States, to
whom do you want them to appeal? To public opinion? That is what forms
the majority. To the legislative body? It represents the majority and blindly
obeys it. To the executive power? It is named by the majority and serves it
as a passive instrument. To the police? The police are nothing other than
the majority under arms. To the jury? The jury is the majority vested with
the right to deliver judgments. The judges themselves, in certain states, are
elected by the majority. However iniquitous or unreasonable the measure
that strikes you may be, you must therefore submit to it [or ee. <What is
that if not the very soul of tyranny under the forms of liberty?>].
4
u. It is very much easier to contest a principle than its consequences. You easily
prove to a king that he does not have the right to sacrice the interest of the State to his
own, but when the majority oppresses you, you are forced to recognize its right before
attacking the use of that right (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 81).
4. In Baltimore, at the time of the War of 1812, a striking example was seen of the excesses
to which the despotism of the majority can lead.
v
At this time the war was very popular in
Baltimore. A newspaper that was strongly against the war aroused the indignation of the
inhabitants by its conduct. The people gathered, broke the presses, and attacked the newspaper
ofce. Some wanted to call the militia, but it did not answer the call. In order to save the
unfortunate journalists, who were threatened by the public furor, it was decided to put them
in jail, like criminals. This precaution was useless; during the night, the people gatheredagain;
the magistrates were unable to get the militia to come; the prison was forced open; one of the
journalists was killed on the spot; the others were left for dead; the guilty, brought before a
jury, were acquitted.
I said one day to an inhabitant of Pennsylvania: Please explain to me why, in a state
founded by Quakers and renowned for its tolerance, emancipated Negroes are not allowed to
exercise the rights of citizens. They pay taxes; isnt it just that they vote?Dont insult us,
he answered, by thinking that our legislators have committed such a gross act of injustice and
intolerance.So, among you, Blacks have the right to vote?Undoubtedly.Then,
how come at the polling place this morning, I did not see a single one in the crowd?This
is not the fault of the law, the American said to me; Negroes, it is true, have the right to
present themselves at elections, but they abstain voluntarily it seems.That is very modest
of them.Oh! it isnt that they refuse to go, but they are afraid that they will be mistreated
there. Among us, it sometimes happens that the law lacks force when the majority does not
support it. Now, the majority is imbued with the greatest prejudices against Negroes, and
magistrates do not feel they have the strength to guarantee to the latter the rights that the
legislator has conferred.What! the majority which has the privilege of making the law,
also wants to have that of disobeying the law?
v. Mr. Cruse, editor of a newspaper in Baltimore, told this anecdote to Tocqueville
Suppose, in contrast, a legislative body composed in such a way that it
represents the majority, without necessarily being the slave of the majoritys
passions; an executive power that has a strength of its own; and a judicial
power independent of the twoother powers; youwill still have a democratic
government, but there will no longer be hardly any chances for tyranny.
[{If the effects of this tyranny are not felt more in America, it is because
America is a new country where political passions are still not very deep
and where so vast a eld for human activity is presented that interests are
rarely opposed to each other.}]
I am not saying that at the present time in America tyranny is frequently
practiced; I amsaying that no guarantee against tyranny is found there, and
that the causes for the mildness of government must be sought in circum-
stances and in mores, rather than in laws.
w
Effects of the Omnipotence of the Majority on the
Arbitrariness of American Public Ofcials
Liberty that American law leaves to ofcials within the
circle that it draws.Their power.
Arbitrariness must be carefully distinguished fromtyranny. Tyranny canbe
exercised by means of the lawitself, andthenit is not arbitrary; arbitrariness
can be exercised in the interests of the governed, and then it is not
tyrannical.
x
(note of 4 November 1831, pocket notebook 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 187
88). The interlocutor of the other conversation is George Washington Smith (conver-
sation of 24 October 1831, alphabetic notebook B, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1,
pp. 24647).
w. The omnipotence of the majority seems to me the most serious disadvantage
attached to democratic governments and the source of their greatest dangers (YTC,
CVh, 4, p. 81).
x. In the manuscript: Arbitrariness must be carefully distinguished from tyranny,
and tyranny from arbitrariness. Arbitrariness can be not tyrannical, and tyranny can be
not arbitrary. In the United States there is almost never arbitrariness, but sometimes
there is tyranny.
To the side: When Louis XIV regulated by himself and with sovereign power the
Tyranny usually makes use of arbitrariness, but if necessary it knows
how to do without it.
In the United States, the omnipotence of the majority, at the same time
that it favors the legal despotism of the legislator, also favors the arbitrar-
iness of the magistrate. Because the majority has absolute control over mak-
ing the law and supervising its execution, and has equal control over those
governing and those governed, it regards public ofcials as its passive agents
and willingly relies on them to take care of serving its designs. So the ma-
jority does not enter in advance into the details of the duties of public
ofcials and scarcely takes the trouble to dene their rights. It treats them
as a master would treat his servants, if, having their behavior always inview,
he could direct or correct their conduct at every moment.
In general, the law leaves American ofcials much more free than ours
within the circle that is drawn around them. Sometimes the majority even
allows them to go outside of this circle. Guaranteed by the opinion of the
greatest number and strong because of their support, they then dare things
that a European, accustomed to the spectacle of arbitrariness, still nds
astonishing. In this way, habits being formed within liberty that, one day,
will be able to become destructive to it.
Of the Power Exercised by the Majority
in America over Thought
In the United States, when the majority has irrevocably settled on
a question, it is no longer discussed.Why.Moral power that
the majority exercises over thought.Democratic republics
immaterialize despotism.
When you come to examine how thought is exercised in the United States,
you notice very clearly to what extent the power of the majority surpasses
all the powers that we know in Europe.
commercial rights [doubtful reading (ed.)] of his subjects, he committed an arbitrary
but not a tyrannical act.
When the National Assembly ordered [blank space in the manuscript (ed.)], it com-
mitted a tyrannical act but not an arbitrary act.
Thought is an invisible and almost imperceptible power that scoffs at all
tyrannies [that scoffs amid chains and executioners. {You could say of it
what Malherbe said of death: it does not stop at the gates of the Louvre
any more than at the door of the poor man}].
y
Today, the most absolute
sovereigns of Europe cannot prevent certain ideas hostile to their authority
from circulating silently within their States and even within their courts.
It is not the same in America; as long as the majority is uncertain, people
speak; but as soonas the majority has irrevocably decided, everyone is silent,
and friends as well as enemies then seem to climb on board together. The
reason for this is simple. There is no monarch so absolute that he cangather
in his hands all of societys forces and vanquish opposition in the way that
a majority vested with the right to make and execute laws can[at will, vested
with the right and the force].
A king, moreover, has only a physical power that acts on deeds and can-
not reach wills; but the majority is vested with a strength simultaneously
physical and moral, which acts on the will as well as on actions and which
at the same time prevents the deed and the desire to do it.
I know of no country where, in general, there reigns less independence
of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America.
There is no religious or political theory that may not be freely preached
in the constitutional States of Europe and that does not penetrate into the
others [{and I do not know of} a European people so powerful and so
strong that it is not forced from time to time to hear hard truths. It is not
this way in America.]; for there is no country in Europe so subject to a
single power that someone who wants to speak the truth does not ndsome
support capable of insuring him against the results of his independence.
If he has the misfortune to live under an absolute government, he often
has the people for him; if he lives in a free country, he can nd shelter, as
needed, behind royal authority. The aristocratic part of society sustains
him in democratic countries, and democracy in the others. But within
a democracy organized as that of the United States, only a single power
y. In Consolation a` Monsieur Du Pe rier, gentilhomme dAix-en-Provence, sur la mort de
sa lle.
is found, a single element of strength and success, and nothing outside
of it.
z
In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought.
Within these limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to go
beyond them. It isnt that he has to fear an auto-da-fe, but he is exposed to
all types of distasteful things andtoeveryday persecutions. Apolitical career
is closed to him; he has offended the only power that has the ability to open
it to him. Everything is denied him, even glory. Before publishing his opin-
ions, he believed he had some partisans; it seems to him that he has them
no longer, now that he has revealed himself to all; for those who censure
himspeak openly, and those who think as he does, without having his cour-
age, keep quiet and distance themselves. He gives in; nally, under the daily
effort, he yields and returns to silence, as though he felt remorse for having
told the truth.
Chains and executioners, those are the crude instruments formerly used
by tyranny; but today civilizationhas perfectedevendespotismitself, which
seemed however to have nothing more to learn.
Princes had, so to speak, materialized violence; the democratic republics
of today have made violence as entirely intellectual as the human will that
it wants to constrain. Under the absolute government of one man, des-
potism, to reach the soul, crudely struck the body; and the soul, escaping
from these blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics, tyr-
anny does not proceed in this way; it leaves the body alone and goes right
to the soul. The master no longer says: You will think like me or die; he
says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything
remains with you; but from this day on you are a stranger among us. You
will keep your privileges as a citizen, but they will become useless to you.
If you aspire to be the choice of your fellow citizens, they will not choose
you, and if you ask only for their esteem, they will still pretend to refuse it
to you. You will remain among men, but you will lose your rights to hu-
manity. When you approach your fellows, they will ee from you like an
impure being. And those who believe in your innocence, even they will
z. In the margin: <Base circumlocutions of the Federalists.>
abandon you, for people would ee fromthem in turn. Go in peace; I spare
your life, but I leave you a life worse than death.
Absolute monarchies had dishonored despotism. Let us be careful that
democratic republics do not rehabilitate it, and that, while making des-
potism heavier for some, they do not, in the eyes of the greatest number,
remove its odious aspect and its degrading character.
Among the proudest nations of the Old World, books have been pub-
lished that intended faithfully to portray the vices and absurdities of their
contemporaries. La Bruye`re lived at the palace of Louis XIV when he com-
posed his chapter on the great, and Molie`re criticized the court in the plays
that he had performed before the courtiers. But the dominating power in
the United States does not understand being played in this way. The
slightest reproach wounds it; the smallest biting truth shocks it, and every-
thing from the forms of its language to its most solid virtues must be
praised. No writer, no matter how famous, can escape this obligation to
heap praise upon his fellow citizens. So the majority lives in perpetual self-
adoration; only foreigners or experience can bring certain truths to the ears
of Americans.
If America has not yet hadgreat writers, we donot have tolookelsewhere
for the reasons: literary genius does not exist without freedomof the mind,
and there is no freedom of the mind in America.
a
The Inquisition was never able to prevent the circulation in Spain of
books opposed to the religion of the greatest number. The dominion of
the majority does better in the United States: it has removed even the
thought of publishing such books. Unbelievers are found in America, but
unbelief nds, so to speak, no organ there.
b
a. Cf. chapter XIII of the rst part of the third volume.
b. The ideas of this paragraphwere suggestedtoTocqueville by a doctor inBaltimore,
Mr. Stuart (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 115).
A note on a slip of paper attests to Tocquevilles dissatisfaction concerning this part
of the chapter:
I have put two distinct ideas within the same expressions, which is a great defect./
That tyranny in America acts directly on the soul and does not torment the body
results from two causes:
You see governments that strive to protect morals by condemning the
authors of licentious books. In the United States, no one is condemnedfor
this kind of work; but no one is tempted to write them. It is not that all
citizens have pure morals, but the majority is steady in its morals.
Here, the use of power is undoubtedly good. I am, consequently, speak-
ing only about the power itself. This irresistible power is an unremitting
fact, and its good usage is only an accident. [Doesnt the majority in Paris
acquire a taste for the lth that sullies our theatres daily?]
Effect of Tyranny of the Majority on the
National Character of the Americans;
Of the Courtier Spirit in the United States
Until now the effects of tyranny of the majority are felt on mores
more than on the running of society.They arrest the
development of men of great character.Democratic republics
organized like those of the United States put the courtier spirit
within reach of the greatest number.Evidence of this spirit in
the United States.Why there is more patriotism among the
people than among those who govern in their name.
The inuence of what precedes is still felt only weakly in political society;
but its harmful effects are already noticeable on the national character of
the Americans. I think that the small number of outstanding men who
appear today on the political stage must be attributed, above all, to the
1. Because it is exercised by a majority and not by a man. A man, never able to
obtain the voluntary support of the mass, cannot inict on his enemy the moral
torment that arises from isolation and public scorn. He is forced to act directly in
order to reach his enemy.
2. Because infact mores have become milder andthat despotismhas beenperfected
and intellectualized.
This same note also exists in YTC, CVh, 3, p. 59; (the copyist indicates that the original
is not in Tocquevilles hand).
always increasing action of the despotism of the majority in the United
States.
When the American Revolution broke out, outstanding men appeared
in large number; then public opinion led and did not tyrannize over wills.
The famous men of this period, freely joining the movement of minds,
had a grandeur of their own; they shed their brilliance on the nation and
did not derive it from the nation.
In absolute governments, the great who are near the throne atter the
passions of the master and willingly bow to his caprices. But the mass of
the nation does not lend itself to servitude; it often submits out of weak-
ness, habit or ignorance, sometimes out of love of royalty or the king.
We have seen peoples take a type of pleasure or pride in sacricing their
will to that of the prince and, in this way, give a kind of independence
of soul to the very act of obedience. Among these peoples much less deg-
radation than misery is found. There is, moreover, a great difference be-
tween doing what you do not approve or pretending to approve what you
do; the one is done by a weak man, but the other belongs only to the habits
of a valet.
c
In free countries, in which each person is more or less called to give his
opinion on matters of State; in democratic republics, in which public life
is constantly mingled with private life, in which the sovereign is ap-
proachable from all sides, and in which it is only a matter of raising ones
voice to reach the sovereigns ear, many more people are found who seek
to bank on the sovereigns weaknesses and to live at the expense of the
sovereigns passions, than in absolute monarchies. Not that men there are
naturally worse than elsewhere, but temptation is stronger and is offered
to more people at the same time. A much more general debasing of souls
results.
Democratic republics put the courtier spirit within reach of the greatest
number and make it penetrate into all classes at the same time. It is one of
the principal reproaches that can be made against them.
c. The manuscript says lackey.
Herve de Tocqueville: Trivial expression that, moreover, attacks an entire class that
at present is no less proud than another (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 87).
That is true, above all, in democratic states organized like the American
republics, in which the majority possesses such absolute and irresistible do-
minion, that, in a way, you must renounce your rights as a citizen and, so
to speak, your position as a man when you want to deviate from the road
marked out by the majority.
Among the immense crowd, in the United States, that pushes into a
political career, I saw very few men who showed this virile candor, this
manly independence of thought, that oftendistinguishedAmericans infor-
mer times and that, wherever it is found, forms the salient feature of great
characters. At rst view, you would say that in America minds have all been
formed on the same model because they so exactly follow the same paths.
Sometimes, it is true, the foreigner will encounter some Americans who
deviate from the rigor of the formulas; these Americans happen to deplore
the vice of the laws, the variableness of democracy and its lack of enlight-
enment; often they even go so far as to notice the defects that are spoiling
the national character, and they indicate the measures that could be taken
to correct those defects. But no one, except you, is listening to them; and
you, to whom they conde these secret thoughts, you are only a passing
foreigner. They willingly give youtruths that are useless toyou, and, coming
into the public square, they use another language.
If these lines ever reach America, I am sure of two things: rst, that
readers will all raise their voices to condemn me; second, that many among
them will absolve me deep down in their conscience.
d
I have heard country spoken about in the United States. I have encoun-
tered true patriotism among the people; I have often searched in vain for
these two things among those wholeadthe people. This is easilyunderstood
d. Democracy./
The greatest moral evil that results from the dominion of democracy is that it puts
the courtier spirit within reach of everyone.
[In the margin: Here the character of courtiers.]
In democratic republics the number of courtiers is immense; the only difference
from monarchies is that these are courtiers with bad taste.
The Americans have only two means to gain the truth, the voice of foreigners and
experience (YTC, CVe, pp. 6263).
by analogy: despotism depraves the one submitted to it much more than
the one who imposes it. In absolute monarchies, the king often has great
virtues; but the courtiers are always vile.
[What I blame democratic republics for is putting the courtier spirit
within reach of such a large number.]
It is true that courtiers, in America, do not say: Sire and Your Majesty,
a grand and capital difference; but they talk constantly about the natural
enlightenment of their master. They do not raise the question of knowing
which one of the virtues of the prince most merits adoration; for theyassert
that he possesses all virtues, without having acquired themand, so to speak,
without wanting to do so. They do not give him their wives and daughters
so that he would deign to elevate them to the rank of his mistresses; but
by sacricing their opinions to him, they prostitute themselves.
Moralists and philosophers in America are not forced to envelop their
opinions in veils of allegory; but, before hazarding an annoying truth, they
say: We know that we are speaking to a people too far above human weak-
nesses ever to lose control of itself. We would not use such language, if we
did not address men whose virtues and enlightenment make them alone,
among all others, worthy of remaining free.
How could those who attered Louis XIV do better?
As for me, I believe that in all governments, whatever they are, baseness
will attach itself to strength and attery to power. And I know only one
way to prevent men from degrading themselves: it is to grant to no one,
with omnipotence, the sovereign power to debase them.
That the Greatest Danger to the American Republics
Comes from the Omnipotence of the Majority
Democratic republics risk perishing by the bad use of
their power, and not by powerlessness.The government
of the American republics more centralized
and more energetic than that of the monarchies of Europe.
Danger that results.Opinion of Madison and
of Jefferson on this subject.
Governments usually perish by powerlessness or by tyranny. In the rst
case, power escapes from them; in the other, it is wrested from them.
e
Many men, seeing democratic States
f
fall intoanarchy, have thought that
government in these States was naturally weak and powerless. The truth is
that, once war has ared up there among the parties, government loses its
effect on society. But I do not think that the nature of a democratic power
is to lack strength and resources; I believe, on the contrary, that it is almost
always the abuse of its forces and the bad use of its resources that make it
perish. Anarchy is almost always born out of its tyranny or its lack of skill,
but not out of its powerlessness.
Stability must not be confused with strength, the greatness of something
e. Washington, 15 January 1832.
There are two ways for a government to perish:
1. By lack of power (like the rst Union, for example).
2. By bad use of power, like all tyrannies.
It is by this last evil that the American republics will perish.
The rst mode is more rapid than the second. The latter is no less certain (YTC,
BIIb, p. 13).
This note does not appear in YTC, CVe and has not been published in Voyage, OC, V,
1. YTC, BIIb, and YTC, CVe are two different copies of the same original, but copy
BIIb, which is later, contains texts that do not appear in the rst copy.
f. The manuscript says free States.
with its duration. In democratic republics, the power that leads
5
society is
not stable, for it often changes hands and objectives. But, wherever it goes,
its strength is nearly irresistible.
The government of the American republics seems to me as centralized
and more energetic than that of the absolute monarchies of Europe. So I
do not think that they will perish from weakness.
6
If liberty is ever lost in America, it will be necessary to lay the blame on
the omnipotence of the majority that will have brought minorities to de-
spair and will have forced them to appeal to physical force. Then you will
see anarchy, but it will arrive as a consequence of despotism.
President James Madison expressed the same thoughts (see the Feder-
alist, No 51.)
It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against
the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against
the injustice of the other part. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] Justice is the end of gov-
ernment. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be
pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily
unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in
a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the
violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger in-
dividuals
g
are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit
to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in
the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually
induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all
parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can be little doubted
that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and
left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular formof government
5. Power can be centralized in an assembly; then it is strong, but not stable. It can be
centralized in a man; then it is less strong, but it is more stable.
6. It is useless, I think, to warn the reader that here, as in all the rest of the chapter, I am
speaking, not about the federal government, but about the individual governments of each
state that the majority leads despotically.
g. In the manuscript: the strongest individuals.
within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppres-
sions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of
the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose
misrule had proved the necessity of it.
[In another place he said: [The] facility of lawmaking seems to be the
disease to which our government is most liable.]
Jefferson also said: The executive power, in our government, is not the
only, and perhaps not the principal object of my concern. The tyranny of
legislators is now and will be for many years to come the most formidable
danger. That of the executive power will come in its turn, but in a more
distant period.
7
In this matter, I like to cite Jefferson in preference to all others, because
I consider him the most powerful apostle democracy has ever had.
j
7. Letter from Jefferson to Madison, 15 March 1789.
h
h. In Conseils edition, vol. I, pp. 34041. Tocqueville quotes correctly from the
French, but in the English Jefferson speaks about the tyranny of the legislatures, not
of the legislators.
j. E
douard de Tocqueville: In this chapter, very well written moreover and of great
interest, you completely avoid the defect for which I reproached you in the notes for the
preceding chapter. Here you coldly judge democracy, without admiration and without
weakness; you tell the truth about it, all the while recognizing its qualities and its ad-
vantages (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 90).
427
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 8
Of What Tempers Tyranny of the Majority
Absence of Administrative Centralization
The national majority does not have the idea of doing
everything.It is forced to use town and county magistrates in
order to carry out its sovereign will.
Previously I distinguished two types of centralization; one, I called gov-
ernmental, and the other administrative.
a
Only the rst exists in America; the second is almost unknown there.
If the power that directs American societies found these two means of
government at its disposal, and combined, with the right to command ev-
erything, the ability and the habit of carrying out everything by itself; if,
after establishing the general principles of government, it entered into the
details of application, and after regulating the great interests of the country,
a. In America, there are a thousandnatural causes that so to speakworkby themselves
toward moderating the omnipotence of the majority. The extreme similarity that
reigns in the United States among all the interests, the material prosperity of the
country, the diffusion of enlightenment and the mildness of mores, which is the
necessary consequence of the progress of civilization, greatly favor the leniency of
government.
I have already pointed out the different causes; the time has come to examine what
barriers the institutions themselves have carefully raisedagainst the power fromwhich
they derive.
Previously I distinguished . . . (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 15).
the tyranny of the maj ori ty 428
it could reach as far as individual interests, liberty would soon be banished
from the New World.
b
But, in the United States, the majority, which often has the tastes
and instincts of a despot, still lacks the most advanced instruments of
tyranny.
Innone of the Americanrepublics has the central government ever taken
charge of anything other than a small number of objects whose importance
attracted its attention. It has never undertaken to regulate the secondary
things of society. Nothing indicates that it has ever even conceived the de-
sire to do so. The majority, while becoming more and more absolute, has
not increased the attributions of the central power; it has only made it
omnipotent in its sphere. Thus despotism can be very heavy at one point,
but it cannot extend to all.
c
Besides, however carried away the national majority may be by its
passions; however ardent it is in its projects, it cannot in all places, in
the same way, and in the same moment, make all citizens yield to its de-
sires.
d
When the central government that represents the national majority
b. In the manuscript, the paragraph is written as follows: The Americans must con-
sider themselves fortunate that this is so: if the majority in the United States found the
one, like the other, in its hands in order to compel obedience to its will, and if it com-
bined, with the right to do everything, the ability and the habit of carrying everything
out by its agents, its power would be, so to speak, without limits.
c. In notes taken by Beaumont for the writing of Marie, this is foundinTocquevilles
hand:
In the American republics the central government has never taken charge except of
a small number of objects whose importance attracted its attention. It has never un-
dertaken to direct the administration of the towns andcounties [v: secondarythings].
It does not seem ever to have conceived the desire to do so. Becoming more andmore
absolute has allowed the rule of the majority to regulate these objects with more
sovereign authority, but has not increased the number of objects in its sphere. So
despotism can be great, but it cannot extend to everything (YTC, Beaumont, CIX).
d. Two causes.
1. Splitting up of sovereignty.
2. Splitting up of administration.
Tyranny can be very great but it cannot be popular.
The Union cannot present a tyrannical majority. Each state could do it, but town
administrations (illegible word).
has given orders as a sovereign, it must rely, for the execution of its com-
mand, on agents who often do not depend on it and that it cannot direct
at every moment. So the municipal bodies and county administrations
form like so many hidden reefs that slow or divide the tide of popular will.
Were the lawoppressive, liberty would still nd a refuge inthe way inwhich
the law would be executed; the majority cannot get into the details, and,
if I dare say so, into the puerilities of administrative tyranny. The majority
does not even imagine that it can do so, for it is not entirely aware of its
power. It still knows only its natural strength and is unaware of how far art
could extend its limits.
This merits reection.
e
If a democratic republic like that of the United
States ever came to be established in a country where the power of one man
had already established administrative centralizationand introducedit into
habits, as well as into laws, I am not afraid to say that, in such a republic,
despotism would become more intolerable than in any of the absolute
monarchies of Europe. It would be necessary to look to Asia in order to
nd something comparable.
The national majority nding itself opposed in its designs in this way by the ma-
jority of the inhabitants of a city or of a district, and tyranny [v: despotism] which
can be very great at some points cannot become general.
If the majority rules the state, it also rules the town and the county; andsince these
two majorities can be opposed in their designs, liberty always nds some refuge, and
despotism which can be irresistibly exercised at several points of the territory cannot
become general, however (YTC, CVh, 3, pp. 5354).
Tocqueville here is quite close to the idea that Madison expresses in Number 10 of the
Federalist, that the best barrier against tyranny is the great extent of the republic. None-
theless there is no reference to this Number of the Federalist in the drafts.
e. Herve de Tocqueville: I observe generally that inthe whole work the author makes
extremely frequent use of this way of expressing himself.
This chapter needs to be reviewed. I would in addition like the author to put there
what he said about associations as barriers to omnipotence. That would be better placed
here than in the chapter on associations where you speak about the remedy before in-
dicating the malady (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 71).
Of the Spirit of the Jurist in the United States, and
How It Serves as Counterweight to Democracy
f
Usefulness of trying to nd out what the natural instincts of the
spirit of the jurist are.Jurists, called to play a great role in the
society that is trying to be born.How the kind of work that
jurists devote themselves to gives an aristocratic turn to their
ideas.Accidental causes that can oppose the development of
these ideas.Facility that the aristocracy has in uniting itself
with jurists.Advantage that a despot could draw from the
jurists.How the jurists form the only aristocratic element that
is by nature able to combine with the natural elements of
democracy.Particular causes that tend to give an aristocratic
f. Inuence exercised by the judicial power on the power of the majority./
When you examine political society in the United States, you notice at rst glance
only a single principle that seems to bind all the parts strongly together: the people
appear as the sole power. Nothing seems able to oppose their will or to thwart their
designs.
But here is a man who appears in a way above the people; he does not get his
mandate from them; he has, so to speak, nothing to fear from their anger, nor any-
thing to hope from their favor. He is vested, however, with more power than any one
of the representatives of the people; for, with a single blow, he canstrike withsterility
the work emanating from the common will (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 1415).
Rousseau(Ducontrat social, bookII, chapter VII), not wantingtolimit thesovereignty
of the people in any way, had to put the legislator outside of the political process.
Tocqueville, who acknowledged absolute sovereignty in no power, makes the legislator
a decisive element of political life.
Several conversations with American lawyers and jurists persuaded the author of the
foremost role that lawyers and jurists play in political life. Cf. the conversation with
Edward Everett of 24 January 1832 (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 151); the conversation with Mr. Latrobe of 30 October 1831 (ibid.,
p. 110) and more especially the conversation with Mr. Gallatin of 10 June 1831 (non-
alphabetic notebook 1, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 61), where the idea that
lawyers constitute a body that serves as a counterweight to democracy is mentioned; the
conversations with John C. Spencer of 17 and 18 July 1831 (ibid., pp. 6869), on the con-
servative effects of the American legal mentality. When Tocqueville takes up the argu-
ment again, he is also thinking of Blackstone (Cf. Correspondence and Conversations of
Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, II, p. 44). Also see Gino Gorla, Com-
mento a Tocqueville. Lidea dei diritti (Milan: Dott. A Guiffre` Editore, 1948, pp. 259
68).
turn to the spirit of the English and American jurists.The
American aristocracy is at the lawyers bar and on the judges
bench.Inuence exercised by jurists on American society.
How their spirit enters into the legislatures, into the
administration, and ends by giving the people themselves
something of the instinct of magistrates.
[I said elsewhere that the American magistracy was vested with a great
political power; it remains for me to see how it tends to exercise its power.
American judges are named by the executive power {or by the legisla-
ture}; they are hardly ever chosen by the people.
But had you made judges chosen directly by the people, by making them
irremovable, you would have given them instincts entirely different from
those of the people.
From the moment when a public ofcial is vested with an ofce for life,
he takes a personal interest in society remaining immobile. If he is not
always the enemy of progress, he is denitely the enemy of revolutions,
and if this ofcial is a man of the law, he is naturally carried by education
to prize stability and he becomes attached to stability by inclination.
In fact, in what could be called the spirit of the jurist there is something
singularly aristocratic.
Whoever will not allow himself to be preoccupied by a fact but by the
ensemble of facts, not by a particular period but by the successionof times,
will easily discover this tendency in the spirit of the jurist.]
When you visit the Americans and study their laws, you see that the
authority that they have given to jurists and the inuence that the Amer-
icans have allowed them to take in government form today the most pow-
erful barrier to the errors of democracy. To me this effect seems due to a
general cause that it is useful to try to determine, because it can recur
elsewhere.
Jurists have been mixed up in all the movements of political society in
Europe for ve hundred years. Sometimes they have served as instruments
of the political powers; sometimes they have used the political powers as
instruments. In the Middle Ages, jurists cooperated wonderfully in ex-
tending the domination of kings; since then, they have worked powerfully
to restrict this very power. In England, they were seen to unite intimately
with the aristocracy; in France they revealed themselves as its most dan-
gerous enemies. So do jurists yield only to sudden and momentary im-
pulses, or, depending on circumstances, do they more or less obey instincts
that are natural to them and that always recur? I would like to clarify this
point; for jurists are perhaps called upon to play the rst role in the political
society trying to be born.
Men who have made law their specialty have drawn from this work hab-
its of order, a certain taste for forms, a sort of instinctive love for the regular
succession of ideas, that make them naturally strongly opposed to the rev-
olutionary spirit and to the unthinking passions of democracy.
[{This effect is larger or smaller depending on how you study the
law.
In countries like France, where all legislation is written [the jurist (ed.)]
contracts the taste for what is regular and legal.}
Furthermore, in countries where the law of precedents rules, such as
England and America, the taste and respect for what is oldare almost always
merged in the soul of the jurist with the love of what is legal.
It is not the same in countries where, as in France, the whole legislation
is found written in codes.
The English jurist tries to determine what has been done; the French
jurist, what the intention was. The rst wants evidence; the second,
arguments. The one wants decisions; the other wants reasons. [Cf. infra
(ed.)]]
The special knowledge that jurists acquire while studying the law as-
sures them a separate rank in society. They form a sort of privileged class
among intelligent people. Each day they rediscover the idea of this su-
periority in the exercise of their profession; they are masters of a necessary
science, the knowledge of which is not widespread; they serve as arbiters
among citizens, and the habit of leading the blind passions of the litigants
toward the goal gives them a certain contempt for the judgment of the
crowd. Add that they naturally form a corps. It isnt that they agree among
themselves and head in concert toward the same point; but the commu-
nity of study and unity of methods link their minds, as interest could
unite their wills.
So you nd hidden at the bottom of the soul of jurists a portion of the
tastes and habits of the aristocracy. Like the aristocracy, they have an in-
stinctive propensity for order, a natural love of forms; like the aristocracy,
they conceive a great distaste for the actions of the multitude and secretly
despise the government of the people.
g
I do not want to say that these natural tendencies of jurists are strong
enough to bind them in an irresistible way. What dominates jurists, as all
men, is particular interest, and above all the interest of the moment.
There is a kind of society where men of the law cannot take a rank in
the political world analogous to the one that they occupy in private life;
you can be sure that, in a society organized in this way, the jurists [despite
their natural tastes] will be very active agents of revolution. But then you
must try to determine if the cause that leads them to destroy or to change
arises among them from a permanent disposition or from an accident. It is
true that jurists singularly contributedto overturning the Frenchmonarchy
in 1789.
h
It remains to be known if they acted in this way because they had
studied the laws, or because they could not contribute toward making
them.
j
g. The manuscript says: . . . always scorn the people.
I do not know if jurists inwardly scorn the government of the people, but denitely
they never express this scorn; because they are sure that the ease with which they
handle words will always open a role for them in the government of the people. In
general, of all classes, jurists are the one in which vanity is the most developed by
popular successes. This vanity directs their outwardly expressed opinions and is the
foundation of their actions.
This vanity has much less effect when they have anestablishedpositionas inAmer-
ica, but it will always be formidable when they have a position to establish, or when
superiorities are found that offend them, which will always happen in a monarchy
where absolute equality cannot be found and where they are too numerous for the
places and for the inuence that reasonably can be given to them (YTC, CIIIb, 1,
p. 76).
h. Herve de Tocqueville: They contributed even more to overturning the Restora-
tion, although a part of their desires was fullled (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 77).
j. Herve de Tocqueville: There is a gap here. Alexis throws himself toward another
order of ideas before going deeply enough into those that precede. One or two more
paragraphs are necessary here in order to explainmore clearly the motives for the conduct
of the jurists in 1789 and 1830 (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 77).
Five hundred years ago, the English aristocracy put itself at the head of
the people and spoke in their name; today it upholds the throne and makes
itself the champion of royal authority.
k
The aristocracy, however, has in-
stincts and tendencies that are its own.
You must also guard against taking isolated members of the corps for
the corps itself.
In all free governments, of whatever form, you will nd jurists among
the rst ranks of all parties. This same remark is also applicable to the ar-
istocracy. Nearly all the democratic movements that have agitatedthe world
have been led by nobles.
Anelite body cannever be sufcient for all the ambitions that it contains;
there are always more talents and passions than posts, and you do not fail
to nd a large number of men there who, not able to grow great quickly
enough by using the privileges of the corps, seek to grow great by attacking
its privileges.
So I do not claim that a period will come when all jurists, or that in
all times, most jurists must appear as friends of order and enemies of
change.
I am saying that in a society where jurists occupy without dispute the
elevated position that belongs to them naturally, [and with all the more
reason in the society where they occupy the rst rank] their spirit will be
eminently conservative and will show itself to be antidemocratic.
m
When the aristocracy closes its ranks to jurists, it nds in them enemies
k. Herve de Tocqueville: That is not exact; the English aristocracy only makes itself
the champion of its privileges and of those of the clergy (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 7778).
m. E
The sense of this paragraph must necessarily be changed, for this reection could
apply to all those of ambition, to all agitators, to all the anarchists of the world, as
well as to jurists. There is no revolutionary who, reaching the rst rank, does not
reveal a conservative spirit, that is to say, who does not want to conserve this rank, that
speaks for itself. So you must not, after saying that jurists do not have anarchic ten-
dencies, give as proof their conduct and their passions that from this paragraph are
precisely those of the anarchists of all times and in all places. Couldnt you say: I am
saying that in a society where jurists will occupy without dispute the rank that legitimately
belongs to them, their spirit, etc? (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 6869).
all the more dangerous because, below the aristocracy in wealth and power,
they are independent of the aristocracy by their work and feel themselves
on its level by their enlightenment.
But every time the nobles have wanted to share some of their privileges
with the jurists, these two classes have found it very easy to join together
and have, so to speak, discovered themselves to be of the same family.
I am equally led to believe that it will always be easy for a king to make
jurists the most useful instruments of his power.
n
There is innitely more natural afnity between men of the law and the
executive power than between them and the people, although jurists often
have to overthrow the rst; just as there is more natural afnity between
the nobles and the king than between the nobles and the people, even
though you have often seen the superior classes of society combine with
the others to struggle against royal power. [ Jurists often fear the king, but
they always despise the people.]
What jurists love above all things is the sight of order, and the greatest
guarantee of order is authority. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that if
they prize liberty, they generally put legality much above it; they fear tyr-
anny less than arbitrariness and, provided that the legislator himself sees
to taking independence away from men, they are more or less content.
So I think that the prince who, in the presence of aninvasive democracy,
would seek to break down the judicial power in his States and to diminish
the political inuence of jurists, would commit a great error. He would let
go of the substance of authority in order to seize its shadow.
I do not doubt that it would be more protable for him to introduce
jurists into the government. After entrusting despotismto theminthe form
As for me, I believe that this will always be a nearly insoluble problem for a king. It
would be necessary that near the sovereign there were neither court, nor in the State
any great superiority that offended the vanity of the jurists. One objects that they
love Louis-Philippe. That comes from the contempt that he inspires in themandthat
precisely makes each one of them believe he has the right to consider himself above
Louis-Philippe, though he is the king. Alexis must take care not to be caught in a
paradox, as much here as in what follows (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 78).
of violence, perhaps he would rediscover it in their hands with the features
of justice and the law.
[As for me, I would never advise any people to leave to the courts the
care of guaranteeing its liberty. I would be afraid that the courts would
sacrice it to monarchs or to themselves. This care concerns great political
assemblies.]
The government of democracy is favorable to the political power of
jurists. When the rich man, the nobleman and the prince are excludedfrom
government, the jurists arrive there by right, so to speak; for then they are
the only enlightened and skillful men that the people can choose outside
of themselves.
o
If jurists are led naturally toward the aristocracy and the prince by their
tastes, they are led naturally toward the people by their interest.
Thus, jurists love the government of democracy, without sharing its ten-
dencies and without imitating its weaknesses, double cause to be powerful
by democracy and over democracy.
The people, in a democracy, do not distrust jurists, because they know
that the interest of jurists is to serve their cause; they listen to themwithout
anger, because they do not assume that jurists have an ulterior motive.
p
In
fact, jurists do not want to overturn the government that democracy has
established, but they strive constantly to lead it along a path that is not its
own and by means that are foreign to it. The jurist belongs to the people
by his interest and by his birth and to the aristocracy by his habits and his
tastes; he is like the natural liaison between these two, like the link that
unites them.
The body of jurists forms the only aristocratic element that can mingle
with the natural elements of democracy without effort and combine with
them in a happy and enduring way. I am not unaware of the faults inherent
o. In America the second guarantee of liberty is found in the constitution of the
judicial power. The absence of administrative centralization is a happy circumstance
more than a result of the wisdom of the law-maker. But the judicial power inthe United
States is a barrier raised by design against the omnipotence of the majority. You can
consider it as the only powerful or real obstacle that the American laws have placed in
the path of the people (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 1617).
p. In the margin: It is to jurists that democracy owes the ability to govern.
in the spirit of jurists; without this mixture of the spirit of jurists with the
democratic spirit, I doubt, however, that democracy could govern society
for long, and I cannot believe that today a republic could hope to maintain
its existence, if the inuence of jurists in public affairs did not increase in
proportion to the power of the people.
This aristocratic character that I see in the spirit of jurists is still more
pronounced in the United States and in England thaninany other country.
This is due not only to the study of the law made by English and American
jurists, but also to the very nature of legislation and to the position that
these interpreters occupy among these two peoples.
The English and the Americans have kept the law of precedents, that is,
they continue to drawfromthe opinions and legal decisions of their fathers
the opinions that they must have in matters of the law and the decisions
they must render.
So with an English or American jurist, the taste and respect for what is
old is nearly always mingled with love of what is regular and legal.
This has still another inuence on the turn of mind of jurists and con-
sequently on the course of society.
The English or American jurist seeks what has been done; the French
jurist, what you must have wanted to do; [the rst, evidence; the second,
arguments] the one wants judgments, the other wants reasons.
When you listen to an English or American jurist, you are surprised to
see him so often cite the opinion of others, and to hear him speak so little
about his own, while among us the contrary happens.
No affair that the French lawyer agrees to handle is so small that he treats
it without introducing a system of his own ideas; and he will examine even
the constituent principles of the law so that the court be pleased in this
regard to have the boundary marker of a disputed inheritance moved back
about six feet.
This sort of abnegation of his own sense made by the EnglishandAmer-
ican jurist in order to rely on the sense of his fathers; this type of servitude,
in which he is obliged to maintain his thought, must give the spirit of the
jurist more timid habits and make him acquire more stationary tendencies
in England and America than in France [for a fact is very much more im-
mobile than an idea or an argument].
Our written laws are often difcult to understand, but everyone canread
them; in contrast, there is nothing more obscure to the common people
and less accessible to them than legislation founded on precedents. This
need for the jurist in England and in the United States, this high idea of
his knowledge, separate him more and more from the people, and end by
putting him in a class apart. The French jurist is only a learned man, but
the English or American man of the law in a way resembles the priests of
Egypt; like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science.
The position that the men of the lawoccupy in England and inAmerica
exercises an inuence no less great on their habits and their opinions. The
aristocracy of England, which has taken care to draw to its bosom every-
thing that had some natural analogy to it, has given a very great portion of
consideration and power to jurists. In English society jurists are not at the
rst rank, but they consider themselves content with the rank that they
occupy. They form something like the junior branch of the English aris-
tocracy, and they love and respect their seniors, without sharing all their
privileges. So the English jurists combine with the aristocratic interests of
their profession the aristocratic ideas and tastes of the society inwhichthey
live.
Therefore in England, above all, you can see in relief the type of jurist
that I am trying to paint: the English jurist esteems the laws, not so much
because they are good as because they are old; and, if he sees himself re-
duced to modifying them on some point in order to adapt to the changes
that societies are subjected to by time, he resorts to the most incredible
subtleties in order to persuade himself that, by adding something to the
work of his fathers, he is only developing their thought and completing
their efforts. Do not hope to make him recognize that he is an innovator;
he will consent to go to absurd lengths before admitting himself guilty of
such a great crime. In England was born this legal spirit that seems indif-
ferent to the heart of things in order to pay attention only to the letter, and
that would rather go beyond reason and humanity than go beyond the law.
English legislation is like an ancient tree on which jurists have constantly
grafted the strangest shoots, in the hope that, while producing different
fruits, they will at least blend their foliage with the venerable stock that
supports them.
In America, there are no nobles nor men of letters, and the people dis-
trust the rich. So jurists form the superior political class and the most in-
tellectual portion of society.
q
Thus, they could only lose by innovating: this
adds a conservative interest to the natural taste that they have for order.
If you asked me where I place the American aristocracy, I would answer
without hesitating that it is not among the rich who have no commonbond
that gathers them together. The American aristocracy is at the lawyers bar
and on the judges bench.
r
The more you think about what happens in the United States, the more
you feel persuaded that in this country the body of jurists forms the most
powerful and, so to speak, the sole counterweight of democracy.
In the United States you easily discover how appropriate the spirit of
the jurist is, by its qualities, and I will say even by its faults, for neutralizing
the vices inherent in popular government.
When the American people allow themselves to be intoxicated by their
passions, or abandon themselves to the impetus of their ideas, jurists make
them feel an almost invisible brake that moderates and stops them. To their
democratic instincts, jurists secretly oppose their own aristocratic tenden-
cies; to their love of novelty, the jurists superstitious respect for what is
old; to the immensity of their designs, the jurists narrow views; to their
disdain for rules, the jurists taste for forms; and to their hotheadedness,
the jurists habit of proceeding slowly.
The courts are the most visible organs that the body of jurists uses to
act upon democracy.
The judge is a jurist who, apart from the taste for order and rules that
he acquired in the study of law, draws the love of stability also from
his irremovability from ofce. His legal knowledge had already assured
q. In the margin: Perhaps put here the large piece added at Baugy.
r. I amnot saying that the aristocratic spirit in the United States is foundonly among
jurists; the rich in America, as everywhere else, certainly have great instincts for order
and preservation. But they do not forma corps; they are not unitedtogether by shared
habits, ideas, tastes. There is no intellectual bondthat gathers their collectivestrength;
they do not make a corps. The people distrust them and do not mix theminto public
affairs, while the jurists, who have more or less the same instincts as the rich, do not
cause the people any fear (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 1718).
him an elevated position among his fellows; his political power really
places him in a rank apart, and gives him the instincts of the privileged
classes.
Armed with the right of declaring laws unconstitutional, an American
magistrate enters constantly into public affairs.
1
He cannot force the people
to make laws, but at least he compels them not to be unfaithful to their
own laws and to remain consistent.
I am not unaware that a secret tendency exists in the United States that
leads the people to reduce the judicial power; in most of the particular state
constitutions, the government, at the request of two legislative houses, can
remove judges from the bench. Certain constitutions make the members
of the courts elective and submit them to frequent reelection.
t
I dare to
predict that sooner or later these innovations will have harmful results and
that one day you will see that by diminishing the independence of the mag-
istrates in this way you have attacked not only the judicial power but also
the democratic republic itself.
It must not be believed, moreover, that in the United States the spirit
of the jurist is enclosed only within the courtrooms; it extends well beyond.
Jurists, forming the only enlightened class that the people do not dis-
trust, are naturally called to occupy most of the public ofces. They ll the
legislatures and are at the head of administrations, so they exercise a great
inuence on the formation of the law and on its execution. Jurists are
obliged, however, to yield to the current of political opinion that carries
them along; but it is easy to nd indications of what they would do if they
were free. The Americans, who have innovated so much in their political
laws, have introduced only slight changes, and with great difculty, into
their civil laws, although several of these laws are strongly repugnant to
their social state.
u
That is because in matters of civil law the majority is
1. See in the rst volume what I say about the judicial power.
s
s. The rst part of the book, as the reader remembers, was published in two volumes.
t. A lawyer from Montgomery, in Alabama, had, on 6 January 1832, drawn the at-
tention of the author to this fact (nonalphabetic notebooks 1 and 2, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 14041).
u. Tocqueville considers this question in the last pages of chapter II of the rst part
of the rst volume.
always obliged to rely on jurists; and the American jurists, left to their own
choice, do not innovate.
It is a very strange thing for a Frenchman to hear the complaints that
arise in the United States against the jurists stationary spirit and their prej-
udices in favor of what is established.
The inuence of the spirit of the jurist extends still farther than the
precise limits that I have just traced.
v
There is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner
or later does not turn into a judicial question. From that, the obligation
that the parties nd in their daily polemics to borrow ideas and language
from the judicial system. Since most public men are or have formerly been
jurists, they make the habits and the turn of ideas that belong to jurists pass
into the handling of public affairs. The jury ends up by familiarizing all
classes with them. Thus, judicial language becomes, in a way, the common
language; so the spirit of the jurist, borninside the schools andcourtrooms,
spreads little by little beyond their connes; it inltrates all of society, so
to speak; it descends to the lowest ranks, and the entire people nishes by
acquiring a part of the habits and tastes of the magistrate.
In the United States, the jurists form a power that is little feared, that is
scarcely noticed, that has no banner of its own, that yields with exibility
to the exigencies of time and gives way without resistance to all the move-
ments of the social body. But this power envelops the entire society, pen-
v. It is easy to notice, if youlook closely, that inall the states of the Union, the judicial
power exercises a great inuence over political affairs. But this inuence is visible,
above all, in the action of the federal courts. You know that the Constitution of the
United States predominates over the particular constitutions just as the latter in turn
predominate over simple laws. Now, I said elsewhere that the Constitution of the
United States forbids the provincial legislatures to introduce retroactive provisions
into their penal laws and to damage certain vested rights. To take these two courses
of action away from the particular states was to wrest from them the very weapons
of tyranny. So every time that legislators pass laws of this type, they are attacked as
unconstitutional before the federal courts. The federal judicial system then comes to
put itself as a disinterested arbiter between the majority that wants to oppress and
the individual that it oppresses.
1
It interposes itself among the local passions whose
ardor can be compared only to those fraternal hatreds about which Tacitus speaks.
1. I do not know if that is true in as absolute a way as I indicate. To research. See
notably Story, p. 498 (YTC, CVh, 5, pp. 2223).
etrates into each of the classes that compose society, works on society in
secret, acts constantly on society without societys knowledge and ends by
shaping society according to its desires.
Of the Jury in the United States
Considered as a Political Institution
w
The jury, which is one of the modes of sovereignty of the people,
must be put in harmony with the other laws that establish this
sovereignty.Composition of the jury in the United States.
Effects produced by the jury on the national character.
Education that it gives to the people.How it tends to establish
the inuence of magistrates and to spread the spirit of the jurist.
Since my subject has led me naturally to talk about the judicial systeminthe
United States, I will not abandon this matter without dealing with the jury.
w. Jury./
The jury is at the very same time an energetic means to make the people rule and
the most effective means to teach them to rule./
Since I am on the judicial system, I want to talk about the jury./
Democratic or aristocratic, but never monarchical, always republican./
[In the margin: As for me, I nd that when you deal with the jury the political
point of viewabsorbs all others so to speak; the jury is above all a political institution;
it is from this point of view that you must always judge it.] There would be a book
to do on the ways in which the Americans make the responsibility of the jury apply
in criminal and civil matters, but here I only want to consider it from the political
point of view (YTC, CVh, 5, p. 31).
These and other ideas had been sketched by Tocqueville in two notes dated respectively
11 October 1831 and 12 January 1832 (pocket notebooks 3, 4 and 5, YTC, BIIa, andVoyage,
OC, V, 1, pp. 18182, 2012). The travel notebooks contain numerous references to the
jury, especially notebook F, which is dedicated exclusively to civil and criminal law in
America. On the role of the jury in civil matters, see the conversation of 21 September
1831 with Senator Francis Gray and the conversation with a lawyer from Montgomery
(nonalphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 91 and 142).
During his journey, Tocqueville attendeda hearing ina circuit court (George W. Pierson,
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, chapter XXVIII).
Tocqueville considers that mores and circumstances act as well against tyranny of the
majority. These two other obstacles to the power of the majority are set forth in chapter
IX, which initially concluded the work. See note a on p. 277 and note e on p. 452.
Two things must be distinguished: the jury as a judicial institution and
as a political institution.
If it was a matter of knowing to what extent the jury, and above all the
jury in civil matters, serves the good administration of justice, I would ad-
mit that its usefulness could be contested.
The institution of the jury was born in a society that was little advanced,
where hardly anything was submitted to the courts except simple questions
of fact; and it is not a simple task to adapt the jury to the needs of a very
civilized people, when the relationships among men are singularly multi-
plied and have taken on a complicated and intellectual character.
2
My principal goal, at this moment, is to envisage the political side of
the jury; another path would take me away frommy subject. As for the jury
considered as a judicial means, I will say only two words. When the English
adopted the institution of the jury, they were a half-barbaric people; they
have since become one of the most enlightened nations of the globe, and
their attachment to the jury has seemed to increase with their enlighten-
ment. They emerged from their territory, and we have seen them spread
across the universe. Some formed colonies; others, independent States. The
body of the nationkept the king; several of the emigrants foundedpowerful
republics. But everywhere the English equally advocated the institutionof
2. It would be something quite useful and curious to consider the jury as a judicial insti-
tution, to appreciate the effects that it produces in the United States and to try to nd out in
what way the Americans have made use of it. You could nd in the examination of this
question alone the subject of an entire book and a book interesting for France. You would try
to nd out there, for example, what portion of American institutions relative to the jury could
be introduced among us and with the help of what gradual process. The American state that
would provide the most light on this subject would be the state of Louisiana. Louisiana con-
tains a mixed population of French and English. The two sets of law are found there face to
face like the two peoples and combine little by little with each other. The most useful books to
consult would be the collection of the laws of Louisiana in two volumes, entitled Digeste des
lois de la Louisiane; and perhaps even more a course-book on civil procedure written in the
two languages and entitled: Traite sur les re`gles des actions civiles, printed in 1830 in New
Orleans, published by Buisson. This work presents a special advantage; it provides to the
French an accurate and authentic explanation of English legal terms. The language of the
law forms something like a separate language among all peoples, and among the English more
than among any other.
the jury.
3
They established it everywhere or hastened to reestablish it. A
judicial institution that thus obtains the votes of a great people over a long
succession of centuries, that is zealously reproduced at all periods of civi-
lization, in all climates and under all forms of government cannot be con-
trary to the spirit of justice.
4
[<Justice is one of the rst needs of men, and there is no prejudice that
can stie it for long.>]
But let us leave this subject. It would singularly narrow your thought to
limit yourself to envisioning the jury as a judicial institution; for, if it ex-
ercises a great inuence on the outcome of trials, it exercises a very much
greater one on the very destinies of society. So the jury is before all else a
political institution. You must always judge it from this point of view.
I understand by jury a certain number of citizens taken at random and
vested temporarily with the right to judge.
3. All the English and American jurists are unanimous on this point. Mr. Story, Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States, inhis [very ne] treatise onthe federal Constitution
returns again to the excellence of the institution of the jury in civil matters: The inestimable
privilege of a trial by Jury in civil cases [is (ed.)], he says, a privilege scarcely inferior to
that in criminal cases, which is conceded by all persons to be essential to political and
civil liberty (Story, book III, ch. XXXVIII [p. 654 (ed.)]).
4. If you wanted to establish the utility of the jury as judicial institution, you would have
many other arguments to offer, and among others the following:
As you introduce jurors into affairs, you can without inconvenience diminish the number
of judges; this is a great advantage. When judges are very numerous, each day death creates
a gap in the judicial hierarchy and opens new places for those who survive. So the ambition
of the magistrates is continually in suspense and makes them naturally depend on the majority
or on the man who appoints to empty posts: then you advance in the courts like you gain rank
in the army. It is a state of things entirely contrary to the good administration of justice and
to the intentions of the legislator. You want the judges to be irremovable so that they remain
free; but what good is it that no one can take their independence away from them if they
willingly sacrice it themselves?
When judges are very numerous, it is impossible not to nd many incompetent menamong
them: for a great magistrate is not an ordinary man. Now, I do not knowif a half-enlightened
court is not the worst of all combinations in order to attain the ends that are set when estab-
lishing the courts of justice.
As for me, I would prefer to abandon the decision in a trial to ignorant jurors led by a
skillful magistrate, than to leave it to judges, the majority of whom would have only an in-
complete knowledge of jurisprudence and of the laws.
To apply the jury to the suppression of crime appears to me to introduce
into the government an eminently republican institution. Let me explain.
The institution of the jury can be aristocratic or democratic, depending
on the class from which you take the jurors; but it always retains a [an
eminently] republicancharacter, inthat it places the real directionof society
in the hands of the governed or of a portion of them, and not in the hands
of those governing.
Force is never more than a eeting element of success; soon after force
comes the idea of right. A government reduced to being able to reach its
enemies only on the eld of battle would soon be destroyed. The true sanc-
tion of political laws is therefore found in the penal laws and if the sanction
is lacking, the law sooner or later loses its force. So the man who judges in
a criminal court is really the master of society. Now, the institution of the
jury puts the people themselves, or at least a class of citizens, on the judges
bench. So the institution of the jury really puts the leadership of society
into the hands of the people or of this class.
5
In England, the jury is recruited from among the aristocratic portionof
the nation. The aristocracy makes the laws, applies the laws and judges the
infractions of the laws.
B
Everything is in accord: consequently England
truly speaking forms an aristocratic republic. In the United States, the same
system is applied to the whole people. Each American citizen is a voter and
eligible for ofce and jury.
C
The system of the jury, such as it is understood
in America, seems to me as direct and as extreme a consequence of the
dogma of sovereignty of the people as universal suffrage. These are two
equally powerful means to make the majority rule.
All the sovereigns who have wanted to draw the sources of their power
from within themselves and lead society instead of letting themselves be
led by society have destroyed the institution of the jury or have enervated
5. An important remark must be made however:
The institution of the jury, it is true, gives to the people a general right of control over the
actions of the citizens, but it does not provide them with the means to exercise this control in
all cases or in an always tyrannical manner.
When an absolute prince has the right to have crimes judged by his appointees, the fate of
the accused is so to speak xed in advance. But were the people resolved to condemn, the
composition of the jury and its lack of accountability would still offer some favorable chances
to the innocent.
it. The Tudors imprisoned jurors who would not condemn, and Napoleon
had jurors chosen by his agents.
[It was the Bourbons who, in the year 1828, really reestablished among
us the institution of the jury by making chance the principal arbiter of the
choice of jurors. I cannot in this matter prevent myself from admiring the
singular connection of events in this world. Bonaparte, who pretended to
hold his right from the national will, made a law directly contrary to the
sovereignty of the people, and the Bourbons, who said they held their right
from themselves, returned the sanction to the hands of the people.
x
The law of 1828 was, without the knowledge of those who passed it, an
immense advance
y
made toward republican institutions in France. You
would have noticed it clearly if the Restoration had not rushed headlong
into an abyss. The jury thus emancipated would have been sufcient to
bind the government little by little to the desires of the middle classes with-
out having had the need to resort to force, because the majority of jurors
was always found among the middle classes.]
However evident most of the preceding truths may be, they donot strike
all minds, and often, among us, there still seems to be only a confused idea
of the institution of the jury. If someone wants to know what elements
should make up the list of jurors, the discussion is limited to considering
the enlightenment and capacity of those called to be a part of the list, as
if it was only a matter of a judicial institution. In truth, that seems to me
to be preoccupied with the least portion of the subject. The jury is before
all else a political institution; it should be considered as a mode of sover-
eignty of the people; it must be entirely rejected when you rule out the
x. To the side: <In note if included.
The cause for it is that the rst attached more value to absolute power than to the
right to exercise it [v: the appearance] while the second still preferred the aspect of the
thing to the thing itself {have the right to do everything rather than to use it.}>
y. E
I would like an immense step instead of an immense advance, because a step may not
be an advance and it is still very doubtful that it is one in this case. In any case I do not
think that you wish to express yourself in this regard or that you should.
This expression of advance, moreover, implies blame for the Bourbons who granted
it without knowing, that is to say against their will. While the word step cannot include
this sense (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 66).
sovereignty of the people, or must be put in harmony with the other laws
that establishthis sovereignty. The jury forms the part of the nationcharged
with ensuring the execution of the laws, as the legislative houses are the
part of the nation charged with making the laws; and for society to be
governed ina xedand uniformmanner, it is necessary that the list of jurors
be expanded or restricted with the list of voters. This is the point of view
that, in my opinion, must always attract the principal attention of the leg-
islator. The rest is so to speak secondary.
I am so persuaded that the jury is before all else a political institu-
tion that I still consider it in this way when it is applied to civil matters.
[This can seem extraordinary at rst glance. Here are my reasons for
doing so.]
Laws are always shaky as long as they do not rely on mores; mores form
the only resistant and enduring power among a people.
When the jury is reserved for criminal affairs, the people see it act only
from time to time and in particular cases; they get used to doing without
the jury in the ordinary course of life, and they consider it as a means and
not as the only means for obtaining justice.
6
When, on the contrary, the jury is extended to civil affairs, its application
comes into view at every moment; then it touches all interests; each person
comes to contribute to its action; in this way it enters into the customs of
life; it bends the human spirit to its forms and merges so to speak with the
very idea of justice.
So the institution of the jury, limited to criminal affairs, is always at risk;
once introduced into civil matters, it stands up against time and the efforts
of men. If you had been able to remove the jury from the mores of the
English as easily as from their laws, the jury would have completely suc-
cumbed under the Tudors. So it is the civil jury that really savedthe liberties
of England.
In whatever manner you apply the jury, it cannot fail to exercise a great
6. This is true for all the more reason when the jury is applied only to certain criminal
affairs.
inuence on the national character, but this inuence increases innitely
the more you introduce it into civil matters.
The jury, and above all the civil jury, serves togive the mindof all citizens
a part of the habits of mind of the judge; and these habits are precisely
those that best prepare the people to be free.
It spreads in all classes respect for the thing judged and for the idea of
right. Remove these two things, and the love of independence will be noth-
ing but a destructive passion.
It teaches men the practice of equity. Each person, by judging his neigh-
bor, thinks that he can be judged in his turn. That is above all true of the
jury in civil matters: there is hardly anyone who fears one day being the
object of a criminal proceeding; but everyone can have a civil trial.
The jury teaches each man not to retreat from responsibility for his own
actions; a manly disposition, without which there is no political virtue.
It vests each citizen with a sort of magistracy; it makes all feel that they
have duties to fulll toward society and that they enter into its government.
By forcing men to get involved in something other than their own affairs,
it combats individual egoism, which is like the rust of societies [{that ruins
nations more than armies do}].
The jury serves unbelievably to form the judgment and to augment the
natural enlightenment of the people. That, in my opinion, is its greatest
advantage. You must consider it as a free school, always open, where each
juror comes to be instructed about his rights, where he enters into daily
communication with the most learned and most enlightened members of
the upper classes, where the laws are taught to him in a practical way, and
are put within the reach of his intelligence by the efforts of the lawyers, the
advice of the judge and the very passions of the parties. I think that the
practical intelligence and good political sense of the Americans must be
attributed principally to the long use that they have made of the jury in
civil matters.
I do not know if the jury is useful to those who have legal proceedings,
but I am sure that it is very useful to those who judge them. I regard it as
one of the most effective means that a society can use for the education of
the people.
What precedes applies to all nations; but here is what is special to the
Americans, and in general to democratic peoples.
I said above that in democracies the jurists, and among them the mag-
istrates, form the only aristocratic body that can moderate the movements
of the people. This aristocracy is vested with no physical power; it exercises
its conservative inuence only over minds. Now, it is in the institution of
the civil jury that it nds the principal sources of its power.
In criminal trials, where society struggles against a man, the jury is led
to see in the judge the passive instrument of the social power, and it dis-
trusts his advice. Moreover, criminal trials rest entirely onsimple facts that
good sense easily comes to appreciate. On this ground, judge and juror
are equal.
It is not the same in civil trials; then the judge appears as a disinterested
arbiter between the passions of the parties. The jurors view him with con-
dence, and they listen to himwith respect; for here his intelligenceentirely
dominates theirs. He is the one who lays out before them the diverse ar-
guments that have fatigued their memory and who takes themby the hand
to lead them through the twists and turns of procedure; he is the one who
connes them to the point of fact and teaches them the answer that they
must give to the question of law. His inuence over themis almost without
limits.
Is it necessary to say nally why I amso little movedby arguments drawn
from the incapacity of jurors in civil matters?
In civil trials, at least whenever it is not a matter of questions of fact,
the jury has only the appearance of a judicial body.
The jurors deliver the decision that the judge has rendered. They lend
to this decision the authority of the society that they represent and he, the
authority of reason and the law.
D
In England and in America, judges exercise an inuence over the fate of
criminal trials that the French judge has never known. It is easy to under-
stand the reason for this difference: the English or American magistrate has
established his power in civil matters; afterward he is only exercising it in
another theater; he is not gaining it there.
There are cases, and they are often the most important ones, where the
American judge has the right to deliver a verdict alone.
7
He then nds him-
self, by happenstance, in the position where the French judge usually nds
himself; but his moral power is very much greater: the memories of the
jury still follow him, and his voice has almost as much power as that of the
society of which the jurors were the organ.
His inuence extends even well beyond the courtroom: inthe diversions
of private life as in the labors of political life, in the public square as within
the legislatures, the American judge constantly nds around himmen who
are used to seeing in his intelligence something superior to their own; and,
after being exercised in trials, his power makes itself felt in all the habits of
mind and even on the very souls of those who have participated with him
in judging.
So the jury, which seems to diminish the rights of the magistracy, really
establishes its dominion, and there is no country where judges are as pow-
erful as those where the people share their privileges.
With the aid of the jury in civil matters, above all, the American mag-
istracy makes what I have called the spirit of the jurist enter into the lowest
ranks of society.
Thus the jury, which is the most energetic means to make the people
rule, is also the most effective means to teach them to rule.
z
7. Federal judges almost always decide alone questions that touch most closely on the gov-
ernment of the country.
z. Among Beaumonts documents relative to the discussion of the constitutional
committee of 1848, the following note is found, which gives an account of an interven-
tion by Tocqueville concerning the jury: Tocqueville sees a disadvantage in an imme-
diate, absolute and general application of the jury in civil matters. Singular mixture
sometimes of fact and law. Necessity of very enlightened public mores. Greater necessity
of a more capable jury because of the difculty of functions. Who says jury says sup-
pression in nearly all cases of the double degree of jurisdiction. Great difculty inleading
the jury (YTC, Beaumont, DIVk).
451
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 9
Of the Principal Causes That Tend
to Maintain the Democratic Republic
a
The democratic republic
b
survives in the United States. The principal goal
of this book has been to make the causes of this phenomenonunderstood.
The ow of my subject carried me, despite myself, close to several of
these causes that I pointed out only from afar in passing. I could not deal
with others. And those that I was allowed to expand upon have been left
behind as if buried under details.
So I thought that before going further and speaking about the future, I
had to gather together in a narrow scope all the reasons that explain the
present.
In this type of summary I will be brief, for I will take care to recall only
very summarily to the reader what he already knows, and among the facts
that I have not yet had the occasion to put forth, I will choose only the
principal ones.
I thought that all the causes that tend to maintain the democratic re-
public
c
in the United States could be reduced to three:
d
a. At rst this chapter was the last in the book; the tenth was added later.
Melvin Richter (The Uses of Theory: Tocquevilles Adaptation of Montesquieu,
in Essays in Theory and History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970, pp. 74102)
compares the method of Tocqueville in this chapter with that followed by Montesquieu
in Esprit des lois.
b. In the manuscript: A large democratic republic . . .
c. The manuscript says: . . . the large democratic republic . . .
d. Of the three causes the least inuential is that of laws and it is, so to speak, the
only one that depends on man. Peoples cannot change their position and the rst
of the pri nci pal caus es 452
The particular and accidental situation in which Providence placed the
Americans forms the rst;
The second results from laws;
The third follows from habits and mores.
Of the Accidental or Providential Causes
That Contribute to Maintaining the
Democratic Republic in the United States
e
The Union does not have neighbors.No large capital.The
Americans have had the good fortune of birth in their favor.
America is an empty country.How this circumstance serves
powerfully to maintain the democratic republic.Manner in
which the wilderness of America is populated.Eagerness of the
Anglo-Americans to take possession of the empty wilderness areas
of the New World.Inuence of material well-being on the
political opinions of the Americans.
conditions of their existence. A nation can in the long run modify its habits and its
mores, but a generation cannot succeed in doing so. It can only change the laws. [In
the margin: But what can the best laws do without circumstances and mores?] Now,
of the three causes that we are speaking about, the least inuential is precisely that
which results from laws. So not only does man not exercise power around himself,
but he possesses so to speak none over himself andremains almost completely a stran-
ger to his own fate (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 19).
e. At rst this part was entitled: What Tends {to Moderate the Omnipotence of the
Majority in America} to Make the Democratic Republic Practicable in America. The rst
sentences of the initial draft showthat this part was a continuationof that onthe tyranny
of the majority: The causes that tend to moderate the omnipotence of the majority
in the United States and to make the democratic republic practicable arise from the
particular circumstances in which the country is or was, from laws and from mores.
A note in the margin species: To put immediately after the omnipotence of the
majority what serves more particularly as a counterweight to it and then what in general
favors the republic, for the omnipotence of the majority, which is the greatest obstacle
to maintaining republics, is not the only one.
There are a thousand circumstances
f
independent of the will of men that
make it easy to have the democratic republic in the United States. Some
are known, others are easy to make known: I will limit myself to explaining
the principal ones.
The Americans do not have neighbors,
g
consequently no great wars, -
nancial crisis, ravages, nor conquest to fear; they need neither heavy taxes
nor a numerous army, nor great generals; they have almost nothing to fear
from a plague more terrible for republics than all the others put together,
military glory.
Howto deny the incredible inuence that military glory exercises onthe
spirit of the people? General Jackson, whomthe Americans have twice cho-
sen to put at their head, is a manof violent character andmiddlingcapacity;
nothing in all the course of his career had ever proved that he had the qual-
ities necessary to govern a free people; consequently, the majority of the
enlightened classes of the Union have always been opposed to him. So who
put him in the Presidents seat and still keeps him there? The memory of
a victory won by him, twenty years ago, under the walls of New Orleans;
now, this victory of New Orleans is a very ordinary feat of arms which
cannot be of much interest for long except in a country where no battles
are fought; and the people who allow themselves to be thus carried away
f. James T. Schleifer (The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America, p. 61)
noted that the meaning of the word circumstances appreciably narrows fromthe drafts
to the nal version and ends by designating only physical circumstances. It canbe added,
in the same way, that the importance of the inuence of climate, as has been seen else-
where, is manifestly greater in the drafts and manuscript than in the nal version.
During his journey, as the correspondence attests, Tocqueville accorded a great im-
portance to climatic conditions: When you see men who tell you that climate does
nothing to the constitution of peoples, assure them that they are mistaken. We saw the
French of Canada: they are a tranquil, moral, religious people; in Louisiana we left other
French who were restless, dissolute, lax in everything. Between them was 15 degrees of
latitude; that is in truth the best reason that I can give for the difference (Letter toErnest
de Chabrol of 16 January 1832, YTC, BIa2). Also see Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC,
XIII, 1, pp. 22536 and a letter of 1829, before the American journey, in Correspondance
avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, pp. 9394.
g. For Rousseau, the absence of conicts with neighbors constitutes one of the con-
ditions for the existence of a good body of laws (Du contrat social, book II, chapter X,
in Oeuvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, III, p. 389). Jefferson often repeated the same
idea.
by the prestige of glory is, certainly, the coldest, most calculating, least mili-
tary and, if I can put it this way, the most prosaic of all the peoples of the
world.
[
*
] h
America has no large capital
1
whose direct or indirect inuence is felt
over the whole extent of the territory; I consider this one of the rst causes
for maintaining republican institutions in the United States.
j
In cities, you
can hardly prevent men from consulting each other, from getting worked
[*]. {which has not prevented one of our compatriots who became American forty
years ago} During our visit to America a medal was struck in honor of G[ener (ed.)]al.
J[ackson (ed.)] having as an inscription: quod Caesar fecit Jackson superavit, which
could have seemed a pleasant jest, but the author did not intend it as a joke. It is true
that this unfortunate atterer was a former French republican, a very ardent enemy of
kings and the vices of the royal court [Edmond-Charles Genet (ed.)].
h. This paragraph appears almost literally in a note of 1 November 1831 (pocket note-
book 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 186). Tocqueville and Beaumont met An-
drew Jackson on 19 January 1832. The evening spent at the White House seems hardly
to have impressed the two Frenchmen favorably. Nor did it modify their opinion about
the American President. Beaumont gave an account of this visit in a letter to his mother
(Lettres dAme rique, pp. 21011). Also see George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont
in America, pp. 66366.
1. America does not yet have a large capital, but it already has three large cities. In 1830,
Philadelphia numbered 161,000 inhabitants, and New York 202,000. The lower classes who
inhabit these vast cities form a populace more dangerous than even that of Europe. It is made
up rst of all of emancipated Negroes, who are condemned by law and opinion to a state of
hereditary degradation and misery. Also in its midst is found a multitude of Europeans pushed
daily by misfortune and loose behavior to the shores of the New World; these men bring to
the United States our worst vices, and they have none of the interests that could combat the
inuence of those vices. Inhabiting the country without being citizens, they are ready to take
advantage of all the passions that agitate the country; consequently we have for some time seen
serious riots break out in Philadelphia and New York. Such disorders are unknown in the
rest of the country, which is not worried about them, because until now the city population
has not exercised any power or any inuence on the rural population.
I regard the large size of certain American cities and above all the nature of their inhab-
itants, however, as a genuine danger that threatens the future of the democratic republics of
the New World, and I am not afraid to predict that it is there that they will perish, unless
their government succeeds in creating an armed force that, while remaining subject to the will
of the national majority, is nevertheless independent of the people of the cities and can repress
their excesses.
j. Compare chapter VIII of book II of Ancien Re gime et la Re volution (OC, II, 1,
pp. 13940), where Tocqueville cites the Marquis de Mirabeau and Montesquieu on the
same theme. Later, the great anti-metropolitan will be Rousseau (Du contrat social, book
III, chapter XIII, Oeuvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, III, p. 427).
up together, frommaking sudden and impassioned resolutions. Cities form
like great assemblies of which all the inhabitants are members. The people
exercise a prodigious inuence over their magistrates there, and often the
people execute their will there without intermediary.
So to subject the provinces to the capital is to put the destiny of the whole
empire, not only in the hands of a portion of the people, which is unjust,
but also to put it in the hands of the people acting by themselves, which is
very dangerous. So the preponderance of capitals strikes a grave blow at the
representative system. It makes modern republics succumb to the fault of
the ancient republics which all perished from not knowing this system.
It would be easy for me to enumerate here a great number of other sec-
ondary causes that have favored the establishment and assure the mainte-
nance of the democratic republics in the United States. But in the middle
of this host of fortunate circumstances, I see two principal ones, and I
hasten to point them out.
I have already said previously that I saw in the origin of the Americans,
in what I called their point of departure, the rst and most effective of all
the causes to which the present prosperity of the United States could be
attributed. The Americans have hadthe goodfortune of birthintheir favor:
long ago their fathers imported to the land that they inhabit equality of
conditions and intellectual equality, from which the democratic republic
was bound to emerge one day as if from its natural source. This is still not
all; with a republican social state, they passed on to their descendants the
habits, ideas and mores most appropriate to make the republic ourish.
When I think about what this original fact produced, I seem to see the
whole destiny of America contained in the rst Puritan who reached its
shores, like the whole human race in the rst man.
Among the fortunate circumstances that also have favored the establish-
ment and assure the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United
States, the rst in importance is the choice of the country itself that the
Americans inhabit. Their fathers gave themthe love of equality andliberty,
but it is God who, by giving them an unlimited continent, granted them
the means to remain equal and free for a long time.
k
k. To the side: When a king nds himself troubled by his neighbors, he goes to
war; when the people are discontent with their position, they make a revolution.
General well-being favors the stability of all governments, but particu-
larly of democratic government, which rests upon the dispositions of the
greatest number, and principally on the dispositions of those who are the
most exposed to needs. When the people govern, they must be happy so
that they do not overturn the State. Misery produces among them what
ambitiondoes among kings. Now, causes that are material andindependent
of the laws and that can lead to well-being are more numerous in America
than they have been in any country in the world, in any period of history.
[In Europe the culminationof goodlaws is toproduce well-being; inAmer-
ica all the work of bad laws would scarcely succeedinpreventingwell-being
from being produced.]
In the United States, it is not only legislation that is democratic; nature
itself works for the people.
Where to nd, in the memory of man, anything resembling what is
happening before our eyes in North America?
The famous societies of antiquity were all founded in the midst of en-
emy peoples who had to be conquered for those societies to be established
intheir place. Modernpeoples have foundinseveral parts of SouthAmerica
vast countries inhabited by peoples who were less enlightened than they,
but who had already appropriated the soil by cultivating it. To establish
their new States, they had to destroy or subjugate large populations, and
they made civilization ashamed of their triumphs.
But North America was inhabited only by wandering tribes who did not
think of using the natural riches of the soil. North America was still, prop-
erly speaking, a vacant continent, a deserted land, that awaitedinhabitants.
Everything is extraordinary among the Americans, their social state as
well as their laws; but what is still more extraordinary is the land that holds
them.
When the earth was given to men by the Creator, it was young and in-
exhaustible,
m
but they were weak and ignorant; and when they had learned
to take advantage of the treasures that it held in its bosom, they already
m. In the manuscript: When God created the globe He at once gave part of it over
to the efforts of its inhabitants. Providence held the rest in reserve, destined for happier
generations.
The land that thus became the rst inheritance of man was young . . .
covered the face of the land, and soon they had to ght to gain the right
to have a refuge and to dwell in liberty.
That is when North America comes into sight, as if God had held it in
reserve and it had only just emerged from the waters of the ood.
It presents, as at the rst days of creation, rivers whose sources do not
run dry, green and moist wildernesses, limitless elds not yet broken by the
farmers plow. In this state, it is no longer offered to the isolated, ignorant
and barbaric man of the earliest ages, but to the man already master of the
most important secrets of nature, united with his fellows, and educated by
an experience of fty centuries.
At the moment I speak, thirteen million civilized Europeans are spread-
ing tranquilly across fertile wilderness areas whose resources or extent they
do not yet exactly know. Three or four thousand soldiers push before them
the wandering race of natives; behind the armed men, woodsmen advance
who pierce the forests, drive away the wildgame, explore the course of rivers
and prepare the triumphant march of civilization across the wilderness.
Often, in the course of this work, I have alluded to the material well-
being that the Americans enjoy; I have pointed it out as one of the great
causes for the success of their laws. This reason had already been given by
a thousand others before me: it is the only one that, falling in a way within
the awareness of the Europeans, has become popular among us. So I will
not expand upon a subject so often treated and so well understood; I will
only add several new facts.
n
It is generally imagined that the wilderness of America is populatedwith
the help of European emigrants who arrive each year on the shores of the
New World, while the American population increases and multiplies on
the soil that their fathers occupied: that is a great error. The European who
reaches the United States arrives there without friends and often without
resources; to live, he is forced to hire out his services, and it is rare to see
him go beyond the large industrial zone that extends along the ocean. You
n. In the margin: The Americans are so fortunate that everything, even including
their vices, is useful to them.
cannot clear the wilderness without capital or credit;
[
*
]
before risking your-
self in the middle of the forest, the body must become accustomed to the
rigors of a new climate. So it is the Americans who, daily abandoning the
place of their birth, go to create for themselves vast domains far away. Thus
the European leaves his cottage to go to inhabit the transatlantic shores,
and the American, who is born on these very shores, disappears in turninto
the emptiness of the central part of America. This double movement of
emigration never stops: it begins in the heart of Europe, it continues across
the great ocean, it keeps on across the solitude of the New World. Millions
of men march at the same time toward the same point of the horizon: their
language, their religion, their mores differ, their goal is shared. They have
been told that fortune is found somewhere toward the West, and they go
in haste to nd it.
o
[What are they going to do, in what precise place must
they stop? They themselves do not know, but they march forward guided
by the hand of God.]
Nothing can be compared with this continual displacement of the hu-
man species, except perhaps what happened at the fall of the Roman Em-
pire. Then, as today, you saw men rush all in a throng toward the same
point and meet turbulently in the same places; but the designs of Provi-
dence were different. [Then God wanted to destroy; today He wants to
create.] Each new arrival brought in his train destruction and death; today
each of them carries with him a seed of prosperity and life.
The distant consequences of this migration of the Americans toward
the West is still hidden from us by the future, but the immediate results are
easy to recognize: because one part of the former inhabitants moves each
year away from the states where they were born, these states, as they grow
older, are becoming populatedonly very slowly; thus inConnecticut, which
still numbers only fty-nine inhabitants per square mile, the population
has only grown by a quarter during the past forty years, while in England
it has increased by a third during the same period. So the emigrant from
Europe always arrives in a country half-full where industry needs hands; he
[*]. A note of explanation and details.
o. Cf. note h for p. 1313 of volume IV.
becomes a worker who is well-off; his son goes to nd his fortune in an
empty country and becomes a wealthy landowner. The rst amasses the
capital that the second turns to good account, and there is no poverty either
among the foreigners or among the natives.
Legislation, in the United States, favors as much as possible the division
of property; but a cause more powerful than legislation prevents property
from dividing too much.
2
You can see it clearly in the states that are nally
beginning to ll up. Massachusetts is the most populated country in the
Union; the inhabitants number eighty per square mile, which is innitely
fewer than in France, where there are one hundred sixty-two gathered in
the same space.
In Massachusetts, however, it is quite rare that small estates are divided:
the eldest generally takes the land; the younger go to nd their fortune in
the wilderness.
The lawabolished the right of primogeniture; but you cansay that Prov-
idence reestablished it without anyone having to complain, and this time
at least it does not offend justice.
You will judge by a single fact the prodigious number of individuals who
leave New England in this way to go to move their homes into the wilder-
ness. We are assured that in 1830, among the members of Congress, there
were thirty-six who were born in the small state of Connecticut. So the
population of Connecticut, which forms only one forty-third of that of
the United States, provides one-eighth of the representatives.
p
The state of Connecticut itself, however, sends only ve representatives
to Congress: the thirty-one others appear there as representatives of thenew
states of the West. If these thirty-one individuals had remained in Con-
necticut, it is probable that instead of being rich landowners, they would
have remained small farmers and lived in obscurity without being able to
open a political career, and that, far from becoming useful legislators, they
would have been dangerous citizens
2. In New England, the land is divided into small estates, but it is no longer being divided.
p. Tocqueville got this information from Judge Dens of Hartford (non-alphabetic
notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 102).
These considerations do not escape the mind of the Americans any more
than ours.
Chancellor Kent writes in his Commentaries on American Law (vol. IV,
p. 380):
It cannot be doubted that the division of property will produce great evils
when it is carried to the extreme; to the extent that each portion of land
can no longer provide for the support of a family; but these disadvantages
have never been felt in the United States, and many generations will pass
before they are felt. The immense area of our uninhabited territory, the
abundance of adjacent lands and the continual ow of emigration that,
departing from the shores of the Atlantic, goes constantly into the interior
of the country, are sufcient and will be sufcient to prevent the breaking
up of inherited lands for a long time yet to come.
It would be difcult to portray the greediness with which the American
throws himself on this immense prize that fortune offers him. To pursue
it he fearlessly dees the Indians arrow and the diseases of the wilderness;
the silence of the woods holds nothing that astonishes him, the approach
of ferocious beasts does not rouse him; a stronger passion than love of life
constantly spurs him on. Before him extends a continent nearly without
limits, and you would say that, already afraid of having no room there, he
hurries for fear of arriving too late. I spoke about the emigration from the
old states, but what will I say about that from the new? Not fty years ago
Ohio was founded; most of its inhabitants were not born there; its capital
has not existed thirty years, and an immense expanse of uninhabitedcoun-
try still covers its territory; the population of Ohio, however, has already
started to march again toward the West; most of those who come into the
fertile prairies of Illinois are inhabitants of Ohio. These men have left their
rst home to be comfortable; they leave the second to be still better off:
nearly everywhere, they nd fortune, but not happiness. Among them, the
desire for well-being has become a restless and ardent passion that grows as
it is being satised. Formerly they broke the ties that bound them to their
birthplace; they have formed no other ties since. For them, emigration be-
gan as a need; today, it has become in their eyes a kind of game of chance,
which they love for the emotions as much as for the gain.
Sometimes man moves so quickly that the wilderness reappears behind
him. The forest has only bent under his feet; the moment he passes, it rises
up again. It is not unusual, while traveling through the new states of the
West, to encounter abandoned dwellings in the middle of the woods; often
you nd the ruins of a cabin in the deepest solitude, and you are amazed
while crossing rough-hewn clearings that attest simultaneously to human
power and inconstancy. Among these abandoned elds, over these day old
ruins, the ancient forest does not delay growing new shoots; the animals
retake possession of their realm; nature comes happily to cover the vestiges
of man with green branches and owers and hastens to make the ephemeral
trace of man disappear.
I remember that while crossing
q
one of the uninhabited districts that
still cover the state of New York, I reached the shores of a lake entirely
surrounded by forests as at the beginning of the world. Asmall island arose
in the middle of the water. The woods that covered it, spreading their fo-
liage, entirely hid its banks. On the shores of the lake, nothing announced
the presence of man; you noticed only a column of smoke on the horizon
that, going straight up into the clouds above the top of the trees, seemed
to hang from rather than rise into the sky.
An Indian canoe was pulled onto the sand. I took advantage of it to go
to visit the island that had rst attracted my attention and soon after I
reached its shore. The entire island formed one of those delightful unin-
habited places of the New World that almost make civilized men feel nos-
talgia for savage life. A vigorous vegetation proclaimed by its wonders the
incomparable fertility of the soil. As in all the wildernesses of NorthAmer-
ica, a profound silence reigned that was interrupted only by the monoto-
nous cooing of the woodpigeons or by the blows that the woodpecker
struck on the bark of the trees. I was very far from believing that this place
had formerly been inhabited, nature there seemed so left to itself; but upon
reaching the center of the island, I suddenly thought that I had found ves-
tiges of man. Then I carefully examined all the objects inthe area, andsoon
q. The manuscript adds by chance. It is not at all by chance that Tocqueville found
himself in this sparsely inhabited regionof the state of NewYork. He was there expressly
to visit the island that he describes here (see appendix I, Voyage to Lake Oneida).
I no longer doubted that a European had come to nd a refuge inthis place.
But how his work had changed appearance! The woods that, long ago, he
had hastily cut down to make himself a shelter had since grown shoots; his
fence had become living hedges, and his cabin had been transformed into
a grove. In the middle of these bushes you still saw a few stones blackened
by re, scattered around a small pile of ashes; undoubtedly this was the
place of the hearth: the chimney, collapsing, had covered it with debris.
For some time I admired insilence the resources of nature andthe weakness
of man; and when nally I had to leave these enchanted places, I again
repeated with sadness: What! Ruins already!
r
In Europe we are used to regarding as a great social danger restlessness
of spirit, immoderate desire for wealth, extreme love of independence.
These are precisely all the things that guarantee a long and peaceful fu-
ture to the American republic. Without these restless passions, the popu-
lation would concentrate around certain places and, as among us, would
soon experience needs difcult to satisfy. How fortunate a country is the
New World, where the vices of man are nearly as useful to society as his
virtues!
This exercises a great inuence on the way in which human actions are
judged in the two hemispheres. Often the Americans call praiseworthy in-
dustry what we name love of gain, and they see a certain cowardice of heart
in what we consider moderation of desires.
In France, simplicity of tastes, tranquillity of mores, spirit of family and
love of birthplace are regarded as great guarantees of tranquillity and hap-
piness for the State; but in America, nothing seems more prejudicial to
society than such virtues. The French of Canada, who have faithfully pre-
served the traditions of the old mores, already nd it difcult to live intheir
territory, and this small group of people just born will soon be prey to the
miseries of old nations. In Canada, the men who have the most enlight-
enment, patriotism and humanity, make extraordinary efforts to give the
r. Herve de Tocqueville: I believe that in this place Alexis should add a note that
would say a few words about the story of the emigrant (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 57).
people a distaste for the simple happiness that is still enough for them.
These men celebrate the advantages of wealth, just as among us they would
perhaps praise the charms of honest mediocrity, and they take more care
to incite human passions than is taken elsewhere to calm such passions.
Nothing in their eyes merits more praises than to exchange the pure and
tranquil pleasures presented by the native country to the poor man for the
sterile enjoyments provided by well-being under a foreign sky; to ee the
paternal hearth and the elds where his ancestors rest; to abandonthe living
and the dead in order to run after fortune.
In our time, America offers men resources always greater than the in-
dustry that develops those resources can be.
So in America, you cannot provide enough enlightenment; for all en-
lightenment, at the same time that it can be useful to whoever possesses it,
still turns to the prot of those who do not. New needs are not to be feared
there, because all needs are satised without difculty. You do not have to
fear giving birth to too many passions, because all passions nd an easy and
salutary means of satisfaction. You cannot make men too free, because they
are almost never tempted to make bad use of liberty.
The American republics of today are like companies of merchants
formed to exploit in common the uninhabited lands of the New World
and occupied with a prospering commerce.
The passions that most profoundly agitate the Americans are commer-
cial passions and not political passions, or rather they carry into politics the
habits of business. They love order, without whichbusiness cannot prosper,
and they particularly prize regularity of mores, which lays the foundation
of good business establishments; they prefer goodsense, whichcreates great
fortunes, to genius, which oftendissipates them; general ideas frightentheir
minds, accustomed to positive calculations, and among the Americans,
practice is more honored than theory.
You must go to America to understand what power material well-being
s
exercises over political actions and even over opinions themselves, which
should be subject only to reason. It is among foreigners that youprincipally
s. See chapter X of the second part of the third volume.
discover the truth of this. Most of the emigrants fromEurope bring to the
NewWorld the wild love of independence and change that is so oftenborn
out of the midst of our miseries. I sometimes met in the United States
some of those Europeans who formerly had been forced to ee their coun-
try because of their political opinions. All astonished me by their speeches;
but I was struck by one of them more than any other. As I crossed one of
the most distant districts of Pennsylvania, night surprised me, and I went
to ask for shelter at the door of a wealthy planter: he was a Frenchman. He
made me sit down beside his hearth, and we began to talk freely, as happens
to men who nd themselves in the depths of the forest two thousand
leagues from the country where they were born. I was not unaware that
forty years ago my host had been a great leveler and an ardent demagogue.
His name was known to history.
t
So I was strangely surprised to hear him discuss the right of property as
an economist, I was almost going to say a landholder, would be able to do;
he spoke of the necessary hierarchy that fortune establishes among men,
of obedience toestablishedlaw, of the inuence of goodmores inrepublics,
of the aid that religious ideas lend to order and to liberty: he even cited as
if by accident, in support of one of his political opinions, the authority of
Jesus Christ.
While listening to him, I wondered at the weakness of human reason.
Something is either true or false; how to nd out amid the uncertainties of
knowledge and the diverse lessons of experience? A new fact arises that
relieves all my doubts. I was poor, now I am rich; if at least well-being,
while acting upon my conduct, left my judgment free! But no, my opinions
have indeed changed with my fortune, and in the happy outcome from
which I prot, I have really discovered the decisive reason that I had lacked
until then.
Well-being exercises an inuence still more freely over the Americans
than over foreigners. The American has always seen before his eyes order
and public prosperity linked together and marching in step, he does not
imagine that they canlive separately; sohe has nothingtoforget, and, unlike
t. This person has not been identied.
so many Europeans, does not need to lose what he retains from his rst
education.
[Political society, however, is constantly agitated in the United States.
But the movement is slow and measured. It inuences the details and not
the whole of public fortune. It bears more upon men than uponprinciples.
You want to improve constantly, but are afraid of upsetting things; and
while desiring the best, you are even more afraid of the worst.
What could I add to succeed in making my thought understood? What
occurred to so many of the French republicans under the Empire and to
some of the liberals of today happens to the majority of men in America.
They nd in the end that society does well, or nearly so, because they are
doing well.]
Of the Inuence of Laws on Maintaining the
Three principal causes for maintaining the democratic
republic.Federal form.Town institutions.
Judicial power.
[The second general cause that I pointed out as serving to maintain the
political institutions of the Americans is foundinthe verygoodness of these
institutions, that is to say in their conformity to the social state andphysical
position.]
The principal goal of this book was to make the laws of the UnitedStates
known; if this goal has been reached, the reader has already been able to
judge for himself which ones, among these laws, tend really to maintain
the democratic republic and which ones put it in danger. If I have not
succeeded in the whole course of this book, I will succeed even less in this
chapter.
So I do not want to pursue the course that I have already covered, and
a few lines must sufce for me to summarize.
Three causes seemto contribute more than all the others to maintaining
the democratic republic in the New World:
The rst is the federal formthat the Americans adopted, and that allows
the Union to enjoy the power of a large republic and the security of a small
one.
I nd the second in the town institutions that, by moderating
u
the des-
potism of the majority, give the people at the same time the taste for liberty
and the art of being free.
The third is foundinthe constitutionof the judicial power. I have shown
how much the courts serve to correct the errors of democracy and how,
without ever being able tostopthe movements of the majority, theysucceed
in slowing and directing them.
Of the Inuence of Mores on Maintaining the
I said above that I considered the mores as one of the great general causes
to which maintaining the democratic republic in the United States can be
attributed.
I understand the expression mores here in the sense that the ancients
attached to the word mores; I apply it not only to mores strictly speaking,
which could be called habits of the heart, but to the different notions that
men possess, to the diverse opinions that are current among them, and to
the ensemble of ideas from which the habits of the mind are formed.
v
So by this word I understand the whole moral and intellectual state of
u. The manuscript says by preventing.
v. I understand by mores the whole of the dispositions that man brings to the gov-
ernment of society. Mores strictly speaking, enlightenment, habits, knowledge . . .
(YTC, CVh, 3, p. 58).
Melvin Richter (The Uses of Theory: Tocquevilles Adaptation of Montesquieu,
in Essays in Theory and History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970, pp. 9091)
remarks that Tocqueville, by the termmores, designates all that Montesquieuunderstood
by general spirit: precedents, mores, habits, economy, style of thought, etc.with the
exception of laws, which he considers apart. But the explanation, which ascribes such a
meaning to Tocquevilles bad memory and imprecision of method, is difcult to accept.
The distinctionbetweenlaws andmores seems more understandable if yourefer toRous-
seau, who denes andunderstands mores ina fashionquite similar tothat of Tocqueville.
On this point as on others, Tocqueville read Montesquieu through Rousseau. See Du
contrat social, book II, chapter XII, uvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, III, pp. 393
94.
a people. My goal is not to drawa picture of Americanmores; I limit myself
at this moment to trying to nd out what among them is favorable for
maintaining the political institutions.
Of Religion Considered as a Political Institution,
How It Serves Powerfully to Maintain the
Democratic Republic among the Americans
[
*
]
North America populated by men who professed a democratic
and republican Christianity.Arrival of Catholics.Why
today Catholics form the most democratic and the most
republican class.
Alongside each religion is found a political opinion that is joined to it by
afnity.
w
Allow the human spirit to follow its tendency, and it will regulate in a
uniform way political society and the holy city; it will seek, if I dare say so,
to harmonize earth with heaven.
x
Most of English America was populated by men who, after escaping
from the authority of the Pope, submitted to no religious supremacy; so
they brought to the New World a Christianity that I cannot portray better
than by calling it democratic and republican: this will singularly favor the
establishment of the republic and of democracy in public affairs. Fromthe
onset, politics and religion found themselves in accord, and they have not
ceased to be so since.
[*]. I will examine in the second volume the state of religion in the United States,
the sects, the religious mores. Here I am considering it only from the political point of
view.
w. Who could deny the fortunate inuence of religion on mores and the inuence
of mores on the government of society?/
The people see in religion the safeguard and the divine origin of liberty; the rich,
the guarantee of their fortune and their life; the statesmen, the safeguard of society; the
pioneer, something like his companion in the wilderness (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 57).
x. In the margin in the rst version: Despotism can do without religion, but not
liberty.
Unanimity of statesmen on the utility of religion.
About fty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into
the United States. For its part, American Catholicism made converts.
y
To-
day in the Union you nd more than a million Christians who profess the
truths of the Roman Church.
These Catholics showa great delity to the observances of their religion,
and are full of ardor and zeal for their beliefs; however, they form the most
republican and most democratic class that exists in the United States. This
fact is a surprise at rst glance, but reection easily discloses the hidden
causes.
[Christianity, even when it demands passive obedience in matters of
dogma, is still of all religious doctrines the one most favorable to liberty,
because it appeals only to the mind and heart of those whom it wants to
bring into subjection.
z
No religionhas so disdainedthe use of physical force
as the religion of J[esus (ed.)]. C[hrist (ed.)]. Now, wherever physical force
is not honored, tyranny cannot endure. Therefore you see that despotism
has never been able to be established among Christians.
a
It has always lived
there from day to day and in a state of alarm. When we say that a Christian
nation is enslaved, it is in comparison to a Christian people that we judge.
If we compare it to an indel people, the Christian nation would seemfree
to us.
y. In the manuscript: American Catholicism spread for its part by numerous
conversions.
z. In a rst version of the drafts, this sentence is also found: . . . wants to bring into
subjection. If it loves to rule despotically over the will of man, it is after the will has by
itself bent to its yoke. No religion . . . (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 49).
a. Herve de Tocqueville:
E
douards advice is to delete this piece up to the words among the different Christian
doctrines.
I share his opinion concerning only the rst paragraph. It is not useful and besides
many claims can be challenged. The author says: no religion has so disdained the use
of physical force as much as the religion of Jesus Christ. Someone will put forward the
Albigensians, the Inquisition, the massacre of the Cevennes, etc. Later despotism has
never been able to be established among Christians is found. Someone will replybyciting
Spain since Philip II.
The paragraph on equality, which goes straight to the point and serves as a tran-
sition, must be kept here (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 5051).
I will say something analogous concerning equality.
Of all religious doctrines, Christianity, whatever interpretationyougive
it, is also the one most favorable to equality. Only the religion of J[esus
(ed.)]. C[hrist (ed.)]. has placed the sole grandeur of man in the accom-
plishment of duties, where each person can attain it; and has been pleased
to consecrate poverty and hardship, as something nearly divine.
I will add that among the different Christian doctrines, Catholicism
seems to me one of the least contrary to the leveling of conditions.]
I think that it is wrong to regard the Catholic religion as a natural enemy
of democracy. Among the different Christiandoctrines, Catholicismseems
to me on the contrary one of the most favorable to equality of conditions.
Among Catholics, religious society is composed of only two elements:
priest and people. The priest alone rises above the faithful; everything is
equal below him.
b
In matters of dogma, Catholicism places all minds on the same level; it
subjects to the details of the same beliefs the learned as well as the ignorant,
the man of genius as well as the common man; it imposes the same obser-
vances on the rich as on the poor, inicts the same austerities on the pow-
erful as on the weak; it compromises with no mortal, and by applying the
same measure to each human being, it loves to mix all classes of society
together at the foot of the same altar, as they are mixed together in the eyes
of God.
So, if Catholicism disposes the faithful to obedience, it does not prepare
them for inequality. I will say the opposite about Protestantism,
c
which, in
general, carries menmuchless towardequality thantowardindependence.
d
b. In the margin: Catholicism favors the spirit of equality in the manner of ab-
solute power. It places one man beyondall rank andleaves all the others mingledtogether
in the crowd.
c. Protestantism is the government of the middle classes applied to the religious
world (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 85).
d. Herve de Tocqueville: I would delete this sentence for three reasons: 1. It implies
a sort of contradiction with the beginning of the chapter where the author attributes to
Protestantism the calm and regular establishment of democracy. 2. The thought is little
developed. 3. The sentence is not useful here (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 5152).
Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy. Remove the prince, and con-
ditions there are more equal than in republics.
e
The Catholic priest has often come out of the sanctuary to enter into
society as a power, and he has come to take a seat amid the social hierarchy;
sometimes he thenused his religious inuence toassure the lastingexistence
of a political order of which he is part. Then you could see Catholics as
partisans of aristocracy by spirit of religion.
But once priests are excluded or withdraw from government, as they are
in the United States, there are no men who, by their beliefs, are more dis-
posed than Catholics to carry the idea of equality of conditions into the
political world.
So if Catholics in the United States are not strongly led by the nature
of their beliefs toward democratic and republican opinions, at least they
are not naturally against them, and their social position, as well as their
small number, makes it a rule for them to embrace those opinions.
f
Most Catholics are poor, and they need all citizens to govern in order to
reach the government themselves. Catholics are in the minority, and they
need all rights to be respected in order to be assured of the free exercise of
theirs. These two causes push them, even without their knowledge, toward
e. I do not doubt that Protestantism, which places all religious authority in the
universality of the faithful acting by themselves, is very favorable to the establishment
of [v: indirectly supports the political dogma of the sovereignty of the people and
thus serves] republican government. And Catholicism, subject to the intellectual au-
thority of the Pope and Councils, seems to me to have more natural afnity with
limited monarchy than with any other government (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 71).
This paragraph is badly written. I would put it this way: If, moreover, Catholics in the
United States were not led by the nature of their belief toward democratic andrepublican
opinions, their social position as well as their small number would make it a rule for them
to embrace those opinions. Delete all the rest. This turnof phrase seems tome topresent
ideas in a more logical way and to serve as a natural transition to the true reason why
Catholics in the United States love the republic. For at bottomyou cannot close your
eyes to the fact that the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Catholics is much more an image
of monarchical government than of republicaninstitutions. Not a wordof the prayer
must be omitted (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 5253).
political doctrines that they would perhaps adopt with less ardor if they
were rich and predominant.
The Catholic clergy inthe UnitedStates have not triedtostruggleagainst
this political tendency; they seek instead to justify it. Catholic priests in
America have divided the intellectual world into two parts: in one, they left
revealed dogmas, and there they submit without discussion; in the other,
they put political truth, and there they think that God abandoned political
truth to the free search of men. Thus, Catholics in the United States are
simultaneously the most submissive faithful and the most independent cit-
izens [that there are in the world].
So you can say that in the United States not a single religious doctrine
shows itself hostile to democratic and republicaninstitutions. All the clergy
there use the same language; [and while American publicists make all the
miseries of society ow from despotism and inequality of conditions,
priests represent despotism and inequality of conditions as the most fertile
sources of moral evil] opinions there are in agreement withlaws, andonly
one current so to speak rules the human mind.
I was living for a short while in one of the largest cities of the Union
when I was invited to attend a political meeting the goal of which was to
come to the aid of the Poles, and to send them arms and money.
I found two or three thousand persons gathered in a vast room that had
been prepared to receive them. Soon after, a priest, dressed in his ecclesi-
astical robes, came forward to the edge of the platform intended for the
speakers. Those attending, after removing their hats, stood in silence, and
he spoke in these terms:
God all-powerful! God of armies! Thou who sustained the hearts and
guided the arms of our fathers when they upheld the sacred rights of their
national independence; Thou who made them triumph over an odious
oppression, and who granted to our people the benets of peace and lib-
erty; oh Lord! turn a favorable eye toward the other hemisphere; look with
pity upon a heroic people who today struggle as we once did and for the
defense of the same rights! Lord, who created all men on the same model,
do not allow despotism to come to distort Thy work and to maintain
inequality on earth. God all-powerful! watch over the destiny of the Poles,
make them worthy to be free; may Thy wisdomrule in their councils, may
Thy strength be in their arms; spread terror among their enemies, divide
the powers that plot their ruin, and do not allow the injustice that the
world witnessed fty years ago to be consummatedtoday. Lord, whoholds
in Thy powerful hand the hearts of peoples as well as those of men, raise
up allies for the sacred cause of right; make the French nation arise nally
and, emerging from the sleep in which its leaders hold it, come to ght
once again for the liberty of the world.
O Lord! never turn Thy face from us; allow us always to be the most
religious people, as well as the most free.
God all-powerful, grant our prayer today; save the Poles. We ask Thee
in the name of Thy beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the
cross for the salvation of all men. Amen.
The entire assembly repeated Amen with reverence.
Indirect Inuence Exercised by Religious Beliefs
on Political Society in the United States
Morality of Christianity which is found in all sects.
Inuence of religion on the mores of Americans.Respect
for the marriage bond.How religion encloses the
imagination of the Americans within certain limits and
moderates among them the passion to innovate.
Opinion of Americans on the political utility of religion.
Their efforts to extend and assure its dominion.
I have just shown what the direct action of religion on politics was in the
United States. Its indirect action seems even more powerful to me, and it
is when religion is not speaking about liberty that it best teaches the Amer-
icans the art of being free.
g
There is an innumerable multitude of sects in the United States. All
differ in the worship that must be given to the Creator, but all agree on the
g. To the side: Patriotic affection of the Americans for religion.
I am not sure that the Americans are convinced of the truth of religion, but I am
sure that they are convinced of its utility.
duties of men toward one another. So each sect worships God in its way,
but all sects preach the same morality in the name of God. If it is very
useful to a man as an individual that his religion be true, it is not the same
for society. Society has nothing either to fear or to hope concerning the
other life; and what is most important for society is not so much that all
citizens profess the true religion but that they profess a religion. All the
sects in the United States are, moreover, within the great Christian unity,
and the morality of Christianity is the same everywhere. [{In America
there are Catholics and Protestants, but Americans profess the Christian
religion.}]
You are free to think that a certain number of Americans, in the worship
they give to God, follow their habits more than their convictions. In the
United States, moreover, the sovereign is religious, and consequently hy-
pocrisy must be common; but America is still the place in the world where
the Christian religion has most retained true power over souls; and nothing
shows better how useful and natural religion is to man, since the country
where today it exercises the most dominion is at the same time the most
enlightened and most free.
I said that American priests come down in a general way in favor of civil
liberty, without excepting even those who do not allow religious liberty;
you do not see them lend their support, however, to any political system
in particular. They take care to keep out of public affairs and do not get
mixed up inthe schemes of the parties. So youcannot say that inthe United
States religion exercises an inuence on laws or on the detail of political
opinions, but it directs mores, and it is by regulating the family that it works
to regulate the State.
I do not doubt for an instant that the great severity of mores that is
noticed in the United States has its primary source in beliefs. Religionthere
is often powerless to restrain the man amid the innumerable temptations
presented by fortune. It cannot moderate in himthe ardor to growrichthat
comes to goad everyone, but it rules with sovereign power over the soul of
the woman, and it is the woman who shapes the mores.
h
America is assur-
edly the country in the world in which the marriage bond is most respected,
h. See chapter IX of the third part of the fourth volume.
and in which the highest and most sound idea of conjugal happiness has
been conceived.
In Europe, nearly all of the disorders of society are born around the
domestic hearth and not far from the marital bed. That is where men con-
ceive scorn for natural bonds and permitted pleasures, taste for disorder,
restlessness of heart, instability of desires. Agitated by the tumultuous pas-
sions that have often troubled his owndwelling, the Europeansubmits only
with difculty to the legislative powers of the State. When, coming from
the agitation of the political world, the American returns to the bosom of
his family, he immediately encounters the image of order and peace. There,
all his pleasures are simple and natural, his joys innocent and tranquil; and
as he achieves happiness by the regularity of life, he easily gets used to reg-
ulating his opinions as well as his tastes.
j
While the European seeks to escape his domestic sorrows by troubling
society, the American draws from his home the love of order that he then
carries into the affairs of the State.
In the United States, religion regulates not only mores; it extends its
dominion even to the mind.
Among the Anglo-Americans, some profess Christian dogmas because
they believe them; others, because they fear not appearing to believe them.
So Christianity rules without obstacles, with the consent of all; as a result,
as I have already said elsewhere, everything is certain and xed in the moral
world, while the political world seems abandoned to discussion and to the
experiments of men. Thus the human mind never sees a limitless eld be-
fore it; whatever its audacity, it feels from time to time that it must stop
before insurmountable barriers. Before innovating, it is forced to accept
certain primary givens, and to subject its boldest conceptions to certain
forms that retard and stop it.
So the imagination of the Americans, in its greatest departures, has only
a circumspect and uncertain movement; its ways are hampered and its
j. Basil Hall nds that Tocqueville exaggerated the domestic happiness of Americans
(cf. the letter of Tocqueville to Basil Hall reproduced in note d for pp. 81921 of the
third volume).
works incomplete. These habits of restraint are found in political society
and singularly favor the tranquillity of the people, as well as the continued
existence of the institutions that the people have given themselves. Nature
and circumstances had made out of the inhabitant of the United States an
audacious man; it is easy to judge so when you see how he pursues fortune.
If the mind of the Americans were free of all hindrances, you would soon
nd among them the boldest innovators and the most implacable logicians
in the world. But the revolutionaries of America are obliged to profess pub-
licly a certain respect for Christian morality and equity that does not allow
them to violate laws easily when the laws are opposed to the execution of
their designs; and if they could rise above their scruples, they would still
feel checked by the scruples of their partisans. Until now no one has been
found in the United States who has dared to advance this maxim: that ev-
erything is allowed in the interest of society. Impious maxim, that seems
to have been invented in a century of liberty in order to legitimate all the
tyrants to come. [<In France a [illegible word] {man} seeks to justify this
enormity by principles and facts, and he goes to take a seat in the councils
of the prince.>]
Therefore, at the same time that the law allows the American people to
do everything, religion prevents them from conceiving of everything and
forbids them to dare everything.
k
So religion, which among the Americans never directly takes part in the
government of society, must be considered as the rst of their political
institutions; for if it does not give them the taste for liberty, it singularly
facilitates their use of it.
It is also fromthis point of viewthat the inhabitants of the UnitedStates
themselves consider religious beliefs. I do not know if all Americans have
faith in their religion, for who can read the recesses of the heart? But I am
sure that they believe it necessary for maintaining republican institutions.
This opinion does not belong to one class of citizens or to one party, but
to the whole nation; you nd it among all ranks.
In the United States, when a politician attacks a sect, it is not a reason
k. In the margin: American liberty was born in the bosom of religion and is still
sustained in its arms.
for even the partisans of that sect not to support him; but if he attacks all
sects together, each one ees from him, and he remains alone.
While I was in America, a witness appeared before the assizes of the
county of Chester (State of NewYork) and declared that he did not believe
in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul. The presiding
judge refused to admit his oath, given, he said, that the witness had de-
stroyed in advance any faith that could be given to his words.
3
The news-
papers reported the fact without comment.
Americans mix Christianity and liberty so completely in their mind that
it is nearly impossible to make them conceive one without the other; and,
among them, this is not one of those sterile beliefs that the past bequeaths
to the present and that seem more to vegetate deep in the soul than to live.
I have seen Americans join together to send priests into the new states
of the West and to found schools and churches there; they are afraid that
religionmay come to be lost inthe middle of the woods, andthat the people
who are arising there may not be as free as those from whom they came. I
met rich inhabitants of New England who abandoned the country of their
birth with the goal of going to lay the foundations of Christianity and
liberty on the banks of the Missouri or on the prairies of Illinois. This is
how religious zeal in the United States constantly warms up at the hearth
of patriotism. You think that these men act uniquely in consideration of
the other life, but you are mistaken: eternity is only one of their concerns.
If you question these missionaries of Christiancivilization, youwill be very
surprised to hear them speak so often about the good things of this world
and to nd politicians where you thought to see only men of religion. All
the American republics stand together one with the others, they will say to
you; if the republics of the West fell into anarchy or submitted to the yoke
3. Here are the words in which the New York Spectator of 23 August 1831 reports the
fact:
The court of commonpleas of Chester county (NewYork) a fewdays since rejectedawitness
who declared his disbelief in the existence of God. The presiding judge remarked that he
had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence
of God; that this belief constituted the sanction of all testimony in a court of justice and
that he knew of no cause in a Christian country where a witness had been permitted to
testify without such a belief.
of despotism, the republican institutions that ourish on the shores of the
Atlantic Ocean would be in great peril; so we have an interest that these
new states are religious, in order that they allow us to remain free.
m
Such are the opinions of the Americans; but their error is clear. For each
day someone proves to me very learnedly that everything is good in Amer-
ica, except precisely this religious spirit that I admire; and I learn that the
only thing missing from the liberty and happiness of the human species,
on the other side of the Ocean, is to believe with Spinoza
n
in the eternity
of the world, and to uphold with Cabanis that the brain secretes thought.
To that I have nothing to reply, in truth, if not that those who use this
language have not been to America, and have not seen religious peoples any
more than free peoples. So I will await their return.
[For me, if something could make me despair of the destiny of Eu-
rope, it is to see the strange confusion that reigns there in minds. I see pious
men who would like to suffocate liberty, as if liberty, this great privilege of
man, was not a nearly holy thing. Further along, I see others who think to
arrive at being free by attacking all beliefs, but I do not see any who seem
to notice the tight and necessary knot that ties [v: the republic] religion to
liberty.]
There are men in France who consider republican institutions as the
temporary instrument of their grandeur. They measure with their eyes the
immense gap that separates their vices and their miseries from power and
riches, and they would like to pile up ruins
o
in this abyss in order to try to
ll it. These men are to liberty what the free companies of the Middle Ages
were to kings; they make war on their own behalf even when they wear his
colors; the republic will always live long enough to pull them out of their
present low position. I am not speaking to them. But there are others who
m. In the margin: We would not give ourselves all these difculties if a regulating
force existed outside of society. But how to govern yourself [v: an entire people] without
the existence [v: support] of beliefs and mores?
n. In place of Spinoza, the manuscript cites Voltaire.
o. In the manuscript: . . . ruins and riches and they would like to throwthe republic
down like a narrow passageway and ying bridge over the abyss.
see in the republic a permanent and tranquil state, a necessary end toward
which ideas and mores lead modern societies each day, and who would
sincerely like to prepare men to be free. When these men attack religious
beliefs, they followtheir passions and not their interests. Despotismcando
without faith, but not liberty. Religion is much more necessary in the re-
public that they advocate than in the monarchy that they attack, and in
democratic republics more than in all others. How could society fail to
perish if, while the political bond grows loose, the moral bond does not
become tighter? And what to do with a people master of itself, if it is not
subject to God?
Of the Principal Causes That Make Religion
Powerful in America
p
Care that the Americans have taken to separate Church and
State.Laws, public opinion, the efforts of priests themselves,
work toward this result.To this cause must be attributed the
power that religion exercises on souls in the United States.
Why.What is today the natural state of man in
p. In an initial plan of the work:
Religious society./
Nomenclature of the various sects.From Catholicismto the sect that is furthest
from it.
Quakers, Methodists.Point out what is antisocial in the doctrine of Quakers,
Unitarians.
Relations among the sects.
Freedom of worship.Toleration: in the legal respect; with respect to mores.
Catholicism.
Place of religion in the political order and its degree of inuence on American
society (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 2627).
Several ideas of this part are roughed out in a letter from Tocqueville to Chabrol dated
26 October 1831. Tocqueville answers certain questions that Louis Bouchitte had asked
him concerning religion in the United States (YTC, BIa2).
This passage is not without many similarities to Note on the religious movement in
the United States by Gustave de Beaumont, very particularly to part III, Relations of
religions with the State (Marie, II, pp. 21325).
the matter of religion.What particular and accidental
cause, in certain countries, works against men
conforming to this state.
The philosophers of the XVIIIth century explained the gradual weakening
of beliefs in a very simple way. Religious zeal, they said, must fade as liberty
and enlightenment increase. It is unfortunate that facts do not agree with
this theory.
q
There is such a European population whose disbelief is equaled only by
its brutishness and ignorance, while in America you see one of the most
free and most enlightened
r
peoples in the world fulll with ardor all the
external duties of religion.
When I arrived in the United States, it was the religious aspect of the
country that rst struck my eyes.
s
As I prolonged my journey, I noticed the
great political consequences that owed from these new facts.
I had seen among us the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty march
almost always in opposite directions. Here, I found them intimately joined
the one to the other: they reigned together over the same soil.
Eachday I felt my desire to knowthe cause of this phenomenonincrease.
To nd it out, I asked the faithful of all communions; I sought, above
all, the company of priests who are the keepers of the different faiths and
who have a personal interest in their continued existence. The religion I
q. I have heard it said in Europe that it was very unfortunate that these poor Amer-
icans had religion. When you have been in the United States, convictionthat religion
is more useful in republics than in monarchies, and in democratic republics more
than anywhere else. Disastrous misunderstanding in France. Despotic powers of Eu-
rope favor religion./
As for these cut-throats, liberty is the greatest gift of God, it is the republicans, I
have nothing to say to them . . . but the others . . . may they know that liberty is an
almost holy thing [v: what distinguishes us from beasts] (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 57).
r. The manuscript says: . . . you see the most free and most enlightened . . .
Herve de Tocqueville: Isnt the expression a bit exaggerated? (YTC, CIIIb, 1 p. 44).
s. Several times Tocqueville uses the same expression in the book while referring to
other aspects that attracted his attention, for example, the activity that reigns in the
United States.
profess brought me particularly close to the Catholic clergy, and I did not
delay in striking up a sort of intimacy with several of its members.
t
To each
of them I expressed my astonishment and revealed my doubts. I foundthat
all of these men differed among themselves only on the details; but all at-
tributed the peaceful dominion that religionexercises intheir countryprin-
cipally to the complete separation of Church and State. I am not afraid to
assert that, during my visit in America, I did not meet a single man, priest
or laymen, who did not agree on this point.
This led me to examine more attentively than I had done until then the
position that American priests occupy in political society. I realized with
t. Few questions have provoked more commentary than the religious beliefs of
Tocqueville. All commentators nonetheless take as true the confession of faith made to
Madame Swetchine in the famous letter of 26 February 1857 (Correspondance avec Ma-
dame Swetchine,OC, XV, 2, p. 315). There Tocqueville says that he lost his faith when
he was sixteen years old, after reading several passages chosen haphazardly from his fa-
thers library. His works and his correspondence allow us, however, to guess his assent
to several great dogmas of Catholicism. As Luis D ez de Corral (La mentalidad pol tica
de Tocqueville con especial referencia a Pascal, Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Morales
y Pol ticas, 1965, p. 118) notes, Tocqueville is closer to those who, in the words of Pascal,
seek while groaning, eternally plagued by doubt and uncertainty, captives to the
wager. In this regard, the author writes to Francisque de Corcelle:
If you know a recipe for belief, for God ! give it to me. But what power does the will
have over the free processes of the mind? If will alone were sufcient for belief, I
would have been devout a long time ago; or rather I would always have been devout,
for doubt has always seemed to me the most unbearable of the ills of the world; I
have constantly judged it to be worse than death and inferior only to illnesses (Cor-
respondance avec Corcelle, OC, XV, 2, p. 29).
A little further in this chapter, Tocqueville explains what perhaps best corresponds to
his own sentiment in the matter of religious beliefs. The latter, he says, are abandoned
by coldness rather than by hatred; you do not reject them, they leave you. While
ceasing to believe religion true, the unbeliever continues to judge it useful. Consid-
ering religious beliefs froma human aspect, he recognizes their dominionover mores,
their inuence over laws. He understands how they can make men live in peace and
gently prepare men for death. So he regrets faith after losing it, and deprived of a
good of which he knows the whole value, he is afraid to take it away from those who
still possess it (p. 486).
Also see Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento pol tico de Tocqueville, Madrid: Alianza
Universidad, 1989, pp. 22771.
surprise that they ll no public position.
4
I did not see a single one of them
in the administration, and I discovered that they were not evenrepresented
within the assemblies.
The law, in several states, had closed a political career to them;
5
opinion,
in all the others.
Whennally I foundout what the mindof the clergy itself was, I noticed
that most of its members seemed to remove themselves voluntarily from
power, and to take a kind of professional pride in remaining apart from it.
I heard them anathematize ambition and bad faith, whatever the po-
litical opinions that ambition and bad faith carefully used to cover them-
selves. But I learned, by listening to them, that mencannot be blameworthy
in the eyes of God because of these very opinions, when the opinions are
sincere, and that there is no more sin in being wrong in matters of govern-
ment than in being mistaken about the way in which your dwelling must
be built or your furrow must be plowed.
I sawthemseparate themselves withcare fromall parties, andee contact
with all the ardor of personal interest.
These facts succeeded in proving to me that I had been told the truth.
Then I wanted to go back from facts to causes. I asked myself how it
could happen that by diminishing the apparent strength of a religion, you
4. Unless you give this name to the functions that many among them occupy in schools.
Most education is conded to the clergy.
5. See the Constitution of New York, art. 7, #4.
Id. of North Carolina, art. 31.
Id. of Virginia.
Id. of South Carolina, art. 1, #23.
Id. of Kentucky, art. 2, #26.
Id. of Tennessee, art. 8, #1.
Id. of Louisiana, art. 2, #22.
The article of the Constitution of New York is formulated as follows:
And whereas the ministers of the gospel are, by their profession, dedicated to the
service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great
duties of their function; therefore, no minister of the gospel, or priest of any de-
nomination whatsoever, shall, at any time hereafter, under any presence or descrip-
tion whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military ofce or place
within this State.
came to increase its true power, and I believed that it was not impossible
to nd out.
Never will the short space of sixty years enclose all of the imagination
of man; the incomplete joys of this worldwill never be enoughfor his heart.
Among all beings, man alone shows a natural distaste for existence and an
immense desire to exist: he scorns life andfears nothingness. Thesedifferent
instincts constantly push his soul toward the contemplation of another
world, and it is religion that leads him there. So religion is only a particular
form of hope, and it is as natural to the human heart as hope itself.
u
It is
by a type of mental aberrationandwiththe helpof a kindof moral violence
exercised over their own nature, that menremove themselves fromreligious
beliefs; an irresistible inclination brings them back to beliefs. Unbelief is
an accident; faith alone is the permanent state of humanity.
So by considering religion only from a human viewpoint, you can say
that all religions draw from man himself an element of strength that they
can never lack, because it is due to one of the constituent principles of
human nature.
I know that there are times when religion can add to this inuence,
which is its own, the articial power of laws and the support of the physi-
cal powers that lead society. We have seenreligions, intimately unitedwith
u. What touches me more than the miracles and the prophecies is the very character
of Christianity. There is the greatest sign of its divine origin. Give honor to all the
religious codes of the world, you will see that they necessarily apply to a certaincoun-
try, to certain mores, to a particular social state or people. I do not examine the proofs
of these religions, and I say that they are false, because they are not made for all times
and for all men. But Christianity seems universal and immortal like the human spe-
cies./
The inuence that religion exercises over mores in the United States must not be
exaggerated; it is not sufcient to make a virtuous people, but an orderly one./
Its action on the women. It is the women who make mores.
I said that democracy was the form of government in which it was most desirable
that the people be happy; it is also the one in which it is most desirable that the people
be moral and for the same reason.
I would not hesitate to say, because I write in an irreligious century, that in the
United States religion is the rst of political institutions. And I even add that I am
that much less afraid to say so because of this reason (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 58).
the governments of the earth, dominate souls by terror and by faith at the
same time; but when a religion contracts such an alliance, I am not afraid
to say, it acts as a man could: it sacrices the future with the present in
mind, and by obtaining a power that is not its due, it puts its legitimate
power at risk.
When a religion seeks to found its dominion only on the desire for im-
mortality that equally torments the hearts of all men, it can aim for uni-
versality; but when it comes to unite with a government, it must adopt
maxims that are applicable only to certain peoples. Therefore, by allying
itself to a political power, religion increases its power over some and loses
the hope of reigning over all.
As long as a religion relies only on the sentiments that console all mis-
eries, it can attract the heart of the human species. Mingled with the bitter
passions of this world, religion is sometimes constrained to defend allies
that have offered interest rather than love; and it must reject as adversaries
men who often still love it, even as they ght those menwithwhomreligion
is united. So religion cannot share the material strength of those who gov-
ern without burdening itself with a portion of the hatreds caused by those
who govern.
The political powers that appear most established have as a guarantee
of their continued existence only the opinions of a generation, the in-
terests of a century, often the life of a man. A law can modify the social
state that seems most denitive and most rm, and with it everything
changes.
The powers of society are all more or less eeting, just as our years upon
the earth; they rapidly follow one another, like the various cares of life;
and you have never seen a government that relied on an invariable dis-
position of the human heart and that was able to base itself on an im-
mortal interest.
As long as a religion nds its strength in the sentiments, the instincts,
the passions that are reproduced in the same way in all periods of history,
it dees the effort of time, or at least it can be destroyed only by another
religion. [Political powers can do nothing against it.] But when religion
wants to rely on the interests of this world, it becomes almost as fragile as
all the powers of the earth. Alone, religion can hope for immortality; tied
to ephemeral powers, it follows their fortune, and often falls with the pas-
sions of the day that sustain those powers.
So by uniting with different political powers, religion can only contract
an onerous alliance. It does not need their help to live, and by serving them
it can die.
The danger that I have just pointed out exists at all times, but it is not
always as visible.
There are centuries when governments appear immortal, and others
when you would say that the existence of society is more fragile than that
of a man.
Certain constitutions keep citizens in a sort of lethargic sleep, andothers
deliver them to a feverish agitation.
When governments seemso strong and laws so stable, mendo not notice
the danger that religion can run by uniting with power.
When governments prove to be so weak and laws so changeable, the peril
strikes all eyes, but then there is often no more time to escape. So you must
learn to see it from afar.
To the extent that a nation assumes a democratic social state and you see
societies lean toward the republic,
v
it becomes more and more dangerous
to unite religion with authority; for the time is coming when power will
pass from hand to hand, when political theories will succeed one another,
when men, laws, constitutions themselves will disappear or change each
day, and not for a time, but constantly. Agitation and instability stemfrom
the nature of democratic republics, as immobility and sleep form the law
of absolute monarchies.
If the Americans, who change the head of State every four years, who
every two years choose new legislators, and replace provincial administra-
tors every year; if the Americans, who have delivered the political world to
the experiments of innovators, had not placed their religion somewhere
outside of the political world, to what could they cling in the ebb and ow
v. In the manuscript: . . . you see governments lean and rush toward the republic.
Herve de Tocqueville: The words and rush, which are meaningless, must be struck
out; you could put and are carried toward (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 46).
of human opinions? Amid the struggle of parties, where would the respect
be that religion is due? What would become of its immortality when ev-
erything perishes around it?
American priests have seen this truth before anyone else, and they model
their conduct on it. They have seen that religious inuence had to be re-
nounced, if they wanted to acquire a political power, and they preferred to
lose the support of power than to share its vicissitudes.
In America, religion is perhaps less powerful than it has been in certain
times and among certain peoples, but its inuence is more durable. It has
reduced itself to its own forces that no one can take away from it; it acts
only within a single circle, but it covers it entirely and predominates within
it without effort.
In Europe I hear voices that are raised on all sides; people deplore the
absence of beliefs and ask how to give religion something of its former
power.
It seems to me that we must rst try attentively to nd out what should
be, today, the natural state of men in matters of religion. Then, knowing
what we are able to hope and what we have to fear, we will see clearly the
goal toward which our efforts must tend.
Two great dangers menace the existence of religions: schisms and
indifference.
During centuries of fervor, men sometimes happen to abandon their
religion, but they escape its yoke only to submit to the yoke of another
religion. Faith changes objects; it does not die. The old religion then
excites fervent love or implacable hatred in all hearts; some leave it
with anger, others follow it with a new ardor: beliefs differ, irreligion is
unknown.
But it is not the same when a religious belief is silently undermined by
doctrines that I will call negative, because while asserting the falsity of one
religion they establish the truth of no other.
Then prodigious revolutions take place in the human spirit, without
man seeming to aid the revolutions with his passions and without sus-
pecting them, so to speak. You see men who allow, as if by forgetfulness,
the object of their most cherished hopes to escape. Carried along by an
imperceptible current against which they do not have the courage to strug-
gle, but to which they yield with regret, they abandon the faith that they
love to follow the doubt that leads them to despair.
During the centuries that we have just described, youabandonyour beliefs
by coldness rather than by hatred; you do not reject them, they leave you.
While ceasing to believe religion true, the unbeliever continues to judge it
useful. Considering religious beliefs from a human aspect, he recognizes
their dominion over mores, their inuence over laws. He understands how
they can make men live in peace and gently prepare men for death. So he
regrets faith after losing it, and deprived of a good of which he knows the
whole value, he is afraid to take it away from those who still possess it.
From his side, the one who continues to believe is not afraid to reveal
his faith to all eyes. In those who do not share his hopes, he sees unfortunate
men rather than adversaries; he knows that he cangaintheir esteemwithout
following their example; so he is at war with no one; and not considering
the society in which he lives as an arena in which religion must struggle
constantly against a thousand erce enemies, he loves his contemporaries
at the same time that he condemns their weaknesses and is distressed by
their errors.
Those who do not believe, hiding their unbelief, and those who do be-
lieve, showing their faith, create a public opinion in favor of religion; it is
loved, it is upheld, it is honored, and you must penetrate to the recesses of
souls to discover the wounds that it has received.
The mass of men, whom religious sentiment never abandons, then see
nothing that separates them from established beliefs. The instinct of an-
other life leads them without difculty to the foot of altars and delivers
their hearts to the precepts and consolations of faith.
Why does this picture not apply to us?
I notice among us men who have ceased to believe in Christianity with-
out adhering to any religion.
I see others who have halted at doubt, and already pretend to believe no
more.
Further along, I meet Christians who still believe and dare not say so.
Amid these lukewarm friends and ery adversaries, I nally discover a
small number of the faithful ready to defy all obstacles and to scorn all
dangers for their beliefs. The latter have acted contrary to human weakness
in order to rise above common opinion. Carried away by this very effort,
they no longer know precisely where they should stop. Since they have
seen that, in their country, the rst use that man made of independence
has been to attack religion, they fear their contemporaries and withdraw
with terror fromthe liberty that the former pursue. Since unbelief appears
to them as something new, they include in the same hatred everything
that is new.
w
So they are at war with their century and their country, and
in each of the opinions that are professed there they see a necessary enemy
of faith.
Such should not be today the natural state of man in matters of
religion.
An accidental and particular cause is found among us that prevents the
human spirit from following its inclination and pushes it beyond the limits
at which it should naturally stop.
I am profoundly persuaded that this particular and accidental cause is
the intimate union of politics and religion.
x
w. Herve de Tocqueville:
Here are two thoughts that do not seem correct to me. Why would people be carried
beyond truth because, to do good, they had the courage to defy prejudice? Then, you
will never nd faithful people foolish enough to believe that unbelief is something
new. This paragraph is to review. The author has not arrived at the true cause of the
estrangement of the clergy and of pious persons from free institutions. You must
seek it in the memory of the persecutions that religion suffered as soon as the word
liberty resounded in France, and in the fear that the persecutions are repeating. The
impression was so strong that it is not erased and that pious persons believe that the
aegis of an absolute power is necessary in order for priests to be out of danger and
for religion to be able to resist philosophical intolerance. The author can link this
thought well to earlier ones, for he speaks on page 15 of men without religion who
persecute those who believe with all the fervor of proselytism.
E
douard de Tocqueville: I agree with father. You must absolutely mentionthe mem-
ories of 93 as a powerful cause of the antipathy of the French clergy for liberal ideas
(YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 4648). The sentence Since they have seen . . . pursue was added
following the comments of the family.
x. As for me, I cannot believe that the evil is as great or as profound as is supposed.
Never will the religious instinct perish in man, and what can better satisfy it than the
religion of J[esus (ed.)]. C[hrist (ed.)].? Christianity is not defeated, it is only bowed
down. Formerly religion[v: Christianity] alloweditself tobe mingledwiththepowers
of the earth, and today I see it as though buried very much alive under their debris.
Unbelievers inEurope pursue Christians as political enemies, rather than
as religious adversaries; they hate faith as the opinion of a party muchmore
than as a mistaken belief; and in the priest they reject the representative of
God less than the friend of power.
In Europe, Christianity allowed itself to be intimately united with the
powers of the earth. Today these powers are falling and Christianity is as
though buried beneath their debris. It is a living thing that someone wanted
to bind to the dead: cut the ties that hold it and it will rise again.
I do not know what must be done to give Christianity in Europe
the energy of youth. God alone would be able to do so; but at least it
depends on men to leave to faith the use of all of the forces that it still
retains.
How the Enlightenment, Habits, and Practical
Experience of the Americans Contribute to the
Success of Democratic Institutions
What must be understood by the enlightenment of the American
people.The human mind has received a less profound
cultivation in the United States than in Europe.But no one
has remained in ignorance.Why.Rapidity with which
thought circulates in the half-empty states of the West.
How practical experience serves Americans even more
than literary knowledge.
In a thousand places in this work I have pointed out to readers what inu-
ence the enlightenment and habits of the Americans exercised on main-
So let us try to extricate it; it still has enough strength to rise again, but not to lift the
weight that overwhelms it. The Christian religion in Europe resembles an old man
whose shoulders are loaded down with a heavy burden; he walks painfully across the
obstacles in the road. He bends under the weight; his limbs are heavy, his breathing
is labored. He walks only with difculty and at each step you would say he was about
to die (YTC, CVh, 4. p. 67; a nearly identical fragment is found in YTC, CVh, 4,
pp. 3132).
taining their political institutions. So now, few new things remain for me
to say.
Until nowAmerica has had only a very small number of notable writers;
it does not have any great historians and does not have one poet. Its in-
habitants see literature strictly understood with a kind of disfavor; and a
third-rank city in Europe publishes more literary works each year than the
twenty-four states of the Union taken together.
y
The American mind withdraws from general ideas; it does not turn to-
ward theoretical discoveries. Politics itself andindustry cannot leadit there.
In the United States, new laws are made constantly; but great writers are
still not found to seek out the general principles of laws.
The Americans have experts on the law and legal commentators; they
lack writers on public affairs; and in politics, they give the world examples
rather than lessons.
[
*
]
It is the same for the mechanical arts.
In America, the inventions of Europe are applied with sagacity, and
after perfecting them, they are marvelously adapted to the needs of the
country. Men there are industrious, but they do not cultivate the science
of industry. You nd good workers and few inventors there. Fulton
[]
ped-
dled his genius for a long time among foreign peoples before being able
to devote it to his country. [So in America you nd none of those great
intellectual centers from which re and light burst forth at the same time
{as in Europe}. I do not knowif perhaps we should thank heaven. America
already carries an immense weight in the destinies of the world; and per-
y. See chapters XIII and XIV of the rst part of the third volume.
[*]. Say a word about Livingston. He is more of a moralist.
[]. He is the one who applied steam to navigation. He offered his secret to Bon-
aparte who, after anexamination, declaredthe thing absurdandimpractical. As weknow,
one of the weaknesses of Bonaparte {this extraordinary man} was to want to pass judg-
ment at rst sight on matters that were foreign to him. Despite his prodigious perspi-
cacity, too frequently he happened to be mistaken.
haps it only lacks great writers to overturn violently in a moment all the
old societies of Europe.]
z
So whoever wants to judge the state of enlightenment among the Anglo-
Americans opens himself to seeing the same subject from two different
views. If he pays attention only to the learned, he will be astonished by
their small number; and if he counts the ignorant, the American people
will seem to him the most enlightened on earth.
The entire population is placed between these two extremes; I have al-
ready said it elsewhere.
[In the United States, you nd fewer great landowners and innitely
more landowners than anywhere else; less wealth and more comfort. Minds
have been subjected to the same law. There scientic and literary genius is
as rare as ability is common, and if you do not nd great writers, everyone
knows how to write. What could be the state of a few minds seems to have
been divided equally among all.]
In New England, each citizen receives the elementary notions of human
knowledge; furthermore, he learns the doctrines and the proofs of his re-
ligion; he is taught the history of his country and the principal features of
the Constitution that governs it. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is
very rare to nd a man who only imperfectly knows all these things, and
one who is absolutely ignorant of them is in a way a phenomenon.
a
When I compare the Greek and Roman republics to these republics of
America, the manuscript libraries of the rst and their coarse populace, to
the thousand newspapers that crisscross the second and to the enlightened
people that inhabit the republics of America; when I then think of all the
efforts that are still made to judge the one with the aid of the others and
z. In the margin:
Knowledge of reading and writing (but less useful than you think).
Knowledge of laws.
Experience.
Practical habit of affairs.
Extensive and homogeneous civilization. Pioneer, an ax and newspapers.
a. To the side: Instruction of the Americans of NewEngland is less advancedthan
in our colleges but more complete than in our schools.
to foresee what will happen today by what happened two thousand years
ago, I am tempted to burn my books,
b
in order to apply only new ideas to
a social state so new.
You must not indiscriminately extend to the whole Union, moreover,
what I say about New England. The more you advance toward the West
or toward the South, the more the instruction of the people diminishes. In
the states neighboring the Gulf of Mexico, a certainnumber of individuals
are found, as among us, to whom the elements of human knowledge are
foreign; but in the United States you would seek in vain for a single district
that was plunged into ignorance. The reason for it is simple: the peoples
of Europe left the shadows and barbarism in order to advance toward civ-
ilization and enlightenment. Their progress was unequal; some ran along
the course, others in a way only walked; still others stopped and they are
still asleep along the road.
It was not the same in the United States.
The Anglo-Americans arrived fully civilized on the soil that their pos-
terity occupies; they did not have to learn, it was enough for them not to
forget. Now, it is the sons of these very Americans who, each year, carry
into the wilderness, with their dwelling-place, knowledge already acquired
and respect for learning. Education made them feel the usefulness of en-
lightenment and made them capable of transmitting this very enlighten-
ment to their descendents. So in the United States, society has no child-
hood; it is born in manhood.
The Americans make no use of the word peasant; they do not employ
the word, because they do not have the idea; the ignorance of the rst ages,
the simplicity of the elds, the rusticity of the village, have not been pre-
served among them, and they imagine neither the virtues, nor the vices,
nor the coarse habits, nor the innocent graces of a civilization being born.
At the extreme limits of the confederatedstates, at the connes of society
and wilderness, is a population of hardy adventurers who, in order to ee
the poverty ready to strike them under the paternal roof, have not been
b. Herve de Tocqueville: I do not like this idea. Why would you burn your books
because a thousand newspapers crisscross the territory of the Union? (YTC, CIIIb, 1,
p. 42).
afraid to plunge into the empty areas of America and seek a new country
there. Having barely arrived at the place that must serve him as a refuge,
the pioneer hastily cuts down a few trees and raises a cabin under the leafy
branches. Nothing offers a more miserable sight than these isolated dwell-
ings. The traveler who approaches them toward the evening notices from
afar the ame of the hearth shining through the walls; and at night, if the
wind comes up, he hears the roof of foliage move noisily amid the trees of
the forest. Who would not believe that this poor cottage serves as a refuge
for coarseness and ignorance? You must not, however, establish any cor-
relation between the pioneer and the place that serves him as a refuge. Ev-
erything is primitive and savage around him, but he is so to speak the result
of eighteen centuries of efforts and experience. He wears city clothing,
speaks the language of the city, knows the past, is curious about the future,
argues about the present; he is a very civilized man who, for a time, submits
to living in the woods and who plunges into the wilderness of the New
World with the Bible, an ax and some newspapers.
c
It is difcult to imagine with what incredible rapidity thought circulates
in the heart of these wilderness areas.
6
I do not believe that there is as great an intellectual movement in the
most enlightened and most populated districts of France.
7
c. Herve de Tocqueville: Could you not put: an ax, tea and newspapers? Tea, being
something of a luxury, gives the idea of civilization (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 43). See, in
appendix II, volume IV, pp. 131516, the description of the dwelling of the pioneer.
6. I traveled over a part of the frontiers of the United States in a type of open carriage
that was called a coach. We moved along briskly day and night over roads scarcely cleared
amid immense forests of greentrees; whenthe darkness became impenetrable, my driverlighted
branches of larch and we continued our route by their light. Here and there we encountered
a cabin amid the woods: it was the post ofce. At the door of this isolated dwelling, the mail-
man threw an enormous packet of letters, and we resumed our course at a gallop, leaving to
each inhabitant in the neighborhood the care of coming to nd his part of the treasure.
7. In 1832, each inhabitant of Michigan provided 1.22 fr. to the postal tax, and each
inhabitant of Florida 1.5 fr. (see National Calendar, 1833, p. 244 [249 (ed.)]). In the same
year, each inhabitant of the departement du Nord paid the State, for the same purpose, 1.4
fr. (see Compte general de ladministration des nances, 1833, p. 623). Now, at this time
Michigan still had only seven inhabitants per square league, and Florida, ve; instruction
was less widespread and activity not as great in these two districts as in most of the states of
You cannot doubt that in the United States the instruction of the people
serves powerfully to maintain the democratic republic. It will be so, I think,
everywhere that the instruction that enlightens the mind is not separated
from the education that regulates mores.
Nonetheless, I do not exaggerate this advantage, and I am still far from
believing, as a great number of people in Europe do, that it is sufcient to
teach men to read and write to make them citizens immediately. []
True enlightenment arises principally from experience, and if the Amer-
icans had not been accustomed little by little to governing themselves, the
book learning that they possess would not be a great help today in suc-
ceeding to do so.
I have lived a great deal with the people of the United States, and I
cannot say howmuchI have admiredtheir experience andtheir goodsense.
e
Do not lead the Americanto speakabout Europe; he will ordinarilyshow
a great presumption and a quite foolish pride. He will be content withthose
general and indenite ideas that, in all countries, are such a great help to
the ignorant. But interrogate him about his country, and you will see the
cloud that enveloped his mind suddenly dissipate; his language will become
clear, plain and precise, like his thought. He will teach you what his rights
are and what means he must use to exercise them; he will know by what
practices the political world operates. You will notice that the rules of ad-
ministration are known to him and that he has made himself familiar with
the mechanism of the laws. The inhabitant of the United States has not
the Union, while the departement du Nord, which includes 3,400 inhabitants per square
league, is one of the most enlightened and most industrial portions of France.
d
d. It is now a matter of comparing this to France, but for that it would be necessary
to have the budget and even statistical details that probably are not to be found [in the
National Calendar (ed.)]. Ask DAunay and N. [sic ] Roger of the French Academy
(YTC, CVh, 1, p. 16). It undoubtedly concerns Felix Le Peletier dAunay and Jean-
Francois Roger.
e. To the side: It is truly from this side that the Americans are [v: the United States
prove to be] superior to all the peoples of the world.
drawn this practical knowledge and these positive notions from books; his
formal education may have prepared him to receive them, but has not pro-
vided him with them.
It is by participating in legislation that the American learns to knowthe
laws; it is by governing that he nds out about the forms of government.
The great work of society is carried out each day before his eyes and, so to
speak, by his hands.
In the United States, the whole of the education of men is directed
toward politics; in Europe, its principal goal is to prepare for private life.
The activity of citizens in public affairs is too rare a fact to be anticipated
in advance.
As soon as you cast your eyes on the two societies, these differences are
revealed even in their external appearance.
In Europe, we often bring the ideas and habits of private existence into
public life, and as we happen to pass suddenly from the interior of the
family to the government of the State, you often see us discuss the great
interests of society in the same way we converse with our friends.
In contrast, the Americans almost always carry the habits of public life
into private life. Among them, the idea of the jury is foundinschool games,
and you nd parliamentary forms even in the order of a banquet.
That Laws Serve More to Maintain the Democratic
Republic in the United States than Physical Causes,
and Mores More than Laws
All the peoples of America have a democratic social state.
Democratic institutions only continue to exist however among the
Anglo-Americans.The Spanish of South America, as favored
by physical nature as the Anglo-Americans, are not able to
support the democratic republic.Mexico, which has adopted
the Constitution of the United States, is not able to do it.The
Anglo-Americans of the West support it with more difculty than
those of the East.Reasons for these differences.
I said that maintaining democratic institutions in the United States had to
be attributed to circumstances, laws and mores.
8
Most Europeans know only the rst of these three causes, and they give
it a preponderant importance that it does not have.
It is true that the Anglo-Americans brought equality of conditions to
the New World. Never were either commoners or nobles found among
them; prejudices of birth there have always been as unknown as prejudices
of profession. Since the social state is therefore democratic, democracy had
no difculty establishing its dominion.
But this fact is not particular to the United States; nearly all the colonies
of America were founded by men equal among themselves or who became
equal by inhabiting the colonies. There is not a single part of the New
World where Europeans were able to create an aristocracy.
Democratic institutions prosper only in the United States, however.
The American Union has no enemies to ght. It is alone in the middle
of the wilderness like an island in the heart of the Ocean.
But nature had isolated in the same way the Spanish of [{Mexico, those
of Peru}] South America [{the Portuguese of Brazil, the French of the An-
tilles, the Dutch of Guyana}], and this isolation did not prevent themfrom
maintaining armies. They made war on each other when foreigners were
lacking. Only the Anglo-American democracy, until now, has been able to
remain at peace.
The territory of the Union presents a limitless eld to human activity;
it offers an inexhaustible sustenance to industry and to work. So love of
wealth takes the place of ambition there, and well-being quells the fervor
of parties.
But in what portion of the world do you meet more fertile wildernesses,
larger rivers, more untouched and more inexhaustible riches than in South
America? Yet South America cannot support democracy. If, for peoples to
be happy, it was sufcient to have been placed in a corner of the universe
8. Here I recall to the reader the general sense inwhichI take the word mores; I understand
by this word the whole of the intellectual and moral dispositions that man brings to the state
of society.
and to be able to spreadat will over uninhabitedlands, the Spanishof South
America would not have to complain about their lot. And whenthey would
not enjoy the same happiness as the inhabitants of the United States, they
would at least make the peoples of Europe envious. There are, however, no
nations on the earth more miserable than those of South America.
Therefore, not only can physical causes not lead to analogous results
among the Americans of the Southandthose of the North, but theycannot
even produce among the rst something that is not inferior to what is seen
in Europe, where physical causes act in an opposite direction.
So physical causes do not inuence the destiny of nations as much as is
supposed.
f
I met men of New England ready to abandon a country where they
would have been able to nd ease and comfort, in order to go to seek their
fortune in the wilderness. Nearby, I saw the French population of Canada
squeeze itself into a space too small for it, when the same wilderness was
near; and while the emigrant of the United States acquired a great estate
at the cost of a few days of work, the Canadian paid as much for land as
if he still lived in France.
Thus nature, while delivering the uninhabited areas of the New World
to Europeans, offers them assets that they do not always know how to use.
I notice among other peoples of America the same conditions of pros-
perity as among the Anglo-Americans, without their laws and their mores;
and these peoples are miserable. So the laws and mores of the Anglo-
Americans form the special reason for their grandeur and the predominant
cause that I am seeking.
I amfar frompretending that there is anabsolute goodinAmericanlaws;
I do not believe that they are applicable to all democratic peoples; and,
among those laws, there are several that, even in the United States, seem
dangerous to me.
You cannot deny, however, that the legislation of the Americans, taken
f. In the margin: So the original equality of conditions and the nature of the coun-
try do not explain in a sufcient way what is happening in the United States. Because
elsewhere these same causes do not produce the same effects.
as a whole, is well adapted to the genius of the people that it must govern
and to the nature of the country.
g
So American laws are good, and a great part of the success that the gov-
ernment of democracy achieves in America must be attributed to them;
but I do not think that they are the principal cause. And if the laws appear
to me to have more inuence on the social happiness of the Americans than
the very nature of the country, from another perspective I see reasons to
believe that they exercise less inuence than mores.
The federal laws surely form the most important portion of the legis-
lation of the United States.
Mexico, which is as happily situated as the Anglo-American Union, ap-
propriated these same laws, and it is not able to get accustomed to the gov-
ernment of democracy.
So there is a reason independent of physical causes and laws that makes
democracy able to govern the United States.
h
But here is what proves it even more. Nearly all the men who inhabit
the territory of the Union are born of the same blood. They speak the same
language, pray to God in the same way, are subject to the same physical
causes, obey the same laws.
So what produces the differences that must be observed among them?
Why, in the [{North}] East of the Union, does republican government
appear strong and well-ordered, why does it proceed with maturity and
deliberation? What cause marks all its acts with a character of wisdom and
lasting existence?
Why, in contrast, do the powers of society in the West [{and in the
South}] seem to move haphazardly?
g. To the side: And in certain cases, it would be more correct to say that the Amer-
icans prosper despite their laws rather than thanks to them.
h. Mexico is not able to support the republic, however. The republic prospers only
within the Anglo-American Union. From so many similar causes, the Union a different
one. And this cause of prosperity which is special prevails over all the others together.
The people of the Union are not only the most religious and most enlightened in the
world, they are also the ones whose political education is the most advanced (YTC,
CVh, 4, p. 45).
Why, in the movement of affairs, does something disorderly, passionate,
you could almost say feverish, reign that does not herald a long future?
I am no longer comparing the Anglo-Americans to foreignpeoples; now
I am contrasting the Anglo-Americans to each other, and I am seeking why
they do not resemble each other. Here all arguments drawn fromthe nature
of the country and fromthe difference of laws are missing at the same time.
I must resort to some other cause; and where will I nd this cause, if not
in mores?
It is in the East [{North}] that the Anglo-Americans have contractedthe
longest use of the government of democracy, and that they have formed
habits and conceived ideas most favorable to maintaining it. [In the North]
Democracy there has little by little penetrated customs, opinions, forms;
you nd it in all the details of social life as in the laws. It is in the East
[{North}] that the book learning and the practical education of the people
have been most perfected and that religion has best intermingled with lib-
erty. What are all these habits, these opinions, these customs, these beliefs,
if not what I called mores?
In the West, in contrast, a part of these same advantages is still lacking.
Many Americans of the states of the West are born in the woods, and they
mix with the civilization of their fathers the ideas and customs of savage
life. Among them, passions are more violent, religious morality less pow-
erful, ideas less settled. Men there exercise no control over each other, for
they scarcely know each other.
j
So the nations of the West show, to a
certain extent, the inexperience and the unruly habits of emerging peo-
ples. Societies in the West are formed from old elements; but the assembly
is new.
k
j. In a slip of paper inserted in the manuscript:
Three centuries ago the English colonies were founded, but only sixty years ago na-
tional and centralized governments were established among them. Before this time
citizens [v: subjects], dispersed in a vast wilderness two thousand leagues from the
sovereign, lived in an almost complete independence. Which really explains why,
among the Americans, individuals always appear experienced and [often] the State,
inexperienced.
k. In the Norththe republic is a strong andwell-orderedgovernment, whichproceeds
So mores, particularly, make the Americans of the United States, alone
among all Americans, capable of supporting the dominion of democracy;
and mores also make the various Anglo-American democracies more or less
well-regulated and prosperous.
Therefore, in Europe, the inuence that the geographic position of the
country exercises on the continued existence of democratic institutions is
exaggerated. Too much importance is attributed to laws, too little tomores.
These three great causes undoubtedly serve to regulate and to direct Amer-
ican democracy; but if they had to be classied, I would say that physical
causes contribute less than laws, and laws innitely less than mores.
I am persuaded that the most fortunate situation and the best laws can-
not maintain a constitution in spite of mores, while the latter still turn to
good account the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws. The im-
portance of mores is a common truth to which study and experience con-
stantly lead. It seems to me that I nd it placed in my mind like a central
point; I see it at the end of all my ideas.
m
I have only one more word to say on this subject.
If, in the course of this work, I have not succeeded in making the reader
with maturity and deliberation, and which marks all its acts with a character of wis-
dom and lasting existence. In the West and in the South, the powers of society seem
in contrast to move haphazardly, and there you observe, in the movement of affairs,
something disorderly, passionate and you could almost say feverish that heralds nei-
ther strength nor continued existence [nor (ed.)] a long future (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 47).
m. Of the superiority of mores over laws./
After I have reected carefully about the principles that make governments act,
about those that sustain them or ruin them; when I have spent a good deal of time
carefully calculating what the inuence of laws is, their relative goodness and their
tendency, I always arrive at this point that, above and beyondall these considerations,
beyond all these laws, I nd a power superior to them. It is the spirit and the mores
of the people, their character. The best laws are not able to make a constitutionwork
in spite of the mores; mores turn to good account the worst laws. That is a common
truth, but one to which my studies bring me back constantly. It is placed in my mind
like a central point; I see it at the end of all my ideas.
Laws, however, work toward producing the spirit, the mores and the character of
the people. But in what proportion? There is the great problem that we cannot think
about too much (YTC, CVe, p. 52; you can nd the same fragment with a few dif-
ferences, in YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 4647).
feel the importance that I attributed to the practical experience of the
Americans, to their habits, to their opinions, in a word, to their mores, in
maintaining their laws, I have missed the principal goal that I set for myself
by writing it.
Would Laws and Mores Be Sufcient to
Maintain Democratic Institutions
Elsewhere than in America?
The Anglo-Americans, transported to Europe, would be obliged
to modify their laws.Democratic institutions must be
distinguished from American institutions.You can imagine
democratic laws better than or at least different from those that
American democracy has given itself.The example of America
proves only that we must not despair of regulating democracy
with the aid of laws and mores.
I said
n
that the success of democratic institutions in the United States was
due to the laws themselves and to mores more than to the nature of the
country.
But does it follow that these same causes alone transported elsewhere
have the same power, and if the country cannot take the place of laws and
mores, can laws and mores in turn take the place of the country?
Here you will understand without difculty that the elements of proof
are lacking. In the New World you meet peoples other than the Anglo-
Americans, and since these peoples are subject to the same physical causes
as the latter, I have been able to compare them to each other.
But outside of America there are no nations that, deprived of the same
physical advantages as the Anglo-Americans, have still adopted their laws
and their mores.
n. In the manuscript: I proved . . .
E
douard de Tocqueville (or Louis de Kergorlay?): I propose to put: I believe that I

proved. The peremptory tone must be avoided (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 27).
Therefore we do not have a point of comparison in this matter; we can
only hazard opinions.
It seems to me rst that the institutions of the United States must be
carefully distinguished from democratic institutions in general.
When I think of the state of Europe, its great peoples, its populous cities,
its formidable armies, the complexities of its politics, I cannot believe that
the Anglo-Americans themselves, transported with their ideas, their reli-
gion, their mores to our soil, could live there without considerably modi-
fying their laws.
But you can imagine a democratic people organized in a different man-
ner from the American people.
Is it impossible to conceive of a government based on the real will of
the majority, but in which the majority, doing violence to its natural in-
stincts of equality, in favor of order and the stability of the State, would
consent to vest a family or a man with all the attributions of the executive
power? Can you not imagine a democratic society in which national forces
would be more centralized than in the United States, in which the people
wouldexercise a less direct andless irresistible dominionover general affairs,
and in which, nonetheless, each citizen, vested with certain rights, would,
within his sphere, take part in the working of the government?
o
What I saw among the Anglo-Americans leads me to believe that
democratic institutions of this nature, introduced prudently into so-
Here royalty or the monarchy, and if possible the hereditary monarchy, must nd a
place. It is indispensable that the author establish that the monarchical State is not
incompatible with democratic institutions.
Alexis must pay the greatest attention to avoid a pitfall in which he would be de-
stroyed, that of allowing the belief that he has written a book in favor of the republic.
Beyond the fact that reason, enlightened by experience, rejects the possibility of es-
tablishing republics strictly speaking among the great European nations, the idea and
even the word republic are antipathetic to the very great majority of the French. So
if Alexis left the slightest doubt about his dispositions on this subject, he would be
blamed by the very greatest number and applauded only by a few scatterbrains and
a few muddleheads (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 15).
ciety,
p
which would mix little by little with the habits and wouldgradually
merge with the very opinions of the people, would be able to subsist else-
where than in America.
q
If the laws of the United States were the only democratic laws that could
be imagined or the most perfect that it is possible to nd, I understand that
you could conclude that the success of the laws of the United States proves
nothing for the success of democratic laws in general, in a country less
favored by nature.
But if the laws of the Americans seem to me defective in many points,
and it is easy for me to imagine others, the special nature of the country
does not prove to me that democratic institutions cannot succeed among
a people where, physical circumstances being less favorable, the laws would
be better.
If men showed themselves to be different in America from what they
are elsewhere; if their social state gave birth among them to habits and
opinions contrary to those that are born in Europe from this same social
state, what happens in the American democracies would teach nothing
about what should happen in other democracies.
If the Americans showed the same tendencies as all the other democratic
peoples, and their legislators resorted to the nature of the country and to
the favor of circumstances in order to keep these tendencies within just
p. In the margin: I can imagine a democratic nation in which, because political life
was more active and more threatened, the executive power was stronger and more active
than it has been until now in the New World.
q. E
douard de Tocqueville or Louis de Kergorlay:

Here you seem to formulate a desire, and that seems to me to move away from the
goal of your work, beyond other disadvantages that it can have in my view.
Your book can only aspire to a great and general inuence if you are very careful
not to make yourself into a party man. Now, if you show yourself or if some see you
as a republican, you will be considered as a party man.
Take care that this ending does not appear as a plea on behalf of the republic. I
tell you this from my soul and conscience, that ending has the appearance of being
so and will be regarded as such; now this is what you have always told me you wanted
to avoid.
To show, to demonstrate that free institutions can be established in a lasting way
only sheltered by morality and religious spirit is a superb thought. It is your whole
book. Try not to compromise it (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 2728).
limits, the prosperity of the United States, having to be attributedtopurely
physical causes, would prove nothing in favor of peoples who would like
to follow their example without having their natural advantages.
r
But neither the one nor the other of these suppositions is justied by
the facts.
I encountered in America passions analogous to those we see in Europe.
Some were due to the very nature of the human heart; others, to the dem-
ocratic state of society.
Thus I found in the United States the restlessness of heart that is natural
to man when, all conditions being more or less equal, each one sees the
same chances torise. There I encounteredthe democratic sentiment of envy
expressed in a thousand different ways. I observed that the people often
showed, in the conduct of affairs, a great blend of presumption and ig-
norance, and I concluded that in America, as among us, men were subject
to the same imperfections and exposed to the same miseries.
But when I came to examine attentively the state of society, I discovered
without difculty that the Americans had made great and happy efforts to
combat these weaknesses of the human heart and to correct these natural
defects of democracy.
Their various municipal laws appeared to me as so many barriers that
held within a narrow sphere the restless ambition of citizens, and turned
to the prot of the town the same democratic passions that could overturn
the State. It seemedto me that Americanlegislators hadmanagedtooppose,
not without success, the idea of rights to the sentiments of envy; the im-
mobility of religious morality, to the continual movements of the political
world; the experience of the people, to their theoretical ignorance; andtheir
habit of affairs, to the hotheadedness of their desires.
So the Americans did not resort to the nature of the country to combat
the dangers that arise from their constitution [v: social state] and fromtheir
r. E
douard de Tocqueville or Louis de Kergorlay: You give, it seems to me, in this

paragraph and in a few others of the preceding chapter much too great an inuence to
the physical nature of a country on the mores and the tendencies of the inhabitants of
this country. This inuence is not non-existent, but it is far, I believe, from being what
you suppose (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 28).
political laws. To the evils that they share with all democratic peoples, they
applied remedies that until nowonly they were aware of; and althoughthey
were the rst to try them out, they succeeded.
The mores and laws of the Americans are not the only ones that can be
suitable for democratic peoples; but the Americans have shown that we
must not despair of regulating democracy with the help of laws and mores.
If other peoples, borrowing from America this general and fruitful idea,
and without wishing to imitate the inhabitants of America inthe particular
application that they have made of this idea, attemptedto adapt themselves
to the social state that Providence imposes on men today, and thus sought
to escape the despotism or the anarchy that threatens them, what reasons
do we have to believe that they must fail in their efforts?
s
The organizationandthe establishment of democracyamongChristians
is the great political problem of our time. The Americans undoubtedly do
not solve this problem, but they provide useful lessons to those who want
to solve it.
s. In the manuscript:
If other democratic nations less fortunately situated than the American people, but
instructed by experience, succeeded in making use of its discoveries while rejecting
its errors, what reason do we have to believe that they must fail in their efforts? So if
the example of the United States does not prove in a sufcient way that all countries
can adapt themselves to democratic institutions, you can infer even less from it that
democratic institutions suit only the United States.
Importance of What Precedes
in Relation to Europe
t
You easily discover why I have engaged in the research that precedes.
u
The
question that I have raised interests not only the United States, but the
entire world; not one nation, but all men.
If peoples whose social state is democratic could remain free only when
they lived in the wilderness, we would have to despair of the future fate of
the human species; for men are marching rapidly toward democracy, and
wildernesses are lling.
If it were true that laws and mores were insufcient for maintaining
democratic institutions, what other refuge would remain for nations, if not
the despotism of one man?
v
I know that today there are many honest men hardly frightened by this
future, who, fatigued by liberty, would love nally to rest far from its
storms.
w
t. Herve de Tocqueville:
I begin my remarks with a general observation which is suggested to me by the very
title of this chapter. The author speaks about all of Europe; but he draws his argu-
ments only from the current social state of France, a social state which that of several
other great nations of Europe will not resemble for many years to come. All his de-
scriptions portray what is happening in France and not elsewhere. All his predictions
relate to France; but he is addressing himself to the whole of Europe. Isnt it to be
feared that a strict and exact reader might make this remark with a sort of blame?
(YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 36).
u. When I searched for the causes that serve most powerfully tomaintaindemocratic
institutions, I did not abandon myself to a vain curiosity. While looking at America, I
still saw Europe; and while thinking about American liberty, I thought of that of all
men (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 68).
v. In the manuscript: if not {monarchy} {absolute power} slavery?
E
douard de Tocqueville (?): You must be careful not to use these expressions un-
stintingly: slavery, servitude, which perhaps smack a bit of the orator, as if there were not
a thousand degrees between absolute liberty and complete enslavement! (YTC, CIIIb,
1, pp. 2930).
w. In the margin:
Today.
Liberty with its storms.
But the latter know very badly the port toward which they are heading.
Preoccupied by their memories, they judge absolute power by what it was
formerly, and not by what it could be today. [There are differences even in
despotism, as in liberty.]
If absolute power came to be established once again among the demo-
cratic peoples of Europe, I do not doubt that it would take a new formand
would show itself with features unknown to our fathers.
There was a time in Europe when the law, as well as the consent of the
people, had vested kings with a power almost without limits. But they
hardly ever happened to use it.
[They had the right rather than the practice of omnipotence.]
I will not talk about the prerogatives of the nobility, about the authority
of the sovereign courts, about the right of corporations, about provincial
privileges, which, while softening the blows of authority, maintained a
spirit of resistance in the nation.
These political institutions, though often contrary to the liberty of in-
dividuals, nonetheless served to foster the love of liberty in souls, and in
this respect their utility is easily conceived. Apart from these institutions,
opinions and mores raised less known, but no less powerful barriers around
royal power.
Religion, love of subjects, the goodness of the prince, honor, family
spirit, provincial prejudices, custom and public opinion limited the power
of kings and enclosed their authority within an invisible circle.
Despotism with its rigors.
Nothing intermediate between.
Something like the Roman empire.
So there is only one path to salvation, which is to seek to regulate liberty. To mor-
alize democracy.
As for me, I believe that the enterprise is possible.
I am not saying that we must do as America; I am not saying that the Americans
have done the best.
(Is there only one type of republic, only one type of royalty?) in the same way
there is more than one way to make democracy rule.
Then the constitution of peoples was despotic and their mores, free.
Princes had the right, but neither the faculty nor the desire todoeverything.
Of the barriers that formerly stopped tyranny, what remains to us today?
Since religion has lost its dominion over souls, the most visible limit that
divided good and bad is overturned; all seems doubtful and uncertain in
the moral realm; kings and people move there haphazardly, and no one can
say where the natural limits of despotism and the bounds of license are.
Long revolutions have forever destroyed the respect that surrounded
heads of State. Released from the weight of public esteem, princes can
henceforth abandon themselves without fear to being drunk with power.
x
When kings see, coming before them, the heart of peoples, they are le-
nient because they feel strong; and they treat the love of their subjects care-
fully, because the love of subjects is the support of the throne. Then, be-
tween the prince and the people, an exchange of sentiments is established
whose gentleness recalls within society the interior of the family. Subjects,
while murmuring against the sovereign, are still distressed to displease him,
and the sovereign strikes his subjects with a light hand, as a father chastises
his children.
But once the prestige of royalty has vanished amid the tumult of rev-
olutions; when kings, following each other upon the throne, have one by
one exposed to the view of the people the weakness of right and the harsh-
x. Herve de Tocqueville:
Released from the weight of public esteem, etc. First, I observe that this paragraph and
the two following are badly placed; they are inserted in a series of ideas that they
interrupt. As for the sentence of which I have quoted the rst words, it is turned in
a picturesque and energetic way, but it lacks clarity; the author wants to say that kings
will more easily do ill because they will no longer have to fear the loss of public esteem.
There is the sense; but one searches for it. Is the idea, moreover, very correct? Al-
though the prestige of royalty is partially destroyed, a good king who is an honest
man will always garner public esteem and this esteem will be a barrier to his passions
(YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 3738).
ness of fact,
y
no one any longer sees in the sovereign the father of the State,
and each one sees a master there. If he is weak, he is scorned; he is hated
if he is strong. He is himself full of rage and fear; he sees himself as a
stranger in his country and treats his subjects as the vanquished.
When provinces and cities were so many different nations in the middle
of the common native land, each one of them had a particular spirit that
opposed the general spirit of servitude; but today when, after losing their
franchises, their customs, their prejudices and even their memories and
their names, all parts of the same empire have become accustomedtoobey-
ing the same laws, it is no more difcult to oppress all of them together
than to oppress one separately from the rest.
While the nobility enjoyed its power, and still long after it had lost it,
aristocratic honor gave an extraordinary strength to individual resistance.
Then you saw men who, despite their impotence, still maintaineda high
idea of their individual value, and dared to resist in isolation the exertion
of public power. [<For honor is a religion; it cannot be conquered by
force.>]
z
But today, when all classes are merging together, when the individual
disappears more and more in the crowd and is easily lost amid the common
obscurity; today, when nothing any longer sustains man above himself, be-
y. Herve de Tocqueville:
You must put the weakness of right and the harshness of fact. It is essential that Alexis
be very careful not to strike the fallen Restoration and the deposed and unhappy
sovereigns. It would perhaps even be appropriate enough that he not strike Louis-
Philippe too hard. Alexis is beginning his career; it would be disagreeable for him to
have all the government newspapers against him. This is undoubtedly a very secon-
dary consideration, but it will be good to consider it (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 3839).
z. E

All that is good in thought and style. Nothing easier than to keep it while indicating
precisely how far we are by our mores from the mores of the Americans. A truth that
is good to put in relief, because if we succeed in changing our mores, we will perhaps
be worthy of the pure democratic state that is perhaps in fact the best. But how far
we are fromthat! And for howlong a time still would a similar attempt be fatal! (YTC,
CIIIb, 1, p. 30).
cause monarchical honor has nearly lost its dominion without being re-
placed by virtue,
a
who can say where the exigencies of [absolute] power and
the indulgences of weakness would stop?
As long as family spirit lasted, the man who struggled against tyranny
was never alone; he found around himclients, hereditary friends, close rela-
tives. And if this support were missing, he still felt sustainedby his ancestors
and roused by his descendants. But when patrimonies are dividing, and
when in so few years races are merging, where to locate family spirit?
[Within a restless crowd a man surrounded by soldiers will come to
take a place. No one will see in him the father of the State. Each one will
a. Of virtue in republics./
The Americans are not a virtuous people and yet they are free. This does not ab-
solutely prove that virtue, as Montesquieu thought, is not essential to the existence
of republics. The idea of Montesquieu must not be taken in a narrow sense. What
this g[reat (ed.)]. m[an (ed.)]. meant is that republics could subsist only by the action
of society over itself. What he means by virtue is the moral power that eachindividual
exercises over himself and that prevents him from violating the right of others.
When this triumph of man over temptation is the result of the weakness of the
temptation or of a calculation of personal interest, it does not constitute virtue in
the eyes of the moralist; but it is included in the idea of Montesquieu who spoke of
the effect much more than of the cause. In America it is not virtue that is great, it is
temptation that is small, which comes to the same thing. It is not disinterestedness
that is great, it is interest that is well understood, which again comes back to almost
the same thing. So Montesquieu was right although he spoke about ancient virtue,
and what he says of the Greeks and Romans is still applicable to the Americans (YTC,
CVe, pp. 6667).
During his journey, however, Tocqueville had noted:
The principle of the ancient republics was the sacrice of particular interest to the
general good. In this sense, you can say that they were virtuous. The principle of this
one appears to me to be to make particular interest part of the general interest. A
kind of rened and intelligent egoism seems the pivot on which the whole machine
turns. These people do not trouble themselves to nd out if public virtue is good,
but they claim to prove that it is useful. If this last point is true, as I think it is in
part, this society can pass for enlightened, but not virtuous. But to what degree can
the two principles of individual good and general good in fact be merged? To what
point will a conscience that you could call a conscience of reection and calculation
be able to control the political passions that have not yet arisen, but which will not
fail to arise? That is what the future alone will show us. Sing-Sing, 29 May, 1831 (al-
phabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 23435).
see a master. He will no longer be respected; he will be feared; and love will
be replaced by fear.
He himself will be agitated and restless. He will feel that he rules only
by force and not by right, by fear and not by love. His subjects will be
strangers in his eyes; he himself will be a stranger in theirs.]
What strength remains to customs among a people who have changed
entirely and who change constantly, where all the acts of tyranny already
have a precedent, where all crimes can rest on an example, where you can
nd nothing so old that you are afraid to destroy it, nor anything so new
that you cannot dare to do it?
What resistance is offered by mores that have already given way so many
times?
What can public opinion itself do, when not twenty
b
persons are gath-
ered together by a common bond; whenthere is neither a man, nor a family,
nor a body, nor a class, nor a free association that can represent and get this
opinion to act?
When each citizen equally impotent, equally poor, equally isolated can
oppose only his individual weakness to the organized strength of the
government?
In order to imagine something analogous to what would then happen
among us,
c
you must resort not to our historical annals. You must perhaps
search the memorials of antiquity
d
and refer to those horrible centuries of
Roman tyranny, when mores were corrupt, memories obliterated, habits
destroyed, [religions shaken], opinions wavering; liberty, chased from the
laws, no longer knew where to take refuge in order to nd a shelter. Then
nothing protected citizens any longer, and citizens no longer protected
b. Allusion to the French law of association that demanded prior permission for all
meetings of more than twenty persons.
c. In the manuscript: . . . among the nations of Europe.
d. E
douard de Tocqueville (?): I contest this idea. Antiquity is so far away, so dif-
ferent from our current social state, that you cannot, I believe, draw from it any point
of comparison to what exists today. And I think that amid the general divergence of
opinions, the only incontestable point is that what is happening in our time is without
precedents (YTC, CIIIb, pp. 3031).
themselves; you saw men mock human nature and princes exhaust the
mercy of heaven rather than the patience of their subjects.
e
Those who think to rediscover the monarchy of Henry IVor Louis XIV
seem very blind to me. As for me, when I consider the state which several
European nations have already reached and toward which all the others are
tending, I feel myself led to believe that among them there will soon no
longer be a place except for democratic liberty
f
or for the tyranny of the
Caesars.
g
Doesnt this merit reection? If men must in fact reach the point where
they must all be made free or all slaves, all equal in rights or all deprived of
rights; if those who governsocieties were reducedto the alternative of grad-
ually raising the crowd up to their level or allowing all citizens to fall below
e. Characteristics of Roman society./
No more {love of country} patriotism.
No more fear of God.
Individual egoism (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 57). See note a for p. 18.
f. If peoples saw a stopping point between absolute power and democratic govern-
ment, they would do well to settle there. But this point does not exist, and they must
keep moving (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 5354).
The two paragraphs of these two pages are very beautiful in style, written with great
force, but the colors are too dark. The horrible state of Rome under the Caesars is
not to be feared for many years, neither for France nor for Europe. For that to happen
civilization would have to regress and the Christian religion would have to be
destroyed.
Alexis must be careful that he is not accusedof having presenteda dismal phantasm
in order to win acceptance for his democratic ideas. The expression of an orator who
wants to move his listeners powerfully can be energetic beyond bounds. That of a
writer must always be wise and measured. In all, I would like Alexis to launch out
more into the future and apply these last portraits less to the present state.
What Alexis says is true in this sense, that the sovereign of France, like that of
Rome, combined in his person a plenitude of powers and authority. He abusedthem
undoubtedly, but not in the same way as the Caesars, nor with the same bloody and
ignoble violence. The author could perhaps revise in this sense (YTC, CIIIb, 1,
pp. 3940).
Cf. note e for p. 1249 of the fourth volume.
the level of humanity, wouldnt this be enough to overcome many doubts,
reassure many consciences, and prepare each person to make great sacrices
easily?
Shouldnt the gradual development of democratic institutions and
mores thenbe considered, not as the best, but as the sole means that remains
for us to be free; and without loving the government of democracy,
wouldnt we be disposed to adopt it as the most applicable and most decent
remedy that may be opposed to the present ills of society?
h
It is difcult to make the people participate ingovernment; it is still more
difcult to provide them with the experience and give them the sentiments
that they lack to govern well.
j
The will of democracy is changeable; its agents, crude; its laws, imper-
fect; I grant it. But if it were true that soon no intermediary must exist
between the dominion of democracy and the yoke of one man, shouldnt
we tend toward the one rather than subject ourselves voluntarily to the
other? And if it were necessary nally to arrive at a complete equality,
wouldnt it be better to allow ourselves to be leveled by liberty than by a
despot?
Those who, after reading this book, would judge that by writing it I
wanted to propose the Anglo-American laws and mores for the imitation
of all peoples who have a democratic social state would have made a great
error; they would be attached to the form, abandoning the very substance
of my thought.
k
My goal has been to show, by the example of America,
h. If the establishment of liberty [v: democracy] was the sole means available to
preserve human independence, shouldnt it be followed with order even by those who
do not judge it the most desirable? (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 9).
j. I would like the upper classes and the middle classes of all of Europe to be as
persuaded as I am myself that henceforth it is no longer a matter of knowing if the
people will come to share power, but in what way they will use their power. That alone
is where the great problem of the future is located (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 32).
k. Importance of this fact for Europe.
Irresistible march of democracy.
To regulate it, to instruct it, great problem of the present.
Misfortunes that would result for the human species fromnot doing so, intolerable
despotism, without safeguard. . . . What is happening in America does not showthat
it can be done, although it does not prove that it must be done in the same way.
that laws and above all mores could allow a democratic people to remain
free. I am, moreover, very far from believing that we must follow the ex-
ample that American democracy has given and imitate the means that it
used to attain the goal of its efforts;
m
for I amnot unaware of the inuence
exercised by the nature of the country and antecedent facts on political
constitutions, and I would regard it as a great misfortune for humankind
if liberty, in all places, had to occur with the same features.
n
But I think that if we do not manage little by little to introduce and
nally to establish democratic institutions among us, and if we abandon
giving all citizens the ideas and sentiments that rst prepare themfor liberty
and then allow them the practice of those ideas and sentiments, there will
be independence for no one, neither for the bourgeois, nor for the noble,
It is the thought, always present, of this future, irresistible that (illegible word) was
always present to the author of this book.
I proved well that the physical situation of the Americans without their laws and
their mores would not sufce, but I did not prove that their laws and their mores are
sufcient without their physical situation (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 110).
m. What I wanted to say . . . that mores and laws had more power than the country.
If that is true, why would we not hope to succeed? Why would we despair of making
something stable and lasting?
I am not saying that we must do as the Americans, but we can arrive at the same
result by another path, and their example can provide useful light (YTC, CVh, 4, p. 11).
n. The paragraph is written this way in the manuscript:
The institutions of the United States are not the only ones that must assure the liberty
of men. I am certainly far from believing so. I will admit without difculty that a
nation can remain free without having precisely the same habits and the same ideas
as the American people. While retracing the laws and portraying the mores of the
American democracy, I have not claimed that all democratic peoples can imitate
the rst and adopt the second, for I am not unaware of the inuence exercised by
the nature of the country on its political constitution and I would regard it as a great
misfortune for humankind if liberty could only occur under a single form. So I am
far from believing that in everything we must imitate the government that American
democracy has given itself.
nor for the poor, nor for the rich, but an equal tyranny for all; and I foresee
that if we do not succeed over time in establishing among us the peaceful
dominion of the greatest number, we will arrive sooner or later at the un-
limited power of one man.
o
o. The question of knowing the name of the one who reigns, even the questions of
royalty or republic, capital questions inordinary times, have only a secondaryinterest,
however, in the extraordinary century in which we live, unless they are attached to
another still more vast. The great, the capital interest of the centuryis the organization
and education of democracy.
[In the margin: We must not forget, today it is very much more a matter of the
very existence of society than of one form of government rather than another, but
it is of civilization as much as of laws [v: to knowif we will be free or slave], of human
dignity as much as of the prosperity of some, of the fate of three or four hundred
million men and not of the destiny of a nation. It is muchmore about the very history
of society . . . ]
But that is what we scarcely consider. Placed in the middle of a rapid river, we
obstinately x our eyes on some debris that we still see on the bank, while the torrent
carries us away and pushes us backward toward the abyss.
I spoke above about men who were present at the ruin of the Roman empire. Let
us fear that the same fate (illegible word) us. This time the barbarians will come not
out of the frozen North; they are rising from the heart of our elds and from the
very midst of our cities (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 31).
515
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 0
Some Considerations on the Present State and
Probable Future of the Three Races That
Inhabit the Territory of the United States
a
The principal task that I had set for myself has now been fullled; I have
succeeded, at least as much as I could, in showing what the laws of the
American democracy were; I have made its mores known. I couldstophere,
but the reader would perhaps nd that I have not satised his expectation.
You encounter in America something more than an immense and com-
plete democracy; the peoples who inhabit the NewWorld can be seen from
more than one point of view.
In the course of this work, my subject often led me to speak about In-
a. Added at the last moment, this chapter could not be the object of the critical read-
ings by the family, Kergorlay, or Beaumont. It is not easy to date its composition in a
precise way, but many indications lead to the idea that it was written during the spring
or summer of 1834. On the 15th of August of that year, his manuscript under his arm,
Tocqueville arrived at the chateau de Gallarande, in the Sarthe, invited by Madame Eu-
genie de Sarce, sister of Gustave de Beaumont. He remained with the Beaumonts until
the middle of September. In July, Tocqueville had written to Beaumont to conde in
him that he did not believe that Gosselin had read the manuscript and to ask his help
on the titles of chapters, which indicates that the manuscript sent to Gosselin did not
then constitute the denitive text.
In this chapter, the similarity to the ideas of Beaumont on the Indians and Blacks is
clear. It consists not only of the consideration of identical questions; it even touches on
sources and citations. Did Beaumont persuade Tocqueville to treat a question that, in
the beginning, belonged to Marie? Does Tocquevilles decision have something to do
with the racial problems that broke out on the East coast of the United States during
the summer of 1834? Did Tocqueville review and correct this chapter while with the
Beaumont family at the end of the summer? The manuscript of the chapter does not
present great differences from the published version and the number of drafts, appre-
ciably less than that for other chapters, attests to a rapid composition.
the three races of the uni ted s tates 516
dians and Negroes, but I never had the time to stop to show what position
these two races occupy in the midst of the democratic people that I was
busy portraying; I said according to what spirit, with the aid of what laws,
the Anglo-American confederation had been formed; I could only indicate
in passing, and in a very incomplete way, the dangers that menace this con-
federation, and it was impossible for me to explainindetail what its chances
of enduring were, apart from laws and mores. While speaking about the
united republics, I hazarded no conjecture about the permanence of re-
publican forms in the New World, and although alluding frequently to the
commercial activity that reigns in the Union, I was not able to deal with
the future of the Americans as a commercial people.
These topics touch on my subject, but do not enter into it; they are
American without being democratic, and above all I wanted to portray de-
mocracy. So I had to put them aside at rst; but I must return to them as
I nish.
b
The territory occupied today, or claimed by the American Union, ex-
tends from the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacic Ocean. So in the
east or in the west, its limits are those of the continent itself; the territory
advances in the south to the edge of the Tropics and then goes back up to
the middle of the frozen areas of the North.
The men spread throughout this space do not form, as in Europe, so
many offshoots of the same family. You discover among them, from the
outset, three naturally distinct and, I could almost say, enemy races. Edu-
cation, laws, origins and eventhe external formof their features, haveraised
an almost insurmountable barrier between them; fortune gathered them
together on the same soil, but it mixed them together without being able
to blend them, and each one pursues its destiny apart.
Among such diverse men, the rst who attracts attention, the rst in
enlightenment, in power, in happiness, is the white man, the European,
man par excellence;
c
below him appear the Negro and the Indian.
b. In a draft the paragraph continues in this way: I amstill going to talk about Amer-
ica, but no more about democracy (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 33).
c. In another version: {To him belongs the most beautiful portion of the future.
Why this unequal sharing of the good things of this world? Who can say?}
These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor facial features, nor
language, nor mores in common; their misfortunes alone are similar. Both
occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both
suffer the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can
blame the same authors for them.
Wouldnt you say, seeing what is happening in the world, that the Eu-
ropean is to the men of other races what man himself is to the animals?
He makes them serve his purposes, and when he cannot make them bend,
he destroys them.
d
Oppressiondeprivedthe descendants of the Africans at a stroke of nearly
all the privileges of humanity. The Negro of the United States has lost even
the memory of his country; he no longer hears the language spoken by his
fathers; he has renounced their religion and forgotten their mores. While
thus ceasing to belong to Africa, however, he has acquired no right to the
good things of Europe; but he has stopped between the two societies; he
has remained isolated between the two peoples; sold by the one and re-
pudiated by the other; nding in the whole world only the home of his
master to offer him the incomplete picture of a native land.
The Negro has no family; he cannot see in a woman anything other than
the temporary companion of his pleasures and, at birth, his sons are his
equals.
Shall I call it a benet of God or a nal curse of His anger, this dispo-
sition of the soul that makes man insensible to extreme miseries and often
even gives him a kind of depraved taste for the cause of his misfortunes?
Plunged into this abyss of evils, the Negro scarcely feels his misfortune;
violence had placed him in slavery; the practice of servitude has given him
the thoughts and ambition of a slave; he admires his tyrants evenmore than
he hates them, and nds his joy and his pride in servile imitation of those
who oppress him.
His intelligence has fallen to the level of his soul.
The Negro enters into servitude and into life at the same time. What
d. To the side of a rst version: Why of these three races, is one born to perish,
the other to rule and the last to serve?
am I saying? Often he is purchased right from the womb of his mother,
and so to speak he starts to be a slave before being born.
Without need as without pleasure, useless to himself, he understands,
by the rst notions that he receives of existence, that he is the property of
another, whose interest is to watch over his days; he sees that the care for
his own fate has not devolved upon him. The very use of thought seems
to him a useless gift fromProvidence, and he peacefully enjoys all the privi-
leges of his servility.
If he becomes free, independence oftenthenseems to himtobe a heavier
chain than slavery itself; for in the course of his existence, he has learned
to submit to everything, except to reason; and when reason becomes his
sole guide, he cannot recognize its voice. A thousand new needs besiege
him, and he lacks the knowledge and the energy necessary to resist them.
Needs are masters that must be fought, and he has only learned to submit
and to obey. So he has reached this depth of misery in which servitude
brutalizes him and liberty destroys him.
Oppression has exercised no less inuence over the Indian races, but its
effects are different.
[Europeans have introduced some newneeds andsome unknownvices
among the savages of North America; but they have not been able entirely
to modify the character of these savage bands. Europeans have been able
to make their tribes disappear, to invade [v: to take the land away from
them] their native land, but they have never submitted to the Europeans.
Some have evaded servitude by ight, others by death.]
Before the arrival of whites in the New World, the men who inhabited
North America lived tranquilly in the woods. Given over to the ordinary
vicissitudes of savage life, they exhibited the vices and virtues of uncivilized
peoples.
[
*
]
Europeans, after scattering the Indian tribes far into the wilder-
ness, condemned themto a wandering and restless life, full of inexpressible
miseries.
[*]. See on the history, the mores of the natives of America before the arrival of the
Europeans and on the philosophy of their languages the very curious research of R.
Heckewelder, Duponceau . . . , contained in the rst volume of the transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1819. Say what [two illegible words] Coo-
per drew from him.
Savage nations are governed only by opinions and mores.
By weakening the sentiment of native land among the Indians of North
America, by scattering their families, by obscuring their traditions, by in-
terrupting the chain of memory, by changing all their habits, and by in-
creasing their needs inordinately, European tyranny has made them more
disorderly and less civilized than they already were. The moral condition
and physical state of these peoples did not cease to deteriorate at the same
time, and they became more barbaric as they became more unhappy. None-
theless, Europeans have not been able entirely to modify the character of
the Indians, and with the power to destroy them, they have never had that
of civilizing and subjugating them.
The Negro is placed at the furthest limits of servitude; the Indian, at the
extreme limits of liberty. The effects of slavery on the rst are scarcely more
harmful than the effects of independence on the second.
The Negro has lost even ownership of his person, and he cannot dispose
of his own existence without committing a kind of larceny.
The savage is left to himself as soon as he can act. He has hardly known
the authority of family; he has never bent his will to that of his fellows; no
one has taught him to distinguish a voluntary obedience from a shameful
subjection, and he is unaware of even the name of law. For him, to be free
is to escape nearly all the bonds of society. He delights in this barbarous
independence, and he would prefer to perish rather than to sacrice the
smallest part of it. Civilization has little hold over such a man.
The Negro makes a thousand hapless efforts in order to enter into a
society that pushes himaway; he bows to the tastes of his oppressors, adopts
their opinions, and aspires, by imitating them, to be mingled with them.
He has been told since birth that his race is naturally inferior to that of the
whites and he is not far from believing it; so he is ashamed of himself. In
each one of his features he nds a mark of slavery and, if he could, he
would joyfully consent to repudiate himself completely.
The Indian, in contrast, has an imagination entirely lled withthe alleged
nobility of his origin. He lives and dies amid these dreams of his pride.
e
Far
e. In the margin: He perishes by the exaggeration of the sentiments that the rst
one lacks.
from wanting to bend his mores to ours, he is attached to barbarism as a
distinctive sign of his race, and he rejects civilization perhaps still less out
of hatred for it than out of fear of resembling the Europeans.
1
To the perfection of our arts, he wants to oppose only the resources of
the wilderness; to our tactics, only his undisciplined courage; to the depth
of our plans, only the spontaneous instincts of his savage nature. He suc-
cumbs in this unequal struggle.
g
The Negro would like to mingle with the European, and he cannot do
so. The Indiancould, to a certainpoint, succeedindoing so, but he disdains
to try. The servility of the one delivers him to slavery, and the pride of the
other, to death.
I remember that traveling through the forests that still cover the state of
1. The native of North America keeps his opinions and even the smallest detail of his habits
with an inexibility that is without example in history. During the more than two hundred
years that the wandering tribes of North America have had daily connections with the white
race, they have borrowed so to speak neither an idea nor a custom. The men of Europe have,
however, exercised a very great inuence over the savages. They have made the Indian char-
acter more disordered, but they have not made it more European. Finding myself in the
summer of 1831 beyond Lake Michigan, in the place named Green-Bay, which serves as the
extreme frontier of the United States with the Indians of the Northwest, I met an American
ofcer, Major H., who, one day, after talking to me a great deal about the inexibility of the
Indian character, told me about the following event:
I once knew, he says to me, a young Indian who had been raised in a college in New
England. He had been very successful there, and had taken the full external appearance
of a civilized man. When war broke out between us and the English in 1810,
f
I saw this
young man again; he was then serving in our army, at the head of some warriors of his
tribe. The Americans had allowed Indians in their ranks only on the condition that they
abstained from the horrible custom of scalping the defeated. The evening of the battle of
***, C. . . came to sit down close to the re of our bivouac; I asked himwhat hadhappened
to him during the day; he told me, and gradually growing excited with the memory of his
exploits, he ended by half-opening his jacket while saying:Dont betray me, but see! In
fact I saw, added Major H., between his body and his shirt, the scalp of an Englishman
still dripping with blood.
f. It certainly concerns the War of 1812. The person Tocqueville was speaking to was
Major Lamard (non-alphabetic notebook 1, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 75
78).
g. To the side: The Negro by being a slave loses the taste for and the possibility of
being free; the Indian by being free becomes incapable of becoming civilized. The one
cannot learn to be free; the other, to put limits on his liberty.
Alabama, I arrived one day next to the cabin of a pioneer. I did not want
to enter the dwelling of the American, but I went to rest for a few mo-
ments at the edge of a spring not far from there in the woods. While I
was in this place, an Indian woman came (we then were near the territory
occupied by the Creek nation); she held the hand of a small girl ve or
six years old, belonging to the white race, whom I supposed to be the
daughter of the pioneer. A Negro woman followed them. A kind of bar-
baric luxury distinguished the costume of the Indian woman: metal rings
were suspended from her nostrils and ears; her hair, mixed with glass
beads, fell freely over her shoulders, and I saw that she wasnt married, for
she still wore the shell necklace that virgins customarily put down on the
nuptial bed. The Negro woman was dressed in European clothes almost
in tatters.
All three came tosit downbeside the spring, andthe youngsavage, taking
the child in her arms, lavished on her caresses that you could have believed
were dictated by a mothers heart; on her side, the Negro woman sought
by a thousand innocent tricks to attract the attention of the small Creole.
The latter showed in her slightest movements a sentiment of superiority
that contrasted strangely with her weakness and her age; you would have
said that she received the attentions of her companions with a kind of
condescension.
Squatting in front of her mistress, watching closely for each of her de-
sires, the Negro woman seemed equally divided between an almost mater-
nal attachment and a servile fear; while a free, proud, and almost erce air
distinguished even the savage womans effusion of tenderness.
I approached and contemplated this spectacle in silence; my curiosity
undoubtedly displeased the Indian woman, for she suddenly arose, pushed
the child far away from her with a kind of roughness, and, after giving me
an irritated look, plunged into the woods.
I had often happened to see gathered in the same places individuals be-
longing to the three human races that people North America. I had already
recognized by a thousand various effects the preponderance exercised by
the whites. But, in the scene that I have just described, there was something
particularly touching: a bond of affection united the oppressed to the op-
pressors here, and nature, by trying hard to bring them together, made still
more striking the immense space put between them by prejudice and laws.
Present State and Probable Future of
the Indian Tribes That Inhabit the
Territory Possessed by the Union
h
Gradual disappearance of the native races.How it is taking
place.Miseries that accompany the forced migrations of the
Indians.The savages of North America had only two means to
escape destruction: war or civilization.They can no longer
wage war.Why they do not want to become civilized when
they could do so, and, when they reach the point of wanting to
do so, they no longer can.Example of the Creeks and the
Cherokees.Policy of the particular states toward these
Indians.Policy of the federal government.
All the Indian tribes that formerly inhabited the territory of NewEngland,
the Narragansetts, the Mohicans, the Pequots no longer live except in the
h. Detached note in the manuscript:
Plan of the chapter.
1. Destruction of the Indians, a fact.
2. How it is taking place.
You make the wild game ee. You buy the land. (Here introduce commercial mores.)
3. Inevitable destruction.
1. War or civilization.
War, they can no longer wage it.
2. Civilization remains.
Difculty that hunting peoples have in becoming civilized. It would be necessary to
have [in advance (?) (ed.)] to become a farmer.
Idleness and pride that prevent them from wanting to do so.
When they want to do so, they are not longer able (here I placed the half-breeds,
perhaps elsewhere). Effects of an incomplete civilization in contact with a complete
one.
What precedes is an imperceptible and so to speak involuntary action of one race
on another, but often the positive and voluntary action of governments is joined with
it. Cherokees, Creeks, way of acting toward themof the state andfederal governments.
The appendix devoted to the Indians in the second volume of Marie (Note on the
past state and the present condition of the Indian tribes of North America) gives inter-
esting details on their way of life and their habits that do not appear inTocquevilles work.
See Harry Liebersohn, Aristocratic Encounters (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress,
1998), pp. 92112.
memory of men; the Lenapes [Delawares] whoreceivedPenn, onehundred
and fty years ago, on the banks of the Delaware, have disappeared today.
j
I met the last of the Iroquois; they were begging. All the nations that I have
just named formerly extended as far as the shores of the sea; nowyou must
go more than one hundred leagues into the interior of the continent to
meet an Indian. These savages have not only withdrawn, they are de-
stroyed.
2
As the natives move away and die, an immense people comes and
increases continuously in their place. Neither a development so prodigious
nor a destruction so rapid has ever been seen among nations.
It is easy to indicate the manner in which this destruction is taking
place.
When the Indians lived alone in the wilderness from which they are
exiled today, their needs were few [and the means to provide for themvery
numerous]; they made their own arms; river water was their only drink;
and they had as clothing the hide of the animals whose esh servedtonour-
ish them.
Europeans introduced to the natives of North America rearms, iron
and brandy; they taught them to replace with our fabrics the barbarian
clothing that contented Indian simplicity until then. While contracting
newtastes, the Indians have not learned the art of satisfying them, andthey
have had to resort to the industry of whites. Inreturnfor these goods, which
he himself did not know how to create, the savage could offer nothing,
other than the rich furs that his woods still contained. From this moment,
the hunt had to provide not only for his needs, but also for the frivolous
passions of Europe. He no longer pursued the beasts of the forest only to
j. On a loose slip of paper in the manuscript: Present state of the relations of the
United States with all the Indians who surround their territory. See report of the Sec-
retary of War, L. Cass, 29 November 1833. National Intelligencer of 10 December 1833.
Beaumont had subscribed to the National Intelligencer in 1833. Tocqueville drew from
this newspaper many details for writing this chapter.
2. In the thirteen original states, only 6,273 Indians remain. (See Legislative Documents,
20th Congress, n. 117, p. 90).
nourish himself, but to obtain the only objects of exchange that he could
give us.
3
While the needs of the natives grew in this way, their resources did not
cease to diminish.
From the day when a European settlement forms in the neighborhood
of the territory occupied by the Indians, the wild game becomes alarmed.
4
Thousands of savages, wandering in the forests, without xed abodes, do
not frighten the game; but the instant the continuous noises of European
industry are heard in some place, the game begins to ee and to withdraw
toward the west, where its instinct teaches it that still limitless wildernesses
will be found. But the buffalo is constantly receding, say Messrs. Cass
and Clark in their report to Congress, 4 February 1829. A few years since,
3. Messrs. Clark and Cass, in their report to Congress, 4 February 1829, p. 23, said:
The time is already long past when the Indians could supply themselves with the things
necessary for their food and clothing without resorting to the industry of civilized men.
Beyond the Mississippi, in a country where immense herds of buffalo are still found, live
Indian tribes that follow the migrations of these wild animals; the Indians that we are
speaking about still nd the means to live by following all the customs of their fathers; but
the buffalo are constantly withdrawing. Now you can no longer get, except with ries or
traps, the smaller type of wild animals, such as bear, deer, beaver, muskrat, that particu-
larly provide the Indians with what is necessary to sustain life.
It is principally in the northwest that the Indians are forced to expend excessive effort
to nourish their families. Often the hunter devotes several days in a row to pursuing game
without success; during this time, his family must eat bark and roots or perish; consequently
many of them die of hunger every winter.
k
The Indians do not want to live like the Europeans; they cannot do without the Europeans,
however, nor live entirely as their fathers did. You will judge so by this sole fact, the knowledge
of which I draw as well from an ofcial source. Some men belonging to an Indian tribe on
the shores of Lake Superior had killed a European; the American government forbid trading
with the tribe of which the guilty parties were part, until they had been surrendered: which
took place.
k. This citation is also found in Marie, II, pp. 29192.
4. Five years ago, says Volney in his Tableau des Etats-Unis, p. 370, while going from
Vincennes to Kaskaskia, territory included today in the state of Illinois, then entirely wild
(1797), you did not cross the prairies without seeing herds of four to ve hundred buffaloes;
today none of them remain; they crossed the Mississippi by swimming, bothered by hunters
and above all by the bells of American cows.
they approached the base of the Alleghany, and a few years hence they may
even be rare upon the immense plains which extend to the base of the
Rocky Mountains. I was assured that this effect of the approach of whites
[{Europeans}] often makes itself felt two hundred leagues from their fron-
tier. Their inuence is exercised therefore on tribes whose name they hardly
know and who suffer the evils of usurpation long before knowing the au-
thors of it.
5
Soon hardy adventurers penetrate the Indian countries; they advance
fteen or twenty leagues beyond the extreme frontier of the whites and go
to build the dwelling of civilized man in the very midst of barbarism. It is
easy for them to do so: the limits of the territory of a hunting people are
poorly xed. This territory belongs, moreover, to the entire nation and is
not precisely the property of anyone; so individual interest defends no part
of it.
m
A few European families, occupying widely separated points, then suc-
ceed in chasing forever the wild animals from all the intermediate space
that stretches between them. The Indians, who had lived until then in a
sort of abundance, nd it difcult to survive, still more difcult to obtain
the objects of exchange that they need. By making their game ee, it is as
if you made the elds of our farmers sterile. Soon they almost entirely lack
the means of existence. You then meet these unfortunate people prowling
about like famished wolves amid their deserted woods. Instinctive love of
native land attaches them to the soil where they were born,
6
and they no
5. You can be persuaded of the truth of what I amadvancing here by consulting the general
portrait of the Indian tribes contained within the limits claimed by the United States ( Leg-
islative Documents, 20th Congress, n. 117, pp. 90105). You will see that the tribes in the
center of America are rapidly decreasing, although the Europeans are still very far fromthem.
m. An identical sentence can be found in Marie (II, p. 233).
6. The Indians, say Messrs. Clark and Cass in their report to Congress, p. 15, are attached
to their country by the same sentiment of affection that ties us to ours; and furthermore, to
the idea of alienating the lands that the Great Spirit gave to their ancestors, they attachcertain
superstitious ideas that exercise a great power over the tribes that have still not given anything
up or who have given up only a small portion of their territory to Europeans. We do not sell
the place where the remains of our fathers rest, such is the rst response that they always make
to whoever proposes to buy their lands.
longer nd anything there except misery and death. They nally make up
their minds; they leave, and following at a distance the ight of the elk, the
buffalo and the beaver, they leave to these wild animals the care of choosing
a new homeland for them. So it is not, strictly speaking, the Europeans
n
who chase the natives of America away, it is famine; happy distinctionthat
had escaped the old casuists and that modern [{Protestant}] doctors have
discovered.
You cannot imagine the dreadful evils that accompany these forced em-
igrations. At the moment when the Indians left their paternal lands, they
were already exhausted and reduced. The country where they are going to
settle is occupied by wandering tribes who see the new arrivals only with
jealousy. Behind them is hunger, ahead of them is war, everywhere there is
misery. In order to escape so many enemies, they divide up. Each one of
them tries to isolate himself in order to nd furtively the means to sustain
his existence, and lives in the immensity of the wilderness like the outlaw
in the bosom of civilized societies. The social bond, long weakened, then
breaks. For them, there already was no longer a native land. Soon there will
no longer be a people; families will scarcely remain; the common name is
being lost, language forgotten, the traces of origin disappear. The nation
has ceased to exist. It scarcely lives in the memory of Americanantiquarians
and is known only to a few European scholars.
I would not want the reader to be able to believe that I am exaggerating
my descriptions here.
o
I have seen with my own eyes several of the miseries
that I have just described; I have gazed upon evils that would be impossible
for me to recount.
At the end of the year 1831, I found myself on the left bank of the Mis-
sissippi, at a place named Memphis by the Europeans. While I was in this
place, a numerous troop of Choctaws (the French of Louisiana call them
Chactas ) came; these savages left their country and tried to pass to the right
bank of the Mississippi where they attered themselves about nding a
refuge that the American government had promised them. It was then the
n. If the word European is kept here, in most cases it has been crossed out and Anglo-
Americans substituted.
o. In the manuscript: that I am inventing [v: creating] descriptions at will here.
heart of winter, and the cold gripped that year with unaccustomed inten-
sity; snowhad hardenedonthe ground, andthe river swept alongenormous
chunks of ice. The Indians led their families with them; they draggedalong
behind them the wounded, the sick, the newborn children, the elderly
about to die. They had neither tents nor wagons, but only a fewprovisions
and weapons. I saw them embark to cross the great river, and this solemn
spectacle will never leave my memory. You heard among this assembled
crowd neither sobs nor complaints; they kept quiet. Their misfortunes were
old and seemed to them without remedy. All the Indians had already en-
tered the vessel that was to carry them; their dogs still remainedonthe bank;
when these animals saw nally that their masters were going away forever,
they let out dreadful howls, and throwing themselves at the same time into
the icy waters of the Mississippi, they swam after their masters.
The dispossession of the Indians often takes place today ina regular and,
so to speak, entirely legal manner.
When the European population begins to approach the wilderness oc-
cupied by a savage nation, the government of the United States commonly
sends to the latter a solemn embassy. The whites assemble the Indians in a
great eld and, after eating and drinking with them, say to them:
What are you doing in the land of your fathers? Soon you will have to dig
up their bones to live there. Howis the country where you live better than
another? Are there woods, marshes and prairies only here where you are,
and can you live only under your sun? Beyond these mountains that you
see on the horizon, beyond the lake that borders your territory onthe west,
you nd vast countries where wild game is still found in abundance; sell
us your lands and go to live happily in those places.
After giving this speech, rearms, woolen clothing, casks of brandy, glass
necklaces, tin bracelets, earrings and mirrors are spread out before the eyes
of the Indians.
7
If, at the sight of all these riches, they still hesitate, it is
7. See in the Legislative Documents of Congress, doc. 117, the account of what hap-
pens in these circumstances. This curious piece is found in the report already cited, made
insinuated that they cannot refuse the consent demandedof them, andthat
soon the government itself will be unable to guarantee to them the enjoy-
ment of their rights.
[
*
]
What to do? Half persuaded, half forced, the In-
dians move away; they go to inhabit new wildernesses where whites will
not leave theminpeace for eventenyears. Inthis way the Americans acquire
at a very low price entire provinces that the richest sovereigns of Europe
could not afford.
8
by Messrs. Clark and Lewis Cass, to Congress, 4 February 1829. Today Mr. Cass is the
Secretary of War.
The Indians, as has been stated, say Messrs. Clark and Cass, reach the treaty ground
poor, and almost naked. Large quantities of goods are taken there by the traders, and are
seen and examined by the Indians. The women and children become importunate to have
their wants supplied, and their inuence is soon exerted to induce a sale. Their improvi-
dence is habitual and unconquerable. The graticationof his immediate wants anddesires
is the ruling passion of an Indian. The expectation of future advantages seldomproduces
much effect. The experience of the past is lost, and the prospects of the future disregarded.
This is one of the most striking traits in their character, and is well known to all who have
had much intercourse with them. It would be utterly hopeless to demand a cession of land,
unless the means were at hand of gratifying their immediate wants; and when their con-
dition and circumstances are fairly considered, it ought not to surprise us that they are so
anxious to relieve themselves.
[*]. See the treaty with the Osages. Everett, p. 16. Longs Expedition, vol. II, p. 245.
8. On 19 May 1830, Mr. Ed. Everett asserted before the House of Representatives that the
Americans had already acquired by treaty, east and west of the Mississippi, 230,000,000acres.
In 1808, the Osages gave up 48,000,000 acres for an income of 1,000 dollars.
In 1818, the Quapaws gave up 29,000,000 acres for 4,000 dollars; they reserved a territory
of 1,000,000 acres for hunting. It had been solemnly sworn that it would be respected; it was
not long before it was invaded like the rest.
In order to appropriate the uninhabited lands to which the Indians claim ownership,
said Mr. Bell, secretary of the Indian affairs committee of Congress, 24 February 1830,
we have adopted the practice of paying the Indian tribes the value of their hunting ground
after the game has ed or has been destroyed. It is more advantageous and certainly more
in conformity with the principles of justice and more humane to act in this way than to
take the territory of the savages by force of arms.
The practice of buying from the Indians their title of ownership is therefore nothing
more than a new mode of acquisition that humanity and expediency have substituted for
violence, and that will equally make us masters of the lands that we claim by virtue of
I have just recounted great evils, I add that they seem irremediable to
me. I believe that the Indianrace of NorthAmerica is condemnedtoperish,
andI cannot prevent myself fromthinking that the day the Europeans settle
on the shores of the Pacic Ocean, that race will have ceased to exist.
9
The Indians of North America had only two paths to salvation: war or
civilization; in other words, they had to destroy the Europeans or become
their equal.
At the birth of the colonies, it would have been possible for them, by
uniting their forces, to rid themselves of the small number of foreigners
who had just arrived at the shores of the continent.
10
More than once, they
attempted to do it and saw themselves on the verge of success. Today the
disproportion of resources is too great for them to be able to consider such
an undertaking.
p
But men of genius still arise among the Indian nations,
who foresee the nal fate reserved for the savage populations and who seek
to bring together all the tribes in a common hatred of Europeans [{and to
silence individual animosities in order to deal only with this objective [v:
discovery, and that moreover assures us the right of civilized nations to settle the territory
occupied by savage tribes.
Until now, several causes have constantly diminished in the eyes of the Indians the
value of the soil that they occupy, and then the same causes have led them to sell it to us
without difculty. The practice of buying from the savages their right of occupancy has
therefore never been able, to any perceptible degree, to slow the prosperity of the United
States.
(Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, n. 227, p. 6).
9. This opinion seemed to us, moreover, that of nearly all the American statesmen.
Judging of the future by the past, said Mr. Cass to Congress, we cannot err in antici-
pating a progressive diminution of their numbers, and their eventual extinction, unless our
border should become stationary, and they be removed beyond it, or unless some radical change
should take place in [the principles of (ed.)] our intercourse with them, which it is easier to
hope for than to expect.
10. See among others the war undertaken by the Wampanoags and the other confederated
tribes, under the leadership of Metacom [King Philip (ed.)], in 1675, against the colonists of
New England, and the war that the English had to withstand in 1622 in Virginia.
p. According to Beaumont, the only possibility rested on an alliance of Indians with
the Black population. Nonetheless, in his novel, this alliance and the revolt that follows
lead to a sharp defeat.
to consider all saving themselves}];
[
*
]
but their efforts are ineffectual. The
tribes that are near the whites are already too weak to offer effective resis-
tance; the others, abandoning themselves to this childish lack of concern
about tomorrow that characterizes savage nature, wait for the danger to
appear before giving it their attention. The rst cannot act, the others do
not want to act.
[If at the same time that the Indians gave up hope of chasing the Eu-
ropeans away from American soil, they had succeeded in becoming civi-
lized, they would still be able to avoid the destruction that threatens them,
for it is nearly impossible to dispossess a farming people completely.]
It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never want to become civilized,
or that they will try too late, when they reach the point of wanting to do
so.
Civilization is the result of a long work of society that proceeds in the
same place and that the different successive generations bequeath to one
another. It is among hunting peoples that civilization has the greatest dif-
culty managing to establish its dominion. Tribes of herders change places,
but they always follow a regular order in their migrations and constantly
retrace their steps; the dwelling-place of hunters varies like that of the very
animals they pursue.
Several times the attempt has been made to bring enlightenment to
the Indians while leaving them with the mores of wandering peoples; the
Jesuits had tried to do it in Canada, the Puritans in New England.
11
Both
accomplished nothing lasting. Civilization was born within the hut and
went to die inthe woods. The great failing of these legislators of the Indians
was not to understand that, to succeed in civilizing a people, it is necessary
[*]. Red Jacket.
q
Cite and translate the speech of Oconostata in Everett, p. 44. Insert
afterward the note from the work.
q. John C. Spencer, on the occasion of a long conversation, provided Tocqueville
with information on Red Jacket (alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIIa, and Voyage, OC,
V, 1, pp. 22123). Edward Everett, for his part, had sent Beaumont several documents
on the Indians, including his speech of 1830 to the House of Representatives. Cf. two
letters from Beaumont to Edward Everett dated 18 February and 1 May 1832, YTC, BIc.
11. See the different historians of New England. Also see Histoire de la Nouvelle-France
by Charlevoix and Lettres ediantes. [See report of the Commission of Indian Affairs, 21st
Congress, n. 217, p. 25.]
above all to get them to settle down, and they can only do so by cultivating
the soil; so it was rst a matter of making the Indians farmers.
Not only do the Indians not possess this indispensable preliminary of
civilization, but also it is very difcult for them to acquire.
Men who have once given themselves over to the idle and adventurous
life of hunters feel an almost insurmountable distaste for the constant and
regular work required by farming. You can see it even within our societies;
but it is even much more visible among peoples for whom hunting habits
have become the national customs.
Apart from this general cause, a cause no less powerful is found only
among the Indians. I have already pointed it out; I believe I must return to
it.
The natives of North America consider work not only as an evil, but
also as a dishonor, and their pride struggles against civilization almost as
obstinately as their idleness.
12
There is no Indian so miserable who, in his bark hut, does not maintain
a proud idea of his individual value; he considers the cares of industry as
degrading occupations; he compares the farmer to the ox that traces the
furrow, and in each of our arts he sees only the work of slaves. It is not that
he has not conceived a very high idea of the power of whites and of the
grandeur of their intelligence; but, if he admires the result of our efforts,
he scorns the means that we have used to obtain them, and, even while
under our inuence, he still believes himself superior to us. Hunting and
war seem to him the only cares worthy of a man.
13
So the Indian, deep
12. In all the tribes, says Volney in his Tableau des Etats-Unis, p. 423, there still exists
a generation of old warriors who, seeing the hoe handled, do not cease to shout about the
degradation of ancient mores and who claim that the savages owe their decline only to these
innovations, and that, to recover their glory and their power, it would be sufcient for them
to return to their primitive mores.
13. In an ofcial document the following portrait is found:
Until a young man has been engaged with an enemy, and can boast of his prowess, he is
held in no estimation, and is considered little better than a woman.
At their great war dances, all the warriors in succession strike the post, as it is called,
and recount the feats they have done. The auditory, upon these occasions, is composed of
the relations, the friends, and the companions of the narrator, and the intensity of their
within the misery of his woods, nurtures the same ideas, the same opinions
as the noble
[
*
]
of the Middle Ages in his fortress, and to resemble himfully
he only needs to become a conqueror. How strange! It is in the forests of
the New World, and not among the Europeans who populate its shores,
that the ancient prejudices of Europe are found today.
I have tried more than once, in the course of this work, to make un-
derstood the prodigious inuence that the social state seemed to me to ex-
ercise on the laws and mores of men. Allow me to add a single word to the
subject.
When I notice the similarity that exists between the political institutions
of our fathers, the Teutons, and those of the wandering tribes of North
America, between the customs recounted by Tacitus and those that I was
sometimes able to witness, I cannot prevent myself from thinking that the
same cause has produced, in the two hemispheres, the same results, and
that amid the apparent diversity of human affairs, it is not impossible to
nd a small number of generative facts from which all the others derive.
So in all that we call Teutonic institutions, I am tempted to see only the
habits of barbarians, and the opinions of savages in what we call feudal
ideas.
r
feelings is manifested by the deep silence with which they listen to his tale, and by the loud
shouts with which he is hailed at the termination. Unfortunate is the young man who has
no deeds of valor to recount at these assemblages; and instances are not wanting, where
young warriors, in the excitement of their feelings, have departed alone from these dances,
in search of trophies to exhibit, and of adventures to relate.
[*]. See the piece fromCass andClark, p. 29, onthe needfor military glory that makes
itself universally felt among them.
r. In the second lecture of his History of Civilization in Europe, Guizot asserted that
the savage life of the American Indians had some similarity to the mores of the ancient
Teutons. He added that the idea of individual independence, that of modern personal
liberty, had appeared in Europe on the occasion of the great Teutonic invasions. The
same ideas are found, more developed, in the seventh lecture of the course oncivilization
in France. Montesquieu, Saint-Simon and Boulainvilliers, before Guizot, had shown a
great admiration for Teutonic institutions.
Whatever the vices and prejudices that prevent the Indians of North
America from becoming farmers and civilized, necessity sometimes forces
them to do so.
Several considerable nations of the South, among others those of the
Cherokees and the Creeks,
14
found themselves as though encircled by
Europeans who, landing on the shores of the Ocean, going down the Ohio
and coming back up the Mississippi, surrounded them all at once. They
were not chased from place to place, as the tribes of the North were, but
were squeezed little by little into limits that were too narrow, as hunters
rst make an enclosure around a thicket before entering simultaneously
into the interior. The Indians, placed then between civilization and death,
saw themselves reduced to living shamefully by their work like whites; so
they became farmers, and without entirely abandoning either their habits
or their mores, they sacriced what was absolutely necessary for their
existence.
The Cherokees went further; they createda writtenlanguage, established
a fairly stable formof government; and, as everything moves witha hurried
step in the New World, they had a newspaper
15
before all had clothes.
What singularly favored the rapid development of European habits
among these Indians was the presence of half-breeds.
16
Sharing the enlight-
enment of his father without necessarily abandoning the savage customs
14. These nations today are encompassed in the states of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabamaand
Mississippi.
There were formerly in the south (you see the remnants of them) four great nations: the
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Cherokees.
The remnants of these four nations still had about 75,000 individuals in 1830. There is at
present, in the territory occupied or claimed by the Anglo-American Union, a count of about
300,000 Indians. (See Proceedings of the Indian Board in the City of NewYork. ) Ofcial
documents provided to Congress bring the number to 313,130. The reader curious to know the
name and strength of all the tribes that inhabit the Anglo-American territory should consult
the documents that I have just indicated. ( Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, n. 117,
pp. 90105.)
15. I brought back to France one or two copies of this singular publication. [Cite the sta-
tistical details that are found in the speech of Everett, p. 26. See id., p. 29.]
16. See in the report of the committee of Indian affairs, 21st Congress, n. 227, p. 23, what
makes the half-breeds multiply among the Cherokees; the principal cause goes back to the War
of Independence. Many Anglo-Americans from Georgia, having taken Englands side, were
forced to withdraw among the Indians and married there.
of his maternal race, the half-breed forms the natural link between civili-
zation and barbarism. Wherever half-breeds have multiplied, savages are
seen to modify little by little their social state and change their mores.
17
So the success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians have the ability
to become civilized, but it in no way proves that they can succeed in
doing so.
s
This difculty that the Indians nd in submitting to civilization arises
from a general cause that is nearly impossible for them to elude.
17. Unfortunately half-breeds have been fewer and have exercised a smaller inuence in
North America than anywhere else.
Two great nations of Europe peopled this portion of the American continent: the French
and the English.
The rst did not take long to enter into unions with the young native women; but mis-
fortune decreed that a secret afnity be found between the Indian character andtheirs. Instead
of giving to the barbarians the taste and habits of civilized life, it was they who often became
passionately attached to savage life; they became the most dangerous inhabitants of the wil-
derness, and won the friendship of the Indian by exaggerating his vices and his virtues. M.
de Se nonville [Denonville (ed.)], Governor of Canada, wrote to Louis XIV, in 1685: For a
long time we believed it necessary to move the savages near us to make them more French; we
all have good grounds to recognize that we were wrong. Those who moved near us did not
become French, and the French who haunted them became savage. They pretend to dress like
them, to live like them (Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, by Charlevoix, vol. II, p. 345).
The Englishman, in contrast, living stubbornly attached to the opinions, the customs and
to the slightest habits of his fathers, remained in the middle of the American wilderness what
he was within the cities of Europe; so he wanted to establish no contact with the savages that
he despised, and carefully avoided mingling his blood with that of the barbarians.
Thus, while the Frenchmanexercised no salutary inuence onthe Indians, the Englishman
was always a stranger to them.
s. Note on a small sheet of paper separate fromthe manuscript, but which, according
to Tocquevilles indications, should have been placed here:
I recall having been very surprised in the middle of the woods by hearing savages
shout to me: bonjour with an air of friendship. This attachment of the Indians to
the [lacking: French (ed.)] is due in part to very honorable causes: If we pay atten-
tion, say Messrs. Clark and Cass in their report to Congress, doc. n. 117, p. 11, to
the inuence acquired and exercised by the French on the Indians, inuence whose
visible traces you still see today after two generations have passed, you will be led to
conclude that the French used their power with honor and impartiality.
The attraction of savage life for Europeans and the scorn of savage populations for civ-
ilization appear in the Discours sur lorigine de line galite of Rousseau (Oeuvres comple `tes,
Paris: Pleiade, 1964, III, note XVI, pp. 22021).
If you cast an attentive eye on history, you discover that in general bar-
baric peoples have risen little by little by themselves, and by their own ef-
forts, toward civilization.
When it happened that they went to drawenlightenment froma foreign
nation, they did so with the rank of conquerors, and not the position of
the vanquished.
When the conquered people are enlightened and the conquering people
half-savage, as in the invasion of the Roman Empire by the nations of the
North, or in that of China by the Mongols, the power that victory assures
to the barbarian is enough to keep him at the level of the civilized man and
allow him to move as his equal, until he becomes his equal; the one has
strength in his favor, the other, intelligence; the rst admires the arts and
sciences of the vanquished, the second envies the power of the conquerors.
The barbarians end by introducing the civilized man into their palaces, and
the civilized man in turn opens his schools to them. But when the one who
possesses physical force enjoys intellectual preponderance at the same time,
it is rare for the vanquished to become civilized; he withdraws or is
destroyed.
Therefore you can say in a general way that savages are going to seek
enlightenment with weapons in hand, but that they do not receive it.
t
If the Indian tribes who now inhabit the center of the continent could
nd in themselves enough energy to undertake becoming civilized, they
would perhaps succeed. Superior then to the barbarian nations that sur-
round them, they would little by little gain strength and experience, and,
when the Europeans nally appeared on their frontiers, they would be in
a state, if not to maintain their independence, at least to make their rights
to the soil recognized and to become integrated with the conquerors. But
the misfortune of the Indians is to enter into contact with the most civi-
t. In the margin, in a rst version:
It is sufcient to see the natives of North America to be persuaded that their race
is in no way inferior to ours. The social state has so to [speak (ed.)] drawn around
the mind of the Indians a narrow circle, but in this circle, they show themselves the
most intelligent of all men. There is without doubt in what the Cherokees have done
more [v: as much] natural genius than in the greatest efforts of civilized peoples.
lized, and I will add the most greedy people of the globe, while they are
themselves still half barbarian; to nd in their teachers, masters, and to
receive oppression and enlightenment at the same time.
u
Living within the liberty of the woods, the Indian of North America
was miserable, but he felt inferior to no one; from the moment he wants
to enter into the social hierarchy of the whites, he can occupy only the last
rank; for he enters ignorant and poor into a society where knowledge and
wealth reign. After leading an agitated life, full of evils and dangers, but
lled at the same time with emotions and grandeur,
18
he must submit to a
u. In his Report on the proposed law concerning the extraordinary credits asked for
Algeria (Moniteur universel, 1 June 1847, pp. 137984, reproducedinOC, III, 1, pp. 309
89), Tocqueville suggests taking into account the errors of the conquest of America and
preventing the destruction of the Arabs by Western civilization (pp. 32730).
18. There is in the adventurous life of hunting peoples some irresistible attraction that
catches hold of the heart of man and carries him away despite his reason and experience. You
can be persuaded of this truth by reading the Memoires de Tanner.
Tanner is a European who was carried off at the age of six by the Indians and who
remained for thirty years in the woods with them. It is impossible to see anything more dreadful
than the miseries he describes. He shows us tribes without chiefs, families without nations,
isolated men, mutilated remnants of powerful tribes, wandering haphazardly amid the ice
and among the desolate wilderness areas of Canada. Hunger and cold pursue them; each day
life seems ready to escape from them. Among them, mores have lost their sway, traditions are
without power. Men become more and more barbaric. Tanner shares all these evils; he knows
his European origin, he is not forcibly kept far from whites; he goes, on the contrary, each year
to trade with them, to wander through their dwelling-places, to see their comfort; he knows
that the day he wants to reenter civilized life he will easily be able to succeed in doing so, and
he remains thirty years in the wilderness. When he nally returns to civilized society, he con-
fesses that the existence whose miseries he has described has secret charms for himthat he cannot
dene; he returns there constantly after having left and pulls himself away fromso many evils
only with a thousand regrets; and when he has nally settled among the whites, several of his
children refuse to come to share with him his tranquillity and his comfort.
I met Tanner myself at the entry to Lake Superior. He appeared to me still to resemble a
savage much more than a civilized man.
You do not nd in the work of Tanner either order or taste; but the author draws, even
unknowingly, a lively picture of the prejudices, passions, vices and above all the miseries of
those among whom he lived.
Viscount Ernest de Blosseville, author of an excellent work on the penal colonies of En-
gland, has translated the Memoires de Tanner.
v
The Viscount de Blosseville added to his
translation notes of great interest that will allow the reader to compare the facts recounted by
Tanner with those already related by a great number of ancient and modern observers.
All those who desire to know the present state and to foresee the future destiny of the Indian
races of North America should consult the work of the Viscount de Blosseville.
v. In the rst edition: of Tanner and will publish them in the course of the year
about to begin.
George W. Pierson (Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, p. 235) indicates that the
travelers met Tanner on the steamboat Ohio, on the way to Detroit, 19 July 1831, and
that the latter offered them his book. Beaumont gives the following account of a con-
versation with Tanner, that he places on the Mississippi:
The Choctaws were being escorted by an agent of the American government charged
with implementing their removal. This man, who did not know the language of the
Indians, had an interpreter close to them, an inhabitant of the United States named
Tanner, who is famous in America for having spent more than thirty years among
the savage tribes of the north. I congratulated myself all the more about meeting him
because I had often desired to do so; this circumstance, joined with the interest that
the misfortune of the Indians inspired in me, suggested to me the thought of crossing
the Mississippi with them and accompanying them to their new territory. I shared
this idea with my traveling companion who very much approved it. As soon as I
had resolved to do so, I felt a burst of joy and enthusiasm thinking that I was going
to see the beautiful forests dreamed of in my imagination, the vast prairies described
by Cooper, and the profound solitudes unknown in the Old World.
The signal for the departure was given and Tanner, with whom I soon began to
converse, assured me that inless thana day we wouldreachthe mouthof the Arkansas
and that one day more would be enough for us to move up the river a distance of
more than 150 miles.
While we descended the Mississippi, I did not cease questioning Tanner about the
mores of the Indians and about the causes for their misfortune. He gave me notions
full of interest about them that I would like one day to be able to make known in all
their scope.You, who sympathize with their misfortunes, he says to me, hurry
to know them!, for soon they will have disappeared from the earth. The forests of
Arkansas are given forever to them! These are, it is true, the terms of the treaty! But
what mockery! The lands that they occupied in Georgia had also been given to them,
thirty years ago, forever! They will be left in this new country that is abandoned to
them as long as their lands are not needed. But as soon as the American population
nds itself too squeezed together on the left bank of the Mississippi, it will sweep
into the fertile countries of the other bank and the Indian will again undergo the fate
that was reserved for him, that of retreating before European civilization. Note,
Tanner also said to me, that it is, to a certain point, in the interest of the Indian to
act in this way at the approach of whites; in fact he lives almost exclusively on game,
and the game itself moves away as soon as civilized society approaches it. It is enough
to put a large road through a country to chase away all the wild buffaloes. The Indian
who goes closely along with them is only following his means of existence, but by
monotonous, obscure and degraded existence. To earn by hard work and
amid shame the bread that must nourish him, such in his eyes is the sole
result of this civilization that is praised to him.
And he is not always sure to obtain even this result.
When the Indians undertake to imitate the Europeans their neighbors,
and like them to cultivate the land, they soon nd themselves exposed to
the effects of a very destructive competition. The white is master of the
secrets of agriculture. The Indian starts out crudely in an art that he does
not know. The one easily makes great harvests grow, the other extracts the
fruits of the earth only with a thousand efforts.
The European is placed amid a population that he knows and whose
needs he shares.
The savage is isolated in the middle of an enemy people whose mores,
language and laws he knows incompletely, but without whom he cannot
manage. Only by exchanging his products for those of the whites can he
become well-off, for his compatriots are nothing more than a feeble help
to him.
Therefore, when the Indian wants to sell the fruits of his work, he does
not always nd the buyer that the European farmer easily nds, and he can
produce only at great cost what the other delivers for a small price.
So the Indian has escaped from the evils to which barbarian nations are
exposed only to subject himself to the greatest miseries of civilizedpeoples,
and he nds almost as much difculty living amid our abundance as within
his forests.
constantly advancing toward the west, he will meet the Pacic Ocean.This will be
the end of his journey and of his life. How many years will pass before his ruin? You
could not say. Each vessel from Europe that brings to America new inhabitants ac-
celerates the destruction of the Indians. After halting in Arkansas, the Choctaws will
be pushed back beyond the Rocky Mountains; this will be their second stage; and
when the wave of the American population arrives, they will not be able either to
remain or to go beyond. Their destiny will be fullled.
While Tanner thus spoke to me, I felt penetrated by a profound sadness.
This conversation belongs to the notes and drafts of Marie (YTC, Beaumont, CIX). The
details that precede and follow this conversation appear in Marie, II, pp. 4855 and292
93.
At home, however, the habits of the wandering life are still not destroyed.
Traditions have not lost their dominion; the taste for hunting has not been
extinguished. The savage joys that he formerly experienced deep withinthe
woods are then represented by the most vivid colors in his troubled imag-
ination; the privations that he endured there seem to him less dreadful in
contrast, the perils that he encountered less great. The independence that
he enjoyed among his equals contrasts with the servile position that he oc-
cupies in civilized society.
From another perspective, the solitude where, for so long, he lived free
is still near him; a few hours of walking can restore it to him. For the half-
cleared eld fromwhichhe draws hardly enoughtofeedhimself, the whites,
his neighbors, offer hima price that to himseems high. Perhaps this money
that the Europeans present to him would allow him to live happily and
tranquilly far from them. He leaves his plow, picks up his weapons, and
goes into the wilderness again forever.
19
19. This destructive inuence that very civilized peoples exercise on those who are less so is
noticeable among the Europeans themselves. [{See what Volney says in his Tableau du climat
et du sol des Etats-Unis, p. 360.}]
Some French had founded, nearly a century ago, in the middle of the wilderness, the city
of Vincennes on the Wabash. They lived there in great abundance until the arrival of the
American emigrants. The latter soon began to ruin the old inhabitants by competition; then
they bought their lands from them for a small sum. At the moment when Volney, fromwhom
I borrow this detail, came upon Vincennes, the number of French was reduced to a hundred
individuals, most of whom were prepared to move to Louisiana or Canada. These French
were honest men, but without enlightenment and without industry; they had contracted part
of the savage habits. The Americans, who were perhaps inferior to them from the moral point
of view, had an immense intellectual superiority over them; they were industrious, educated,
rich, and used to governing themselves.
I myself saw in Canada, where the intellectual difference between the two races is much
less pronounced, the Englishman, master of commerce and industry in the country of the
Canadian, stretch out on all sides and squeeze the Frenchman into limits too narrow.
In the same way, in Louisiana, nearly all the commercial and industrial activity is con-
centrated in the hands of the Anglo-Americans.
Something still more striking is happening in the province of Texas; the state of Texas is,
as you know, part of Mexico and serves as the frontier with the United States. For several
years, Anglo-Americans have entered individually into this province still poorly populated,
bought lands, taken hold of industry, and rapidly taken the place of the original population.
You can foresee that if Mexico does not hasten to stop this movement, Texas will not take long
to escape from it.
You can judge the truth of this sad portrait by what is happening among
the Creeks and the Cherokees, whom I cited.
These Indians, in the little that they have done, have surely shown as
much natural genius as the peoples of Europe in their wider undertakings;
but nations, like men, need time to learn, whatever their intelligence and
their efforts.
w
While these savages worked to become civilized, the Europeans contin-
ued to envelop them from all sides and to squeeze them in more and more.
Today, the two races have nally met; they touch each other. The Indian
has already become superior to his father, the savage, but he is still very
inferior to the white, his neighbor. With the aid of their resources andtheir
enlightenment, the Europeans did not take long to appropriate most of the
advantages that possession of the soil could provide to the natives; the
Europeans settled among them, seized the land or bought it at a low price,
and ruined the Indians by a competition that the latter could in no way
sustain. Isolated in their own country, the Indians no longer formed any-
thing except a small colony of inconvenient foreigners in the middle of a
numerous and dominating people.
20
If a few differences comparatively not very perceptible in European civilization lead to
such results, it is easy to understand what must happen when the most perfected civilization
of Europe enters into contact with Indian barbarism.
w. On a detached sheet: Put the piece from Jefferson on Logan to prove capacity of
the Indians. See Notes On Virginia, p. 153.
20. See, in the Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, n. 89, the excesses of all kinds com-
mitted by the white population on the territory of the Indians. Sometimes the Anglo-
Americans settle on one part of the territory, as if land was lacking elsewhere, and troops from
Congress must come to expel them; sometimes they carry away the livestock, burn the houses,
cut down the fruit of the natives or use violence against their persons.
All these documents provide evidence that each day the natives are victims of abuse by
force. Normally the Union maintains an agent among the Indians charged with representing
it; the report of the agent for the Cherokees is found among the documents that I am citing;
the language of this ofcial is nearly always favorable to the savages. The intrusion of whites
into the territory of the Cherokees, he says, p. 12, will cause the ruin of those who live there
leading a poor and inoffensive existence. Further along you see that the state of Georgia,
wanting to narrow the limits of the Cherokees, proceeds to a boundary marking; the federal
agent remarks that, having beenmade only by the whites andwithout full hearings, the bound-
ary marking has no value.
Washington said, in one of his messages to Congress: We are more en-
lightened and more powerful than the Indian nations; it is to our honor to
treat them with kindness and even with generosity.
This noble and virtuous policy has not been followed.
The greediness of the colonists usually joins with the tyranny of the
government. Although the Cherokees and the Creeks were settled on the
soil they inhabited before the arrival of the Europeans, although the Amer-
icans often negotiated with them as with foreign nations, the states within
which they nd themselves did not want to recognize themas independent
peoples, and undertook to subject these men, barely out of the forests, to
their magistrates, to their customs and to their laws.
21
Misery had pushed
these unfortunate Indians towardcivilization, oppressiondrives themtoday
back toward barbarism. Many of them, leaving their half-cleared elds,
resume the habit of savage life.
If you pay attention to the tyrannical measures adopted by the legisla-
tures of the states of the South, to the conduct of their governors and the
actions of their courts, you will easily be convinced that the complete ex-
pulsion of the Indians is the nal goal toward which all their efforts si-
multaneously tend. The Americans of this part of the Union enviously
regard the lands that the natives possess;
22
they feel that the latter have not
yet completely lost the traditions of savage life, and before civilization has
rmly attached them to the soil, they want to reduce them to despair and
force them to move away.
Oppressed by the particular states, the Creeks and Cherokees addressed
21. In 1829, the state of Alabama divides the territory of the Creeks into counties and
submits the Indian population to European magistrates.
In 1830, the state of Mississippi classes the Choctaws and the Chickasaws with the whites
and declares that those among them who take the title of chief will be punished with a ne
of 1,000 dollars and a year in prison.
When the state of Mississippi thus extended its laws over the Choctaw Indians who lived
within its limits, the latter assembled together; their chief showed them what the claim of the
whites was and read to them some of the laws to which the whites wanted to subject them.
The savages declared with one voice that it would be better to plunge againinto the wilderness.
( Mississippi Papers.)
22. The Georgians, who nd themselves so bothered by the nearby presence of the Indians,
occupy a territory that still does not number more than seven inhabitants per square mile. In
France, there are one hundred sixty-two individuals in the same space.
the central government. The latter is not insensitive to their misfortunes;
that government would sincerely like to save the remnants of the natives
and assure them the free possession of the territory that it guaranteed to
them.
23
But when it seeks to execute this plan, the particular states put up
a formidable resistance, and then the central government resolves without
difculty to let a few savage tribes, already half destroyed, perish in order
not to put the American Union in danger.
x
Powerless to protect the Indians, the federal government would at least
like to ease their lot; to this end, it has undertaken to transport them at its
expense to other places.
[
*
]
23. In 1818, Congress ordered that the territory of Arkansas would be visited by American
commissioners, accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws and Chickasaws. This
expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly, McCoy, Wash Hood and John Bell. See the
different reports of the commissioners and their journal in the papers of Congress, n. 87, House
of Representatives.
x. Note not included in the chapter, but which appears in the manuscript in this
place:
Extract from a speech given before a town meeting of Philadelphia, 11 January 1830:
Can a government founded on the celebrated statement of the rights of man that
accompanies our Declaration of Independence consent shamelessly to violate among
others those very rights for which it then fought? If dependent nations have been able
to declare themselves independent, howcan we refuse to allownations that are already
independent to remain so? Is the people that abuses its power in order to exercise
tyranny externally a sincere friend of liberty? And would it not be tyrannical to drive
a nation from its partially cultivated lands and from its homes and to send it to create
a new settlement in the wilderness, where greed will not long allow it to remain in
peace, if we are to judge the future by the past? Amid the discouragement that they
must feel, will the Indians even have the energy to undertake what we expect of them?
The expulsionof the Moors fromSpainis universally consideredanact of tyranny.
The Moors, however, were the sons of the former conquerors andthe former enemies
of the religion and mores of Spain. The Cherokees are in no way the enemies of the
people of the United States.
This note is found with others in a copy that is not in Tocquevilles hand. A note on the
jacket of the section on the Indians explains the origin of the copies: To dictate or copy
before thinking about correcting. The copies remaining in this jacket consist of un-
published fragments and notes.
[*]. See the instructions of the Secretary of War to Generals Cannall [Carroll (ed.)]
and Goffre [Coffee (ed.)], dated 30 May 1830.
There are 75,000 Indians to transport.
Between the latitudes of 33rd and 37th degrees north, extends a vast
country that has taken the name Arkansas, from the principal river that
waters it. It borders on one side the frontier of Mexico, on the other, the
banks of the Mississippi. A multitude of small streams and rivers cut across
it fromall sides; the climate is mildandthe soil fertile. Onlya fewwandering
hordes of savages are found there.
[
*
]
It is to a section of this country, which
is closest to Mexico and at a great distance fromAmerican settlements, that
the government of the Union wants to transport the remnants of the native
populations of the South.
At the end of the year 1831, we were assured that 10,000 Indians had
already gone to the banks of the Arkansas; others arrived every day. But
Congress has not been able to create as well a unanimous will among those
whose fate it wanted to determine. Some consent with joy to move away
from the home of tyranny; the most enlightened refuse to abandon their
growing crops and newdwellings; they think that if the workof civilization
is interrupted, it will not be resumed again; they fear that sedentary habits,
barely contracted, will be permanently lost in the middle of still savage
countries where nothing is preparedfor the subsistence of a farmingpeople;
they know that in this new wilderness they will nd enemy hordes and, to
resist them, they no longer have the energy of barbarism and have not yet
acquired the strength of civilization. The Indians easily discover, moreover,
all that is provisional in the settlement that is proposed to them. Who will
assure themthat they will nally be able to rest in peace in their newrefuge?
The United States promises to maintain them there; but the territory that
they nowoccupy hadformerly beenguaranteedtothemby the most solemn
oaths.
24
Today the American government does not, it is true, take their
[*]. See Journey of Long, vol. II.
24. You nd, in the treaty made with the Creeks in 1790, this clause: The United States
solemnly guarantee to the Creek Nation, all their lands within the limits of the United States
to the westward and southward of the boundary described in the preceding article.
The treaty concluded in July 1791 with the Cherokees contains what follows: The United
States solemnly guarantee to the Cherokee nation, all their lands not hereby ceded. If any
citizen of the United States, or other person not being an Indian, shall settle on any of the
Cherokees lands, such person shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Cher-
okees may punish him or not, as they please. Art. [7 and (ed.)] 8.
lands from them, but it allows their lands to be invaded. In a few years,
undoubtedly, the same white population that now presses around them
will again be at their heels in the solitude of Arkansas; they will then nd
the same evils again without the same remedies; and sooner or later with-
out land, they will still have to resign themselves to dying.
There is less cupidity and violence in the way the Union acts toward the
Indians than in the policy followed by the states; but the two governments
equally lack good faith.
The states, while extending what they call the benet of their laws to
the Indians,
y
count on the fact that the latter will prefer to move away than
to submit; and the central government, while promising these unfortunate
people a permanent refuge in the West, is not unaware that it is not able
to guarantee it to them.
25
Therefore, the states, by their tyranny, force the savages to ee; the
Union, by its promises and with the aid of its resources, makes the ight
easy. These are different measures that aim at the same end.
26
y. Note of Tocqueville on a small sheet of paper not part of the manuscript: It is
admitted by all, says Mr. Everett in his speech, that the Indians are not able to live under
the laws of the states. The Indians say it; the government says it. The states do not deny
it. Clearly the laws of whites have not been made for the Indians; we and they are in
agreement on this point.
25. That does not prevent promising it to them in the most formal manner. See the letter
of the President addressed to the Creeks, 23 March 1829 (Proceedings of the Indian Board
in the City of New York, p. 5): Beyond the great river Mississippi, [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]your
father has provided a country large enough for all of you [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]. There your white
brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it,
you and all your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty.
It will be yours for ever.
In a letter written to the Cherokees by the Secretary of the War Department, 18 April 1829,
this ofcial declares to them that they must not deceive themselves about retaining the enjoy-
ment of the territory that they occupy at the moment, but he gives them this same positive
assurance for the time when they will be on the other side of the Mississippi (same work, p. 6).
As if the power that he now lacked would not be lacking in the same way then!
26. To have an exact idea of the policy followed by the particular states and by the Union
vis-a`-vis the Indians, you must consult: 1. the laws of the particular states relating to the
Indians (this collection is found in the legislative documents, 21st Congress, n. 319); 2. the laws
of the Union relating to the same subject, and in particular that of 30 March 1802 (these laws
are found in the work of Mr. Story entitled: Laws of the United States); 3. nally, to know
By the will of our Father inHeaven, the Governor of the whole world,
said the Cherokees in their petition to Congress,
27
the red manof America
has become small, and the white man great and renowned.
When the ancestors of the people of these United States rst came to
the shores of America, they found the red man strongthough he was
ignorant and savage, yet he received them kindly, and gave them dry land
to rest their weary feet. They met in peace, and shook hands in token of
friendship.
Whatever the white man wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter
willingly gave. At that time the Indian was the lord, and the white man
the suppliant. But now the scene has changed. The strength of the red
man has become weakness. As his neighbors increased in numbers, his
power became less and less, and now, of the many and powerful tribes
who once covered these United States, only a few are to be seena few
whom a sweeping pestilence has left. The Northern tribes, who were once
so numerous and powerful, are now nearly extinct. Thus it has happened
to the red man of America.
Shall we, who are remnants, share the same fate? [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]
The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from
our fathers, who possessed it from time immemorial, as a gift from our
common Father in Heaven. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] They bequeathed it to us as
their children, and we have sacredly kept it, as containing the remains of
our beloved men. This right of inheritance we have never ceded nor ever
forfeited. Permit us to ask what better right can the people have to a coun-
try than the right of inheritance and immemorial peaceable possession?
We know it is said of late by the State of Georgia, and by the Executive
of the United States, that we have forfeited this rightbut we think this
is said gratuitously. At what time have we made the forfeit? What great
crime have we committed, whereby we must forever be divested of our
country?
z
Was it when we were hostile to the United States, and took part
with the King of Great Britain, during the struggle for independence? If
so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the rst treaty of peace between
what the current state is of the relations of the Union with all of the Indian tribes, see the
report made by Mr. Cass, Secretary of War, 29 November 1823.
27. 19 November 1829. This piece is translated word for word.
z. In the manuscript: . . . of our country and rights?
the United States and our beloved men? Why was not such an article as
the following inserted in the treaty: The United States give peace to the
Cherokees, but, for the part they took in the late war, declare them to be
but tenants at will, to be removed when the convenience of the States,
within whose chartered limits they live, shall require it? That was the
proper time to assume such a possession. But it was not thought of, nor
would our forefathers have agreed to any treaty whose tendency was to
deprive them of their rights and their country.
Such is the language of the Indians; what they say is true; what they
foresee seems inevitable to me.
From whatever side you envisage the destiny of the natives of North
America, you see only irremediable evils. If they remain savage, they are
pushed ahead and kept on the move; if they want to become civilized, con-
tact with men more civilized than they delivers them to oppression and
misery. If they continue to wander from wilderness to wilderness, they per-
ish; if they undertake to settle down, they still perish. They can become
enlightened only with the aid of Europeans, and the approach of Euro-
peans depraves them and pushes them back toward barbarism. As long as
you leave themin their empty wilderness, they refuse tochange their mores,
and when they are nally forced to want to change them, there is no more
time to do so.
The Spanish unleash their dogs on the Indians as on wild beasts; they
pillage the New World like a city taken by assault, without discrimination
and without pity; but you cannot destroy everything, fury has an end. The
rest of the Indian populations that escaped the massacres ended up min-
gling with their conquerors and adopting their religion and their mores
[{the Indians today share the rights of those who conquered them and one
day perhaps will rule over them}].
28
The conduct of the Americans of the United States toward the natives
radiates, in contrast, the purest love of forms and of legality. Provided that
the Indians remain in the savage state, the Americans do not in any way
28. But the Spanish must not be honored for this result. If the Indiantribes hadnot already
been settled on the soil by agriculture at the moment of the arrival of the Europeans, they
would have undoubtedly been destroyed in South America as in North America.
get involved in their affairs and they treat them as independent peoples;
they do not allow themselves to occupy their lands without having duly
acquired them by means of a contract; and if by chance an Indian nation
is no longer able to live in its territory, the Americans take it fraternally by
the hand and lead it themselves to die outside of the country of its fathers.
The Spanish, with the help of monstrous crimes without precedents,
while covering themselves with an indelible shame [{that will live as long
as their name}], were not able to succeed in exterminating the Indian race,
nor even in preventing it from sharing their rights;
a
the Americans of the
United States have achieved this double result with a marvelous ease,
calmly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, without violat-
ing a single one of the great principles of morality
29
inthe eyes of the world.
You cannot destroy men while better respecting the laws of humanity.
[{This world is, it must be admitted, a sad and ridiculous theater.}]
a. Several of these ideas already appear in a letter from Tocqueville to his mother,
dated 25 December 1831, fromMississippi (YTC, BIa1, reproduced inOCB, VII, pp. 99
106). In a travel note after this letter, and dated 3 January 1832, Tocqueville remarks:
Why of all the European races of the New World is the English race the one that
has most preserved the purity of its blood and has least mingled with the native races?
Apart from powerful reasons drawn from national character, from temperament, a
particular cause of difference exists. Spanish America was peopled by adventurers
attracted by thirst for gold, and who, transplanted alone on the other side of the
Atlantic, found themselves forced in a way to contract unions with the women of the
countries they inhabited. The English colonies were peopled by men who ed their
country out of religious passion, or whose goal, by coming to the New World, was
to live there by cultivating the land. They came with women and children and were
able at once to form a complete society (pocket notebook 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage,
OC, V, 1, p. 192).
29. See among others the report made by Mr. Bell in the name of the Committee of Indian
Affairs, 24 February 1830, in which it is established, p. 5, by very logical reasons, and where
it is proved very learnedly that: The fundamental principle, that the Indians had no right
by virtue of their ancient possession either of soil, or sovereignty, has never been abandoned
expressly or by implication. That is to say that the Indians, by virtue of their ancient pos-
session, have acquired no right of either property or sovereignty, fundamental principle
that has never been abandoned, either expressly or tacitly.
While reading this report, written moreover by a skillful hand, you are astonished by the
facility and ease with which, from the rst words, the author gets rid of arguments founded
on natural right and reason, that he calls abstract and theoretical principles. The more I
Position That the Black Race Occupies in
the United States;
30
Dangers to Which
Its Presence Exposes the Whites
c
consider it, the more I think that the only difference that exists between the civilized man and
the one who is not, in relation to justice, is this: the one contests in the judicial systemthe rights
that the other is content to violate.
30. Before treating this matter, I owe the reader a warning. In a book that I spoke about
already at the beginning of this work, and that is now on the verge of appearing, M. Gustave
de Beaumont, my traveling companion, had as his principal object to make the position of
Negroes amid the white population of the United States known in France. M. de Beaumont
has thoroughly treated a question that my subject has only allowed me to touch upon. His
book, whose notes contain a very great number of very precious and entirely unknown leg-
islative and historical documents, also presents scenes whose energy can be equaled only by the
truth. The work of M. de Beaumont should be read by those who want to understand to what
excesses of tyranny men are pushed little by little once they have begun to go beyond nature
and humanity.
b
b. This note does not exist in the manuscript.
c. To ask about Blacks.
1. Black population, slave and emancipated in the United States (illegible word).
2. Is it true that the laws of the Carolinas and Georgia forbid teaching slaves to
read and write? Gazette of December.
(1) How do these laws set about to prohibit the (illegible word)?
(2) What does the President want for [the (ed.)] bank, to destroy it or to replace
it?
(3) What did he do against the federal courts. (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 86).
The Quaker Collection of the library of Haverford College in Pennsylvania preserves
three pages of questions in English concerning the colored population. A note from
the last page attributes these questions to Tocqueville, but the writing is that of Gustave
de Beaumont. The questions bear upon the separation of Blacks and whites in the
schools, hospitals, churches and other public places, on the intellectual equality of the
two races, on the possibility of a gradual abolition, and on the danger of a race war.
Beaumont is concerned as well about the differences between the law and its execution:
In a government founded upon the will of the people, the public opinion secures the
impartial execution of the law?How is it possible that the law is impartially executed
in reference to black people when the public opinion concerning such people is not
impartial itself? It has not been possible to identify the person to whom this inquiry is
addressed. It probably concerns one of the persons that Tocqueville and Beaumont met
in Pennsylvania (see George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 782
86). With the kind permission of Haverford College, Pennsylvania (Quaker Collection,
E. W. Smith, no. 95).
Why it is more difcult to abolish slavery and to make its mark
disappear among modern peoples than among ancient peoples.
In the United States, prejudice of whites against Blacks seems to
become stronger as slavery is destroyed.Situation of Negroes in
the states of the North and the South.Why the Americans
abolish slavery.Servitude, which brutalizes the slave,
impoverishes the master.Differences that you notice between
the right bank and the left bank of the Ohio.To what they
must be attributed.The Black race moves back toward the
South as slavery does.How this is explained.Difculties that
the states of the South have in abolishing slavery.Dangers for
the future.Preoccupation of minds.Founding of a Black
colony in Africa.Why the Americans of the South increase the
rigors of slavery, at the same time that they are growing
disgusted with it.
The Indians will die inisolationas they lived; but the destiny of the Negroes
is in a way intertwined with that of the Europeans. Although the two races
are bound to each other, they do not blend together. It is as difcult for
them to separate completely as to unite.
The most formidable of all the evils that threaten the future of the
United States arises from the presence of Blacks on their soil. When you
seek the cause of the present troubles and future dangers of the Union, you
almost always end up at this rst fact, from no matter where you start.
Men generally need to make great and constant efforts to create lasting
evils; but there is one evil that enters into the world furtively. At rst, you
barely notice it amid the usual abuses of power; it begins with anindividual
whose name is not preserved by history; it is deposited like an accursedseed
at some point in the soil; it then feeds on itself, spreads effortlessly, and
grows naturally with the society that received it. This evil is slavery.
Christianity haddestroyedservitude; the Christians of the sixteenthcen-
tury reestablished it; but they never allowed it in their social system other
than as an exception, and they took care to restrict it to a single one of the
human races. They therefore gave humanity a wound not as extensive, but
innitely more difcult to heal.
d
Two things must be carefully distinguished: slavery in itself and its
consequences.
The immediate evils produced by slavery were nearly the same among
ancient peoples as they are among modern peoples, but the consequences
of these evils were different. Among the ancients the slave belonged to the
same race as his master, and often he was superior to him in education and
in enlightenment.
31
Liberty alone separated them; once liberty was granted,
they easily blended.
So the ancients had a very simple means to rid themselves of slavery and
its consequences; this means was emancipation, and as soon as they used it
in a general way, they succeeded.
f
d. Europeans by destroying millions of Indians in the New World inicted a hor-
rible, but temporary evil on humanity. Slavery [v: the presence of Blacks] is an evil that
feeds on itself [v: perpetuates itself with the generations], that is constantly reborn, and
that can only cease by evils greater than itself (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 93).
31. We know that several of the most celebrated authors of antiquity were or had been
slaves: Aesop and Terence are among this number. Slaves were not always taken fromamong
barbarian nations; war put very civilized men into servitude.
e
e. In the work of Thomas Clarkson An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the
Human Species (London: J. Phillips, 1788, pp. 1316), you nd reections very similar to
those of Tocqueville on the difference between modern and ancient slavery; the author
likewise cites Aesop and Terence as examples of civilized slaves. Beaumont possessed a
French edition of this book in his library (Cf. Marie, I, pp. 296301), as well as the
following works on slavery: Brissot de Warville, Examen critique des Voyages dans
lAme rique septentrionale de M. le marquis de Chastellux; Marquis de Condorcet, Re ex-
ions sur lesclavage des Noirs; Thomas Clarkson, Essai sur les de savantages de la traite; Ben-
jaminS. Frossard, La cause des esclaves ne`gres et des habitants de laGuine e, porte e autribunal
de la justice, de la religion, de la politique; Daniel Lescallier, Re exions sur le sort des noirs
dans nos colonies; Theophile Mandar, Discours sur le commerce et lesclavage des ne`gres (this
information is contained in the thesis of Alvis Lee Tinnin, Gustave de Beaumont, Prophet
of the American Dilemma, New Haven, Yale University, 1961).
f. When it is said that slavery is disappearing, it has disappeared in effect. Nothing
like that. Prejudices that remain. Law of New England. As slavery withdraws, whites
fear blending more, become scornful. Small number of mulattos. School, churchand
industry [separate(?) (ed.)]. The laws less harsh, hatreds more so. Slavery was cruel.
You can make slavery end, but not the prejudices that it gave birth to; you can make
the Negro cease to be a slave, but not make himbecome the equal of the white (YTC,
CVh, 2, pp. 9596).
Not that the marks of servitude in antiquity did not still continue to
exist for some time after servitude was destroyed. [{Real inequality was fol-
lowed by social inequality.}]
There is a natural prejudice that leads man to scorn the one who has
been his inferior, long after he has become his equal; real inequality pro-
duced by fortune or law is always followed by an imaginary inequality that
has its roots in mores; but among the ancients this secondary effect of slav-
ery came to an end. The emancipated man so strongly resembled the men
who were born free that it soon became impossible to distinguish himfrom
them.
What was more difcult among the ancients was to change the law; what
is more difcult among modern peoples is to change mores, and for us the
real difculty begins where in antiquity it ended.
This happens because among modern peoples the non-material and
transitory fact of slavery is combined inthe most fatal way withthe material
and permanent fact of the difference of race. The memory of slavery dis-
honors the race, and race perpetuates the memory of slavery.
There is not an African who came freely to the shores of the NewWorld;
from that it follows that all those who are found there today are slaves or
emancipated. Thus the Negro, together with life, transmits to all of his
descendants the external sign of his shame. Law can destroy servitude; but
only God alone can make its mark disappear.
g
The modern slave differs from the master not only in liberty, but also in
origin. You can make the Negro free, but he remains in the position of a
stranger vis-a`-vis the European.
That is still not all. In this man who is born in lowliness, in this stranger
that slavery introduced among us, we scarcely acknowledge the general fea-
tures of humanity. His face appears hideous to us, his intelligence seems
limited to us, his tastes are base; we very nearly take himfor anintermediate
being between brute and man.
32
g. When you see the difculty of destroying the inequality in the laws, you under-
stand what is impracticable about destroying the one in nature (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 90).
32. For whites to abandon the opinion that they have conceived of the intellectual and
moral inferiority of their former slaves, it would be necessary for Negroes to change, and they
cannot change as long as this opinion persists.
So after abolishing slavery, modern peoples still have to destroy three
prejudices much more elusive and more tenacious than slavery: the prej-
udice of the master, the prejudice of race, and nally the prejudice of the
white.
It is very difcult for us, who have had the good fortune to be born
among men whom nature made our fellows and the law our equals; it is
very difcult for us, I say, to understand what insurmountable distance
separates the Negro of America from the European. But we can have a
remote idea of it by reasoning by analogy.
h
We formerly saw among us great inequalities whose principles were only
in legislation. What more ctitious than a purely legal inequality! What
more contrary to the instinct of man than permanent differences estab-
lished among men clearly similar! These differences have continuedtoexist
for centuries however; they still continue to exist in a thousand places; ev-
erywhere they have left imaginary marks that time can scarcely erase. If the
inequality created solely by laws is so difcult to uproot, how to destroy
the one that seems to have its immutable foundations in nature itself?
m
As for me, whenI consider what difculty aristocratic bodies of whatever
nature have merging with the mass of the people, and the extreme care that
they take to preserve for centuries the imaginary barriers that separatethem,
I despair of seeing an aristocracy founded on visible and imperishable signs
disappear.
n
h. In the margin: I regard the mixing of races as the greatest misfortune of
humanity.
m. Among the Americans slavery seemed contrary neither to religion nor to the
interest of the State; what was more difcult was to establish it in the laws (YTC, CVh,
3, pp. 23).
n. In the margin:
Thus in America prejudice seems to grow stronger as slavery withdraws. The dif-
ference becomes marked in the mores as it fades away in the laws. In several countries
of Europe different peoples found themselves together. They took centuries toblend;
but they were similar on all points. The Moors who hardly differed from the Spanish
could not manage to mingle with them. If the various offshoots of the same human
family have so much difculty mingling and blending, how to admit that two radi-
cally different races will ever manage to do so? If a slight difference in the nature of
features was found to be a nearly insurmountable obstacle, what will it be when you
nd a difference so great that what appears beautiful to one seems the height of ug-
liness to the other?
So those who hope that one day the Europeans will blend with the Ne-
groes seem to me to entertain a chimera. My reason does not lead me to
believe it, and I see nothing in the facts that indicate it.
Until now, wherever whites have been the most powerful, they have held
Negroes in degradation or in slavery. Wherever Negroes have been the
strongest, they have destroyed whites; it is the only accounting that might
ever be possible between the two races.
If I consider the United States of our day, I see clearly that in a certain
part of the country the legal barrier that separates the two races is tending
to fall, but not that of mores. I see slavery receding; the prejudice to which
it gave birth is immovable.
In the part of the Union where Negroes are no longer slaves, have they
drawn nearer to whites? Every man who has lived in the United States will
have noted that an opposite effect has been produced. [{In no part of the
Union are the two races as separated as in New [England (ed.)] [v: the
North].}]
Racial prejudice seems to me stronger in the states that have abol-
ished slavery than in those where slavery still exists, and nowhere does it
appear as intolerant as in the states where servitude has always been
unknown.
[f ] o
o. These alphabetical notes appear in the manuscript, but not the text of the notes,
which is found, however, in one of the drafts:
(a) Among the states where slavery is abolished, Massachusetts is the only one I
know that has prohibited the legitimate union of the two races. See Laws of Massa-
chusetts, vol. I, p. [blank (ed.)].
(b) Among the states that have abolished slavery or did not allow it, the states of
Delaware, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are the only ones I know that have excluded
Negroes from electoral rights. In the others the lawis silent about it andconsequently
allows it. In the constitution of the state of New York, amended in 1821, Negroes
can vote, but particular property qualications are required of them, which makes
the permission of the law illusory.
(c) In most of the states where slavery is abolished, the law does not make any
color distinction while establishing the qualication for the jury. But as it leaves an
arbitrary power to the ofcials charged with drawing up the list, care is taken never
to put the name of a Black on it.
(d) While I was in New York a French (illegible word) [Creole (?) (ed.)] from the
Antilles, coming to the theater, {was taken for a mulatto and refused} was resisted in
It is true that in the North of the Union the law allows Negroes and
whites to contract legitimate unions;
[a]
but opinion declares vile the white
who joins in marriage with a Negro woman; and it would be difcult to
cite an example of such a deed.
In nearly all the states where slavery is abolished, the Negro has been
given electoral rights;
[b]
but if he presents himself to vote, he risks his life.
p
Oppressed, he can make a complaint, but he nds only whites among his
judges. The law opens the jurors seat to him,
[c]
but prejudice pushes him
away from it. His son is excluded from the school where the descendant of
the European goes to be instructed. In the theaters he cannot, even at the
price of gold, buy the right to sit next to the one who was his master;
[d]
in
the hospitals he lies apart. The Black is allowed to beseech the same God
as the whites, but not to pray to him at the same altar. He has his priests
his entry to the boxes of the dress circle for which he had purchased the right at the
door. He did not understand English; a violent quarrel ensued that nearly had un-
fortunate consequences; with his swarthy tint it was assumed that he could indeed
be a mulatto.
(e) It is right to note that in general Negroes are mingled with whites in Catholic
churches. Protestantismestablishes in the religious order the government of the mid-
dle classes, and the haughtiness of the middle classes toward the people is known.
(f ) Not only does Ohio not allowslavery, but it prohibits the entry intoits territory
of free Negroes and forbids them to acquire anything there.
(g) The gradual abolition of slavery was declared in Pennsylvania in 1780. In Mas-
sachusetts this abolition goes back to the very period of the constitution in 1779;
Connecticut began to abolish slavery in 1784. The state of New York in 1799. Kents
Commentaries, vol. II, p. 201 (YTC, CVh, 2, pp. 7677).
Note g belongs to the following paragraph, in the margin in the manuscript: Slavery
today is abolished in {two-thirds} of the Union (here a note on the precise number of
states where slavery does not exist. I believe that the number does not exceed twelve, but
these are the most important). There are portions of the territory where it has been
destroyed for nearly a half century,
g
others that never allowed it in their midst.
Beaumont described the incident of the Creole twice, with many details (Marie, I,
p. v, note and pp. 19397).
p. Draft, under a paper pasted into place: . . . life. The law made them the equals
of whites. In public places they can take a place next to whites, but if they try to do so,
people ee their approach. The same hospitals are opentothem, but they occupyseparate
places. Even in the prisons care is taken not to mingle the two races and it seems to be
believed that to force a murderer to breathe the same air as a Negro is to degrade him
more. His sons . . .
and his churches.
[e]
The gates of heaven are not closed to him: but in-
equality scarcely stops at the edge of the other world. When the Negro is
no more, his bones are thrown aside, and the difference in conditions is
found again even in the equality of death.
Thus the Negro is free, but he is not able to share either the rights or the
pleasures or the labors or the pains or even the tomb of the one whose equal
he has been declared to be; he cannot meet him anywhere, either in life or
in death.
[{What miserable mockery this is.}]
In the South where slavery still exists, Negroes are less carefully kept
aside; they sometimes share the labors of whites and their pleasures; to a
certainpoint they are permittedto mix withthem. Legislationis moreharsh
in their regard; habits are more tolerant and milder.
In the South the master is not afraid to raise his slave up to his level,
because he knows that if he wishes he will always be able to throwhimback
into the dust. In the North the white no longer distinctly sees the barrier
that should separate him from a degraded race, and he withdraws with all
the more care from the Negro because he fears that someday he will merge
with him.
With the American of the South, nature sometimes reasserts its rights
and for a moment reestablishes equality between Blacks and whites. In the
North pride silences even the most imperious passion of man. The Amer-
ican of the North would perhaps consent to make the Negro woman the
temporary companion of his pleasures if the legislators had declared that
she must not aspire to share his bed; but she is able to become his wife, and
he withdraws from her with a kind of horror.
This is how in the United States the prejudice that pushes Negroes away
seems to increase proportionately as Negroes cease to be slaves, and how
inequality becomes imprinted in the mores as it fades in the laws.
But if the relative positionof the two races that inhabit the UnitedStates
is as I have just shown, why have the Americans abolished slavery in the
north of the Union, why do they keep it in the south, and what causes
them to aggravate its rigors there?
It is easy to answer. Slavery is being destroyed in the United States not
in the interest of the Negroes, but in that of the whites.
[America has given great truths to the world, but it has as well provided
the world with the demonstration of an admirable truth. Christianity had
condemned slavery as odious, the experience of the United States proves it
deadly.]
The rst Negroes were imported into Virginia about the year 1621.
33
So
in America, as in all the rest of the world, servitude was born in the South.
From there it gained ground step by step; but as slavery moved up toward
the North the number of slaves kept decreasing;
34
there were always very
few slaves in New England.
q
The colonies were founded; a century had already passed, and an ex-
traordinary fact began to strike everyones attention. The provinces that
possessed no slaves so to speak grew in population, in wealth, and in well-
being more rapidly than those that had them.
In the rst, however, the inhabitant was forced to cultivate the soil him-
self or to hire the services of another man; in the second, he found at his
disposal workers whose efforts were not paid. So there was work and ex-
pense on one side, leisure and economy on the other. But the advantage
remained with the rst.
This result seemed all the more difcult to explain because the emi-
grants, all belonging to the same European race, had the same habits, the
33. See History of Virginia by Beverley. See also, in the Memoires de Jefferson, curious
details about the introduction of Negroes into Virginia and about the rst act that prohibited
their importation in 1778.
34. The number of slaves was smaller in the North, but the advantages resulting from
slavery were not disputed more there than in the South. In 1740, the legislature of the state
of New York declares that the direct importation of slaves must be encouraged as much as
possible, and that smuggling must be severely punished as tending to discourage the honest
merchant (Kents Commentaries, vol. II, p. 206). You nd in the historical Collection of
Massachusetts, vol. IV, p. 193, the curious research of Belknap on slavery in New England.
The result is that, as early as 1630, Negroes were introduced, but that from that moment
legislation and mores showed themselves opposed to slavery.
Also see in this place the way in which public opinion, then the law, managed to destroy
servitude.
q. Slavery which begins in the south and spreads to the north, abolition of slavery
which begins in the north and spreads to the south (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 51).
same civilization, the same laws, and differed only in slightly perceptible
nuances.
Time continued to march. Leaving the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, the
Anglo-Americans [{Europeans}] plunged every day further into the unin-
habitedareas of the West; there they encounterednewterrains andclimates;
they had to conquer obstacles of different kinds; their races mingled, men
of the South went toward the North, men of the North descended toward
the South. Among all these causes, the same fact was reproduced at each
step; and in general the colony in which there were no slaves became more
populated and more prosperous than the one in which slavery was in force.
So as things advanced you began to see that slavery, so cruel to the slave,
was deadly to the master.
But this truth was conclusively proved on the banks of the Ohio.
The river that the Indians had named the Ohio, or the Beautiful River
par excellence, waters one of the most magnicent valleys that man has
ever made his dwelling-place. Rolling terrain extends on the two banks of
the Ohio where the soil offers inexhaustible treasures to the plowmanevery
day; on the two banks the air is equally healthy and the climate temperate;
each one of them forms the extreme boundary of a vast state. On the left
the state that follows the thousand curves made by the Ohio in its course
is called Kentucky; the other borrowed the name of the river itself. The
two states differ only on one single point: Kentucky allowedslaves, the state
of Ohio cast all of them out.
35
So the traveler who, placed in the middle of the Ohio, allows himself
to be carried along by the current until the river ows into the Mississippi
navigates, so to speak, between liberty and servitude; and he has only to
glance around him to judge in an instant which one is most favorable to
humanity.
On the left bank of the river, the population is scattered; from time to
time you see a gang of slaves with a carefree air crossing elds half de-
serted; the primeval forest constantly reappears; youwouldsay that society
35. Ohio not only does not allow slavery, but it prohibits the entry of free Negroes into its
territory and forbids them to acquire anything there. See the statutes of Ohio.
is asleep; man seems idle; it is nature that offers the image of activity and
life.
From the right bank arises, in contrast, a confused murmur that pro-
claims fromafar the presence of industry; richcrops cover the elds; elegant
dwellings announce the taste and the attentions of the plowman; on all
sides comfort is revealed; man seems rich and content: he is working.
36
The state of Kentucky was founded in 1775; the state of Ohio was
founded only twelve years later:
r
twelve years in America is more than a
half-century in Europe. Today the population of Ohio already exceeds that
of Kentucky by 250,000 inhabitants.
37
These diverse effects of slavery and of liberty are easily understood; they
are sufcient to explain clearly the differences that are found between an-
cient civilization and that of today.
On the left bank of the Ohio work merges with the idea of slavery; on
the right bank, with that of well-being and progress; there it is debased,
here it is honored. On the left bank of the river you cannot nd workers
belonging to the white race; they would be afraid of resembling slaves; you
must rely on the efforts of Negroes. On the right bank you would look in
vain for someone idle; the white extends his activity and his intelligence to
all undertakings.
Thus the men who in Kentucky are charged with exploiting the natural
riches of the soil have neither enthusiasm nor enlightenment; while those
who could have these two things do nothing or go into Ohio in order to
make use of their industry and to be able to exercise it without shame.
It is true that in Kentucky masters make slaves work without being
36. It is not only the individual man who is active in Ohio; the state itself undertakes
immense enterprises; between Lake Erie and the Ohio the state of Ohio has establishedacanal
by means of which the Mississippi Valley communicates with the River of the North. Thanks
to this canal the merchandise of Europe that arrives in New York can descend by water as
far as New Orleans, across more than ve hundred leagues of the continent.
r. In the margin: Ohio began to be inhabited 1787. Kentucky 1775. Daniel Boone.
Notebook E contains several notes on Ohio and Kentucky (YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC,
V, 1).
37. Exact gure according to the census of 1830:
Kentucky, 688, 844.
Ohio, 937, 679.
obliged to pay them, but they gain little benet from their efforts, while
the money that they would have given to free laborers would have been
repaid with great interest by the value of their work.
s
The free worker is paid, but he works faster than the slave, and rapidity
of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his
help, but you buy it only when it is useful; the Black has nothing to claim
as the price for his services, but you are obliged to feed him all the time; he
must be sustained in his old age as in his mature years, in his unproductive
childhood as during the fruitful years of his youth, during illness as in
health. It is therefore only by paying that you obtain the work of these two
men: the free worker receives a salary; the slave, an education, food, care,
clothing. The money that the master spends for the maintenance of the
slave melts away little by little and on small particulars; you hardly notice
it. The salary that you give to the worker is given all at once, and it seems
to enrich only the one who receives it; but in reality the slave has cost more
than the free man, and his efforts have been less productive.
38
The inuence of slavery extends still further; it penetrates even into the
very soul of the master, and gives his ideas and his tastes a particular
direction.
On the two banks of the Ohio nature has given man an enterprising
and energetic character; but on each side of the river he makes a different
use of this common quality.
s. The paragraph that follows is not in the manuscript.
38. Apart from these causes, which make the labor of free workers, wherever they abound,
more productive and more economical than that of slaves, another one must be pointed out
that is particular to the United States. Over the whole surface of the Unionthe way to cultivate
sugar cane successfully has not yet been found except on the banks of the Mississippi, near the
mouth of this river, on the Gulf of Mexico. In Louisiana the cultivation of sugar cane is
extremely advantageous; nowhere does the farmer gain such a great value fromhis efforts; and
since a certain relationship is always established between the costs of production and the prod-
ucts, the price of slaves is very high in Louisiana. Now since Louisiana is one of the confed-
erated states, slaves can be transported there from all parts of the Union; so the price given for
a slave in New Orleans raises the price of slaves in all the other markets. The result of this is
that, in countries where the land returns little, the cost of cultivation by slaves continues to
be very considerable, which gives a great advantage to the competition of free workers.
The white of the right bank, obliged to live by his own efforts, made
material well-being the principal goal of his existence; andsince thecountry
that he inhabits presents inexhaustible resources to his industry, and offers
constantly recurring lures to his activity, his ardor to acquire has surpassed
the ordinary limits of humancupidity. Yousee him, tormentedbythedesire
for wealth, go boldly down all the paths that fortune opens to him; he be-
comes indiscriminately seaman, pioneer, manufacturer, farmer, bearing
with an equal constancy the work or the dangers attached to these different
professions. There is something marvelous in the resources of his genius,
and a sort of heroism in his greediness for gain.
The American of the left bank scorns not only work, but all the enter-
prises that work brings to success; living in idle comfort, he has the tastes
of idle men; money has lost a part of its value inhis eyes; he pursues fortune
less than excitement and pleasure, and he expends to these ends the energy
that his neighbor deploys elsewhere; he passionately loves the hunt andwar;
he takes pleasure in the most violent exercises of the body; the use of arms
is familiar to him, and from his childhood he has learned to risk his life in
single combat. So slavery not only prevents whites from making a fortune,
it turns them away from wanting to do so.
The same causes, operating continuously for two centuries in opposite
directions inthe Englishcolonies of NorthAmerica, have endedbycreating
a prodigious difference between the commercial capacity of the Southerner
and that of the Northerner. Today only the North has ships, factories, rail-
roads and canals.
This difference is noticeable not only in comparing the North and the
South, but in comparing the inhabitants of the South among themselves.
Nearly all the men in the southernmost states of the Union who devote
themselves to commercial enterprises and seek to utilize slavery have
come from the North; each day the men of the North spread into this
part of the American territory where there is less competition for them
to fear; there they discover resources that the inhabitants did not notice,
and submitting to a system that they disapprove of, they succeed in turn-
ing it to better account than those who, having established the system,
still uphold it.
If I wanted to push the parallel further, I would easily prove that nearly
all the differences that are noticeable between the character of the Ameri-
cans in the South and the North are born out of slavery; but this would go
beyond my subject. I am trying at this moment to nd out not what all the
effects of servitude are, but what effects servitude produces on the material
prosperity of those who have accepted it.
[What I limit myself to saying at this moment is this. The Americans
are, of all modern peoples, those who have pushed equality and inequality
furthest among men. They have combineduniversal suffrage andservitude.
They seem to have wanted to prove in this way the advantages of equality
by opposite arguments. It is claimed that the Americans, by establishing
universal suffrage and the dogma of sovereignty [of the people], have made
clear to the world the advantages of equality. As for me, I think that they
have above all proved this by establishing servitude, and I nd that they
establish the advantages of equality much less by democracy than by
slavery.]
This inuence of slavery on the production of wealth couldonly be very
imperfectly known by antiquity. Servitude existed then in all the civilized
world, and the peoples who did not know it were barbarians.
So Christianity destroyed slavery only by asserting the rights of slaves;
today you can attack it in the name of the master. On this point interest
and morality are in agreement.
t
t. Tocqueville bases the greatest part of his argument against slaveryonconsiderations
of an economic type. Beaumont does as much in Marie (I, pp. 13335, 303304). Certain
critics have not failed to blame Tocqueville for having nearly abandoned philosophical
and religious arguments. The reason for this omission seems to be a tactical choice rather
than lack of awareness. Not only hadTocqueville heardit assertedright fromthe mouths
of several Americans that slavery would disappear because it was not protable, but he
was also aware that the discussion on slavery had henceforth left the religious and moral
realm to take place principally on economic grounds. Even a partisan of slavery like
Achille Murat had not hesitated to write that slavery would disappear when free labor
is cheaper than the labor of slaves (Achille Murat, Esquisse morale et politique des E
tats-
Unis, Paris: Crochard Libraire, 1832, p. 110). It is not impossible that Tocqueville had
read this book. Alphabetic notebook A (small notebook A, YTC, BIIa) contains the
following note (omitted in Voyage, OC, V, 1): Authors who have written on the United
States. Letters on the United States by Achille Murat, son of the ex-king of Naples,
Bossage, 1830. The partisans of abolition used arguments of an economic type as well.
As these truths manifested themselves in the United States, yousawslav-
ery retreat little by little before the light of experience.
Servitude had begun in the South and afterward spread toward the
North; today it is withdrawing. Liberty, starting in the North, is moving
without stopping toward the South. Among the large states Pennsylvania
today forms the extreme limit of slavery to the North, but evenwithinthese
limits it is shaken; Maryland, which is immediately belowPennsylvania, is
preparing daily to do without it, andVirginia, whichcomes after Maryland,
is already debating its utility and its dangers.
39
You can cite in particular, based on Beaumonts library, one of the rst modern anti-
slavery works, the book of BenjaminS. Frossard, La cause des esclaves ne `gres et des habitants
de la Guine e porte e au tribunal de la justice, de la religion, de la politique . . . (Lyon: Aime
de la Roche, 1789, 2 vol.), and Thomas Hamilton (Men and Manners in America, Phila-
delphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1833, pp. 31722), which Beaumont cites in his book,
and who also uses arguments of this type.
The French Society for the Abolitionof Slavery, to whichBeaumont andTocqueville
belonged, proclaimedin1837: Abolitionof slavery cannolonger inany civilizedcountry
give rise to a discussion of principles: the only question with which enlightened minds
have to be concerned today is that of the means by which this abolition could be realized
without disruption in the colonies. Revue des deux mondes, X, 4th series, 1837, p. 418
(see the speech of Tocqueville on the English experience, reproduced on page 422).
See on this subject Sally Gersham, Alexis de Tocqueville and Slavery, French His-
torical Studies 9, no. 3 (1976): 46783; Richard Resh, Alexis de Tocqueville and the
Negro. Democracy in America Reconsidered, Journal of Negro History 48, no. 4 (1963):
25160; Gerald M. Bonetto, Tocqueville and American Slavery, Canadian Review of
American Studies 15, no. 2 (1984): 12939; Harvey Mitchell, America After Tocqueville
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and August H. Nimitz, Jr., Marx,
Tocqueville and Race in America (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 139.
39. There is a particular reason that is nally detaching the two last states that I have just
named from the cause of slavery.
The former wealth of this part of the Union was founded principally on the cultivation
of tobacco. Slaves were particularly appropriate to this cultivation. Now, it happens that for
quite a few years tobacco has been losing its market value; the value of the slaves, however,
remains always the same. Thus the relationship between the costs of production and the prod-
ucts is changed. So the inhabitants of Maryland and of Virginia feel more disposed than they
were thirty years ago either to do without slaves in the cultivation of tobacco, or to abandon
the cultivation of tobacco and slavery at the same time.
No great change in human institutions takes place without discovering,
among the causes of this change, the inheritance law.
When unequal division ruled in the South, each family was represented
by a rich man who did not feel the need any more than he had the taste for
work; the members of his family that the law had excluded from the com-
mon inheritance lived around himin the same manner, as so many parasitic
plants; you then saw in all the families of the South what you still see today
in the noble families of certain countries of Europe, where the younger
sons, without having the same wealth as the eldest son, remain as idle as
he. This similar effect was produced in America and in Europe by entirely
analogous causes. Inthe Southof the UnitedStates the entire race of whites
formed an aristocratic body at the head of which stood a certain number
of privileged individuals whose wealth was permanent and whose leisure
was inherited.
u
These leaders of the American nobility perpetuatedthe tra-
ditional prejudices of the white race in the body that they represented, and
maintained the honorable character of idleness. Withinthis aristocracyyou
could nd poor men, but not workers; poverty there seemed preferable to
industry; so Black workers and slaves encountered no competitors, and
whatever opinion you might have about the utility of their efforts you very
much had to use them, since they were the only ones available.
Fromthe moment whenthe lawof inheritance was abolishedall fortunes
began to diminish simultaneously, all families movedinthe same waycloser
to the state in which work becomes necessary to existence; many among
them entirely disappeared; all foresaw the moment when it would be nec-
essary for each man to provide for his needs by himself. Today you still see
the rich, but they no longer forma compact and hereditary body; they were
u. Many of Tocquevilles ideas on the South of the United States come from con-
versations that he had during the months of September and October 1831 with Brown,
John Quincy Adams and Latrobe (non-alphabetic notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 87152). At the beginning of November Tocqueville was so con-
vinced of the existence of an aristocratic spirit in the South that, when he met Charles
Carroll, he immediately sawin his manners and his way of life the proof of the existence
of the southern aristocracy that he had been told had already nearly disappeared.
not able to adopt a spirit, to persevere there, and to make it penetrate into
all ranks. So the prejudice that condemned work began to be abandoned
by common accord; there were more poor, and the poor were able without
being ashamed to concern themselves with the means of gaining their live-
lihood. Thus one of the most immediate effects of equal division was to
create a class of free workers. From the moment when the free worker en-
teredinto competitionwiththe slave, the inferiority of the latter madeitself
felt, and slavery was attacked in its very essence, which is the interest of the
master.
As slavery retreats, the Black race follows it in its backward march, and
returns with it toward the tropics from where it originally came.
This can seem extraordinary at rst glance; we will soon understand it.
By abolishing the principle of servitude, the Americans do not free the
slaves.
Perhaps what is about to follow would be difcult to understand if I did
not cite an example. I will choose that of the state of New York. In 1788,
the state of New York prohibits the sale of slaves within it. This was a
roundabout way of prohibiting importation. Fromthat moment the num-
ber of Negroes no longer grows except by the natural increase of the Black
population. Eight years later a more decisive measure is taken, and it is
declared that from July 4, 1799 onward, all children born of slave parents
will be free. All means of increase are then closed; there are still slaves, but
you can say that servitude no longer exists.
From the period when a state of the North also prohibits the importa-
tion of slaves, Blacks are no longer removed from the South to be trans-
ported to that state.
Fromthe moment when a state of the North forbids the sale of Negroes,
the slave, no longer able to leave the hands of the one who owns him,
becomes a burdensome property, and there is an interest in transporting
him to the South.
The day when a state of the North declares that the son of a slave will
be born free, the slave loses a great part of his market value; for his posterity
can no longer be part of the market, and again there is a great interest in
transporting him to the South.
Thus the same law prevents slaves from the South from coming to the
North and pushes those of the North toward the South.
But here is another cause more powerful than all those that I have just
discussed.
As the number of slaves diminishes in a state, the need for free workers
makes itself felt. As free workers take over industry, since the work of the
slave is less productive, the slave becomes a second-rate or useless property,
and again there is a great interest in exporting himto the South where com-
petition is not to be feared.
So the abolition of slavery does not bring the slave to liberty; it only
makes him change masters. From the north he passes to the south.
As for the emancipated Negroes and those who are born after slavery has
been abolished, they do not leave the North to go to the South, but they
nd themselves vis-a`-vis the Europeans in a position analogous to that of
the natives; they remain half civilized and deprived of rights amid a popu-
lation that is innitely superior to them in wealth and enlightenment; they
are exposed to the tyranny of laws
40
and to the intolerance of mores.
v
More
unfortunate from a certain perspective than the Indians, they have against
them the memories of slavery, and they cannot claim possession of a single
piece of land; many succumb to their misery;
41
others concentrate in the
cities where, undertaking the roughest work, they lead a precarious and
miserable existence.
Since the number of whites is increasing at twice the rate after the ab-
olition of slavery, Blacks would soon be as if swallowed up amid the waves
of a foreign population, even if the number of Negroes continued to grow
in the same way as in the period when they were not yet free.
40. The states where slavery is abolished ordinarily attempt to make it quite difcult for
free Negroes to stay in their territory; and since a sort of emulation among the different states
is established on this point, the unfortunate Negroes can only choose among evils.
v. Cf. Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 16165, 33338.
41. There is a great difference between the mortality of whites and that of Blacks in the
states where slavery is abolished: from 1820 to 1831, in Philadelphia only one white died out
of forty-two individuals belonging to the white race, while one Negro died there out of twenty-
one individuals belonging to the Black race. Mortality is not so great by far among Negro
slaves. (See Emmersons [Emersons (ed.)] Medical Statistics, p. 28.)
Aland cultivatedby slaves is ingeneral less populatedthanonecultivated
by free men; America is, moreover, a new country; so at the moment when
a state abolishes slavery, it is still only half full. Scarcely is servitude de-
stroyed there and the need for free workers felt, than you see a crowd of
hardy adventurers rushing in from all parts of the country; they come to
prot from the new resources which are going to open to human industry.
The land is divided among them; on each portion a family of whites settles
and takes possession of it. It is also toward the free states that European
emigration heads. What would the poor man of Europe do, coming to nd
comfort and happiness in the New World, if he went to inhabit a country
where work was stained with shame?
Thus the white population grows by its natural movement and at the
same time by an immense emigration, while the Black population does not
receive emigrants and becomes weaker. Soon the proportion that existed
between the two races is reversed. The Negroes form nothing more than
unfortunate remnants, a small, poor and wandering tribe lost in the middle
of an immense people, master of the land; and nothing more is noticed of
their presence except the injustices and the rigors to which they are
subjected.
In many of the states of the West the Negro race has never appeared; in
all the states of the North it is disappearing. So the great question of the
future is shrinking within a narrow circle; it thus becomes less formidable,
but no easier to resolve.
The further south you go, the more difcult it is to abolish slavery use-
fully. This results from several material causes that must be developed.
This rst is climate: it is certain that as Europeans approach the tropics
work becomes proportionately more difcult for them; many Americans
even claim that below a certain latitude it ends up becoming fatal to them,
while the Negro submits to it without dangers;
42
but I do not think that
42. This is true in the places where rice is cultivated. Rice plantations, whichare unhealthy
in all countries, are particularly dangerous in those that are struck by the burning sun of the
tropics. Europeans would have a great deal of difculty cultivating the land in this part of
the New World, if they wanted to insist on making it produce rice. But cant one do without
rice plantations?
this idea, so favorable to the laziness of the man of the South, is based on
experience. It is not hotter in the South of the Union than in the south of
Spain or of Italy.
43
Why would the European not be able to accomplishthe
same work there? And if slavery was abolished in Italy and inSpainwithout
having the masters perish, why wouldnt the same thing happen in the
Union? So I do not believe that nature has forbidden the European of
Georgia or of Florida, under pain of death, to draw their subsistence from
the land themselves; but this work would assuredly be more painful and
less productive for them than for the inhabitants of New England.
44
With
the free worker in the South losing in this way a part of his superiority over
the slave, it is less useful to abolish slavery.
All the plants of Europe grow in the North of the Union; the South has
special products.
It has been noted that slavery is an expensive means to cultivate cereal
crops. Whoever grows wheat in a country where servitude is unknownnor-
mally keeps in his service only a small number of workers; at harvest time
and during planting he brings together many others, it is true; but the latter
live at his place only temporarily.
To ll his warehouses or to sow his elds, the farmer who lives in a
slave state is obliged to maintain throughout the entire year a great num-
ber of servants, whom he needs only during a few days; for, unlike free
workers, slaves cannot, while working for themselves, wait for the mo-
ment when you must come to hire their labor. You must buy theminorder
to use them.
So slavery, apart from its general disadvantages, is naturally less appli-
cable to countries where cereal crops are cultivated than to those where
other products are harvested.
The cultivation of tobacco, cotton and, above all, sugar cane requires,
43. These states are closer to the Equator than Italy and Spain, but the continent of Amer-
ica is innitely colder than that of Europe.
44. Spain formerly had transported a certain number of peasants from the Azores into a
district of Louisiana called Attakapas. Slavery was not introduced among them; it was an
experiment. Today these men still cultivate the land without slaves; but their industry is so
listless that it scarcely provides for their needs.
on the contrary, constant attention. There you can employ women and
children that you could not use in the cultivation of wheat. Thus slavery
is naturally more appropriate to the country where the products that I have
just named are grown.
Tobacco, cotton, sugar cane grow only in the South; there they formthe
principal sources of the wealth of the country. By destroying slavery the
men of the South would nd themselves with these alternatives: either they
would be forced to change their systemof cultivation, and thenthey would
enter into competition with the men of the North, more active and more
experienced than they; or they would cultivate the same products without
slaves, and then they would have to bear the competition of the other states
of the South that would have retained slaves.
Thus the South has particular reasons for keeping slavery that the North
does not have.
w
But here is another motive more powerful than all the others. The South
would indeed be able, if really necessary, to abolish slavery; but howwould
the South rid itself of Blacks? In the North slavery and slaves are chased
away at the same time. In the South you cannot hope to attain this double
result at the same time.
While proving that servitude was more natural and more advantageous
in the South than in the North, I showed sufciently that the number of
slaves must be much greater there. The rst Africans were brought into the
South; that is where they have always arrived in greater number. As you go
further south, the prejudice that holds idleness in honor gains power. In
the states that are closest to the tropics there is not one white man who
works. So Negroes are naturally more numerous in the South than in the
North. Each day, as I said above, they become more numerous; for, in pro-
portionas slavery is destroyedat one endof the Union, Negroes accumulate
in the other. Thus the number of Blacks is increasing in the South, not
only by the natural movement of the population, but also by the forced
w. Cultivation by slaves is innitely less advantageous to the north than it was for-
merly for two reasons.
The rst that certain very costly products such as tobacco have fallen [in price].
The second that the price of slaves has always remained very high because of New
Orleans where they are very expensive (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 86).
emigration of the Negroes of the North. The African race, to grow in this
part of the Union, has reasons analogous to those that make the European
race increase so quickly in the North.
In the state of Maine there is one Negro for every three hundred inhab-
itants; in Massachusetts one for every one hundred; in the state of New
York two for every one hundred; in Pennsylvania three; inMarylandthirty-
four; forty-two in Virginia, and fty-ve nally in South Carolina.
45
Such
was the proportion of Blacks in relation to whites in the year 1830. But this
proportion changes constantly: every day it becomes smaller in the North
and greater in the South.
It is clear that in the southernmost states of the Union you cannot abol-
ish slavery as you have in the states of the North without running very great
dangers that the latter did not have to fear.
We have seen how the states of the North carefully handled the tran-
sitionbetweenslavery andliberty. They keepthe present generationinirons
and free future races; in this way Negroes are introduced into society only
little by little, and while the man who could make bad use of his indepen-
dence is retained in servitude, the one who can still learn the art of being
free, before becoming master of himself, is liberated.
It is difcult to apply this method to the South. When you declare that
beginning at a certain time the son of the Negro will be free, you introduce
the principle and the idea of liberty into the very heart of servitude; the
Blacks who are kept in slavery by the legislator and who see their sons
emerge from it are astonished by this unequal division that destiny makes
between them; they become restless and angry. From that moment slavery
has in their view lost the type of moral power that time and custom gave
45. In the American work entitled Letters on the Colonization Society, by Carey, 1833,
you read the following: In South Carolina, for forty years, the Black race has been increasing
faster than the white race. By combining the population of the ve states of the South that
rst had slavery, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, you
discover, Mr. Carey says again, that from 1790 to 1830, whites have increased in the pro-
portion of 80 per 100 in these states, and Blacks in the proportion of 112 per 100.
In the United States, in 1830, the men belonging to the two races were distributed in the
following manner: states where slavery is abolished, 6,565,434 whites, 120,520 Negroes. States
where slavery still exists, 3,960,814 whites, 2,208,102 Negroes.
it; it is reduced to being nothing more than a visible abuse of force. [Thus
the law that sets the son at liberty makes it more difcult to keep the father
a slave.] The North had nothing to fear from this contrast, because in the
North Blacks were small in number and whites very numerous. But if this
rst dawn of liberty came to break upon two million men at the same time,
the oppressors would have to tremble.
x
After emancipating the sons of their slaves, the Europeans of the South
would soon be compelled to extend the same benet to the entire Black
race.
In the North, as I said above, from the moment when slavery is abol-
ished, and even from the moment when it becomes probable that the time
of its abolition is approaching, a double movement takes place. Slaves leave
the country to be transported more to the South; whites of the northern
states and the emigrants from Europe rush to take their place.
These two causes cannot work in the same way in the last states of the
South. On the one hand, the mass of slaves is too great there to be able to
x. Tocqueville will study in detail the systems of emancipation in his parliamentary
report on slavery (Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargee dexaminer la proposition
de M. de Tracy relative aux esclaves des colonies, Paris: A. Henry, 1839, reproduced in OC,
III, 1, pp. 4178). The committee recommends that, after the immediate abolition of
slavery in the French colonies, the State become the tutor of Blacks during a transition
period by educating them and selling their work at a low price. The revenue will serve
to amortize the indemnities to the former owners. Each of the emancipated will receive
a minimal salary and a parcel of land from the State.
Tocqueville will defend the conclusions of the committee in a series of articles on
abolition published in the Sie `cle, 22 and 28 October, 8 and 21 November, 6 and 14 De-
cember 1843 (reproduced in E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, pp. 79111). A few

critics have noted that in his reections on slavery Tocqueville allowed his nationalist
ideas to prevail over his antislavery principles. See on this subject Seymour Drescher,
Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization, Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1968; Melvin Richter, Tocqueville on Algeria, Review of Politics 25, no. 3
(1963): 36398; Irving M. Zeitlin, Liberty, Equality andRevolutioninAlexis de Tocqueville,
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971.
In his novel Beaumont discusses in a little more detail the process of emancipation.
Gradual emancipation seems to him too costly, and he is of the opinion that Jeffersons
idea of giving a portion of the territory to emancipated Negroes is dangerous. The con-
frontation of the two races seems as inevitable to him as to Tocqueville. (Cf. Marie, I,
pp. 31438.)
hope to make them leave the country;
y
on the other hand, the Europeans
and the Anglo-Americans of the North dread coming to live in a country
where work has still not been rehabilitated. Moreover, they rightly regard
the states where the proportion of Negroes surpasses or equals that of
whites as threatened by great misfortunes, and they refrain from bringing
their industry there.
Thus by abolishing slavery, the men of the South would not succeed,
like their brethren of the North, in making Negroes arrive gradually at
liberty; they would not appreciably diminish the number of Blacks, and to
hold them in check they would be alone. So in the course of a few years
you would see a great people of free Negroes placed inthe middle of a more
or less equal nation of whites.
The same abuses
z
of power that maintain slavery today would then be-
come the source of the greatest dangers that whites in the South would
have to fear. Today the descendant of Europeans alone possesses the land;
he is the absolute master of industry; he alone is rich, enlightened, armed.
The Black possesses none of these advantages; but he can do without them,
he is a slave. Once free, charged with watching over his own fate, can he
remain deprived of all these things without dying? So what made the
strengthof the white, whenslavery existed, exposes himtoa thousandperils
after slavery is abolished.
Left in servitude, the Negro can be held in a state near that of the brute;
free, he cannot be prevented frombecoming educatedenoughtoappreciate
the extent of his ills and to catch sight of the remedy to them. There is,
moreover, a singular principle of relative justice that is found very deeply
buried in the human heart. Men are struck much more by the inequality
that exists within the interior of the same class than by the inequalities that
are noticed among different classes. Slavery is understood; but howtoimag-
y. In the South the mass of slaves is too considerable for anyone ever to hope of
diminishing the number of them very noticeably by exportation. You must wait until
death, by making them disappear little by little, removes themalong with the just terrors
to which they give rise.
Here is one side of the subject, let us envisage another [text interrupted(ed.)] (YTC,
CVh, 2, p. 102).
z. The manuscript says: The same causes.
ine the existence of several million citizens eternally bent down by infamy
and given over to hereditary miseries? In the North a population of eman-
cipated Negroes experiences these evils and feels these injustices; but it is
weak and reduced; in the South it would be numerous and strong.
From the moment that you allow whites and emancipated Negroes to
be placed on the same soil as peoples who are strangers to each other, you
will understand without difculty that there are only two possibilities in
the future: Negroes and whites must either blend entirely or separate.
I have already expressed my conviction about the rst means.
46
I do not
think that the white race and the Black race will come to live on an equal
footing anywhere.
But I believe that the difculty will be even greater in the United States
than anywhere else.
a
If a man happens to stand outside of the prejudices
of religion, of country, of race, and this manis king, he canworksurprising
revolutions in society. An entire people cannot so to speak rise above itself
in this way.
A despot coming to join the Americans and their former slaves under
the same yoke would perhaps succeed in mixing them together; as long as
the American democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will dare to
attempt such an undertaking, and you can anticipate that, the more the
whites of the United States are free, the more they will seek to separate
themselves.
47
I said elsewhere that the true link between the European and the Indian
was the half-breed; in the same way, the true transition between the white
and the Negro is the mulatto. Wherever there is a very great number of
mulattos, the fusion between the two races is not impossible.
46. This opinion, moreover, is based on authorities much more weighty than I. In the
Memoires de Jefferson, among others, you read: Nothing is more clearly writteninthe book
of destiny than the emancipation of the Blacks, and it is just as certain that the two races
equally free will not be able to live under the same government. Nature, habit and opinion
have established insurmountable barriers between them. (See Extrait des Memoires de Jef-
ferson, by M. Conseil.)
a. In the margin: Of all governments those that have the least power over mores
are free governments.
47. If the English of the Antilles had governed themselves, you can count on the fact that
they would not have granted the act of emancipationthat the mother country has just imposed.
There are parts of America where the European and the Negro have so
crossed that it is difcult to meet a man who is completely white or com-
pletely Black. Having reached this point, the two races can really be said to
have mingled; or rather, in their place, a third has appeared that takes after
the two without being precisely either the one or the other.
Of all Europeans the English are the ones who have least mingled their
blood with that of the Negroes. You see more mulattos in the South of the
Union than in the North, but innitely fewer than in any other European
colony. Mulattos are very few in the United States; they have no strength
by themselves, and in the quarrels between the races they ordinarily make
common cause with the whites. This is how in Europe you often see the
lackeys of great lords put on nobility with the people.
This pride of origin, natural to the English, has beensingularlyincreased
further among the Americans by the individual pride given birth by dem-
ocratic liberty. The white man of the United States is proud of his race and
proud of himself.
Besides, since whites and Negroes do not come to mingle in the North
of the Union, how would they mingle in the South? Can you suppose for
one moment that the American of the South, placed as he will always be
between the white man in all his physical and moral superiority and the
Negro, canever think of mixing withthe latter? The Americanof the South
has two energetic passions that will always lead him to separate himself: he
will be afraid of resembling the Negro, his former slave, and of descending
below the white, his neighbor.
If it were absolutely necessary to foretell the future, I would say that in
the probable course of things the abolitionof slavery inthe Southwill make
the repugnance that the white population feels there for the Blacks grow. I
base this opinion on what I have already noted analogously in the North.
I said that the white men of the North withdrawfromNegroes all the more
carefully as the legislator blurs the legal separationthat shouldexist between
them. Why would it not be the same in the South? In the North when
whites are afraid of ending by blending with Blacks, they fear animaginary
danger. In the South where the danger would be real, I cannot believe that
the fear would be less.
b
If, on the one hand, you recognize (and the fact is not doubtful) that in
the extreme South Blacks are constantly accumulating and growing faster
than whites; if, on the other hand, you concede that it is impossible to
foresee the time when Blacks and whites will come to mingle and to draw
the same advantages from the state of society, must you not conclude that
in the states of the South Blacks and whites will sooner or later end by
getting into a struggle?
What will the nal result of this struggle be?
You will easily understand that on this point you must conne yourself
to vague conjectures. With difculty the human mind manages in a way
to drawa great circle around the future; but withinthis circle chance, which
escapes all efforts, is in constant motion. Inthe portrait of the future chance
always forms the obscure point where the sight of intelligence cannot pen-
etrate. What you can say is this: in the Antilles it is the white race that seems
destined to succumb; on the continent, the Black race.
In the Antilles whites are isolated in the middle of an immense popu-
lation of Blacks;
c
on the continent Blacks are placed between the sea and
an innumerable people who already extend above them as a compact mass,
from the frozen areas of Canada to the borders of Virginia, fromthe banks
b. These notes in the manuscript seem instead to be the plan for the rest of this
section:
If he does not mingle, what? Examine the various possibilities. Here nothing dog-
matic, no fear for the white race of America, on the contrary for the Black race.
Perhaps they will separate? Perhaps they will wage a war of extermination? This is
probable as long as the Union lasts because the South leans on the North.
Finally reason to preserve slavery and all its rigors for the good of the two races.
If the two races cannot blend together in the southernmost states of the Union,
what then will be their fate? You easily understand that on this point you must nec-
essarily conne yourself tovague conjectures. Inall humanevents there is animmense
portion abandoned to chance or to secondary causes that escapes entirely from fore-
casts and calculations.
c. We have already seen the whites destroyed in the Antilles. Our sons will see the
Blacks destroyed in most of the United States, this at the end of the successive retreat of
Negroes toward the South (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 95).
of the Mississippi to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. If the whites of
North America remain united, it is difcult to believe that Negroes can
escape the destruction that threatens them; they will succumb by sword or
misery. But the Black populations accumulated along the Gulf of Mexico
have chances for salvation if the struggle between the two races comes
about when the American confederation has dissolved. Once the federal
link is broken, the men of the South would be wrong to count on lasting
support fromtheir brothers of the North. The latter knowthat the danger
can never reach them; if a positive duty does not compel them to march
to the aid of the South, you can foresee that the sympathies of race will
be powerless.
Whatever the period of the struggle may be, the whites of the South left
to themselves will moreover present themselves in the contest with an im-
mense superiority of enlightenment and means; but the Blacks will have
for themnumbers andthe energy of despair. Those are great resources when
you have weapons in hand. Perhaps what happened to the Moors of Spain
will then happen to the white race of the South [(something not very prob-
able, it is true)]. After occupying the country for centuries, it will nally
withdraw little by little toward the country from which its ancestors came
in the past, abandoning to the Negroes the possession of a country that
Providence seems to intend for the latter, since they live there without dif-
culty and work more easily there than whites.
The danger, more or less remote but inevitable, of a struggle between
the Blacks and whites who populate the South of the Union presents itself
constantly as a painful dream to the imagination of the Americans. The
inhabitants of the North talk daily about these dangers, althoughthey have
nothing directly to fear from them. They seek in vain to nd a means to
ward off the misfortunes that they foresee.
In the states of the South the inhabitants are silent. They do not speak
about the future with strangers; they avoid talking about it with friends;
each person hides it so to speak from himself. The silence of the South has
something more frightening about it than the noisy fears of the North.
This general preoccupation of minds has given birth to an almost
unknown enterprise that can change the fate of one part of the human
race.
Fearing the dangers that I have just described, a certainnumber of Amer-
ican citizens gather as a society with the goal of exporting at their expense
to the coasts of Guinea the free Negroes who would like to escape the tyr-
anny that weighs upon them.
48
In 1820, the society that I am speaking about succeeded in founding in
Africa, at 7 degrees of north latitude, a settlement to whichit gave the name
Liberia.
d
The latest news announced that two thousand ve hundred
Negroes were already gathered at this place. Transported to their former
country, the Blacks have introduced American institutions there. Liberia
has a representative system, Negro jurors, Negromagistrates, Negropriests;
you see churches and newspapers there, and by a singular turn of the vi-
cissitudes of this world whites are forbidden to settle within its walls.
49
There certainly is a strange twist of fortune! Two centuries have passed
since the day when the inhabitant of Europe undertook to carry Negroes
from their family and their country to transport them to the shores of
48. This society took the name Colonization Society of Blacks.
See its annual reports, and notably the fteenth. Also see the brochure already indicated
entitled: Letters on the Colonization Society and On Its Probable Results, by M. Carey,
Philadelphia, April 1833.
d. You read in the National Intelligencer of 14 January 1834, a curious article on
Liberia, from which it follows that at this period the colony had a newspaper entitled
Liberia Herald which contained pieces on history and on ethics and a page of
advertisements.
See the letter addressed by Mr. Voorhead [sic (ed.)] captain of the ship John Adams
to the Secretary of the Navy, published in the National Intelligencer of January 1834
(YTC, CVh, 2, p. 75).
This is the letter of P. F. Voorhees in which he describes his visit to Monrovia. This
letter was published on 13 February 1834 in the review cited. Tocqueville also seems to
have found in the same newspaper information about the Bank and the division of fed-
eral territories.
A note from his pocket notebook 1 also shows that he thought about visiting the
colony established by Negroes in Wilberforce, Canada: Colony that the colored men are
establishing at Wilberforce in upper Canada. It can be interesting to visit (YTC, BIIa,
and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 153). The project was not accomplished.
49. This last regulation has been penned by the founders of the settlement themselves. They
were afraid that something analogous to what is happening on the frontiers of the United
States would happen in Africa, and that the Negroes, like the Indians, entering into contact
with a race more enlightened than theirs, would be destroyed before being able to become
civilized.
North America. Today you meet the European busy again carting the de-
scendants of these very Negroes across the Atlantic Ocean in order to take
them back to the land from which he had once uprooted their fathers. Bar-
barians have drawn the enlightenment of civilizationfromwithinservitude
and have learned in slavery the art of being free.
e
Until today Africa was closed to the arts and sciences of whites. The
enlightenment of Europe, imported by Africans, will perhaps penetrate
there. So there is a beautiful and great idea in the founding of Liberia; but
the idea, which can become so fruitful for the Old World, is sterile for the
New.
In twelve years the Society for the colonizationof Blacks has transported
to Africa twothousandve hundredNegroes. Duringthe same timeperiod,
about seven hundred thousand of them were born in the United States.
If the colony of Liberia were in the position to receive each year thou-
sands of new inhabitants, and the latter in a condition to be brought there
usefully; if the Union took the place of the Society, and if annually it used
its riches
50
and its ships to export Negroes to Africa, it still would not be
able tobalance just the natural increase of the populationamongtheBlacks;
and by not removing each year as many men as those born, it would not
even manage to suspend the development of the evil that is growing each
day in its bosom.
51
The Negro race will no longer leave the shores of the American conti-
nent, where the passions and the vices of Europe made it come; it will
disappear from the New World only by ceasing to exist. The inhabitants
e. Note in the manuscript: {To civilization by stultication.}
50. Many other difculties as well would be met in such an enterprise. If the Union, in
order to transport Negroes from America to Africa, undertook to buy Blacks from those whose
slaves they were, the price of Negroes increasing in proportion to their rarity would soon rise
to enormous amounts, and it is inconceivable that the states of the North would consent to
make such an expenditure, whose benets they would not receive. If the Union removed the
slaves of the South by force or acquired them at a low price set by the Union, it would create
an insurmountable resistance among the states located in this part of the Union. From the
two sides you end up at the impossible.
51. In 1830, there were in the United States 2,010,527 slaves, and 319,467 emancipated; in
all 2,329,994 Negroes; which formed a little more than one fth of the total population of the
United States in the same period.
of the United States can postpone the misfortunes that they fear, but they
cannot today destroy the cause of them.
I am obliged to admit that I do not consider the abolition of slavery as
a means to delay in the states of the South the struggle of the two races.
f
The Negroes can remain slaves for a long time without complaining; but
once among the number of free men, they will soonbecome indignant about
being deprived of nearly all the rights of citizens; and not able to become
the equals of whites, they will not take long to prove to be their enemies.
In the North emancipating the slaves was all prot; you rid yourself in
this way of slavery, without having anything to fear fromfree Negroes. The
latter were too few ever to claim their rights. It is not the same in the South.
The question of slavery was for the masters in the North a commercial
and manufacturing question; in the South it is a question of life or death.
So you must not confuse slavery in the North and in the South.
God keep me from trying, like certain American authors, to justify the
principle of the servitude of Negroes; I am only saying that all those who
have allowed this painful principle in the past are not equally free to aban-
don it today.
I confess that when I consider the state of the South, I discover for the
white race that inhabits these countries only two ways to act: to free the
Negroes and combine with them; to remain separated from themand hold
them in slavery as long as possible.
g
The middle terms seem to me to lead
shortly to the most horrible of all civil wars, and perhaps to the ruin of one
of the two races.
The Americans of the South envisage the question from this point of
view, and they act accordingly. Not wanting to blend together with the
Negroes, they do not want to set them free.
f. I admit that if I had the misfortune to live in a country where slavery had been
introduced and I had the liberty of the Negroes in my hand, I would keep myself from
opening it (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 86).
g. Beaumont reached the same conclusion in Marie, I, pp. 294301.
It is not that all the inhabitants of the South regard slavery as neces-
sary to the wealth of the master; on this point many among them agree
with the men of the North, and readily admit with the latter that servi-
tude is an evil; but they think that this evil must be maintained in order
to live.
Enlightenment, by increasing in the South, made the inhabitants of this
part of the territory see that slavery is harmful to the master, and this same
enlightenment shows them, more clearly than they had seen until then, the
near impossibility of destroying it. A singular contrast results. Slavery be-
comes established more and more in the laws, as its usefulness is more dis-
puted; and while its principle is gradually abolished in the North, in the
South more and more rigorous consequences are drawn from this very
principle.
Today the legislation of the states of the South relative to slaves presents
a kind of unheard of atrocity, and by itself alone it reveals some profound
disturbance in the laws of humanity. It is enough to read the legislation of
the states of the South to judge the desperate position of the two races that
inhabit them.
It is not that the Americans of this part of the Union have exactly in-
creasedthe rigors of servitude; they have, onthe contrary, made thephysical
lot of the slaves milder. The ancients knew only chains and death to main-
tain slavery; the Americans of the South of the Union have found more
intellectual guarantees for the continuance of their power. They have, if I
many express myself in this way, spiritualized despotism and violence. In
antiquity they tried to prevent the slave from breaking his chains; today we
have undertaken to remove his desire to do so.
The ancients chained the body of the slave, but they left his mind free
and allowed him to become enlightened. In that they were consistent with
themselves; then slavery had a natural way out: from one day to another
the slave could become free and equal to his master.
The Americans of the South, who do not think that at any time the
Negroes can blend with them, have forbidden, under severe penalties,
teaching them to read and write.
h
Not wanting to raise them to their level,
they hold them as close as possible to the brute.
j
In all times the hope for liberty had been placed within slavery in order
to soften its rigors.
The Americans of the South have understood that emancipationalways
presented dangers when the emancipated person could not one day come
to be assimilated with the master. To give a man liberty and leave him in
misery and disgrace, that is to do what, if not to provide a future leader of
a slave revolt? It had already been noted for a long time, moreover, that the
presence of the free Negro cast a vague restlessness deep within the soul of
those who were not free, and made the idea of their rights penetrate their
soul like an uncertain glimmer. The Americans of the South have in most
cases removed from the masters the ability to emancipate.
52
I met in the South
k
of the Union an old man who formerly had lived
in an illegitimate union with one of his Negro women. He had had several
children with her, who coming into the world became slaves of their father.
Several times the latter had thought to bequeath them at least liberty, but
years had gone by before he was able to overcome the obstacles raised to
emancipation by the legislator. During this time old age came, and he was
about to die. He then imagined his sons led from market to market and
passing from paternal authority to the rod of a stranger. These horrible
images threw his dying imagination into delirium. I saw him prey to the
agonies of despair, and I then understood how nature knew how to avenge
the wounds done to it by laws.
These evils are awful, without doubt; but are they not the foreseeable
and necessary consequence of the very principle of servitude among mod-
ern peoples?
h. To the side, witha note: (Verify this). See National Intelligencer, December 1833.
South Carolina. Possible reference to a speech by OConnell, delivered on the occa-
sion of an antislavery meeting, and reproduced in the number for 5 December 1833 of
this review. See note c of p. 548.
j. Blacks are a foreign nation that you have conquered and to whom you give a
nationality and the means of resistance by emancipating them or even by enlightening
them (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 98).
52. Emancipation is not forbidden, but subjected to formalities that make it difcult.
k. In a variant, he species that the story took place in North Carolina.
From the moment when Europeans took their slaves fromwithin a race
of men different from their own, that many among them considered as
inferior to other human races, and with which all envisaged with horror the
idea of ever assimilating, they supposed slavery to be eternal; for, between
the extreme inequality that servitude creates and the complete equality that
independence naturally produces among men, there is nointermediatelast-
ing state. The Europeans vaguely sensed this truth, but without admitting
it. Every time it concerned Negroes, you saw the Europeans obey some-
times their interest or their pride, sometimes their pity. Toward the Black
they violated all the rights of humanity, and then they instructed him in
the value and inviolability of these rights. They opened their ranks to their
slaves, and when the latter attempted to enter, they chased them away in
disgrace. Wanting servitude, the Europeans allowed themselves to be led
despite themselves or without their knowing towardliberty, without having
the courage of being either completely iniquitous or entirely just.
If it is impossible to foresee a period when the Americans of the South
will mix their blood with that of the Negroes, can they, without exposing
themselves to perishing, allow the latter to attain liberty? And if, in order
to save their own race, they are obliged to want to keep them in chains,
must you not excuse them for taking the most effective means to succeed
in doing so?
What is happening in the South of the Union seems to me at the very
same time the most horrible and the most natural consequence of slavery.
When I see the order of nature overturned, when I hear humanity cry out
and struggle in vain under the laws, I admit that I do not nd the indig-
nation to condemn the men of today, authors of these outrages; but I sum-
mon up all of my hatred against those who after more than a thousand
years of equality introduced servitude again into the world.
Whatever the efforts of the Americans of the South to keep slavery,
moreover, they will not succeedforever. Slavery, squeezedintoa singlepoint
of the globe, attacked by Christianity as unjust, by political economy as
fatal; slavery, amid the democratic liberty and the enlightenment of our
age, is not an institution that can endure. It will end by the deed of the
slave or by that of the master. In both cases, great misfortunes must be
expected.
If you refuse liberty to the Negroes of the South, they will endby seizing
it violently themselves; if you grant it to them, they will not take long to
abuse it.
What Are the Chances for the American Union to
Last? What Dangers Threaten It?
m
What makes preponderant strength reside in the states rather
than in the Union.The confederation will last only as long as
all the states that make it up want to be part of it.Causes that
should lead them to remain united.Utility of being united in
order to resist foreigners and in order not to have foreigners in
America.Providence has not raised natural barriers between
the different states.There are no material interests that divide
them.Interest that the North has in the prosperity and union
of the South and of the West; the South with those of the North
and of the West; the West with those of the other two.Non-
material interests that unite the Americans.Uniformity of
opinions.Dangers to the confederation arise from the difference
in the characters of the men who compose it and in their
passions.Characters of the men of the South and of the
North.Rapid growth is one of the greatest perils of the
Union.March of the population toward the northwest.
Gravitation of power in this direction.Passions to which these
rapid movements of fortune give birth.The Union subsisting,
does its government tend to gain strength or to become weaker?
Various signs of weakening.Internal improvements.
Uninhabited lands.Indians.Affair of the Bank.
Affair of the tariff.General Jackson.
The maintenance of what exists in each one of the states that compose the
Union depends in part on the existence of the Union. So it is necessary to
m. Original title: future of the europeans who inhabit the united
states.
examine rst what the probable fate of the Union is. But rst of all it is
good to settle on one point; if the current confederation came to break up,
it seems to me incontestable that the states that are part of it would not
returnto their original individuality. Inplace of one Union, several of them
would form. I do not intend to try to nd out on what bases these new
Unions would come to be established; what I want to show are the causes
that can lead to the dismemberment of the current confederation.
To succeed I am going to be obliged to go over again some of the roads
that I have previously traveled. I will have to review several subjects that are
already known. I know that by acting in this way I am exposing myself to
the reproaches of the reader; but the importance of the matter that remains
for me to treat is my excuse. I prefer to repeat myself sometimes than not
to be understood, and I prefer to harm the author rather than the subject.
The law-makers who drewup the Constitution of 1789 triedhardtogive
the federal power a separate existence and a preponderant strength.
But they were limited by the very conditions of the problem that they
had to resolve. They had not been charged with constituting the govern-
ment of a single people, but with regulating the association of several peo-
ples; and whatever their desires, they always had to end up dividing the
exercise of sovereignty.
[In this division the law-makers of the Union found themselves still
enclosed in a circle out of which they were not free to go.
The conditions of the division were xed in advance and by the very
nature of things. Tothe Unionrevertedthe directionof all general interests,
to the states the government of all special [v: provincial] interests.
The portion of the Union in this division of sovereignty seems at rst
view greater than that of the states; and in actual fact it is the smallest.
The general interests of the country touchits inhabitants only fromtime
to time. The interests of locality, every day. The government of the Union
has more power than that of the states, but you rarely feel it act. The pro-
vincial government does smaller things, but it never rests. The one assures
the independence and the greatness of the country, something that does
not immediately touch upon individual well-being; the other regulates lib-
erty, fortune, life, the entire future of each citizen.
So true political life is foundinthe state andnot inthe Union. Americans
are attached to the Union by principle, to their state by sentiment and by
instinct. They must ina way rise above themselves inorder tosustainfederal
sovereignty against that of the states.]
n
In order to understand well what the consequences of the division
were, it is necessary to make a short distinction between the acts of
sovereignty.
There are matters that are national by their nature, that is to say that are
related only to the nation taken as a body, and can be conded only to the
men or to the assembly that represents most completely the entire nation.
I will put in this number war and diplomacy.
There are others that are provincial by their nature, that is to say that
are related to certain localities and can be appropriately treated only in the
locality itself. Such is the budget of towns.
Finally, matters are found that have a mixed nature: they are national in
that they interest all of the individuals who make up the nation; they are
provincial in that there is no necessity that the nation itself provides for it.
These are, for example, the rights that regulate the civil and political state
of the citizens. There is no social state without civil and political rights. So
these rights interest all citizens equally; but it is not always necessary to the
existence and to the prosperity of the nation that these rights be uniform,
and consequently that they be regulated by the central power.
So among the matters that sovereignty deals with,
o
there are two nec-
n. In the margin: The nationality of the Union is an opinion, the nationality of
the states, a sentiment.
The real strength of society is in the state not in the Union.
In another place on the same page: Thus interests, habits, sentiments combine to
concentrate true political life in the states.
o. What must be understood by the word sovereignty and the words right of sover-
eignty./
The sovereign power, always a single being.
The sovereign power.The people.
Acts of sovereignty.All acts whatever of the public authority.
Authors of these acts.The sovereign power delegates the power to do these acts either
to one single individual or to several. It puts these acts in whatever categories it pleases.
essary categories; youndthemagaininall well-constitutedsocieties, what-
ever the base, moreover, on which the social pact has been established.
Betweenthese two extreme points are placed, like a oatingmass, general
but non-national matters that I have called mixed. Since these matters are
neither exclusively national nor entirely provincial, the care of providing
for them can be attributed to the national government or to the provincial
government, following the conventions of those who are becoming asso-
ciated, without missing the purpose of the association.
Most oftensimple individuals unite inorder toformthe sovereignpower
and their combination makes up a people. Above the general government
they have given themselves you then nd only individual strengths or col-
lective powers, each of which represents a very minimal fraction of the
sovereign power. Then as well it is the general government that is most
naturally called to regulate not only matters national by their essence, but
the greatest portion of the mixed matters that I already mentioned. The
localities are reduced to the portion of sovereignty that is indispensable to
their well-being.
Sometimes, by a fact prior to the association, the sovereignpower is com-
posed of already organized political bodies; then it happens that the pro-
vincial government takes charge of providing not only for the matters ex-
clusively provincial by their nature, but also for all or part of the mixed
Theoretical division of acts.Principal acts, lesser acts depending on whether they
interest directly the whole or the parts of the sovereign power when, by an order of
things prior to the association, the sovereign power is composed of individuals and
is consequently represented by a single people.
Practical consequence.When the sovereign power delegates the exercise of all
the principal acts to the same person (man or assembly), tendency that this man or
assembly gathers all the others.
When it delegates the exercise of principal acts to several, contrary tendency.
Another consequence. When the sovereign power is composed of individuals, ten-
dency to gather the exercise of all the principal acts into the same hands, into what
others?
When composed of nations, contrary tendency.
Single people goes to despotism, confederation to anarchy.
Fears of the French of dismemberment, absurd.
Id. of the Americans of consolidation.
After the theory, make this perceptible in practice (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 7577).
matters of which it was just a question. This is because the confederated
nations, which were themselves sovereign powers before their union, and
which, although they are united, continue to represent a very considerable
fractionof the sovereignpower, intendedtocede tothe general government
only the exercise of the rights indispensable to the union.
p
When the national government, apart from the prerogatives inherent in
its nature, nds itself vested with the right to regulate the mixed matters
of sovereignty, it possesses a preponderant strength. Not only does it have
many rights, but all the rights that it does not have are at its mercy, and it
is to be feared that it will go so far as to take away from the provincial
governments their natural and necessary prerogatives.
[
*
]
When it is, on the contrary, the provincial government that nds itself
vested with the right to regulate the mixed matters, an opposite tendency
reigns in society. Preponderant strength then resides in the province, not
p. Each isolated individual has an absolute right over himself, right that has no limit
in the material world except his strength, inthe moral worldexcept justice andreason.
A people, which is a collection of individuals, possesses a right of the same nature.
This right then takes the name of sovereignty.
The people, taking this term in the sense not of a class but of all the classes of
citizens, the people.
Every time an independent people acts and in whatever manner it acts, it does an
act of sovereignty. So you would try in vain to establish a distinction among the
acts of public authority between those that are due essentially to the right of sover-
eignty and those that are not inherent to it. What you cando is to distinguishbetween
the most and the least important of the habitual actions of the sovereign power.
The sovereign power delegates a part or the totality of the exercise of its power
either to a man or to several.
But all the acts of the public authority, whatever they may be, derive from the
expressed or presumed will of the sovereign power. Sovereignty can have a multitude
of agents, but there is always only one sovereign power.
[In the margin] A people, an association of peoples, always represents a unique
individual. Sovereignty can have a multitude of agents, but there is always only one
sovereign power, just as in one man there is always only one will applied to different
objects and served by different organs (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 8284).
[*]. The central government of France possesses the right to act in everything in the
name of the nation and the right to regulate all matters of internal administration that
have a general character. These are immense prerogatives but it [they (ed.)] are not
enough for it and it uses the strength that they give to it to direct the use of communal
funds and to interfere in [interrupted text (ed.)].
in the nation; and you must fear that the national government will end up
being stripped of privileges necessary to its existence.
q
So single peoples are naturally led toward centralization, and confed-
erations toward dismemberment.
r
It only remains to apply these general ideas to the American Union.
To the particular states reverted inevitably the right to regulate purely
provincial matters.
In addition these same states retained that of xing the civil andpolitical
capacity of citizens, of regulating the relationships of men with eachother,
and of administering justice to them; rights that are general in their nature,
but that do not necessarily belong to the national government.
We have seen that to the government of the Union was delegated the
power to command in the name of the entire nation in cases where the
nation would have to act as one and the same individual. It represented
the nation vis-a`-vis foreigners; it led the common forces against the com-
mon enemy. In a word it was concerned with matters that I have called
exclusively national.
In this division of the rights of sovereignty the part of the Union still
seems at rst glance greater than that of the states; a slightly more thorough
examination demonstrates that in fact it is less.
q. I cannot prevent myself from thinking that the men in America who fear the en-
croachments of the central government confuse two essentially distinct things: com-
plete and incomplete sovereignty.
In countries where sovereignty is not divided, and where the provinces administer
themselves and do not govern themselves, town [v: provincial] liberties are always in
danger. The natural tendency of society is to concentrate strength at the center and
it is only by a constant effort that provincial liberties are maintained.
But in a State [v: country] where sovereignty is divided, the greatest strength nd-
ing itself placed in the extremities not at the center, the tendency of the society is to
split up and it is only with effort that it remains united. Consequently you have seen
nearly all the States where (illegible word) sovereignty was undivided nish [by (ed.)]
arriving at administrative despotism and the confederations at anarchy (YTC, CVh,
2, pp. 4849).
r. The natural tendency of a people, if you do not oppose it, is to concentrate social
forces indenitely until you arrive at pure administrative despotism. The natural ten-
dency of confederations is to divide these forces indenitely until you arrive at dismem-
berment (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 78).
[The Union is an almost imaginary being that is not easily apparent
to the senses.]
The government of the Union executes more vast enterprises, but you
rarely feel it act. The provincial government does smaller things, but it never
rests and reveals its existence at each instant.
The government of the Union watches over the general interests of the
country; but the general interests of a people have only a debatable inu-
ence on individual happiness.
The affairs of the province, in contrast, visibly inuence the well-being
of those who inhabit it.
The Union assures the independence and the greatness of the nation,
things that do not immediately touch individuals. The state maintains the
liberty, regulates the rights, guarantees the fortune, assures the life, the en-
tire future of each citizen.
The federal government is placed at a great distance from its subjects;
the provincial government is within reach of all. It is enough to raise your
voice in order to be heard by it. The central government has for it the pas-
sions of a few superior men who aspire to lead it; on the side of the pro-
vincial government is found the interest of second-rate menwho only hope
to obtain power in their state; and it is these who, placed near the people,
exercise the most power over them.
So the Americans have much more to expect and to fear from the state
than from the Union; and following the natural march of the humanheart,
they must be attached much more intensely to the rst than to the second.
[But men, whatever you say, are not led only by interests; they obey
habits and sentiments.
{True patriotism remained with the state and did not pass to the Union.
The state has an ancient existence, the Union is comparatively a new
thing.}]
In this habits and sentiments are in agreement with interests.
When a compact nation divides its sovereignty and reaches the state of
confederation, memories, customs, habits struggle for a long time against
the laws and give the central government a strength that the latter deny it.
When confederated peoples unite in a single sovereignty, the same causes
act in the opposite direction. I do not doubt that if France became a con-
federated republic like that of the United States, the government would at
rst show itself to be more energetic than that of the Union; and if the
Union constituted itself as a monarchy like France, I think that the Amer-
ican government would remain for some time weaker than ours. At the
moment when national life was created among the Anglo-Americans, pro-
vincial existence was already old, necessary relationships were established
between the towns and individuals of the same states; youwere accustomed
there to considering certain matters from a common point of view, and
to dealing exclusively with certain enterprises as representing a special
interest.
s
The Union is an immense body that offers to patriotism a vague object
to embrace. The state has settled forms and circumscribed limits; it rep-
resents a certain number of things known and dear to those who inhabit
it. It blends with the very image of the land, is identied with property,
with family, with memories of the past, with the work of the present, with
dreams of the future. So patriotism, which most often is only an extension
of individual egoism, has remained with the state and has not so to speak
passed to the Union.
Thus interests, habits, and sentiments unite to concentrate true political
life in the state, and not in the Union.
You can easily judge the difference in the strength of the two govern-
ments by seeing each of them move within the circle of its power.
Every time that a state government addresses itself to a man or to an
s. Among the causes that can hasten the dismemberment of the Union in the rst
rank is found the state of weakness and inertia into which the federal government
would fall, if the central power came to this degree of feebleness that it could no
longer serve as arbiter among the different provincial interests and could not effec-
tively defend the confederation against foreigners; its usefulness would become
doubtful, and the Union would no longer exist except on paper; and each state would
tend to separate itself from it in order to nd its strength in itself.
So it is very important, granting the fact of the Union, to try to nd out if the
federal government tends to gain or to lose power.
The question of the strength and of the weakness of the federal government, im-
portant moreover in itself and separate from the question of the duration of the
Union, would still be important; for the strength or the weakness of the federal gov-
ernment, even if it had no inuence on the duration of the Union, wouldnecessarily
have an inuence on prosperity and its progress (YTC, CVh, 1, pp. 8081).
association of men its language is clear and imperative; it is the same with
the federal government when it is speaking to individuals; but as soon as it
nds itself facing a state, it begins to talk at length: it explains its motives
and justies its conduct; it argues, advises, hardly ever commands. If doubts
arise about the limits of the constitutional powers of each government, the
provincial government claims its right with boldness and takes prompt and
energetic measures to sustain it. During this time the government of the
Union reasons; it appeals to the good sense of the nation, to its interests,
to its glory; it temporizes, negotiates; only when reduced to the last extrem-
ity does it nally determine to act. At rst view you could believe that it is
the provincial government that is armed with the strength of the whole
nation and that Congress represents a state.
So the federal government, despite the efforts of those who constituted
it, is, as I have already said elsewhere, by its very nature a weak government
that more than any other needs the free support of the governed in order
to subsist.
It is easy to see that its object is to realize with ease the will that the states
have to remain united. This rst condition fullled, it is wise, strong and
agile. It has been organized in such a way as usually to encounter only in-
dividuals before it and to overcome easily the resistance that some would
like to oppose to the commonwill; but the federal government has not been
established with the expectation that the states or several among them
would cease to want to be united.
If the sovereignty of the Union today entered into a struggle with that
of the states, you can easily foresee that it would succumb; I doubt even
that the battle would ever be engaged in a serious way.
t
Every time that an
obstinate resistance is put up against the federal government, you will see
t. What singularly favors the Union is that all the confederated states have reached
more or less the same degree of civilization and the same type of civilization. They
are thus naturally more suited for working together than a single nation whose parts
would not be perfectly homogeneous on this point.
The lack of homogeneity on this point, which hinders the government of a single
nation, is particularly contrary to a confederation because there the differences be-
tween the ideas and the mores of diverse populations nd a legal expression and
strength.
it yield. Experience has proven until now that when a state stubbornly
wanted something and demanded it resolutely, the state never failed to ob-
tain it; and that when it clearly refused to act,
53
it was left free to do so.
If the government of the Union had a force of its own, the physical
situation of the country would make the use of it very difcult.
54
The United States covers an immense territory; long distances separate
the states; the population is spread over a country still half wilderness. If
the Union undertook by arms to hold the confederated states to their duty,
What will perhaps always prevent Switzerland from forming a very really united
country, is that the differences between the civilization of the cantons is striking. The
difference between the canton of Vaud and that of Appenzell is like that between the
XIXth century and the XVth.
The central government in confederations is always by its nature weaker than the
governments of States (for many reasons), but that is above all true when it is not an
active sovereignty that is being carved up, but several sovereignties that are merging.
In this case the memories, habits, interests struggle for a long time in the opposite
direction against the laws. The central government would for a long time remainvery
much stronger in France than in the United States, even if France would become a
federated republic. The central government of the United States will for a long time
remain weaker than the current government of France, even if the Union would
become a monarchy. When national life was created among the Anglo-Americans.
Federal government.
Union requires in order to subsist rare simplicity of mores or of needs, or very
advanced civilization.
Weakness of the Union proven by facts.
1. All the amendments to the Constitution have been made in order to restrict
federal power. The federal government abandoned in practice certain of its prerog-
atives and took no new ones. Every time that the state resolutely stood up to the
Union, it more or less gained what it wanted.
1. Georgia in 1793 refusing to obey the decision of the Supreme Court. See Kent,
volume 1, p. 278.
2. Rebellion in Pennsylvania against the whiskey tax (YTC, CVh, 2, pp. 7980).
53. See the conduct of the states of the North in the War of 1812. During this war,
Jefferson says in a letter of 17 [14 (ed.)] March 1817 to General Lafayette, four of the eastern
states were no longer tied to the Union except as dead bodies to living men ( Correspondance
de Jefferson, published by Conseil) [vol. II, pp. 29697 (ed.)].
54. The state of peace in which the Union nds itself gives it no pretext for having a
permanent army. Without a permanent army, a government has nothing preparedinadvance
in order to take advantage of the favorable moment, to overcome resistance, and to take sov-
ereign power by surprise.
its position would be analogous to that of England at the time of the War
of Independence.
Moreover, a government, were it strong, could only with difculty es-
cape the consequences of a principle, once it accepted that principle itself
as the foundation of the public law that is to govern it. The confederation
has been formed by the free will of the states; the latter by uniting did not
lose their nationality and did not merge into one and the same people. If
today one of these very states wanted to withdraw its name from the con-
tract, it would be quite difcult to prove that it could not do so. The federal
government, in order to combat it, would not rely in a clear way on either
force or law.
For the federal government to triumph easily over the resistance that a
few of its subjects might put up, it would be necessary for the particular
interest of one or of several of themto be intimately linked to the existence
of the Union, as has often been seen in the history of confederations.
I suppose that, among these states that the federal bond gathers together,
there are some that alone enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose
prosperity depends entirely on the fact of union; it is clear that the central
power will nd in them a very great support for maintaining the others in
obedience. But then it will no longer draw its strength from itself, it will
draw it from a principle that is contrary to its nature. Peoples confederate
only to gain equal advantages from union, and in the case cited above the
federal government is strong because inequality reigns among the united
nations.
I suppose again that one of the confederated states has gained a pre-
ponderance great enough to take hold of the central power by itself alone;
it will consider the other states as its subjects and, in the allegedsovereignty
of the Union, will make its own sovereignty respected. Then great things
will be done in the name of the federal government, but truly speaking this
government will no longer exist.
55
In these two cases the power that acts in the name of the confederation
55. In this way, the province of Holland inthe republic of the Netherlands andthe emperor
in the German Confederation sometimes put themselves in the place of the Union, and ex-
ploited the federal power in their particular interest.
becomes that much stronger the more you move away from the natural
state and the acknowledged principle of confederations.
In America the present union is useful to all the states, but it is essential
to none. If several states broke the federal bond, the fate of the others would
not be compromised, even though the sum of their happiness would be
less. Just as there is no state whose existence or prosperity is entirely
u
linked
to the present union, neither is there one that is disposed to make very great
personal sacrices to preserve it.
From another perspective, no state is seen for now to have, out of am-
bition, a great interest in maintaining the confederation as we see it today.
All undoubtedly do not exercise the same inuence in federal councils, but
there is not one of them that should atter itself about dominating them
and that can treat the other confederated states as inferiors or subjects.
So it seems to me certain that if one portion of the Union wanted se-
riously to separate fromthe other, not only wouldyounot be able toprevent
it from doing so, but you would not even be tempted to try. So the present
Union will last only as long as all the states that compose it continue to
want to be part of it.
This point settled, we are now more at ease: it is no longer a matter of
trying to ndout if the states currently confederatedwill be able toseparate,
but if they will want to remain united.
Among all the reasons that make the present union useful to the Amer-
icans, you nd two principal ones whose evidence easily strikes everyone.
Although the Americans are so to speak alone on their continent, com-
merce gives them as neighbors all the peoples with whom they trafc. So
despite their apparent isolation, the Americans need to be strong, and they
can only be strong by remaining united.
The states by dividing would not only diminish their strength vis-a`-vis
foreigners, they would create foreigners on their own soil. From that mo-
ment they would enter into a systemof internal customs; they woulddivide
valleys by imaginary lines; they would imprison the course of rivers and
u. The published text says entirely, while the manuscript says intimately, a word
that seems to work better.
hinder in all ways the exploitation of the immense continent that God
granted them as their domain.
Today they have no invasion to fear, consequently no army to maintain,
no taxes to levy [no military despotismto fear]; if the Union came to break
apart, the need for all these things would perhaps not take long to make
itself felt.
So the Americans have an immense interest in remaining united.
From another perspective it is nearly impossible to discover what type
of material interest one portion of the Union would have, for now, to sepa-
rate from the others.
When you cast your eyes over a map of the United States and you see
the chain of the Allegheny Mountains running from the Northeast to the
Southwest and covering the country over an expanse of 400 leagues, you
are tempted to believe that the purpose of Providence was to raise between
the Mississippi basin and the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean one of those
natural barriers that, opposing the permanent relationships of men with
each other, form like necessary limits to different peoples.
But the average height of the Allegheny Mountains does not surpass 800
meters.
56
Their rounded summits and the spacious valleys that they enclose
within their contours present easy access in a thousand places. There is
more. The principal rivers that come to empty their waters into the Atlantic
Ocean, the Hudson, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, have their sources
beyond the Allegheny Mountains on the open plateau that borders the
Mississippi basin. Leaving this region
57
they come out through the rampart
that seemed as though it should throw them back toward the west and,
once within the mountains, trace natural routes always open to men.
So no barrier is raised between the different parts of the country occu-
pied today by the Anglo-Americans. The Allegheny Mountains are far from
serving as limits to peoples; they do not even mark the boundaries of states.
56. Average height of the Allegheny Mountains according to Volney ( Tableau des E
tats-
Unis, p. 33), 700 to 800 meters; 5,000 to 6,000 feet, according to Darby; the greatest height of
the Vosges is 1,400 meters above sea level.
57. See View of the United States, by Darby, pp. 64 and 79.
New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia enclose them within their precincts
and extend as far to the west as to the east of these mountains.
58
The territory occupied today by the twenty-four states of the Unionand
the three great districts that are not yet placed among the number of states,
although they already have inhabitants, covers an area of 131,144 square
leagues,
59
that is to say that it already presents a surface almost equal to ve
times that of France.
[
*
]
In these limits are found a varied soil, different
temperatures, and very diverse products.
This great expanse of territory occupied by the Anglo-Americanrepub-
lics has given birth to doubts about the maintenance of their union. Here
distinctions must be made: conicting interests are sometimes created in
the different provinces of a vast empire and end up coming into conict;
then it happens that the great size of the State is what most compromises
its duration. But if the men who cover this vast territory do not have con-
icting interests among themselves, its very expanse must be useful to their
prosperity, for the unity of government singularly favors the exchange that
can be made with the different products of the soil, and by making their
ow easier, it increases their value.
Now, I clearly see different interests in the different parts of the Union,
but I do not nd any that conict with each other.
The states of the South are nearly exclusively agricultural; the states of
the North are particularly manufacturing and commercial; the states of the
West are at the same time manufacturing and agricultural. In the South
tobacco, rice, cotton and sugar are harvested; in the North and in the West,
corn and wheat. These are the diverse sources of wealth. But in order to
draw upon these sources, there is a means common and equally favorable
to all; it is the Union.
w
58. The chain of the Allegheny Mountains is not higher than that of the Vosges and does
not offer as many obstacles as the latter to the efforts of human industry. So the countries
situated on the eastern slope of the Allegheny Mountains are as naturally linked to the Valley
of the Mississippi as Franche-Comte , upper Burgundy and Alsace are to France.
59. 1,002,600 square miles. See View of the United States, by Darby, p. 435.
[*]. France, according to Malte-Brun, volume VIII, p. 178, has an area of 26,739
square leagues.
w. These ideas appear in two letters of Carey published in the National Intelligencer
of 28 and 31 December 1833. Tocqueville more than likely became aware of them.
The North, which carries the riches of the Anglo-Americans to all parts
of the world and the riches of the world into the Union, has a clear interest
in having the confederation continue to exist as it is today, so that the num-
ber of American producers and consumers that it is called to serve remains
the greatest possible. The North is the most natural middleman between
the south and the west of the Union, on the one hand, and the rest of the
world, on the other; so the North should want the South and the West to
remain united and prosperous so that they provide raw materials for its
manufacturing and cargo for its ships.
The South and the West have on their side a still more direct interest in
the preservation of the Union and the prosperity of the North. The prod-
ucts of the South are in large part exported overseas; so the South and the
West need the commercial resources of the North. They should want the
Union to have a great maritime power in order to be able to protect them
effectively. The South and the West should contribute willingly to the costs
of a navy, although they do not have ships; for if the eets of Europe came
to blockade the ports of the South and the Mississippi delta, what would
become of the rice of the Carolinas, the tobacco of Virginia, the sugar and
cotton that grow in the valleys of the Mississippi? So there is not a portion
of the federal budget that does not apply to the preservation of a material
interest common to all the confederated states.
[To clarify this subject even more I want to make a comparison drawn
from France.
Provence gathers oil and Flanders harvests wheat; Burgundy produces
wine and Normandy raises livestock. Do these different provinces nd in
the diversity of products reasons to hate each other? Isnt [it (ed.)] on the
contrary the diversity of these products that gives thema common interest
in remaining united in order to exchange them more freely?
Georgia seems to me to have the same reasons to remain united with
Massachusetts as Provence with Flanders, and Ohio appears to me as nat-
urally linked to the state of New York as Burgundy to Normandy.]
x
x. In a rst version:
It is not in the interests but in the passions
1
of the Americans that you must seek
the causes of ruin that threaten the American Union.
Apart fromthis commercial utility, the Southand the West of the Union
nd a great political advantage in remaining united with each other and
with the North.
The South encloses in its bosom an immense population of slaves, a
population threatening at present, still more threatening in the future.
The states of the West occupy the bottom of a single valley. The rivers
that water the territory of these states, originating from the Rocky or the
Allegheny Mountains, all come to mingle their waters with that of the
Mississippi and ow with it toward the Gulf of Mexico. The states of the
West are entirely isolated by their position from the traditions of Europe
and the civilization of the Old World.
So the inhabitants of the South should desire to preserve the Union in
order not to live alone in the face of the Blacks, and the inhabitants of the
West, in order not to nd themselves enclosed within the central part of
America without free communication with the world.
The North for its part should want the Union not to divide, in order to
remain as the link that joins this great body to the rest of the world.
So there exists a tight bond among the material interests of all parts of
the Union.
I will say as much for the opinions and the sentiments that you could
call the non-material interests of man.
The inhabitants of the United States speak a great deal about their love
What most compromises the fate of the Union is its very prosperity, is the rapid
growth of some parts.
The states that adhere to . . .
1. This is clearly seen. The south, which has the greatest need to remain united,
gives signs of impatience. The north and the west, which could by themselves alone
form an immense republic, most want the union.
If interests alone were sufcient to maintain the Americans in the Union, there
would be no portion of the United States where the federal Constitutionhadwarmer
adherents than in the south.
The south needs the north not only to guarantee the importation of its products,
but also to defend it from the Negroes who live in its bosom.
The Americans of the south are, however, the only ones who threaten to break
the federal bond.
So youmust seekreasons other thanthose takenfrominterests properlyspeaking.
of country; I admit that I do not trust this considered patriotism that is
based upon interest and that interest, by changing object, can destroy.
Nor do I attach a very great importance to the language of the Ameri-
cans, when each day they express the intention of preserving the federal
system that their fathers adopted.
What maintains a large number of citizens under the same government
is much less the reasoned will to remain united than the instinctive and in
a way involuntary accord that results from similarity of sentiments and
resemblance of opinions.
I will never admit that men form a society by the sole fact that they
acknowledge the same leader and obey the same laws; there is a society only
when men consider a great number of objects in the same way; when they
have the same opinions on a great number of subjects; when, nally, the
same facts give rise among them to the same impressions and the same
thoughts.
y
Whoever, considering the question fromthis point of view, wouldstudy
what is happening to the United States, would discover without difculty
that their inhabitants, divided as they are into twenty-four distinct sover-
eignties, constitute nonetheless a single people; and perhaps he would even
come to think that the state of society more truly exists within the Anglo-
American Union than among certain nations of Europe that have never-
theless only a single legislation and are subject to one man alone.
z
y. What truly constitutes a society is not having the same government, the same
laws, the same language, it is having on a great number of points the same ideas and the
same opinions. The rst things are all material. They are the means by which ideas and
opinions reign. Note well that for the despotic form itself (the one that has least need
for a society ) to be lasting, it must rely on this base (YTC, CVh, 2, p.77).
z. Bond of American society./
Research what the ideas common to the Americans are. Ideas about the future.
Faith in human perfectibility, faith in civilization that is judged favorably in every
respect. Faith in liberty! This is universal.
Faith in the good sense and denitive reason of the people. This is general but not
universal.
You can do on that a very interesting (illegible word).
The true bond of the Americans is this much more than love of country and
nationality. These two things are more apparent than real, but the others differentiate
Although the Anglo-Americans have several religions, they all have the
same way of envisaging religion.
a
They do not always agree on the means to take in order to govern well
and vary on some of the forms that are appropriate to give to the govern-
ment, but they agree on the general principles that should govern human
societies. From Maine to Florida, from the Missouri to the Atlantic Ocean,
they believe that the origin of all legitimate powers is in the people. They
conceive the same ideas on liberty and on equality; they profess the same
opinions on the press, the right of association, the jury, the responsibility
of the agents of power.
If we pass from political and religious ideas to the philosophical and
moral opinions that regulate the daily actions of life and guide conduct as
a whole, we will note the same agreement.
the Americans from all other peoples. What makes their common bond is what sepa-
rates them from the others.
[To the side: Many men in France believe that American society is lacking [a (ed.)]
bond. False idea. It has more of a true bond than ours.]
Shared ideas. Philosophical and general ideas.
That interest well understood is sufcient to lead men to do good.
That each man has the ability to govern himself.
That good is relative and that there it [makes (ed.)] continual progress in society;
that nothing there is or should be nished forever.
More special ideas, advantages of equality (YTC. CVh, 2, p. 78).
This note already contains the seeds of many ideas of the rst part of the third volume.
a. Tocqueville had copied into one of his travel notebooks the following fragment,
an extract from a letter that he had written 8 July 1831 to Louis de Kergorlay:
It is clear that there still remains here a greater core of the Christian religion than in
any country in the world, to my knowledge, and I do not doubt that this disposition
of minds still inuences the political regime. It gives a moral and well-ordered turn
to ideas; it stops the lapses of the spirit of innovation; above all it makes very rare
the disposition of the soul, so common among us, that makes you rush forward
against all obstacles per fas et nefas [by all possible paths] toward the goal that you
have chosen. It is certain that a party, whatever desire it had to gain a result, would
still believe itself obliged to march toward it only by means that would have an ap-
pearance of morality and would not openly shock religious beliefs, always more or
less moral even when they are false (alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Corres-
pondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, p. 231; this fragment is not published in Voyage,
OC, V, 1).
The Anglo-Americans
60
place moral authority in universal reason, as
they do political power in the universality of citizens, and they consider
that you must rely on the sense of all in order to discern what is permitted
or forbidden, what is true or false. Most of them think that knowledge of
his interest well understood is sufcient to lead a man toward the just and
the honest. They believe that each person by birth has received the ability
to govern himself, and that no one has the right to force his fellow to be
happy. All have an intense faith in human perfectibility; they judge that the
diffusion of knowledge must necessarily produce useful results, ignorance
must lead to harmful effects; all consider society as a body in progress; hu-
manity as a changing scene, where nothing is or should be xed forever,
and they admit that what seems good to them today can be replaced to-
morrow by something better that is still hidden.
b
I do not say that all these opinions are correct, but they are American.
At the same time that the Anglo-Americans are thus united with each
other by these shared ideas, they are separated from all other peoples by a
sentiment, pride.
For fty years it has not ceased to be repeated to the inhabitants of the
UnitedStates that they formthe only religious, enlightenedandfreepeople.
They see that among them until now democratic institutions have pros-
60. I think I do not need to say that by this expression: the Anglo-Americans, I mean
only to speak about the great majority of them. A fewisolated individuals always standoutside
of this majority.
b. At the same time that the Americans are thus united with each other by opinions,
what separates them from others, pride.
They are separated from all other peoples.
Religion, by a sentiment of pride.
Politics, they believe [themselves (ed.)] alone democratic.
Philosophy, are in a state to be free.
Economy, (illegible word) are wise.
If we pass from political and religious ideas to philosophical opinions, properly
speaking, to those that regulate the daily actions of life and direct conduct as a whole,
I will note the same agreement.
Most Americans accept that the knowledge of interest well understoodis sufcient
to lead men to honesty (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 103).
pered, while they fail in the rest of the world; so they have an immense
opinion of themselves, and they are not far from believing that they form
a species apart in the human race.
Thus the dangers that menace the American Union do not arise from
diversity of opinions any more than from that of interests. They must be
sought in the variety of characters and in the passions of the Americans.
The men who inhabit the immense territory of the United States have
nearly all come from a shared stock; but over time climate and above all
slavery have introduced marked differences between the character of the
English of the South and the character of the English of the North.
It is generally believed among us that slavery gives to one portion of the
Union interests contrary to those of the others. I have not noted that this
was the case. Slavery has not created interests in the South contrary tothose
of the North; but it has modied the character of the inhabitants of the
South, and has given them different habits.
I have shown elsewhere what inuence servitude had exercised on the
commercial capacity of the Americans of the South; this same inuence
extends equally to their mores.
The slave is a servant who does not argue and who submits to everything
without a murmur. Sometimes he murders his master, but he never resists
him. In the South there are no families so poor that they do not have slaves.
The American of the South from his birth nds himself invested with a
kind of domestic dictatorship; the rst notions that he receives of life make
himknowthat he is born to command, and the rst habit that he contracts
is that of dominating without difculty. So education tends powerfully to
make the American of the South a man haughty, quick, irascible, violent,
ardent in his desires, impatient with obstacles; but easy to discourage if he
cannot triumph with the rst blow.
The Americanof the Northdoes not see slaves rushuparoundhis cradle.
He does not evennd free servants, for most oftenhe is limitedtoproviding
for his needs by himself. Soon after he is born, his mind is presented with
the idea of necessity from all directions. So he learns early to know on his
own the exact natural limit of his power; he does not expect to bend by
force wills that are opposed to his, and he knows that to gain the support
of his fellows it is above all necessary to win their favor. So he is patient,
thoughtful, tolerant,
c
slow to act, and persevering in his designs.
Inthe southernstates the most pressing needs of manare always satised.
Thus the American of the South is not preoccupied by the material needs
of life; someone else takes care of thinking about them for him. Free on
this point, his imaginationis directed towardother greater andless precisely
dened matters. [<So the whites in the south form an aristocratic body
{kind of aristocracy}. Consequently a certainfeudal tendency reigns intheir
thoughts and in their tastes.>] The American of the South loves grandeur,
luxury, glory, fame, pleasures, idleness above all; nothingforces himtomake
efforts in order to live, and as he has no necessary work, he falls asleep and
does not undertake even useful work.
Because equality of fortunes reigns in the North, and slavery no longer
exists there, man there is absorbed, as it were, by these very material con-
cerns that the white scorns in the South. From his birth he is busy ghting
poverty, and he learns to place material comfort above all the enjoyments
of the mind and heart. His imagination, concentrated on the small details
of life, fades, his ideas are fewer and less general, but they become more
practical, clearer and more precise. Since he directs all the efforts of his
intelligence only toward the study of well-being, he does not take long to
excel there; he knows admirably how to make the most of nature and of
men in order to produce wealth; he understands marvelously the art of
making society work toward the prosperity of each one of its members,
and of extracting from individual egoism the happiness of all.
The man of the North has not only experience, but also learning; but
he does not prize knowledge as a pleasure. He values it as a means, and he
avidly takes hold only of its useful applications.
The American [{man}] of the South is more spontaneous, more witty,
more open, more generous, more intellectual and more brilliant.
The American [{man}] of the North is more active, more reasonable,
more enlightened and more skillful.
c. Inthe margin: Tolerant indicates a virtue. Awordwouldbe neededthat indicates
the interested and necessary toleration of a man who needs others.
The one has the tastes, prejudices, weaknesses and the grandeur of all
aristocracies.
The other, the qualities and failings that characterize the middle class.
Bring two men together in society, give to these two men the same in-
terests and in part the same opinions; if their character, their enlightenment
and their civilization differ, there is a great chance that they will not get
along. The same remark is applicable to a society of nations.
[
*
]
So slavery does not attack the American confederation directly by in-
terests, but indirectly by mores.
The states that joined the federal pact in 1790 numbered thirteen; the
confederation counts twenty-four of them today. The population that
amounted to nearly four million in 1790 had quadrupled in the space of
forty years; in 1830 it rose to nearly thirteen million.
61
Such changes cannot take place without danger.
For a society of nations as for a society of individuals, there are three
principal ways to last: the wisdom of the members, their individual weak-
ness, and their small number.
The Americans who withdraw from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in
order to plunge into the West are adventurers impatient with any kind of
yoke, greedy for wealth, often cast out by the states where they were born.
They arrive in the middle of the wilderness without knowing each other.
There they nd to control them neither traditions nor family support, nor
examples. Among themthe rule of laws is weak, andthat of mores is weaker
still. So the men who daily populate the valleys of the Mississippi are in-
ferior in all ways to the Americans who inhabit the old limits of the Union.
They already exercise, however, a great inuence in its councils, and they
[*]. It is to this diversity of characters that you must resort in order to explain how
every time there is a division of opinion among the Anglo-Americans, you have seen the
North on one side and the South on the other, often without being able to see the same
division found in their interests. {See from the time of Washington the question of the
tax on distilled liquors. Marshall, vol. 5, p. 185.}
61. Census of 1790 3,929,328
Census of 1830 12,856,165.
arrive at the government of common affairs before having learned to man-
age themselves.
62
The weaker the members are individually, the greater the societys
chances to last, for they thenhave security only by remainingunited. When,
in 1790, the most populated of the American republics did not have
500,000 inhabitants,
63
each one of them felt its insignicance as an inde-
pendent people, and this thought made obedience to a federal authority
easier. But when one of the confederated states numbers 2,000,000inhab-
itants, as does the state of New York, and covers a territory whose area is
equal to one-quarter of that of France,
64
it feels strong by itself, and if it
continues to desire the union as useful to its well-being, it no longer regards
it as necessary to its existence; it can do without it; and agreeing to remain
there, it does not take long to want to be preponderant in it.
The mere multiplication of members of the Union would already tend
powerfully to break the federal bond. All men placed at the same point of
view do not look at the same objects in the same way. This is so with all
the more reason when the point of view is different. So as the number of
American republics increases, you see the chance to gather the assent of all
to the same laws diminish.
Today the interests of the different parts of the Union are not in conict
with each other; but who could foresee the various changes that the near
future will bring about in a country where each day creates cities and every
ve years nations?
Since the founding of the English colonies the number of inhabitants
doubles every twenty-two years or so; I do not see any causes that should
for the next century stopthis progressive movement of theAnglo-American
population. Before one hundred years have passed I think that the territory
62. This, it is true, is only a temporary peril. I do not doubt that with time society will
become settled and orderly in the west, as it has already become on the shores of the Atlantic
Ocean.
63. Pennsylvania had 431,373 inhabitants in 1790.
64. Area of the state of New York, 6,213 square leagues (46,500 square miles). See View
of the United States, by Darby, p. 435.
occupied or claimed by the United States will be covered by more than one
hundred million inhabitants and divided into forty states.
65
I admit that these one hundred million men do not have different in-
terests; I grant them all, on the contrary, an equal advantage in remaining
united, and I say that, by the very fact that they are one hundred million,
forming forty distinct and unequally powerful nations, the maintenance of
the federal government is nothing more than a happy accident.
I would like to believe in human perfectibility; but until men have
changed in nature and are completely transformed, I will refuse to believe
in the duration of a government whose task is to hold together forty diverse
peoples spread over a surface equal to half of Europe,
66
to avoid rivalries,
ambition, and struggles among them, and to bring the action of their in-
dependent wills together toward the accomplishment of the same projects.
But the greatest risk that the Union runs by growing comes from the
continual displacement of forces that takes place within it.
From the shores of Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, you count as
the crow ies about four hundred French leagues. Along this immense line
winds the frontier of the United States; sometimes it stays within these
limits, most often it penetrates well beyond into the wilderness. It has been
calculated that along this entire vast front whites advanced each year on
average seven leagues.
67
From time to time an obstacle presents itself: it is
an unproductive district, a lake, an Indian nation that is met unexpectedly
65. If the population continues to double in twenty-two years, for another century, as it
has done for two hundred years, in 1852 you will number in the United States twenty-four
million inhabitants, forty-eight in 1874, and ninety-six in 1896. It will be so even if you
encountered on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains terrain that was unsuitable for
agriculture. The lands already occupied can very easily hold this number of inhabitants. One
hundred million men spread over the soil occupied at this moment by the twenty-four states
and the three territories that compose the Union would only give 762 individuals per square
league, which would still be very far from the average population of France, which is 1,006;
from that of England, which is 1,457; and which would remain even below the population
of Switzerland. Switzerland, despite its lakes and mountains, numbers 783 inhabitants per
square league. See Malte-Brun, vol. VI, p. 92.
66. The territory of the United States has an area of 295,000 square leagues; that of Eu-
rope, according to Malte-Brun, vol. VI, p. 4, is 500,000.
67. See Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, n. 117, p. 105.
in its path. The column then stops an instant; its two extremities bend
toward each other and, after they have rejoined, the advance begins again.
There is inthis gradual andcontinuous marchof the Europeanracetowards
the Rocky Mountains something providential; it is like a ood of men that
rises unceasingly and that swells each day by the hand of God.
Within this rst line of conquerors cities are built and vast states are
founded. In 1790, scarcely a few thousand pioneers were found spread
across the valleys of the Mississippi; today these same valleys hold as many
men as the entire nation contained in 1790. The population there reaches
nearly four million inhabitants.
68
The city of Washington was founded in
1800, at the very center of the American confederation; nowthis city nds
itself at one of its extremities. The representatives of the last states of the
West,
69
in order to take their seats in Congress, are already obliged to make
a journey as long as that of the traveler who goes from Vienna to Paris.
All the states of the Union are carried along at the same time towards
wealth; but all cannot grow and prosper in the same proportion.
In the north of the Union detached branches of the Allegheny Moun-
tain chain, advancing to the Atlantic Ocean, form spacious harbors and
ports always open to the largest ships. From the Potomac, in contrast, and
following the coast of America to the mouth of the Mississippi, you nd
nothing more than a at and sandy terrain. In this part of the Union the
mouths of nearly all the rivers are obstructed, and the ports that are open
here and there in the middle of lagoons do not present to ships the same
depth and offer to commerce much smaller facilities than those of the
North.
To this rst inferiority which arises from nature another is joined that
comes from laws.
We have seen that slavery, which is abolished in the North, still exists in
the South, and I have shown the fatal inuence that it exercises on the well-
being of the master himself.
68. 3,672,317, census of 1830.
69. From Jefferson, capital of the state of Missouri, to Washington, you count 1,019 miles,
or 420 postal leagues (American Almanac, 1831, p. 43 [44 (ed.)]).
So the North must be more commercial
70
and more industrious than
the South. It is natural that population and wealth concentrate there more
rapidly.
The states situated on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean are already half
populated. Most of the lands have an owner; so those states cannot receive
the same number of emigrants as the states of the West that still offer an
unlimited eld to industry. The basin of the Mississippi is innitely more
fertile than the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. This reason added to all the
others vigorously pushes the Europeans toward the West. This is rigorously
demonstrated by gures.
If you work with the whole of the United States, you nd that in forty
years the number of inhabitants there has more or less tripled. But if
you envisage only the basin of the Mississippi, you discover that in the
same period of time the population
71
there has become thirty-one times
greater.
72
Each day the center of federal power is displaced. Forty years ago the
70. In order to judge the difference that exists between the commercial movement of the
South and that of the North, it is enough to glance at the following picture:
In 1829, the ships of large and small commerce belonging to Virginia, the two Carolinas
and Georgia (the four large states of the South) had a tonnage of only 5,243.
In the same year, the vessels of the state of Massachusetts alone had a tonnage of 17,322
( Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, 2nd session, n. 140, p. 244).
Thus the state of Massachusetts alone had three times more ships than the above-named
four states.
The state of Massachusetts, however, has only 959 square leagues of area (7,335 square
miles) and 610,014 inhabitants, while the four states that I am speaking about have 27,204
square leagues (210,000 miles) and 3,047,767 inhabitants. Thus the area of the state of
Massachusetts forms only one thirtieth of the area of the four states, and its population is ve
times smaller than theirs ( View of the United States, by Darby). Slavery harms in several
ways the commercial prosperity of the South: it diminishes the spirit of enterprise among
whites, and it prevents them from nding at their disposal the sailors that they need. The navy
recruits in general only from the lowest class of the population. Now it is slaves who in the
South form this class, and it is difcult to use them at sea; their service would be inferior to
that of whites, and you would always have to be afraid that they might revolt in the middle
of the ocean, or might take ight when reaching foreign shores.
71. View of the United States, by Darby, p. 444.
72. Note that, when I speak about the basin of the Mississippi, I am not including the
portion of the states of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, placed west of the Allegheny
Mountains, and that should, however, be considered as also part of it.
majority of the citizens of the Union were on the shores of the sea in the
vicinity of the place where Washington is rising today; nowit is deeper into
the land and more to the North; you can be sure that within twenty years
it will be on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains. Assuming that the
Unioncontinues to exist, the basinof the Mississippi, because of its fertility
and its extent, is necessarily called to become the permanent center of fed-
eral power. In thirty or forty years the basin of the Mississippi will have
taken its natural rank. It is easy to calculate that then its population, com-
pared to that of the states placed on the shores of the Atlantic, will be in
proportion of about 40 to 11. So in a few more years the leadership of the
Union will escape completely from the states that formed it, and the popu-
lation of the valleys of the Mississippi will predominate in federal councils.
This continuous gravitationof strengthandfederal inuence towardthe
Northwest is revealed every ten years, when, after doing a federal census of
the population, the number of representatives that each state must send to
Congress is xed once again.
73
In1790, Virginia had nineteenrepresentatives inCongress. This number
continued to grow until 1813, when we saw it attain the gure of twenty-
three. From this time it began to decrease. In 1833 it was no more than
twenty-one.
74
During this same period the state of New York followed an
73. You notice then that during the ten years that have just passed one state increased its
population in the proportion of 5 to 100, as Delaware; another was in the proportion of 250
to 100, as the territory of Michigan. Virginia nds that, during the same period, it increased
the number of its population in the relationship of 13 to 100, while the adjacent state of Ohio
increased the number of its population in the proportion of 61 to 100. See the general table
contained in the National Calendar;
d
you will be struck by the inequality in the fortune of
the different states.
d. It concerns the American Almanac for 1832, p. 162. The National Calendar also
contains gures on the census, but the percentages given by Tocqueville belong to the
American Almanac.
74. You are going to see further along that during the last periodthe populationof Virginia
grew in the proportion of 13 to 100. It is necessary to explain how the number of the repre-
sentatives of a state can decrease when the population of the state, far from decreasing itself,
is advancing. I take as point of comparison Virginia, which I have already cited. The number
of representatives of Virginia, in 1823, was inproportionto the total number of representatives
of the Union; the number of representatives of Virginia in 1833 is equally in proportion to
the total number of representatives of the Union in 1833, and in proportion in relation to its
population, which increased during these ten years. So the relation of the new number of
opposite progression: in1790, it hadinCongress tenrepresentatives; in1813,
twenty-seven; in 1823, thirty-four; in 1833, forty. Ohio did not have a single
representative in 1803; in 1833 it had nineteen.
It is difcult to conceive of a lasting union between two peoples one of
whomis poor and weak, the other rich andstrong, evenif it wouldbe proved
that the strength and wealth of one is not the cause of the weakness and
poverty of the other. Union is still more difcult to maintain in a time when
one is losing strength and when the other is in the process of gaining it.
This rapid and disproportionate increase of certain states threatens the
independence of the others. If New York, with its two million inhabitants
and its forty representatives, wanted to pass a law in Congress, it would
perhaps succeed. But even if the most powerful states did not seek to op-
press the least powerful, the danger wouldstill exist, for it is inthe possibility
of the deed almost as much as in the deed itself.
The weak rarely have condence in the justice and reason of the strong.
So the states that are growing less quickly than the others cast a look of dis-
trust and envy on those that fortune favors. From that comes this profound
malaise and this vague uneasiness that you notice in one part of the Union,
and that contrast with the well-being and condence that reign in the other.
I think that the hostile attitude taken by the South has no other causes.
The men of the South are of all Americans those who should most hold
on to the Union, for they are the ones who above all would suffer from
being abandoned to themselves; but they are the only ones who threaten
to break the bond of the confederation. What causes that? It is easy to say:
the South, which provided four Presidents to the confederation;
75
which
knows today that federal power is escaping from it; which each year sees
representatives from Virginia to the old will be proportional, on the one hand, in relation to
the new total number of representatives to the old, and, on the other, in relation to the pro-
portions of increase for Virginia and for the entire Union. Thus in order for the number of
representatives from Virginia to remain stationary, it is sufcient that the relation of the
proportion of increase of the small country to that of the large be the inverse of the relation
of the new total number of representatives to the old; if this proportion of increase of the
Virginia population is in a weaker relation to the proportion of increase of the entire Union,
as the new number of representatives of the Union with the old, the number of representatives
of Virginia will be decreased.
75. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.
the number of its representatives to Congress decrease and those of the
North and of the West increase; the South, populated by ardent and iras-
cible men, is getting angry and is becoming uneasy. It looks at itself with
distress; examining the past, it wonders each day if it is not oppressed. If
it comes to nd that a law of the Union is not clearly favorable to it, it cries
out that it is being abused by force; it complains ardently, and if its voice
is not heard, it becomes indignant and threatens to withdrawfroma society
whose costs it bears, without getting any prots.
The tariff laws, said the inhabitants of Carolina in 1832, enrich the
North and ruin the South, for, otherwise, how could you imagine that the
North, withits inhospitable climate andaridsoil, wouldconstantlyincrease
its wealth and power, while the South, which is the garden of America, is
falling rapidly into decline?
76
If the changes that I have talked about took place gradually, so that each
generation at least had the time to pass by along with the order of things
that it had witnessed, the danger would be less; but there is something pre-
cipitous, I could almost say revolutionary, inthe progress that societymakes
in America. The same citizen has been able to see his state march at the
head of the Union and then become powerless in federal councils. There
is one such Anglo-American republic that grew up as quickly as a man, and
that was born, grew and reached maturity in thirty years.
It must not be imagined, however, that the states that lose power are
becoming depopulated or are declining; their prosperity is not stopping;
they are growing even more quickly than any kingdom of Europe.
77
But it
76. See the report made by its committee to the Convention that proclaimed nullication
in South Carolina.
77. The population of a country assuredly forms the rst element of its wealth. During
this same period of 1820 to 1832, when Virginia lost two representatives to Congress, its popu-
lation increased in the proportion of 13.7 to 100;
e
that of the Carolinas in the relation of 15
to 100, and that of Georgia in the proportion of 51.5 to 100. (See American Almanac, 1832,
p. 162.) Now Russia, which is the European country where the population grows most quickly,
only increases in ten years the number of its inhabitants in the proportion of 9.5 to 100; France
in that of 7 to 100, and Europe as a whole in that of 4.7 to 100 (see Malte-Brun, vol. VI,
p. 95).
e. Draft of the note in the manuscript: The population grewby 145,000 inhabitants
or 13.7 percent in ten years. See fth census. It seems to me that by following this pro-
gression the population of Virginia would take about 75 years to double.
seems to them that they are becoming poor because they are not becoming
rich as quickly as their neighbor, andthey believe they are losing their power
because they suddenly come in contact with a power greater than theirs.
78
So it is their sentiments and their passions that are wounded more than
their interests. But isnt this enough for the confederation to be at risk? If
since the beginning of the world peoples and kings had in view only their
true utility, you would hardly know what war was among men.
Thus the greatest danger that threatens the United States arises from
their very prosperity; it tends to create among several of the confederated
states the intoxication that accompanies the rapid augmentationof wealth,
and, among others, the envy, distrust and the regrets that most oftenfollow
its loss.
The Americans rejoice when contemplating this extraordinary move-
ment; they should, it seems to me, consider it with regret and with fear.
Whatever they do, the Americans of the United States will become one of
the greatest peoples of the world; they will cover nearly all of North
America with their offspring; the continent that they inhabit is their do-
main, it cannot escape them. So what presses them to take possession of
it today? Wealth, power and glory cannot fail to be theirs, and they rush
toward this immense fortune as if only a moment remained for them to
grasp it.
I believe I have demonstrated that the existence of the present confed-
eration depends entirely on the agreement of all the confederated states to
want to remain united; and from this given I tried to nd out what the
causes are that could lead the different states to want to separate. But there
are two ways for the Union to perish. One of the confederated states can
want to withdraw from the contract and thus break the common bond
violently; most of the remarks that I have made before apply to this case.
The federal government can progressively lose its power by a simultaneous
tendency of the unitedrepublics totake backthe use of their independence.
The central power, deprived successively of all of its prerogatives, reduced
78. It must be admitted, however, that the depreciation that has taken place in the value
of tobacco for fty years has notably diminished the comfort of the farmers of the South; but
this fact is independent of the will of the men of the North as it is of theirs.
by a tacit agreement to powerlessness, would become incapable of fullling
its object, and the second Union would perish like the rst, by a sort of
senile weakness.
The gradual weakening of the federal bond, which leads nally to the
annulment of the Union, is moreover in itself a distinct fact that can lead
to many other less extreme results before producing that nal result. The
confederation would still exist, though the weakness of its government
could already have reduced the nationto powerlessness, andcausedinternal
anarchy and the slowing of the general prosperity of the country.
So after trying to nd out what is leading
f
the Anglo-Americans to be-
come disunited, it is important to examine whether, giventhe Unions con-
tinued existence, their government is enlarging the sphere of its action or
is narrowing it, whether it is becoming more energetic or weaker.
The Americans are clearly preoccupied by a great fear. They notice that
among most peoples of the world the exercise of the rights of sovereignty
tend to become concentrated in a few hands, and they are afraid of the
idea that it will end up by being so among them. The statesmenthemselves
experience these terrors, or at least pretend to experience them; for in
America centralization is not popular, and you cannot more skillfully
court the majority than by rising against the alleged encroachments of the
central power. The Americans refuse to see that in countries where this
centralizing tendency that frightens them manifests itself, you nd only
a single people, while the Union is a confederation of different peoples;
a fact that is sufcient to disrupt all of the expectations based on the
analogy.
I admit that I consider these fears of a great number
g
of Americans as
entirely imaginary. Far from fearing like them the consolidation of sover-
eignty in the hands of the Union, I believe that the federal government is
becoming weaker in a visible way.
To prove what I am advancing on this point I will not resort to old
f. In the manuscript: what could lead . . .
g. The manuscript says: of some Americans.
facts, but to those that I was able to witness or that have taken place in
our time.
h
When you examine attentively what is happening in the United States,
youdiscover without difculty the existence of twocontrarytendencies; they
are like two currents that travel over the same bed in opposite directions.
During the forty-ve years that the Unionhas existedtime has dealt with
a host of provincial prejudices that at rst militated against it. The patriotic
sentiment that attached each of the Americans to his state has become less
exclusive. By getting to know each other better the various parts of the
Union have drawn closer. The mail, that great link between minds, today
penetrates into the heart of the wilderness;
79
steamboats make all points of
the coast communicate with eachother daily. Commerce descends andgoes
back up the rivers of the interior with an unparalleled rapidity.
80
To these
opportunities created by nature and art are joined instability of desires,
restlessness of spirit, and love of riches that, constantly pushing the Amer-
ican out of his house, put him in communication with a great number of
his fellow citizens. He travels his country in all directions; he visits all the
populations that inhabit it. You do not nd a province of France whose
inhabitants know each other as perfectly as the 13 million men who cover
the surface of the United States.
h. In the margin: So the existence of the Union [v: the will to remain united], a
matter of chance. Its dismemberment, something always possible, something inevitable
with time.
The weakening of the federal government as government apart from dismember-
ment, another question. The rst intention of Tocqueville had been to acknowledge
in the introduction of the second volume his error as to the danger of the dissolution
of the United States (see note b for p. 690 of the third volume and James T. Schleifer,
The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America, pp. 10211.
79. In 1832, the district of Michigan, which has only 31,639 inhabitants and still forms
only a wilderness scarcely cleared, showed the development of 940 miles of post roads. The
nearly entirely wild territory of Arkansas was already crossed by 1,938 miles of post roads. See
The Report of the Postmaster General, 30 November 1833. Carrying newspapers alone
throughout the Union brings in 254,796 dollars per year. [These documents are found in
National Calendar, 1833, p. 244. See Report of the Postmaster General, National Intel-
ligencer, 12 December 1833.]
80. In the course of ten years, from 1821 to 1831, 271 steamboats were launched just on the
rivers that water the valley of the Mississippi [ National Almanac, 1832, p. 255]. In1829, there
were 256 steamboats in the United States. See Legislative Documents, n. 140, p. 274.
At the same time that the Americans mingle, they assimilate; the differ-
ences that climate, origin and institutions have placed between them di-
minish. They all get closer and closer to a common type. Each year thou-
sands of men who have left the North spread throughout all parts of the
Union: they bring with them their beliefs, their opinions, their mores, and
as their enlightenment is superior to that of the men among whom they
are going to live, they do not take long to take hold of affairs and to modify
society to their prot. This continual emigration of the North toward the
South singularly favors the fusion of all the provincial characters into one
single national character.
j
So the civilization of the North seems destined
to become the common measure against which all the rest must model
themselves one day.
k
As the industry of the Americans makes progress, you see the commer-
cial bonds that unite all the confederated states tighten, and the union
moves from opinions into habits. The passage of time nally makes a host
of fantastic terrors that tormented the imagination of the men of 1789
disappear. The federal power has not become oppressive; it has not de-
stroyed the independence of the states; it does not lead the confederated
states to monarchy; with the Union the small states have not fallen into
dependence on the large. The confederation has continued to grow con-
stantly in population, in wealth, in power.
So I am persuaded that in our times the Americans have fewer natural
difculties living united than they found in 1789; the Union has fewer en-
emies than then.
m
j. Beaumont had written during his journey: American uniformity./
One of the principal causes of the uniformity of mores amongthe Americans, which
is always going to increase, comes from the spirit of emigration of the inhabitants of
New England, who bring everywhere their enterprising, industrious and mercantile
spirit. (Baltimore, 31 October 1831) (YTC, CIX).
k. At the time of his conversation with Tocqueville and Beaumont, John Latrobe, a
lawyer from Baltimore, had insisted a great deal on the differences between the south
and the north of the United States and had not hesitated to assert: I believe that all the
American continent must model itself one day on New England (non-alphabetic note-
books 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 111).
m. All superior men for the Union, all secondary men against (YTC, CVh, 2,
p. 50).
And yet, if you want to study carefully the history of the United States
over forty-ve years, you will easily be persuaded that the federal power is
declining.
It is not difcult to point out the causes of this phenomenon.
At the moment when the Constitution of 1789 was promulgated, ev-
erything was perishing in anarchy; the Union that followed this disorder
excited much fear and hatred; but it had ardent friends because it was the
expression of a great need. So although more attacked then than it is today,
the federal power rapidly reached its maximum power, as usually happens
to a government that triumphs after inaming its forces in the struggle. In
this period the interpretation of the Constitution seemed to expand rather
thannarrowfederal sovereignty, andthe Unionpresentedinseveral respects
the spectacle of one and the same people led, within as without, by a single
government.
n
But in order to reach this point the people in a way surpassed itself.
The Constitution had not destroyed the individuality of the states, and
all bodies, whatever they may be, have a secret instinct that carries them
toward independence. This instinct is still more pronounced in a country
like America, where each village forms a kind of republic accustomed to
governing itself.
So there was an effort made by the states that submitted to federal pre-
ponderance. And every effort, even if crowned with a great success, cannot
fail to weaken with the cause that gave it birth.
As the federal government consolidated its power, America resumed its
rank among nations, peace reappeared on its borders, public credit re-
covered; confusion was succeeded by a settled and [well-regulated] order
that allowed individual industry to follow its natural path and develop in
liberty.
This very prosperity began to make the Americans lose sight of the cause
n. In the margin: It was the temporary effect of the will of the sovereigns, and not
the permanent effect of the fusion of all sovereignty into a single one. If that had been
the case, the power of the Union instead of diminishing would have increased
constantly.
that had produced it; the danger having passed, they no longer found in
themselves the energy and patriotism that had helped to avert it. Delivered
from the fears that preoccupied them, they lapsed easily into the course of
their habits and abandoned themselves without resistance to the ordinary
tendency of their inclinations. From the moment when a strong govern-
ment no longer seemed necessary, some began again to think that it was a
nuisance. Everything prosperedwiththe Union, andnoone separatedfrom
the Union; but they hardly wanted to feel the action of the power that
represented it. In general they desired to remain united, and in each par-
ticular fact they tended to become independent again. The principle of
confederation was each day more easily accepted and less applied; thus the
federal government itself, by creating order and peace, brought about its
decline.
As soon as this disposition of minds began to show itself outwardly,
party men who live on the passions of the people began to exploit it to their
prot.
From that moment the federal government found itself in a very critical
situation; its enemies had popular favor, and by promising to weaken it,
they gained the right to lead it.
o
From that period onward every time the government of the Union en-
tered into a contest with that of the states, it has almost never ceased to
retreat. When there has been an occasion to interpret the terms of the fed-
eral Constitution, the interpretation has most oftenbeenagainst the Union
and favorable to the states.
The Constitution gave the federal government the care of providing for
the national interests. It had been thought that it was up to the federal
government to do or to encourage in the interior the great undertakings
(internal improvements ) that were of a nature to increase the prosperity of
the entire Union, such as, for example, canals.
The states became frightened by the idea of seeing an authority other
than their own thus dispose of a portion of their territory. They fearedthat
the central power, acquiring a formidable patronage inthis way withintheir
o. In the margin: I believe, but it is to be veried, that the entry of the republicans
{federalists} to power was the rst step, step indirect but real along this path.
own area, would come to exercise an inuence there that they wanted to
reserve entirely to their agents alone.
p
The democratic party that was always opposed to all developments of
the federal power then raised its voice; Congress was accusedof usurpation;
the head of State, of ambition. The central government intimidated by
this uproar ended by recognizing its error itself, and by withdrawingstrictly
into the sphere that was drawn for it.
The Constitution gives the Union the privilege of dealing with foreign
peoples. The Union had in general considered the Indian tribes that border
the frontiers of its territory from this point of view. As long as these savages
agreed to ee before civilization, the federal right was not contested; but
from the day when an Indian tribe undertook to settle on a piece of land,
the surrounding states claimed a right of possession over these lands and a
right of sovereignty over the men within them. The central government
hastened to recognize both, and after dealing with the Indians as with in-
dependent peoples, it delivered them as subjects to the legislative tyranny
of the states.
81
Among the states that were formed along the Atlantic shore, several ex-
tended indenitely to the West into the wilderness where Europeans had
not yet penetrated. Those whose limits were irrevocably xed jealously saw
the immense future open to their neighbors. The former, in a spirit of con-
ciliation and in order to facilitate the act of Union, agreed to draw limits
for themselves and abandoned to the confederation all the territory that
could be found beyond those limits.
82
Since this period the federal government has become the proprietor of
p. In the margin: Examine here the succession of messages of the various Presi-
dents who have followed each other for forty years. But wait to see if I cannot nd an
agent for this research. See note a for p. 84.
81. See in the Legislative Documents that I have already cited in the chapter onthe Indians
the letter of the President of the United States to the Cherokees, his correspondence on this
subject with his agents, and his messages to Congress.
82. The rst act of cession took place on the part of the state of NewYork in1780; Virginia,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, South Carolina, North Carolina followed this example at dif-
ferent periods. Georgia was the last; its act of cession dates only from 1802.
all the unsettled land
TN6
found outside of the thirteen states originally con-
federated. It is the federal government that undertakes to divide and to sell
that land, and the money that is brought in is put exclusively into the trea-
sury of the Union. With the aid of this revenue the federal government
buys the Indians lands from them, opens roads in new districts, and
facilitates with all its power the rapid development of society there.
Now, it has happened that in these very wilderness areas, formerly ceded
by the inhabitants on the shores of the Atlantic, new states have formed
over time. Congress has continued to sell, to the prot of the entire nation,
the unsettled lands that these states still enclose within them. But today
those states claim that once constituted they should have the exclusive right
to apply the proceeds of these sales to their own use. Since complaints had
become more and more threatening, Congress believed it necessary to take
away from the Union a part of the privileges that it had enjoyed until then,
and at the end of 1832, it passed a law that, without ceding to the new
republics of the West the ownership of their unsettled lands, nonetheless
applied the greatest part of the revenue that was drawnfromit totheir prot
alone.
83
It is sufcient to travel across the United States to appreciate the advan-
tages that the country derives from the bank.
r
These advantages are of sev-
eral kinds; but there is one above all that strikes the foreigner; the notes of
Translators Note 6: American historians usually refer to the matter Tocque-
ville is discussing here as the controversy over public lands. Giventhe context, totranslate
terrain inculte or terres incultes as uncultivated land(s) would miss the point; I have there-
fore used the term unsettled land(s), that is, public land not yet settled.
83. The President refused, it is true, to assent to this law, but he completely accepted its
principle. See Message of 8 December 1833.
q
q. A note in another place of the chapter points out: On all that see the language
of the President in 1833, National Calendar, p. 27.
r. The discussion on the Bank of the United States and the question of the tariff
formed in the beginning two distinct sections under the titles: affair of the bank
of the united states and nullification affair. The rst section began in this
place with this sentence: The attacks directed at this moment against the Bank of the
United States can be considered as newproofs of the weakening of the federal principle.
The details cited by Tocqueville could he been found in the congressional debates
published in the National Intelligencer at the end of 1833 and in the rst months of 1834.
the Bank of the United States are accepted at the same value on the wil-
derness frontier as in Philadelphia, the seat of its operations.
84
The Bank of the United States, however, is the object of great hatred.
Its directors have declared themselves against the President, and they are
accused not improbably of having abused their inuence inorder tohinder
his election. So the President, with all the fervor of a personal enmity, at-
tacks the institution that the former represent. What has encouraged the
President to pursue his vengeance in this way is that he feels supported by
the secret instincts of the majority.
The Bank forms the great monetary link of the Union as the Congress
is its great legislative link, and the same passions that tend to make the
states independent of the central power tend toward the destruction of
the Bank.
The Bank of the United States always holds in its hands a great num-
ber of the notes belonging to the provincial banks; every day it can oblige
the latter to redeem their notes in specie. For the Bank, in contrast, such
a danger is not to be feared; the greatness of its available resources allows
it to meet all expenses. Their existence thus threatened, the provincial
banks are forced to exercise restraint and to put into circulation only a
number of notes proportionate to their capital. Only with impatience
do the provincial banks endure this salutary control. So the newspapers
that are their creatures and the President, made by his interest into their
organ, attack the Bank with a kind of fury. Against it they stir up local
passions and the blind democratic instinct of the country. According to
them the directors of the Bank form an aristocratic and permanent body
whose inuence cannot fail to make itself felt in the government, and
must sooner or later alter the principles of equality on which American
society rests.
The struggle of the Bank against its enemies is only one incident in the
great battle that the provinces wage in America against the central power;
84. The current Bank of the United States was created in1816, witha capital of 35,000,000
dollars (185,500,000 fr.); its charter expires in 1836. Last year Congress passed a law to renew
it, but the President refused his assent. Today the struggle is engaged by both sides with an
extreme violence, and it is easy to predict the coming fall of the Bank.
the spirit of independence and democracy, against the spirit of hierarchy
and subordination. I am not claiming that the enemies of the Bank of the
United States are precisely the same individuals who on other points attack
the federal government; but I am saying that the attacks against the Bank
of the United States are the result of the same instincts that militate against
the federal government, and that the large number of the enemies of the
rst is an unfortunate symptom of the weakening of the second.
But the Union
s
has never shown itself more feeble than in the famous
tariff affair.
85
The wars of the French Revolution and that of 1812, by preventing free
communication between America and Europe, had created factories in the
north of the Union. When peace had reopened the road to the NewWorld
to European products, the Americans believed they had to establish a
system of tariffs that could at the very same time protect their emerging
industry and pay off the amount of debts that the wars had made them
contract.
The states of the South,
t
which have no manufacturing to encourage
and which are only agricultural, did not take long to complain about this
measure.
I am not claiming to examine here what could be imaginary or real in
their complaints, I am telling the facts.
From 1820 onward, South Carolina declared in a petition to Congress
that the tariff law was unconstitutional, oppressive and unjust. After that
Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, the state of Alabama and that of
Mississippi, made more or less energetic complaints along the same lines.
s. Here the section on the Bank of the United States ended and the one on nulli-
cation began, which nished with the words: no use would be made of it [p. 624].
85. For details of this affair, see principally Legislative Documents, 22nd Congress, 2nd
session, n. 30.
t. Some weeks before leaving America the author admitted to his brother, E
douard:
I have only a supercial idea of the South of the Union, but in order to know it as well
as the North, it would be necessary to have stayed there six months (letter of 20January
1832, YTC, BIa2). Various complications, including a very severe winter, a shipwreck,
and the illness of Tocqueville, considerably reduced the time that the two friends had
decided to spend in the South. Their stay in New Orleans lasted scarcely two days.
Far from taking these murmurings into account, Congress, in the years
1824 and 1828, again raised the tariff duties and again sanctioned the
principle.
Then was produced or rather was recalled in the South a celebrated doc-
trine that took the name of nullication.
u
I have shown in its place that the purpose of the federal Constitution
was not to establish a league, but to create a national government. The
Americans of the United States, in all cases foreseen by their Constitution,
form only one and the same people. On all those points the national will
expresses itself, as among all constitutional peoples, with the aid of a ma-
jority. Once the majority has spoken, the duty of the minority is to submit.
Such is the legal doctrine, the only one that is in agreement with the text
of the Constitution and the known intention of those who established it.
The nulliers of the South claim on the contrary that the Americans,
by uniting, did not intend to blend into one and the same people, but that
they only wanted to form a league of independent peoples; it follows that
each state, having preserved its complete sovereignty if not inactionat least
in principle, has the right to interpret the laws of Congress, and to suspend
within its borders the execution of those that to it seem opposed to the
Constitution or to justice.
The entire doctrine of nullication is found in summary in a sentence
pronounced in 1833 before the Senate of the United States by Mr. Calhoun,
avowed head of the nulliers of the South:
The Constitution is a compact, to which the states are parties in their
sovereign capacity; and that, as inall other cases of compact betweenparties
having no common umpire, each has a right to judge for itself [the extent
of its reserved powers].
v
u. Nulliers. See art. of the Revue (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 43). Was it the Revue des deux
mondes?
v. These ideas appear in the speech of 26 February 1833 (reply to Webster), repro-
duced in the National Intelligencer of 26 March 1833. Tocqueville had as well obtained
rst-hand information on this subject during his visit to Philadelphia in October 1831.
Tocqueville writes to his father on 7 October 1831:
We are in a great hurry to arrive in this last city. A remarkable event is happening
there at this moment; all the partisans of free trade have sent deputies who formwhat
It is clear that such a doctrine destroys the federal bond in principle and
in fact brings back the anarchy from which the Constitution of 1789 had
delivered the Americans.
When South Carolina saw that Congress showed itself deaf to its com-
plaints, it threatened to apply to the federal tariff law the doctrine of the
nulliers. Congress persisted in its system; nally the storm broke.
In the course of 1832, the people of South Carolina
86
called a national
[state] convention to decide on the extraordinary means that remained to
be taken; and on November 24 of the same year this conventionpublished,
under the name of an ordinance, a law that nullied the federal tariff law,
and forbade levying the duties that were set forth there, and forbade ac-
cepting appeals that could be made to the federal courts.
87
This ordinance
was supposed to be put in force only in the following month of February,
the Americans call a convention; it is a great assembly that, outside of the powers of
the State, discusses one of the questions most likely to agitate political passions in
this country, raises all the constitutional questions, and under the pretext of drafting
a petition to Congress, really plays the role of Congress. We are very curious to see
how things go within this convention. We will see there one of the most extreme
consequences of the dogma of the sovereignty of the people (YTC, BIa2).
In a note of 14 October of the same year, Tocqueville summarizes in this way his
ideas on the convention: Of all that I have seen in America, it is the convention that
most struck me as the dangerous and impractical consequence among us of the sover-
eignty of the people (alphabetic notebook B, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 238).
Memories of the revolution were too intense for Tocqueville to be able to accept the
arguments of Sparks and Gilpin who, in 1833, wrote to him to assure him that the res-
olution of the tariff problem had contributed more to strengthening than to weakening
the Union (Jared Sparks to Tocqueville, 30 August 1833; H. D. Gilpin to Tocqueville,
24 September 1833, in YTC, CId). Tocqueville got the opposite argument fromthe very
mouth of a former President of the United States, John Quincy Adams (non-alphabetic
notebooks 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 97). James T. Schleifer (The
Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America, pp. 110111) notes the little attention
given by critics to the interpretations of Sparks and Gilpin.
86. That is to say a majority of the people; for the opposing party, called Union Party,
always numbered a very strong and very active minority in its favor. Carolina can have about
47,000 voters; 30,000 were favorable to nullication, and 17,000 opposed.
87. This ordinance was preceded by a report of a committee charged with preparing the
draft; this report contains the exposition and the purpose of the law. You read there, p. 34:
and it was pointed out that if Congress modied the tariff before this time,
South Carolina would agree not to followup on its threats with other mea-
sures. Later, but in a vague and unspecied way, the desire to submit the
question to an extraordinary assembly of all the confederated states was
expressed.
While waiting, South Carolina armed its militia and prepared for war.
What did Congress do? Congress, which had not listened to its entreat-
ing subjects, lent its ear to their complaints as soon as it saw them with
weapons in hand.
88
It passed a law
89
according to which the duties set in
the tariff were to be progressively reduced over ten years, until they had
reached the point of not exceeding the needs of the government. Thus
Congress completely abandoned the tariff principle. For a duty that pro-
tected industry, Congress substituted a purely scal measure.
90
In order to
hide its defeat, the government of the Union took recourse in an expedient
that is much used by weak governments: while yielding on the facts, it
showed itself inexible on the principles. At the same time that Congress
changed the tariff legislation, it passed another law by virtue of which the
When the rights reserved to the several States are deliberately invaded, it is their right and
their duty to interpose for the purpose of arresting the progress of the evil of usurpation,
and to maintain, within their respective limits, the authorities and privileges belonging
to them as independent sovereignties [Virginia Resolutions of 1798. (ed.)]. If the several
States do not possess this right, it is in vain that they claim to be sovereign. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]
South Carolina claims to be a sovereign State. She recognizes no tribunal upon earth as
above her authority. It is true, she has entered into a solemn compact of Union with other
sovereign States, but she claims, and will exercise the right to determine the extent of her
obligations under that compact, nor will she consent that any other power shall exercise
the right of judgment for her. And when that compact is violated by her co-States, or by
the Government which they have created, she asserts her unquestionable right to judge
of the infractions as well as of the mode and measure of redress [Kentucky Resolutions
of 1798 (ed.)].
88. What really decided Congress on this measure was a demonstration by the powerful
state of Virginia, whose legislature offered to serve as arbiter between the Union and South
Carolina. Until then, the latter had seemed entirely abandoned, even by the states that had
protested with it.
89. Law of 2 March 1833.
90. This law was suggested by Mr. Clay and passed in four days in both houses of Congress
by an immense majority.
President was vested with an extraordinary power to overcome by force the
resistance that then was no longer to be feared.
South Carolina did not even agree to leave to the Union these weak
appearances of victory; the same national [state] convention that had nul-
lied the tariff law, having assembled again, accepted the concession that
had been offered to it; but at the same time it declared that it would only
persist more forcefully in the doctrine of the nulliers, and to prove it, it
annulledthe lawthat conferredextraordinary powers onthe President, even
though it was very certain that no use would be made of it.
Nearly all the actions that I have just spoken about took place during
the Presidency of General Jackson. You cannot deny that in the tariff
affair the latter upheld the rights of the Union with skill and vigor. I
believe, however, that, among the number of dangers that the federal
power runs today, you must include the very conduct of the one who
represents it.
Some persons in Europe have formed an opinion concerning the inu-
ence that General Jackson can exercise in the affairs of his country that
seems very extravagant to those who have seen things up close.
You have heard it said that General Jackson had won battles, that he was
an energetic man, led by character and habit to the use of force, avid for
power and a despot by taste. All that is perhaps true, but the consequences
that have been drawn from these truths are great mistakes.
It has been imagined that General Jackson wanted to establish a dicta-
torship in the United States, that he was going to make the military spirit
reign there, and extend the central power to the point of endangering pro-
vincial liberties. In America the time for such undertakings and the century
of such men has not yet arrived. If General Jackson had wanted to dom-
inate in this way, he would assuredly have lost his political position and
compromised his life; so he has not been so imprudent as to attempt it.
Far from wanting to extend federal power, the current President repre-
sents, on the contrary, the party that wants to restrict this power to the
clearest and most precise terms of the Constitution, and that does not ac-
cept any interpretation that can ever be favorable to the government of the
Union; far from presenting himself as the champion of centralization,
General Jackson is the agent of provincial jealousies; it is the decentralizing
passions (if I can express myself in this way) that brought him to sovereign
power. He remains and prospers there by attering these passions each day.
General Jackson is the slave of the majority; he follows it in its will, in its
desires, in its half-discovered instincts, or rather he divines it and runs to
put himself at its head.
Each time that the government of the states struggles with that of the
Union it is rare that the President is not the rst to doubt his right; he is
almost always ahead of the legislative power; when there is room for in-
terpretation on the extent of federal power, he lines up in a way against
himself; he belittles himself, he hides, he stands aside.
[
*
]
It is not that he is
naturally weak or an enemy of the union; when the majority declareditself
against the pretensions of the nulliers of the South, you saw him put
himself at its head, formulate with clarity and energy the doctrine that the
majority professed and be the rst to call for the use of force. General Jack-
son, to use a comparison borrowed from the vocabulary of American par-
ties, seems to me federal by taste and republican by calculation.
w
After thus demeaning himself before the majority in order to win its
favor, General Jackson rises again; he then marches toward the objects that
the majority itself pursues, or towardthose that it does not see withjealousy,
overturning every obstacle before him. Strong due to a support that his
predecessors did not have, he tramples underfoot his personal enemies
wherever he nds them, with an ease that no President has found; on his
own responsibility he takes measures that none before himwould ever have
dared to take; it evenhappens that he treats the national representationwith
a sort of almost insulting disdain; he refuses to approve the laws passed by
Congress, and often neglects to respond to this great body. He is like a
favorite who sometimes treats his master rudely. So the power of General
Jackson is constantly increasing; but that of the President is decreasing. In
[*]. See message of 1832, in ne [at the end]. National Calendar, p. 31.
w. The remarks on Jackson and the American Presidency earned Tocqueville severe
criticisms from Thomas H. Benton (Thirty Years View; or, a History of the Working of
the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850, New York: Appleton and
Company, 1854, I, pp. 11114). For an introduction to the ideas of Tocqueville on the
Presidency, see Hugh Brogan, Tocqueville and the American Presidency, Journal of
American Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 35775. See as well note f for p. 372.
his hands the federal government is strong; it will pass enervated to his
successor.
Either I am strangely mistaken, or the federal government tends each
day to become weaker; it is withdrawing successively from affairs, it is nar-
rowing more and more the circle of its action. Naturally weak, it is aban-
doning even the appearance of strength. From another perspective I
thought I saw in the United States that the sentiment of independence was
becoming more and more intense in the states, the love of provincial gov-
ernment more and more pronounced.
The Union is desired; but reduced to a shadow. They want it strong in
certain cases and weak in all the others; they pretend that in time of war it
can gather in its hand the national forces and all the resources of the coun-
try, and that in time of peace it does not so to speak exist; as if this alter-
nation between debility and vigor was natural.
I see nothing that can for now stop this general movement of minds;
the causes that have given it birth do not cease to operate in the same di-
rection. So it will continue, and it can be predicted that, unless some ex-
traordinary circumstance arises, the government of the Union will grow
weaker each day.
I believe however that we are still far from the time when the federal
power, incapable of protecting its own existence and bringing peace to the
country, will fade away in a sense by itself. The Union is in the mores, it is
desired; its results are clear, its benets visible. When it is noticed that the
weakness of the federal government compromises the existence of the
Union, I do not doubt that we will see the birth of a movement of reaction
in favor of strength.
The government of the United States is, of all the federal governments
that have been established until now, the one that is most naturally destined
to act; as long as you do not attack it in an indirect manner by the inter-
pretation of its laws, as long as you do not profoundly alter its substance,
a change of opinion, an internal crisis, a war, could suddenly restore the
vigor that it needs.
What I wanted to note is only this: many men among us think that in
the United States there is a movement of minds that favors centralization
of power in the hands of the President and Congress. I claim that an op-
posite movement is clearly observed. As the federal government grows
older, far from gaining strength and threatening the sovereignty of the
states, I say that it tends to become weaker eachday, andthat the sovereignty
of the Union alone is in danger. That is what the present reveals. What will
be the nal result of this tendency, what events can stop, slowor hasten the
movement that I have described? The future hides them, and I do not claim
to be able to lift its veil.
Of Republican Institutions in the United States,
What Are Their Chances of Lasting?
The Union is only an accident.Republican institutions
have more of a future.The republic is, for now, the natural
state of the Anglo-Americans.Why.In order to destroy it,
it would be necessary to change all the laws at the same time and
modify all the mores.Difculties that the Americans have in
creating an aristocracy.
The dismemberment of the Union, by introducing war within the states
confederated today and with it permanent armies, dictatorship and taxes,
could in the long run compromise the fate of republican institutions there.
But you must not confuse the future of the republic with that of the
Union.
x
The Union is an accident that will only last as long as circumstances
favor it, but the republic seems to me the natural state of the Americans,
and only the continuous actionof contrary causes acting always inthe same
way could replace it with monarchy.
y
x. Division of the American empire./
When I spoke to Mr. Schermerhorn about the possible divisionthat couldtake place
among the united provinces, he seemed to me not to believe that the thing was to be
feared in the least in the near future, but thinks that it could happen someday by and by.
April 1831 (YTC, BIIb, unpublished travel note).
y. In the margin: The republic in the United States does not arise only from the
laws, but from the nature of the country, from habits, from mores.
The Union exists principally in the law that created it. A single revolu-
tion, a change in public opinion can shatter it forever. The republic has
deeper roots.
z
z. Of the different ways that you can imagine the republic./
What is understood by republic in the United States is an ordered State actually
based on the enlightened will of the people. It is a government where [v: liberty of
discussion and thought reigns from which] resolutions mature over a long time, are
debated slowly and are executed with maturity. What is called the republic in the
United States is the tranquil rule of the majority. The majority, after it has had the
time to recognize itself and to take note of its existence, is the source of all powers.
But the majority itself is not omnipotent; above it in the moral world are found
humanity and reason, in the material world, vested rights. The majority in its om-
nipotence recognizes these two barriers, andif it has sometimes happenedtooverturn
them, it felt itself carried away by its passions beyond its rights, just as manconstantly
happens to do evil, while entirely recognizing the existence and the sanctity of virtue.
That is what is understood by republic in the United States.
[In the margin: I cannot believe that the Roman republic could have begun at the
time of Catilina./
It is this government that must leave to each man the largest part of his indepen-
dence and liberty and that is the farthest removed from despotism.]
[To the side: In all the countries where this republic would be practical, I would
be a republican.]
But we have made strange discoveries in Europe and we are much more advanced
than that.
The republic according to certain men in Europe is not the rule of the majority
as has been believed until now; it is the rule of those who speak in the name of the
majority. It is not the people who act in these kinds of governments, it is those who
want the greatest good for the people. Republican government is, moreover, the only
one in which the right to do everything must be recognized and that must not keep
strictly to any divine or human law in order to reach the end that it proposes, which
is nothing other than the greatest happiness of humanity. This end in itself alone
justies all the rest.
[In the margin: Happy distinction that allows acting in the name of nations with-
out consulting them.]
Republican liberty does not try to persuade but to break; it proceeds only by sud-
den movements and always has the ax or the hammer in hand in order to make its
way in the world.
[In the margin: Republican liberty is the power to dare anything (illegible word,
crossed out), it is scorn for all the rules, [v: holy laws] from those of morality to those
of common sense.
You believed that the cause of aristocracy was lost. But here are (illegible word).
I tell you that those men are the only partisans of aristocracy, at least not still the
aristocracy of the rich and the nobles in truth. They are the aristocracy of cut-th[roats
(ed.)]
[Dispersed over an immense and half empty
a
territory, the Americans
have found themselves from the beginning divided into a great number of
small distinct societies that were not naturally attachedtoa commoncenter.
When I see one of these alleged republicans, it seems to me that I always hear him
say [v: see the executioner in his ofcial outt standing on the scaffold crying out]:
Peoples of the earth (for it is always the entire earth that he addresses from their [sic ]
rooftop) come to us, for except for your fathers there has never been anything more
foolish than you, and if you do not put your destiny in our hands, you will never be
able to prosper, unless we get involved in your destiny.
You imagined, fellow citizens, that the republic was by its nature a mild and pros-
perous government, and you thought that the trial that had formerly been made of
it among us must not be imputed to the system itself, but to those who put it into
practice and to the extraordinary circumstances in which the (illegible word) was
found; know that the republic that we are proposing is very exactly the one that you
have seen in the past, and that it can be established as such only with the aid of a
profound and radical revolution in property and in ranks. Some have told you that
the men made so famous by the misfortunes of a generationwere madmen, miserable
men intoxicated with power and blood by an unexpected success, and that you must
not charge liberty with the evils that they did in its name. Beware of listening to such
language, fellow citizens; the men that you hear about did only what they had to do.
What are called their crimes are actions as beautiful as they are immortal. They sac-
riced themselves for you, ungrateful men, even while slitting your throats. You
would perhaps be tempted to believe that we, their successors, adopt their love for
the good while deploring their errors; do not be mistaken, fellow citizens; we think
that in our time as in theirs dictatorship alone can save the country and that liberty
can be established only after punishing writers [v: all our adversaries] by death, and
that respect for rights can arise only after trampling all rights under foot. [v: We
admire on all points these great men and we burn to walk intheir steps; while waiting,
we kiss the sacred dust where they left their footprint. And even their costumes, holy
relic, we would like to make reappear in order to begin from now on to resemble
them in a few ways.]
So come to us dear fellow citizens, come so we can share your fortunes among
ourselves [v: so we can trample your beliefs underfoot] and so we can cut your throat
following the principles that we received from our fathers and that we will leave to
our children. How to resist such language? Arent these agreeable speeches and pleas-
ant missionaries?
[To the side: As long as those who sincerely want the establishment of the republic
do not push far away from their ranks such miserable men, the kings of Europe can
still rest easy on their thrones] (YTC, CVh, 2, pp. 6874).
This fragment, of complicated transcription, contains various other variants and
versions.
a. While preparing the plan for this chapter, Tocqueville had noted: The republic
is in a way the natural state of small, enlightened States (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 43).
So it was necessary that each one of these small societies took care of its
own affairs, since nowhere did you see a central authority that could nat-
urally provide for them. Town and provincial liberty were introduced to
America by the English, but they arose there all by themselves by the very
nature of things. Now, town and provincial liberty are the basis of [v: the
only lasting foundation that you can give to] republican institutions and as
long as they exist in the United States, the United States will remain
republican.]
What is understood by republic in the United States is the slow and
tranquil action of society on itself. It is an ordered state actually based on
the enlightened will of the people. It is a conciliatory government, where
resolutions mature over a long time, are debated slowly and are executed
with maturity.
Republicans in the United States value mores, respect beliefs, recognize
rights. They profess this opinion, that a people must be moral, religious
and moderate, in proportion as it is free. What is called a republic in the
United States is the tranquil rule of the majority. The majority, after it has
had the time to recognize itself and to take note of its existence, is the
common source of powers. But the majority itself is not omnipotent.
Above it in the moral world are found humanity, justice and reason; in the
political world, vested rights. The majority recognizes these two barriers,
and if it happens to cross them, it is because the majority has passions, like
every man; and like him, it can do evil while perceiving good. [{For me, I
will have no difculty in saying, in all countries where the republic is prac-
tical, I will be republican.}]
But we have made strange discoveries in Europe.
According to some among us, the republic is not the rule of the majority,
as we have believed until now; it is the rule of those who answer for the
majority. It is not the people who lead these sorts of governments, but those
who know the greatest good of the people: happy distinction, that allows
acting in the name of nations without consulting them, and claiming their
gratitude while trampling them underfoot.
b
Republican government is,
b. Royalty has had its valets and its spies, why would the republic not have its cut-
throats?
moreover, the only one in which the right to do everything must be rec-
ognized, and that can despise what men until nowhave respected, fromthe
highest laws of morality to the ordinary rules of common sense.
Until our time it had been thought that despotismwas odious, whatever
its forms. But it has been discovered in our day that there are legitimate
tyrannies and holy injustices in the world, provided that they are exercised
in the name of the people.
[That is not a vague theory; they are maxims that are professed while
basing them on facts. These doctrines have found ardent missionaries. I
believe that I hear them saying to us:
You imagined, they say to us, that the republic was by its nature a free
and tolerant government, and you thought perhaps that the trial that had
formerly been made of it among us must not be imputed to the system
itself, but to those who put it into practice and to the extraordinary cir-
cumstances in which this country found itself.]
c
The ideas that the Americans have formed about the republic singularly
facilitate its use for them and ensure that it will last.
d
Among them, if the
practice of republican government is often bad, at least the theory is good,
and the people always nish by conforming their acts to it.
It was impossible in the beginning and it would still be very difcult in
America to establish a centralized administration. Men are spread over too
large a space and are separated by too many natural obstacles for one man
to be able to undertake to direct the details of their existence. So America
is par excellence the country of provincial and town government.
An aristocracy of wolves, worse.
Great capitals annul the representative system (YTC, CVj, 2, p. 22).
c. In the margin: Some limit themselves to praising the disinterestedness of Robes-
pierre and the greatness of soul of Danton. Others go still further.
d. Tocqueville wrote to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831:
Here we are very far from the ancient republics, it must be admitted, and yet this
people is republican and I do not doubt that it will be for a long time still. And the
republic is for it the best of governments.
I explain this phenomenon to myself only by thinking that America nds itself
for now in a physical situation so happy that particular interest is never contrary to
general interest, which is certainly not the case in Europe (YTC, BIa2).
To this cause, whose action made itself equally felt on all the Europeans
of the New World, the Anglo-Americans added several others that are par-
ticular to them.
Whenthe colonies of NorthAmerica were established, municipal liberty
had already penetrated English laws as well as mores, and the English em-
igrants adopted it not only as something necessary, but also as a goodwhose
value they knew.
[We have seen furthermore that in this matter the inuence exercisedby
the country has been greater or lesser depending on the circumstances that
accompanied colonization and the previously contracted habits of the
colonists.
The French carried to America the tradition of absolute monarchy; the
English came there with the customs of a free people.
When the French arrived in Canada they rst founded a city that they
called Quebec. From this city the population spread little by little by de-
grees, like a tree that spreads it roots in a circle. Quebec has remained the
central point, and the French of Canada are still today only one and the
same people, submitted in most cases to one and the same government.
{It was not this way in the United States, above all in the part of the
country that was called New England.}] We have seen, furthermore, how
the colonies were founded. Each province and each district so to speak was
populated separately by men strangers to one another, or associated for dif-
ferent ends.
So the English of the United States found themselves from the begin-
ning divided into a great number of small distinct societies that were at-
tached to no common center, and it was necessary for each one of these
small societies to take care of its own affairs, since nowhere did you see a
central authority that naturally had to and easily could provide for them.
Thus the nature of the country, the very manner in which the English
colonies were founded, the habits of the rst emigrants, all united to de-
velop town and provincial liberties there to an extraordinary degree.
In the United States the institutions of the country are therefore as a
whole essentially republican; to destroy in a lasting way the laws that es-
tablished the republic, it would be necessary in a way to abolish all the laws
all at once.
If today a party undertook to establish a monarchy in the United States,
it would be in a still more difcult position than whoever would want at
the present moment to proclaim the republic in France. Royalty wouldnot
nd legislation prepared for it in advance, and then inactual fact youwould
see a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions.
e
The monarchical principle would penetrate with as much difculty into
the mores of the Americans.
In the United States, the dogma of the sovereignty of the people is not
an isolated doctrine that is attached neither to the habits nor to the ensem-
ble of dominant ideas; you can on the contrary envisage it as the last link
in a chain of opinions that envelops the entire Anglo-American world.
Providence has given to each individual, what ever he is, the degree of reason
necessary for him to be able to direct himself in the things that interest him
exclusively. Such is the great maxim on which in the United States civil
and political society rests: the father of the family applies it to his children,
the master to his servants, the town to those it administers, the province
to the town, the state to the provinces, the Union to the states. Extended
to the whole of the nation, it becomes the dogma of the sovereignty of
the people.
[So the republican principle of the sovereignty of the people is not
only a political principle, but also a civil principle.]
Thus in the United States the generative principle of the republic is the
same one that regulates most human actions. So the republic, if I can ex-
press myself in this way, penetrates the ideas, the opinions and all the habits
of the Americans at the same time that it is established in their laws; and
in order to succeed in changing the laws, they would have to be changed
wholesale as it were. Inthe UnitedStates the religionof the greatest number
itself is republican; it subjects the truths of the other world to individual
reason, as politics relinquishes to the good sense of all the responsibility for
the interests of this one; and it agrees that each man should freely take the
e. 25 October 1831.The people are always right, that is the dogma of the republic
the same as the king can do no wrong is the religion of monarchical States. It is a great
question to know if one is more false than the other; but what is very certain is that
neither the one nor the other is true (pocket notebook 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC,
V, 1, p. 184).
path that will lead him to heaven, in the same way that the law recognizes
the right of each citizen to choose his government.
Clearly only a long series of facts, all having the same tendency, can
substitute for this ensemble of laws, opinions and mores an ensemble of
the opposite mores, opinions and laws.
If the republican principles must perish in America, they will succumb
only after a long social effort, frequently interrupted, often resumed; sev-
eral times they will seem to arise again, and will disappear never to return
only when an entirely new people will have taken the place of those who
exist today. Now, nothing can portend such a revolution, no sign an-
nounces it.
What strikes you the most on your arrival in the United States is the
type of tumultuous movement in which political society is immersed. The
laws change constantly, and at rst view it seems impossible that a people
so little sure of its will does not soon substitute for the present form of its
government an entirely new form. These fears are premature. There are as
regards political institutions two types of instability that must not be con-
fused. The one is attached to secondary laws; that one can reign for a long
time within a well-settled society. The other constantly shakes the very
foundations of the constitution, and attacks the generative principles of
the laws; this one is always followed by troubles and revolutions; the nation
that suffers it is in a violent and transitory state. Experience demonstrates
that these two types of legislative instability do not have a necessary link
between them, for we have seen them exist conjoined or separately de-
pending on times and places. The rst is found in the United States, but
not the second. The Americans frequently change the laws, but the foun-
dation of the Constitution is respected.
Today the republican principle reigns in America as the monarchical
principle dominated in France under Louis XIV. The French of that time
were not only friends of monarchy, but also they did not imagine that you
could put anything in its place; they acknowledged it as you acknowledge
the course of the sun and the vicissitudes of the seasons. Among themroyal
power had no more advocates than adversaries.
This is how the republic exists in America, without struggle, without op-
position, without proof, by a tacit agreement, a sort of consensus universalis.
Nonetheless, I think that by changing their administrative procedures
as often as they do, the inhabitants of the United States compromise the
future of republican government.
Hampered constantly in their projects by the continual changeability of
legislation, it is to be feared that men will end up considering the republic
as an inconvenient way to live in society; the evil resulting from the insta-
bility of secondary laws would then put into question the existence of the
fundamental laws, and would lead indirectly to a revolution. But this time
is still very far from us.
What you can foresee from now on is that by leaving the republic the
Americans would pass rapidly to despotism, without stopping for a very
long time at monarchy. Montesquieu said that there was nothing more ab-
solute than the authority of a prince who followed a republic since the
undened powers that had been given without fear to anelective magistrate
are then put into the hands of a hereditary leader.
f
This is generally true
but particularly applicable to a democratic republic. In the United States
the magistrates are not elected by a particular class of citizens, but by the
majority of the nation; they represent immediately the passions of the mul-
titude, and depend entirely on its will; so they inspire neither hate nor fear.
Also I have noted the little care that has been taken to limit their powers
by tracing limits to its action, and what an immense share has been left to
their arbitrariness. This order of things has created habits that would sur-
vive it. The American magistrate would keep his undened power while
ceasing to be responsible, and it is impossible to say where tyranny would
then stop.
[If Napoleon had followed Louis XIV, {he would have found royal
power strong but surrounded by impediments that would have imposed
limits on his spirit of domination} he would have shown himself more
stable but not as absolute as he was. Napoleon following a representative
of the people could do anything.]
There are menamong us who are waiting tosee aristocracy arise inAmer-
f. Montesquieu, Considerations sur les causes et la grandeur des Romains et de leur
de cadence, chapter XV, in uvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade, 1951), I, p. 150.
ica and who already foresee with exactitude the period when it must grasp
power.
I have already said, and I repeat, that the current movement of American
society seems to me more and more democratic.
I do not claim, however, that one day the Americans will not end by
restricting among themselves the circle of political rights, or by conscating
these very rights for the prot of one man; but I cannot believe that they
will ever grant the exclusive use of those rights to a particular class of cit-
izens or, in other words, that they will establish an aristocracy.
An aristocratic body is composed of a certain number of citizens who,
without being placed very far from the crowd, raise themselves nonetheless
in a permanent manner above it; you touch and cannot strike them; you
mix with them each day, and cannot merge with them.
It is impossible to imagine anything more contrary to the nature and to
the secret instincts of the human heart than a subjugation of this type; left
to themselves men will always prefer the arbitrary power of a king to the
regular administration of nobles.
In order to last an aristocracy needs to establish inequality in prin-
ciple, to legalize it in advance, and to introduce it into the family at
the same time that it spreads it throughout the society; all things that
repulse natural equity so strongly that only by coercion can you obtain
them from men.
Since human societies have existed I do not believe that you can cite the
example of a single people that, left to itself and by its own efforts, has
created an aristocracy within itself; all the aristocracies of the Middle Ages
are daughters of conquest. The conqueror was the noble, the conquered
the serf. Force then imposed inequality, which once entered into the mores
lasted by itself and passed naturally into the laws.
You have seen societies that, because of events prior to their existence,
are so to speak born aristocratic, and that are then led by each century back
toward democracy. Such was the fate of the Romans, and that of the bar-
barians who came after them. But a people who, starting from civilization
and democracy, would come closer by degrees to inequality of conditions,
and would nish by establishing within itself inviolable privileges and ex-
clusive categories, there is something that would be new in the world.
Nothing indicates that America is destined to be the rst to give such a
spectacle.
[I do not know if the Americans, like all peoples who have run the
course before them, will end by submitting to one master, but I cannot
believe that they will ever have a true aristocracy./
A party that undertook to establish monarchy in America today would
nd itself in as difcult a position as the one that wanted to proclaim the
republic in France. In France you would implant the republican principle
inthe middle of secondary institutions that are still eminentlymonarchical.
In America you would establish a king who would nd in his hands only
republican institutions.]
Some Considerations on the Causes of the
Commercial Greatness of the United States
The Americans are called by nature to be a great maritime
people.Extent of their shores.Depth of the ports.Greatness
of the rivers.It is however much less to physical causes than to
intellectual and moral causes that you must attribute the
commercial superiority of the Anglo-Americans.Reason for this
opinion.Future of the Anglo-Americans as commercial
people.The ruin of the Union would not stop the maritime
development of the peoples who compose it.Why.The Anglo-
Americans are naturally called to serve the needs of the
inhabitants of South America.They will become, like the
English, the carriers of a large part of the world.
From the Bay of Fundy to the Sabine River in the Gulf of Mexico, the
coast of the United States extends the length of about nine hundred
leagues.
These coasts form a single unbroken line; they are all placed under the
same rule.
No people in the world can offer to commerce deeper, more vast and
more secure ports than the Americans.
The inhabitants of the United States form a great civilized nation that
fortune has placed in the middle of the wilderness, twelve hundred leagues
from the principal center of civilization. So America has daily need of Eu-
rope. With time the Americans will undoubtedly manage to produce or to
manufacture at home most of the objects that they need, but the two con-
tinents will never be able to live entirely independent of each other; too
many natural bonds exist between their needs, their ideas, their habits and
their mores.
[Europe has no less need of the United States than the latter of
Europe.]
The Union has products that have become necessary to us, and that our
soil totally refuses to provide, or can do so only at great cost. The Americans
consume only a very small part of these products; they sell us the rest.
So Europe is the market of America, as America is the market of Europe;
and maritime commerce is as necessary to the inhabitants of the United
States in order to bring their raw materials to our ports as to transport our
manufactured goods to them.
So the United States would have to provide great resources to the in-
dustry of maritime peoples, if they gave up commerce themselves, as the
Spanish of Mexico have done until now; or they would have to become
one of the premier maritime powers of the globe. This alternative was
inevitable.
The Anglo-Americans have at all times shown a decided taste for the sea.
Independence, by breaking the commercial ties that unitedthemtoEngland,
gave their maritime genius a new and powerful development. Since this pe-
riod the number of ships of the Union has increased in a progressionalmost
as rapid as the number of inhabitants. Today it is the Americans themselves
who carry to their shores nine-tenths of the products of Europe.
91
It is also
91. The total value of imports for the year ending 30 September 1832 was 101,029,266
dollars. Imports brought on foreign ships represented only a sum total of 10,731,037 dollars,
about one tenth.
g
g. Tocqueville obtained this information from the American Almanac for 1834,
pp. 14142.
the Americans who carry to European consumers three-quarters of the ex-
ports of the New World.
92
The ships of the United States ll the port of Le Havre and that of
Liverpool. You see only a small number of English or French vessels in the
port of New York.
93
Thus not only does the American merchant stand up to the competition
on his own soil, but he also ghts foreigners with advantage on theirs.
This is easily explained. Of all the vessels of the world it is the ships
of the United States that cross the seas most cheaply. As long as the mer-
chant marine of the United States keeps this advantage over the others,
not only will it keep what it has conquered, but each day it will increase
its conquests.
To know why the Americans sail at lower cost than other men is a dif-
cult problem to solve. You are tempted at rst to attribute this superiority
to some material advantages that nature would have put within their reach
alone; but it is not that.
American ships cost almost as much to build as ours;
94
they are not better
constructed, and in general do not last as long.
The salary of the American sailor is higher than that of the sailor of
92. The total value of exports during the same year was 87,176,943 dollars; the value ex-
ported on foreign vessels was 21,036,183 dollars, or about one quarter ( Williams Register,
1833, p. 398).
93. During the years 1829, 1830, 1831, ships with a total tonnage of 3,307,719 entered the
ports of the Union. Foreign ships provided a tonnage of only 544,591 of the total. So they were
in the proportion of about 16 to 100 ( National Calendar, 1833, p. 304 [305 (ed.)]).
During the years 1820, 1826 and 1831, English vessels that entered the ports of London,
Liverpool and Hull had a tonnage of 443,800. Foreign vessels that entered the same ports
during the same years had a tonnage of 159,431. So the relationship between them was about
as 36 to 100 ( Companion to the Almanac, 1834, p. 169).
In the year 1832, the relationship of foreign ships and English ships that entered the ports
of Great Britain was as 20 to 100.
94. Raw materials in general cost less in America than in Europe, but the price of labor
is very much higher there.
Europe; what proves it is the large number of Europeans that you nd in
the merchant marine of the United States.
h
So how do the Americans sail more cheaply than we?
I think that you would look in vain for the causes of this superiority
in material advantages; it is due to purely intellectual and moral qual-
ities.
Here is a comparison that will make my thought clear.
During the wars of the Revolution the French introduced into military
art a new tactic that troubled the oldest generals and all but destroyed the
oldest monarchies of Europe. They undertook for the rst time to do
without a host of things that until then had been judged indispensable
to war; they required from their soldiers new efforts that civilized nations
had never demanded from theirs; you saw them do everything on the
run, and without hesitating risk the life of men in view of the result to
be gained.
The French were less numerous and less rich than their enemies; they
possessed innitely fewer resources; they were constantly victorious, how-
ever, until the latter decided to imitate them.
The Americans introduced something analogous to commerce. What
the French did for victory, they do for economy.
j
The European navigator ventures only with prudence onto the sea; he
leaves only when the weather is inviting; if an unforeseenaccident happens
to him, he returns to port; at night he furls part of his sails, and when he
h. Commerce.
Mr. Schermerhorn claimed that the construction of vessels, the pay of sailors and the
different expenses of navigation cost more for the Americans than for the French; he
attributed the superiority of the rst only to their extreme activity, constantly stim-
ulated by the passion to make a fortune, and the almost total absence of restriction.
It is an established opinion in France that the Americans are the merchants of the world
who sail at least expense.
April 1831 (unpublished travel note, YTC, BIIa).
j. The Americans apply to commerce the same principles and the same manner that
Bonaparte applied to war (YTC, CVj, 2, p. 18).
sees the Ocean turn white as land nears, he slows his course and checks the
sun.
The American neglects these precautions and dees these dangers. He
leaves while the storm is still raging; night and day he spreads all of his sails
to the wind; while in route, he repairs his ship strained by the storm; and
when he nally approaches the end of his journey, he continues to sail to-
ward the shore as if he already saw port. [He often perishes, but even
more often he reaches port before his competitors.]
The American is often shipwrecked;
k
but no navigator crosses the sea as
rapidly as he. [Of all men the American seems to me to be the one who
has conceived the greatest and the most accurate idea of the value of time.
There is no portion so small of day or night that does not have a value . . .
in his eyes. He saves hours as the Dutch merchant saved capital. That is the
secret of his success.] Doing the same things that someone else does in
less time, he can do them at less cost.
Before coming to the end of a long voyage, the European navigator be-
lieves that he must touch land several times on his way. He loses precious
time looking for a port of call or awaiting the opportunity to leave one, and
each day he pays the duty to remain there.
The American navigator leaves from Boston to go to buy tea in China.
He arrives in Canton, remains there a few days and comes back. He has
covered in less than two years the entire circumference of the globe, and
he has seen land only once. During a crossing of eight or ten months he
has drunk brackish water and lived on salted meat; he has fought constantly
against the sea, against disease, against boredom; but upon his return he
can sell a pound of tea for one penny less than the English merchant. The
goal is reached.
I cannot express my thought better than by saying that the Americans
put a kind of heroism in their way of doing commerce.
k. Francis Grund (The Americans, in Their Moral, Social and Political Relations, Bos-
ton: Marsh, Capen and Lyon, 1837, pp. 29394) denies this assertion. In his opinion the
number of accidents was not proportionately higher in the American navy, because the
number of miles covered by American ships was superior to that covered by European
ships. Grund is inspired otherwise on many occasions by the Democracy, without ever
ceasing to criticize Tocqueville.
[Heroism that is not only calculation, but also suggested by nature.
Natural heroism that must give them not only the trade of America but
make them carriers to nations.]
It will always be very difcult for the merchant of Europe to follow the
same course as his competitor from America. The American, while acting
in the way I described above, is following not only a calculation; he is above
all obeying his nature.
The inhabitant of the United States experiences all the needs and all the
desires to which an advanced civilization gives rise, and he does not nd
around him as in Europe a society skillfully organized to satisfy them; so
he is often obliged to obtain by himself the various objects that his edu-
cation and his habits have made necessary for him. InAmerica it sometimes
happens that the same man plows his eld, builds his house, fashions his
tools, makes his shoes and weaves by hand the crude fabric that has to cover
him. This harms the perfection of industry, but serves powerfully to de-
velop the intelligence of the worker. There is nothing that tends more to
materialize man and remove from his work even the trace of soul than the
great division of labor. [<With the division of labor youdo better andmore
economically what you already did, but you do not innovate. The division
of labor is an element of wealth more than of progress.
The art of dividing labor is the art of conscating the intelligence of the
greatest number for the prot of a few.>]
m
In a country like America where
m. Intelligence of the people in America./
It has been noted in Europe that division of labor made maninnitely more suitable
for taking care of the detail to which he was applying himself, but reduced his general
capacity. The worker thus classed becomes past master in his specialty, brute in all
the rest. Example of England. Frightening state of the working classes inthis country.
What makes the American of the people so intelligent a man is that the division
of labor does not exist so to speak in America. Each man does a little of everything.
He does each thing not as well as the European who takes care of it exclusively, but
his general capacity is one hundred times greater. Great cause of superiority in the
habitual matters of life and in the government of society (YTC, CVe, p. 53).
J. B. Say had criticized the effects of the division of labor in chapter VIII of the rst
volume of his Traite deconomie politique. Tocqueville and Beaumont read Say aboard
the Havre during their Atlantic crossing. We do not know if it was the Traite or the six
volumes of Cours de conomie politique. In 1834 when he prepared his memoir on pau-
perism, following his visit to England the preceding year, Tocqueville also read the work
specialized men are so rare, you cannot require a long apprenticeship of
each one of those who take up a profession. So the Americans nd it very
easy to change profession, and they make the most of it, depending on the
needs of the moment. You meet some of them who have been successively
lawyers, farmers, merchants, evangelical ministers, doctors. If theAmerican
is less skillful than the European in each trade, there are hardly any of them
that are entirely unknown to him. His ability is more general, the circle of
his intelligence is wider. So the inhabitant of the United States is never
stopped by any axiom of trade; he escapes all prejudices of profession; he
is no more attached to one system of operation than to another; he does
not feel more tied to an old method than to a new one; he has created no
habit for himself, and he easily escapes from the sway that foreign habits
could exercise over his mind, for he knows that his country resembles no
other, and that its situation is new in the world [so he always follows his
reason and never practice].
The American inhabits a land of wonders, around him everything is
constantly stirring, and each movement seems to be an improvement. So
the idea of the newis intimately linked in his mind to the idea of the better.
Nowhere does he see the limit that nature might have put on the efforts of
man; in his eyes what is not is what has not yet been attempted.
n
This universal movement that reigns inthe United States, these frequent
reversals of fortune, this unexpected displacement of public and private
wealth, all join together to keep the soul in a sort of feverish agitation that
admirably disposes it to all efforts, and maintains it so to speak above [itself
and] the common level of humanity. For an American all of life happens
like a game of chance, a time of revolution, a day of battle.
These same causes, operating at the same time on all individuals, nish
of Viscount Albande Villeneuve-Bargemont (Economie politique chre tienne, ourecherches
sur la nature et les causes du paupe risme . . . , Paris: Paulin, 1834, 3 vols.), inwhichEngland
is the constant example of the evils produced by the excesses of industry.
n. For the American the past is in a way like the future: it does not exist. He sees
nowhere the natural limit that nature has put on the efforts of man; according to him
what is not, is what has not yet been tried (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 47).
by stamping an irresistible impulse on the national character. So an Amer-
ican taken at random must be a man ardent in his desires, enterprising,
adventurous, above all an innovator. This spirit is found in fact in all his
works; he introduces it into his political laws, into his religious doctrines,
into his theories of social economy, into his private industry; he carries it
everywhere with him, deep in the woods, as well as within the cities. It is
this same spirit applied to maritime commerce that makes the American
sail more quickly and more cheaply than all the merchants of the world.
As long as the sailors of the United States keep these intellectual advan-
tages and the practical superiority that derives from them, not only will
they continue to provide for the needs of the producers and consumers of
their country, but also they will tend more and more to become, like the
English,
95
the carriers of other peoples.
This is beginning to be achieved before our eyes. Already we are seeing
American sailors introduce themselves as middlemen in the commerce of
several of the nations of Europe;
96
America offers them an even greater
future.
The Spanish and the Portuguese founded in South America great col-
onies that have since become empires. Civil war and despotism today des-
olate these vast countries. The population movement is stopping, and the
small number of men who live there, absorbed by the concernof defending
themselves, scarcely feel the need to improve their lot.
But it cannot always be so. Europe left to itself managed by its own
efforts to pierce the shadows of the Middle Ages; South America is Chris-
tian like us; it has our laws, our customs; it contains all the seeds of civi-
lization that have developed within European nations and their offshoots;
beyond what we had, South America has our example: why wouldit remain
forever barbarous?
95. It must not be believed that English vessels are uniquely occupied in transporting for-
eign goods to England or in transporting English products to foreigners; today the merchant
marine of England is like a great enterprise of public carts, ready to serve all producers of the
world and to connect all peoples. The maritime genius of the Americans leads them to raise
an enterprise rivaling that of the English [and often they will manage to serve the same pro-
ducers more cheaply].
96. One part of the commerce of the Mediterranean is already done on American vessels.
It is clearly only a question of time here. A more or less distant period
will undoubtedly come when the South Americans will form ourishing
and enlightened nations.
But when the Spanish and the Portuguese of South America begin to
experience the needs of civilized peoples, they will still be far from able to
satisfy them themselves; newly born to civilization, they will be subject to
the superiority already acquired by their elders. They will be farmers for a
long time before becoming manufacturers and merchants, and they will
need the intervention of foreigners in order to go and sell their products
overseas and to obtain in exchange the objects whose necessity will now
make itself felt.
You cannot doubt that the Americans of North America are called one
day to provide for the needs of the Americans of South America. Nature
placed the rst near the second. It thus provided the North Americans with
great opportunities to know and estimate the needs of the South Ameri-
cans, to strike up permanent relations with these peoples, and gradually to
take possession of their market. The merchant of the United States could
lose these natural advantages only if he was very inferior to the merchant
of Europe; and he is, on the contrary, superior to him on several points.
The Americans of the United States already exercise a great moral inuence
over all the peoples of the New World. From them comes enlightenment.
All the nations that inhabit the same continent are already accustomed to
considering them as the most enlightened, most powerful and wealthiest
offshoots of the great American family. So they turn their view constantly
toward the Union and they assimilate themselves, as much as it is within
their power, to the peoples that compose it. Each day they come to draw
political doctrines from the United States and borrow laws from them.
The Americans of the United States are vis-a`-vis the peoples of South
America precisely in the same situation as their fathers, the English, vis-a`-
vis the Italians, the Spanish, the Portuguese and all those peoples of Europe
who, being less advanced in civilization and industry, receive from their
hands most of the objects of consumption.
England is today the natural center of commerce of nearly all the nations
that are near it; the American Union is called to fulll the same role in the
other hemisphere. So every people that arises or that grows up in the New
World arises and grows up there in a way to the prot of the Anglo-
American.
If the Union came to break up, the commerce of the states that formed
it would undoubtedly be slowed for some time in its development, but less
than is thought. It is clear that whatever happens the commercial states will
remain united. They all touch each other; among them there is a perfect
identity of opinion, interests and mores, and alone they can make up a very
great maritime power. Thus even if the South of the Union became in-
dependent of the North, the result would not be that it could do without
the North. I said that the South is not commercial; nothing yet indicates
that it must become so.
[
*
]
So the Americans of the South of the United
States will be obliged for a long time to resort toforeigners inorder toexport
their products and to bring to them the objects that are necessary for their
needs. Now of all the middlemen that they can take their neighbors of the
North are surely those who can serve them more cheaply. So they will serve
them, for the lowest price is the supreme law of commerce. There is no
sovereign will or national prejudices that can struggle for long against the
lowest price. You cannot see more venomous hatred than that which exists
between the Americans of the United States and the English. In spite of
these hostile sentiments, however, the English provide to the Americans
most manufactured goods, for the sole reason that the English sell themfor
less than other peoples. The growing prosperity of America thus turns, de-
spite the desire of the Americans, to the prot of the manufacturing in-
dustry of England.
[*]. This is due to the combination of several natural causes whose inuence it is
very difcult to combat. The South, if you thus call all the country situated south of the
Potomac, possesses very few good mercantile ports and has no military port except Nor-
folk in Virginia.
As long as slavery exists in [the (ed.)] South you will not be able to recruit sailors there.
The population that provides sailors in the North does not exist in the South; it is re-
placed there by slaves who cannot be used to do commerce.
1
We have seen moreover
that slavery takes away from the Americans of the South some of the qualities most
appropriate for succeeding on the seas.
1. They would not serve as well as white sailors and would desert in foreign
countries.
Reason shows and experience proves that no commercial greatness is
lasting if it cannot be combined as needed with military power.
This truth is as well understood in the United States as anywhere else.
The Americans are already in the position of making their ag respected;
soon they will be able to make it feared.
I am persuaded that the dismemberment of the Union, far fromdimin-
ishing the naval forces of the Americans, would tend strongly to increase
them. Today the commercial states are linked to those that are not com-
mercial, and the latter often go along only reluctantly with increasing a
maritime power from which they prot only indirectly.
If, on the contrary, all the commercial states of the Union formed only
one and the same people, trade would become for them a national interest
of the rst order, so they would be disposed to make very great sacrices
to protect their ships, andnothing wouldprevent themfromfollowingtheir
desires on this point.
[In the present condition in which the affairs of the commercial world
nd themselves, there is no policy more naturally indicated than that of
France.
France is called to be always one of the great maritime powers, but she
can never become the rst except by chance. Since France cannot hope to
dominate the sea in a lasting way, her visible interest is to prevent another
from dominating there [v: to rise up against the domination of the sea] and
to make the most liberal maxims as regards commerce prevail in the whole
world.
Even if the principle of the independence of neutral nations were not
based on the right of nations, France should therefore still uphold it with
all her strength. The independence of neutral nations is a guarantee against
maritime tyranny, and France is the necessary champion of freedomof the
seas.
It is fromthis point of viewthat France is the natural enemy of England.
She will always be so whatever you do, as long as England is able to impose
its laws on the ocean.
America is at present in a position analogous to that of France. It is
powerful without being able to dominate; it is liberal because it cannot
oppress.
So America is the natural ally of France, in the same way that England
is its enemy.
o
Everything that is done to the prot of the naval greatness
of the United States is done in a way to the prot of France; for the mar-
itime power of the Americans, by increasing, divides the dominion of the
sea and gives to the French the liberty that they need.
If maritime forces come to reach a balance between England and Amer-
ica, which will happen I think in a period that is not far away, the role of
France will be, by going alternately to the side of the weaker, to prevent
either one of them from entirely dominating the sea and thus to maintain
liberty there.
But this balance itself will not be settled.]
I think that nations, like men, almost always show from their youth the
principal features of their destiny. When I see in what spirit the Anglo-
Americans manage commerce, the opportunities that they nd for doing
it, the successes that they achieve, I cannot keep myself frombelieving that
one day they will become the premier maritime power of the globe. They
are pushed to take possession of the seas, as the Romans to conquer the
world.
o. Tocqueville expressed himself in similar terms in a letter to John C. Spencer of 10
November 1841 (Virginia Historical Society, reproduced in Correspondance e trange `re,
OC, VII, pp. 8486). Two years later he explains to Niles: I have let the chain of my
relationships with the United States break a bit. I regret it. I would like to renew it. I
place there an interest of heart and also of patriotism, for one of the foundations of my
politics is that in spite of prejudices and quarrels over details, France and the United
States are allies so natural and so necessary to one another that they must never for a
moment lose sight of one another (Letter of 15 June 1843, YTC, DIIa). Tocquevilles
brief time at the ministry of foreign affairs coincided paradoxically with a moment of
great tension between the two countries.
649
Conclusion
a
Here I am approaching the end. Until now, while speaking of the future
destiny of the United States, I forced myself to divide my subject into vari-
ous parts in order to study each one of them with more care.
Now I would like to bring all of them together in a single point of view.
What I will say will be less detailed, but more sure. I will see each object
less distinctly; I will take up general facts with more certitude. I will be like
a traveler who, while coming outside the walls of a vast city, climbs up the
adjacent hill. As he moves away, the men that he has just left disappear from
his view; their houses blend together; he no longer sees the public squares;
he makes out the path of the streets with difculty; but his eyes followmore
easily the contours of the city, and for the rst time he grasps its form. It
seems to me that I too discover before me the whole future of the English
race in the New World. The details of this immense tableau have remained
in shadow; but my eyes take in the entire view, and I conceive a clear idea
of the whole.
The territory occupied or possessed today by the United States of Amer-
ica forms about one-twentieth of inhabited lands.
b
However extensive these limits are, you would be wrong to believe that
the Anglo-American race will stay within them forever; it is already spread-
ing very far beyond.
There was a time when we too were able to create in the American wil-
a. In the manuscript, the conclusion is found in a jacket with the title: future of
the republican principle in the united states.
b. In an earlier draft, the conclusionbeganhere withthis paragraph: TheAmerican
confederation occupies or possesses a territory whose surface is estimated at 2,257,374
1
square miles. Thus the UnitedStates alone has under its dominationabout one-twentieth
of inhabited lands.
1. View of the United States, by Darby, p. 57.
conclus i on 650
derness a great French nation and balance the destinies of the New World
with the English. France formerly possessed in North America a territory
nearly as vast as the whole of Europe. The three greatest
c
rivers of the con-
tinent then owed entirely under our laws. The Indian nations that live
from the mouth of the Saint Lawrence to the Mississippi delta heard only
our language spoken; all the European settlements spread over this im-
mense space recalled the memory of the homeland; they were Louisbourg,
Montmorency, Duquesne, Saint-Louis, Vincennes, La Nouvelle Orleans,
all names dear to France and familiar to our ears.
But a combinationof circumstances that wouldbe toolongtoenumerate
1
deprived us of this magnicent heritage. Everyplace where the French were
too few and not well established, they disappeared. What was left gathered
into a small space and passed under other laws. The four hundred thousand
French of Lower Canada today form like the remnant of an ancient people
lost amid the waves of a new nation.
d
Around them the foreign population
grows constantly; it is spreading in all directions; it even penetrates the ranks
of the former masters of the soil, dominates in their cities, and distorts their
c. The manuscript says: The two greatest . . .
1. In rst place this one: free peoples accustomed to the municipal regime succeed much
more easily than others in creating ourishing colonies. The habit of thinking for yourself and
governing yourself is indispensable in a newcountry, where success necessarily depends inlarge
part on the individual efforts of the colonists.
d. In a small fragment belonging to one of the appendices of the Penitentiary System,
Tocqueville explains why according to him the French do not have good colonies (re-
peated in E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, pp. 3540). Among the reasons advanced
he cites the continental character of France, the love of the Frenchman for his country,
the legal habits and bad political education that accustom citizens to the existence of a
tutelary power ready to help in the slightest difculty. In the same way Tocqueville ex-
plains how Canada, even better than France, allows the damaging effects of adminis-
trative centralization to be studied (LAncien Re gime et la Re volution, OC, II, 1, pp. 286
87). See in this regard: Jean-Michel Leclerq, Alexis de Tocqueville inCanada (24August
to 2 September 1831), Revue dhistoire de lAme rique franc aise 22, no. 3 (1968): 35664;
Edgar McInnis, A Letter from Alexis de Tocqueville on the Canadian Rebellion of
1837, Canadian Historical Review 19, no. 4 (1938): 39497; and GerardBergeron, Quand
Tocqueville et Siegfried nous observaient . . . (Quebec: Presses de lUniversite du Quebec,
1990).
conclus i on 651
language. This population is identical to that of the United States. So I am
right to say that the English race does not stop at the limits of the Union,
but is advancing very far beyond toward the northeast.
In the northwest you nd only a few unimportant Russian settlements;
but in the southwest Mexico arises before the steps of the Anglo-American
like a barrier.
Thus there are truly speaking only two rival races that share the New
World today, the Spanish and the English.
The limits that are to separate these two races have been xed by a treaty.
But however favorable this treaty may be to the Anglo-Americans, I do not
doubt that they are soon going to break it.
Beyond the frontiers of the Union, next to Mexico, extend vast prov-
inces that still lack inhabitants. The menof the UnitedStates will penetrate
these uninhabited areas even before those who have the right to occupy
them. They will appropriate the soil, they will establish a society, and when
the rightful owner nally appears, he will nd the wilderness made fertile
and foreigners calmly settled on his inheritance.
The land of the New World belongs to the rst occupant, and empire
is the prize for the race.
Countries already populated will have difculty protecting themselves
from invasion.
I have already spoken before about what is happening in the province
of Texas. Each day the inhabitants of the United States enter little by little
into Texas; they acquire lands there, and even while submitting to the laws
of the country, they are establishing the dominion of their language and
their mores. The province of Texas is still under the rule of Mexico; but
soon you will no longer nd any Mexicans there so to speak. Something
similar is happening everywhere the Anglo-Americans enter into contact
with populations of another origin.
You cannot conceal the fact that the English race has acquired an im-
mense preponderance over all the other European races of the NewWorld.
It is very superior to them in civilization, in industry and in power. As long
as it has before it only uninhabited or sparsely inhabited countries, as long
as it does not nd in its path aggregated populations, through which it will
conclus i on 652
be impossible for it to clear a passage, you will see it spread without ceasing.
It will not stop at lines drawn in treaties, but will overowthese imaginary
dikes from all directions.
[{The Constitution of the United States has been credited with the pro-
gress that the population makes each year.}]
What also marvelously facilitates this rapid development of the English
race in the New World is the geographic position that it occupies there.
When you go up toward the north above its northern frontiers, you
nd polar ice, and when you descend a few degrees below its southern
limits, you get into the heat of the equator. So the English of America
are located in the most temperate zone and the most habitable part of the
continent.
You imagine that the prodigious movement that is noted in the increase
of the population of the United States dates only fromindependence. That
is an error. The population grew as quickly under the colonial system as
today; it doubled the same in about twenty-two years. But then it applied
to thousands of inhabitants; now it applies to millions. The same fact that
passed unnoticed a century ago strikes all minds today.
e
The English of Canada, who obey a king, increase innumber andspread
almost as quickly as the English of the United States, who live under a
republican government.
During the eight years that the War of Independence lasted, the popu-
lation did not cease to increase following the proportion previously in-
dicated.
Although there then existed on the frontiers of the West great Indian
nations allied with the English, the movement of emigration toward
the West never, so to speak, relented. While the enemy ravaged the coasts
of the Atlantic, Kentucky, the western districts of Pennsylvania, the state
of Vermont and that of Maine lled up with inhabitants. Nor did the
e. In the margin: Nothing can slow it,
neither political event,
nor civil discords,
nor bad laws, nor wars.
conclus i on 653
disorder that followed the war prevent the population from growing and
stop its progressive march into the wilderness. Thus the difference in
laws, the state of peace or the state of war, order or anarchy, inuenced
only in an imperceptible way the successive development of the Anglo-
Americans.
This is easily understood. No causes exist that are general enough to
make themselves felt at the same time at all the points of a territory so
immense. Thus there is always a large portion of the country where you
are sure to nd a shelter fromthe calamities that strike another, andhowever
great the evils may be, the remedy offered is always greater still.
So it must not be believed that it is possible to stop the expansion of the
English race of the New World. The dismemberment of the Union, by
leading to war on the continent, the abolition of the republic, by intro-
ducing tyranny there, can retard its development, but not prevent it from
attaining the necessary complement of its destiny. There is no power on
earth that can close to the steps of the emigrants this fertile wilderness that
is open in all areas to industry and that presents a refuge from all miseries.
Future events, whatever they may be, will not take away fromthe Americans
either their climate, or their interior seas, or their great rivers, or the fertility
of their soil. Bad laws, revolution and anarchy, cannot destroy among them
the taste for well-being and the spirit of enterprise that seems the distinctive
character of their race, or completely extinguish the knowledge that en-
lightens them.
[It would be as easy to stop the waves of the sea as to prevent the waves
of Anglo-American emigration from reaching the shores of the Pacic
Ocean.]
Thus amid the uncertainty of the future there is at least one event that
is certain. At some period that we can call near at hand, since it concerns
the life of peoples, the Anglo-Americans will cover alone all the immense
space included between the areas of polar ice and the tropics; they will
spread from the strands of the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacic.
I think that the territory over which the Anglo-American race must
conclus i on 654
someday spread equals three-quarters of Europe.
2
The climate of the
Union is, everything considered, preferable to that of Europe; its natural
advantages are as great; it is clear that its population cannot fail one day to
be proportionate to ours.
Europe, divided among so many diverse peoples; Europe, through con-
stantly recurring wars and the barbarism of the Middle Ages, succeeded in
having four hundred ten inhabitants
3
per square league. What cause so
powerful could prevent the United States from having as many one day?
Many centuries will pass before the various offshoots of the Englishrace
of America cease showing a common physiognomy. You cannot foresee the
period when man will be able to establish permanent inequality of con-
ditions in the New World.
So whatever differences are made one day in the destiny of the various
offshoots of the great Anglo-American family by peace or war, liberty or
tyranny, prosperity or poverty, they will all at least preserve an analogous
social state and will have in common customs and ideas that derive from
the social state.
The bond of religion alone was sufcient in the Middle Ages to bring the
diverse races that peopled Europe together in the same civilization. The En-
glish of the New World have a thousand other bonds with each other, and
they live in a century wheneverything is trying to become equal amongmen.
The Middle Ages was a period of division. Each people, each province,
each city, each family then tended strongly to become more individual.
f
Today an opposite movement makes itself felt; peoples seem to march to-
ward unity. Intellectual links unite the most distant parts of the earth, and
men cannot remain strangers to one another for a single day, or ignorant
of what is happening in no matter what corner of the universe. Conse-
2. The United States alone already covers a space equal to half of Europe. The surface of
Europe is 500,000 square leagues; its population 205,000,000 inhabitants. Malte-Brun, vol.
VI, book CXIV, p. 4.
3. See Malte-Brun, vol. VI, book CXVI, p. 92.
f. Tocqueville will for the rst time use the term individualism in chapter II of the
second part of the third volume.
conclus i on 655
quently you notice today less difference between Europeans and their de-
scendants of the New World, despite the Ocean that divides them, than
between certain cities of the XIIIth century that were separated only by a
river.
If this movement of assimilation brings foreign peoples together, it is
opposed with greater reason to the offshoots of the same people becoming
strangers to each other.
So a time will come when you will be able to see in North America one
hundred and fty million
g
men
4
equal to one another, who will all belong
to the same family, who will have the same point of departure, the same
civilization, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same
mores, and among whom thought will circulate with the same form and
will be painted with the same colors. All the rest is doubtful, but this is
certain. Nowhere is a fact entirely newin the world, and imaginationitself
cannot grasp its import.
Today there are two great peoples on earth who, starting from different
points, seem to advance toward the same goal: these are the Russians and
the Anglo-Americans.
Both grew up in obscurity; and while the attention of men was oc-
cupied elsewhere, they suddenly took their place in the rst rank of na-
tions, and the world learned of their birth and their greatness nearly at
the same time.
All other peoples seem to have almost reached the limits drawn by na-
ture, and have nothing more to do except maintain themselves; but these
two are growing.
5
All the others have stopped or move ahead only with a
thousand efforts; these two alone walk with an easy and rapid stride along
a path whose limit cannot yet be seen.
The American struggles against obstacles that nature opposes tohim; the
Russian is grappling with men. The one combats the wilderness and bar-
g. The gure is missing in the manuscript.
4. It is the population proportionate to that of Europe, by taking the average of 410 men
per square league.
5. Russia is of all the nations of the Old World the one whose population is increasing
most rapidly, keeping the proportion. [See Malte-Brun, vol. VI, p. 95.]
conclus i on 656
barism; the other, civilization clothed in all its arms. Consequently the con-
quests of the American are made with the farmers plow, those of the Rus-
sian with the soldiers sword.
To reach his goal the rst relies on personal interest, and, without di-
recting them, allows the strength and reason of individuals to operate.
The second in a way concentrates all the power of society in one man.
The one has as principal means of action liberty; the other, servitude.
Their point of departure is different, their paths are varied; nonetheless,
each one of them seems called by a secret design of Providence to hold in
its hands one day the destinies of half the world.
h
h. This passage is one of the best known of the Democracy, and probably one of the
most cited of the entire book. It gained Tocqueville a reputation as a prophet that has
not failed to harm the overall interpretation of his work. If several critics have noted
that a similar idea is found among authors as diverse as Edmund Dana, Alexander Hill
Everett, the Abbe de Pradt, Madame de Stael, Edward Everett (in two reviews of Pradt),
John Bristed, Stendhal, and Michel Chevalier, it must nonetheless be noted that the
theories of Tocqueville sometimes differ perceptibly from those of these authors. M. de
Pradt (Du syste`me permanent de lEurope a` legard de la Russie et des affaires de lOrient,
Paris: Pichon and Didier, 1828), for example, does oppose two powers, but they are En-
gland as maritime force and Russia as land force. He only incidentally mentions that
America could avenge Europe (p. 5). Alexander Everett (America: Or a General Survey
of the Political Situation of the Several Powers of the Western Continent . . . , Philadelphia:
H. C. Carey and I. Lee, 1827), for his part, conceives three great powers: Russia, England,
and the United States.
You cannot understand why Tocqueville terminates his considerations with this af-
rmation if you forget that his interest in the United States is nearly equal to the one he
had for Russia. This is clear not only in his correspondence with the Circourts, Greg,
Madame Phillimore, Everett, or Corcelle, but also in long conversations that he was able
to have with Theodore Sedgwick in 1834 or with Grandmaison twenty years later. The
latter notes that in 1854, Tocqueville continued to think that the Slavic race and the
Anglo-Saxon race would one day share the world. His interest in Russia had led him to
read the work of Baron de Haxthausen (E
tudes sur la situation interieure, la vie nationale

et les institutions rurales de la Russie, Hanover, 18471853, 3 vols.). Grandmaison reports
that Tocqueville asserted: a young and intelligent man, courageous enough to learn
Russian and to spend some years in Russia, would nd there the subject of a very curious
study and of a book of high interest that would come to be a counterpart to his own
work on America. And he adds: This idea preoccupied him a great deal; you felt with
him the regret of not being able to execute it, and I believe he would have willingly
pushed me into this undertaking, if I had given him the slightest opening frommy side
(Sejour dAlexis de Tocqueville en Touraine, preparationdulivre sur lAncienRegime,
conclus i on 657
Correspondant, 114, 1879, pp. 92649; cf. p. 943). Beaumont, perhaps persuaded by the
author, will do for the Revue des deux mondes a review of the book of Haxthausen (La
Russie et les Etats-Unis sous le rapport economique, Revue des deux mondes, 2nd series,
5, 1854, pp. 116383). See note y for p. 158. Also see on this subject: Rene Remond, Les
E
tats-Unis devant lopinion franc aise, 18151852, Paris: Armand Colin, 1962, I, pp. 378
79 note; Theodore Draper, The Idea of the Cold War and Its Prophets. On Tocque-
ville and Others, Encounter, 52, 1979, pp. 3445 (Draper insists on the fact that Tocque-
ville never considered a possible confrontation between the two countries); Bernard
Fabian, Alexis de Tocqueville Amerikabild: Genetische Untersuchungen uber Zusammen-
hange mit der Zeitgenossischen, Insbesondere der Englischen Amerika-Interpretation, Hei-
delberg: C. Winter, 1957; and Philip Merlan, A Precursor of Tocqueville, Pacic His-
torical Review 35, no. 4 (1966): 46768.
658
Notes
First Part
(A) Page 36
See, concerning the lands of the west that Europeans have not yet pene-
trated, the two voyages undertaken by Major Long, at the expense of
Congress.
Concerning the great American desert, Mr. Long says notably that a line
must be drawn about parallel to the 20th degree of longitude (meridianof
Washington),
1
beginning at the Red River and ending at the Platte River.
Extending from this imaginary line to the Rocky Mountains, whichborder
the Mississippi Valley in the west, are immense plains, generally covered
with sand which is unsuitable for agriculture, or strewn with granite stones.
They are deprivedof water inthe summer. There only great herds of buffalo
and wild horses are found. Some Indian hordes are seen as well, but only
a small number.
Major Long has heard it said that, ascending the Platte River, inthe same
direction, this same desert would always be found on the left; but he was
not able personally to verify the accuracy of this report. Longs Expedition,
vol. II, p. 361.
Whatever condence Major Longs account merits, it must not be for-
gotten, however, that he only crossed the country that he is speaking about,
without making any great zigzags outside the line that he followed.
1. The 20th degree of longitude, following the meridian of Washington, is approximately
the equivalent of the 99th degree following the meridian of Paris.
notes 659
(B) Page 38
South America, in the region between the tropics, produces an incredible
profusion of climbing plants known by the generic name of creepers. The
ora of the Antilles alone offers more than forty different species.
Among the most graceful of these bushes is the grenadilla. Descourtiz,
a
in his description of the plant kingdomof the Antilles, says that this lovely
plant attaches itself to trees by means of its tendrils, and forms moving
arcades andcolonnades, made richandelegant by the beauty of the crimson
owers, variegated with blue, that decorate themand that delight the sense
of smell with the scent they give off; vol. I, p. 265.
The acacia with large pods is a very thick creeper that grows rapidly and,
going from tree to tree, sometimes covers more than a half-league; vol. III,
p. 227.
(C) Page 40
On the American Languages
The languages spoken by the Indians of America, from the Arctic Pole to
Cape Horn, are all formed, it is said, on the same model, and subject to
the same grammatical rules; from that it can be concluded that, in all like-
lihood, all the Indian nations came from the same stock.
Each tribal band of the American continent speaks a different dialect;
but the languages strictly speaking are very few in number, which would
tend as well to prove that the nations of the New World do not have a very
ancient origin.
Finally the languages of America are extremely regular, so it is probable
that the peoples who use them have not yet been subjected to great revo-
lutions and have not mixed with foreign nations by necessity or voluntarily;
a. M. E. Descourtiz, Voyages dun naturaliste et ses observations, Dufart Pe`re, 1809,
3 vols.
notes 660
for it is in general the union of several languages into a single one that
produces irregularities of grammar.
Not long ago the American languages, and in particular, the languages
of North America, attracted the serious attention of philologists. It was
discovered then, for the rst time, that this idiom of a barbarous people
was the product of a system of very complicated ideas and of very clever
combinations. It was noticed that these languages were very rich and that,
when forming them, great care had been taken to show consideration for
the sensitivity of the ear.
The grammatical systemof the Americans differs fromall others on sev-
eral points, but principally in this one.
Some peoples of Europe, among others the Germans, have the ability
to combine different expressions as needed, and thus to give a complex
meaning to certain words. The Indians have extended this ability in the
most surprising way, and have succeeded in xing so to speak at a single
point a very large number of ideas. This will be easily understood with the
help of an example cited by Mr. Duponceau, in the Memoirs of the Amer-
ican Philosophical Society.
When, he says, a Delaware woman plays with a cat or with a dog, you
sometimes hear her pronounce the word kuligatschis. The word is com-
posed in this way: K is the sign of the second person and means you or
your; uli, which is pronounced ouli, is a fragment of the word wulit, which
means beautiful, pretty; gat is another fragment of the word wichgat, which
means paw; nally schis, which is pronounced chise, is the diminutive end-
ing which carries with it the idea of smallness. Thus, in a single word, the
Indian woman has said: Your pretty little paw.
Here is another example that shows with what felicity the savages of
America know how to compose their words.
A young man in the Delaware language is called pilape . This word is
formed from pilsit, chaste, innocent; and from le nape, man: that is to say
man in his purity and his innocence.
This ability to combine words is noticeable above all in a very strange
way of forming verbs. The most complicated action is often rendered by
a single verb; nearly all the nuances of the idea bear upon the verb and
modify it.
notes 661
Those whowouldlike toexamine inmore detail this subject that I myself
have only touched on very supercially, should read:
1. The Correspondence of Mr. Duponceau with the Reverend Hec-
welder [Heckewelder (ed.)], relating to the Indian languages. This corre-
spondence is found in the rst volume of the Memoirs of the American
Philosophical Society, published in Philadelphia, in 1819, Abraham Small,
pp. 356464.
2. The grammar of the Delaware or Lenape language by Geiberger,
b
and
the preface of Mr. Duponceau, which is added. The whole thing is found
in the same collections, vol. III.
3. A very well done summary of these works, contained at the end of
volume VI of the Encyclopedia Americana.
(D) Page 42
We nd in Charlevoix, volume I, p. 235, the history of the rst war that
the French of Canada had to sustain, in 1610, against the Iroquois. The
latter, although armed with bows and arrows, offered a desperate resistance
to the French and their allies. Charlevoix, who is not good at doing por-
traits, shows very well in this piece the contrast that the mores of the
Europeans presented to those of the savages, as well as the different ways
in which these two races understood honor.
The French, he says, grabbed the beaver skins that covered the
Iroquois, whom they saw spread out over the ground; the Hurons, their
allies, were scandalized by this spectacle. The latter, on their side, began to
exercise their ordinary cruelties onthe prisoners, anddevouredone of those
who had been killed, which horried the French. Thus, adds Charlevoix,
these barbarians gloried in a disinterestedness that they were surprisednot
to nd in our nation, and did not understand that there was much less evil
in stripping the dead than in eating their esh like wild beasts.
b. David Zeisberger, A Grammar of the Language of the Lenni Lanape, translated
by P. S. Duponceau, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, III, 1827, pp. 65
250.
notes 662
The same Charlevoix, in another place, vol. I, p. 230 [231 (ed.)], depicts
in this way the rst torture that Champlain witnessed, and the return of
the Hurons to their village.
After having done eight leagues, he says, our allies stopped, and, tak-
ing one of their captives, they reproached him for all the cruelties that he
had exercised on the warriors of their nation who had fallen into his hands,
and they declared to him that he must expect to be treated in the same
manner, adding that, if he had courage, he would display it by singing. He
soon started to sing his song [of death, then his song (ed.)] of war, and all
those that he knew, but with a very sad tone, says Champlain, who had not
yet had the time to know that all of the music of the savages is somewhat
lugubrious. His torture, accompanied by all the horrors that we will speak
of later, frightened the French who in vain did their utmost to put an end
to it.
c
The following night, because a Huron dreamed that they were being
pursued, the retreat changed into a veritable ight, and the savages did not
stop anywhere again until they were out of any danger.
From the moment that they saw the huts of their village, they cut long
sticks to which they attached their share of the scalps and carried them
triumphantly. At this sight the women ran, jumped in swimming, and,
reaching the canoes took these bloody scalps from the hands of their hus-
bands, and hung them around their necks.
These warriors offered one of these horrible trophies to Champlain,
and also made hima present of some bows and some arrows, the only spoils
of the Iroquois that they had wanted to take, begging him to show them
to the king of France.
Champlain lived alone all one winter amid these barbarians, without his
person or his property being compromised for one instant.
(E) Page 64
Although the Puritan rigor that prevailed at the birth of the English col-
onies of America has already become much weaker, you still nd extraor-
dinary traces of it in the habits and in the laws.
c. Tocqueville omits here the details of the dismemberment and death of the Indian.
notes 663
In 1792, at the very period when the anti-Christian republic of France
began its ephemeral existence, the legislative body of Massachusetts pro-
mulgated the law that you are about to read, in order to force citizens to
observe Sunday. Here are the preamble and the principal provisions of this
law, which deserves to attract all the readers attention:
Whereas, says the legislator, Sunday observance is inthe public interest;
that it produces a useful suspension of work; that it leads men to reect
upon the duties of life and the errors to which humanity is so prone; that
it allows us in private and in public to honor God, creator and governor
of the universe, and allows us to devote ourselves to those acts of charity
that are the adornment and the relief of Christian societies;
Whereas some irreligious or thoughtless persons, forgetting the duties
imposed by Sunday and the benets that society gains fromthem, profane
the Holy Day in pursuit of their pleasures or their work; that this behavior
is contrary to their own interests as Christians; that, in addition, it is of a
nature to disturb those who do not follow their example, and brings real
harm to the entire society by introducing the taste for dissipation and dis-
solute habits;
The Senate and the House of Representatives order the following:
1. No one will be able, on Sunday, to keep his shop or workshop open.
No one will be able, on that day, to be active in any work or business
whatsoever, attend any concert, ball or show of any sort, nor pursue any
kind of hunt, game, recreation, under penalty of a ne. The ne will
not be less than 10 shillings, and will not exceed 20 shillings for each
offense.
2. No traveler, driver, carter, except in case of necessity, will be able to
travel on Sunday, under penalty of the same ne.
3. Hotelkeepers, retailers, innkeepers, will prevent any person living in
their town from visiting them on Sunday, in order to pass the time in
pleasure or business. In case of offense, the innkeeper and his guest will
pay the ne. Moreover, the innkeeper will lose his license.
4. Whoever, being in good health and without having a sufcient rea-
son, fails for three months to attend public worship will be condemned
to a 10 shilling ne.
5. Whoever, within the connes of a church, displays inappropriate
behavior will pay a ne of 5 to 40 shillings.
notes 664
6. The tythingmen of the towns
2
are charged with responsibility for
enforcing this law. They have the right to visit on Sunday all the rooms
of hotels or public places. The innkeeper who refuses their entry into his
establishment will be condemned for this fact alone to a ne of 40
shillings.
The tythingmen must stop travelers and inquire after the reason that
has forced them to be on the road on Sunday. Whoever refuses to answer
will be condemned to a ne that could be 5 pounds sterling.
If the reason given by the traveler does not seem sufcient to the ty-
thingman, he will bring the said traveler before the justice of the peace of
the district (Law of 8 March 1792. General Laws of Massachusetts, vol. I,
p. 410).
On 11 March 1797, a new law increased the level of nes, half of which
was to belong to the one who brought proceedings against the offender.
Same collection, vol. I, p. 535.
On 16 February, 1816, a new law conrmed these same measures. Same
collection, vol. II, p. 405.
Analogous provisions exist in the laws of the state of New York, revised
in 1827 and 1828. (See Revised Statutes, 1st part, ch. XX, p. 675). It is said
there that on Sunday no one will be able to hunt, sh, gamble or frequent
establishments where drink is served. No one will be able to travel, if it is
not out of necessity.
This is not the only trace left in the laws by the religious spirit and the
austere mores of the rst emigrants.
You read in the revised statutes of the state of New York, vol. I, p. 662
[663 (ed.)], the following article:
Every person who shall win or lose at play, or by betting at any time, the
sum or value of twenty-ve dollars or upwards, within the space of
twenty-four hours, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on con-
viction shall be ned not less than ve times the value or sum so lost or
won; which [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] shall be paid to the overseers of the poor of
the town. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]
2. These are ofcials elected each year who, by their functions, are at the very same time
close to the rural guard and to the ofcer of the criminal investigation department.
notes 665
Every person who shall [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] lose at any time or sitting the
sum or value of twenty-ve dollars or upwards[. . . (Ed) . . . ] may [ . . .
(ed.) . . . ] sue for and recover the money. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] The overseers of
the poor of the town where the offense was committed may sue for and
recover the sum or value so lost and paid, together with treble the saidsum
or value, from the winner thereof for the benet of the poor.
The laws that we have just cited are very recent; but who could com-
prehend them without going back to the very origin of the colonies? I do
not doubt that today the penal portion of this legislation is only very rarely
applied; the laws retain their inexibility when the mores have already bent
before the movement of the times. Sunday observance in America, how-
ever, is still what most strikes the foreigner.
d
There is notably a large American city in which, beginning Saturday
evening, social movement is as if suspended. You cross it at the hour that
seems to invite those of mature years to business and youth to pleasure,
and you nd yourself in a profound solitude. Not only is no one working,
but also no one appears to be alive. You hear neither the movement of
industry nor the accents of joy, nor even the confused murmurings that
arise constantly within a large city. Chains are hung in the vicinity of the
churches; the half-closed shutters of the houses only reluctantly allowa ray
of sunlight to penetrate the dwelling of the citizens. Scarcely here andthere
do you see an isolated man who is passing noiselessly through deserted
crossroads and along abandoned streets.
The next morning at the beginning of day, the rattle of carriages, the
noise of hammers, the cries of the population begin again to make them-
selves heard; the city awakens; a restless crowd rushes toward the centers of
commerce and industry; everyone stirs, everyone becomes agitated, every-
one hurries around you. A sort of lethargic drowsiness is followed by a
feverish activity; you would say that each person has only a single day at
his disposal in order to gain wealth and to enjoy it.
d. See the appendix sects in america.
notes 666
(F) Page 70
It is needless to say that, in the chapter that you have just read, I did not
intend to do a history of America. My only goal was to enable the reader
to appreciate the inuence that the opinions and mores of the rst emi-
grants exercised on the fate of the different colonies and on that of the
Union in general. So I had to limit myself to citing a few unconnected
fragments.
I do not know if I am wrong, but it seems to me that by following the
path that I am only pointing out here, someone could present some por-
traits of the rst years of the American republic that would be worthy of
the attention of the public, and that would undoubtedly provide material
for statesmen to consider. Not able to devote myself to this work, I wanted
at least to facilitate it for others. So I believed that I should present here a
short list and an abridged analysis of the works that seemed to me most
useful to draw upon.
In the number of general documents that could fruitfully be consulted,
I will place rst the work entitled: Historical Collection of State Papers and
other authentic documents, intended as materials for an history of the United
States of America, by Ebenezer Hazard.
The rst volume of this compilation, which was printed inPhiladelphia
in 1792, contains the exact text of all the charters granted by the crown of
England to the emigrants, as well as the principal acts of the colonial gov-
ernments during the rst years of their existence. You nd there, among
others, a great number of authentic documents on the affairs of New En-
gland and Virginia during this period.
The second volume is dedicated almost entirely to the acts of the con-
federation of 1643. This federal pact, which took place among the colonies
of New England, with the goal of resisting the Indians, was the rst ex-
ample of union given by the Anglo-Americans. There were also several
other confederations of the same nature, until that of 1776, which led to
the independence of the colonies.
The historical collection of Philadelphia is found in the Royal Li-
brary.
Each colony has as well its historical memorials, several of which are
notes 667
very precious. I begin my study with Virginia, which is the state populated
earliest.
The rst of all the historians of Virginia is its founder Captain John
Smith. Captain Smith left us a volume in quarto, entitled: The General
History of Virginia and New-England, by Captain John Smith, some time
governor in those countryes and admiral of New-England, printed inLondon
in 1627. (This volume is found at the Royal Library.) The work of Smith
is embellished with very interesting maps and plates, which date from the
time when it was printed. The account of the historian extends from the
year 1584 to 1626. Smiths book is esteemed and deserves to be so. The
author is one of the most famous adventurers who appeared in the century
full of adventurers; he lived at the end of that century. The book itself
breathes this fervor of discoveries, this spirit of enterprise that characterized
the menof that time; there youndthose chivalrous mores that were mixed
with business and were made to serve the acquisition of wealth.
But what is remarkable above all in Captain Smith is that he mixed, with
the virtues of his contemporaries, qualities that remained foreign to most
of them; his style is simple and clear, all of his accounts have the stamp of
truth, his descriptions are not ornate.
This author throws precious light onthe state of the Indians at the period
of the discovery of North America.
The second historian to consult is Beverley. The workof Beverley, which
forms a volume in duodecimo, was translated into French and printed in
Amsterdam in 1707. The author begins his accounts in the year 1585 and
ends them in the year 1700. The rst part of his book contains historical
documents, properly so called, relative to the early years of the colony. The
second contains a curious portrait of the state of the Indians at that distant
period. The third gives very clear ideas about the mores, social state, laws
and political habits of the Virginians at the time of the author.
Beverly was of Virginian origin, which made him say at the beginning
that he begs readers not to examine his work with too strict a critical eye,
seeing that since he was born in the Indies, he does not aspire to purity of
language. Despite this modesty of the colonist, the author shows through-
out his book that he bears the supremacy of the mother country with im-
patience. You nd as well in the work of Beverley numerous traces of this
notes 668
spirit of civil liberty that has, since that time, animatedthe Englishcolonies
of America. You also nd the trace of the divisions that have existed for
such a long time among them, and that delayed their independence. Bev-
erley detests his Catholic neighbors of Marylandstill more thanthe English
government. The style of this author is simple; his accounts are often full
of interest and inspire condence. The French translation of Beverleys
history is found in the Royal Library.
I saw in America, but I was not able to nd again in France, a work that
also merits consultation; it is entitled: History of Virginia, by WilliamStith.
This book offers interesting details, but it seemed long and diffuse to me.
The oldest and best document that you can consult on the history of
the Carolinas is a small book in quarto, entitled: The History of Carolina,
by John Lawson, printed in London in 1718.
The work of Lawson contains rst a voyage of discovery in the west of
Carolina. This voyage is written as a journal; the accounts of the author
are confused; his observations are very supercial; you only nd a quite
striking portrait of the ravages caused by smallpox and brandy among the
savages of this period, and an interesting portrait of the corruption of mo-
res that reigned among them, and that the presence of the Europeans
favored.
The second part of the work of Lawson is dedicated to retracing the
physical state of Carolina and to making its products known.
In the third part, the author does aninteresting descriptionof the mores,
customs and government of the Indians of this period.
There is often spirit and originality in this portion of the book.
The history by Lawson ends with the charter granted to Carolina at the
time of Charles II.
The general tone of this work is light, often licentious, and forms a per-
fect contrast with the profoundly grave style of the works published at this
same time in New England.
The history by Lawson is an extremely rare document in America that
cannot be obtained in Europe. There is, however, a copy of it in the Royal
Library.
From the southern extremity of the United States, I pass immediately
to the northern extremity. The intermediate space was populatedonly later.
notes 669
I must rst point out a very curious compilation entitled: Collection of
the Massachusetts Historical Society, printed for the rst time in Boston in
1792, reprinted in 1806. This work is not in the Royal Library, nor, I believe,
in any other.
The collection (which continues) contains a host of very precious doc-
uments relating to the history of the different states of NewEngland. There
you nd unpublished correspondence and authentic pieces that were hid-
den away in the provincial archives. The complete work of Gookinrelating
to the Indians has been inserted there.
Several times, in the course of the chapter to which this note belongs,
I pointed out the work of Nathaniel Morton entitled: New Englands
Memorial. What I said about this work is enough to prove that it is worthy
to draw the attention of those who would like to knowthe history of New
England. The book by Nathaniel Morton forms a volume in octavo, re-
printed in Boston in 1826. It is not in the Royal Library.
The most respected and most important document that we possess on
the history of New England is the work of the Reverend Cotton Mather,
entitled: Magnalia Christi Americana, or the ecclesiastical history of New En-
gland, 16201698, 2 vol. in octavo, reprinted in Hartford in 1820. I do not
believe that it is found in the Royal Library.
The author divided his work into seven books.
The rst presents the history of what prepared and led to the founding
of New England.
The second contains the life of the rst governors and principal mag-
istrates who administered this country.
The third is consecrated to the life and works of the evangelical ministers
who, during this same period, led souls there.
In the fourth, the author describes the founding and development of
the university of Cambridge (Massachusetts).
In the fth, he explains the principles and discipline of the Church of
New England.
The sixth is consecrated to retracing certain facts that denote, according
to Mather, the salutary action of Providence on the inhabitants of New
England.
notes 670
In the seventh, nally, the author teaches us the heresies and troubles to
which the Church of New England has been exposed.
Cotton Mather was an evangelical minister who, born in Boston, spent
his life there.
All the ardor and all the religious passions that led to the founding of
New England animate and give life to his accounts. You frequently nd
traces of bad taste in his way of writing; but he captivates, because he is
full of enthusiasm that ends by communicating itself to the reader. He is
often intolerant, more often gullible; but you never see in him the desire
to deceive; sometimes his work even presents beautiful passages and true
and profound ideas such as these:
Before the arrival of the Puritans, he says, vol. I, ch. IV, p. 61, the English
had tried several times to settle the country that we live in; but since they
did not aim higher than the success of their material interests, they were
soon defeated by obstacles; this wasnt the case with the men who arrived
in America, pushed and sustained by a noble religious idea. Although the
latter found more enemies than perhaps the founders of any other colony
ever had, they persisted in their plan, and the settlement that they estab-
lished still exists today.
Mather sometimes mixes, with the austerity of these portraits, images
full of sweetness and tenderness. After speaking about an English lady
whose religious fervor had brought her to America with her husband, and
who soon succumbed to the hardships and miseries of exile, he adds:
As for her virtuous spouse, Isaac Johnson, Esq., He tryd to live without
her, likd it not, and dyd (V. I, p. 71.)
Mathers book admirably reveals the time and country that he is trying
to describe.
If he wants to teach us what motives led the Puritans to seek a refuge
beyond the seas, he says:
The God of Heaven served as it were, a summons upon the spirits of
his people in the English nation; stirring up the spirits of thousands which
never saw the faces of each other, with a most unanimous inclination to
leave all the pleasant accommodations of their native country; andgo over
notes 671
a terrible ocean, into a more terrible desart [sic ], for the pure enjoyment
of all his ordinances.
It is nowreasonable that before we pass any further [he adds] the reasons
of this undertaking should be more exactly made known unto the pos-
terity of those that were the undertakers, lest they come at length to forget
and neglect the true interest of New-England. Wherefore I shall nowtran-
scribe some of them from a manuscript, wherein they were then tendered
unto consideration.
[ . . . (ed.) . . . ]
First, It will be a service unto the Church of great consequence, tocarry
the Gospel into those parts of the world, and raise a bulwark against the
kingdomof antichrist, which the Jesuites [sic ] labour to rear up inall parts
of the world.
Secondly, All other Churches of Europe have been brought under des-
olations; and it may be feared that the like judgments are coming upon
us; and who knows but God hath provided this place to be a refuge for
many, whom he means to save out of the General Destruction.
Thirdly, The land grows weary of her inhabitants, insomuch that man,
which is the most precious of all creatures, is here more vile and base than
the earth he treads upon: children, neighbors, and friends, especially the
poor, are counted the greatest burdens, which if things were right would
be the chiefest earthly blessings.
Fourthly, We are grown to that intemperance in all excess of riot, as
no mean estate almost will sufce a man to keep sail with his equals, and
he that fails in it, must live in scorn and contempt: hence it comes to pass,
that all arts andtrades are carriedinthat deceitful manner, andunrighteous
course, as it is almost impossible for a good upright man to maintain his
constant charge, and live comfortably in them.
Fifthly, The schools of learning and religion are so corrupted, as [ . . .
(ed.) . . . ] most children, even the best, wittiest, and of the fairest hopes,
are perverted, corrupted, and utterly overthrown, by the multitude of evil
examples and licentious behaviours in these seminaries.
notes 672
Sixthly, The whole earth is the Lords garden, and he hath given it to
the sons of Adam, to be tilled and improved by them: why then should
we stand starving here for places of habitation and in the mean time suffer
whole countries, as protable for the use of man, to lye [sic ] waste without
any improvement?
Seventhly, What can be a better or nobler work, and more worthy of
a christian, than to erect and support a reformed particular Church in its
infancy, and unite our forces with such a company of faithful people, as
by a timely assistance may grow stronger and prosper; but for want of it,
may be put to great hazard, if not be wholly ruined.
Eighthly, If any such as are known to be godly, and live in wealth and
prosperity here, shall forsake all this to join with this reformedchurch, and
with it runthe hazardof anhardandmeancondition, it will be anexample
of great use, both for the removing of scandal and to give more life unto
the faith of Gods people in their prayers for the plantation, and also to
encourage others to join the more willingly in it.
Later, explaining the principles of the Churchof NewEnglandonmoral
matters, Mather rises up violently against the custom of drinking toasts at
dinner, which he calls a pagan and abominable habit.
He proscribes with the same rigor all ornaments that women can put in
their hair, and condemns without pity the fashion of showing the neckand
arms that, he says, is becoming established among them.
In another part of the work, he recounts at great length several instances
of witchcraft that frightened New England. You see that the visible action
of the devil in the affairs of this world seems to him an incontestable and
proven truth.
In a great number of places in this same book a spirit of civil liberty and
political independence is revealed that characterized the contemporaries of
the author. Their principles in matters of government appear at each step.
Thus, for example, you see the inhabitants of Massachusetts, fromthe year
1630 [1636 (ed.)], ten years after the founding of Plymouth, devote 400
pounds sterling to the establishment of the university of Cambridge.
If I pass fromgeneral documents relating to the history of NewEngland
notes 673
to those that relate to the various states included in its limits, I will rst
have to point out the work entitled: The History of the Colony of Massa-
chusetts, by Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor of the Massachusetts province,
2 vols. in octavo. A copy of this book is found in the Royal Library; it is a
second edition printed in London in 1765.
The history of Hutchinson, which I cited several times in the chapter
to which this note relates, begins in the year 1628 and nishes in 1750. A
great air of truthfulness reigns in the whole book; the style is simple and
unaffected. This history is very detailed.
The best document to consult, for Connecticut, is the history of Ben-
jamin Trumbull, entitled: A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and
Ecclesiastical, 16301764, 2 vols. in octavo, printed in 1818 at New Haven. I
do not believe that Trumbulls work is found in the Royal Library.
This history contains a clear and cold exposition of all the events that
took place in Connecticut during the period indicated by the title. The
author drew upon the best sources, and his accounts retain the stamp of
truth. All that he says about the early years of Connecticut is extremely
interesting. See notably in his work the Constitution of 1639, vol. I, ch. VI,
p. 100 [103 (ed.)]; and also the Penal Laws of Connecticut, vol. I, ch. VII,
p. 123.
The work of Jeremy Belknap entitled: History of NewHampshire, 2 vols.
in octavo, printed in Boston in 1792, is rightly well regarded. See particu-
larly, in Belknaps work, ch. III of the rst volume. In this chapter, the
author gives extremely valuable details about the political and religious
principles of the Puritans, about the causes of their emigration, and about
their laws. There you nd this interesting quotation from a sermon deliv-
ered in 1663:
New England must constantly recall that it was founded for a religious
purpose and not for a commercial purpose. It is written on its forehead
that it professed purity in matters of doctrine and discipline. May mer-
chants and all those who are busy piling up money remember, therefore,
that it is religion, and not gain, that was the object of the founding of
these colonies. If there is someone among us who, in his estimation of
the world and of religion, looks upon the rst as 13 and takes the second
notes 674
only as 12, he is not prompted by the sentiments of a true son of New
England.
Readers will nd in Belknapmore general ideas andmore power of thought
than that presented until now by the other American historians.
I do not know if this book is found in the Royal Library.
Among the states of the center that are already old, and that merit our
interest, the states of New York and Pennsylvania stand out above all. The
best history that we have of the state of New York is entitled: History of
New York, by William Smith, printed in London in 1757. A French trans-
lation exists, also printed in London in 1757, 1 vol. in duodecimo. Smith
provides us with useful details on the wars of the French and English in
America. He is, of all the American historians, the one who best shows the
famous confederation of the Iroquois.
As for Pennsylvania, I cannot do better than to point to the work of
Proud entitled: The History of Pennsylvania, From the Original Institution
and Settlement of That Province, under the First Proprietor and Governor
William Penn, in 1681 till after the Year 1742, by Robert Proud, 2 vols. in
octavo, printed in Philadelphia in 1797.
This work particularly deserves the attention of the reader; it contains
a host of very interesting documents on Penn, the doctrine of the Quakers,
the character, mores, customs of the rst inhabitants of Pennsylvania. As
far as I know, it is not in the Royal Library.
I do not need to add that among the most important documents relative
to Pennsylvania are the works of Pennhimself andthose of Franklin. These
works are known by a great number of readers.
Most of the books that I have just cited had already been consulted by
me during my stay in America. The Royal Library has kindly entrusted me
with some of them; others have been loaned to me by Mr. Warden, former
consul general of the United States to Paris, author of an excellent book
on America. I do not want to conclude this note without extending to Mr.
Warden the expression of my gratitude.
notes 675
(G) Page 84
You nd what follows in the Me moires de Jefferson:
In the rst years of the English settlement in Virginia, when land was
obtained for little, or even for nothing, several far-seeing individuals ac-
quired great land concessions, and desiring to maintain the splendor of
their families, they entailed their wealth to their descendants. The trans-
mission of these properties from generation to generation, to men who
carried the same name, had nally produced a distinct class of families
that, with the legal privilege of perpetuating their wealth, thus formed a
kind of patrician order distinguished by the grandeur and the luxury of
their holdings. It was from among this group that the king usually chose
the members of his council ( Jeffersons Memoirs ).
In the United States, the principal provisions of English law relating to
inheritance were universally rejected.
The rst rule of inheritance is, says Mr. Kent, that if a person owning real
estate, dies seized, or as owner, without devising the same, the estate shall
descend to his lawful descendants in the direct line of lineal descent; and
if there be but one person, then to him or her alone, and if more than
one person, and all of equal degree of consanguinity to the ancestor, then
the inheritance shall descend to the several persons as tenants in common
in equal parts [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] without distinction of sex.
This rule was prescribed for the rst time in the state of New York by a
statute of 23 February 1786 (see Revised Statutes, vol. III; Appendix, p. 48);
it has been adopted since in the revised statutes of the same state. It prevails
now throughout the United States, the sole exception being that, in the
state of Vermont, the male heir has a double share. Kents Commentaries,
vol. IV, p. 370.
Mr. Kent, in the same work, vol. IV, pp. 122, reviews American legis-
lation relative to entail. The outcome is that before the American Revo-
lution the English laws on entail formed the common law in the colonies.
Entail strictly speaking (Estates tail ) was abolished in Virginia in 1776 (this
abolition took place on the motion of Jefferson; see Jeffersons Memoirs ),
in the state of New York in 1786. The same abolition has taken place since
notes 676
in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri. In Vermont,
the states of Indiana, Illinois, South Carolina and Louisiana, entail has al-
ways been unusual. The states that believed they had to keep English leg-
islation relative to entail modied it in a way to remove its principal aris-
tocratic characteristics. Our general principles inmatters of government,
says Mr. Kent, tend to favor the free circulation of property.
e
What singularly strikes the French reader who studies American legis-
lation relative to inheritance is that our laws on the same matter are still
innitely more democratic than theirs.
American laws divide the wealth of the father equally, but only in the
case where his will is not known: for every man, says the law, in the State
of New York (Revised Statutes, vol. III; Appendix, p. 51), has full liberty,
power and authority, to dispose of his goods by a will, to bequeath, divide,
in favor of whatever person it may be, provided that he does not make out
his will in favor of a political body or an organized company.
French law makes equal or nearly equal division the rule of the testator.
Most of the American republics still allow entail and limit themselves
to restricting the effects.
French law allows entail in no case.
f
If the social state of Americans is still more democratic than ours, our
laws are thus more democratic than theirs. This is explained better than
you think: in France democracy is still busy demolishing; in America it
reigns tranquilly over the ruins.
e. The quoted text reads: The general policy of this country does not encourage
restraints upon the power of alienation of land. Kents Commentaries, volume IV,
p. 17.
f. Herve de Tocqueville: I read that with surprise. The law authorizes the father tes-
tator to favor one of his children. In collateral line it leaves a very much greater latitude
(YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 99).
notes 677
(H) Page 97
Summary of Electoral Conditions in the United States
All the states grant the enjoyment of electoral rights at age twenty-one. In
all the states, you have to have resided a certain time in the district where
you vote. This time varies from three months to two years.
As for the property qualication: in the state of Massachusetts, to be a
voter, you have to have 3 pounds sterling of income, or 60 of capital.
In Rhode Island, you have to own property valued at 133 dollars (704
francs).
InConnecticut, you have to have a property withanincome of 17dollars
(about 90 francs). A year of service in the militia gives the right to vote as
well.
In New Jersey, the voter must have wealth of 50 pounds sterling.
In South Carolina and Maryland, the voter must own 50 acres of
land.
In Tennessee, you must own some property.
In the states of Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New York, it is sufcient, to be a voter, to pay taxes: in most of
these states, service in the militia is the equivalent of paying taxes.
In Maine and in New Hampshire, it is sufcient not to be included on
the list of the poor.
Finally in the states of Missouri, Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana, Indiana,
Kentucky, Vermont, no condition is required having to do with the wealth
of the voter.
Only North Carolina, I think, imposes on the voter for the Senate con-
ditions other than those imposed on voters for the House of Representa-
tives. The rst must own property of 50 acres of land. It is sufcient, in
order to be able to elect representatives, to pay a tax.
(I) Page 161
A prohibitive system exists in the United States. The small number of cus-
toms ofcials and the great extent of coastline make smuggling very easy;
notes 678
it is done innitely less there than elsewhere, however, because each person
works to repress it.
Since there is no preventive surveillance in the United States, you see
more res there than in Europe; but ingeneral they are extinguishedsooner,
because the surrounding population does not fail to go quickly to the place
of danger.
(K) Page 165
It is not correct to say that centralization was born out of the French Rev-
olution; the French Revolution perfected it, but did not create it. The taste
for centralization and the mania for regulation go back in France to the
period when the jurists entered into the government; which takes us back
to the time of Philippe le Bel [the Fair]. Since that time, these two things
have never ceased to increase. Here is what M. de Malesherbes, speaking
in the name of the Cour des aides, said to King Louis XVI in 1775:
3
There remained to each body, to each community of citizens the right
to administer its own affairs; a right that we do not say was part of the
original constitution of the kingdom, for it goes back much further: it is
natural law, it is the law of reason. But it has been taken away from your
subjects, Sire, and we will not be afraid to say that the administration has
fallen in this respect into excesses that can be called childish.
Since powerful ministers made it a political principle not to allow the
national assembly to be convoked, we have gone step by step to the point
of declaring null and void deliberations of the inhabitants of a village
when they are not authorized by an intendant; so that, if this community
has an expenditure to make, the assent of the subdelegate of the intendant
must be gained, consequently the plan that he adopted must be followed,
the workers that he favors must be used, they must be paid as he sees t;
and if the community has a court case to sustain, it must alsobe authorized
to do so by the intendant; the case must be argued before this rst tribunal
before being brought before the courts. And if the opinion of the inten-
3. See Memoires pour servir a` lhistoire du droit public de la France en matie`re
dimpots, p. 654, printed in Brussels in 1779.
notes 679
dant is against the inhabitants, or if their adversary has the ear of the
intendant, the community is deprived of the ability to defend its rights.
Here, Sire, are the means by whichsome have workedtosmother inFrance
all municipal spirit, to extinguish, if it could be done, even the sentiments
of citizens; the entire nation has been so to speak prohibited and it has
been given guardians.
g
What could you say better today, now that the French Revolution has
made what are called its conquests in the matter of centralization?
In 1789, Jefferson wrote from Paris to one of his friends: Never was
there a country where the mania for governing too much had taken deeper
roots and done more mischief than in France. Letter to Madison, 28 Au-
gust 1789.
The truth is that in France, for several centuries, the central power has
always done all that it could to extend administrative centralization; inthis
course it has never had any other limit than its strength.
The central power born from the French Revolution went further in this
than any of its predecessors, because it was stronger and more clever than
any of them. Louis XIV submitted the details of communal existence to the
wishes of the intendant; Napoleon submitted them to those of the minister.
It is always the same principle, extendedtoconsequences more or less remote.
(L) Page 170
This immutability of the constitution in France is a necessary consequence
of our laws.
And, to speak rst about the most important of all the laws, that which
regulates the order of succession to the throne, what is more immutable in
its principle than a political order based on the natural order of succession
g. Count de Boissy dAnglas, Essais sur la vie, les e crits et les opinions de M. de Males-
herbes (Paris: Treuttel and Wurtz, 1819), I, pp. 3056 (quoted in YTC, CVh, 5, p. 3). We
know that this idea that the process of centralization predates the Revolution is the prin-
cipal thesis of the Old Regime and the Revolution.
Also see Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento pol tico de Tocqueville (Madrid: Alianza
Universidad, 1989), pp. 13780.
notes 680
from father to son? In 1814, Louis XVIII had this perpetuity of the law of
political succession acknowledged in favor of his family. Those who settled
the results of the revolution of 1830 followed his example; only they estab-
lished the perpetuity of the law to the prot of another family; in this they
imitated chancellor Maupeou, who, while instituting the newparlement on
the ruins of the old, took care to declare in the same ordinance that the
new magistrates would be irremovable as their predecessors were.
The laws of 1830do not, any more thanthose of 1814, indicate anymeans
to change the constitution. Now, it is clear that the ordinary means of leg-
islation cannot be sufcient for that.
Fromwhat does the king derive his powers? Fromthe constitution. From
what the peers? From the constitution. From what the deputies? Fromthe
constitution. Howthen would the king, the peers and the deputies be able,
by uniting, to change something in a law by the sole virtue of which they
govern? Outside the constitution they are nothing; so on what ground
would they stand in order to change the constitution? One of two things:
either their efforts are powerless against the charter, whichcontinues toexist
in spite of them, and then they continue to rule in its name; or they succeed
in changing the charter, and then, since the law by which they exist no
longer exists, they are no longer anything themselves. By destroying the
charter, they are destroyed.
That is still much more obvious in the laws of 1830 than in those of 1814.
In 1814, the royal power put itself, in a way, outside and above the consti-
tution; but in 1830, by its own admission, it is created by the constitution
and is absolutely nothing without it.
Thus a part of our constitution is immutable, because it has been joined
with the destiny of a family; and the whole of the constitution is equally
immutable, because no legal means are seen to change it.
All this is not applicable to England. Since England has no written con-
stitution, who can say that its constitution is being changed?
notes 681
(M) Page 171
The most respected authors who have written about the English consti-
tution establish, as though trying to out do each other, this omnipotence
of Parliament.
Delolme says [book I (ed.)], ch. x, p. 77: It is a fundamental principle
with the English lawyers, that parliament can do everything, except making a
woman a man or a man a woman.
Blackstone expresses himself still more categorically, if not more ener-
getically, than Delolme; in these terms [book V, ch. II]:
The power and jurisdiction of Parliament, says sir EdwardCoke (4 Inst.
36), is so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be conned, either
for causes or persons, within any bounds. And of this highcourt, he adds,
it may be truly said, Si antiquitatem spectes, est vetustissima; si dignitatem,
est honoratissima; si jurisdictionem, est capacissima. It hath sovereign and
uncontrollable authority in making, conrming, enlarging, restraining,
abrogating, repealing, reviving, and expounding of laws concerning mat-
ters of all possible denominations, ecclesiastical, or temporal, civil, mili-
tary, maritime, or criminal: this being the place where that absolute des-
potice [sic ] power, which must in all governments reside somewhere, is
entrusted by the constitution of these kingdoms. All mischief and griev-
ances, operations and remedies, that transcend the ordinary course of laws
are within the reach of this extraordinary tribunal. It can regulate or new
model the succession to the crown; as was done in the reign of Henry VIII
and William III. It can alter the established religion of the land; as was
done in a variety of instances, in the reigns of king Henry VIII. and his
three children. It can change and create afresh even the constitution of the
kingdom and of parliaments themselves; as was done by the act of union
and the several statutes for triennial and septennial elections. It can, in
short, do everything that is not naturally impossible; and therefore some
have not scrupled to call its [sic ] power, by a gure rather too bold, the
omnipotence of parliament.
notes 682
(N) Page 185
There is no subject on which the American constitutions agree more than
on political jurisdiction.
All the constitutions that deal with this subject give the house of
representatives the exclusive right to accuse, except only the Constitution
of North Carolina, which grants the same right to the grand juries (ar-
ticle 23).
Nearly all the constitutions give to the senate, or to the assembly that
takes its place, the exclusive right to judge.
The only penalties that the political courts can pronounce are: dismissal
or banning frompublic ofces in the future. Only the Constitutionof Vir-
ginia allows pronouncing all types of penalties.
Crimes that can lead to political jurisdiction are: in the federal Consti-
tution (sect. IV, art. I) [Article II, Section 4 (ed.)], in that of Indiana (art.
3, pp. 23 and 24), of New York (art. 5), of Delaware (art. 5), high treason,
corruption and other high crimes or misdemeanors;
In the Constitution of Massachusetts (ch. I, sect. II), of North Carolina
(art. 23), and of Virginia (p. 252), bad conduct and bad administration;
In the Constitution of New Hampshire (p. 105), corruption, reprehen-
sible schemes, and bad administration;
In Vermont (ch. II, art. 24), bad administration;
In South Carolina (art. 5), Kentucky (art. 5), Tennessee (art. 4), Ohio
(art. 1, #23, 24), Louisiana (art. 5), Mississippi (art. 5), Alabama (art. 6),
Pennsylvania (art. 4), crimes committed in ofce.
In the states of Illinois, Georgia, Maine and Connecticut, no crime is
specied.
(O) Page 276
It is true that the powers of Europe can wage great maritime wars against
the Union; but it is always easier and less dangerous to sustain a maritime
notes 683
war than a continental war. Maritime war requires only a single kind of
effort. Acommercial people that consents to give its government the money
needed is always sure to have eets. Now, sacrices of money can be con-
cealed from nations much more easily than sacrices of men and personal
efforts. Defeats at sea, moreover, rarely compromise the existence or the
independence of the people who experience them.
As for continental wars, it is clear that the peoples of Europe cannot
wage dangerous wars against the American Union.
It is very difcult to transport to and to maintain in America more than
25,000 soldiers; this represents a nation of about 2,000,000 people. The
greatest European nation ghting against the Union in this way is in the
same position as a nation of 2,000,000 inhabitants would be in a war
against one of 12,000,000. Add to this that the American has all of his
resources at hand and the European is 1,500 leagues from his, and that the
immensity of the territory of the United States alone would present an
insurmountable obstacle to conquest.
Second Part
(A) Page 298
In April 1704 the rst American newspaper appeared. It was published in
Boston. See Collection of the Historical Society of Massachusetts, vol. VI,
p. 66.
You would be wrong to believe that the periodical press has always been
entirely free in America; attempts were made there to establish something
analogous to prior censorship and to the surety bond.
Here is what you nd in the legislative documents of Massachusetts, for
the date of 14 January 1722.
The committee named by the general assembly (the legislative body of
the province) to study the affair relating to the newspaper entitled: New
England Courant
h
h. In the rst edition: Courant (which was written by the celebrated Franklin) . . .
The error was corrected in the following editions.
notes 684
thinks that the tendency of the said newspaper is to ridicule religion and
make it sink into contempt; that the holy authors are treated in a profane
and irreverent manner; that the conduct of the ministers of the Gospel is
interpreted with malice; that the government of His Majesty is insulted,
and that the peace and tranquillity of this province are disturbed by the
said newspaper; consequently, the committee is of the opinion that, inthe
future, James Franklin, printer andeditor, be forbiddento print or publish
the said newspaper or any other writing, without having submitted them
in advance to the Secretary of the province. The justices of the peace of
the town of Suffolk will be charged with obtaining from Mr. Franklin a
bond that will be a pledge for his good conduct during the coming year.
The proposal of the committee was accepted and became law, but the
effect was null. The newspaper eluded the interdiction by putting the name
of Benjamin Franklin in place of James Franklin beneath its columns, and
opinion nally put an end to the measure.
(B) Page 445
In order to be county voters (those who represent landed property) before
the reform bill passed in 1832, it was necessary to have by sole ownership
or by lifetime lease capital in land bringing in 40 shillings in net income.
This law was made under Henry VI, about 1450. It has been calculatedthat
40 shillings at the time of Henry VI would be equivalent to 30 pounds
sterling today. This amount adopted in the XVth century was allowed to
remain, however, until 1832, which proves how much the English consti-
tution became democratic over time, even while appearing immobile. See
Delolme, book I, ch. IV; also see Blackstone, book I, ch. IV.
English jurors are chosen by the county sheriff (Delolme, vol. I, ch XII
[XIII (ed.)]. The sheriff is in general a prominent man of the county; he
fullls judicial and administrative functions; he represents the King, and is
named by him every year (Blackstone, book I, ch. IX). His position puts
him above suspicion of corruption on the part of the parties; if, moreover,
his impartiality is put in doubt, the jury that he has named can be recused
en masse, and then another ofcer is charged with choosing newjurors. See
Blackstone, book III, ch. XXIII.
notes 685
To have the right to be a juror, it is necessary to own capital in land, with
a value of at least 10 shillings in income. (Blackstone, book III, ch. XXIII).
You will note that this condition was imposed during the reign of William
and Mary, that is toward 1700, a period when the value of money was in-
nitely higher than today. You see that the English based their jury system,
not on capacity but on landed property, like all their other political
institutions.
In the end farmers were admitted to the jury, but it was required that
their leases be very long, and that they have a net income of 20 shillings,
apart from the rent. (Blackstone, idem.)
(C) Page 445
The federal constitution introduced the jury into the courts of the Union
in the same way that the states had introducedit into their particular courts;
in addition, the federal constitution did not establish its own rules about
the choice of jurors. Federal courts draw from the ordinary list of jurors
that each state has drawn up for its use. So it is the laws of the states that
must be examined to know the theory of the composition of the jury in
America. See Storys Commentaries on the Constitution, book III, ch.
XXXVIII, pp. 65459; Sergeants Constitutional Law, p. 165. Also see the
federal laws of 1789, 1800 and 1820 on the subject.
To show clearly the principles of the Americans regarding the compo-
sition of the jury, I have drawn upon the laws of states far fromeach other.
Here are the general ideas that can be derived from this examination.
In America, all citizens who are voters have the right to be jurors. The
large state of NewYorkhas, however, establisheda slight differencebetween
those two capacities; but it is in the direction opposite to our laws, that is
to say, there are fewer jurors thanvoters inthe state of NewYork. Ingeneral,
you can say that in the United States the right to be part of a jury, like the
right to elect representatives, extends to everyone; but the exercise of this
right is not put indiscriminately into all hands.
Each year a body of municipal or district magistrates, called selectmen
in New England, supervisors in the state of New York, trustees in Ohio,
parish sheriffs in Louisiana, choose for each district a certain number of
notes 686
citizens having the right to be jurors, and among whom they assume the
capacity to be so. These magistrates, being elected themselves, do not excite
distrust; their powers are very extensive and very arbitrary, like those of
republican magistrates in general, and it is said that they often use those
powers, above all in New England, in order to remove unworthy or incom-
petent jurors.
The names of the jurors thus chosen are sent on to the county court,
and from the totality of these names, the jury that must deliver the verdict
in each affair is drawn by lot.
The Americans have, moreover, tried by all possible means to put the
jury within reach of the people, and to make it as little burdensome as
possible. Since the jurors are very numerous, each persons turn comes
scarcely every three years. The sessions are held in the chief seat of each
county; the county corresponds more or less to our arrondissement. Thus,
the court comes to be located near the jury, instead of drawing the jury
close to it, as in France; nally the jurors are paid, either by the state, or by
the parties. They receive, in general, one dollar (5.42 fr.) per day, apart from
travel expenses. In America the jury is still regarded as a burden, but it is a
burden easy to bear, and one you submit to without difculty.
See Brevards Digest of the Public Statute Law of South Carolina, 2nd
vol., p. 338; id., vol. I, pp. 454 and 456; id., vol. II, p. 218.
See The General Laws of Massachusetts revised and published by authority
of the legislature, vol. II, pp. 331, 187 [141].
See The Revised Statutes of the State of New York, vol. II, pp. 720, 411,
717, 643.
See The Statute Law of the State of Tennessee, vol. I, p. 209.
See Acts of the State of Ohio, pp. 95 and 210.
See Digeste ge neral des actes de la le gislature de la Louisiane, vol. II, p. 55.
(D) Page 449
When you closely examine the constitution of the civil jury among the
English, you easily discover that the jurors never escape the control of the
judge.
It is true that the verdict of the jury, civil as well as criminal, generally
notes 687
includes fact and law in a simple statement. Example: A house is claimed
by Peter as one he bought, here is the fact. His adversary raises the objection
of the incompetence of the seller, here is the law. The jury limits itself to
saying that the house will be put back in Peters hands; thus it decides fact
and law. When introducing the jury in civil matters, the English did not
keep the infallibility of the opinion of the jurors that they granted in crim-
inal matters, when the verdict is favorable.
If the judge thinks that the verdict has made a false application of the
law, he can refuse to receive it, and send the jurors back to deliberate.
If the judge allows the verdict without comment, the proceedings are
still not entirely settled: there are several paths of recourse open against the
decision. The principal one consists of asking the courts to void the verdict
and to assemble a new jury. It is true to say that such a demand is rarely
granted and never more than two times. Nonetheless, I sawthe case happen
before my eyes. See Blackstone, book III, ch. XXIV; id., book III, ch. XXV.
DEMOCRACY
I N AMERICA
s4s4s4s4s4
volume 3
Indianapolis
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(Set)
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(Vol. 2)
(Vol. 3)
(Vol. 4)
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978-0-86597-721-1
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Paperback ISBNs
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III. Title.
jk216.t713 2009
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viii
Contents
Key Terms xxvi
Foreword xxviii
(1835)
v ol ume i
Introduction 3
Part I
contents ix
in America 91
the Union 98
Town District 103
Of Town Life 108
Of the State 135
United States 142
Federal Powers 195
contents x
Election Crisis 222
of the State 244
v ol ume i i
Part II
contents xi
of That Right 309
of Ofcials 340
to Economy 343
Those of France 349
and Those Vices 356
contents xii
United States 427
contents xiii
United States 465
United States 472
Threaten It? 582
of Lasting? 627
United States 637
Conclusion 649
Notes 658
xiv
(1840)
v ol ume i i i
contents xv
Often Bombastic 843
in Civil Life 895
contents xvi
and Newspapers 905
a Spiritualism 939
Public Affairs 948
Harm Well-Being 963
contents xvii
v ol ume i v
Become Equal 987
of the Wife 1048
contents xviii
contents xix
Have to Fear 1245
Notes 1286
Appendixes 1295
Edition 1373
Bibliography 1396
Index 1499
s4s4s4s4s4
volume 2
2f2f2f2f2f
689
s4s4s4s4s4
DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA
a
a. Introduction to the third volume./
Ideas about the plan of this volume./
Perhaps most of the things contained in this bundle will be useful for the large
nal chapter in which I intend to summarize the subject./
Inuence of democracy. Ter [three (ed.)]:
I. Ideas
II. Sentiments. This relates only to man in isolation.
III. Customs. They include the relationships of men with one another.
What is American or English without being democratic.
Great difculty in disentangling what is democratic, commercial, English and
Puritan.
To explain in the foreword.
My principal subject is not America, but the inuence of democracy on America. As
a result, the only one of the four causes set forth above that I must dwell upon se-
riously and at length is the democratic. Perhaps not because it is the principal one
(what I believe, moreover), but because it is the one that is most important for me
to show. I must speak about the others only: 1. To interest the class of readers who
want above all to know America, 2. To make myself clearly understood, 3. To show
that I am not exclusive and entirely given to a single idea.
[In the margin: I see all the other causes, but I am only looking at the democratic.]
If, among these various causes, I always choose by preference to deal with the dem-
ocratic cause, let me not therefore be accused of an exclusive mind.
I do not believe it necessary to treat the commercial, English and Puritan causes
separately. I only think that I must show in the course of the book that I know and
appreciate them.
To speak about the four causes only in the preface and only there give them their
respective places.
Important idea.
After nishing, look carefully at the places where I could point out how the things
produced by democracy help democracy in turn and indirectly.
[On the following page] Perhaps in the large nal chapter.
Idea of democratic liberty and idea of religion.
foreword 690
s4s4s4s4s4
Foreword
b
The Americans have a democratic social state that has naturally suggested
to them certain laws and certain political mores.
c
In civil society as in political society, these two points of departure explain nearly
everything. And I must come back to that in a general way, either at the beginning
or at the end of the third volume (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 3941).
b. Several notes andfragments indicate that Tocqueville hadconsideredwritingalong
preface that contained a good number of ideas present in the fourth and last part of the
book (it constituted a single chapter in the rst drafts). Did the sheer size of the last
chapter lead him to sacrice the preface? This preface was reduced to a foreword, and
certain ideas of the introduction (including the admission of his error concerning the
weakening of the federal bond) did not nally nd their place in the rst pages of this
volume.
Some notes of rough drafts that present a version of the foreword very similar to the
nal versionbear the date 5 February 1838. Inthe followingmonths, however, Tocqueville
did not stop coming back to the idea of writing a long introductiontothe secondvolume
and hesitated about whether to place certain fragments at the beginning or at the end
of the book.
One of the principal ideas of the preface must be, it seems to me, to show in brief
all the dissimilarities that exist between the American democracy and ours. Democracy
pushing men further in certain directions in America than it does among us (sciences,
arts), in certain others pushing them not as far (religion, good morals) (YTC, CVk, 1,
p. 48).
Note relative to the preface of my great work.
It must be shown how recent events justify most of the things that I said.
Indians.
Texas.
Negroes.
The necessity of having troops in the cities.
Ultra-democratic tendencies.
Admit my error. The weakening of the federal bond (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 39).
c. First paragraphs of the book in a rough draft:
The work which appears at this moment (illegible word) the public is not an entirely
new work. It is the second and last part of a book that I published ve years ago on
democracy in the United States.
foreword 691
This same social state has, moreover, given birth among them to a mul-
titude of sentiments andopinions that were unknowninthe oldaristocratic
societies of Europe. It has destroyedor modiedrelationships that formerly
existed and established new ones. The appearance of civil society has been
no less changed than the physiognomy of the political world.
I dealt with the rst subject in the work that I published ve years
ago on American democracy. The second is the subject of the present
book. These two parts complement one another and form only a single
work.
d
I must immediately warn the reader against an error that would be very
prejudicial to me.
Seeing me attribute somany diverse effects toequality, he couldconclude
When there are no more castes, distinct features, particular and exclusive rights,
permanent riches, entailed estates, citizens differ little from each other by their con-
ditions, and they constantly change conditions; they naturally adopt certainlaws, and
contract certain habits of government that are appropriate to them.
This same equality and these same causes inuence not only their political ideas
and habits, but also all their habits and all their ideas. The men who live in this dem-
ocratic social state conceive new opinions; they adopt new mores; they establish re-
lationships among themselves that did not exist or modify those that already existed.
The appearance of civil society is not less changed than the physiognomy of the
political world.
[To the side, with a bracket that includes the two previous paragraphs: Louis would
say that only about the Americans.]
The object of the book that I published ve years ago was to showthe rst effects
of equality; this one wants to depict the second. The two parts united form a single
whole.
It is this second portion of the subject that I wanted to treat in the present book.
I am assuredly very far from claiming to have seen everything on so vast a ground.
I am even certain that I have discovered only a small part of what it includes.
The Revolution that reduced to dust the aristocratic society in which our fathers
lived is the great event of the time. It has changed everything, modied everything,
altered everything. [v: hit everything].
[In the margin, witha bracket that includes the twoprevious paragraphs] Todelete,
I think (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 3536).
d. The rst book more American than democratic. This one more democratic than
American (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 53).
foreword 692
that I consider equality as the unique cause of all that happens today.
e
This
would assume a very narrow view on my part.
There is, in our time, a host of opinions, sentiments, instincts that owe
their birth to facts foreign or even contrary to equality. Thus, if I took the
United States as an example, I would easily prove that the nature of the
country, the origin of the inhabitants, the religion of the rst founders,
their acquired enlightenment, their previous habits, exercised and still ex-
ercise, independently of democracy, an immense inuence on their way of
thinking and feeling. Different causes, also distinct from the fact of equal-
ity, would be found in Europe and would explain a great part of what is
happening there.
I recognize the existence of all these different causes and their power,
but talking about them is not my subject. I have not undertaken to show
e. In Preface, I believe.
Explain somewhere what I understand by centuries of equality [v: democratic cen-
turies]. It is not that chimerical time when all men will be perfectly similar andequal,
but those:
1. When a great number among them will be in (two illegible words) and when a
greater number will fall either above or below, but not far fromthe commonmeasure.
2. Those when there will be no more permanent classication, caste, class, any
insurmountable barrier or even one very difcult to surmount, so that if all men are
not equal, they can all aspire to the same point; some being able (illegible word) to
fear falling, others to hope to rise, so that a common measure makes itself (illegible
word) against which all men measure themselves in advance, which spreads the sen-
timent of equality even within unequal conditions.
22 June 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 4546).
In another place, he explains:
Two close but distinct propositions:
1. I cannot show all that equality does and will do.
2. I do not claim to link everything to equality, but only to show where equality
acts (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 53).
Idea of the preface or of the last chapter./
That democracy is not the cause of everything, but that it mixes with everything,
and has a part in all the causes (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 42).
foreword 693
the reason for all our inclinations and all our ideas; I have only wanted to
show to what extent equality had modied both.
f
You will perhaps be surprised that, since I am rmly of the opinion that
the democratic revolution we are witnessing is an irresistible fact against
which it would be neither desirable nor wise to struggle, I have oftenended
up addressing such harsh words in this book to the democratic societies
created by this revolution.
I will simply reply that it is because I was not an adversary of democracy
that I have wanted to be candid about it.
g
Mendo not receive the truth fromtheir enemies, andtheir friends hardly
ever offer the truth to them; that is why I have spoken it.
I have thought that many would take it upon themselves to announce
the newgood things that equality promises to men, but that fewwoulddare
to point out from a distance the perils with which it threatens them. So it
f. Principal object. Somewhere.
I want to make everyone understand that a democratic social state is an invincible
necessity in our time.
Dividing then my readers into enemies and friends of democracy, I want to make
the rst understand that for a democratic social state to be tolerable, for it to be able
to produce order, progress, in a word, to avoid all the evils that they anticipate, at
least the greatest ones, they must at all costs hasten to give enlightenment and liberty
to the people who already have such a social state.
To the second, I want to make them understand that democracy cannot give the
happy fruits that they expect from it except by combining it with morality, spiritu-
alism, beliefs . . .
I thus try to unite all honest and generous minds within a small number of com-
mon ideas.
As for the question of knowing if such a social state is or is not the best that
humanity can have, may God himself say so. Only God can say (YTC, CVk, 2,
pp. 5556).
g. I am profoundly persuaded that you can succeed in making democratic peoples
into prosperous, free, powerful, moral and happy nations. So I do not despair of the
future, but I think that peoples, like men, in order to make the most of their destiny,
need to know themselves, and that to master events, it is above all necessary to master
yourself (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 33).
Idea of bringing democracy to moderate itself. Idea of the book (YTC, CVk, 1,
p. 39).
foreword 694
is principally toward these perils that I have directed my attention, and,
believing that I have clearly discerned them, I have not had the cowardice
to say nothing about them.
h
I hope that you will nd again in this second work the impartiality
j
that
seemed to be noted in the rst. Placed in the middle of the contradictory
opinions that divide us, I have tried to eradicate temporarily in my heart
the favorable sympathies or contrary instincts that each one of them in-
spires in me. [I have wanted to live alone in order to keep my mind free.]
If those who read my book nd a single sentence that aims to atter one
of the great parties that have agitated our country, or one of the small fac-
tions that bother and enervate it today, may those readers raise their voices
and accuse me.
The subject that I have wanted to embrace is immense; for it includes
most of the sentiments and ideas that the new state of the world brings
forth. Such a subject assuredly exceeds my powers;
k
while treating it, I have
not succeeded in satisfying myself.
But, if I have not been able to achieve the goal that I set, readers will at
least do me the justice of granting that I have conceived and followed my
enterprise in the spirit that could make me worthy to succeed in it.
m
h. In a rst version of this paragraph, Tocqueville added: <Far fromwanting to stop
the development of the new society, I am trying to produce it> (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 44).
j. This in the preface.
I am often obliged to repeat myself because I want to divide what is indivisible, the
soul. The same soul constantly produces an idea and a sentiment. Place there the already
completed piece in which I compare the soul to a milieu whose ideas and sentiments are
like beams . . . (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 30).
k. Not only do I not claim to have seen everything in my subject, but I am certain
I have seen only a very small part. The democratic revolution is the great event of our
days, it spreads to everything, it modies or changes everything. There is nothing that
cannot or perhaps should not be dealt with while speaking about it. I have said all that
I have seen clearly, leaving to those more skillful or to men enlightened by a longer ex-
perience to portray the rest (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 47).
m. Ideas of the preface or of the last chapter:
In order to make myself well understood I have constantly been obliged to depict
extreme states, an aristocracy without a mixture of democracy, a democracy without
a mixture of aristocracy, a perfect equality which is an imaginary state. Then I come
to attribute to one or the other of the two principles more complete effects thanthose
that they generally produce because, in general, they are not alone. In my words, the
foreword 695
reader must distinguish what my true opinion is, from what is said in order to make
it well understood (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 51).
To say in the preface, if not in the book.
Idea of races.
I do not believe that there are races destined for liberty and others for servitude,
some for happiness and enlightenment, others for misfortunes and ignorance. These
are cowardly doctrines.
Doctrines, however. Why? That is due to the natural vice of the human mind in
democratic times [and of the heart that makes these peoples tendtowardmaterialism.
This idea of the invisible inuence of race is an essentially materialistic idea], apart
from the weakening of beliefs.
That the generative idea of this book is directly the opposite, since I begin invin-
cibly at this point that whatever the tendencies of the social state, men can always
modify them and ward off the bad tendencies while appropriating the good (YTC,
CVk, 1, p. 37).
696
s4s4s4s4s4
first part
a
Inuence of Democracy
on the Intellectual Movement
a. The rough drafts indicate that in the beginning the rst chapter included a large
portionof the ideas that nowconstitute the following chapters: the taste for general ideas,
general ideas in politics and certain considerations from chapter V on religion. Chapters
VI and VII are not in the summary of chapters copied in notebook CVf, which suggests
that they were included when the work of writing was already well advanced.
Concerning the other chapters of the rst part, a note mentions:
A chapter IV was found here in which I explained at length the inuence that the
philosophical method of the Americans exercised on the relationships of father and
children, of master and servant, on women, the customs of societies.
This spoiled the subject and treated it incompletely, for all these things have a
particular character under democracy not only because of the philosophical doctrine
givenbirthby equality, but also for a thousandother causes that cannot, consequently,
be treated here.
I believe however that for the mind of the reader, tired by the long theory that
precedes, to rest in applications, I would do [well (ed.)] in a very short chapter to
point out how in fact the philosophical method of the Americans can inuence (not
cause) all these things (YTC, CVj, I, pp. 9192).
In a letter to Beaumont of 14 June 1836 (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1,
p. 160), Tocqueville announced his intention to nish the rst part before his departure
for Switzerland in mid-July, which allows us reasonably to date the rst version of this
part to the summer of 1836. It is in November 1838, when he begins the revision of his
manuscript, that Tocqueville, in another letter to Beaumont (ibid., pp. 32526) alludes
to the confusion of the rst two chapters and the necessity to review them. In the fol-
lowing letter (ibid., p. 328), he says he has thrown the rst one hundred pages of the
manuscript into the re and entirely rewritten them. Another letter of the same month
to Francisque de Corcelle conrms these statements (Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC,
XV, 1, p. 105).
697
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1
a
In the beginning, the organization of the rst chapters probably must have appeared
as follows: (1) A long chapter on philosophical method, including a certain number of
ideas that were later moved or that formed independent chapters, like the one on pan-
theism, which nowbears number 7. (2) The origin of beliefs among democratic peoples.
(3) A chapter on religion. (4) The inuence of philosophical method on the relations of
the father with his children, of the master with his servants, on woman and on habits.
(5) The taste for general ideas. (6) Science and the arts.
a. While rereading and recasting my manuscript, do, after each chapter, a small
outline of what it contains; a kind of assets and liabilities of democracy; that will mar-
velously facilitate for me the nal tableau, which it is immensely important to do well
(YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 1112).
Notebook F of the manuscript collection of Yale reproduces short summaries of each
chapter. The rst page bears the date April 1840. Here is the summary of this chapter:
1. That the Americans show by their actions that they have a philosophical
method, even though they have neither philosophical school nor philosophical
doctrine strictly speaking.
2. That this method consists principally of drawing your opinions only from
within yourself, as Descartes indicates.
3. That it is principally from their social state that they have drawn this method
and that it is the same cause that has made it adopted in Europe.
4. That the Americans have not made so great a use of this method as the French:
1. Because they got from their origin a more xed religion. 2. Because they are not
and have never been in revolution. 3. As a result of a still more general and powerful
cause that I am going to develop in the following chapter and that in the long run
must limit, among all democratic peoples, the intellectual independence given birth
by equality (YTC, CVf, pp. 12).
The rst draft of this chapter (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 4282) contains some ideas that
afterwardwill acquire sufcient importance toconstitute independent chapters (chapters
2 to 8). Tocqueville clearly hesitated a great deal about the content of the rst chapter,
nding himself inclined to speak about individualism before everything else.
Perhaps, Tocqueville noted again in a rough draft, begin the whole book with the
chapters on individualismand the taste for material enjoyments. Nearly everythingows
from there in ideas as well as in sentiments (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 12).
It is probably on the advice of Kergorlay, who spent the autumnof 1838 at the Tocque-
ville chateau at the very time when the author worked on the revision of the rst version
phi los ophi cal method 698
Of the Philosophical Method of the Americans
b
I think that in no country in the civilized world is there less interest in
philosophy than in the United States.
The Americans have no philosophical school of their own, and they
worry very little about all those that divide Europe; they hardly knowtheir
names.
of his manuscript, and who found the rst two chapters remarkably well written, that
Tocqueville changed his mind.
In another place:
Of all the chapters that precede the IXth where I am now (December 1838), there is
not a single one in which I have not felt the need to assume that the reader knew
either what leads democratic peoples to individualism, or what leads themto the taste
for material enjoyments. The experience of these eight chapters tends to prove that
the two chapters on individualism and material enjoyments should precede the
others.
L[ouis (ed.)]. thinks that whatever logical interest there might be inbeginningwith
the two chapters above, I must persevere in placing the chapter on method at the
beginning. That, he says, opens the subject very grandly and makes it immediately
seen from a very elevated perspective (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 11).
Chapter 9 in the manuscript is now number 11, entitled: in what spirit the amer-
icans cultivate the arts.
Another note, probably prior, suggested: Perhaps do a chapter on the inuence of
democracy on the moral sciences. I do not believe that the rst chapter of the book
corresponds to that (YTC, CVa, p. 45).
b. Chap. 1.
This rst chapter treats a very abstract matter. Extreme efforts must be made to
make it clear and perceptible, otherwise the reader would be discouraged.
In this chapter there are two ideas that I take up and leave alternately in a way that
is fatiguing for the mind, it is that of an independent method and of the inclination
and aptitude for general ideas.
Either these two ideas must be intimately linked with each other, or they must be
separated entirely and treated individually.
Perhaps explain in a few words the meaning of the expressions: general ideas, gen-
eralization, method (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 42).
The jacket that contains the manuscript of the chapter bears this note: There is no
society without common ideas and no common ideas if on each point each person is
abandoned to the solitary and individual effort of his reason.
It is easy to see, however, that nearly all the inhabitants of the United
States direct their minds in the same way, and conduct them according to
the same rules; that is to say, they possess, without ever having taken the
trouble to dene its rules, a certain philosophical method that is common
to all of them.
To escape from the spirit of system, from the yoke of habits, from the
maxims of family,
c
from the opinions of class, and, to a certain point, from
the prejudices of nation; to take tradition only as information, and present
facts only as a useful study for doing otherwise and better; to seek by your-
self and in yourself alone the reason for things, to strive toward the result
without allowing yourself to be caught up in the means, and to aim for
substance beyond form: such are the principal features that characterize
what I will call the philosophical method of the Americans.
d
If I go still further and, among these various features, look for the prin-
cipal one and the one that can sum up nearly all the others, I discover that,
in most operations of the mind, each American appeals only to the indi-
vidual effort of his reason.
So America is one of the countries of the world where the precepts of
Descartes are least studiedandbest followed.
e
That shouldnot be a surprise.
c. In the rough drafts and rst versions: . . . from the maxims of State (YTC, CVj,
1, p. 21; another version, p. 43).
d. In the margin, in pencil: {And religion, Ampe`re?}
Jean-Jacques Ampe`re, writer and historian with eclectic tastes, son of the famous
physicist. Tocqueville met him in 1835 in the salon of Madame Recamier, with whom
Ampe`re was in love for fteen years. We knowlittle about the beginningof the friendship
between Tocqueville and Ampe`re, but we know that the author of the Democracy read
several chapters of this volume to him and asked for his advice on several occasions.
From1841, the Tocqueville chateaushelteredinone of its towers a roomof Ampe`re, always
ready to receive him. Indefatigable traveler, Ampe`re ended several of his long journeys
by a visit to the Tocquevilles.
Upon the death of the author, Ampe`re published a touching article on his best
friend: Alexis de Tocqueville, Correspondant, 47, 1859, pp. 31235. The correspon-
dence of Tocqueville with Ampe`re has been published involume XI of uvres comple `tes.
e. Although Descartes professes a great scorn for the crowd, his method is based on
the idea of the equality of minds, for if I must rely on myself why would you not do
the same?
Protestantism itself already announced that society had become very democratic
(YTC, CVj, 1, p. 13).
Americans do not read the works of Descartes, because their social state
diverts them from speculative studies, and they follow his maxims because
the same social state naturally disposes their mind to adopt them.
f
Amid the constant movement that reigns within a democratic society,
g
the bond that links generations together weakens or breaks; each man
easily loses track of the ideas of his ancestors, or is hardly concernedabout
them.
Nor can the men who live in such a society draw their beliefs from the
opinions of the class to which they belong, for there are so to speak no
longer any classes, and those that still exist are composed of elements so
uid, that the corps can never exercise a true power over its members.
h
As for the action that the intelligence of one man can have on that of
another, it is necessarily very limited in a country where citizens, having
become more or less similar, all see each other at very close range; and, not
noticing in any one of them the signs of incontestable greatness and su-
periority, they are constantly brought back to their own reason
j
as the most
Descartes, the greatest democrat (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 53).
A letter from Kergorlay dated 27 June 1834 (Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII,
1, pp. 38489) suggests that the two friends had had the project of reading together the
Discours de la me thode. It contains the rst impressions of Kergorlay onreadingthis work.
f. In the margin: <Perhaps transfer here several of the things that I say in the chapter
on revolutions. Here the foundations are found, they must be well secured before
building.>
g. Ademocratic people, society, time does not mean a people, society, time inwhich
all men are equal, but a people, society, time in which there are no more castes, xed
classes, privileges, particular and exclusive rights, permanent riches, properties xed
in the hands of families, in which all men can constantly rise or descend and mingle
together in all ways.
When I mean it in the political sense, I say democracy.
When I want to speak about the effects of equality, I say equality (YTC, CVk,
1, pp. 5051).
h. In the margin: <They escape the rule of their own habits, for they change them
constantly.>
j. Imagine men entirely equal in knowledge, in enlightenment, in reason; ration-
alism
1
comes into the world.
visible and nearest source of truth. Then it is not only condence in a par-
ticular man that is destroyed, but the taste to believe any man whatsoever
on his word.
So each person withdraws narrowly into himself and claims to judge the
world from there.
The custom that the Americans have of only taking themselves as guide
for their judgment leads their mind to other habits.
Since they see that they manage without help to solve all the small dif-
culties that their practical life presents, they easily conclude that every-
thing in the world is explicable, and that nothing goes beyond the limits
of intelligence.
Thus, they readily deny what they cannot understand; that gives them
little faith in the extraordinary and an almost invincible distaste for the
supernatural.
Since they are accustomed to relying on their own witness, they love to
see the matter that they are dealing with very clearly; so in order to see it
more closely and in full light, they rid it as fully as they can of its wrapping;
they push aside all that separates them from it, and clear away everything
that hides it fromtheir view. This dispositionof their mindsoonleads them
to scorn forms, which they consider as useless and inconvenient veils placed
between them and the truth.
So the Americans did not need to drawtheir philosophical methodfrom
books, they found it within themselves. I will say the same about what
happened in Europe.
This same method became established and popularized in Europe only
as conditions there became more equal and men more similar.
Let us consider for a moment the train of events:
Rationalism, general ideas: two things produced by equality, but distinct.
Necessity that religions have in democratic centuries of winning over common
opinion.
1. I use this modern word without understanding it well. The most natural mean-
ing to give it is the independence of individual reason (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 1011).
In the XVIth century, the men of the Reformation
k
subject some of the
dogmas of the ancient faith to individual reason; but they continue to ex-
clude all the others from discussion.
m
In the XVIIth, Bacon, in the natural
sciences, and Descartes, in philosophy strictly speaking, abolish accepted
formulas, destroy the rule of traditions and overthrow the authority of the
master.
n
k. In the margin of a rst version belonging to the rough drafts: The Protestant
religion (perhaps religions should only be touched as little as possible for fear of burning
my ngers) (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 45).
m. I suppose that knowing the language that our fathers spoke, I do not know their
history. I open the books of the (three illegible words) of the XVIth century. I un-
derstand that there one preaches to men that each one of them has the right and the
ability to choose the particular road that should lead to heaven. I amassured that half
of the nations of Europe have adopted this new doctrine. That is enough. I do not
need to be taught that a great political revolution has preceded and accompanied the
religious revolution whose history is provided for me.
[v: That is enough. I already know without anyone telling me that in a nation in
which intellectual equality is thus professed and accepted, a very great inequality in
conditions cannot exist andthat whatever the external appearances of political society
may still be, men have already come very close to a common level] (YTC, CVj, 1,
pp. 1314).
n. Fragment on a separate sheet of the manuscript:
Read the preliminary portion of the Novum Organum entitled subject and plan, p.
263 and following, and compare the manner in which Bacon explains his method
concerning the physical senses to the manner in which Descartes, more or less at the
same time, conceived and explained his method concerning the moral sciences, and
you will be astonished to see to what degree the two methods are identical and how
these new truths occur in the same way to these two minds.
This is obviously not the result of chance, but indicates a general direction of the
human mind in this period. Bacon and Descartes, like all great revolutionaries, made
ideas that were already spread in all minds clear and systematic./
They gave the general formula applicable to all the particular truths that each per-
son began to nd at hand everywhere./
Bacon, 15611626.
The Novum Organum (instrument) was published in 1620./
Our method, says Bacon (p. 264), submits to examinationwhat ordinarylogic
adopts on the faith of others and by deferring blindly to authority. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]
Instead of rushing, so to speak, as is commonly done, toward the most elevated
principles and the most general propositions in order then to deduce middle prop-
ositions, it begins on the contrary with natural history and particular facts and
The philosophers of the XVIIIth century, nally generalizing the same
principle, undertake to submit to the individual examination of each man
the object of all his beliefs.
o
climbs only imperceptibly and with an extreme slowness up the ascending ladder,
to entirely general propositions and to principles of the rst order./
The seat of human understanding, he says below, must be rid of all received
opinions and methods, then the mind must be turned in an appropriate way toward
the facts that must enlighten it; nally, when it is sufciently prepared, these facts
must be presented to it./
Obviously not only is a new scientic method introduced there, but also a great
revolution of the human mind is begun or rather legalized, theorized.
From the moment when observation, the detailed and analytical observation of
facts, is the condition of all scientic progress, there is no longer a means to have
anything other than individual and formed beliefs in scientic matters. Received or
dogmatic beliefs are chased from that entire portion of the human mind.
Tocqueville takes this quotation from the preface of Bacons work which is enti-
tled: Spirit, Subject, Purpose, and Plan of the Work.
o. The manuscript says:
If I put aside the opinions of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century and
their actions, which must be considered as fortuitous accidents caused by the partic-
ular state of their country, in order to envisage only the fundamental principles that
constituted their method, I discover that the same rules that directedtheir minds lead
that of the Americans today. I see that in the period when they wrote the old aris-
tocratic society among us was nally dissolving; this makes me see clearly that the
philosophical method of the XVIIIth century is not only French but democratic, and
that is why it was so easily adopted in all of Europe and why it contributed so pow-
erfully to changing the face of Europe. I do not claim that this method could only
arise indemocratic centuries, but I amsaying that menwholive duringthesecenturies
are particularly disposed by their social state to nd and to accept this method, and
that it is only during that time that it can become usual and popular.
If someone asks me why, today . . .
In a rough draft, the author specied:
The rst use that the French philosophers made of their liberty was to attack all
religions with a kind of fury and particularly the Christian religion. I believe that this
must be considered as a pure accident, a fact particular to France, the result of ex-
traordinary circumstances that might never have been found and that already to a
great extent no longer exist.
Who does not see that Luther, Descartes
p
and Voltaire used the same
method, and that they differ only in the greater or lesser use that they
claimed to make of it?
Why did the men of the Reformation enclose themselves so narrowly
in the circle of religious ideas? Why did Descartes want to use it only in
certainmatters, although he made his methodapplicable toeverything, and
declare that only philosophical and not political things must be judged by
oneself? Howdidit happenthat inthe XVIIIthcentury general applications
that Descartes and his predecessors had not noticed or had refused to see
were all at once drawn from that same method? Finally, why in that period
did the method we are speaking about suddenly emerge from the schools
to penetrate society and become the common rule of intelligence, andwhy,
after becoming popular among the French, was it openlyadoptedor secretly
followed by all the peoples of Europe?
The philosophical method in question was able to arise in the XVIth
century, to take shape and become general in the XVIIth; but it could not
be commonly adopted in either one of the two. Political laws, the social
state, the habits of the mind that owfromthese rst causes, were opposed
to it.
It was discovered in a period when men began to become equal
and similar to each other. It could only be generally followed in centuries
I ampersuaded that the revolutionary inuence (two illegible words) France is due
much less [to (ed.)] its very ideas than to the philosophical method that provided
them. It is not because they shook Christianity in their country, changed their laws,
modied their mores that they turned Europe upside down. It is because they were
the rst to point out to the human mind a new method by the aid of which you
could easily attack all things old and open the way to all things new.
And if someone asks me why foreign peoples so readily conformed to the new
method that the French brought to light, I will answer that like the French, although
to a lesser degree, they were naturally disposed by their social state to adopt it (YTC,
CVj, 1, pp. 5456).
The same idea appears at the beginning of his Social andPolitical State of FranceBefore
and Since 1789 (OC, II, 1, p. 34).
p. Descartes was Catholic by his beliefs and Protestant by his method (YTC, CVj,
1, p. 32).
when conditions had nally become nearly similar and men almost the
same.
So the philosophical method of the XVIIIth century is not only French,
but democratic,
q
which explains why it was so easily accepted everywhere
in Europe, whose face it so much contributed to changing. It is not because
the French changed their ancient beliefs and modied their ancient mores
that they turned the world upside down; it is because they were the rst to
generalize and bring to light a philosophical method by the aid of which
you could easily attack all things old and open the way to all things new.
If someone nowasks me why, today, this same method is followed more
rigorously and applied more often among the French than among the
Americans, among whom equality is nonetheless as complete and older, I
will answer that it is due in part to two circumstances that must rst be
made clear.
It is religion that gave birth to the Anglo-American societies: that must
never be forgotten; so in the United States religion merges with all national
habits and all sentiments that the country brings forth; that gives it a par-
ticular strength.
r
q. It is not Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Voltaire that must be blamed. They only gave
form or application; the substance emerged from the state of the world in their time
(Rubish, 1).
r. All the peoples of Europe were born in centuries when the ardor of religious pas-
sions reigned, but American society was established especially in order to satisfy these
very passions. It was created in order to obey rules prescribed by a positive belief and
it is a direct product of faith. The inuence of this premier fact grows weaker each
day; it is still powerful; and if the Americans are dogmatic in the matter of religion
that is not because their social state is democratic, but because their origin is Puritan.
Although philosophy and religion are two distinct things, there nevertheless exists
between them a very close link that makes them in some way depend on each other.
Whenthe humanmindhas indeedstoppedwithinthe xedlimits of a religious belief,
philosophy merges so to speak with religion or at least it becomes as exclusive and
nearly as stable as religion itself. When on the contrary religious beliefs are shaken,
philosophical systems proliferate.
The Americans do not concern themselves with proving by metaphysical reasons
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, they do not try to mark out
the rules of human morality, and do not claim to discover the commonprinciple that
should govern the actions of man. They believe inthe authenticity of a bookinwhich
God himself, addressing immortal creatures, took care to set down with his powerful
hand the limit of good and evil.
[In the margin: This is very goodandmerits being kept; perhaps it shouldbe placed
where I show how aristocracy immobilizes the mind.]
(three illegible words) the greatest of the philosophical questions that have divided
the world for six thousandyears seemhardly to preoccupy the mindof the Americans.
This results from yet another cause than the one indicated above.
Although philosophical systems can in the long run exercise a powerful inuence
on the destinies of the human species, they seem to have only a very indirect con-
nection with the fate of each man in particular; it follows that it can excite only a
secondary interest in the latter. So men never feel carriedtowardphilosophical studies
by an actual and pressing need, they devote themselves to them for pleasure or in
order to ll the leisure that the principal affairs of life leave to them. Now in {small}
democratic countries generally and in particular in the United States, where so many
various raw materials are offered to human activity, few men are found who can be
concerned with philosophy, and the latter, should they be found, would lack a public
that would be interested in their work and would encourage their efforts.
When a man incessantly pursues well-being or wealth, leads ships to the antipodes
of the earth, cuts down forests each day, lls in swamps, transforms the wilderness,
he willingly leaves to another the trouble of discovering the limits of free will and of
trying to nd out the origin of evil.
Of all the branches of human study, philosophy will be, if I am not mistaken, the
one that will suffer most from the establishment of democracy. If men, whose social
state and habits are democratic, wanted to occupy themselves with philosophy, I do
not doubt that they would bring to this matter the boldness and freedom of mind
that they display elsewhere. But it can be believed that rarely will they want to be
concerned with it.
It is right moreover to distinguish two things with care.
Anation can have a philosophy of its own andhave no philosophical systemstrictly
speaking. When each of the men who compose a people proves individually by his
actions that they all have a certain uniform way of envisaging human affairs, you can
say that the people in general have a philosophy even though no one has yet taken
on the task of reducing these common notions to a body of knowledge, of specifying
these general ideas spread throughout the crowd and of linking them methodically
together in a logical order.
When you study the life of the Americans you discover without difculty that the
greater part of all their principal actions are naturally linkedto a certainsmall number
of theoretical philosophical opinions to which each man indistinctly conforms his
conduct.
Do you know why the inhabitant of the United States (illegible word) does not
undertake to control the private conduct of his servants andscarcely reserves the right
to counsel his children?
To this powerful reason add this other one, which is no less so: in Amer-
ica, religion has so to speak set its own limits; the religious order there has
remained entirely distinct from the political order, so that they were able
to change ancient laws easily without shaking ancient beliefs.
So Christianity retained a great dominion over the mind of the Amer-
icans, and, what I want to note above all, it reigns not only as a philosophy
that you adopt after examination, but also as a religion that you believe
without discussion.
In the United States, Christian sects vary innitely and are constantly
changing, but Christianity itself is an established and irresistible fact that
no one attempts to attack or defend.
The Americans, having admitted the principal dogmas of the Christian
religion without examination, are obliged to receive in the same way a great
number of moral truths that arise from it and are due to it. That connes
the work of individual analysis within narrow limits, and excludes from it
several of the most important human opinions.
s
Do you understand why he (illegible word) lavishly (two illegible words) of him-
self . . .
[In the margin: Examples drawn from the American theory of the equality of men,
of the doctrine of interest. Each one for himself.
I know that there is a multitude of American actions that have their driving power
in these two doctrines, but they do not come back to me at this moment.
End in this way:
So the Americans have a [v: their] philosophy even though they do not have phi-
losophers, and if they do not preach their doctrines in writings, they at least teach
them by their actions.
Perfectibility. Nothing draws visible limits to man.
Another very fruitful principle for the Americans.
All philosophical doctrines that can have a close connection to human actions are
very xed in America. Purely theoretical opinions are intermingled with religious
doctrines strictly speaking.]
The fact is that the Americans have allowed the Christian religion to direct the
small actions of life, and they have adopted [v: have created for themselves] a dem-
ocratic philosophy for most of the large ones (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 6369).
s. I amrmly persuadedthat if yousincerely appliedtothe searchfor the true religion
the philosophical method of the XVIIIth century, you would without difculty dis-
cover the truth of the dogmas taught by Jesus Christ, and I think that you would
arrive at Christianity by reason as well as by faith. So I am not astonished to see in
The other circumstance that I spoke about is this:
The Americans have a democratic social state and a democratic con-
stitution, but they have not had a democratic revolution. They arrived
on the soil that they occupy more or less as we see them. That is very
important.
There are no revolutions that do not turn ancient beliefs upside down,
enervate authority and cloud common ideas. So every revolution has more
or less the effect of leaving men to themselves and of opening before the
mind of each one of them an empty and almost limitless space.
When conditions become equal following a prolonged struggle be-
tween the different classes that formed the old society, envy, hatred and
contempt for neighbor, pride and exaggerated condence in self, invade,
so to speak, the human heart and for some time make it their domain.
This, apart from equality, contributes powerfully to divide men, to make
themmistrust each others judgment and seek enlightenment only within
themselves alone.
t
Each person then tries to be self-sufcient and glories in having beliefs
that are his own. Men are no longer tied together except by interests and
the Americans sincere Christians, but at rst glance, I am surprised by the manner
in which they become so. Within Christianity the American mind is deployed with
an entirely democratic independence, but it is very rare for it to dare to go beyond
these limits that it does not seem to have imposed on itself (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 59
60).
t. General revolt against all authority. Attempt to appeal to individual reason in all
things. General and salient character of the philosophy of the XVIIIth century, char-
acter essentially democratic.
But much more so when conditions are becoming equal than when conditions are
equal. An intellectual anarchy that is revolutionary and not democratic. We see on
this point more disorder than we will ever see.
The XVIIIth century exalted the individual (illegible word). It was revolution, not
democracy.
Skepticism is found at the beginning of democratic centuries rather than in these
centuries.
The philosophy of the XVIIIth century was revolutionary rather thandemocratic.
Try to nd out what was revolutionary in it and what was democratic (YTC, CVj, 1,
pp. 1112).
not by ideas, and you would say that human opinions no longer formany-
thing other than a kind of intellectual dust that swirls onall sides, powerless
to come together and settle.
Thus, the independence of mind that equality suggests is never so great
and never appears so excessive as at the moment when equality begins to
become established and during the painful work that establishes it. So you
must carefully distinguish the type of intellectual liberty that equality can
provide, from the anarchy that revolution brings. These two things must
be considered separately, in order not to conceive exaggerated hopes and
fears about the future.
I believe that the men who will live in the new societies will often make
use of their individual reason; but I am far from believing that they will
often abuse it.
This is due to a cause more generally applicable to all democratic coun-
tries and that, in the long run, must keep individual independence of
thought within xed and sometimes narrow limits.
I am going to speak about it in the chapter that follows.
u
u. In the manuscript, you nd here these two fragments:
two good fragments that will perhaps be necessary to put to use.
[In the margin: To join to the chapter on method./
This piece would have been excellent in the chapter on method if before showing
why democratic peoples have an independent individual reason, I had shown why
aristocratic peoples do not have it. To see. ]
In the Middle Ages it was believed that all opinions had to follow from authority.
Philosophy, this natural antagonist of authority, had itself, in those times, taken the
form of authority; it had taken on the characteristics of a religion. After creating
certain opinions by the free and individual force of some minds, it imposed these
opinions without discussion and by repressing the force that had given birth to it (see
what Aristotle was in the Middle Ages and until the beginning of the XVIIthcentury
when the Parlement of Paris forbid under penalty of death either to uphold or to
teach any maxim against ancient and approved authors.)
In the XVIIIth century the extreme of the opposite state was reached, that is to
say that people claimed to appeal for all things only to individual reason and to chase
dogmatic beliefs away entirely, and just as in the Middle Ages the form and the ap-
pearance of a religion was given to philosophies, in the XVIIIth century the form
and the appearance of philosophy was given to religions.
Today the movement still continues in minds of a second order, but the others
understand and accept that received beliefs and discovered beliefs, authority and lib-
erty, individualism and social force are needed at the very same time. The whole
question is to decide the limits of these two things.
My whole mind must be bent to that.
24 April 1837.
The other fragment says:
There is no society possible without social conventions, that is to say without a si-
multaneous agreement of the majority of citizens on certain beliefs, ideas or certain
customs that you accept once in order to follow them forever.
There are conventions of this type in democracies as elsewhere, but at the same
time that the social state and mores become more democratic, the number of these
conventions becomes less. Agreement is reachedonvery general ideas that place wider
and wider limits on the independence of each person and allowvariety ina multitude
of particular cases and secondary facts to be introduced progressively. It is like a circle
that is constantly growing larger and in which individual liberty expands in propor-
tion and becomes agitated.
I will take as an example what is happening in the United States in the matter of
religion. It is clear that the Americans to [sic ] accept the truthof the Christianreligion
without discussing it.
They have in a way moved the limits of discussion back to the extreme limits of
Christianity, but there the spirit of innovation must stop and it stops in fact as if by
itself, by a type of tacit and general agreement; while within the interior of Chris-
tianity the individual independence given birth by democracy is exercised without
constraint and there is no interpretation of the Gospel so strange that does not nd
. . . [interrupted text (ed.)]
[To the side: Good sentence to introduce in the chapter on philosophical method,
in the place where I speak about the religion of the Americans.]
On a strip of paper: D[emocratic (ed.)] method.
The democratic tendency that consists of getting to the substance of things without
paying attention to the form; in fact, through the formality, [this] is clearly seen in the
civil code. Marriage is perfected by consent and only in consent; sale by the desire to
sell. . . .
711
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2
a
Of the Principal Source of Beliefs among
Democratic Peoples
b
a. 1. That man cannot do without dogmatic beliefs:
1. Without dogmatic beliefs there are no common ideas and consequently nocom-
mon action; so they are necessary to society.
2. The individual can have neither the time nor the strength of mind necessary to
develop opinions that are his own on all matters. If he undertook it, he would never
have anything except vague andincomplete notions. Sodogmatic beliefs arenecessary
to the individual.
2. Therefore, there will always be beliefs of this type. It is only a matter of nding
their sources.
3. It is in humanity and not above or beyond that democratic men will place the
arbiter of their beliefs.
4. Within the interior of humanity, it is to the mass alone that each individual
hands over the care of forming for him opinions that he cannot form for himself on
a great number of matters.
5. So intellectual authority will be different, but it will perhaps not be less.
6. Far from fearing that it is disappearing, it must instead be feared that it is be-
coming too great (YTC, CVf, pp. 23).
b. New sources of beliefs. Authority. Sources of beliefs among democratic peoples.
To put in, before or after the chapters in which I treat the inuence of equality on
philosophy and religion.
Religionauthority.
Philosophyliberty.
What is happening in the United States in the matter of religion is proof of this.
(Illegible word) difculty for men to stop at common ideas. Remedy for that in
the future. This difculty is something more revolutionary than democratic.
The same ideas from this chapter recur two or three times in the course of the
work, among others in associations and above all in revolutions; I must try to treat
them completely here, with verve and without being concerned about what I said
elsewhere; because that is their natural and principal place. But afterward it would
the pri nci pal s ource of beli efs 712
Dogmatic beliefs are more or less numerous, depending on the times. They
are born in different ways and can change form and object; but you cannot
make it so that there are no dogmatic beliefs, that is to say, opinions that
men receive on trust and without discussion. If each person undertook to
form all his opinions himself and to pursue truth in isolation, along paths
opened up by himself alone, it is improbable that a great number of men
would ever unite together in any common belief.
c
be necessary to compare this chapter to those I named above, so as to avoidmonotony
as much as possible, particularly with the chapter on revolutions. There is the danger.
I believe however that it can be avoided by painting with moderation in this chapter
the natural and true state of democratic peoples relative to beliefs and in the chapter
on revolutions by showing (illegible word) and more (illegible word) the exaggeration
and the danger of the same tendencies (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 12).
The rst title of the second chapter had been: of particular causes that in
america can harm the free development and the generalization of
thought (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 3342, 8288). The principal cause, Tocqueville wrote, is
the rule of the majority. This idea reappears at the end of the chapter, but without the
development and the attention it had received in the rough drafts.
c. Note to reread before reworking this chapter. Capital.
The weakening of beliefs is much more general and more complete during the
democratic revolution than when democracy is settled.
Since a multitude of beliefs is then renounced, general condence in beliefs is
shaken.
By belief I mean an opinion that you have not had the time to examine yourself
and that you accept on trust because it has been transmitted to you, andbecause those
more clever profess it or because the crowd follows it.
Dogmatic beliefs are supports necessary for the weakness [of (ed.)] men. There is
no human mind that is able to nd [prove? (ed.)] by itself all the truths that it needs
to live. A belief is an instrument that you have not fabricated yourself, but that you
use because you lack the time to look for something better.
You cannot hide the fact that equality of conditions, democracy . . . is essentially
contrary to dogmatic beliefs, that is a capital idea, which I must face throughout this
chapter, clarify, explain and carefully delimit in my mind (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 2).
Wilhelm Hennis (La nueva ciencia politica de Tocqueville, Revista de estudios po-
liticos 22, 1981, pp. 738) notes that Tocqueville is more like Rousseau than he is a Car-
tesian because he accepts the necessity of dogmatic beliefs and because he places the
grandeur of man in the coincidence of the sentiment of liberty with religious sensibility.
Now, it is easy to see that no society is able to prosper without similar
beliefs, or rather none can continue to exist in such a way; for, without
common ideas, there is no common action, and, without common action,
there are still men, but not a social body. So for society to exist, and, with
even more reason, for this society to prosper, all the minds of the citizens
must always be brought and held together by some principal ideas; andthat
cannot happen without each one of themcoming at times to drawhis opin-
ions from the same source and consenting to receive a certain number of
ready-made beliefs.
d
If I now consider man separately, I nd that dogmatic beliefs are no
less indispensable for him to live alone than to act in common with his
fellows.
e
But to us this anti-cartesianism seems instead to be a sign of Pascals inuence. Like the
author of the Pense es, Tocqueville believes that, at the time of his eeting passage in the
world, man must accept certain general ideas that he is incapable of proving or of dis-
covering by himself and that all free human action nds itself within the circle limited
by these truths. As Tocqueville wrote to Kergorlay in 1841: Experience teaches me more
and more that the success and the grandeur of this world reside much more in the good
choice of these general and generative ideas than in the skillfulness that allows you each
day to get yourself out of the small difculties of the moment (Correspondance avec
Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 2, p. 100).
Luiz D ez del Corral has more than once demonstrated the inuence of Pascal on
Tocqueville (as in El liberalismo de Tocqueville. (La inuencia de Pascal.), Revista de
Occidente 3, no. 26 (1965): 13353). See also Luis D ez del Corral, El pensamiento pol tico
de Tocqueville (Madrid: Alianza, 1989); and Aurelian Craiutu, Liberalism Under Siege
(Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003).
d. I know only two states bearable for peoples as for men: dogmatic beliefs [v: ig-
norance] or advanced knowledge, between these two extremes are found doubt and all
miseries (YTC, CVa, p. 41).
e. [In the margin: Beccaria said that authority, society, was the portion of liberty that
individuals left to the mass in order to retain a more complete and more assured
enjoyment of (illegible word).]
By philosophy I mean all that the individual discovers by the individual effort of
his reason.
By religion I mean all that he accepts without discussing it. So philosophy and
religion are two natural antagonists. Depending on whether the one or the other
predominates in humanity, men tend toward an intellectual individualism without
limits, or tend toward having only common opinions and ending at intellectual slav-
ery. These two results are impractical and bad. Philosophy is needed and religions are
needed.
1
If man was forced to prove to himself all the truths that he uses every
day, he would never nish doing so; he would wear himself out with pre-
liminary demonstrations without advancing; as he has neither the time,
because of the short span of his life, nor the ability, because of the limi-
tations of his mind, to act in this way, he is reduced to holding as certain
a host of facts and opinions that he has hadneither the leisure nor the power
to examine and to verify by himself, but that those more clever have found
or that the crowd adopts. On this foundation he builds himself the struc-
ture of his own thoughts. It is not his will that leads him to proceed in this
manner; the inexible law of his condition compels him to do so.
There is in this world no philosopher so great that he does not believe
It is clear that the democratic social state must make philosophy as I (illegible
word) it predominate.
You must not hide from the fact that when you dogmatically teach a child or a
man a doctrine, you are taking away from him the part of liberty that he could have
applied to discovering this doctrine himself. From this perspective you put him into
slavery. But it is a slavery often necessary for the preservation of the liberty that you
leave to him. Thus the beautiful denition of Beccaria is found again.
[In the margin: When a philosophical opinion, after being discovered by the in-
dividual reason of one man, spreads by the authority of the name of this man, such
a philosophy is temporarily in the state of religion.
I would say as much about all political, scientic, economic doctrines that reign
in the same manner.]
When men associate for whatever object, each one gives up a certain portion of
his freedom to act and to think that the association can use. Outside of the associ-
ation, each one regains his individual independence and occupied [sic ] his mind or
his body with what pleases him. Men make associations of all types.
They make some very durable ones that they call societies; they make some very
temporary ones by the aid of which they gain a certain precise object that they had
in view. A religion (the word is taken here in the common sense) is an association in
which you give up your liberty in a permanent way. Associations of this type are
necessary.
If man was forced to prove by himself . . .
1. These two principles are arranged in each century and among each people in
various proportions; that is nearly the entire history of humanity (YTC, CVj, 1,
pp. 35).
The library of the Tocqueville chateau had a copy of Beccaria, Traite des de lits et des
peines (Philadelphia [Paris], 1766), translated by Morellet. The contractualist principle
that Tocqueville refers to above appears in the second chapter of the edition cited (pp.
69).
a million things on the faith of others, and who does not assume many
more truths than he establishes.
f
This is not only necessary but desirable. A man who would undertake
to examine everything by himself would only be able to give a little time
and attention to each thing; this work would keep his mind in a perpetual
agitation that would prevent him from penetrating any truth deeply and
from settling reliably on any certitude. His intelligence would be indepen-
dent and weak at the very same time. So, among the various subjects of
human opinions, he must make a choice and adopt many beliefs without
discussing them, in order to go more deeply into a small number that he
has reserved to examine for himself.
g
[<In this manner he is misled more, but he deceives himself less.>]
It is true that every man who receives an opinion on the word of others
f. The great Newton himself resembles an imbecile more by the things that he does
not know than he differs from one by the things that he knows (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 36).
In a note destined for the introduction, Tocqueville had written:
Preface.
There is no man in the world who has ever found, and it is nearly certain that none
will ever be met who will nd the central ending point for, I am not saying all the
beams of general truth, whichare unitedonly inGodalone, but evenfor all the beams
of a particular truth. Men grasp fragments of truth, but never truth itself. This ad-
mitted, the result would be that every man who presents a complete and absolute
system, by the sole fact that his system is complete and absolute, is almost certainly
in a state of error or falsehood, andthat every manwho wants to impose sucha system
on his fellows by force must ipso facto and without preliminary examination of his
ideas be considered as a tyrant and an enemy of the human species.
[To the side: They intercept some beams from time to time, but they never hold
the light in their hand.]
The idea is not mine, but I believe it good. 8 March 1836.
Not to accept or to disregarda fact because the cause escapes youis a great weakness
and a great foolishness in the moral and political sciences, as in all the others (YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 4647).
g. In the margin, in pencil: To reexamine. Ampe`re.
puts his mind into slavery; but it is a salutary servitude that allows making
a good use of liberty.
h
[That is noticeable above all indogmatic beliefs whose subject is religion.
Religion, by providing the mind with a clear and precise solution to a
great number of metaphysical and moral questions as important as they
are difcult to resolve, leaves the mind the strength and the leisure to pro-
ceed with calmness and with energy in the whole area that religion aban-
dons to it; and it is not precisely because of religion, but with the help of
the liberty and the peace that religion gained for it, that the human mind
has often done such great things in the centuries of faith.]
j
So, no matter what happens, authority must always be foundsomewhere
in the intellectual and moral world. Its place is variable, but it necessarily
h. Uncertainty of human judgments./
The one who receives an idea is almost always more convinced of its correctness
and absolute truth than the one who conceived and produced it. This appears at rst
view contrary to good sense and even to experience, but it is so.
The work to which the one who conceived the idea devoted himself in order to
make it ready to appear before the public, almost always made him discover certain
weak, obscure or even incomplete sides that escape others. The reader or the listener
who sees the result of the operation without seeing the operation itself, notices at rst
the plausible and likely side that is presented to him and, without being concerned
about the other side, he seizes the former and holds on to it rmly. I am persuaded
that everything considered skepticism is more common among those who teach
where certitude is to be found than among those who go to the latter tondcertitude.
27 December 1835 (YTC, CVa, pp. 5455).
And in another place:
A doctrine must never be judged by the one who professes it, but by those who accept
it.
[In the margin: That a doctrine must not be judged by the teacher, but by the
disciples.]
The most harmful doctrines can lead the man who inventedthemto very beautiful
practical consequences; because, apart fromhis doctrine, he has the strengthof mind,
the imagination, the ambition and the energy that made him discover the doctrine
and bring it to light. His disciples have nothing more than the doctrine and in them
it bears its natural fruits.
29 December 1836 (YTC, CVa, p. 34).
j. I would readily compare dogmatic beliefs to algebraic quantities by the aid of
which you simplify the operations of life (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 56).
has a place. Individual independence can be greater or lesser; it cannot be
limitless. Thus, the question is not to know if an intellectual authority
k
exists in democratic centuries, but only to know where its repository is and
what its extent will be.
I showed in the preceding chapter howequality of conditions made men
conceive a kind of instinctive unbelief in the supernatural, and a very high
and often exaggerated idea of human reason.
So men who live during these times of equality are not easily led to place
the intellectual authority to which they submit outside and above human-
ity. It is in themselves or their fellows that they ordinarily look for the
sources of truth. That would be enough to prove that a newreligioncannot
be established during these centuries, and that all attempts to bring it to
life would be not only impious, but also ridiculous and unreasonable. You
can predict that democratic peoples will not easily believe in divine mis-
sions, that they will readily scoff at new prophets and that they will want
to nd the principal arbiter of their beliefs within the limits of humanity
and not beyond.
When conditions are unequal and men dissimilar, there are some indi-
viduals very enlightened, very learned, very powerful because of their in-
telligence, and a multitude very ignorant and very limited. So men who
live in times of aristocracy are naturally led to take as guide for their opin-
ions the superior reason of one man or of one class, while they are little
disposed to recognize the infallibility of the mass.
k. Two effects of authority:
1. More time and freedom of mind to examine and go deeper into the questions
that you reserve for yourself.
2. More assurance inholding your owninthe portionthat youreservedfor yourself
and in defending yourself there against external attacks than if you did not have one
certain and rmly established point.
Not only are you strong on beliefs that you have received, but you are also more
condent about beliefs that you formed yourself. The soul acquired the habit of
rmly believing and energetically defending all its beliefs, the dogmatic ones as much
as the philosophical ones (Rubish, 1).
The contrary happens in centuries of equality.
m
As citizens become more equal and more similar, the tendency of each
blindly to believe a certain man or a certain class decreases. The disposition
to believe the mass increases, and more and more it is opinion that leads
the world.
Not only is common opinion the sole guide that remains for individual
reason among democratic peoples; but also it has among these peoples an
innitely greater power than among any other. In times of equality, men,
m. Inuence that equality of conditions exercises on philosophy.
The further I go the more I am persuaded that equality of conditions pushes man
with an unequaled energy to lose sight of the individual, his dignity, his strength, his
value . . . , in order to think no longer of anything except the mass. This single given
fact inuences nearly all the points of view that men have about humanity in that
time. The trace [of it (ed.)] has been found everywhere.
In democracy you see only yourself and all.
After the inuence that equality exercises on philosophical method, say what it
exercises on philosophy itself.
[To the side: Question of realists and nominalists, to examine when I treat the
inuence of equality on philosophy. You tend more and more today to lose sight of
the individual in order to see only humanity, that is to say, to become, I believe, realist.
See Revue des deux mondes of May 1837, literary review of the year] (YTC, CVj,
1, p. 7).
It concerns A.C.T., Mouvement de la presse francaise en 1836, Revue des deux mondes,
4th series, X, 1837, pp. 45398. On page 456, an account is given of the edition done by
Victor Cousin of the works of Abelard and of his denition of the words realist and
nominalist.
In 1840, Tocqueville writes, on the same question, to his English translator:
I believe that the realists are wrong. But above all I amsure that the political tendency
of their philosophy, dangerous in all times, is very pernicious in the time in which
we live. The great danger of democratic ages, be sure of it, is the destruction or the
excessive weakening of the parts of the social body in the presence of the whole. Ev-
erything today that raises up the idea of the individual is healthy. Everything that
gives a separate existence to the species and enlarges the notion of the type is dan-
gerous. The mind of our contemporaries runs in this direction by itself. The doctrine
of the realists introduced into the political world pushes toward all the abuses of
democracy; it is what facilitates despotism, centralization, scorn for particular rights,
the doctrine of necessity, all the institutions and all the doctrines that allowthe social
body to trample men underfoot and that make the nation all and the citizens nothing
(Letter to Henry Reeve of 3 February 1840, Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, 1,
pp. 5253).
because of their similarity, have no faith in each other; but this very simi-
larity gives them an almost unlimited condence in the judgment of the
public; for it does not seem likely to them that, since all have similar en-
lightenment, truth is not found on the side of the greatest number.
n
When the man who lives in democratic countries compares himself in-
dividually to all those who surround him, he feels with pride that he is equal
to each of them; but, whenhe comes to envisage the ensemble of his fellows
and to place himself alongside this great body, he is immediately over-
whelmed by his own insignicance and weakness.
This same equality that makes himindependent of eachone of his fellow
citizens in particular, delivers him isolated and defenseless to the action of
the greatest number.
o
So the public among democratic peoples has a singular power the idea
of which aristocratic nations would not even be able to imagine. It does
not persuade, it imposes its beliefs and makes them penetrate souls by a
kind of immense pressure of the mind of all on the intelligence of each.
In the United States, the majority takes charge of providing individuals
with a host of ready-made opinions, and thus relieves them of the obli-
gation to form for themselves opinions that are their own. A great number
of theories in matters of philosophy, morality and politics are adopted in
this way by each person without examination on faith in the public; and,
n. In the margin: Before having this entire part of my discussion printed, I must
rereadthe analogous things that I say inthe chapter onrevolutions andconsider for myself
what I should leave there or transfer here.
o. 1. Absence of those intermediate authorities between his own reason and the col-
lective reason of his fellows leaves nothing else as guide except the mass.
2. Each individual, nding himself isolated and weak, nds himself overwhelmed
in the presence of the mass.
3. It is only during democratic centuries that you clearly conceive the idea of the
mass [{human species}], when you follow it without hesitating, you believe it without
discussion and beliefs penetrate souls by a kind [of (ed.)] immense pressure of the
mind of the greatest number [v: of all] on the intelligence of each (Rubish, 1).
if you look very closely, you will see that religion itself reigns there much
less as revealed doctrine than as common opinion.
p
p. When you look very closely, you see that equality of conditions produces three
things:
1. It isolates men from one another, prevents the reciprocal action of their intel-
ligence and allows their minds to diverge in all directions.
2. It gives to nearly all men the same needs, the same interests, the same sights, so
that in the long run, without knowing it or wanting it, they nd themselves having
on a host of points the same ideas and the same tastes.
3. It creates the moral power of the majority (I saw in another place its political
power). Man, feeling very weak, seeing around him only beings equally weak and
similar to him, the idea of the collective intelligence of his fellows easily overwhelms
him. That gives to common opinion a power over minds that it never attains to the
same degree among aristocratic peoples. Among the latter, where there are individuals
very enlightened, very learned, very powerful due to their intelligence and a crowd
of others very ignorant, very limited, you readily trust the superior reason of a man,
but you believe little in the infallibility of the mass. It is the time of prophets.
Faith in common opinion is the faith of democratic nations. The majority is the
prophet; you believe it without reasoning. You follow it condently without discus-
sion. It exerts an immense pressure on individual intelligence. The moral dominion
of the majority is perhaps called to replace religions to a certainpoint or to perpetuate
certain ones of them, if it protects them. But then religion would live more like
common opinion than like religion. Its strength would be more borrowed than its
own. All this can be supported by the example of the Americans.
Men will never be able to deepen all their ideas by themselves. That is contrary to
their limited nature. The most (illegible word) and the most free genius believes a
million things on the faith of others. So moral authority no matter what you do must
be found somewhere in the moral world. Its place is variable, but a place is necessary
for it. Man needs to believe dogmatically a host of things, were it only to have the
time to discuss a few others of them. This authority is principally called religion in
aristocratic centuries. It will perhaps be named majority in democratic centuries, or
rather common opinion.
[In the margin: Somewhere make the state of transition felt in which each person
is pulling in his direction and forms purely individual opinions, beliefs, ideas.]
As men become more equal, the disposition to believe in one man decreases, the
disposition to believe in the mass increases, and is more and more the opinion that
leads the world.
Religion is an authority (illegible word) [prior? (ed.)] to humanity, but manifested
by one man or one class of men to all the others, who submit to it. Common opinion
is an authority that is not prior to humanity and that is exercised by the generality
of men on the individual.
The source of these two authorities is different, but their effects come together.
I know that, among Americans, political laws are such that the ma-
jority governs society as a sovereign;
q
that greatly increases the dominion
that it naturally exercises over intelligence. For there is nothing more fa-
miliar to man than recognizing a superior wisdom in the one who op-
presses him.
r
Common opinion like religion gives ready made beliefs and relieves man from the
unbearable andimpossible obligationto decide everything eachday by himself. These
beliefs were originally discussed, but they are no longer discussed and they penetrate
minds by a kind of pressure of all on each.
[In the margin: I spoke elsewhere about the political and violent dominion of the
majority. Here, I am speaking about its moral and peaceful dominion. To say that.]
It is very difcult to believe that equality does not weaken the rst of these au-
thorities, but you can think that it will make up for it in part by the second, and that
the moral power of common opinion will be called upon to limit much more than
is supposed the errors of individual reason. This will be a change of power rather
than a destruction of power (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 810).
q. The manuscript says governs despotically.
r. Of particular causes that can harm the free development and generalization of
thought in America./
I showed in the preceding chapter that dogmatic and traditional opinions main-
tained in the matter of religion limited the innovative mind of the Americans in
several directions so to speak. There is another cause perhaps less powerful, but more
general that threatens to stop and already hinders the free development of thought
in the United States. This cause, which I already pointed out in another part of this
work, is nothing other than the (illegible word) power that the majority exercises in
America.
A religion is a power whose movements are regulated in advance and that moves
within a known sphere, and many people believe that within this sphere its effects
are benecial, and that a dogmatic religion better manages to obtain the desirable
effects of a religion than one that is rational. The majority is a (illegible word) power
that moves in a way haphazardly and can spread successively to everything. Religion
is law, the omnipotence of the majority is arbitrariness.
Religion leads the human mind to stop by itself and makes obedience the free
choice of a moral and independent being.
The majority forces the human mind to stop, despite what they have [sic ] and by
forcing it constantly to obey ends by taking away from it even the desire to be free
to act for itself.
In the United States, the pernicious inuence that omnipotence of the majority
exercises over thought makes itself noticeable above all in politics. It is principally
on political questions that public opinion has formed until now; but the laws of the
Americans are such that the majority, in whatever direction it decided to head, would
make its omnipotence equally felt. Its own will and not the constitution of the coun-
try limits it.
You cannot hide from the fact that the Americans have, in that, allowed them-
selves to be carried away by the usual tendency of democratic peoples. In democ-
racies, whatever you think, the majority and the power that represents it are always
provided with a rough power and no matter how little the laws favor instead of
combat this tendency, it is nearly impossible to say where the limits of tyranny will
be. Now, despotism, whoever imposes it, always produces a kind of dullness of the
human mind. Freed from the opinions of family and of class, the human mind
bends itself to the will of the greatest number. I say that among purely aristocratic
peoples the interest of class, the habits of family, the customs of profession, the
maxims of the State . . . form as so many barriers that enclose within them the
imagination of man.
If in place of these (two illegible words) that hinder and slow the progress of the
humanmind, democratic peoples substitutedthe uncontrolledpower of themajority,
it is easy to see that the evil would only have changed character. You could say that
the human mind is oppressed in another way, but you could not maintain that it is
free. Men would not have found the means to live independently; they would only
have discovered, a difcult thing, a new mode of servitude.
In aristocracies the power that curbs the imagination of man is one and the prej-
udices of all types that are born and maintained within an aristocracy take certain
paths and prevent the imagination from proceeding in that direction, but they do
[not (ed.)] attack intellectual liberty in its principle and in an absolute way; in de-
mocracies constituted in the manner that I spoke about above, the majority hangs in
a way over the human mind, it curbs in a permanent and general way all its springs
of action and by means of bending men to its will ends by taking away from each
one of them the habit and the taste to think for themselves. So it could happen, if
you were not careful, that democracy, under the dominion of certain laws, would
harm the liberty of thought that the democratic social state favors, and after escaping
from the interests of class and the traditions of family the human mind would chain
itself to the will of the greatest number.
I think that is something that should make all those who see in human liberty a
holy thing and who do not hate the despot, but despotism, reect deeply. For me,
when I feel the hand of power pressing on my head, knowing who is oppressing me
matters little to me [and I (ed.)] do not feel more inclined to (illegible word) [put
(ed.)] my head in the yoke because a million hands present it to me.
[two illegible lines]
I say that among democratic peoples I clearly notice two contrary tendencies. One
leads mentowardnewand general thoughts, the other couldreduce them, sotospeak,
to not thinking.
So if I found myself suddenly charged with giving laws to a democratic people, I
would try to distinguish these two tendencies clearly and make them not cancel each
other out or at least make it so that the second does not become preponderant. With
This political omnipotence of the majority in the United States in-
creases, in fact, the inuence that the opinions of the public would have
without it on the mind of each citizen there; but it does not establish it.
The sources of this inuence must be sought in equality itself, and not in
this purpose, I would attempt not to destroy the dominion of the majority, but to
moderate its use and I would work hard to get it to limit itself after overturning all
rival powers. In this way, in order to provide not a complete picture but an example,
if I lived among a democratic people, I would prefer to see it adopt the monarchical
constitution rather than the republican form, I would prefer that you instituted two
legislative assemblies rather than one, an irremovable judiciary rather than elected
magistrates, provincial powers rather than a centralized administration. For all of
these institutions can be combined with democracy, without altering its essence. As
the social state becomes more democratic I would attach more value to gaining all or
a few of these things, and by acting in this way I would have in view not only, as I
saidinanother part of this work, tosave political liberty, but alsotoprotect the general
progress of the human mind. If you say that such maxims will not be popular, I will
attempt to console myself with the hope that they are true.
I understand that you serve the cause of democracy, but I want you to do so as a
moral and independent being who retains the use of his liberty even as he lends his
support. That you see in the majority the most bearable of all powers, I understand,
but I would like you to be its counselor and not its courtier, and I would want you
to say to it just as Massillon said to the young king, Louis XV, Sire [interrupted text
(ed.)] (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 3342).
The library of the Tocqueville chateau contained a 1740 edition, in ve volumes, of the
sermons of Massillon. Tocqueville is perhaps referring to the following passage fromthe
second part of the sermon on the Incarnation:
The liberty, Sire, that princes owe to their peoples is the liberty of laws. You are the
master of the life and the fortune of your subjects; but you can dispose of themonly
according to the laws. You know only God alone above you, it is true; but the laws
must have more authority than yourself. You do not command slaves, you command
a free and quarrelsome nation, as jealous of liberty as of its liberty.
Another note mentions:
Chap. II. Of the particular causes that can harm the free development and the gen-
eralization of thought in America.
The pieces of Massillon, on which you can draw, are found:
Petit care me. 1. Sermon of Palm Sunday, rst and third part. 2. Sermon of the Incar-
nation, second part.
You could still look for and, in any case, knit together separate sentences. There would
be nothing improper about that (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 33).
the more or less popular institutions that equal men can give themselves.
It is to be believed that the intellectual dominion of the greatest number
would be less absolute among a democratic people subject to a king, than
within a pure democracy; but it will always be very absolute, and, whatever
the political laws may be that govern men in centuries of equality, you can
predict that faith in common opinion will become a sort of religion whose
prophet will be the majority.
Thus intellectual authority will be different, but it will not be less; and,
far from believing that it must disappear, I foresee that it would easily be-
come too great and that it might well be that it would nally enclose the
action of individual reason within more narrow limits than are suitable for
the grandeur andhappiness of the humanspecies. I see very clearly inequal-
ity two tendencies: one that leads the mind of each man toward new
thoughts and the other that readily reduces him to thinking no more. And
I notice how, under the dominion of certain laws, democracy would ex-
tinguish the intellectual liberty that the democratic social state favors, so
that after breaking all the obstacles that were formerly imposed on it by
classes or men, the human mind would bind itself narrowly to the general
wills of the greatest number [volonte s ge ne rales du plus grand nombre
Trans. ].
s
If, in place of all the diverse powers that hindered or slowed beyond
measure the rapid development of individual reason, democratic peoples
substituted the absolute power of a majority, the evil would only have
changed character. Men would not have found the means to live indepen-
dently; they would only have discovered, a difcult thing, a new face of
servitude. I cannot say it enough: for those who see liberty of the mind as
s. Liberty and authority will always divide the intellectual worldintotwoparts. These
two parts will be more or less unequal depending on the centuries./
Authority can be exercised in the name of one certain power or in the name of
another; but authority itself will continue to exist.
[In the margin: If men had only dogmatic beliefs, they would remain immobile.
If they had only non-dogmatic beliefs, they would live in an ineffectual agitation.
On the one hand, despotism; on the other, anarchy.] (Rubish, 1).
a holy thing, and who hate not only the despot but also despotism, there
is in that something to make them reect deeply. For me, when I feel the
hand of power pressing onmy head, knowing whois oppressingme matters
little to me, and I am no more inclined to put my head in the yoke, because
a million arms present it to me.
726
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 3
a
Why the Americans Show
More Aptitude and Taste for General Ideas
Than Their Fathers the English
God does not consider the human species in general. He sees at a single
glance and separately all the beings who make up humanity, and he notices
a. 1. What is the strength and the weakness of general ideas. Result greater, less exact.
2. That general ideas arise principally from enlightenment.
3. This is not sufcient to explain why the Americans and above all the French,
who are not more enlightened than the English, show much more aptitude and taste
for general ideas than the latter.
Apart fromthe commoncause of enlightenment, these other causes must therefore
be recognized:
1. When men are (illegible word) [similar? (ed.)] their similarity leads themto con-
ceive ideas about themselves applicable to the entire species, which gives them the
habit and the taste for general ideas in all things.
2. Men being equal and weak, you do not see individuals who force themto march
along the same path. So a great cause must be imagined that acts separately but in
the same way on each one of them. That also leads to general ideas.
3. When men have escaped from the spirit of class, profession, (illegible word) in
order to search for truth by themselves, they are led to study the very nature of man.
New form of general idea.
4. All men of democracies are very busy practically. That gives them a great taste
for general ideas, which produce great results in little time.
5. Writers of democratic centuries, like all the other men of those centuries, want
quick successes and present enjoyments. That leads them vigorously toward general
ideas.
4. Also, aristocratic peoples do not esteem general ideas enough and do not make
enough use of them; democratic peoples are always ready to abuse them and to be-
come excessively impassioned about them (YTC, CVf, pp. 35).
apti tude and tas te for general i deas 727
each of them with the similarities that bring each closer to the others and
the differences that isolate each.
So God does not need general ideas; that is to say he never feels the
necessity to encompass a very great number of analogous objects within
the same form in order to think about them more comfortably.
It is not so with man. If the human mind undertook to examine and to
judge individually all the particular cases that strike it, it would soon be lost
amid the immensity of details and would no longer see anything; in this
extremity, it resorts to an imperfect, but necessary procedure that helps its
weakness and proves it.
b
b. The human mind naturally has the taste for general ideas because its soul is an
emanation of God, the most generalizing being in the universe. So it is only by a kind
of constraint that you keep the human mind contemplating particular cases. And if
it sees a way to escape by some path, it rushes in that direction; and, the more re-
strained it is in all the other directions, the more violently it does so.
That is why when aristocratic societies become enlightened without yet ceasing to
be aristocratic, you nd minds who force their bonds and, in a way losing sight of
earth, go far away from the real world in order to create the most general principles
in matters of politics, morality, and philosophy.
During this time real society continues to follow its routine existence; and while
castes, professions, religions, fortunes divide and classify men, interests, ideas, an en-
tirely imaginary society is in a way built in the air outside of real society; it is an
entirely imaginary society in which the human (illegible word) [v: mind], no longer
limited by the desire for application, subjects everything to general principles and
common rules.
So youmust not judge the state of a people by a fewadventurous minds that appear
within it. For it could happen that they might be all the more given to generalizing
the less the people itself is given to doing so, and that the impossibility of establishing
anything that pleases them in the real world might be what pushes them so energet-
ically into entirely imaginary regions. I doubt that More would have written his Uto-
pia if he had been able to realize a few of his dreams in the government of England,
and I think that the Germans of today would not abandon themselves with so much
passion to the search for general truth in philosophy if they were allowedtogeneralize
a few of their ideas in politics.
When some men put forward very general ideas, it is not proof therefore that
the social state is already democratic; it is only an indication that it is beginning to
become so.
But if you nd among an entire people a visible tendency to apply the same rules
to everything, if you see it, while still remaining in the practical and the real, try hard
to extend the same moral, intellectual, political condition to all men at once, do not
After considering a certain number of matters supercially and noticing
that they are alike, the human mind gives them all the same name, puts
them aside and goes on its way.
General ideas do not attest to the strength of human intelligence, but
rather to its insufciency, for there are no beings exactly the same in nature:
no identical facts; no rules applicable indiscriminately and in the same way
to several matters at once.
c
hesitate any longer and say without fear that here the revolution is accomplished, and
it is from now on no longer a matter of destroying democracy, but only of regulat-
ing it.
The state of slavery in which the woman lives among savage tribes, her complete
separation from men and her imprisonment among Orientals, her inferiority and
more or less great subjugation among the civilized peoples of Europe can provide
arguments about what I have said concerning the intellectual effects of aristocracy.
The aristocracy of sex is the most natural, the most complete and the most uni-
versal that is known. And the greater and more exclusive it is, the more it tends to
specialize and to (illegible word) the circle of human ideas.
Inthe Orient there are the thoughts of menandthe thoughts of women. InEurope
you imagine ideas that apply at the same time to the two types that compose the
human species.
By mixing the sexes in activities and in pleasures you thus give to the intelligence
of men and of women something more daring and more general.
That also sufces to explain well the differences that are noticeable in the march
of intelligence in the west and in the east (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 2729).
Cf. conversation with Clark of 9 August 1833 (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, p. 25).
c. Earlier version in a rough draft:
. . . at once. When man says that something is, he assumes a fact that he knows does
not exist but that he uses, lacking anything better; he leaves better clarication for
later when he has the time, just as the algebraist expresses by a or by b certain
quantities whose value he will examine later (three illegible words).
So general ideas are only means by the aid of which men advance toward truth,
but without ever nding it. You can even say that, to a certain extent, by following
this path they are moving away from it.
For if they limited themselves to examining certain matters individually they (two
illegible words) the former, while by considering them together he cannot have any-
thing except a confused and inexact idea of everything.
General ideas are not any less the most powerful instruments of thought, but you
must know how to use them.
That men often form general ideas out of laziness as much as out of weakness and
need (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 15).
General ideas are admirable in that they allow the human mind to make
rapid judgements about a great number of matters at the same time; but,
on the other hand, they never provide it with anything other than incom-
plete notions, and they always make it lose in exactitude what it gains in
breadth.
As societies grow older, they acquire knowledge of new facts and
each day, almost without knowing it, they take hold of a few particular
truths.
As man grasps more truths of this nature, he is naturally led to conceive
a greater number of general ideas. You cannot see a multitude of particular
facts separately, without nally discovering the common bond that holds
them together. Several individuals make the notion of the species emerge;
several species lead necessarily to that of the genus. So the older and more
extensive the enlightenment of a people, the greater will always be their
habit of and taste for general ideas.
But there are still other reasons that push men to generalize their ideas
or move them away from doing so.
The Americans make much more frequent use than the English of gen-
eral ideas and delight much more in doing so; that seems very strange at
rst, if you consider that these two peoples have the same origin, that they
lived for centuries under the same laws and that they still constantly com-
municate their opinions andtheir mores toone another. The contrast seems
even much more striking when you concentrate your attention on our Eu-
rope and compare the two most enlightened peoples that live there.
d
d. It is possible that certain .-.-.- a natural genius that leads them to generalize their
ideas. Great writers have said so and yet I still doubt it. I see nothing in the physical
constitution of man that disposes him to one order of ideas rather than to another,
and nothing in historical facts leads me to believe that this particular disposition of
the mind is inherent in one of the human races rather than in the others. I see that
the peoples most avid for general ideas and the best disposed to discern them have
not always shown the same taste for seeking them and the same facility for discerning
them. So I reject a reason that analysis cannot grasp and that, supposedly applicable
to all times, explains only what is happening today (Rubish, 1).
You would say that among the English the human mind tears itself away
from the contemplation of particular facts only with regret and pain in
order to return from there to causes, and that the human mind generalizes
only in spite of itself.
It seems, on the contrary, that among us the taste for general ideas has
become a passion so unrestrained that it must be satised in the slightest
thing. I learn each morning upon waking that a certain general and eternal
law has just been discovered that I had never heard of until then [and that I obey with all the rest of my fellows some primary causes
of which I was unaware]. There is no writer so mediocre for whom it is
enough in his essay to discover truths applicable to a great kingdom and
who does not remain discontent with himself if he has not been able to
contain humanity within the subject of his discourse.
e
e. There are several causes that make men form general ideas.
Amanby dint of researchdiscovers numerous andnewconnections amongdiverse
matters, beings, facts, . . . and he draws a general idea from it.
Another discovers a certain number of connections among other matters. He
knows that the general idea that these connections (illegible word) bring forth is in-
exact, but he wants to go further and he uses it as an imperfect means that nonetheless
helps him reach the truth.
These are the learned, considered, philosophical ways to create general ideas. Gen-
eral ideas created in this way attest to the vigor of the human mind.
But most men do not set about doing it in this way. After an inattentive and short
examination, they believe they have discovered a common connectionamong certain
matters. To continue research is long and tiresome. To examine indetail if the matters
that you are comparing are truly alike and to what degree would be difcult. So you
hasten to pronounce. If you considered most of the general ideas that are current
among men you would see that most do not attest to the vigor of the human mind,
but to its laziness.
[In the margin] Men do in the matter of government what they do in the fact of
language. They notice at rst only particular cases, then when they begin to know
general ideas, they want to generalize too much; as they become more learned, they
complicate their sciences and establish classications, distinctions that they had not
at rst noticed. Thus with government. The idea of centralization belongs to the
middle age of human intelligence (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 1617).
And in the rubish of the end of volume IV:
The man who puts forth general ideas is exposed to two great dangers from the per-
spective of criticism.
Such a dissimilarity between two very enlightened peoples astonishes
me. If nally I turn my mind toward England and notice what has been
happening for half a century within that country, I believe I am able to
assert that the taste for general ideas is developing there as the ancient con-
stitution of the country is becoming weaker.
So the more or less advanced state of enlightenment alone is not suf-
cient to explain what suggests love of general ideas to the human mind or
turns it away from them.
When conditions are very unequal, and inequalities are permanent, in-
dividuals become little by little so dissimilar that you would say that there
are as many distinct humanities as there are classes; you see only one of
them at a time, and, losing sight of the general bond that gathers all within
the vast bosom of the human species, you envisage only certain men and
not man.
So those who live in these aristocratic societies never conceive very gen-
eral ideas relative to themselves, and that sufces to give them a habitual
distrust of these ideas, and an instinctive disgust for them.
The man who inhabits democratic countries, on the contrary, sees near
He is exposed to the danger common to all those who put forth ideas which is that
they are false and it is noticed. He is also exposedto another danger whichis particular
to the subject.
The more general an idea (and I suppose it true as well as general), the more it
allows particular cases to escape. A very great number of particular cases opposed to
a general idea would prove that the idea is false, but a fewparticular cases do not prove
it. The one who raises against the maker of a general idea a certain number of par-
ticular cases does not therefore prove absolutely that this idea is false, but he advances
the beginning of embarrassing [doubtful reading (ed.)] evidence.
Now, since this beginning of evidence exists against all general ideas true or false,
it is like a weapon at the disposal of all narrowor ill-intentionedminds. General ideas
can be appreciated in a competent manner only by very enlightened and very im-
partial minds. There is the evil.
Special ideas leave less room for partiality and require much less enlightenment in
those who judge them (Rubish, 2, in a jacket belonging to the bundle of the last part
that is entitled some rubish that do not fall into one section of this
chapter rather than into another).
him only more or less similar beings; so he cannot consider whatever part
of the human species, without having his thought widen and expand to
embrace the whole. All the truths that are applicable to himself seem to
him to apply equally or in the same way to each one of his fellow citizens
and of his fellow men.
f
Having contracted the habit of general ideas in the
one area of his studies that concerns himmost and that interests himmore,
he transfers this same habit to all the others, and this is how the need to
nd common rules in everything, to encompass a great number of matters
within the same form, and to explain an ensemble of facts by a sole cause,
becomes an ardent and often blind passion of the human mind.
g
Nothing shows the truth of what precedes better than the opinions of
antiquity relative to slaves.
The most profound and far-reaching geniuses of Rome and of Greece
were never able to reach this idea so general, but at the same time so simple,
f. In democracies, since men are all more or less equal and similar to each other,
subject to sensations little different, and provided with analogous ideas, it is nearly
always found that what is applicable to one is applicable at the same time and in the
same way to all the others.
So democratic nations are led naturally and so to speak without wanting to be
toward conceiving general ideas in what interests themthe most, whichis themselves.
They thus contract the general taste for generalization of ideas and carry it into all
the inquiries of the mind.
In this way the smallest democratic people will be closer to searching for and nd-
ing the general rights that belong to the human species than the greatest nationwhose
social state is aristocratic.
There is only a step for the human mind between believing that all the citizens of
a small republic must be free and considering that each man has an equal right to
liberty (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 2223).
g. The Americans are a democratic people who since its birth was able to act in all
ways; the French form a democratic people who for a long time was able only to
think. Now I know nothing that leads men more vigorously toward general theories
than a social state that disposes them naturally to discover new ideas and a political
constitution that forbids themfromrectifying these ideas by practice andfromtesting
them by experience.
In this sense, I think that the institutions of democracy prudently introduced are,
everything considered, the best remedy that you can set against the errors of the
democratic mind (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 71).
of the similarity of men and of the equal right to liberty that each one of
them bears by birth; and they struggled hard to prove that slavery was in
nature and that it would always exist. Even more, everything indicates that
those of the ancients who had been slaves before becoming free, several of
whom have left us beautiful writings, themselves envisaged servitude inthe
same way.
All the great writers of antiquity were part of the aristocracy of masters,
or at least they saw this aristocracy established without dispute before their
eyes; so their minds, after expanding in several directions, were limited in
that one, and Jesus Christ had to come to earth in order to make it under-
stood that all members of the human species were naturally similar and
equal.
h
In centuries of equality, all men are independent of each other, isolated
and weak; you see none whose will directs the movements of the crowd in
h. Proofs of the limits that the classication of ranks puts on the free development
of thought.
Plato and Aristotle were born in the middle of democratic republics. Cicero saw
the greatest part of the human species gathered under the same laws. These are ample
reasons that should have made general thoughts come to the mindof these great men.
Neither those men, however, nor any other of antiquity was able to discover the so
simple idea of the equal right to liberty that each man [has (ed.)] by birth.
The slavery that has not existed for so many centuries appeared to them in the
nature of things, and they seemed to consider it as a necessary and eternal condition
of humanity.
Even more, nothing indicates that the menof that time who hadbeenslaves before
becoming free and several of whom were great writers, had considered from a dif-
ferent perspective the servitude from which they had suffered so much. How to ex-
plain this?
All the ancients who have left us writings were part of the aristocracy of masters,
or at least they saw this aristocracy established without dispute among the men of
their time. Their minds, so expansive in so many directions, were limited on that one
and J[esus (ed.)]. C[hrist (ed.)]. had to come to earth in order to consider the general
value of man and to make it understood that similar beings could and must be equal.
When I see Aristotle make the power of Alexander serve the progress of the natural
sciences, ransack all of Asia weapons in hand in order to nd unknown animals and
plants, and when I notice that after studying nature at such great cost he ended up
nally by discovering slavery there, I feel myself ledto think that manwoulddobetter
to remain at home, not to study books and to look for truth only in his own heart
(YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 3031).
a permanent fashion; in these times, humanity always seems to march by
itself. So inorder to explainwhat is happening inthe world, youare reduced
to searching for some general causes that, acting in the same way on each
one of our fellows, therefore lead them all voluntarily to follow the same
route. That also naturally leads the human mind to conceive general ideas
and causes it to contract the taste for them.
I showed previously how equality of conditions brought each man to
search for truth by himself. It is easy to see that such a method must im-
perceptibly make the human mind tend toward general ideas.
When I repudiate the traditions of class, of profession and of family,
when I escape from the rule of example in order, by the sole effort of my
reason, to search for the path to follow, I am inclined to draw the grounds
of my opinions from the very nature of man, which brings me necessarily
and almost without my knowing, toward a great number of very general
notions.
j
Everything that precedes nally explains why the English show much
less aptitude and taste for the generalization of ideas than their sons, the
Americans, and above all than their neighbors, the French, and why the
English today show more of such aptitude and taste than their fathers
did.
k
The English have for a long time been a very enlightened andat the same
time very aristocratic people; their enlightenment made them tend con-
stantly toward very general ideas, and their aristocratic habits held themin
very particular ideas. From that this philosophy, at the very same time bold
j. In the margin: All this portion seems to me of contestable truth and to delete.
k. The (illegible word) reason for the difference.
1. In practical life.
2. The second . . . in physical nature; although I am in general little in favor of
arguments based on the physical nature of peoples, I believe nonetheless that I am able
to make use of them here (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 6970).
and timid, broad and narrow, that dominated in England until now, and
that still keeps so many minds there restricted and immobile.
m
Apart from the causes that I showed above, you nd still others, less
apparent, but no less effective, that produce among nearly all democratic
peoples the taste and often the passion for general ideas.
These sorts of ideas must be clearly distinguished. There are some that
are the product of a slow, detailed, conscientious work of intelligence, and
those enlarge the sphere of human knowledge.
m. First version in a rough draft:
The English have for a long time been one of the most enlightened and most aris-
tocratic people of the globe. I think that the singularities that you notice in their
opinions must be attributed to the combination of these two causes. Their enlight-
enment made them tend toward general ideas, while their aristocratic habits held
them within the circle of particular ideas. From that this philosophy at the very same
time bold and timid, broad and narrow, liberated and addicted to routine that char-
acterizes the march of the human mind in England. Certainly, the country that pro-
duced the two Bacons, the great Newton {Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham}, that
country is not naturally sterile in men who can conceive general ideas and put them
within reach of the common people, but these extraordinary men lacked a public.
They opened wide roads where they marched alone; mores and laws formed like in-
tellectual barriers that separated their minds from that of the crowd, and if they were
able to open their country to new and general ideas in the particular matters that they
treated, they did not succeed in giving it the taste for new and general ideas in all
matters. The various causes that I have just enumerated can exist without the social
state and institutions having yet become democratic, and I do not claim that lacking
the auxiliary causes they cannot develop more or less power. I am only saying that
democracy places men in a situation favorable to the conception of new and general
ideas and that uniting with other causes, it pushes them vigorously toward them. If
the Americans were neither enlightened nor free, I doubt that they would have very
general and very bold ideas, but I am sure that their social state coming to be com-
bined with their enlightenment and their liberty has singularly helped them to con-
ceive these sorts of ideas.
[In the margin] There is only one aristocracy in America, that of skin. See the
consequences: more narrow ideas . . . (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 8081).
You nd a variant of this fragment in YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 3132, where Tocqueville adds
(p. 32): In America there is less freedom of mind in the slave countries. Among equal
men, there cannot be lasting classication.
There are others that arise easily from a rst rapid effort of the mind,
and that lead only to very supercial and very uncertain notions.
Men who live in centuries of equality have a great deal of curiosity and
little leisure; their life is so practical, so complicated, so agitated, so active,
that little time remains for themto think. The menof democratic centuries
love general ideas, because they exempt them from studying particular
cases; they contain, if I can express myself in this way, many things within
a small volume and in little time produce a great result. So when, after an
inattentive and short examination, they believe they notice among certain
matters a common relationship, they push their research no further, and,
without examining in detail how these diverse matters are similar or dif-
ferent, they hasten to arrange them according to the same formula, inorder
to move on.
One of the distinctive characteristics of democratic centuries is the taste
that all menthere feel for easy success andpresent enjoyments. This is found
in intellectual careers as in all others. Most of those who live in times of
equality are full of an ambition intense and soft at the same time; they want
to gain great successes immediately, but they would like to excuse them-
selves from great efforts. These opposing instincts lead them directly to the
search for general ideas, by the aid of which they atter themselves to por-
tray very vast matters at little cost, and to attract the attention of the public
without difculty.
And I do not know if they are wrong to think this way; for their readers
are as much afraid to go deeper as they themselves are and ordinarily seek
in the works of the mind only easy pleasures and instructionwithout work.
If aristocratic nations do not make enoughuse of general ideas andoften
show them an ill-considered scorn, it happens, on the contrary, that dem-
ocratic peoples are always ready to abuse these sorts of ideas and to become
impassioned excessively for them.
n
n. In the margin: I believe that in this matter what can be said most generally true
is this.
737
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 4
a
Why the Americans Have Never Been as
Passionate as the French about General Ideas
in Political Matters
[<I showed in the preceding chapter that equality of conditions suggested
to the human mind the taste for general ideas. I do not want to abandon
this subject without pointing out here in passing how the great liberty that
the Americans enjoy prevents them from giving themselves blindly to this
very taste in politics.>]
I said before that the Americans showed a less intense taste than the
a. Chapter 4 (a).
1
Why the Americans have never been as passionate as the French about political
theories.
The Americans have never shown the same passion as the French for political
theories.
That comes from the fact that they have always done politics in a practical way.
On this point their liberty combatted the excessive taste for general ideas to which
their equality, all by itself, would have given birth. This seems contrary to what I said
in the preceding chapter, that it was the practical life of democratic peoples that sug-
gested the love of theory to them. These two things are reconciled, however, by means
of a distinction.
The busy life of democratic peoples gives them in fact the taste for theories, but
not in the thing with which they are occupied.
It is even enough to make them occupy themselves with something in order to
make them accept general ideas relative to this thing only after examination (YTC,
CVf, pp. 56).
1. The chapters marked (a) are those that still leave me most unsatised and that
must principally attract my attention at a last reading (YTC, CVf, p. 1).
In the jacket that contains the manuscript of the chapter: This chapter leaves me
with something to be desired, I do not know what.
general i deas i n poli ti cal matters 738
French for general ideas. That is above all true for general ideas relative to
politics.
Although the Americans introduce innitely more general ideas intoleg-
islation than the English, and although they concern themselves much
more than the latter with adjusting the practice of human affairs to the
theory, you have never seen in the United States political bodies as in love
with general ideas as were our own Constituent Assembly andConvention;
never has the entire American nation had a passion for these sorts of ideas
in the same way that the French people of the XVIIIth century did, and
never has it shown so blind a faith in the goodness and in the absolute truth
of any theory.
This difference between the Americans and us arises out of several
causes, but principally this one:
The Americans form a democratic people that has always run public
affairs by themselves, and we are a democratic people that, for a long time,
has only been able to think about the best way to conduct them.
Our social state already led us to conceive very general ideas in matters
of government, while our political constitution still prevented us fromrec-
tifying these ideas by experience and from discovering little by little their
inadequacy; while among the Americans these two things constantly bal-
anced and mutually corrected each other.
It seems, at rst view, that this is strongly opposed to what I said pre-
viously, that democratic nations drew from the very agitation of their prac-
tical life the love that they show for theories. A closer examination reveals
that there is nothing contradictory there.
b
Men who live in democratic countries are very avid for general ideas,
because they have little leisure and because these ideas excuse them from
wasting their time in examining particular cases; that is true, but it must
be extended only to the matters that are not the habitual and necessary
b. This in not a contradiction, but it is due to the fact that the Americans are not
only equal but are republican (Rubish, 1).
object of their thoughts.
c
Tradesmenwill graspeagerly andwithout looking
very closely all the general ideas that are presented to them relative to phi-
losophy, politics, the sciences and the arts; but they will accept only after
examination those that have to do with commerce and accept them only
with reservation.
The same thing happens to statesmen, when it is a matter of general
ideas relative to politics.
So when there is a subject on which it is particularly dangerous for dem-
ocratic peoples to give themselves to general ideas blindly and beyondmea-
sure, the best corrective that youcanemploy is tomake themconcernthem-
selves with it every day and in a practical way; then it will be very necessary
for them to enter into details, and the details will make them see the weak
aspects of the theory.
c. Let us consider Germany.
The human mind there shows itself excessively (illegible word) and generalizing
as regards philosophy and above all metaphysics, regular and specialized, enslaved, in
nearly all the rest. What causes that?
In America, on the contrary, where the human mind is regular as regards philos-
ophy, it is bold and generalizing in all the rest.
Wouldnt the result be that equality of conditions leads to bold and general ideas
only in matters of civil and political society and exercises only an imperceptible in-
uence on all the rest?
Or rather isnt there a hidden reason that makes it so that bold and general ideas
in philosophy can occur to a mind that does not conceive the others?
Or rather nally must you search for the explanation for all of that in the facts and
say:
First of all, that it is not correct that inthe UnitedStates the commonmindis routine
as regards philosophy. If you give the name philosophy to the principles that direct
humanactions, evenif the principles were not reducedtotheory andscience, theAmer-
icans certainly have a philosophy and even a very new and very bold philosophy.
Secondly, equality of conditions is already very great; that the philosophical move-
ment that you are speaking about has above all been noticeable since a half-century
ago whenequality of conditions really came about. That its consequences come about
only in philosophy because it is suppressed by force everywhere else and that it brings
them about all the more vigorously there because it can bring themabout only there.
Philosophy is in fact only the complete exercise of thought, separate fromthe practice
of action (YTC, CVa, pp. 3637).
See the rst chapter of book III of the Old Regime (OC, II, 1, pp. 193201), where, using
the same reasoning, Tocqueville explains the appearance of the Frenchpre-revolutionary
intellectuals and their passion for general ideas in politics.
The remedy is often painful, but its effect is certain.
In this way democratic institutions, which force each citizen to be oc-
cupied in a practical way with government, moderate the excessive taste for
general theories in political matters that equality suggests.
d
d. Usefulness of varying the means of government. Ideas too general as regards gov-
ernment are a sign of weakness in the human mind, like ideas too particular. Be-
longing to the middle age of intelligence. Danger of allowing a single social principle
to take without objection the absolute direction of society.
General idea that I wanted to make emerge from this work.
[In the margin: Perhaps use here the piece on general ideas.]
.-.-.-.-.-.-.- men ordinarily {judge} ideas much more perfect, more effective and
more beautiful in proportion to their being more simple, and that it [sic ] can be
reduced much more easily to a single fact.
This judgment arises in part from our weakness. Complications tire the human
mind, and it willingly rests [v: with a kind of pride] in the idea of a single cause
producing by itself alone an innity of great effects. If however we cast our eyes on
the work of the being par excellence, of the creator of man, of his eternal model, of
God, we are surprised by the strange complications that present themselves to our
sight. We are obliged to renounce our (illegible word) of beauty and to place perfec-
tion in the grandeur of the result and not in the simplicity of the means.
God ties together a multitude of bones, muscles, nerves, each of which has a sepa-
rate and distinct function. The rst elements are themselves the products of a mul-
titude of primary causes. In the middle of this machine so complicated, he places an
intelligence that resides there without being part of it. An invisible bond unites all
these things and makes them all work toward a unique end. This assemblage feels,
thinks, acts, it is man, it is the king of the world after the one who created it.
The same diversity is found in all the works of the Creator. . . .
Man himself is only a means, among the millions of means that God uses to reach
the great end that he proposes, the government of the universe. God indicates as
much to us. .-.-.-.- great results can be obtained only with the help of a great diversity
of efforts, with variety of chosen means. If your machine can function as well with
one wheel as with two, only make one; but make ten if that is useful for the object
that you have in view. If the machine thus composed produces what you must expect
from it, it is no less beautiful than if it were simpler.
The error of men comes from believing that you can produce very great things
with very simple means. If you could do it, they would be right to put the idea of
beauty partially in the simplicity of means.
[v: So God, if I can express myself in this way, puts the idea of grandeur and
perfection not in executing a great number of things with the help of a single means,
but in making a multitude of diverse means contribute to the perfect execution of a
single thing.]
Theoretical .-.-.-.-.- have more connectiontopractice thanyouthink. This opinion
that you can achieve a very great result with the help of a single means and that you
should aim for that, this opinion applied to the matter of government has exercised
a strange and fatal inuence on the fate of humanity. It has singularly facilitated and
still facilitates every day the establishment of despotism on the earth. What is more
simple than (illegible word) organizedgovernment of a (illegible word)? What is more
complicated than liberty?
If men had enough strength of mind to combine easily a great number of means,
they would succeed better in this way.
It is their weakness and not their strength that leads them to the idea of (illegible
word).
Not able to do something very well with a great number of means, they hope to
do it more or less well with the help of one single means.
The human mind, not being able to coordinate a great number of means, got the
idea that it was glorious to employ only a single one of them (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 37
41).
742
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 5
a
How, in the United States, Religion Knows
How to Make Use of Democratic Instincts
b
a. 1. I showed that dogmatic beliefs were necessary; the most necessary and the most
desirable are dogmatic beliefs in the matter of religion. Reasons to believe.
[In the margin: To change the title. Put one that places it more clearly under the
rubric of ideas and operations of the mind.]
1. Fixed ideas on God and human nature are necessary to all men and every day
to each man, and it is found that there are only a few, if any, men who are capable
by themselves of xing their ideas on these matters. It is a science necessary to all at
each moment and inaccessible to the greatest number. That is unique. So it is in these
matters that there is the most to gain and the least to lose by having dogmatic beliefs.
2. These beliefs particularly necessary to free peoples.
3. Id. to democratic peoples.
2. So I am led to seek humanly how religions could most easily assert themselves
during the centuries of equality that we are entering.
Development of this:
1. Necessity that religions be based on the idea of a unique being imposing at the
same time the same rules on each man.
2. Necessity of extricating religion from forms, practices, gures, as men become
more democratic.
3. Necessity of not insisting on remaining immobile in secondary things.
4. Necessity of trying to purify and regulate the love of well-being, without at-
tempting to destroy it.
5. Necessity of gaining the favor of the majority.
3. All this proved by the example of America (YTC, CVf, pp. 67).
b. Twice there must be the question of religion in this book.
1. The rst principally in a separate chapter placed I think after the rst in which
I would examine philosophically the inuence of democracy on religions.
reli gi on and democrati c i ns ti ncts 743
I established in one of the preceding chapters that men cannot do without
dogmatic beliefs, and that it was even much to be desired that they had
such beliefs. I add here that, among all dogmatic beliefs, the most desirable
seemto me to be dogmatic beliefs in the matter of religion; that very clearly
follows, even if you want to pay attention only to the interests of this world
alone.
[Religions have the advantage that they provide the human mind with
the clear and precise answer to a very great number of questions.]
There is hardly any human action, no matter howparticular you assume
it to be, that is not born out of a very general idea that men have conceived
of God, of Gods relationships with humanity, of the nature of their soul
and of their duties toward their fellows. You cannot keep these ideas from
being the common source from which all the rest ows.
c
[Experience has proved that they were necessary to all men and that each
man needed them daily in order to solve the smallest problems of his
existence.]
So men have an immense interest in forming very xed ideas about God,
their soul, their general duties toward their creator andtowardtheir fellows;
for doubt about these rst points would leave all their actions to chance
and would condemn them in a way to disorder and impotence.
So this matter is the one about which it is most important for each one
of us to have xed ideas, and unfortunately it is also the one on which it
is most difcult for each person, left to himself and by the sole effort of
his reason, to come to x his ideas.
Only minds very emancipated from the ordinary preoccupations of life,
2. The second incidentally somewhere in the second volume where I would say
more oratorically how it is indispensable in democracies in order to immaterialize
man (Rubish, 1).
See Agne`s Antoine, Politique et religionchez Tocqueville, inLaurence Guellec, Tocque-
ville et lesprit de la de mocratie ([Paris:] Presses de Sciences Po, 2005), pp. 30517; and
also by the same author, Limpense de la de mocratie (Paris: Fayard, 2003).
c. In the margin: <What is most important is not so much that they are correct, it
is that they are clear and xed.>
very perceptive, very subtle, very practiced are able with the help of a great
deal of time and care to break through to such necessary truths.
Yet we see that these philosophers themselves are almost always sur-
rounded by uncertainties; at each step the natural light that illumines them
grows dark and threatens to go out, and despite all their efforts they still
have been able to discover only a small number of contradictory notions,
in the middle of which the human mind has drifted constantly for thou-
sands of years, unable to grasp the truth rmly or even to nd new errors.
Such studies are far beyond the average capacity of men, and, even if most
men were capable of devoting themselves to such studies, it is clear that
they would not have the leisure to do so.
Fixed ideas about God and human nature are indispensable for the daily
practice of their life, and this practice prevents them from being able to
acquire those ideas.
That seems unique to me. Among the sciences, there are some, useful
to the crowd, that are within its grasp; others are only accessible to a few
persons and are not cultivated by the majority, which needs only the most
remote of their applications. But the daily practice of this science is indis-
pensable to all, even though its study is inaccessible to the greatest number.
General ideas relative to God and to humannature are, therefore, among
all ideas, those most suitable to remove from the habitual action of indi-
vidual reason, and for which there is the most to gain and the least to lose
by recognizing an authority.
The rst object, and one of the principal advantages of religions, is to
provide for each of these primordial questions a clear, precise answer, in-
telligible to the crowd and very enduring.
There are very false and very absurd religions. You can say however that
every religion that remains within the circle that I have just pointed out
and that does not claim to go outside of it, as several have tried to do in
order to stop the free development of the human mind in all directions,
imposes a salutary yoke on the intellect; and it must be recognized that, if
religion does not save men in the other world, it is at least very useful to
their happiness and to their grandeur in this one.
This is above all true of men who live in free countries.
When religion is destroyed among a people, doubt takes hold of the
highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each per-
son gets accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about
the matters that most interest his fellows and himself. You defend your
opinions badly or you abandon them, and, since you despair of being able,
by yourself, to solve the greatest problems that humandestiny presents, you
are reduced like a coward to not thinking about them.
Sucha state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the motivatingforces
of will and prepares citizens for servitude.
Then not only does it happen that the latter allow their liberty to be
taken, but they often give it up.
When authority no longer exists in religious matters, any more than in
political matters, men are soon frightened by the sight of this limitless in-
dependence. This perpetual agitation [<and this continual mutation>] of
all things disturbs and exhausts them. Since everything shifts in the intel-
lectual world, they at least want everything to be rm and stable in the
material order, and, no longer able to recapture their ancient beliefs, they
give themselves a master.
For me, I doubt that man can ever bear complete religious independence
and full political liberty at the same time; and I am led to think that, if he
does not have faith, he must serve, and, if he is free, he must believe.
I do not know, however, if this great utility of religions is not still
more visible among peoples where conditions are equal, than among all
others.
It must be recognized that equality, which introduces great advantages
into the world, nevertheless suggests, as will be shown below, very danger-
ous instincts to men; it tends to isolate them from one another and to lead
each one of them to be interested only in himself alone.
It opens their souls excessively to love of material enjoyments.
The greatest advantage of religions is to inspire entirely opposite
instincts. There is no religion that does not place the object of the de-
sires of men above and beyond the good things of the earth, and that
does not naturally elevate his soul toward realms very superior to those
of the senses. Nor is there any religion that does not impose on each
man some duties toward the human species or in common with it, and
that does not in this way drag him, from time to time, out of contem-
plation of himself. This is found in the most false and most dangerous
religions.
So religious peoples are naturally strong precisely in the places where
democratic peoples are weak; this makes very clear how important it is for
men to keep their religion while becoming equal.
I have neither the right nor the will to examine the supernatural means
that God uses to make a religious belief reach the heart of man. At this
moment I am envisaging religions only from a purely human viewpoint. I
am trying to nd out how they can most easily retain their dominion in
the democratic centuries that we are entering.
d
I have shown how, in times of enlightenment and equality, the human
mind agreed to receive dogmatic beliefs only with difculty and strongly
felt the need to do so only as regards religion [<and dogmatic beliefs are
readily adopted in the form of common opinions>]. This indicates rst of
all that, in those centuries, religions must be more discreet than in all other
centuries in staying within the limits that are appropriate to themandmust
not try to go beyond them; for, by wanting to extend their power beyond
religious matters, they risk no longer being believed in any matter. So they
must carefully draw the circle within which they claim to stop the human
mind, and beyond that circle they must leave the mind entirely free to be
abandoned to itself.
Mohammed made not only religious doctrines, but also political max-
ims, civil and criminal laws, and scientic theories descend from heaven
and placed them in the Koran. The Gospel, in contrast, speaks only of the
general relationships of men with God and with each other. Beyond that,
it teaches nothing and requires no belief in anything. That alone, among
d. If God allowed me to lift the veil of the future, I would refuse to do so; I would
be afraid to see the human race in the hands of clerks and soldiers (Rubish, 1). The same
idea appears in another draft: I would be afraid to see the entire society in the hands of
soldiers. A bureaucratic, military organization. The soldier and the clerk. Symbol of fu-
ture society (YTC, CVa, p. 50). Cf. note a of p. 1245.
a thousand other reasons, is enough to show that the rst of these two
religions cannot long dominate during times of enlightenment and de-
mocracy, whereas the second is destined to reign during these centuries as
in all others.
e
If I continue this same inquiry further, I nd that for religions tobe able,
humanly speaking, to persist in democratic centuries, they must not only
carefully stay withinthe circle of religious matters; their power alsodepends
a great deal on the nature of the beliefs that they profess, on the external
forms that they adopt, and on the obligations that they impose.
What I said previously, that equality brings men to very general andvery
vast ideas, must principally be understood in the matter of religion. Men
similar and equal easily understand the notion of a single God, imposing
on each one of them the same rules and granting them future happiness at
the same cost. The idea of the unity of the human race leads them con-
stantly to the idea of the unity of the Creator, while in contrast men very
separate from each other and strongly dissimilar readily come to make as
many divinities as there are peoples, castes, classes andfamilies, andtomark
out a thousand particular roads for going to heaven.
You cannot deny that Christianity itself has not in some way been sub-
e. Tocqueville explained in a letter to Richard Milnes (Lord Houghton), dated 29
May 1844:
You seem to me only like Lamartine to have come back from the Orient a bit more
Moslem than is suitable. I do not know why some distinguished minds show this
tendency today. For my part, I have experienced from my contact with Islam (you
know that through Algeria we touch each day on the institutions of Mohammed)
entirely opposite effects. As I got to know this religion better, I better understood
that from it above all comes the decadence that before our eyes more and more affects
the Moslemworld. Had Mohammed committed only the mistake of intimatelyjoin-
ing a body of civil and political institutions to a religious belief, in a way to impose
on the rst the immobility that is in the nature of the second, that would have been
enough to doom his followers in a given time at rst to inferiority and then to in-
evitable ruin. The grandeur and holiness of Christianity is in contrast to have tried
to reign only in the natural sphere of religions, abandoning all the rest to the free
movements of the human mind.
With the kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge (Houghton papers, 25/200).
jected to the inuence exercised by the social and political state onreligious
beliefs.
At the moment when the Christian religion appeared on earth, Provi-
dence, which without doubt prepared the world for its coming, had gath-
ered together a great part of the humanspecies, like animmense ockunder
the scepter of the Caesars. The men who made up this multitude differed
a great deal from one another, but they nevertheless had this point in com-
mon, they all obeyed the same laws; and each of them was so weak and so
small in relation to the greatness of the prince, that they all seemed equal
when compared to him.
It must be recognized that this newand particular state of humanity had
to dispose men to receive the general truths that Christianity teaches, and
it serves to explain the easy and rapid way in which it then penetrated the
human mind.
f
f. The history of religions clearly shows the truth of what I said above that general
ideas come easily to the human mind only when a great number of men are placed
in an analogous situation.
Since the object of religionis to regulate the relationships that shouldexist between
man and the Creator, there is nothing that seems more natural than general ideas
.-.-.-.-.- until the Roman Empire, however, you saw almost as many religions and
gods as peoples. The idea of a religious doctrine applicable to all mencame onlywhen
nearly all men had been subjected in the same manner to the same power.
I would say something more as well. You can conceive that all men should adore
the same God, without accepting that all men are equal in the eyes of God. Chris-
tianity says these two things. So it is not only based on a general idea but on a very
democratic idea, whichis anadditional nuance. I believe that Christianitycomes from
God and that it is not a particular state of humanity that gave birth to it; but it is
obvious that it had to nd great opportunities for spreading at a period when nearly
all the human species, like an immense ock, was mixed and mingled under the scep-
ter of the Caesars, and when subjects, whoever they were, were so small in relation
to the greatness of the prince, that when you came to compare them to him, the
differences that could exist among them seemed nearly imperceptible.
You wonder why nearly all the peoples of modernEurope present a physiognomy
so similar? It is because the same revolution that occurs within each State among
citizens, takes place within the interior of Europe among peoples. Europe forms more
and more a democracy of nations; each [nation (ed.)] being nearly equal to the others
by its enlightenment, its social state, its laws, it is not surprising that all envisage the
The counter-proof came about after the destruction of the Empire.
The Roman world was then broken so to speak into a thousand pieces;
each nation reverted to its original individuality. Soon, within the interior
of these nations, ranks became innitely graduated; races became marked;
castes divided each nation into several [enemy] peoples. In the middle of
this common effort that seemed to lead human societies to subdivide them-
selves into as many fragments as it was possible to imagine, Christianity
did not lose sight of the principal general ideas that it had brought to light.
But it seemed nonetheless to lend itself, as much as it could, to the new
tendencies given birth by the splitting up of the human species. Men con-
tinued to adore only a single God, creator and sustainer of all things; but
each people, each city, and so to speak each man believed in the ability to
gain some separate privilege and to create particular protectors next to the
sovereign master. Not able to divide Divinity, his agents at least were mul-
tiplied and enlarged beyond measure; the homage due to angels and saints
became for most Christians a nearly idolatrous worship, and it could be
feared at one time that the Christian religion was regressing toward the
religions that it had vanquished.
It seems clear to me that the more the barriers that separated nations
within humanity and citizens within the interior of each people tend to
disappear, the more the human mind heads as if by itself toward the idea
of a single and omnipotent being, dispensing equally and in the same way
the same laws to each man. So particularly in these centuries of democracy,
it is important not to allow the homage given to secondary agents to be
confused with the worship due only to the Creator.
[So youcanforesee inadvance that every religionina democraticcentury
that comes to establish intermediary powers between God and men and
indicates certain standards of conduct to certain men will come to clash
same matters in the same way.(Rubish, 1. Another version of the same passage exists
in YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 8587).
In the copy from CVj, 1 (p. 86), next to the third paragraph, in the margin, you read:
Is the social state the result of ideas or are the ideas the result of the social state?
with the irresistible tendencies of intelligence; it will not acquire authority
or will lose the authority that it had acquired at a time when the social state
suggested opposite notions.]
Another truth seems very clear to me; religions must attend less to ex-
ternal practices in democratic times than in all others.
I have shown, in relation to the philosophical method of the Americans,
that nothing revolts the human mind more in times of equality than the
idea of submitting to forms. Men who live during these times endure rep-
resentations impatiently; symbols seem to them puerile artices that you
use to veil or keep from their eyes truths that it would be more natural to
show them entirely naked and in full light of day; the trappings of cere-
monies leave them cold, and they are naturally led to attach only a secon-
dary importance to the details of worship.
Those who are charged with regulating the external form of religions in
democratic centuries must pay close attention to these natural instincts of
human intelligence, in order not to struggle needlessly against them.
I rmly believe in the necessity of forms;
g
I knowthat they x the human
mind in the contemplation of abstract truths, and forms, by helping the
mind to grasp those truths rmly, make it embrace them with fervor. I do
not imagine that it is possible to maintain a religion without external prac-
tices, but on the other hand I think that, during the centuries we are en-
tering, it would be particularly dangerous to multiply them inordinately;
that instead they must be restricted and that you should retain only those
that are absolutely necessary for the perpetuationof the dogma itself, which
is the substance of religions,
1
of which worship is only the form. Areligion
that would become more minutely detailed, more inexible and more bur-
dened by small observances at the same time that men are becoming more
equal, would soon see itself reduced to a troop of passionate zealots in the
middle of an unbelieving multitude.
g. The manuscript says: I do not deny the utility of forms. See note r for p. 1270.
1. In all religions, there are ceremonies that are inherent in the very substance of belief
and that must be carefully kept from changing in any way. That is seen particularly in Ca-
tholicism, where form and foundation are often so closely united that they are one.
I know that some will not fail to object that religions, all having general
and eternal truths as their object, cannot bend in this way to the changing
instincts of each century, without losing the character of certitude in the
eyes of men. I will answer here again that you must distinguish very care-
fully between the principal opinions that constitute a belief and that form
what theologians call the articles of faith, and the incidental notions that
are linked to them. Religions are obliged always to hold rm in the rst,
whatever the particular spirit of the times; but they must very carefullykeep
from binding themselves in the same way to the second, during centuries
when everything changes position constantly and when the mind, accus-
tomed to the moving spectacle of human affairs, reluctantly allows itself
to be xed. Immobility in external and secondary things does not seem to
me a possibility for enduring except when civil society itself is immobile;
everywhere else, I am led to believe that it is a danger.
We will see that, among all the passions to which equality gives birth or
favors, there is one that it makes particularly intense and that it deposits at
the same time in the heart of all men; it is the love of well-being. The taste
for well-being forms like the salient and indelible feature of democratic
ages.
It can be believed that a religion that undertook to destroy this funda-
mental passion would in the end be destroyed by it; if a religion wanted to
drag men away entirely from the contemplation of the good things of this
world in order to deliver them solely to the thought of those of the other,
you can predict that souls would nally escape from its hands and go far
from it to plunge into material and present pleasures alone.
The principal business of religions is to purify, to regulate and to limit
the overly ardent and overly exclusive taste for well-being that men feel in
times of equality; but I believe that religions would be wrong to try to
overcome it entirely and to destroy it. Religions will not succeed in turning
men away from love of riches; but they can still persuade them to enrich
themselves only by honest means.
h
h. I believe religious beliefs necessary for all democratic peoples, but I believe them
necessary for the Americans more than for all others. In a society constituted like the
American republics, the only non-material conceptions [v: the only non-material tastes]
come from religion (YTC, CVa, p. 5).
This leads me to a nal consideration that, in a way, includes all the
others. As men become more similar and more equal, it is more important
for religions, while still keeping carefully out of the daily movement of
affairs, not unnecessarily to go against generally accepted ideas and the per-
manent interests that rule the mass; for commonopinionappears more and
more as the rst and most irresistible of powers; outside of it there is no
support strong enough to allow resistance to its blows for long.
j
That is no
less true among a democratic people, subjected to a despot, than in a re-
public. In centuries of equality, kings often bring about obedience, but it
is always the majority that brings about belief; so it is the majority that must
be pleased in everything not contrary to faith.
[It would be wrong to attribute only to the Puritan origin of Americans
the power that religion retains among them; there are many other causes
as well. The object of what precedes was to make the reader better under-
stand the principal ones.]
k
I showed, inmy rst work, howAmericanpriests
stand aside from public affairs. This is the most striking example, but not
the only example, of self-restraint. In America, religion is a world apart
where the priest reigns but which he is careful never to leave; within its
limits, he leads
m
minds; outside he leaves men to themselves and abandons
themto the independence and to the instability that are appropriate totheir
nature and to the time. I have not seen a country where Christianity was
less enveloped by forms, practices and images than in the United States,
and where it presented more clear, more simple and more general ideas to
the human mind. Although the Christians of America are divided into a
j. In democratic centuries religion needs the majority, and to gain this majority its
genius must not be contrary to the democratic genius (Rubish, 1).
k. I have already pointed out two great causes for the power of religious beliefs in
America:
1. The Puritan origin.
2. The separation of church and State.
These two causes are very powerful, but they are not democratic; the ones that
remain for me are democratic (Rubish, 1).
m. The manuscript says: he subjugates.
multitude of sects, they all see their religion from this same perspective.
This applies to Catholicism as well as to the other beliefs. There are no
Catholic priests who show less taste for small individual observances, ex-
traordinary and particular methods of gaining your salvation[indulgences,
pilgrimages and relics], or who are attached more to the spirit of the law
and less to its letter than the Catholic priests of the United States; nowhere
is the doctrine of the Church that forbids giving the saints the worshipthat
is reserved only for God taught more clearly and followed more. Still, the
Catholics of America are very dutiful and very sincere.
Another remark is applicable to the clergy of all communions. American
priests do not try to attract and x the entire attention of man onthe future
life; they willingly abandon a part of his heart to the cares of the present;
they seem to consider the good things of this world as important, though
secondary matters. If they themselves do not participate in industry, they
are at least interested in its progress and applaud it, and, while constantly
pointing out the other world to the faithful man as the great object of his
fears and of his hopes, they do not forbid him to seek well-being honestly
in this one. Far from showing him how the two things are separate and
opposite, they pay particular attention instead to nding in what place they
touch and are connected.
All American priests know the intellectual dominion exercised by the
majority and respect it. They support only necessary struggles against the
majority. They do not get involved in party quarrels, but they willingly
adopt the general opinions of their country and their time, and they go
along without resistance with the current of sentiments and ideas that car-
ries everything along around them. They try hard to correct their contem-
poraries, but do not separate from them. So public opinion is never their
enemy; instead it sustains and protects them, and their beliefs reign si-
multaneously with the strengths that are their own and those that they bor-
row from the majority.
In this way, by respecting all the democratic instincts that are not con-
trary to it and by using several of those instincts to help itself, religion
succeeds in struggling with advantage against the spirit of individual in-
dependence that is the most dangerous of all to religion.
754
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 6
a
Of the Progress of Catholicism
America is the most democratic country on earth, and at the same time the
country where, according to trustworthy reports,
b
the Catholic religion is
making the most progress. This is surprising at rst view.
Two things must be clearly distinguished. Equality disposes mentowant
to judge by themselves; but, from another side, it gives them the taste and
the idea of a single social power, simple and the same for all. So men who
live in democratic centuries are very inclined to avoidall religious authority.
But, if they consent to submit to such an authority, they at least want it to
be unitary and uniform; religious powers that do not all lead to the same
center [or in other words national churches] are naturally shocking to their
a. This chapter, which bears the number Vbis in the manuscript, as well as the one
that follows, are not included in the list of notebook CVf. In the manuscript the rst
title is: how the progress of equality has favored the progress of
catholicism.
On the jacket of the manuscript you nd this note: Ask for some gures from Mr.
Wash perhaps. Probably this concerns Robert Walsh, American journalist, founder of
the National Gazette. Tocqueville and Beaumont met him in Philadelphia (George W.
Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 47576, 537).
b. Several conversations with Americans had persuaded Tocqueville of the rapid in-
crease of Catholicismin the United States. This fact has been contestedby certainAmer-
ican critics. On this subject, it can be recalled that, in his rst letters from America,
Tocqueville noted that if the lower classes tended toward Catholicism, the upper classes
converted instead to Unitarianism (cf. alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage,
OC, V, 1, pp. 23032. YTC, BIIa contains a note on conversions in India copied from
the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, 4, April 1831, p. 316. It is not reproduced in
Voyage ).
of the progres s of catholi ci s m 755
intelligence, and they imagine almost as easily that there is no religion as
that there are several.
c
You see today, more than in earlier periods, Catholics who become un-
believers and Protestants who turn into Catholics. If you consider Ca-
tholicism internally, it seems to lose; if you look at it from the outside, it
gains. That can be explained.
Men today are naturally little disposed to believe; but as soon as they
have a religion, they nd a hidden instinct within themselves that pushes
them without their knowing toward Catholicism. Several of the doctrines
and practices of the Roman Church astonish them;
d
but they experience
a secret admiration for its government, and its great unity attracts them.
If Catholicism succeeded nally in escaping from the political hatreds
to which it gave birth, I hardly doubt that this very spirit of the century,
which seems so contrary to it, would become very favorable to it,
e
and that
it would suddenly make great conquests.
It is one of the most familiar weaknesses of human intelligence to want
to reconcile contrary principles and to buy peace at the expense of logic.
c. Two very curious conversations could be done, one with a Protestant minister,
the other with a Catholic priest. They would be made to uphold on all points opposed
[sic ] to what they are in the custom of upholding elsewhere.
These conversations would have to be preceded by a portrait of these two men and
of their institutions. Very piquant details would result from all of that for the French
public above all (YTC, CVa, p. 55. See the appendix bearing the title sects in
america).
d. The manuscript says: repulse them.
e. The chapter nishes in this way in the manuscript:
and that it would end by being the only religion of all those who would have a
religion.
I think that it is possible that all men who make up the Christian nations will in the
long run come to be no longer divided except into two parts. Some will leave Christianity
entirely and others will go into the Roman Church.
In 1843, Tocqueville had a very different secret opinion about the relation between
Catholicism and democracy.
Catholicism, he wrote to Francisque de Corcelle, which produces such admirable
effects in certain cases, which must be upheld with all ones power because in France
religious spirit can exist only with it, Catholicism, I am very afraid, will never adopt the
new society. It will never forget the position that it had in the old one and every time
that [it] is given some powers, it will hasten to abuse them. I will say that only to you.
But I say it to you, because I want to have you enter into my most secret thought
Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC, XV, 1, p. 174.
of the progres s of catholi ci s m 756
So there have always been and will always be men who, after submitting a
few of their religious beliefs to an authority, will want some other religious
beliefs to elude it, and will allow their minds to oat haphazardly between
obedience and liberty. But I am led to believe that the number of the latter
will be fewer in democratic centuries than in other centuries, and that our
descendants will tend more and more to divide into only two parts, some
leaving Christianity entirely, others going into the Roman Church.
757
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 7
What Makes the Minds of Democratic Peoples
Incline toward Pantheism
a
I will show later how the predominant taste of democratic peoples for very
general ideas is found again in politics; but now I want to point out its
principal effect in philosophy.
It cannot be denied that pantheism has made great progress in our time.
The writings of a portion of Europe clearly carry its mark. The Germans
introduce it into philosophy, and the French into literature. Among the
works of the imagination that are published in France, most contain some
opinions or some portrayals borrowed from pantheistic doctrines, or allow
a sort of tendency toward those doctrines to be seen in their authors. This
does not appear to me to happen only by accident, but is due to a lasting
cause.
b
As conditions become more equal and each man in particular becomes
more similar to all the others, weaker and smaller, you get used to no longer
envisaging citizens in order to consider only the people; you forget indi-
viduals in order to think only about the species.
In these times, the human mind loves to embrace all at once [and to mix
up in the same view] a host of diverse matters; it constantly aspires to be
able to connect a multitude of consequences to a single cause.
a. In the rst page of the manuscript: Very small chapter done afterward and that
I think should be placed after general ideas. Think more whether it must be included
and where to place it. Perhaps it is too unique to be separate.
It carries the number 3bis in the manuscript, and the rst paragraph clearly indicates
that at the moment of drafting it followed the current chapter 4, consecrated to general
ideas in politics. The jacket of the chapter in the manuscript also contains a rough draft
of the chapter.
b. In the margin, in pencil: [illegible word]. Ampe`re.
panthei s m 758
The mind is obsessed by the idea of unity, looking for it in all directions,
and, when it believes unity has been found, it embraces it and rests there.
Not only does the human mind come to discover in the world only one
creation and one creator, this rst division of things still bothers it, and it
readily tries to enlarge and to simplify its thought by containing God and
the universe in a single whole. If I nd a philosophical system according
to which the things material and immaterial, visible and invisible that the
world contains are no longer considered except as the various parts of an
immense being that alone remains eternal amid the continual change and
incessant transformation of everything that composes it, I will have no dif-
culty concluding that such a system, although it destroys human individ-
uality, or rather because it destroys it, will have secret charms for men who
live in democracy; all their intellectual habits prepare them for conceiving
it and set themonthe pathto adopt it. It naturally attracts their imagination
and xes it; it feeds the pride of their mind and atters its laziness.
c
Among the different systems by the aid of which philosophy seeks to
explain the world, pantheism seems to me the one most likely to seduce
the human mind in democratic centuries.
d
All those who remainenamored
of the true grandeur of man must join forces and struggle against it.
c. Religious .-.-.-.-.-.- of a unique being regulating all men by the same laws is an
essentially democratic idea. It can arise in other centuries, but it can have its complete
development only in these centuries. Example of that in the Christianity of the Mid-
dle Ages when populations, without losing the general idea of a unique god, split up
the divinity in the form of saints. So in democratic centuries a religion that wants to
strike minds naturally must therefore get as close as possible to the idea of unity, of
generality, of equality (With the notes of chapter 5. Rubish, 1).
d. Democracy, which brings about the idea of the unity of human nature, brings
men back constantly to the idea of the unity of the creator./
Household gods, particular saints of a family, patrons of cities and of kingdoms, all
that is aristocratic.
To accept all these different celestial powers, you must not believe all to be of the
same species.
[With a bracket that includes the last two paragraphs: Hic. ] (Inthe rubish of chapter
5. Rubish, 1).
759
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 8
a
How Equality Suggests to the Americans the
Idea of the Indenite Perfectibility of Man
b [TN 7]
Equality suggests several ideas to the human mind that would not have
occurred to it otherwise, and it modies nearly all those that the mind al-
ready had. I take for example the idea of human perfectibility, because it
is one of the principal ones that intelligence can conceive and because it
a. A note from the rubish of the foreword indicates that Tocqueville had thought of
having this chapter followed by the one on interest well understood:
After showing how a democratic social state could give birth in the human mind to
the idea of indenite perfectibility, my intention was to show how this same social
state brings men to adopt the doctrine of interest well understood as principal rule
of life.
I would have thus pointed out to the reader the two principal ideas that inAmerica
[added: it seems to me] guide most of the actions of the Americans.
But I am nding unforeseen difculties that force me to divide my work (With
notes of the foreword. Rubish, 1).
b. 1. The idea of human perfectibility is as old as man. But equality gives it a new
character.
2. Among aristocratic peoples where everything is immobile and appears eternal,
where men are xed in castes, classes or professions that they cannot leave, the idea
of perfectibility appears to the human mind only in a confused form and with very
narrow limits.
3. In democratic societies where each man can try on his behalf to ameliorate his
lot, where everything changes constantly and gives rise to innite attempts, where
each individual comparing himself to the mass has a prodigious idea of the form
[strength? (ed.)] of the latter, the idea of perfectibility besets the human mind and
assumes immense proportions.
4. This shown by America (YTC, CVf, pp. 78).
Translators Note 7: For this title and chapter, I have used the cognate inde-
nite, a more literary term still carrying the sense of without limit or not limited, rather
than using either unlimited or innite.
i dea of the i ndefi ni te perfecti bi li ty of man 760
constitutes by itself alone a great philosophical theory whose consequences
are revealed each moment in the conduct of affairs.
Althoughmanresembles animals inseveral ways, one feature is particular
only to him alone; he perfects himself, and they do not perfect themselves.
The human species could not fail to discover this difference from the be-
ginning. So the idea of perfectibility is as old as the world; equality did not
give birth to it, but equality gave it a new character.
When citizens are classed according to rank, profession, birth, andwhen
all are compelled to follow the path on which chance placed them, each
man believes that near him he sees the furthest limits of human power, and
no one tries any more to struggle against an inevitable destiny. It is not that
aristocratic peoples absolutely deny manthe ability to perfect himself. They
do not judge it to be indenite; they conceive of amelioration, not change;
they imagine the condition of society becoming better, but not different;
and, while admitting that humanity has made great progress and that it can
still make more progress, they enclose humanity in advance within im-
passable limits.
So they do not believe they have reached the supreme good and absolute
truth (what man or what people has been so foolish ever to imagine that?),
but they like to persuade themselves that they have almost attained the
degree of grandeur and knowledge that our imperfect nature entails; and
since nothing stirs around them, they readily imagine that everything is in
its place.
c
That is when the lawmaker claims to promulgate eternal laws,
when peoples and kings want to erect only enduring monuments andwhen
the present generation assumes the task of sparing future generations the
trouble of regulating their own destiny.
c. Certitude:
I imagine that after long debating a point with others and with yourself, you reach
the will to act, but not certitude. Discussion can show clearly what must be done,
but almost never with utter certainty what must be believed. It always raises more
new objections than the old ones it destroys. Only it draws the mind from the fog in
which it restedand, allowing it to see different probabilities distinctly, forces it tocome
to a decision.
[On the side: June 1838.] (YTC, CVa, p. 47).
As castes disappear, as classes come closer together, as commonpractices,
customs, and laws vary because men are mixed tumultuously together, as
new facts arise, as new truths come to light, as old opinions disappear and
as others take their place, the image of an ideal and always eeting perfec-
tion presents itself to the human mind.
Continual changes then pass before the eyes of each man at every mo-
ment. Some changes worsen his position, and he understands only too well
that a people or an individual, however enlightened, is not infallible. Other
changes improve his lot, and he concludes that man, in general, is endowed
with the indenite ability to improve. His failures make him see that no
one can claim to have discovered absolute good; his successes iname him
in pursuing the absolute good without respite. Therefore, always searching,
falling, getting up again, often disappointed, never discouraged, he tends
constantly toward this immense grandeur that he half sees vaguely at the
end of the long course that humanity must still cover.
[When conditions are equal each man nds himself so small next to the
mass that he imagines nothing equivalent to the efforts of the latter. The
sentiment of his own weakness leads him each day to exaggerate the power
of the human species.]
You cannot believe how many facts ow naturally from this philosoph-
ical theory that man is indenitely perfectible,
d
and the prodigious inu-
d. I am so sure that everything in this world has its limit that not to see the limit of
something seems to me to be the most certain sign of the weakness of the human
mind.
A man is endowed with an intelligence superior to that of the common man. He
has beautiful thoughts, great sentiments; he takes extraordinary actions. Howwould
I take hold of him in order to bring him back to the common level?
He deems that a certain truth that strikes his view is applicable in all times and to
all men, or he judges that one of his fellows whomhe admires is worthy to be admired
and merits being imitated in everything.
That is enough to make me see his limits and to indicate to me where he comes
back into the ordinary conditions of humanity.
He would place the limit of the true and the good elsewhere than where I place it
myself; from that I would not conclude that he fails at everything at this point; I would
instead feel disposed to believe that I am wrong myself.
ence that it exercises on even those who, occupied only with acting and not
with thinking, seem to conform their actions to it without knowing it.
I meet an American sailor, and I ask him why the vessels of his country
are constituted so as not to last for long, and he answers me without hes-
itation that the art of navigation makes such rapid progress each day, that
the most beautiful shipwouldsoonbecome nearly useless if it lastedbeyond
a few years.
e
In these chance words said by a coarse man and in regard to a particular
fact, I see the general and systematic idea by which a great people conducts
all things.
Aristocratic nations are naturally led to compress the limits of human
perfectibility too much, and democratic nations to extend themsometimes
beyond measure.
But if he puts the limit nowhere, I have no further need to discuss it and I regard
it as established that he is wrong.
5 April 1836. (YTC, CVa, pp. 3536).
e. Note of Tocqueville in the manuscript: This answer was given to me, but it con-
cerned only steamboats.
763
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 9
a
How the Example of the Americans Does Not
Prove That a Democratic People Cannot Have
Aptitude and Taste for the Sciences,
Literature, and the Arts
b
a. On the jacket containing the chapter: The rst part of the chapter seems good to
me. The second does not satisfy me. The evidence does not grab my mind. Something,
I do not know what, is missing./
Perhaps it will be necessary to have the courage to delete this sectionentirely inorder
to arrive immediately at the chapter on details. See note a of pp. 69697.
The cover of the rubish of this chapter bears this note: Very considerable and suf-
ciently nished fragments of the chapter as it was before the revision of September
1838 (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville already had worked on the chapters on art, science and
literature in June 1836.
Bonnel (YTC, CVf, p. 1) remarks that a copy of the Journal des debats of 2 April 1838
exists inside a jacket on which Tocqueville wrote: Journal to reread when I treat the
direction that equality gives to the ne arts. The number of the Journal des debats cited
contains the second part of the review, by Philare`te Chasles, of the work of E. J. De-
lecluze, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Leopold Robert (Paris: Rittner andGoupil, 1838);
the rst had been published March 18. This book contains a commentary on the indus-
trialization of art that could have interested Tocqueville.
b. 1. The Americans have made little progress in the sciences, letters and arts.
2. This is due to causes that are more American than democratic.
1. Puritan origin.
2. Nature of the country that leads too vigorously to the sole search for riches.
3. Proximity of scientic and literary Europe and of England in particular.
3. Why other democratic peoples would be different.
1. A people who would be ignorant and (illegible word) at the same time as dem-
ocratic, not only would not cultivate the sciences, letters and the arts, but also would
never come to cultivate them. The law would constantly undo fortunes without cre-
ating new ones. Since ignorance and (illegible word) benumb souls, the poor man
would not even have the idea of bettering his lot and the rich man of defending
himself against the approach of poverty. Equality would become complete and in-
vincible and no one would ever have either the time or the taste for devoting them-
the s ci ences , li terature, and the arts 764
It must be recognized that, among the civilized people of today, there are
few among whom the advanced sciences have made less progress than in
the United States, and who have provided fewer great artists, illustrious
poets and celebrated writers.
c
Some Europeans, struck by this spectacle, have considered it as a natural
and inevitable result of equality, and they have thought that, if the dem-
ocratic social state and institutions came at some time to prevail over all the
selves to the works and pleasures of the mind. But it isnt the same with a people who
become democratic while remaining enlightened and free. Why:
1. Since each man conceives the idea of the better and has the liberty to strive
toward it, a general effort is made toward wealth. Since each man is reduced to his
own strength, he attains wealth depending on whether he has greater or lesser nat-
ural abilities. And since natural inequality is very great, fortunes become very un-
equal and the law of inheritance has no effect other than preventing the perpetu-
ation of wealth in families. From the moment when inequality of fortunes exists,
there are men of leisure, and from the moment when men have leisure, they tend
by themselves toward the works and pleasures of the mind.
In an enlightened and free democratic society, men of leisure will have neither the
usual wealth, nor the perfect tranquillity, nor the interests that the members of an
aristocracy have, but they are much more numerous.
2. Not only is the number of those who can occupy their intelligence greater, but
also the pleasures and the works of the mind are followed by a crowd of men who
would in no way be involved in them in aristocratic societies.
[In the margin:
1. Utility of knowledge which appears to all and which arouses all to attempt to
acquire some knowledge.
2. Perpetual mixture of all classes, all men continually growing closer together,
emulation, ambition, envy that make even the worker claim to give his mind some
culture.
3. From the moment when the crowd is led to the works of the mind, a multitude
devotes itself to them with ardor in order to gain glory, power, wealth. Democratic
activity shows itself there as elsewhere. Production is immense.
Conclusion. Enlightened and free democratic societies do not neglect the sciences,
the arts, letters; they only cultivate them in their own way] (YTC, CVf, pp. 810).
c. To begin the chapter by: It must be recognized . . . something moderate, supple,
and not too intensely satirical. I must not put the Americans too low, if afterward I want
to raise up other democratic peoples (Rubish, 1).
earth,
d
the human mind would see the enlightenment that illuminates it
darken little by little, and man would fall back into the shadows.
d. Passage that beganthe chapter, ina jacket of the rubish that carries this explanation:
Portion of the chapter relating to the particular reasons that turn Americans away
from the sciences, literature and the arts./
Portions of the old chapter./
.-.-.-.-.-.- the frontiers of the United States toward the Northwest still meet here
and there in nearly inaccessible places and on the banks of raging torrents against
whose course European boats or canoes are unable to go, small groups of beavers half
destroyed, remnants of a great amphibious population that formerly extended over
the major part of the continent. Although reduced to a very small number, these
industrious animals have kept their habits, I could almost say their civilization and
their laws.
You see them as in the past devote themselves to different types of industry with
surprising dexterity and marvelous harmony. They make bridges, raise large dams
that make the rivers meander and, after establishing the walls of the dwelling ac-
cording to a methodical and uniform plan, they take care to isolate it in the middle
of a lake created by their efforts.
That is where, in a secure and tranquil refuge, the generations succeed each other
obscurely, amid a profound peace and an unbroken well-being.
Although the most perfect harmony seems to reign within this small society, you
cannot nd there, if the accounts of the voyageurs do not mislead us, the trace of a
hierarchical order; each one there is busy without letup with his affairs, but is always
ready to lend his aid.
One day civilized man, this destroyer or this ruler of all beings, comes to pass
by and the amphibious republic [v: nation] disappears forever without leaving a
trace.
[In the margin: See the description of Buffon. Order, property, comfort, work in
common and the division of property, public granaries, internal peace, union of all
to repulse external violence.]
Ill-humored observers have been found who wanted to see in this republic of
beavers a fairly faithful symbol of the republic of the United States.
Americans have concentrated, it is true, in a surprising way on material concerns
.-.-.-.- to man only to have him more easily discover the means to satisfy the needs
of the body.
It is not that the inhabitant of the United States is a coarse [v: unpolished] being,
but among the products of civilization, he has chosen what was most dened, most
material, most positive in order to appropriate it for himself. He has devoted himself
to the study of the sciences only to look immediately for the useful applications; in
letters, he saw only a powerful means to create individual afuence and social well-
being; andhe cultivatedthe arts muchless toproduce objects of value thantodecorate
and beautify the existence of the rich. You could say that he wanted to develop the
Those who reason in this way confuse, I think, several ideas that it would
be important to separate and to examine apart. Without wanting to, they
mix what is democratic with what is only American.
e
The religion that the rst emigrants professed and that they handed
down to their descendants, simple in its worship, austere and nearly prim-
itive in its principles, enemy of external signs and of the pomp of cere-
monies, is naturally little favorable to the ne arts and permits literary plea-
sures only reluctantly.
[At their arrival on the shores of the New World, these men were at
rst assailed by such great needs and threatened by such great dangers, that
they had to dedicate all the resources of their intelligence to satisfying the
rst and overcoming the second.]
The Americans are a very ancient and very enlightened people, who en-
countered a new and immense country in which they can expand at will,
and that they make fruitful without difculty. That is without example in
intellectual power of man only to make it serve the pleasures of his physical nature
and that he has employed all the resources of the angel only to perfect the animal
[variant in the margin: beast].
Among the Europeans who fromtheir arrival in the UnitedStates have beenstruck
by this spectacle, there are several who have seen in this tendency of the American
mind a necessary and inevitable result of democracy and who have thought that if
democratic institutions succeeded in prevailing over all the earth the human mind
. . . (rubish, 1).
In the rubish influence of democracy on literature, Tocqueville com-
ments: To make fun of those who believe that democracy will lead us to live like the
beavers. Perhaps true if it had started with societies.
[To the side: Democracy without liberty would perhaps extinguish the enlighten-
ment of the human mind. You would then have only the vices of the system.]
Cf. Pensee 257 of Pascal (Lafuma edition). Also see Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC,
XIII, 1, p. 389.
The library of the Tocqueville chateaucontainedat least twoworks of Buffon: Histoire
naturelle ge ne rale et particulie `re, 1769, 13 vols.; and Histoire naturelle des oiseaux, 1770, 4
vols. (YTC, AIe).
e. Inthe margin: <The Americans have appearedtoconcentrate onthe material cares
of life and they have seemed to believe that intelligence was given to man only to allow
himmore easily to discover the means to satisfy the needs of the body.> On this subject,
see Teddy Brunius, Alexis de Tocqueville, the Sociological Aesthetician (Uppsala: Almqvist
and Wicksell, 1960).
the world. SoinAmerica, eachmannds opportunities unknownelsewhere
to make or to increase his fortune. Greed is always in good conditionthere,
and the human mind, distracted at every moment from the pleasures of
the imagination and the works of intelligence, is drawn only into the pur-
suit of wealth. Not only do you see in the United States, as in all other
countries, industrial and commercial classes; but, what has never beenseen,
all men there are busy at the same time with industry and with commerce.
I am persuaded however that, if the Americans had been alone in the
universe, with the liberties and enlightenment acquired by their fathers and
the passions that were their own, they wouldnot have takenlongtodiscover
that you cannot make progress for long in the application of the sciences
without cultivating the theory; that all the arts improve by their interaction,
and however absorbed they might have been in the pursuit of the principal
object of their desires, they would soon have recognized that to reach it
better, they had to turn away from it from time to time.
The taste for pleasures of the mind is, moreover, so natural to the heart
of civilized man that, among the cultured nations that are least disposed
to devote themselves to it, there is always a certain number of citizens who
develop it. This intellectual need, once felt, would have soonbeensatised.
But, at the same time that the Americans were led naturally to ask of
science only its particular applications, of the arts only the means to make
life easy, learned and literary Europe took care of going back to the general
sources of truth, and perfected at the same time all that can work toward
the pleasures of man as well as all that must serve his needs.
f
f. To the side: America forms like one part of the middle classes of England.
In the rubish, inside the jacket that is entitled portions of the old chapter:
Among all the classes which made up the English nation there was particularly one
that, placed above the people by its comfort and below the nobles by the mediocrity
of its fortune, possessed the tranquil tastes [v: the love of well-being], the simple
habits, the incomplete enlightenment, the good practical and [blank (ed.)] sense
that in nearly all countries. .-.-.-.-.- middle classes. It was the middle classes that
provided to the population of the United States its principal and so to speak its
only elements.
At the headof the enlightenednations of the OldWorld, the inhabitants
of the United States particularly singled out one with whom a common
origin and analogous habits closely united them. They found among this
people famous scientists, skilled artists, great writers, and they could reap
the rewards of intelligence without needing to work to accumulate them.
I cannot agree to separate America from Europe, despite the Ocean that
divides them. I consider the people of the United States as the portion of
the English people charged with exploiting the forests of the New World,
while the rest of the nation, provided with more leisure and less preoccu-
pied by the material cares of life, is able to devote itself to thought and to
develop the human mind in all aspects.
[<So I think that democracy must no more be judged by America than
the different nations of Europe by one of the commercial and manufac-
turing classes that are found within them.>]
So the situation of the Americans is entirely exceptional, and it may be
believed that no democratic people will ever be put in the same situation.
Their entirely Puritan origin, their uniquely commercial habits, even the
country that they inhabit and that seems to divert their intelligence from
the study of the sciences, letters and the arts; the proximity of Europe, that
allows them not to study them without falling back into barbarism; a thou-
sand particular causes, of which I have been able to showonly the principal
ones, had to concentrate the American mind in a singular way in the con-
cern for purely material things. The passions, needs, education, circum-
stances, everything seems in fact to combine to bend the inhabitant of the
Scarcely transported to the shores of the New World, these men were at rst as-
sailed by great needs and threatened by great dangers against which they had at rst
to direct their entire attention in order to satisfy the rst and to ward off the second.
After these rst obstacles had been conquered, it was found that the country they
inhabited offered such incredible possibilities to human industry that there was no
one there who could not aspire to comfort and many to wealth, so that the human
mind, diverted from the pursuit of the sciences, distracted from the pleasures of the
mind, insensitive to the attractions of the arts, found itself as if carried away despite
itself by a rapid torrent toward only the acquisition of wealth[v: well-being](Rub-
ish, 1).
United States toward the earth. Religion alone makes him, from time to
time, turn a eeting and distracted gaze toward heaven.
So let us stop seeing all democratic nations with the face of the American
people, and let us try nally to consider them with their own features.
g
g. Fragment in the manuscript:
If those who think that the sciences, letters and the arts cannot prosper among
democratic peoples assumed the existence of the three principal circumstances that
I am going to talk about, I would perhaps share their sentiment.
I imagine a people newly emerged from the uncivilized state, among whom con-
ditions remained equal and political power is concentrated in the hands of one man.
That among a democratic nation of this type the human mind would be stopped in
its development, curbed and as if struck by a sort of intellectual paralysis, I accept
without difculty.
[In the margin: Here take if possible a condent, simple, short, broken, didactic
style. Free myself from the oratorical form.
Read Beaumonts piece.
Under democracies that come after an aristocratic order, that are enlightened
and free, the sciences, literature and the arts develop, but they develop in a certain
way./
America itself can provide us with illuminating details on this point.
(Note) The underlined sentence must not be lost fromviewand try to bindmyself
to it.
This chapter ongeneral ideas must be short andfollowedby separate small chapters
on the sciences, letters and the arts. Mix America as much as possible with all of that.]
But why imagine an imaginary democracy when we can easily conceive of a real
one? What good is it to go back to the origin of the worldwhen what is happening
before our eyes is enough to enlighten us?
I take the European peoples such as they appear before my eyes, with their aris-
tocratic traditions, their acquired enlightenment, their liberties, and I wonder if by
becoming democratic they risk, as some would like to persuade us, falling back into
a kind of barbarism.
There exists at the bottom of the human heart a natural taste for things of the
mind and the enjoyments of the imagination, as well as an instinctive tendency to-
ward the pleasures of the senses. The mind of man left to itself leans from one side
toward the limited, the material and the commercial, the useful, from the other it
tends without effort toward the innite, the non-material, the great andthe beautiful.
So when men have once tasted, as among us, the intellectual and delicate pleasures
that civilization provides, I cannot believe that he [sic ] will ever get sick of them.
Legislation, social state can direct in a certain way the natural tendency that leads men
there, but not destroy it.
[To the side, with a bracket that includes the last two paragraphs: All of that is
perhaps too metaphysical, too long . . .]
You can imagine a people among whom there would be neither caste,
nor hierarchy, nor class; where the law, recognizing no privileges, would
divide inheritances equally; and who, at the same time, would be deprived
of enlightenment and liberty. This is not an empty hypothesis: a despot
can nd it in his interest to make his subjects equal and to leave them ig-
norant, in order to keep them slaves more easily.
Not only would a democratic people of this type show neither aptitude
nor taste for the sciences, literature and the arts, but also you may believe
that it will never show them.
The law of inheritance would itself undertake in each generation to de-
stroy fortunes, and no one would create newones. The poor man, deprived
of enlightenment and liberty, would not even conceive the idea of rising
toward wealth, and the rich man would allow himself to be carried along
toward poverty without knowing how to defend himself. A complete and
Give a democratic people enlightenment and liberty and you will see them, you
can be sure, bring to the study of the sciences, letters and the arts the same feverish
activity that they show in all the rest.
[In the margin: The rst idea is this one:
A people who has acquired the habit of literary pleasures cannot get out of the
habit completely. There will always remain at least a large number of men who will
keep it and there will be utility and prot in satisfying the latter.
The second:
Among an enlightened and free people equality cannot fail to have limits. Many
rich men, men of leisure who perhaps wouldnot by themselves conceive the pleasures
of the imagination but who take to those that they see being enjoyed.]
Beaumont commented on the study of the sciences in America in Marie, I, pp. 24748.
Some years later, Tocqueville had partially changed his opinion. In a letter dating
probably from 1856 and perhaps addressed to Mignet, he asserted:
Under the spell that your reading cast on me yesterday, I forgot to make a small
observation to you that has recurred to me since and [that (ed.)] I do not want to
leave absolutely in silence. It concerns the very amusing portrait that you do of the
Americans, above all of their scorn for letters. I know that you do not speak there in
your name; nonetheless, I believe that a small correction from you would do well in
that place. I am talking above all of the accusation of being indifferent to letters. You
know that since then they have made, even in this direction, very notable progress.
They begin to count among civilized nations, even in the sciences that relate to pure
theory, like metaphysics. A single parenthesis by you on this subject will reestablish
equity without reducing any of the charm of the tableau (Private archives).
invincible equality would soon be established between these two citizens.
No one would then have either the time or the taste for devoting himself
to the works and pleasures of the mind. But everyone wouldlive benumbed
in the same ignorance and in an equal servitude.
When I come to imagine a democratic society of this type, I immediately
think I feel myself in one of these low, dark and suffocating places, where
lights, brought in from outside, soon grow dim and are extinguished. It
seems to me that a sudden weight overwhelms me, and that I am dragging
myself along among the shadows around me in order to nd the exit that
should lead me back to the air and daylight. But all of this cannot apply
to men already enlightened who remain free after destroying the particular
and hereditary rights that perpetuated property in the hands of certain in-
dividuals or certain bodies.
[<In democratic societies of this type equality encounters necessary lim-
its that it cannot go beyond.>]
When the men who live within a democratic society are enlightened,
they discover without difculty that nothing either limits themor xes their
situation or forces them to be content with their present fortune.
So they all conceive the idea of increasing it, and, if they are free, they
all try to do so, but all do not succeed in the same way. The legislature, it
is true, no longer grants privileges, but nature gives them. Since natural
inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal from the moment when
each man makes use of all his abilities in order to grow rich.
The law of inheritance is still opposed to the establishment of rich fam-
ilies, but it no longer prevents the existence of the rich. It constantly leads
citizens back toward a common level from which they constantly escape;
they become more unequal in property the more their enlightenment in-
creases and the greater their liberty is.
In our time a sect celebrated for its genius and its extravagances arose; it
claimed to concentrate all property in the hands of a central power and to
charge the latter with distributing it afterward, according to merit, to all
individuals. You were shielded in this way from the complete and eternal
equality that seems to threaten democratic societies.
There is another simpler and less dangerous remedy; it is to grant privi-
lege to no one, to give everyone equal enlightenment and an equal inde-
pendence, and to leave to each manthe care of making his place for himself.
Natural inequality will soon appear and wealth will pass by itself toward
the most able.
h
So [enlightened] and free democratic societies will always containwithin
them a multitude of wealthy or well-to-do men. These rich men will not
be bound as closely together as members of the old aristocratic class; they
will have different instincts and will hardly ever possess a leisure as secure
and as complete; but they will be innitely more numerous than those who
composed this class could have been. These men will not be narrowly con-
ned within the preoccupations of material life and they will be able, al-
though to varying degrees, to devote themselves to the works and pleasures
of the mind. So they will devote themselves to them; for, if it is true that
the human mind leans from one side toward the limited, the material and
the useful, from the other, it rises naturally toward the innite, the non-
material and the beautiful. Physical needs attach the mind to the earth, but,
as soon as you no longer hold it down, it stands up by itself.
Not only will the number of those who can interest themselves in the
works of the mind be greater, but also the taste for intellectual enjoyments
will descend, from one person to the next, even to those who, inaristocratic
societies, seem to have neither the time nor the capacity to devote them-
selves to those enjoyments.
When there are no more hereditary riches, privileges of class and pre-
rogatives of birth, and when each man no longer draws his strength except
from himself, it becomes clear that what makes the principal difference
among the fortunes of men is intelligence. All that serves to fortify, to ex-
pand and to embellish intelligence immediately acquires a great value.
h. Give all citizens equal means [v: instruction and liberty] to achieve wealth and
prevent wealth acquired by the individual efforts of one of them from then going to
accumulate by itself and being transmitted without difculty to all of his descen-
dants, and you will very naturally approach the goal toward which the Saint-
Simonians claim to go, without using the dangerous and impractical means that they
indicate. Leave men alone. They will class themselves according to their capacity, just
watch that nothing prevents them from doing so.
[In the margin] These ideas are capital. They clarify my mind and clearly showme
the place where it is necessary to build (Rubish, 1. A nearly identical passage exists on
the page that carries the number 8).
The utility of knowledge reveals itself with an extremely particular clar-
ity to the very eyes of the crowd. Those who do not appreciate its charms
value its effects and make some efforts to achieve it.
In enlightened and free democratic centuries, men have nothing that
separates them or anything that keeps them in their place; they go up or
go down with a singular rapidity. All classes see each other constantly, be-
cause they are very close. They communicate and mingle every day, imitate
and envy each other; that suggests to the people a host of ideas, notions,
desires that they would not have had if ranks had been xed and society
immobile. In these nations, the servant never considers himself as a com-
plete stranger to the pleasures and works of the master, the poor to those
of the rich; the man of the country tries hard to resemble the man of the
city, and the provinces, the metropolis.
Thus, no one allows himself easily to be reduced to the material cares
of life alone, and the most humble artisan casts, from time to time, a few
eager and furtive glances into the superior world of intelligence. People do
not read in the same spirit and in the same way as among aristocratic peo-
ples; but the circle of readers expands constantly and ends by including all
citizens.
j
From the moment when the crowd begins to be interested in the works
of the mind, it discovers that a great means toacquire glory, power or wealth
is to excel in a few of them. The restless ambition given birth by equality
[v: democracy] immediately turns in this direction as in all the others. The
number of those who cultivate the sciences, letters and the arts becomes
immense. A prodigious activity reveals itself in the world of the mind; each
man seeks to open a path for himself there and tries hard to attract the eye
of the public. Something occurs there analogous to what happens in the
United States in political society; works are often imperfect, but they are
j. So I am persuaded that conditions, by becoming more equal among us, will only
extend the circle of those who know and value literary pleasures. The whole question
is knowing whether or not they will lose on the side of purity of taste what they gain
on the side of numbers.
But I am far from believing that among democratic peoples who have enlight-
enment and liberty, the number of men of leisure will be as small as is supposed
(Rubish, 1).
innumerable; and, although the results of individual efforts are ordinarily
very small, the general result is always very great.
So it is not true to say that men who live in democratic centuries are
naturally indifferent to the sciences, letters and the arts; only it must be
recognized that they cultivate them in their own way, and that they bring,
from this direction, qualities and defects that are their own.
775
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 0
a
Why the Americans Are More Attached to the
Application of the Sciences Than to the Theory
b
a. 1. Among democratic peoples, each man wants to judge by himself; no one likes
to believe anyone on his word; no one talks a lot of ne words. All these instincts are
found again in the scientic world, and give to the sciences among the latter peoples
a free, sure, experimental, but less lofty course.
2. Three distinct parts of the sciences, one purely theoretical, another (illegible
word) theoretical but close to application, a last absolutely applied.
The Americans excel in the last two and neglect the rst one, why:
1. Meditation is needed to make progress in the most theoretical portion of the
sciences. The perpetual movement that reigns in democratic societies does not allow
devoting oneself to it. It takes away the time and also the desire. In societies where
nearly everyone is constantly in action, there is little esteem for meditation.
2. It is the lofty and disinterested love of truth that pushes the humanmindtoward
the abstract portion of the sciences. These great scientic passions show themselves
more rarely in democratic centuries than in others, why:
1. Because the social state does not lead to great passions in general, and does not
keep souls on so lofty a tone.
2. Because men who live in democratic societies are constantly in a hurry to enjoy,
are discontent with their position and, aspiring to change it, are not led to value the
sciences except as means to go by the easiest and shortest roads to wealth. So they
reward scientists in this spirit and push them constantly in this direction.
[In the margin: I know something more striking, clearer, better nally than this
deduction, but my mind refuses to grasp it.]
3. In democratic centuries, the government must exercise all its efforts to sustain
the theoretical study of the sciences. Practical study develops by itself.
4. If men turned entirely away from theory to occupy themselves only with the
practical, they couldagainbecome by themselves nearly barbarous. Example of China
(YTC, CVf, pp. 1112).
b. Order of ideas./
appli cati on of the s ci ences 776
If the democratic social state and democratic institutions do not stop the
development of the human mind, it is at least incontestable that they lead
it in one direction rather than another. Their efforts, limited in this way,
are still very great, and you will pardon me, I hope, for stopping a moment
to contemplate them.
When it was a matter of the philosophical method of the Americans, I
made several remarks that we should benet from here.
Equality develops inevery manthe desire to judge everythingbyhimself;
it gives him, in everything, the taste for the tangible and the real, scorn for
traditions and forms. These general instincts make themselves seen prin-
cipally in the particular subject of this chapter.
Those who cultivate the sciences among democratic peoples are always
afraid of being lost in utopias. They distrust systems; they love to stay very
close to the facts and to study them by themselves; since they do not allow
themselves to be easily impressed by the name of any one of their fellows,
they are never inclined to swear on the word of the master; but, on the
contrary, you see them constantly occupied with searching for the weak
part of his doctrine. Scientic traditions have little sway over them; they
never stop for long in the subtleties of a school, and they spin out a lot of
fancy words withdifculty; they enter as muchas they canintothe principal
parts of the subject that occupies them, and they love to explain them in
1. Three parts in each science: high, middle, low.
This proved by the science of laws.
These three parts hold together but can be cultivated separately.
2. Equality leads men to neglect the rst, in order to occupy themselves only with
the other two. Why:
1. No meditation possible in the middle of democratic movement.
2. Great political liberty that deprives science of great geniuses and great passions.
This is not necessarily democratic.
First a distinction must be made between nations that possess great political liberty
and those that do not have it. This is a great question: political genius and scientic
genius are so different that you can say that one only inames the other without
diverting it.
3. Two types of scientic passions, one disinterested and lofty, the other mercantile
and low (Rubish, 1).
common language. The sciences then have a freer and more certain, but
less lofty allure.
c
The mind can, it seems to me, divide science into three parts.
The rst contains the most theoretical principles, the most abstract no-
tions, the ones whose application is unknown or very distant.
The second is made up of general truths that, though still pure theory,
lead nevertheless by a direct and short path to application.
The processes of application and the means of execution fulll
d
the
third.
e
c. Under democracy the sciences get rid of useless words, of empty formulas. Efforts
of the Americans to get out of the judicial routine of the English. Code of Ohio.
See Beaumont, G. B. Q. (Rubish, 1). Cf. Marie, I, pp. 24748.
d. Note in the margin: Louis thinks that this piece should be modied a bit and do
three classes of scientists instead of three classes of sciences. For, in fact, he says, there
are only two of them.
e. At the end of the chapter, you nd a jacket with the title: Development that
seemed too long to me, but which is good in itself.:
An example would make my thought easier to grasp: I would choose the science that
I know best which is that of the laws. The distinctions that I have just indicated are
found in the science of laws and I believe, without being able to assert it in so positive
a way, that you should see at least the trace of those distinctions in all of the laws and
principally in those that are called exact, because of the rigorous manner in which
they proceed.
There is a science of laws whose object is lofty, speculative, general. The former
works hard to nd the rules by which human societies exist and to determine the laws
that various peoples must impose on themselves in order to reach the goal that they
propose for themselves.
There is a science of laws that, taking hold of a particular body of laws, or even
of the higher portion of a body of laws, demonstrates what general principles dom-
inate there and shows the economy that reigns and the overall view that is revealed.
There is a last one that enters into the administrative or judicial detail of the pro-
cesses by which the legislator wanted to have his plans carriedout, learns howpolitical
assemblies or the courts interpreted their will, and that teaches the art of making
good the rights of each citizen with the aid of the laws.
A class of scholars is attached to each of these portions of the science to whom
you give the name writers on law, legal experts, jurists (examine these denitions in
the best authors).
If you now come to examine how these different men are related to each other,
you discover that in the long run the legal expert and the jurist cannot do without
Each one of these different portions of science can be cultivated sepa-
rately, eventhoughreasonandexperience make it knownthat none of them
can prosper for long when it is separated absolutely from the other two.
In America, the purely applied part of the sciences is admirably culti-
vated, and the theoretical portion immediately necessary to application is
carefully attended to; in this regard the Americans reveal a mind always
clear, free, original and fruitful; but there is hardly anyone in the United
States who devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract por-
tion of human knowledge. In this the Americans show the excess of a ten-
dency that will be found, I think, although to a lesser degree, among all
democratic peoples.
f
the writer on law, but that at a given moment they can easily act and prosper inde-
pendently of him.
If men limited themselves to studying the whole and the detail of existing laws
without ever going as far as the general theory of laws, it is clear that by degrees they
would reach the point of seeing in the legislation of their country only a collection
of formulas that they would end up using without exactly understanding their sense,
and that they would not take long to become miserably lost in the maze of the sub-
tleties of the school. That is how you can truthfully say that there is a necessary re-
lation between Montesquieu and the least bailiff of the kingdom, in such a way that
the enlightenment of the rst gives light by a far and distant reection to the works
of the second.
But men do not need to return every day to the philosophy of lawinorder to know
the laws in force; without having sought what the legislator must have wanted, they
are able to understand what he wanted. They are able to apply the general wills [vo-
lonte s ge ne ralesTrans.] to the particular case and draw from legal science its most
useful consequences. Therefore each one of these different portions of the science
of laws can be cultivated separately, although each cannot prosper in the long run
when it is separated absolutely from the others. Coming back now to my subject, I
want to know if democracy tends to develop the various parts of science in the same
way.
In America, where the practical portion of human knowledge and the theoretical
portion immediately necessary for application are admirably cultivated, there is so to
speak no example of anyone interested in the essentially theoretical and general part.
I think that you would not do justice by attributing this to democracy alone. The
Americans are pushed exclusively toward application by powerful causes that are due
neither to the social state nor to the political constitution. I have carefullyenumerated
them above.
[In the margin] Quid.
f. Now in all free governments, a great number of men are involved in politics, and
Nothing is more necessary to the cultivation of the advanced sciences,
or of the higher portion of the sciences, than meditation; and nothing is
less appropriate to meditation than the interior of a democratic society.
There you do not nd, as among aristocratic peoples, a numerous class that
remains at rest because it nds itself well-off, and another that does not stir
because it despairs of being better-off. Each man is in motion; some want
to attain power, others to take hold of wealth. Amid this universal tumult,
this repeated clash of contrary interests, this continual march of men to-
ward fortune, where to nd the calm necessary for profound intellectual
syntheses? How to x your thoughts on some point, when around you ev-
erything moves, and you yourself are dragged along and tossed about each
day by the impetuous current that drives everything?
g
in free governments whose social state is democratic, there is hardly anyone who
is not occupied by it. So among nations subject to these governments it must be
expected that a kind of public scorn for the higher speculations of science and a
kind of instinctive repulsion for those who devote themselves to them will be
established.
I imagine that a people constituted like the Germans of today, among whomgreat
civil liberty would be found, where enlightenment would be very widespread, where
communal independence would not be unknown, but where great political liberty
would not exist, would be in a more fortunate position than another to cultivate and
to perfect the theoretical portion of the sciences; and I would not be surprised if, of
all the countries of Europe, Germany soonbecame for this reasonthe principal center
of higher human knowledge.
Despotism is hardly able to maintain what it nds existing, and by itself alone it
has never produced anything great. So I am not talking about an enslaved nation,
but about a people who would not be entirely master of itself.
Great political liberty seems to me so precious a thing in itself and so necessary to
the guarantee of all other liberties that, as long as it does not disappear at the same
time from all the countries of the earth, I am more or less sure of never inhabiting a
country where it will not exist; but I cannot believe that, followingthe ordinarycourse
of societies, great political liberty must favor the development of the general and
theoretical part of the sciences. I recognize in it a thousand other advantages, but not
that one (Rubish, 1).
g. Of all branches of human studies, philosophy will be, if I am not mistaken, the
one that will suffer most from the establishment of democracy. If the men whose social
state and habits are democratic wanted to concern themselves with philosophy, I do not
doubt that they would bring to this matter the boldness and the freedom of mind that
The type of permanent agitation that reigns within a tranquil and al-
ready constituted democracy must be clearly distinguished from the tu-
multuous and revolutionary movements that almost always accompanythe
birth and development of a democratic society.
When a violent revolution takes place among a very civilized people, it
cannot fail to give a sudden impulse to sentiments and to ideas.
This is true above all of democratic revolutions, that, by moving at once
all of the classes that make up a people, give birth at the same time to
immense ambitions in the heart of each citizen.
If the French suddenly made such admirable progress in the exact sci-
ences, at the very moment when they nally destroyed the remnants of the
old feudal society, this sudden fertility must be attributed, not to democ-
racy, but to the unparalleled revolution that accompanied its development.
What occurred then was a particular fact; it would be imprudent to see in
it the indication of a general law.
Great revolutions are not more common among democratic peoples
than among other peoples; I am even led to believe that they are less so.
But within these nations there reigns a small uncomfortable movement, a
sort of incessant rotation of men that troubles and distracts the mindwith-
out enlivening or elevating it.
Not only do menwholive indemocratic societies devote themselves with
difculty to meditation, but also they naturally have little regard for it. The
democratic social state and democratic institutions lead most men to act
constantly; now, the habits of mind that are appropriate to action are not
always appropriate to thought. The man who acts is often reduced to being
content with approximation, because he would never reach the end of his
plan if he wanted to perfect each detail. He must rely constantly on ideas
that he has not had the leisure to study in depth, for he is helped much
more by the expediency of the idea that he is using than by its rigorous
correctness; and everything considered, there is less risk for him in making
use of a few false principles, than in taking up his time establishing the
they display elsewhere. But you can believe that they will rarely want to concern them-
selves with it (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 66).
truth of all his principles. The world is not controlled by long, learned
proofs. The rapid view of a particular fact, the daily study of the changing
passions of the crowd, the chance of the moment and the skill to grab hold
of it, decide all matters there.
So in centuries when nearly everyone acts, you are generally led to attach
an excessive value to the rapid ights and to the supercial conceptions of
the mind, and, on the contrary, to depreciate excessively its profound and
slow work.
This public opinion inuences the judgment of the men who cultivate
the sciences; it persuades themthat they cansucceed inthe sciences without
meditation, or turns them away from those sciences that require it.
h
There are several ways to study the sciences. You nd among a host of
men a selsh, mercenary and industrial taste for the discoveries of the mind
that must not be confused with the disinterested passion that is aroused in
the heart of a small number; there is a desire to utilize knowledge and a
pure desire to know. I do not doubt that occasionally, among a few, an
ardent and inexhaustible love of truth is born that feeds on itself and gives
constant delight without ever being able to satisfy itself. It is this ardent,
proud and disinterested love of the true that leads men to the abstract
sources of truth in order to draw generative ideas from there.
If Pascal
j
had envisaged only some great prot, or even if he had been
h. The taste for well-being makes a multitude ask the sciences loudly for applications
and recompenses with money and with glory those who nd them.
And acting on the soul of scientists the multitude leads themto take their research
in this direction and even makes them incapable of directing it elsewhere by taking
from them the taste for non-material things that is the principal motivating force of
the soul (Rubish, 1).
j. Different motives that can push men toward science.
Material interest.
Desire for glory.
Passion to discover the truth. Personal satisfaction that is impossible to dene or
to deny its effects.
Perhaps the greatest scientists are due uniquely to this last passion. For will is not
enough to bring action; the mind must rush forward by itself toward the object; it
must aspire.
moved only by the sole desire for glory, I cannot believe that he would ever
have been able to summon up, as he did, all the powers of his intelligence
to reveal more clearly the most hidden secrets of the Creator. When I see
him, in a way, tear his soul away from the midst of the cares of life, inorder
to give it entirely to this inquiry, and, prematurely breaking the ties that
hold the soul to the body, die of old age before reaching forty years of age,
I stop dumbfounded; and I understand that it is not an ordinary cause that
can produce such extraordinary efforts.
The future will prove if these passions, so rare and so fruitful, arise and
develop as easily amid democratic societies as within aristocratic ones. As
for me, I admit that I nd it difcult to believe.
In aristocratic societies, the class that leads opinion and runs public af-
fairs, being placed above the crowd in a permanent and hereditary way,
naturally conceives a superb idea of itself and of man. It readily imagines
glorious enjoyments for man and sets magnicent ends for his desires. Ar-
istocracies often undertake very tyrannical and very inhuman actions, but
they rarely conceive low thoughts; and they show a certain proud disdain
for small pleasures, even when they give themselves over to them; that gives
all souls there a very lofty tone. In aristocratic times, you generally get very
vast ideas about the dignity, power and grandeur of man. These opinions
inuence those who cultivate the sciences, like all the others; it facilitates
the natural impulse of the mind toward the highest regions of thought and
naturally disposes the mind to conceive the sublime and nearly divine love
of truth.
So the scientists of these times are carried toward theory, and it even
often happens that they conceive an ill-considered scorn for application.
Archimedes, says Plutarch,
k
had a heart so noble that he never deigned
Imagine Newton or Pascal in the middle of a democracy.
The soul is given a less lofty tone in democracies. It envisages the things of life
from a lower perspective (in the rubish the influence of democracy on lit-
erature, Rubish, 1).
k. This fragment appears in the rubish with this bibliographic reference: Plutarch,
Vie de Marcellus, p. 269, vol. III, translation of Augustus. The quotation, longer in the
to leave any written work on how to erect all of these war machines [<for
which he gained glory and fame, not for human knowledge but rather for
divine wisdom>]; and considering all of this science of inventing andmak-
ing machines and generally any art that brings some utility when put into
practice, as vile, low and mercenary, he used his mind and his study to write
only things whose beauty and subtlety were in no way mixed with neces-
sity. Such is the aristocratic aim of the sciences.
It cannot be the same among democratic nations.
[Among these peoples, the opinions of the class that governs and the
general mores of the nation hardly ever raise the human mind toward the-
ory; on the contrary they draw it every day toward application.]
Most of the men who compose these nations are very greedy for material
and present enjoyments; since they are always discontent with the position
that they occupy, andalways free toleave it, they thinkonly about the means
to change their fortune or to increase it. [Men naturally have the desire to
take pleasure quickly and easily, but that is particularly true of those who
live in democracies.
This sentiment to which scientists themselves are not strangers leads
them to look for the consequences of a principle already knownrather than
to nd a new principle; their work is at the very same time easier and better
understood.
The same sentiment makes the public attach much more value to ap-
plications than to abstract truths.]
m
For minds so disposed, every new
method that leads to wealth by a shorter road, every machine that shortens
work, every instrument that reduces the costs of production, every dis-
covery that facilitates and increases pleasures, seems the most magnicent
effort of human intelligence. It is principally from this side that demo-
cratic peoples are attached to the sciences, understand them and honor
draft, contains a phrase that is missing from the book: . . . so noble <and an under-
standing so profound in which there was a hidden treasure of so many geometric in-
ventions> (Rubish, 1).
m. This fragment is found on a separate sheet of the manuscript.
them.
n
In aristocratic centuries [v.: societies], people particularly demand
enjoyments of the mind from the sciences; in democratic ones, those of
the body.
Depend on the fact that the more a nation is democratic, enlightened
and free, the larger the number of these self-seeking men who appreciate
scientic genius will grow, and the more discoveries immediatelyapplicable
to industry will yield prot, glory and even power to their authors; for, in
democracies, the class that works takes part in public affairs, and those who
serve it have to look to it for honors as well as for money.
You can easily imagine that, in a society organized in this manner, the
human mind is led imperceptibly to neglect theory and that it must, on
the contrary, feel pushed with an unparalleled energy toward application,
or at least toward the portion of theory necessary to those who do
applications.
An instinctive tendency raises the human mind in vain toward the high-
est spheres of intelligence; interest leads it back toward the middle ones.
That is where it puts forth its strength and restless activity, and brings forth
miracles. These very Americans, who have not discovered a single one of
the general laws of mechanics, have introduced to navigation a new ma-
chine that is changing the face of the world.
Certainly, I am far from claiming that the democratic peoples of today
are destined to see the transcendent light of the human mind extinguished,
or even that they must not kindle new light within their midst. At the age
of the worldinwhichwe ndourselves andamong somany letterednations
that are tormented incessantly by the ardor of industry, the ties that bind
the different parts of science together cannot fail to be striking; and the
very taste for application, if it is enlightened, must lead men not to neglect
theory. In the middle of so many attempts at application, so many exper-
iments repeated each day, it is often nearly impossible for very general laws
n. So if it happens in the United States that there is no innovation in philosophy,
in literature, in science, in the ne arts, that does not come from the fact that the social
state of the Americans is democratic, but rather from the fact that their passions are
exclusively commercial (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 91).
not to happen to appear; so that great discoveries would be frequent, even
though great inventors were rare.
I believe moreover in high scientic vocations. If democracy does not
lead men to cultivate the sciences for their own sake, on the other hand
it immensely increases the number of those who cultivate the sciences. It
cannot be believed that, among so great a multitude, there is not born
from time to time some speculative genius inamed by the sole love of
truth. You can be sure that the latter will work hard to penetrate the most
profound mysteries of nature, whatever the spirit of his country and of
his time. There is no need to aid his development; it is enough not to
stop it. All that I want to say is this: permanent inequality of condi-
tions leads men to withdraw into proud and sterile research for abstract
truths; while the democratic social state and democratic institutions
dispose them to ask of the sciences only their immediate and useful
applications.
This tendency is natural and inevitable. It is interesting to know it, and
it can be necessary to point it out.
If those who are called to lead the nations of today saw clearly and from
a distance these new instincts that will soon be irresistible, they would un-
derstand that with enlightenment and liberty, the men who live in demo-
cratic centuries cannot fail to improve the industrial portionof the sciences,
and that henceforth all the effort of the social power must go to sustain the
theoretical sciences and to create great scientic passions.
Today, the human mind must be kept to theory, it runs by itself toward
application, and instead of leading it back constantly toward the detailed
examination of secondary effects, it is good to distract it sometimes inorder
to raise it to the contemplation of rst causes.
Because Roman civilization died following the invasion of the barbar-
ians, we are perhaps too inclined to believe that civilization cannot die
otherwise.
If the light that enlightens us ever happened to go out, it would grow
dark little by little and as if by itself. By dint of limiting yourself to ap-
plication, you would lose sight of principles, and when you had entirely
forgotten the principles, you would badly follow the methods that derive
fromthem; no longer able to invent newmethods, youwouldemploywith-
out intelligence and without art the learned processes that you no longer
understood.
Whenthe Europeans reachedChina three hundredyears ago, theyfound
all the arts at a certain degree of perfection, and they were astonished that,
having arrived at this point, the Chinese had not advancedmore. Later they
discovered the vestiges of some advanced knowledge that had been lost.
The nation was industrial; most of the scientic methods were preserved
within it; but science itself no longer existed. That explained to the Eu-
ropeans the singular type of immobility in which they found the mind of
the people. The Chinese, while following the path of their fathers, had
forgotten the reasons that had guided the latter. They still used the formula
without looking for the meaning; they kept the instrument and no longer
possessed the art of modifying and of reproducing it. So the Chinese could
not change anything. They had to give up improvement. They were forced
to imitate their fathers always and in all things, in order not to throwthem-
selves into impenetrable shadows, if they diverged for an instant from the
road that the latter had marked. The source of human knowledge had
nearly dried up; and although the river still owed, it could no longer swell
its waves or change its course.
China had subsisted peacefully for centuries however; its conquerors
had taken its mores; order reigned there. A sort of material well-being was
seen on all sides. Revolutions there were very rare, and war was so to speak
unknown.
o
So you must not feel reassured by thinking that the barbarians are still
far from us; for if there are some peoples who allowlight to be wrestedfrom
their hands, there are others who trample it underfoot themselves.
p
o. With a note, in the manuscript: <Louis says that he is afraid that this last piece,
although good, appears a bit exaggerated giventhe current state of our notions onChina.
It now seems certain, he says, that if the Chinese have declined, they have at least never
been as advanced as I suppose and as was supposed in Europe sixty years ago.>
p. In the rubish:
Louis said to me today (1 June 1838) that what had struck him as more obvious and
more clear in the question of the sciences was that the applied sciences or the theo-
retical part of the sciences most necessary to application had, in all times, been cul-
tivated among men as the taste for material enjoyments, for individual improvements
increased, while the cultivation of the advanced sciences had always been joinedwith
a certain taste for intellectual pleasures which found pleasure in encountering great
truths, even if they were useless.
This seemed to him applicable to aristocratic peoples like the English or the men
of the Middle Ages, in the period of the Renaissance, although some were occupied
in this period with the things of heaven; it is clear however that there was a reaction
toward the things of the earth. But he admitted that democracy drove this taste and
that it could thus be considered as the mediate cause of this scientic impulse whose
immediate cause would be the taste for material enjoyments./
It seems clear to me that I do not make the taste for material well-being suggested
by this social and political state play a large enough role among the causes that lead
democracies toward the applied sciences. It is however the greatest, the most incon-
testable, the truest reason. I have not precisely omitted it, but under-played it. This
gap must be repaired. See note (a, b, c).
To cite England. The taste for well-being taking hold of the democratic classes
would give these classes, thanks to liberty and commercial possibilities, a great pre-
ponderance, allowing them in a way to give their spirit to the nation, while letting
the aristocratic classes subsist in its midst. What follows for [the (ed.)] sciences.
Still more intense taste; class that feels it still more preponderant in America. Prac-
tical impulse of the sciences still more exclusive.
[In the margin: Another point of view that is not sufciently appreciated.
Peoples who have strongly devoted themselves to the application of something,
very practically occupied with something, nd neither the time nor the taste to be
occupied withtheory. I saidsomething similar while talkingabout the sciences among
free peoples. But I was talking only about taste.
It is clear that an aristocracy, like a democracy, can be constantly occupied in a
practical way with something and neglect all the rest. It is the case of the Romans
who were so devoted to the conquest of the world that they were not able to think
about the sciences. They have left nothing on that. While the Greeks more divided
made great scientic progress./
How many things are explained by the taste for material well-being!!] (Rubish, 1).
788
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 1
a
In What Spirit the Americans
Cultivate the Arts
b
I believe it would be wasting my time and that of my readers, if I applied
myself to showing how the general mediocrity of fortune, the lack of su-
peruity, the universal desire for well-being and the constant efforts made
by each person to gain well-being for himself, make the taste for the useful
a. 1. Democratic institutions and the democratic social state make the human mind
tend toward the useful rather than toward the beautiful as regards art. I set forth this
idea without proving it. The rest of the chapter comments on it or adds to it.
2. 1. In aristocracies, artisans, apart from the desire to earn money, have their in-
dividual reputation and the reputation of their corps to maintain. The aim of the
arts is to make a small number of masterpieces, rather than a large number of im-
perfect works. It is no longer so when each profession no longer forms one corps and
constantly changes members.
2. In aristocracies, consumers are few, very rich and very demanding. In de-
mocracies, they are very many, in straitened circumstances and nearly always with
more needs than means. Thus the nature of the producer and of the consumer com-
bine to increase the production of the arts and to decrease their merit.
3. An analogous tendency of the arts in democratic times is to simulate in their
products a richness that is not there.
4. In the ne arts in particular, the democratic social state and democratic in-
stitutions make the aim the elegant and the pretty rather than the great; the repre-
sentation of the body rather than that of the soul; they turn away from the ideal and
concentrate on the real (YTC, CVf, pp. 1213).
b. Among the ne arts I clearly see something to say only about architecture, sculp-
ture, painting. As for music, dance . . . , I see nothing (in the rubish of chapter 5.
Rubish, 1).
Tocqueville seems not to have appreciated the musical evenings that he attended in
the United States. In his correspondence, he speaks of caterwauling music and un-
bearable squealings. Beaumont thought it good to delete these commentaries from his
edition of Tocquevilles complete works.
how the ameri cans culti vate the arts 789
predominate over the love of the beautiful inthe heart of man. Democratic
nations, where all these things are found, will therefore cultivate the arts
that serve to make life comfortable in preference to those whose object is
to embellish it; they will by habit prefer the useful to the beautiful, andthey
will want the beautiful to be useful.
c
But I intend to go further, and, after pointing out the rst feature, to
outline several others.
It happens ordinarily, in centuries of privilege, that the exercise of nearly
all the arts becomes a privilege and that each profession is a world apart
where no one is at liberty to enter. And, even when industry is free, the
immobility natural to aristocratic nations makes all those who are occupied
by the same art end up nevertheless forming a distinct class, always com-
posed of the same families, all of whose members know each other and a
class in which public opinion and corporate pride soon arise. In an indus-
trial class of this type, each artisan has not only his fortune to make, but
also his reputation to keep. It is not only his interest that regulates his be-
havior, or even that of the buyer, but that of the corps, and the interest of
the corps is that each artisan produces masterpieces. So in aristocratic cen-
turies, the aim of the arts is to make the best possible, and not the most
rapid or the cheapest.
d
c. What makes the taste for the useful predominate among democratic peoples./
[In the margin: Perhaps to philosophy. What makes the doctrine of the useful
predominate.
Utilitarians. ]
This idea is necessary, but perhaps it has already been treated either under this title
or under another. It must be treated separately. It is too important to be found only
accidentally in my book. The preeminence granted in all things to the useful is in
fact one of the principal and fertile characteristics of democratic centuries.
There are many things that make the taste for the useful predominate in these
centuries: the middling level of fortunes, the lack of superuity, the lack of imagi-
nation or rather the perpetual straining for the production of well-being. There is
imagination in the ordinary sense of the word only in the upper and lower classes;
the middle ones do not have it.
There are still many other causes. Look for them.
12 April 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 10).
d. You nd in aristocratic societies as well as in democracies men who cultivate the
useful arts, and who even excel if not in all at least in several of them. It sufces to
When on the contrary each profession is open to all, when the crowd
enters and leaves each constantly, and when its different members, because
of their great number, become unknown, indifferent and nearly invisible
to each other, the social bond is destroyed, and each worker, led back to
himself, seeks only to earn the greatest amount of money possible at the
least cost. There is nothing more than the will of the consumer to limit
him. Now it happens that, at the same time, a corresponding revolution
makes itself felt among the last.
In countries where wealth, like power, is concentrated in a few hands
and remains there, the use of most of the wealth of this world belongs to
always the same small number of individuals; necessity, opinion, the mod-
eration of desires exclude all others.
Since this aristocratic class keeps itself immobile at the point of grandeur
where it is placed, without narrowing or expanding, it always experiences
the same needs and feels them in the same way. The men who compose it
draw naturally from the superior and hereditary position that they occupy
the taste for what is very well made and very lasting.
That gives a general turn to the ideas of the nation as regards the arts.
It often happens, among these peoples, that the peasant himself prefers
to do entirely without the objects that he covets than to acquire them
imperfect.
So in aristocracies, workers labor only for a limited number of buyers,
who are very difcult to satisfy. The gain that they expect depends prin-
cipally on the perfection of their works.
This is no longer so when, all privileges being destroyed, ranks mingle
and all men constantly go down and rise up the social scale.
You always nd, within a democratic people [and particularly in the
period when they nally come to be so], a host of citizens whose patri-
mony divides and decreases. They have contracted, in better times, certain
see a few of the engraved breast-plates that the warriors of the Middle Ages left for
us, and the gothic churches that still seem to thrust into the sky from the heart of
our cities, in order to understand that the armorers and the masons of those times
were often skilled men.
But they did not bring to their works the same spirit as the artisans of today (Rub-
ish, 1).
needs that they continue to have after the ability to satisfy them no longer
exists, and they try restlessly to nd if there is not some indirect means to
provide for them.
On the other hand, you always see in democracies a very large number
of men whose fortune grows, but whose desires growvery much faster than
their fortune and who greedily eye the goods that their fortune promises
them, before it delivers them. These mentry toopeninall directions shorter
paths to these nearby enjoyments. The result of the combination of these
two causes is that in democracies you always meet a multitude of citizens
whose needs are beyond their resources and who would readily agree to
being satised incompletely rather than renouncing entirely the object of
their covetous desire.
The worker easily understands these passions because he shares them
himself. In aristocracies, he tried to sell his products very expensively to a
few; now he understands that there would be a more expedient means to
become rich, it would be to sell his products inexpensively to all [<for he
begins to discover that a small prot that is repeated every day would be
preferable to a considerable gain that you can expect only rarely.>
That sets his mind on a new path. He no longer tries to make the best
possible but at the lowest price.].
Now, there are only two ways to arrive at lowering the price of mer-
chandise.
The rst is to nd better, shorter and more skillful means of producing
it.
e
The second is to fabricate ingreater quantity objects more or less similar,
but of less value. Among democratic peoples, all the intellectual abilities
of the worker are directed toward these two ends.
He tries hard to invent procedures that allow him to work, not only
better, but faster andat less cost, andif he cannot manage todoso, toreduce
the intrinsic qualities of the thing that he is making without making it
entirely inappropriate to its intended use. When only the rich had watches,
e. Democracy leads toward the useful arts not so much because it decreases the num-
ber of those who could have demands to make on the ne arts as because it takes away
from the latter even the taste to seek the beautiful in the arts (in rubish of the chap-
ters on the arts, Rubish, 1).
nearly all were excellent. Now hardly any are made that are not mediocre,
but everyone has them. Thus, democracy not only tends to direct the hu-
man mind toward the useful arts, it leads artisans to make many imperfect
things very rapidly, and leads the consumer to content himself with these
things.
It isnt that in democracies art is not capable, as needed, of producing
marvels. That is revealed sometimes, when buyers arise who agree to pay
for time and effort. In this struggle of all the industries, amid this immense
competition and these innumerable trials, excellent workers are formed
who get to the furthest limits of their profession. But the latter rarely have
the opportunity to show what they know how to do; they carefully mod-
erate their efforts. They stay withina skillful mediocrity that is self-assessing
and that, able to go beyond the goal that it sets for itself, aims only for the
goal that it attains. In aristocracies, in contrast, workers always do all that
they know how to do, and, when they stop, it is because they are at the
limit of their knowledge.
When I arrive in a country and I see the arts provide some admirable
products, that teaches me nothing about the social state and political con-
stitution of the country.
f
But if I notice that the products of the arts there
f. That the perfection of certain products of the arts is not a proof of civilization./
The Mexicans that Cortes conquered so easily had reached a high degree of per-
fection in the manufacture of cotton. Their fabrics and the colors with which they
covered them were admirable, p. 64.
In India cotton fabrics and particularly muslins have always been made and are
still made whose softness, brilliance, and toughness, Europeans, with all the perfec-
tion of their arts, are still not able to imitate, p. 61.
India, however, is still in a state of semi-barbarism.
The fact is that the perfectionof anisolatedart proves nothing, onlythat thepeople
who cultivate it have emerged from the state of a hunting or pastoral people. In this
state nothing can be perfected.
Another curious fact that Baines book provides me with is that the beautiful mus-
lins of Dana were in all their splendor only while India had kings and an aristocracy.
They have been in decline since, because of a lack of orders, p. 61 (Rubish, 1).
Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London: H. Fisher,
R. Fisher and P. Jackson, 1835). Reprinted in New York by Augustus M. Kelly, 1966
(Reprints of Economics Classics).
are generally imperfect, in very great number and at a low price, I am
sure that, among the people where this is occurring, privileges are becom-
ing weak, and the classes are beginning to mingle and are soon going to
blend.
g
Artisans who live indemocratic centuries not only seektoput their useful
products in the reach of all citizens, they also try hard to give all their prod-
ucts shining qualities that the latter do not have.
In the confusion of all classes, each man hopes to be able to appear to
be what he isnt and devotes great efforts to succeeding in doing so. De-
mocracy does not give birth to this sentiment, which is only too natural to
the heart of man; but it applies it to material things. The hypocrisy of virtue
exists in all times; that of luxury belongs more particularly to democratic
centuries.
In order to satisfy these new needs of human vanity, there is no impos-
ture to which the arts do not resort; industry sometimes goes so far in this
direction that it ends by harming itself. The diamond has already been so
perfectly imitated that it is easy to make a mistake. Once the art of pro-
ducing false diamonds has been invented so that you can no longer distin-
guish false from true ones, both will probably be abandoned, and they will
again become stones.
This leads me to talk about those arts that are called, par excellence, the
ne arts.
I do not believe that the necessary effect of the democratic social state
and democratic institutions is to decrease the number of menwhocultivate
the ne arts. [];
but these causes powerfully inuence the manner in which they are culti-
vated. Since most of those who had already contracted the taste for the ne
arts have become poor, and, on the other hand, many of those who are
not yet rich have begun, by imitation, to conceive the taste for the ne
arts, the quantity of consumers in general increases, and very rich and
g. So democracy draws a multitude of mediocre products from the arts, but these
products are sufcient for the well-being of a multitude of our fellows, while more per-
fect works would serve only a small number (in rubish of the chapters on the
arts, Rubish, 1).
very rened consumers become more rare. Something analogous to what
I already demonstrated when I talked about the useful arts then occurs in
the ne arts. They multiply their works and reduce the merit of each one
of them.
No longer able to aim at the great, you seek the elegant and the pretty;
you tend less to reality than to appearance.
In aristocracies you do a few great paintings, and, in democratic coun-
tries, a multitude of small pictures. In the rst, you raise bronze statues,
and, in the second, you cast plaster statues.
When I arrived for the rst time in New York by the part of the Atlantic
Ocean called the East River, I was surprised to notice, along the river bank,
at some distance from the city, a certain number of small palaces of white
marble,
h
several of which were of a classical architecture; the next day, able
to consider more closely the one that had particularly attracted my atten-
tion, I found that its walls were of white-washed brick and its columns of
painted wood. It was the same for all the buildings that I had admired the
day before.
The democratic social state and democratic institutions give as well, to
all the imitative arts, certain particular tendencies that are easy to point out.
[<I know that here I am going back to ideas that I have already had the
occasion to explain in relation to poetry, but the fault is due less to me than
to the subject that I amtreating. I amtalking about manandmanis a simple
being, whatever effort is made to split him up in order to know him better.
It is always the same individual that you envisage in various lights. All that
I can do is only to point out the result here, leaving to the memory of the
reader the trouble of going back to the causes.>]
j
They often divert them
from portraying the soul in order to attach them only to portraying the
h. . . . an incredible multitude of country houses, as large as little boxes but as care-
fully worked . . . I was so struck by how comfortable these small houses had to be and
by the good effect that they produced on the landscape, that I will try to obtainthe design
or the plan of one or two of the prettiest ones. Perhaps E
milie would make use of it for

Nacqueville. I already know that they are not expensive. (Extract of the letter from
Tocqueville to his mother, of 26 April19 May 1831, YTC, BIa2.) Pocket notebook 1 in
fact contains the plan of one of these houses (YTC, BIIa, pp. 23).
j. In the margin: To delete if I put this piece before poetry.
body; and they substitute the representation of movements and sensations
for that of sentiments and ideas; in the place of the ideal, nally, they put
the real.
I doubt that Raphael made as profound a study of the slightest mech-
anisms of the human body as the artists of today. He did not attribute the
same importance as they to rigorous exactitude onthis point, for he claimed
to surpass nature. He wanted to make man something that was superior to
man; he undertook to embellish beauty itself.
David and his students were, onthe contrary, as goodanatomists as pain-
ters. They represented marvelously well the models that they had before
their eyes, but rarely did they imagine anything beyond; they followed na-
ture exactly, while Raphael sought something better than nature. They left
us an exact portrait of man, but the rst gave us a glimpse of divinity in
his works.
You can apply to the very choice of subject what I said about the manner
of treating it.
The painters of the Renaissance usually looked above themselves, or far
from their time, for great subjects that left a vast scope to their imagination.
Our painters often lend their talent to reproducing exactly the details of
the private life that they have constantly before their eyes, and on all sides
they copy small objects that have only too many originals in nature.
k
k. They hasten [to (ed.)] depict battles before the dead are buried and they enjoy
exposing to our view scenes that we witness every day.
I do not know when people will tire of comparing the democracy of our time with
what bore the same name inantiquity. The differences betweenthese twothings reveal
themselves at every turn. For me, I do not need to think about slavery or other reasons
that lead me to regard the Greeks as very aristocratic nations despite some democratic
institutions that are found in their midst. I agree not to open Aristotle to nish per-
suading me. It is enough for me to contemplate the statues that these peoples have
left. I cannot believe that the man who made the Belvedere Apollo emerge frommar-
ble worked in a democracy.
[In the margin. Next to the last paragraph.] To delete. That I think raises useless
objections (in the rubish of the chapter that follows, Rubish, 1).
For his part, Beaumont hadwritten: There exists, inthe UnitedStates, a type of painting
that prospers: these are portraits; it is not the love of art, it is self-love (Marie, I, p. 254).
796
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 2
a
Why the Americans Erect Such Small and
Such Large Monuments at the Same Time
I have just said that, in democratic centuries, the monuments of art tended
to become more numerous and smaller. I hasten to point out the exception
to this rule.
Among democratic peoples, individuals are very weak; but the State,
which represents them all and holds them all in its hand, is very strong.
b
Nowhere do citizens appear smaller than in a democratic nation. Nowhere
does the nation itself seem greater and nowhere does the mind more easily
form a vast picture of it. In democratic societies, the imagination of men
narrows when they consider themselves; it expands indenitely when they
think about the State. The result is that the same men who live meanly in
cramped dwellings often aim at the gigantic as soon as it is a matter of
public monuments.
c
a. 1. In democratic societies, individuals are very weak, but the State is very great.
The imagination narrows when you think about yourself; it expands immeasurably
when you turn your attention to the State.
In those societies, you see a small number of very small monuments and a mul-
titude of very large ones.
Example of the Americans proves it.
2. Nor do large monuments prove anything about the prosperity, the enlighten-
ment and the real greatness of the nation.
Example of the Mexicans and the Romans shows it (YTC, CVf, pp. 1314).
b. In a note: It is their very weakness that makes its strength . . .
A piece from ambition could go well there.
c. In democracies the State must take charge of large and costly works not only
because these large works are beautiful, but also in order to sustain the taste for what is
great and for perfection (in rubish of the chapters on the arts, Rubish, 1).
s mall and large monuments 797
The Americans have laid out on the site that they wanted to make into
the capital the limits of an immense city that, still today, is hardly more
populated than Pontoise, but that, according to them, should one day con-
tain a million inhabitants; already they have uprooted trees for ten leagues
around, for fear that they might happentoinconvenience the futurecitizens
of this imaginary metropolis. They have erected, in the center of the city,
a magnicent palace to serve as the seat of Congress, and they have given
it the pompous name of the Capitol.
Every day, the particular states themselves conceive and execute prodi-
gious undertakings that would astonish the genius of the great nations of
Europe.
Thus, democracy does not lead men only to make a multitude of petty
works; it also leads them to erect a small number of very large monuments.
But between these two extremes there is nothing. So a few scattered rem-
nants of very vast structures tell nothing about the social state and insti-
tutions of the people who erected them.
I add, although it goes beyond my subject, that they do not reveal their
greatness, their enlightenment and their real prosperity any better.
Whenever a power of whatever kind is capable of making an entire peo-
ple work toward a sole undertaking, it will succeed with little knowledge
and a great deal of time in drawing something immense from the combi-
In Beaumonts papers you nd this note drafted during the journey that they made
together to England in 1835:
Aristocracy. Democracy.
Public institutions./
One thing strikes me when I examine the public institutions in England: it is the
extreme luxury of their construction and maintenance. In the United States I saw
the government of democracy do most of its institutions with an extreme economy.
Example: prisons, hospitals. It seems to me that these institutions cannot be done
more cheaply. In England it is entirely the opposite: the government or the admin-
istration appears to try to construct everything at the greatest possible expense. What
magnicence in the construction of Milbank! What luxury in the slightest details!!
20 million francs spent to hold 2,000 prisoners! And Beldlan [Bedlam (ed.)]! for 250
of the insane, 2 million 500 thousand francs (cost of construction), 200,000 pounds
sterling. Isnt it the spirit of aristocracies to do everything with grandeur, withluxury,
with splendor, and with great expenditures! And Greenwich! And Chelsea!
(14 May [1835], London) (YTC, Beaumont, CX).
nation of such great efforts; you do not have to conclude from that that
the people is very happy, very enlightenedor evenvery strong.
d
TheSpanish
found the city of Mexico full of magnicent temples and vast palaces; this
did not prevent Cortez fromconquering the MexicanEmpire withsix hun-
dred foot soldiers and sixteen horses.
If the Romans had known the laws of hydraulics better, they would not
have erected all these aqueducts that surround the ruins of their cities; they
would have made better use of their power and their wealth. If they had
discovered the steam engine, perhaps they would not have extended to the
extreme limits of their empire those long articial stone lines that are called
roman roads.
These things are magnicent witnesses to their ignorance at the same
time as to their grandeur.
d. Many men judge the state of the civilization of a people by its monuments, that
is a very uncertain measure.
I will admit that it proves that these peoples were more aristocratic, but not that
they were more civilized and greater.
Ruins of Palenque in Mexico. Mexicans who still knew only hieroglyphic writing
and vanquished so easily by the Spanish (Rubish of the previous chapter, Rubish, 1).
In 1845, concerning French monuments, Tocqueville made the following reection
to his friend Milnes:
France has the appearance of noticing since only ten years ago, that it is still covered
with masterpieces of the Middle Ages. The idea of repairing them, of completing
them, of preserving them above all from complete ruin preoccupies a great number
of cities, several of which have already made great sacrices. Do not conclude from
it that society is returning to old ideas and institutions. It is the sign of precisely the
opposite. Nothing indicates better that the Revolution is nished and that the old
society is dead. As long as the war between the old France and the new France pre-
sented for the rst the least chance of success, the nation treated the monuments of
the Middle Ages like adversaries; it destroyed them or left them to perish; it saw in
them only the physical representation of the doctrines, beliefs, mores and laws that
were hostile to it. In the middle of this preoccupation, it did not even notice their
beauty. It is because it no longer fears anything from what they represent that it is
attached to them as if to great works of art and to curious remnants of a time that
no longer exists. The archeologist has replaced the party man (Paris, letter of 14 April
1845. With the kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge. Houghton papers,
25/201).
People who would leave no other traces of their passage than a few lead
pipes in the earth and a few iron rods on its surface could have been more
masters of nature than the Romans.
e
e. The rubish continues:
Large monuments belong to the middle state of civilization rather than to a very
advanced civilization. Man ordinarily erects themwhen his thoughts are alreadygreat
and his knowledge is still limited and when he does not yet know how to satisfy it
except at great expense.
On the other hand, the ruins of a few large monuments cannot teach us if the
social state of the people who erected them was aristocratic or democratic since we
have just seen that democracy happens to build similar ones.
In the rough drafts of the previous chapter: They [large monuments (ed.)] are the
product of centralization. Here introduce the thought that centralization is not at all the
sign of high civilization. It is found neither at the beginning nor at the endof civilization,
but in general at the middle (rubish of chapters on the arts, Rubish, 1).
And in another place in the same jacket: Large monuments prove nothing but the
destruction of large monuments proves. Warwick castle, aristocratic. Cherbourgseawall,
democratic (rubish of the previous chapter. Rubish, 1). It was during his stay in England
in 1833 that Tocqueville visited the ruins of Warwick castle, setting for Kenilworth of
Walter Scott. To his future wife, Mary Mottley, he sent a short account of his visit entitled
Visit to Kenilworth (YTC, CXIb, 12, reproduced in OCB, VII, pp. 11619).
800
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 3
a
Literary Physiognomy of Democratic Centuries
When you enter the shop of a bookstore in the United States, and when
you go over the American books that ll their shelves, the number of works
appears very large, while that of known authors seems in contrast very
small.
b
a. 1. The Americans do not have literature so to speak. All their literary works come
to them from England, or are written according to English taste.
2. This is due to particular and temporary causes and must not prevent us from
searching for what the literature natural to democracy is.
3. All ranks are marked and men immobile in their places, literary life like political
existence is concentrated in an upper class. From that xed rules, traditional literary
habits, art, delicacy, nished details, taste for style, for form . . .
4. When ranks are mixed, menof talent andwriters have diverse origins, a different
education, they constantly change, only a little time can be given to the pleasures of
the mind. . . . From that, absence of rules, scorn for style, rapidity, fertility, liberty.
5. There is a moment when the literary genius of democracy andthat of aristocracy
join, short and brilliant period, French literature of the XVIIIth century (YTC, CVf,
pp. 1415).
b. In the Rubish, under the title influence of democracy on literature, the
chapter begins in this way: I am speaking about America and America does not yet
so to speak have literature, but the subject attracts me and holds me. I cannot pass by
without stopping. When you enter . . . (Rubish, 1).
Another title of the chapter, still in the Rubish, was this one: general ideas on
the effect produced by equality on literature. The initial plan of Tocque-
ville probably included this sole chapter that, becoming too long, was subsequently di-
vided. The rough drafts of this chapter and of those that follow, up to chapter 18, are
found in several jackets; the contents do not always coincide with the title.
The reections of Tocqueville on literature have given rise to various commentaries:
Katherine Harrison, A French Forecast of American Literature, South Atlantic Quar-
li terary phys i ognomy 801
First you nd a multitude of elementary treatises intended to give the
rst notion of human knowledge. Most of these works were written in
Europe. The Americans reprint them while adapting them to their use.
Next comes a nearly innumerable quantity of books on religion, Bibles,
sermons, pious stories, controversies, accounts of charitable institutions.
Finally appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets: in America, par-
ties, to combat each other, do not write books, but brochures that circulate
with an unbelievable rapidity, live for a day and die.
c
terly 25, no. 4 (1926): 35056; Donald D. Kummings, The Poetry of Democracies:
Tocquevilles Aristocratic Views, Comparative Literature Studies 11, no. 4 (1974): 306
19; Reino Virtanen, Tocqueville on a Democratic Literature, French Review 23, no. 3
(1950): 21422; Paul West, Literature and Politics. Tocqueville on the Literature of De-
mocracies, Essays in Criticism 12, no. 3 (1972): 520; Francoise Melonio and Jose-Luis
D az, editors, Tocqueville et la litte rature (Paris: Presses de lUniversite Paris-Sorbonne,
2005).
c. For these statistical details look in Beaumont (Rubish, 1).
Cf. Marie, I, pp. 23858. Beaumont always showed a more intense interest than
Tocqueville in literature. At the time of their voyage in England in 1835, it is Beaumont
who questioned J. S. Mill on the relationship between literature and democracy.
Literature./
Democracy./
Conversation with John Mill, 18 June 1835. London./
Question. Up to now I consider democracy as favorable to the material well-being
of the greatest number, and from this perspective I am a partisan of it. But a shadow
exists in my mind; a doubt troubles me. I do not know if the tendency of democracy
is not anti-intellectual; it gives to the greatest number physical well-being; up to a
certain point it is even a source of morality for all those whose condition it renders
middling, either by destroying great wealth, which corrupts, or by bringing an end
to great poverty, which degrades and debases; it also spreads more general, more uni-
form instruction. There are its benets; but to what point is it not contrary to the
taste for literature, to the development of the advanced sciences, to speculative stud-
ies, to intellectual meditations? In order to devote oneself to the love of literature
and the pleasures of the mind, leisure is necessary, and who possesses leisure if not
the rich? The man who works to live, does he nd the leisure to think? Does he have
the time, the taste and the ability for it? Isnt it to be feared that at the same time that
common instruction spreads among the greatest number, advanced instruction will
be abandoned, that the taste for literature will be lost, and that only useful books will
be read? that no one will be interested in theories and speculation? that you will think
only of application, and no longer of invention?
Amid all of these obscure productions of the human mind appear the
more remarkable works of only a small number of authors who are known
by Europeans or who should be.
d
Answer. I believe that the tendency of democracy is diametrically opposed to the
fear that you express. Here we see, as an argument in favor of democracy, the impulse
that it gives to the taste for letters and intellectual things. It is true that as democracy
spreads, the number of those who work in order to exist increases; at the same time
the number of persons with leisure decreases. But it is precisely on this fact that we
base our belief. We consider it as a fact established by experience that the men who
work the most are those who read and think more; while idle men neither read nor
think. The man who does nothing and whose whole life is leisure rarely nds the time
to do anything. For him, reading is a trial, and three quarters and a half of the rich
do not read a volume a year; they are moreover constantly busy with little nothings,
withsmall interests of luxury, dress, horses, wealth, frivolous cares that aredistractions
rather than occupations. For them it is such a great difculty to expand their mind
for a single instant that writing the least letter seems a trial, reading the least work is
an onerous burden (YTC, Beaumont, CX).
d. <These are the works of Mr. Irving, the novels of Mr. Cooper, the eloquent
treatises of Doctor Channing> (Rubish, 1).
Unpublished travel note from small notebook A:
Books interesting and good to buy:
1. Stories of American Life, by American Writers, edited by Mary Russell Mitford
(Colburn and Bentley: London, 1831), 3 vols. A worthwhile review is given in West-
minster Review, April 1831, page 395. They include portrayals of three types: 1. His-
torical life or life sixty years ago. 2. Border life that is the life of the outer settlements.
3. City life which embraces pictures of masses as they exist at this moment in New
York, Philadelphia and the great towns (small notebook A, YTC, BIIa).
Tocqueville does not appear to have read this book.
Tocqueville and Beaumont would have been able to have a conversation with the
writer Catherine Maria Sedgwick, of whom they had heard a great deal spoken. But,
impatient to reach Boston, they just missed her at Stockbridge (George W. Pierson,
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 34950). Tocqueville seems to have read the
letters of Cooper. In travel notebook E, you read: Find Coopers letters (YTC, BIIa,
different reading in Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 65). It probably concerns James Fenimore
Cooper, Notions of the Americans; Picked Up By a Travelling Bachelor (London: Henry
Colburn, 1828), 2 vols.
In an unpublished note (alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa) you nd the following
list: Living American writers: VerplankPauldingHallStoneNealBarker
WillisMiss Sedgwick. It concerns the authors who are included in the book edited
by Mary Russell Mitford, and who are cited in the preface of the work.
Although today America is perhaps the civilized country in which there
is least involvement with literature,
e
a large number of individuals is found
there who are interested in things of the mind and who make them, if not
their whole lifes work, at least the attraction of their leisure. But it is En-
gland that provides to the latter most of the books that they demand.
f
Nearly all of the great English works are reproduced in the United States.
The literary genius of Great Britain still shines its light into the depths of
the forests of the New World. There is scarcely a pioneers cabin where you
do not nd a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I recall having read for the
rst time the feudal drama of Henry V in a log house.
g
In Marie (I, pp. 39293) Beaumont cites the following American authors: Miss Sedg-
wick, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Jared Sparks, Robert Walsh, Edward
Livingston, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, EdwardEverett, andWilliamElleryChanning.
Reino Virtanen has suggested that Channings Remarks on National Literature perhaps
inuenced the writing of these chapters on literature. See concerning Channing, Reino
Virtanen, Tocqueville and William Ellery Channing, American Literature, 22, 1951,
pp. 2128; and Tocqueville and the Romantics, Symposium 13, no. 2 (1959): 16785.
William Ellery Channing, The Importance and Means of a National Literature (Edin-
burgh: Thomas Clark, 1835), 31 pages, claims that the United States does not yet have
literature and proposes means to create one.
Tocqueville could as well have been inuenced by an article by Philare`te Chasles,
published under the title De la litterature dans lAmerique du Nord, which appeared
in the Revue des deux mondes, volume III, 1835, pp. 169202.
e. The Americans are in the most unfavorable position for having a literature. Anew
people that each day nds at its disposal the literary works of an ancient people./
Democracy produces a host of bad works; but it does not prevent good ones (Rub-
ish, 1).
f. Look in all the dictionaries for democracy, you will not nd there the word eru-
dition (Rubish, 1).
g. I remember that one day, the pioneer was absent, and while awaiting his return, I
took one of these volumes, isolated product of a genius of another hemisphere. Hav-
ing opened it by chance, I fell upon the rst part of the drama of Henry V [v: VI].
Time andthe overly active curiosity of my hosts hadalmost destroyedthe rest. During
this reading I soon lost sight of the sentiment [of (ed.)] all that surrounded me and
all the great characters evoked by the poet arose little by little around me. I thought
I saw them with their language, their beliefs, their passions, their prejudices, their
virtues and their vices.
All the memories of the heroic times of our history assailed me at the same time;
Not only do the Americans go each day to draw upon the treasures of
Englishliterature, but alsoyoucantruthfully say that they ndtheliterature
of England on their own soil.
h
Among the small number of men who are
busy in the United States composing works of literature, most are English
in content and above all in form. In this way they carry to the middle of
democracy the ideas and the literary practices that are current within the
aristocratic nation that they have taken as a model. They paint with colors
borrowed from foreign mores; almost never representing in its reality the
country where they were born, they are rarely popular there.
my imagination lled suddenly with the pomp of feudal society; I saw high turrets,
a thousand banners waving in the air; I heard the sound of armor, the burst of clar-
ions, the heavy step of caparisoned war horses. I contemplated for a moment all this
mixture of misery and wealth, of strength and weakness, of inequality and grandeur
that marked the Middle Ages, and then I opened my eyes and sawmyself in my small
log cabin built yesterday in the middle of a owering wilderness that recalled the rst
days of the world and was inhabited by the descendants of these same Europeans
who had become the obscure and peaceful citizens of a democratic republic. I felt
gripped, passing my viewalternately over these two extreme points of humandestiny
that I had before me. I was astonished by the immense space that stretched between
[them (ed.)] and that humanity had had to cover.
Do you desire to see in all their clarity the extreme mobility andthe strange detours
of human destiny? Do you want, in a way, to see the raging and irresistible torrent
of time owbefore your eyes? Go sit downnext to the hearthof the Americanpioneer
and there read Shakespeare in the shadow of the virgin forest.
[In the margin] Read the books of Mr. Irving [that (ed.)] have all the merits and
all the defects of a translation (Rubish, 1).
h. In a rst version:
<Mr. Fenimore Cooper borrowed his principal scenes from wild nature and not
from democratic forms. He portrayed America as it no longer is, with colors foreign
to the America of today. Mr. W. Irving is English in content as well as in form; he
excels at representing with nesse and grace scenes borrowed fromthe aristocratic life
of England. He is happy amid old feudal ruins and never borrows> anything from
the country where he was born. The writers I am speaking about, despite their talent
and the quarrelsome patriotism that they often try to use to enhance their efforts in
the eyes of their fellow citizens, do not excite more real sympathies in the United
States than if they were born in England. Thus, they live as little as they can in the
country that they praise to us, and in order to enjoy their glory they come to Europe
(Rubish, 1).
[Read the books of Mr. W. Irving; there you will only nd soft and pale
reections of a re that is no longer seen and no longer felt {there you will
nd the qualities and the defects of a translation}].
The citizens of the United States themselves seem so convinced that
books are not published for them, that before settling on the merit of one
of their writers, they ordinarily wait for him to have been appreciated in
England. This is how, in the case of paintings, you willingly leave to the
author of the original the right to judge the copy.
j
So the inhabitants of the United States do not yet have, strictlyspeaking,
literature. The only authors that I recognize as Americans are journalists.
The latter are not great writers, but they speak the language of the country
and make themselves heard. I see only foreigners in the others. They are
for the Americans what the imitators of the Greeks and the Romans were
for us in the period of the renaissance of letters, an object of curiosity, not
generally speaking of sympathy. They amuse the mind [<of a few>] and
do not act on the mores [<of all>].
I have already said that this state of things was very far from being due
only to democracy, and that it was necessary to look for the causes inseveral
particular circumstances independent of democracy.
If the Americans, while still keeping their social state and their laws, had
another origin and found themselves transported to another country, I do
not doubt that they would have a literature. As they are, I am sure that in
the end they will have one; but it will have a character different from the
one that shows itself in the American writings of today, one that will be its
own. It is not impossible to sketch this character in advance.
I suppose anaristocratic people among whomletters are cultivated[some
of this type are found in the world]; the works of the mind, as well as the
affairs of government, are regulated there by a sovereign class. Literary life,
j. First version: America is moreover, taken in mass and despite its efforts to appear
independent, still in relation to Europe in the position of a secondary city relative to the
capital, and you notice, in its smallest ways of acting, this mixture of pride and servility
that is nearly always found in the conduct of the provinces vis-a`-vis their capital (Rub-
ish, 1).
like political existence, is concentratednearly entirely inthis class or inthose
closest to it. This is enough for me to have the key to all the rest.
When a small number of always the same men are involved at the same
time inthe same matters, they easily agree anddecide incommononcertain
principal rules that must guide each one of them. If the matter that attracts
their attention is literature, the works of the mind will soon be subjected
by them to a few precise laws that you will no longer be allowed to avoid.
If these men occupy a hereditary position in the country, they will nat-
urally be inclined not only to adopt a certain number of xed rules for
themselves, but also to follow those that their ancestors imposed on them-
selves; their set of laws will be rigorous and traditional at the same time.
Since they are not necessarily preoccupied with material things, since
they have never been so, and since their fathers were not either, they were
able over several generations to take an interest in works of the mind. They
understood literary art and in the end they love it for itself and take a
learned pleasure in seeing that you conform to it.
That is still not all; the men I am speaking about began their life and
nish it in comfort or in wealth; so they have naturally conceived the taste
for studied enjoyments and the love of rened and delicate pleasures.
In addition, a certain softness of mind and heart that they oftencontract
amid this long and peaceful use of so many worldly goods, leads them to
avoid in their very pleasures whatever could be found too unexpected and
too intense. They prefer to be amused than to be intensely moved; they
want to be interested, but not carried away.
k
k. Do you want to clarify my thought by examples? Compare modern literature to
that of antiquity.
What fertility, what boldness, what variety in our writings! What wisdom, what
art, what perfection, what nish in those of the Greeks and Romans!
What causes the difference? I think of the large number of slaves who existed
among the ancients, of the small number of masters, of the concentration of power
and wealth in a few hands. This begins to enlighten me, but does not yet satisfy me,
for the same causes are more or less found among us. Some more powerful reason is
necessary. I discover it nally in the rarity and expense of books and the extreme
difculty of reproducing and circulating them. Circumstances, coming to concen-
Now imagine a great number of literary works executed by the men I
have just described or for them, and you will easily conceive of a literature
where everything is regulated and coordinated in advance. The least work
will be meticulous in its smallest details; art and work will be seen in ev-
erything; each genre will have particular rules that it will not be free to
depart from and that will isolate it from all the others.
The style will seem almost as important as the idea, form as content; the
tone will be polished, moderate, elevated. The mind will always have a no-
ble bearing, rarely a brisk pace, and writers will be more attached to per-
fection than to production.
It will sometimes happen that the members of the lettered class, since
they live only with each other and write only for themselves, will entirely
lose sight of the rest of the world; this will throw them into the affected
and the false; they will make small literary rules for their sole use, which
will imperceptibly turn them away from good sense and nally take them
away from nature.
By dint of wanting to speak in a way other than common they attain a
sort of aristocratic jargon
m
that is hardly less removed from ne language
than the dialect of the people.
Those are the natural pitfalls of literature in aristocracies.
Every aristocracy that sets itself entirely apart from the people becomes
powerless. That is true in letters as well as in politics.
1
trate the taste for pleasures of the mind ina very small number, formeda small literary
aristocracy of the elite within a large political aristocracy (Rubish, 1).
m. Note in the manuscript: Language of Bensserade and of Voiture. Hotel de Ram-
bouillet. Novel of Scudery.
Some affected.
Others coarse. Tocqueville had probably read P. L. Rderer, Me moire pour servir a`
lhistoire de la socie te polie en France (Paris: Firmin Didot Fre`res, 1835).
1. All of this is true above all in aristocratic countries that have been subject to the power
of a king for a long time and peacefully.
When liberty reigns in an aristocracy, the upper classes are constantly obliged to make use
of the lower ones; and, by using them, they become closer to them. That often makes something
of the democratic spirit penetrate within them. Moreover, among a privileged corps that gov-
erns, there develops an energy and habit of enterprise, a taste for movement and noise, that
cannot fail to inuence all literary works.
Now let us turn the picture around and consider the reverse side.
Let us take ourselves toa democracy whose ancient traditions andpresent
enlightenment make it sensitive to the enjoyments of the mind. Ranks are
mixed and confused; knowledge like power is innitely divided and, if I
dare say so, scattered in all directions.
Here is a confused crowd with intellectual needs to satisfy. These new
amateurs of the pleasures of the mind have not all received the same edu-
cation; they do not possess the same enlightenment, they do not resemble
their fathers, and at every instant they differ from themselves; for they are
constantly changing place, sentiments and fortune. So the mind of each
one of them is not linked with that of all the others by common traditions
and habits, and they have never had either the power, or the will, or the
time to agree among themselves.
It is, however, from within this incoherent and agitated multitude that
authors arise, and it is this multitude that distributes prots and glory to
the latter.
It is not difcult for me to understand that, things being so, I must
expect to nd in the literature of such a people only a small number of
those rigorous conventions that readers and writers recognize in aristo-
cratic centuries. If it happened that the men of one period fell into agree-
ment on a few, that would still prove nothing for the following period for,
among democratic nations, each new generation is a new people. So
among these nations, letters can be subjected to strict rules only with dif-
culty, and it is nearly impossible that they might ever be subjected to
permanent rules.
In democracies, all the men who occupy themselves with literature are
far from having received a literary education, and, of those among them
able to have some smattering of literature, most follow a political career or
embrace a profession from which they can turn away only for moments to
sample surreptitiously the pleasures of the mind. So they do not make these
pleasures the principal charm of their existence; but they consider them as
a temporary and necessary relaxation amid the serious work of life. Such
men can never acquire sufciently advanced knowledge of literary art to
sense its niceties; the small nuances escape them. Having only a very short
time to give to letters, they want to turn it entirely to account. They love
books that can be obtained without difculty, that are quickly read, that
do not require learned research to be understood. They demand easy things
of beauty that reveal themselves and that can be enjoyed at once; above all
they must have the unexpected and the new. Accustomed to a practical,
contentious, monotonous existence, they need intense andrapidemotions,
sudden insights, striking truths or errors that immediately draw them out
of themselves and introduce them suddenly and as if by violence into the
middle of the subject.
n
What more do I need to say about it? And, without my explaining it,
who does not understand what is about to follow?
Taken as a whole, the literature of democratic centuries cannot present,
as in the time of aristocracy, the image of order, regularity, science and art;
form will ordinarily be neglected and sometimes scorned. Style will often
appear bizarre, incorrect, overdone and dull, and almost always bold and
vehement. Authors will aim for rapidity of execution rather than for per-
fectionof details. Short writings will be more frequent thanbigbooks, spirit
more frequent than erudition, imagination more frequent than depth. A
rough and almost wild strength of thought will reign, and often there will
be a very great variety and singular fertility in production. They will try to
astonish rather than please, and will strive more to carry passions away than
to charm taste.
o
Writers will undoubtedly be found here and there who would like to
take another path, and, if they have superior merit, they will succeed in
being read, despite their faults and qualities. But these exceptions will be
n. Metaphysics. Perhaps mystical by spirit of reaction (Rubish, 1).
o. In the manuscript:
<Per[haps (ed.)] here piece B while removing what I say about style a few lines
higher?>
B. Men who live in aristocracies have for style, as in general for all forms, a su-
perstitious respect and an exaggerated love. It happens that they value experience and
turns of phrase as much as thought. Those who live in democratic countries are on
the contrary led to neglect style too much. Sometimes they show an imprudent scorn
for it. There are some of them who think themselves philosophers in that and who
are often nothing but coarse ignoramuses.
rare, and even those who, in the whole of their work, depart in this way
from common practice, will always return to it in some details.
p
I have just portrayed two extreme states; but nations do not go suddenly
from the rst to the second; they arrive there only gradually and through
innite nuances. During the passage that leads a lettered people from one
to the other, a moment almost always occurs when as the literary genius of
democracies meets that of aristocracies, bothseemtowant toreigninagree-
ment over the human mind.
Those are transient, but very brilliant periods:
q
then you have fertility
without exuberance, and movement without confusion [liberty in order].
Such was French literature of the XVIIIth century.
r
p. Irving is a model of aristocratic graces.
Irving must not be considered as an image of democratic literature, but his great
success inAmerica proves that democracies themselves are sensitive togreat literarymerit,
whatever it may be (Rubish, 1).
In another place:
The success of Mr. W. Irving inthe UnitedStates is a proof of this. I knowof nothing
more rm and more gracious than the spirit of this author. Nothing more polished
than his works. They form a collection of small tableaux painted with an innite [v:
admirable] delicacy. Not only has this particular merit not prevented Mr. Irving from
gaining a great reputation in America, but evidently he owes it to this merit alone,
for it would be difcult to nd any other one in him (Rubish, 1).
q. The most favorable moment for the development of the sciences, of literature
and of the arts is when democracy begins to burst into the midst of anaristocraticsociety.
Then you have movement amid order. Then humanity moves very rapidly, but like an
army in battle, without breaking ranks and without discipline losing anything to ardor
(Rubish, 1).
r. In a letter of 31 July 1834 intended for Charles Stoffels and devoted to literature,
Tocqueville formulated the following remarks concerning style:
Buffon assuredly said something false when he claimed that style was the whole man,
but certainly style makes a great part of the man. Showme books that have remained,
having as sole merit the ideas that they contained. They are few. I do not even know
of an example to cite, if not perhaps a few books whose style was of an extreme
simplicity; this negative defect does not repulse the reader in an absolute way like the
opposite vice. You nd that the principal quality of style is to paint objects and to
make them perceptible to the imagination. I am of the same opinion, but the dif-
culty is not seeing the goal but attaining it. It is this very desire to put the thought
in relief that preoccupies all those who are involved in writing today and that makes
most of them fall into such great extravagances. Without having myself a style that
satises me in any way, I have however studied a great deal and meditated for a long
time about the style of others, and I am persuaded of what I am about to say to you.
There is in the great French writers, whatever the period from which you take them,
a certain characteristic turn of thought, a certain way of seizing the attention of
readers that belongs to each of them. I believe that you come to the world with this
particular character; or at least I admit that I see no way to acquire it; for if you want
to imitate the particular technique of an author, you fall into what painters call pas-
tiches; and if you do not want to imitate anyone, you are colorless. But there is a
quality common to all writers; it serves in a way as the basis of their style; it is on this
foundation that they each then place their own colors. This quality is quite simply
good sense. Study all the writers left to us by the century of Louis XIV, that of Louis
XV, and the great writers from the beginning of ours, such as Madame de Stael and
M. de Chateaubriand, and you will nd among all good sense as the base. So what
is good sense applied to style? That would take a very long time to dene. It is the
care to present ideas in the simplest and easiest order to grasp. It is the attentiongiven
to presenting at the same time to the reader only one simple and clear point of view
whatever the diversity of the matters treated by the book, so that the thought is [not
(ed.)] so to speak on two ideas. It is the care to use words in their true sense, and as
much as possible in their most limited and most certain sense, in a way that the reader
always positively knows what object or what image you want to present to him. I
know men so clever that, if you quibble with them on the sense of a sentence, they
immediately substitute another one without so to speak changing a single word, each
of them being almost appropriate for the thing. The former men can be good dip-
lomats, but they will never be good writers. What I also call good sense applied to
style is to introduce into the illustrations only things comparable to the matter that
you want to show. This is better understood by examples. Everyone makes illustra-
tions while speaking, as M. Jourdain made prose; the illustrationis the most powerful
means to put into relief the matter that you want to make known; but still it is nec-
essary that there is some analogy with the matter, or at least that you understand
clearly what type of analogy the author wants to establish between them. When Pas-
cal, after depicting the grandeur of the universe, ends with this famous piece: The
world is an innite sphere whose circumference is everywhere and whose center is
nowhere, the soul is gripped by this image, and however gigantic the idea that it
presents, the mind conceives it at the rst stroke; the object that Pascal uses for his
comparison is familiar; the reader knows perfectly the ordinary dimensions of it and
the form; with modications made by the writer, it becomes however an admirable
object of comparison with the universe that extends without end around you like an
immense circle whose center you think you occupy wherever you go. Pascals thought
makes (illegible word) so to speak and grasps in an exact and (illegible word) fashion
what the mind itself cannot conceive. I do not knowwhy I cited this example. I could
have cited thousands of others. In the most innocent, most skillful or most delicate
ideas of great writers you always see a foundation of good sense andreasonthat forms
the base. I have allowed myself to go on speaking about this part of style more than
I would go beyond my thought, if I said that the literature of a nation
is always subordinated to its social state and political constitution. I
know that, apart from these causes, there are several others that give cer-
tain characteristics to literary works; but the former seem to me the prin-
cipal ones.
The connections that exist between the social and political state of a
people and the genius of its writers are always very numerous; whoever
knows the one is never completely ignorant of the other.
others because that is where most of the writers of our time err andthat is what makes
a jargon of P. L. Courrier [Courier (ed.)] be called their style. . . . If you want to write
well, you must above all read, while studying from the viewpoint of style those who
have written the best. The most useful, without comparison, seem to me to be the
prose writers of the century of Louis XIV. Not that you must imitate their turn,
which is dated, but the base of their style is admirable. There, sticking out, you nd
all the principal qualities that have distinguished good styles in all centuries (YTC,
CIc).
The ideas explained in these chapters scarcely differ from those of Chateaubriand,
Sainte-Beuve or La Harpe. Tocquevilles literary tastes always included the classics of the
XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, such as Pascal, Bossuet and Bourdaloue. In1838, his read-
ings included Rabelais, Plutarch, Cervantes, Machiavelli, Fontenelle, Saint-Evremond
and the Koran. See Charles de Grandmaison, Sejour dAlexis de Tocqueville en Tou-
raine, Correspondant, 114, 1879, p. 933; and the conversation with Senior on literature
in Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior
(London: H. S. King and Co., 1872), I, pp. 14043.
813
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 4
a
Of the Literary Industry
b
Democracy not only makes the taste for letters penetrate the industrial
classes, it introduces the industrial spirit into literature.
[In aristocratic centuries you often take literature as a career, and in the
others as a trade.]
In aristocracies, readers are particular and few; in democracies, it is less
difcult to please them, and their number is prodigious. As a result, among
aristocratic peoples, you can hope to succeed only by immense efforts, and
these efforts which can bring a great deal of glory cannot ever gain much
money; while among democratic nations, a writer can hope to obtainwith-
a. Democracy not only makes the taste for letters penetrate the industrial classes, it
introduces the industrial spirit into literature.
Since readers are very numerous and very easy to satisfy because of the absolute
need that they have for something new, you can make your fortune by constantly
producing a host of new but imperfect works. You thus easily enough attain a small
glory and a great fortune.
Democratic literatures for a small number of great writers swarm with sellers of
ideas (YTC, CVf, p. 15).
b. On the jacket of the chapter: Small chapter that seems to me too short (given its
merit) and that must, I believe, be combined or even destroyed. In the manuscript you
also nd a draft of the chapter, but no rubish exists for it. The central idea of this
chapter, as Reino Virtanen (Tocqueville and the Romantics, Symposium 13, no. 2, 1959,
p. 180) has remarked, recalls the article of Sainte-Beuve, De la litterature industrielle,
Revue des deux mondes, 19, 1839, pp. 67591. Cf. Marie, I, p. 248.
of the li terary i ndus try 814
out much cost a mediocre fame and a great fortune.
c
For that, he does not
have to be admired; it is enough that he is enjoyed.
d
The always growing crowd of readers and the continual need that they
have for something new assures the sales of a book that they hardly value.
In times of democracy, the public often acts toward authors like kings
ordinarily do toward their courtiers; it enriches them and despises them.
What more is needed for the venal souls who are born in courts, or who
are worthy to live there?
Democratic literatures always swarm with these authors who see in let-
ters only an industry,
e
and, for the few great writers that you see there, you
count sellers of ideas by the thousands.
c. In the draft: It would be very useful to know what Corneille, Racine and Voiture
gained from their works.
d. In the draft:
Not only do the Americans make fewbooks, but alsomost of their books seemwritten
solely with prot in view. You would say that in general their authors see in literature
only an industry and cultivate letters in the same spirit that they clear virgin forests.
That is easily understood.
[In the margin: This must probably be deleted, for the Americans cannot present
the image of opposites.
If in literature they are subject to the aristocratic genius of the English, as I said
previously, how can they present the vices of the literary genius of democracies?
That is not yet clear however.]/
The fault comes in the word literature. The Americans do not have literature, but
they have books and what I am saying about their books is true.
e. In the draft: Authors desire money more than in aristocratic centuries because
money is everything./
They earn money more easily because of the multitude of readers./
And the less they aim for perfection, the more of it they earn.
815
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 5
a
Why the Study of Greek and
Latin Literature Is Particularly Useful in
Democratic Societies
What was called the people in the most democratic republics of antiquity
hardly resembled what we call the people. In Athens, all citizens took part
in public affairs; but there were only twenty thousand citizens out of more
than three hundred fty thousand inhabitants; all the others were slaves
and fullled most of the functions that today belong to the people andeven
to the middle classes.
So Athens, with its universal suffrage, was, after all, only an aristocratic
republic in which all the nobles had an equal right to government.
a. 1. That the ancient societies always formed true aristocracies, despite their dem-
ocratic appearance.
2. That their literature was always in an aristocratic state, because of the rarity of
books.
3. That their authors show, in fact, very much in relief the qualities natural tothose
who write in times of aristocracy.
4. That it is therefore very appropriate to study them in democratic times.
5. That does not mean that everyone must be thrown into the study of Greek and
Latin.
What is good for literature can be inappropriate for social and political needs.
In democratic centuries it is important to the interest of individuals and to the
security of the State that studies are more industrial than literary.
But in these societies there must be schools where one can be nourished by ancient
literature.
A few (illegible word) universities and literary (illegible word) would do better for
that than the multitude of our bad colleges (YTC, CVf, p. 16).
s tudy of greek and lati n li terature 816
You must consider the struggle of the patricians and the plebeians of
Rome in the same light and see in it only an internal quarrel between the
junior members and the elders of the same family. All belonged in fact to
the aristocracy and had its spirit.
b
It must be noted, moreover, that in all of antiquity books were rare and
expensive, andthat it was highly difcult toreproduce themandtocirculate
them. These circumstances, coming to concentrate in a small number of
men the taste and practice of letters, formed like a small literary aristoc-
racy of the elite within a larger political aristocracy. Also nothingindicates
that, among the Greeks and the Romans, letters were ever treated like an
industry.
So these peoples, who formed not only aristocracies, but who were also
very civilized and very free nations, had to give to their literary productions
the particular vices and special qualities that characterize literature in aris-
tocratic centuries.
It is sufcient, in fact, to cast your eyes on the writings that antiq-
uity has left to us to discover that, if writers there sometimes lacked va-
riety and fertility in subjects, boldness, movement and generalization in
thought, they always demonstrated an admirable art and care in details;
nothing in their works seems done in haste or by chance; everything is
b. [In the margin: To put in the preface when I show the difculty of the subject.
New state.
Incomplete state.]
It is sufcient to read the Vies des hommes illustres of Plutarch to be convinced that
antiquity was and always remained profoundly aristocratic in its laws, in its ideas, in
its mores [v: opinions], that what was understood by the people of that time does
not resemble the people of today, and that the rivalry of plebeians and patricians in
Rome compared to what is happening today between the rich and the poor must be
considered only as internal quarrels between the elders and the junior members of
an aristocracy.
[To the side: that even the democracy of Athens never resembled that of America
[v: never could give the idea of the democratic republic].
This idea has been introduced in the chapters on literature and is good there]
(YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 3738).
In March and April 1838, Tocqueville read Plutarch. In his letters to Beaumont, Corcelle
and Royer-Collard, he admits that he nds in Plutarch a grandeur of spirit that pleases
him and makes him forget the moral meanness of the time in which he lives. Various
parts of the manuscript retain traces of this reading.
s tudy of greek and lati n li terature 817
written for connoisseurs, and the search for ideal beauty is shown con-
stantly. There is no literature that puts more into relief the qualities that
are naturally lacking in writers of democracies than that of the ancients.
So no literature exists that is more appropriate to study in democratic
centuries. This study is, of all, the most appropriate for combatting the
literary defects inherent in these centuries; as for their natural qualities,
they will arise all by themselves without the need to learn how to acquire
them.
Here I must make myself clear.
A study can be useful to the literature of a people and not be appropriate
for their social and political needs.
If you persisted stubbornly in teaching only literature in a society where
each man was led by habit to make violent efforts to increase his fortune
or to maintainit, youwouldhave very polishedandvery dangerous citizens;
for since the social and political state gives them needs every day that edu-
cation would never teach them to satisfy, they would disturb the State, in
the name of the Greeks and the Romans, instead of making it fruitful by
their industry.
It is clear that in democratic societies the interest of individuals, as well
as the security of the State, requires that the education of the greatest num-
ber be scientic, commercial, and industrial rather than literary.
Greek and Latin must not be taught in all schools; but it is important
that those destined by their nature or their fortune to cultivate letters, or
predisposed to appreciate them, nd schools where they can perfectly
master ancient literature and be thoroughly penetrated by its spirit. A few
excellent universities would be worth more to achieve this goal than a mul-
titude of bad colleges where superuous studies done badly prevent nec-
essary studies from being done well.
All those who have the ambition to excel in letters, among democratic
nations, must be nourished often by the works of antiquity. It is a healthy
regimen.
It is not that I consider the literary productions of the ancients as irre-
proachable. I think only that they have special qualities that can serve mar-
velously to counterbalance our particular defects. They support us as we
lean over the edge.
818
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 6
a
How American Democracy Has
Modied the English Language
b
If what I have said previously concerning letters in general has been well
understood by the reader, he will easily imagine what type of inuence the
democratic social state anddemocratic institutions canexercise onlanguage
itself, which is the rst instrument of thought.
a. 1. Modication that English has experienced in America.
2. Democratic cause of that:
1. Democratic peoples constantly change their words, because among themthings
are constantly shifting. Thus, great number of new words, character of democratic
languages.
2. Character of these newwords. Most of themare relatedto the needs of industry,
to the science of administration.
3. Origin of these words. Little of learned etymologies. Some borrowings made
from living languages. Above all, gain from itself.
Three means of gaining from itself: 1. Put forgotten terms back into use. 2. Make
expressions belonging to a science or to a profession enter into general circulation
with a gurative meaning. 3. Give to a word in use an uncommon meaning. That is
the most widely used and easiest method, but also the most dangerous. By doubling
the meaning of a word in this way, you make it uncertain which one you are leaving
aside for it and which one you are giving to it.
4. What makes dialects and patois disappear with democratic institutions.
5. What makes all articial and conventional classications of words disappear as
well in the same period.
6. Why democracy multiplies abstract words, generalizes their use and leads to the
abuse of them (YTC, CVf, p. 17).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: The review of this chapter was extremely tiring
for me; I do not know if this explains why I currently consider the chapter as too long
and boring and miss the original draft, fragments of which I will nd moreover in the
rubish.
Read this chapter to men of the world and study their impressions.
the engli s h language 819
American authors live more, truly speaking, in England than in their
own country, since they constantly study English writers and take them
daily as models. It is not like this for the population itself; the latter is sub-
jected more immediately to the particular causes that can have an effect on
the United States. So you must pay attention not to the written language,
but to the spoken language, if you want to see the modications that the
idiom of an aristocratic people can undergo while becoming the language
of a democracy.
c
Educated Englishmen, and judges more competent to appreciate these
ne nuances than I am able to be myself,
d
have often assured me that the
c. In the margin: So the language of a people is an excellent indicator for judging
their social state, just as knowledge of the social state is sufcient to judge the state of
the language in advance.
d. They said that the Americans showed even more propensity than the English for
making new words; that when the Americans made a new word, they never looked
for its root in learned languages; that they borrowed it fromforeign languages or even
from their own language by changing the meaning of an already known word or by
making a wordmove fromthe real meaning tothe gurative meaning. Theseeducated
Englishmen added that most of these borrowings were made from the vocabulary of
artisans, of businessmen, of political men rather than from that of philosophers, so
that language had a kind of tendency to become materialized. Finally, they said that
the Americans often used indiscriminately the same words in very diverse circum-
stances; so that the Americans employed on a solemn occasion an expression that the
English would have used only in the most ordinary cases and vice versa.
Letter to Mr. Hall (on letter paper, Rubish, 1).
The letter to Basil Hall, from which Tocqueville drew this fragment, is found in the
library of Princeton University and says this:
Chateau de Baugy, 19 June 1836./
I cannot thank you enough, Sir, for the letter you kindly sent me on the 4th of
this month. I accept with a great deal of gratitude all that it contains of attery and
usefulness. Your opinions on America and on England will always carry a great weight
in my view and I love knowing them, even when they do not exactly conform to
mine. Controversy between men who esteemone another can only be very protable.
I will prove that your letter pleased me greatly by answering it at great length. I would
like my response to engage you in continuing a correspondence to which I attach
great value.
You reproach me for having said: that the interests of the poor were sacriced in
England to those of the rich. I confess that this thought, explained in so few words,
thrown out in passing, without commentaries, is of a nature to present a much more
absolute meaning than the one I meant to give it, and my intention has always been
to modify it, when I could get to reviewing my work. What I wantedtosay principally
is that England is a country in which wealth is the required preliminary for a host of
things that elsewhere you can gain without it. So that in England there is a host of
careers that are much more closed to the poor than they are in several other countries.
This would still demand a great number of explanations in order to be well under-
stood. I am obliged to set them aside for the moment when I will have the pleasure
of seeing you again. For now, I move to a subject that has a more current interest for
me, which is America.
You nd that I have portrayed too favorably the domestic happiness of the Amer-
icans. As it is very important for me to clarify this delicate point to which I will be
obliged to return in my two last volumes, you will allow me, I hope, to submit a few
observations to you. I have not claimed that a great tenderness reigned in the interior
of households in the United States; I wanted to say that a great deal of order and
purity reigned there, an essential condition for the order and tranquillity of political
society itself. I believed that came in part from the principles and the character that
American women brought to the conjugal union, and it is in this sense that I said
that women exercised a great indirect inuence on politics. It seemed to me that in
the United States more than in any other country that I know, it was acknowledged
and regulated by unanimous consent that the woman once married devoted herself
entirely to her husbandandto her children, andthat is what made me say that nowhere
had a higher and more just idea of conjugal happiness beenimagined. The extremepurity
of morals in marriage seems to me, after all, the rst of all the conditions for this
happiness, although it is not the only one, and on this point America seems to me to
have the advantage even over England. I proved by my conduct the high idea that I
have of English women; but if virtue is, as I do not doubt, the general rule for them,
this rule seems to me to allow still fewer exceptions on the other side of the Atlantic.
Here is my comment on this subject: I never heard a thoughtless remark said in the
UnitedStates about a marriedwoman; Americanbooks always assume chastewomen;
foreigners themselves, whose tongues would not be bound by custom, confess that
there is nothing to say about them. I have even met some of them corrupt enough
to be distressed by it, and their regret seemed to me the most complete demonstration
of the fact. The same unanimity is not seen in England. I met young fools inEngland
who hardly spared the honor of their female compatriots. I saw moralists who com-
plained that the morality of women, principally in the lower classes, was not as great
as formerly. Finally, your writers themselves sometimes assume that conjugal faith is
violated. All of that does not exist, to my knowledge, in America. But I see myself
that I have allowed myself to be carried much too far in my demonstration. I hope
that you will see in what precedes only the extreme desire to enlighten myself on a
subject that is innitely important for me to know.
I will answer almost nothing on what you tell me about the Anglican Church. I
do not knowEnglandwell enoughto be able todiscuss withyouthe degree of political
utility that your church can have. What I want to say is that in general I believe the
union of church and State, not harmful to the State, but harmful to the church. I
enlightened classes of the United States differed notably, in their language,
from the enlightened classes of Great Britain.
e
have seen too closely among us the fatal consequences of this union not to be afraid
that something analogous is happening among you. Now, that is a result that you
must try to avoid at all cost, for religion is, in my eyes, the rst of all the political
guarantees, and I do not see any good that can compensate men for the loss of beliefs.
I thank you very much for taking the trouble to inform me about the idiom of
the Americans. This subject has interested me greatly recently, and I want to talk
about it with you at greater length since you have assuredme that my questions would
not bother you.
In the United States I met very well bred Englishmen who made the following
remarks to me. They struck me all the more at the moment when they were made to
me because I had observed something analogous in the modications that the French
language has undergone during the past one hundred years. They said then that the
Americans had still more propensity than the English for making new words, that
when they made a new word they never looked for its root in learned languages, that
they borrowed it fromforeignlanguages or evenfromtheir ownlanguage bychanging
the meaning of an already known word or by making a word move from the real
meaning to the gurative meaning. They added that most of these borrowings were
made from the language of various industries, that they were taken from the vocab-
ulary of artisans, of businessmen, of political men rather than from that of philos-
ophers, so that the language had a tendency to become materialized, in a way. I do
not know, Sir, if I am making myself understood. A long conversation would be
necessary to explain what I am forced to put into a few lines. Also I am counting
more on your sagacity than on my clarity. These same persons also said that it often
happened that the Americans used indiscriminately the same words in very diverse
circumstances, so that they employed on a solemn occasion an expression that the
English would have used only in the most ordinary cases and vice versa.
Does all of that seem well founded to you? If this scribbling suggests some ideas
to you and you would be good enough to share them with me, I will be very obliged
to you. And now, Sir, it only remains for me to ask you to excuse my detestable
writingthat you will perhaps decipher with difcultyand to accept the assurance
of my most profound consideration.
[signed: Alexis de Tocqueville.]
P. S. If your article appears in the review, I will be very pleased to see it, but believe,
Sir, that this circumstance will add nothing to the gratitude that I feel at your having
written it.
With the kind permission of Princeton University (General Manuscripts [Misc.] Col-
lection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Uni-
versity Library). The article of Basil Hall cited in the postscript is Tocqueville on the
State of America, Quarterly Review, 57, 1836, pp. 13262.
e. In the margin: Canada.
They not only complained that the Americans had put many newwords
into use; the difference or the distance between the two countries was
enough to explain that; but they also complained that these newwords were
particularly borrowed either from the jargon of parties, or from the me-
chanical arts, or fromthe language of business. They addedthat oldEnglish
words were often taken by the Americans in a new sense. Finally, they said
that the inhabitants of the United States frequently intermingled styles in
a singular way, and that they sometimes put together words that, in the
language of the mother country, were customarily kept apart. [This is how
they happened, for example, to introduce a familiar or commonexpression
into the pomp of a speech.]
These remarks, which were made to me at various times by men who
seemed to me to merit belief, led me to reect upon this subject, and my
reections brought me, by theory, to the same place that they had reached
by practice.
In aristocracies, where everything remains at rest, language must natu-
rally share that rest. Fewnewwords are made, because fewnewthings hap-
pen; and if you did new things, you would try hard to portray them with
known words whose meaning has been xed by tradition.
If it happens that the human mind there nally stirs by itself, or that
enlightenment, penetrating from outside, awakens it, the new expressions
that are created have a learned, intellectual and philosophical character that
indicates that they do not to owe their birth to a democracy. When the fall
of Constantinople made the sciences and letters owback toward the West
[and when the enlightenment of antiquity after being revived in Italy -
nally penetrated among us], the French language found itself almost all at
once invaded by a multitude of new words, all of which had their roots in
Greek and Latin. You then saw in France an erudite neologism, which was
practiced only by the enlightened classes, and whose effects were never felt
by the people or only reached them in the long run.
All the nations of Europe successively presentedthe same spectacle. Mil-
ton alone introduced into the English language more than six hundred
words, almost all drawn from Latin, Greek and Hebrew.
f
f. M. de Chateaubriand says in his comments on Milton, 1, V, that the latter created
The perpetual movement that reigns within a democracy tends on the
contrary constantly to renewthe face of language like that of public affairs.
Amid this general agitation and this competition of all minds, a great num-
ber of new ideas are formed; old ideas are lost or reappear; or they become
subdivided into innite small nuances.
So words are often found there that must go out of use, and others that
must be brought into use.
Democratic nations moreover love movement for itself. That is seen in
language as well as inpolitics. Evenwhenthey do not needtochange words,
they sometimes feel the desire to do so.
The genius of democratic peoples shows itself not only inthe great num-
ber of new words that they put into use, but also in the nature of the ideas
that these new words represent.
Among these peoples, the majority makes the law in the matter of lan-
guage, as in everything else. Its spirit reveals itself there as elsewhere. Now,
ve to six hundred newwords, nearly all drawnfromGreek, HebrewandLatin. Good
example of learned neologism./
Consubstantiality, word created or at least recognized and brought to light by the
Council of Nice [Nicea (ed.)] in the fourth century to combat Arius.
Transubstantiation, wordcreatedinthe XVIthcentury by the adversaries of Luther
who wanted to express by [that (ed.)] that the bread of the host changed substance
and became the body of Jesus Christ. See Histoire des variations, v. 1, p. 113.
Constitutionality, word created by the French Revolutionexpressing likewise a new
idea. Examples of new words that different causes can invent in all times (Rubish, 1).
In the margin of the manuscript, Tocqueville notes another example of neologism:
comfortableEnglish.
Cf. Chateaubriand, Essai sur la litterature anglaise (Paris: Charles Gosselin andFurne,
1836), I, pp. 89. Tocqueville authorizedHenry Reeve, the Englishtranslator of his book,
to delete the reference to Milton, which the latter considered inaccurate. Reeve nally
left it, probably because Tocqueville had informed him that it was already too late to
eliminate it from the French edition (Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, 1, pp. 5457).
During the summer of 1836, which he spent in Switzerland, Tocqueville read The
Prince, the History of Florence and some letters of Machiavelli, the Complete Works of
Plato and the Histoire des variations of Bossuet (the library of the Tocqueville chateau
contains an edition published in Paris in 1730).
the majority is occupied more with public affairs than studies, more with
political and commercial interests than with philosophical speculation or
literature. Most of the words created or accepted by the majority will bear
the mark of these habits; they will serve principally to express the needs of
industry, the passions of parties or the details of public administration.
Language will expand constantly in that way, while on the contrary it will
little by little abandon the terrain of metaphysics and theology.
As for the source from which democratic nations draw their new
words and the manner in which they set about to fabricate them, it is easy
to say.
Men who live in democratic countries hardly know the language that
was spoken in Rome and in Athens, and they do not bother about going
back to antiquity in order to nd the expression they are lacking. If they
sometimes resort to learned etymologies, it is ordinarily vanity that makes
them search the content of the dead languages, and not erudition that
brings certain words naturally to their minds. It even happens sometimes
that it is the most ignorant among them who make the most use of such
etymologies. The entirely democratic desire to go beyond your sphere of-
ten leads men in democracies to want to enhance a very coarse profession
by a Greek or Latinname. The lower anoccupationandthe more removed
from knowledge, the more pompous and erudite is the name. This is
how our tightrope walkers have transformed themselves into acrobats and
funambulists.
Lacking dead languages, democratic peoples willingly borrow words
fromliving languages; for they communicate constantlyamongthemselves,
and the men of different countries willingly imitate each other, because
they resemble each other more each day.
But democratic peoples look principally to their own language for the
means to innovate. From time to time, they take up in their vocabulary
forgotten expressions that they bring to light again, or they take from a
particular class of citizens a term that is its own in order to bring the term
into the regular language with a gurative meaning; a multitude of ex-
pressions that at rst belonged only to the special language of a party or a
profession thus nd themselves brought into general circulation.
The most usual expedient that democratic peoples employ to innovate
with regard to language consists of giving an uncommon meaning to an
expression already in use. This method is very simple, very quick and very
easy. Knowledge is not needed to use it well; and ignorance even facilitates
its use. But it makes language run great risks. By doubling the meaning of
a word in this way, democratic peoples sometimes make it doubtful which
meaning they are leaving aside and which one they are giving to it.
An author begins by turning a known expression a little bit away from
its original meaning and after having modied it in this way, he adapts it
as well as he can to his subject. Another appears who pulls the meaning in
another direction; a third carries it with him along a new path; and since
there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that candenitelysettle
the meaning of the word, the latter remains in a variable situation. As a
result, writers almost never have anair of being attachedtoa single thought;
instead they always seem to aim at the middle of a group of ideas, leaving
to the reader the trouble of judging which one is hit.
This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would prefer that
you sprinkled the language with Chinese, Tartar or Huron words, than to
make the meaning of French words uncertain. Harmony andhomogeneity
are only the secondary beauties of language. There is much more conven-
tion in this kind of thing, and you can, if necessary, do without them. But
there is no good language without clear terms.
g
Equality necessarily brings several other changes to language.
Inaristocratic centuries, wheneachnationtends toholditself apart from
all the others and loves to have a physiognomy that is its own, it often
happens that several peoples who have a common origin become very for-
eign to each other, so that, without ceasing to be able to understand each
other, they no longer all speak in the same way.
In these same centuries, each nation is divided into a certain number of
classes that see each other little and do not mingle; each one of these classes
invariably takes on and keeps intellectual habits that belong only to it, and
adopts by preference certain words and certain terms that pass afterward
g. In the margin, concerning this paragraph: <To delete, I think.>
from generation to generation like inheritances. You then nd in the same
idiom a language of the poor and a language of the rich, a language of
commoners and a language of nobles, a learned language and a vulgar lan-
guage. The more profound the divisions and the more insurmountable the
barriers, the more this must be so. I would readily bet that, among the castes
of India, language varies prodigiously, and that almost as much difference
is found betweenthe language of a pariah andthat of a Brahminas between
their forms of dress.
When, on the contrary, men no longer held in their place see each other
and communicate constantly, when castes are destroyed, and when classes
are renewed and mixed together, all the words of a language are mingled.
Those words that cannot suit the greatest number perish; the rest form a
common mass from which each person draws more or less haphazardly.
Nearly all the different dialects that divided the idioms of Europe are no-
ticeably tending to disappear; there are no patois in the New World, and
they are disappearing daily in the Old World.
h
This revolution in the social state inuences style as well as language.
Not only does everyone use the same words, but they alsoget accustomed
to employing each of them indiscriminately. The rules that style had cre-
ated are almost destroyed. You hardly nd expressions that, by their nature,
seem vulgar, and others that appear rened. Since individuals fromvarious
ranks bring with them, to whatever station they rise, expressions and terms
that they have used, the origin of words is lost like that of men, and a
confusion is developed in language as in society.
I know that in the classication of words rules are found that are not
due to one form of society rather than to another, but that derive fromthe
h. In America there is no class which speaks the language in a very delicate and very
studied manner, but you do not nd a patois. The same remark applies to Canada.
That is due to several causes, but among others to equality of conditions which, by
giving to all men an analogous education, by mixing them together constantly, has
had to provide them necessarily with similar forms of language.
We see the same revolution taking place in Europe and above all in France. The
patois are disappearing as conditions become equal (Rubish, 1).
very nature of things. There are expressions and turns which are vulgar
because the sentiments that they must express are truly low, and others
which are elevated because the objects that they want to portray are natu-
rally very high.
Ranks, by mingling, will never make these differences disappear. But
equality cannot fail to destroy what is purely conventional and arbitrary in
the forms of thought. I do not even know if the necessary classication
which I pointed out above will not always be less respected among a dem-
ocratic people than among another; because, among such a people, there
are no men whose education, enlightenment and leisure permanently dis-
pose them to study the natural laws of language and who make those laws
respected by observing them themselves.
I do not want to abandon this subject without portraying democratic
languages with a last feature that will perhaps characterize them more than
all the others.
I showed previously that democratic peoples had the taste and often the
passion for general ideas; that is due to qualities and defects that are their
own. This love of general ideas shows itself, in democratic languages, in
the continual use of generic terms and abstract words, and by the manner
in which they are used. That is the great merit and the great weakness of
these languages.
j
Democratic peoples passionately love generic terms and abstract words,
because these expressions enlarge thought and, by allowing many objects
to be included in a little space, aid the work of the mind.
k
j. In the margin: <Perhaps make this into a small chapter having this title: whyequal-
ity multiplies the number of abstract words, generalizes their use and leads to the abuse
of them.
Probably do so.>
k. General and abstract terms./
Due to the need to give yourself latitude while speaking either to yourself or to
others; to the fear of responsibility; to the need to give yourself latitude to the right
and to the left of the point where you are placed. Result of life in a changing, un-
certain, agitated time, as a democratic time always is, and of the softness of souls in
that same time./
All our impressions turn vague when you approach a moral question; they oat
A democratic writer will willingly say in an abstract way the capable for
capable men, and without getting into details about the things to which
this capacity applies. He will speak about actualities in order to depict all
at once the things that are happening at this moment before his eyes, and
he will understand by the word eventualities all that can happen in the uni-
verse beginning from the moment when he is speaking.
Democratic writers constantly create abstract words of this type, or
they take the abstract words of language in a more and more abstract
sense.
Even more, to make discourse more rapid, they personify the object of
the abstract words and make it act like a real individual. They will say that
the force of things wants the capable to govern.
m
I cannot do better than to explain my thought by my own example.
I have often used the word equality in an absolute sense; I have, as well,
personied equality in several places, and in this way I have happened to
say that equality did certain things or refrained from certain others. You
can maintain that the men of the century of Louis XIV would not have
spoken in this way; it would never have occurred to the mind of any one
of them to use the word equality without applying it to a particular thing,
and they would rather have renounced using it than agree to making equal-
ity into a living person.
These abstract words that ll democratic languages and that you use
between praise and blame. Which comes from the softness of souls that demands
little effort from others and requires little from yourself (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 23).
Madame de Stael already complained about the uncontrolled creation of abstract words
in Chapter VII of the second part of her De la litte rature (Paris: Charpentier, 1842),
p. 501. La Harpe had done the same.
m. At the time of the last insurrection of the Greeks against the Turks, a minister
[v: orator], having to speak of Greece and not knowing if he had to designate it as a
province in revolt or as a free State, took it into his head to call it a locality. Anaristocratic
language would never have provided such an expedient to politics (Rubish, 1). See Rene
Georgin, Tocqueville et le langage de la democratie, Vie et langage 17, no. 201 (1968):
74044; and Laurence Guellec, Tocqueville et les langages de la de mocratie (Paris: Honore
Champion, 2004).
for the slightest reason without connecting them to any particular fact,
enlarge and veil thought. They make the expression more rapid and the
idea less clear. But, as regards language, democratic peoples prefer obscu-
rity to labor.
I do not know, moreover, if vagueness does not have a certain secret
charm for those who speak and write among these peoples.
Men who live there, since they are often left to the individual efforts of
their intellect, are almost always tormented by doubt. Moreover, since their
situation changes constantly, they are never held rmly to any one of their
opinions by the very immobility of their fortune.
So the men who inhabit democratic countries often have vacillating
thoughts; they must have very broad expressions in order to contain them.
Since they never know if the idea they express today will suit the new sit-
uation that they will have tomorrow, they naturally conceive the taste for
abstract terms. An abstract word is like a box with a false bottom; you put
the ideas that you want into it, and you take them out without anyone
seeing.
[I am so persuaded of the inuence that the social state and political
institutions of a people exercise on its language, that I think that you could
easily succeed in discovering these rst facts solely by inspecting the words
of the language, and I am astonished that this idea has not been applied
more often and more perfectly to the idioms that we know without know-
ing the men who use or have used them.]
Among all peoples, generic and abstract words form the basis of lan-
guage; so I am not claiming that you nd these words only in democratic
languages. I am only saying that the tendency of men, in times of equality,
is particularly to augment the number of words of this type, always to take
them singly in their most abstract sense, and to use them for the slightest
reason, even when the needs of speech do not require it.
830
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 7
a
a. 1. Denition of poetry. Search for andportrayal of the ideal. Object of the chapter.
Try to nd out if among the actions, sentiments and ideas of democratic peoples,
some are found that lend themselves to the ideal and can serve as source of poetry.
2. Democratic peoples have naturally less taste for the ideal because of the passions
that bind them constantly to the pursuit of the real.
3. Moreover there are several subjects proper to the portrayal of the ideal that they
are lacking.
1. Religions are shaken.
2. They become simplied
3. Men take no further interest in the past.
4. They nd with difculty material for the ideal in the present because they are
all small and see each other very clearly.
4. So most of the American [ancient? (ed.)] sources of poetry are drying up, but
others are opening.
1. Men of democratic centuries readily take an interest in the future.
2. If individuals are small, society seems [blank (ed.)] to them and lends itself to
poetry. Each nation sees itself.
3. The human species is seen and it can be portrayed.
4. There is no complete divinity, but the gure of God is greater and clearer and
his place relative to the whole of human affairs is more recognizable.
5. The external man does not lend himself [to poetry (ed.)] but poets descend into
the realm of the soul and there they nd the sentiments of not just one man in
particular, but of man in general to portray; equality brings forth the image of man
in general and is interested in him.
Thus democracy does not make all the subjects that lend themselves to the ideal
disappear. It makes them less numerous and greater (YTC, CVf, pp. 1819).
In the rubish of these chapters you nd this as well:
Poetry of democracy./
Future of democracy, sole poetic idea of our time. Immense, indenite idea. Pe-
riod of renewal, of total change in the social system of humanity. This idea alone
throws more poetry into souls than there was in the century of Louis XV and in that
of Louis XIV.
It is only the past or the future that is poetic. The present very rarely is. There was
nevertheless a great deal of poetry in the present in the Middle Ages. Facts to explain
(Rubish, 1).
s ources of poetry 831
Of Some Sources of Poetry
among Democratic Nations
b
b. On a jacket that accompanies that of the chapter:
Piece that began the chapter and that must be deleted, I believe, as written in an
affected style and above all verbiage./
I would like to portray the inuence that democratic institutions exercise in the
United States on the poetic genius of man, but beyond the fact that the subject is
placed outside of the ordinary circle of my thoughts, a rst difculty stops me.
I do not know if anyone up to now has taken care to provide an uncontested
denition of the thing I am attempting to speak about. No one can deny that poetry
has not obtained great power over the imagination of men; but who has ever said
clearly what poetry was; howmany different and oftendissimilar things we have gath-
ered under this very name!
[In the margin: Show in a more striking way what is useful in poetry. The Ro-
mans./
It is not sufciently understood that men cannot do without poetry./
Poetry and poetic faculty to distinguish. Taste for the ideal./
I want to examine not only if democracy leads men to do works of poetry but also
if it suggests poetic ideas to them./
The one is not the necessary consequence of the other, for a people can have a
great number of poetic ideas and not have the time or the art of writing or the taste
for reading. But in general you can say that these two things go together.]
A small rhymed epigram is a work of poetry; a long epic in verse is as well. I see
enormous differences between these two productions of the human mind, but they
have something similar in the form. I understand that it is to form that the word
begins to be attached, and I conclude from it that poetry consists of carefully en-
closing the idea in a certain number of syllables symmetrically arranged. But no. I
hear that these verses are poetic and that those are not. Some grant that there is poetry
in a prose work and others contend that they nd no trace of it in a long poem. So
poetry rests not only in the form of the thought, but also in the thought itself. It can
reside in the two things united or inhabit each one of them separately. So what de-
nitively is poetry? This could become the topic for a dissertation, with which I do
not intend to fatigue the reader. So instead of trying to nd out what language has
wanted to include in the word poetry, I will say what I include in it myself and I will
x the meaning that I give to it in the present chapter.
On a page bearing the title of poetry in america, you read this rst beginning of
the chapter: I often wondered while traveling across the United States if, amid this
people exclusively preoccupied by the material cares of life [v: commercial enterprises],
among so many mercantile speculations, a single poetic idea would be found, and I be-
lieved I recognized several of themthat appearedto me eminently to have this character.
Several very different meanings have been given to the word poetry. It
would tire readers to try to nd out which one of these different meanings
is most suitable to choose; I prefer to tell them immediately which one I
have chosen.
Poetry, in my view, is the search for and the portrayal of the ideal.
c
The poet is the one who, by taking away a part of what exists, adding
some imaginary features to the picture, and combining certain real circum-
stances that are not found together, completes, enlarges nature. Thus, the
aim of poetry will not be to represent truth, but to embellish it and to offer
a higher image to the mind.
d
Verse will seem to me like the ideal of beauty for language, and in this
sense it will be eminently poetic; but in itself alone, it will not constitute
poetry.
[<Poetry always takes as the subject of its portraits beings who are really
found in nature or who at least live in the imagination of the men to whom
it is addressed. It changes, enlarges, embellishes what exists; it does not
create what does not exist, and if it attempts to do so, it can still amuse or
surprise, but it no longer rouses and becomes the puerile game of an idle
imagination.>]
e
I want to nd out if, among the actions, sentiments and ideas of dem-
ocratic peoples, some are found that lend themselves to the imaginationof
the ideal and that must, for this reason, be considered as natural sources of
poetry.
It must rst be recognized that the taste for the ideal and the pleasure
that is taken in seeing its portrayal are never as intense and as widespread
among a democratic people as within an aristocracy.
[In democratic societies the human mind nds itself constantly bound
c. The greatest proof of the misery of man is poetry. God cannot make poetry; he
sees everything clearly (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
d. You idealize a small object, you are poetic without being great.
You represent a great thing in its natural state, you are great or sublime, but not
poetic (Rubish, 1).
e. I will go still further and without limiting the name of poet to writers I will readily
agree to extend it to all those who undertake to offer images to men, provided that they
represent by them something superior to what is. Raphael will seem to me to merit this
title as well as Homer (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
by the small details of real [v: present] life. That results not only from the
fact that all men work, but above all from the fact that they carry out all
their works with fervor and I could almost say with love.]
f
Among aristocratic nations, it sometimes happens that the body acts as
if by itself, while the soul is plunged into a repose that weighs it down.
Among these nations, the people themselves often show poetic tastes, and
their spirit sometimes soars above and beyond what surrounds them.
g
But, in democracies, the love of natural enjoyments, the idea of some-
thing better, competition, the charmof impending success, are like somany
spurs that quicken the steps of each man in the career that he has embraced
and forbid him from standing aside from it for a single moment. The prin-
cipal effort of the soul goes in this direction. Imagination is not extin-
guished, but it devotes itself almost exclusively to imagining the useful and
to representing the real.
Equality not only diverts men from portraying the ideal; it decreases the
number of subjects to portray.
[You cannot deny that equality [v: democracy], while becoming estab-
lished among men, does not make a great number of these subjects that
lent themselves to the portrayal of the ideal disappear from their view,
and does not in this way dry up several of the most abundant sources of
poetry.]
Aristocracy, by holding society immobile, favors the steadiness and du-
ration of positive religions, as well as the stability of political institutions.
Not only does it maintain the human spirit in faith, but it disposes it to
adopt one faith rather than another. An aristocratic people will always be
inclined to place intermediary powers between God and man.
You can say that in this aristocracy shows itself very favorable to poetry.
When the universe is populated with supernatural powers that do not fall
within the senses, but are discovered by the mind, imagination feels at ease,
f. In the margin: <This sentence is found word for word, I believe, in revolutions.
Vary it in one place or the other. The idea is necessary to both.>
g. In the margin: <While the middle classes, although they have more leisure, show
it almost not at all. From that you can see clearly that it is less the constraint of work
that stops the poetic impulse than the spirit that is brought to work.>
and poets, nding a thousand diverse subjects to portray, nd innumerable
spectators ready to be interested in their portraits.
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, it sometimes happens that
beliefs go drifting away like the laws. Doubt then brings the imagination
of poets back to earth and encloses them within the visible and real
world.
h
Even when equality does not shake religions, it simplies them; it diverts
attention from secondary agents in order to bring it principally to the sov-
ereign master.
Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplationof the
past, and xes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of
instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In that, aristocracy is very much
more favorable to poetry, for things ordinarily enlarge and become obscure
as they become more distant; and from this double perspective they lend
themselves more to the portrayal of the ideal.
After removing the past from poetry, equality partially removes the
present.
Among aristocratic peoples, a certain number of privileged individuals
exist, whose existence is so to speak above and beyond the human condi-
tion; power, wealth, glory, spirit, delicacy and distinction in all things seem
to belong by right to the latter. The crowd never sees them very closely, or
does not follow them in detail; there is little that you have to do to make
the portrayal of these men poetic.
On the other hand, there exists among these same peoples ignorant,
humble and subservient classes; and the latter lend themselves to poetry by
the very excess of their coarseness and misery, as the others do by their
renement and their grandeur. Moreover, since the different classes that
make up an aristocratic people are very separatedfromeachother andknow
each other badly, imagination can always, while representing them, add
something to or subtract something from the real.
In democratic societies, where men are all very small and very similar,
h. Doubt itself prosaic in detail is immensely poetic over all. Byron proved it very
well. What poetry in the why and the how of man in face of God and of nature.
Audacious doubt is eminently democratic (rubish of these chapters, Rub-
ish, 1).
each one, while viewing himself, sees all the others at the same instant. So
poets who live in democratic centuries cannot ever take one man in par-
ticular as the subject of their portrait; for a subject with mediocre great-
ness, which you also see clearly on all sides, will never lend itself to the
ideal.
Therefore equality, while becoming established on the earth, dries up
most of the ancient sources of poetry.
Let us try to show how it nds new ones.
When doubt depopulated heaven and when the progress of equality re-
duced each man to better known and smaller proportions, poets, not yet
imagining what they could put in place of these great subjects that with-
drew with aristocracy, turned their eyes toward inanimate nature. Losing
heroes and gods from view, they undertook at rst to portray rivers and
mountains.
That gave birth in the last century to the poetry that was called, par
excellence, descriptive.
Some have thought that this embellished portrayal of the material and
inanimate things which cover the earth was poetry appropriate to demo-
cratic centuries; but I think that is a mistake. I believe that it only represents
a period of transition.
I am persuaded that in the long run democracy diverts the imagi-
nation from everything that is external to man, in order to x it only
on man.
j
Democratic peoples can be very amused for a moment by considering
nature; but they get really excited only by the sight of themselves. Here
alone are the natural sources of poetry to be found among these peoples,
and it may be believed that all poets who do not want to draw upon these
sources will lose all sway over the souls of those whomthey claimto charm,
and will end by no longer having anything except cold witnesses to their
transports.
j. Democracy diverts the human mind from the contemplation of external objects
in order to concentrate it on itself. Man is the most beautiful study of man, Pope said.
That is true for all peoples, but there is no more evident truth for a democratic people.
Almost the whole of its literature is contained in this single expression (Rubish, 1).
I have demonstrated how the idea of the progress and of the indenite
perfectibility of the human species was appropriate to democratic ages.
Democratic peoples hardly worry about what has been, but they readily
dream about what will be, and their imagination has no limits in this di-
rection; it expands and grows without measure.
This offers a vast opening to poets and allows them to move their por-
trayal far away from what is seen. Democracy, which closes the past to po-
etry, opens the future.
[In democratic centuries poets cannot take as the subject of their por-
trait a hero or a prince.]
Since all the citizens who make up a democratic society are nearly equal
and similar, poetry cannot attach itself to any one of them; but the nation
offers itself to its brush. The similarity of all individuals, which makes each
one of them separately inappropriate for becoming the subject of poetry,
allows poets to include them all in the same image and to consider nally
the people itself. Democratic nations see their own gure more clearly than
all others and this great gure lends itself marvelously to the portrayal of
the ideal.
I will easily acknowledge that the Americans
k
do not have poets; I cannot
admit as well that they do not have poetic ideas.
m
Some in Europe are very much interested in the American wilderness,
but the Americans themselves hardly think about it. The wonders of in-
animate nature leave them indifferent, and so to speak they see the admi-
rable forests that surround them only at the moment when they fall under
their blows.
n
Their sight is lled with another spectacle. The American
k. I cited this example of America not only because America is the particular object
of my discourse, but also because I believe that in this it provides me with insights about
what must happen among democratic peoples in general (Rubish, 1).
m. Milton, democratic poet./
Byron idem./
The one is democratic because he drew his generative idea from Christianity.
The other by the natural impulse of his time (rubish of these chapters,
Rubish, 1).
n. There is until now only a single writer who has felt and could produce this ad-
mirable poetry of wild nature such as the wilderness of America reveals to us, and this
great poet is not American (Rubish, 1).
people see themselves marching across this wilderness, draining swamps,
straightening rivers, populating empty areas, and subduing nature. [Every
day they notice their size growing and their strength increasing, and they
already perceive themselves in the future leading as absolute masters the
vast continent that they have made fruitful and cleared.] This magnicent
image of themselves does not only present itself now and then to the imag-
ination of the Americans; you can say that it follows each one of them in
the least as well as in the principal of his actions, and that it remains always
hovering in his mind.
You cannot imagine anything so small, so colorless, so full of miserable
interests, so anti-poetical, in a word, than the life of a man in the United
States; but among the thoughts that direct him one is always found that is
full of poetry, and that one is like a hidden nerve which gives vigor to all
the rest.
o
[You must not be astonished by this for how could you think that
men who do such great things would be entirely devoid of great ideas?]
p
In aristocratic centuries, each people, like each individual, is inclined to
hold itself immobile and separate from all the others.
Indemocratic centuries the extreme mobility of menandtheir impatient
desires make them constantly change place, and make the inhabitants of
different countries mingle together, see and hear each other, and borrow
from each other. So it is not only the members of the same nation who
become similar; nations themselves assimilate, and all together form in the
eye of the beholder nothing more than a vast democracy in which each
o. So I do not fear that democratic peoples lack poetry, but I am afraid that this
poetry aims for the gigantesque rather than for grandeur. For it, I fear the inuence of
their poets more than their timidity, and I am afraid that the sublime there may be
several times closer still to the ridiculous than anywhere else (rubish of these
chapters, Rubish, 1).
p. In a rst draft, this paragraph followed: The sight of what is happening in the
United States makes me reect on democratic peoples in general, and these new reec-
tions modify the opinion that I had had formerly that democracies could not fail to
extinguish the poetic genius of man and to substitute for the empire of the imagination
that of good sense. That is true, but to a lesser degree than I had believed at rst. So I
think that there is a kind of poetry within reach of democratic peoples, and I am per-
suaded that great writers who will be born among them will not fail to see it and to take
hold of it (Rubish, 1).
citizen is a people. That brings to light for the rst time the gure of the
human species.
All that relates to the existence of the human species taken as a whole,
its vicissitudes, its future becomes a very fertile mine for poetry.
q
Poets who lived in aristocratic ages made admirable portraits by taking
as subjects certain incidents in the life of a people or of a man; but not
one of them ever dared to include in his tableau the destinies of the hu-
man species, while poets who write in democratic ages can undertake to
do so.
At the same time that each person, raising his eyes above his country,
nally begins to notice humanity itself, God reveals himself more andmore
to the human mind in his full and entire majesty.
If in democratic centuries faith in positive religions is often shaky and
beliefs in intermediary powers, whatever name you give them, grow dim,
men on the other hand are disposed to conceive a much more vast idea of
Divinity itself, and the intervention of the divine in human affairs appears
to them in a new and greater light.
Seeing the human species as a single whole, they easily imagine that the
same design rules over its destinies, and in the actions of each individual,
they are led to recognize the mark of this general and constant plan by
which God leads the species.
r
This can also be considered as a very abundant source of poetry that
opens in these centuries.
Democratic poets will always seem small and cold if they try to give
bodily forms to gods, demons or angels, and try to make them descend
from heaven to quarrel over the earth.
But, if democratic poets want to connect the great events that they are
relating to the general designs of God for the universe, and, without show-
q. Note on the other side of the jacket that contains the rubish of the chapter: In
aristocracy, the detail of man poetic. Homer portrays Achilles. In democracy, humanity
independently of the particular forms that it can take in certain places and in certain
times. Byron, Childe Harold, Chateaubriand, Rene (Rubish, 1).
r. What is more poetic than the Discours sur lhistoire universelle of Bossuet? Only
God and the human species are present there, however (Rubish, 1).
ing the hand of the sovereign master, cause his thought to be entered into,
they will be admired and understood, for the imagination of their com-
patriots itself follows this road.
s
You can equally foresee that poets who live in democratic ages will por-
tray passions and ideas rather than persons and actions. [and that they will
apply themselves to relating the general features of human passions and
ideas rather than those that depend on a time and on a country.
t
This is easy to understand.]
Language, dress and the daily actions of menindemocracies are resistant
to the imagination of the ideal. These things are not poetic in themselves,
and they would moreover cease to be so, because they are too well known
by all those to whomyou undertook to speak about them. That forces poets
constantly to penetrate below the external surface that the senses reveal to
them, in order to glimpse the soul itself. Now there is nothing that lends
s. We have had today (22 April 1837) an interesting conversation on poetry.
We all fell into agreement that the intervention of the divinity in human affairs
was essentially poetic by nature and particularly necessary to epic poetry.
The discussion turned on the means of making the intervention of the divinity
felt today, of making it perceptible.
By common agreement we abandoned mythological divinities, personied pas-
sions . . . , as operatic machines that chilled the spectator.
I maintained that today you had equally to avoid using saints, demons and angels,
since the spirit of the century was drawn more and more to grasp the idea of the
entirely intellectual and non-material action of the divinity on souls, without inter-
mediaries inwhomyouscarcely believe. But the difculty arose of makingthis action,
conceived by the mind alone, felt and making this invisible agent seen in the very
play of human passions.
Charles [Stoffels? (ed.)] maintained that man was so made that you could never
make him conceive of the intervention of the divinity without visible agents. I main-
tained the opposite, but without being able to develop my thought practically.
[In the margin: Humanitarian poetry.
Poem of man. Human destiny.
Jocelyn. Human condition.
This merits being carefully examined (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
t. Sensual poetry. Arabs.
Appropriate to democratic peoples (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
itself more to portraying the ideal than man envisaged in this way in the
depths of his non-material nature.
u
I do not needto travel across heavenandearthtonda marvelous subject
full of contrast, of grandeur and innite pettiness, of profoundobscurities
and singular clarity, capable at the same time of giving birth to pity, ad-
miration, contempt, terror. I have only to consider myself. Man comes out
of nothing, passes through time, and goes to disappear forever into the
bosom of God. You see him only for a moment wandering at the edge of
the two abysses where he gets lost.
If man were completely unaware of himself, he would not be poetic; for
what you have no idea about you cannot portray. If he saw himself clearly,
his imagination would remain dormant and would have nothing to add to
the picture. But man is revealed enough for him to see something of him-
self, and hidden enough for the rest to disappear into impenetrable shad-
ows, into which he plunges constantly and always in vain, in order nally
to understand himself.
v
u. In the manuscript, you nd in place of this sentence two paragraphs that repeat
ideas present in other places of the chapter.
v. Miseries of man./
[In the margin: To put perhaps with sentiments. Transition.
Put somewhere because good.
Human will.
In preface probably when I say that I am speaking about the difculty of the
subject.]
If you examine the conduct of men, you easily discover that tastes direct them
much more than opinions or ideas.
Where does the instinctive, almost physical sensation that we call taste come from?
How is it born, is it supported? Where does it take us and push us? Who knows?
Thus man does not know even the principal motive of his own actions and when,
tired of looking for truth in the entire universe, he comes back toward himself, ob-
scurity seems to redouble as he approaches and wants to understand himself.
[In the margin: This text is better.
And when, tired of looking for what makes his fellows act, he tries hard at least
to untangle what pushes himself, he still does not know what to believe. He travels
across the entire universe and he doubts. He nally comes back toward himself and
obscurity seems to redouble as he approaches himself more and wants to under-
stand himself.]
9 March 1836 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 1213).
So among democratic peoples, you must not wait for poetry to live by
legends, for it to be nourished by traditions and ancient memories, for it
to try to repopulate the universe with supernatural beings in whomreaders
and poets themselves no longer believe, or for it coldly to personify virtues
and vices that you can see in their own form. It lacks all these resources;
but man remains for it, and that is enough. Human destinies, man, taken
apart from his time and country and placed in front of nature and God,
with his passions, his doubts, his unprecedented prosperity and incompre-
hensible miseries, will become for these peoples the principal and almost
unique subject of poetry; and this is what you can already ascertain if you
consider what has been writtenby the great writers whohave appearedsince
the world began to turn toward democracy.
Writers who, today, have so admirably reproducedthe features of Childe
Harold, of Rene and of Jocelyn
w
did not claim to recount the actions of
one man; they wanted to illuminate and enlarge certainstill obscure aspects
of the human heart.
Tocqueville here is referring to Pascal, very specically to the fragment on the dispro-
portion of man (pense e 390 of the Lafuma edition).
In 1831, he had already written to Ernest de Chabrol a letter with accents of Pascal:
The more I examine this country and everything, the more I see and the more I am
frightened by seeing the fewcertainties that manis able to acquire inthis world. There
is no subject that does not grow larger as you pursue it, no fact or observation at the
bottom of which you do not nd a doubt. All the objects of this life appear to us
only like certain decorations of the opera that you see only through a curtain that
prevents you from discerning the contours with precision.
There are men who enjoy living in this perpetual half-light; as for me, it tires me
out and drives me to despair. I would like to hold political and moral truths as I hold
my pen, and doubt besieges me.
Yesterday there was an American who asked me how I classied human miseries;
I answered without hesitating that I put them in this order: chronic illnesses, death,
doubt. . . . He stopped me and protested; I have reected about it since and I persist
in my classication, but this is enough philosophy (letter of 19 November 1832, YTC,
BIa2).
w. Henry Reeve added Faust to these examples.
Those are the poems of democracy.
So equality does not destroy all the subjects of poetry; it makes them
less numerous and more vast.
x
x. I do not know if poetry such as I have taken care to dene it, poetry that does not
consist of a particular form but [of (ed.)] a certain kind of ideas, is not among the
literary tastes most natural to democracy <because it is enjoyed without preparation
and in a moment and it rapidly removes the soul from the middle of the pettiness
and monotony of democratic life.
The great images of poetry seize so to [speak (ed.)] the soul without warning; they
draw it as if by force far away from its everyday habits.> The enjoyments that poetry
provides are more instinctive than reasoned; you enjoy them without preparation,
you obtain them for yourself instantaneously. They seize so to speak the soul without
warning and draw it as if by force far away from its everyday routine.
What ts democracy better than all that? (rubish of these chapters, Rub-
ish, 1).
843
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 8
a
Why American Writers and Orators
Are Often Bombastic
b
I have often noticed that the Americans, who generally treat matters with
a clear and spare language devoid of all ornamentation, and whose extreme
simplicity is often common, fall readily into bombast as soon as they want
to take up poetic style. They then appear pompous without letup fromone
end of the speech to the other; and seeing them lavish images at every turn
in this way, you would think that they never said anything simply.
The English fall more rarely into a similar fault.
The cause of this can be pointed out without much difculty.
In democratic societies, each citizen is habitually busy contemplating a
very small object, which is himself. If he comes to raise his eyes higher, he
then sees only the immense image of society, or the still greater gure of
the human species. He has only very particular and very clear ideas, or very
general and very vague notions; the intermediate space is empty.
a. 1. Men who live in democracies have only very small ideas that relate to themselves
or very general ones. As soon as you take them out of themselves, they want the
gigantesque.
2. Their writers give it to them readily because they have similar instincts and as
well because they have the democratic taste of succeeding quickly and withlittle cost.
3. Among democratic peoples poetic sources are beautiful, but rare. They are soon
exhausted. Andthenyouthrowyourself into the monstrous andthe imaginary(YTC,
CVf, p. 19).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: Perhaps this chapter is too thin to be put sep-
arately and should be joined to the preceding one.
ameri can wri ters and orators 844
So when you have drawn him out of himself, he is always waiting for
you to offer him some prodigious object to look at, and it is only at this
price that he agrees to keep himself away for a moment from the small
complicated concerns that agitate and charm his life.
This seems to me to explain well enough why men of democracies who
in general have such narrowaffairs, demand fromtheir poets such vast con-
ceptions and portraits so beyond measure.
For their part, writers hardly fail to obey these instincts that they share;
they inate their imaginationconstantly, andexpandingit beyondmeasure,
they make it reach the gigantesque, for which they often abandonthe great.
In this way, they hope immediately to attract the eyes of the crowd and
to x them easily on themselves, and they often succeed in doing so; for
the crowd, which seeks in poetry only very vast subjects, does not have time
to measure exactly the proportions of all the subjects that are presented to
it, or taste sure enough to see easily in what way they are disproportionate.
The author and the public corrupt each other at the same time.
We have seen, moreover, that among democratic peoples the sources of
poetry were beautiful, but not very abundant. You soon end by exhausting
them. Finding no more material for the ideal in the real and in the true,
poets leave them entirely and create monsters.
I am not afraid that the poetry of democratic peoples may show itself
to be timid or that it may stay very close to the earth. I am apprehensive
instead that it may lose itself at every moment in the clouds, and that it
may nish by portraying entirely imaginary realms. I fear that the works
of democratic poets may offer immense and incoherent images, over-
charged portraits, bizarre compositions, and that the fantastic beings that
have emerged from their mind may sometimes cause the real world to be
missed.
845
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 9
a
Some Observations on the
Theater of Democratic Peoples
b
a. 1. It is in the theater that the literary repercussions of the political revolution rst
make themselves felt. Spectators are carried away by their secret tastes without having
the time to acknowledge it.
2. The literary revolution takes place more suddenly in the theater than elsewhere.
Even in aristocracies the people have their voice in the theater. When the social
state becomes democratic, the people become sovereign and overthrow by riot the
literary laws of the aristocracy.
3. It is in the theater that the literary revolution is always most visible. The theater
puts into relief most of the qualities and all of the defects inherent in democratic
literatures.
1. Scorn for erudition. No ancient subjects.
2. Subjects taken from current society and presenting its inconsistencies.
3. Few xed rules.
4. Style (illegible word) careless.
5. Improbabilities.
4. The Americans show all these instincts when they go to the theater, but they
rarely go. Why (YTC, CVf, p. 20).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript:
CH. [perhaps M (ed.)] to whom I have just read this chapter (22 December 1838)
immediately found 1. that it greatly resembled literary physiognomy. 2. that it was a
bit serious given the subject. 3. that it would be desirable to introduce more citations
and less argumentation./
Doesnt interest begin to tire and isnt this chapter, which is only the development
of literary physiognomy, too much?
Examine the impression of those who hear it./
I believe, taking everything into account, that this chapter should be deleted.
CH could indicate Charles Stoffels or Ernest de Chabrol. Tocqueville read part of his
manuscript to Chateaubriand, but a letter to Beaumont obliges us to place this reading
the theater of democrati c peoples 846
When the revolution that changed the social and political state of an
aristocratic people begins to make itself felt in literature, it is generally in
the theater that it is rst produced, and it is there that it always remains
visible.
The spectator of a dramatic work is in a way taken unprepared by the
impression that is suggested to him. He does not have time to search his
memory or to consult experts; he does not think about ghting the new
literary instincts that are beginning to emerge in him; he yields to them
before knowing them.
Authors do not take long to discover which way public taste is thus se-
cretly leaning. They turn their works in that direction; and plays, after serv-
ing to make visible the literary revolution that is being prepared, soon end
by carrying it out. If you want to judge in advance the literature of a people
that is turning toward democracy, study its theater.
Among aristocratic nations themselves, moreover, plays form the most
democratic portions of literature. There is no literary enjoyment more ac-
cessible to the crowd than those that you experience seeing the stage. Nei-
ther preparation nor study is needed to feel them. They grip you amid your
preoccupations and your ignorance. When the love, still half crude, for the
pleasures of the mind begins to penetrate a class of citizens, it immediately
drives them to the theater. The theaters of aristocratic nations have always
been full of spectators who do not belong to the aristocracy. It is only in
the theater that the upper classes have mingled with the middle and lower
classes, and that they have agreed if not to accept the advice of the latter,
at least to allow them to give it. It is in the theater that the learned and the
in January 1839. If it concerns M, Tocquevilles wife, Mary Mottley, must be con-
sidered.
On a loose sheet with the manuscript of the chapter:
Perhaps this chapter should be reduced to only the new ideas that it contains, only
recalling all the others in passing.
The new ideas are:
1. It is in the theater that the literary revolution rst shows itself.
2. It is there that it is most sudden.
3. It is there that it is always most visible.
lettered have always had the most difculty making their taste prevail over
that of the people, and keeping themselves from being carried away by the
taste of the people. There the pit has often laid down the law for the boxes.
[So democracy not only introduces the lower classes into the theater, it
makes them dominate there.]
If it is difcult for an aristocracy not to allow the theater to be invaded
by the people, you will easily understand that the people must rule there
as a master once democratic principles have penetrated laws and mores,
when ranks merge and minds like fortunes become more similar, and when
the upper class loses its power, its traditions and its leisure, along with its
hereditary wealth.
So the tastes and instincts natural to democratic peoples as regards lit-
erature, will show themselves rst in the theater, and you can predict that
they will be introduced there with violence. In written works, the literary
laws of the aristocracy will become modied little by little in a general and
so to speak legal manner. In the theater, they will be overthrown by riots.
[All that I have said in a general way about the literature of democracies
is particularly applicable to the works of the theater.]
The theater puts into relief most of the qualities and nearly all the vices
inherent in democratic literatures.
Democratic peoples have only very mediocre esteem for learning, and
they scarcely care about what happened in Rome and in Athens; they mean
for you to talk about themselves, and they ask for the present to be
portrayed.
Consequently, when the heroes and mores of antiquity are often repro-
duced on stage, and care is taken to remain very faithful to ancient tradi-
tions, that is enough to conclude that the democratic classes do not yet
dominate the theater.
Racine excuses himself very humbly, in the preface of Britannicus, for
having made Junie enter among the vestal virgins, where, according toAulu-
Gelle, he says, no one younger than six or older than nine years of age was
received. It may be believed that he would not have thought to accuse him-
self or to defend himself from such a crime, if he had written today.
c
Such a fact enlightens me not only about the state of literature in the
times in which it took place, but also about that of the society itself. A
democratic theater does not prove that the nation is democratic; for, as we
have just seen, even in aristocracies it can happen that democratic tastes
inuence the stage. But whenthe spirit of aristocracyalone rules thetheater,
that demonstrates invincibly that the whole society is aristocratic, and you
can boldly conclude that this same learned and lettered class that directs
authors commands citizens and leads public affairs.
It is very rare that the rened tastes and haughty tendencies of the ar-
istocracy, when it governs the theater, do not lead it to make a choice, so
the speak, in human nature. Certainsocial conditions interest it principally,
and it is pleased to nd them portrayed on the stage; certain virtues, and
even certain vices, seem to the aristocracy to merit more particularly being
reproduced on stage: it accepts the portrayal of these while it removes all
the others from its sight. In the theater, as elsewhere, it only wants to nd
great lords, and it is moved only by kings. It is the same for styles. An ar-
istocracy willingly imposes certain ways of speaking on authors; it wants
all to be said with this tone.
The theater therefore often happens to portray only one of the dimen-
sions of man, or even sometimes to represent what is not found in human
nature; it rises above human nature and leaves it behind.
In democratic societies spectators do not have suchpreferences, andthey
rarely exhibit similar antipathies; they love to nd on stage the confused
mixture of conditions, of sentiments and ideas that they nd before their
eyes. The theater becomes more striking, more popular and more true.
Sometimes, however, those who write for the theater indemocracies also
go beyond human nature, but in another way thantheir precursors. By dint
of wanting to reproduce minutely the small singularities of the present
c. In the margin of a rst version that is found in the rubish of the chapter:
Shakespeare, Addison: There where authority does not deign to interfere in the the-
ater (Rubish, 1).
moment and the particular physiognomy of certain men, they forget to
relate the general features of the species.
When the democratic classes rule the theater, they introduce as much
liberty in the manner of treating the subject as in the very choice of this
subject.
The love of the theater being, of all literary tastes, the one most natural
to democratic peoples, the number of authors and that of spectators, like
that of the performances, increases constantly among these peoples. Such
a multitude, composed of such diverse elements and spread over so many
different places, cannot accept the same rules and be subject to the same
laws. No agreement is possible among very numerous judges who do not
know where to meet; each separately makes his judgment. If the effect of
democracy is in general to make literary rules and conventions doubtful,
in the theater it abolishes them entirely, in order to substitute only the ca-
price of each author and each public.
It is equally inthe theater above all that what I have already saidelsewhere
in a general way concerning style and art in democratic literatures is re-
vealed. When you read the criticism brought forth by the dramatic works
of the century of Louis XIV, you are surprised to see the great esteem of
the public for verisimilitude, and the importance that it placed on the fact
that a man, remaining always true to himself, did nothing that could not
be easily explained and understood. It is equally surprising howmuchvalue
was then attached to the forms of language and what small quarrels over
words were made with dramatic authors.
It seems that the men of the century of Louis XIV attached a very ex-
aggerated value to these details, which are noticed in the study but that
elude the stage.
d
For, after all, the principal object of a play is to be pre-
sented, and its rst merit is to stir emotion. That came from the fact that
the spectators of this period were at the same time the readers. Leaving the
d. <What made the men of the century of Louis XIV want to nd only princes and
kings on the tragic stage was a sentiment analogous to that which made Alexander say,
when requested to appear at the Olympic games: I would willingly go if only kings raced
there> (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville here takes up a known episode, drawn from the Life of
Alexander of Plutarch.
performance, they waited at home for the writer, in order to complete their
judgment of him.
In democracies, you listen to plays, but you do not read them. Most of
those who attend stage plays are not seeking the pleasures of the mind, but
the intense emotions of the heart. They are not waiting to nd a work of
literature, but a spectacle, and provided that the author speaks the language
of the country correctly enough to make himself understood and that the
characters excite curiosity and awaken sympathy, they are content; without
asking anything more of the ction, they immediately reenter the real
world. So style there is less necessary; for on the stage observation of these
rules escapes more and more.
As for verisimilitudes, it is impossible tobe oftennew, unexpected, rapid,
while remaining faithful to them. So they are neglected, and the public
pardons it. You can count on the fact that they will not worry about the
roads you have led them along, if you lead them nally to an object that
touches them. They will never reproachyoufor having movedtheminspite
of the rules.
[Two things must be clearly distinguished.
Complicated intrigues, forced effects, improbability are often due to
scorn for art and sometimes to ignorance of it. These faults are found in
all theaters that are beginning, and for this reasonaristocratic theaters have
often provided an example of them, because it is ordinarily aristocracy
that leads the youthful period of peoples. The oddities, coarseness and
extravagance that are sometimes found in Lope de Vega and in Shakes-
peare
e
do not prove that these great men followed the natural taste of the
aristocracy, but only that they were the rst to write for it.
f
Their genius
subsequently perpetuated their errors.
g
When a great dramatic author
does not purge the stage of the vices that he nds there, he xes them
e. The rubish also names Calderon.
f. Memoir of Grimm. Deep discussion of what there is of the improbable (Rubish,
1). It perhaps concerns Friedrich M. Grimm, Nouveaux me moires secrets et inedits histo-
riques, politiques, anecdotiques et litte raires . . . , (Paris: Lerouge-Wolf, 1834), 2 vols.
g. Variant in the rubish: This is seen in the renaissance of letters among all peoples
evenaristocracies. See Lope de Vega, Shakespeare andthe Frenchbefore Corneille. When
a great genius . . . (Rubish, 1).
there, and all those who follow imitate those courtiers of Alexander who
found it easier to tilt their heads to the side like their master than to con-
quer Asia.
Democratic writers know in general the conventions of the stage, and
the rules of dramatic art, but often they willingly neglect them in order to
go faster or to strike more forcefully.]
The Americans bring to full light the different instincts that I have just
depicted, when they go to the theater.
h
But it must be recognized that there
is still only a small number of them who go. Although spectators and spec-
tacles have prodigiously increased since forty years ago inthe UnitedStates,
the population still goes to this type of amusement only with extreme
reticence.
That is due to particular causes that the reader already knows and that
it is sufcient to recall to him in two words.
The Puritans, who founded the American republics, were not only en-
emies of pleasure; they professed in addition an entirely special horror of
the theater. They considered it as an abominable diversion, and as long as
their spirit reigned unrivaled, dramatic presentations were absolutely un-
known among them. These opinions of the rst fathers of the colony left
profound traces in the mind of their descendants.
The extreme regularity of habits and the great rigidity of mores that are
seen in the United States, moreover, have not been very favorable to the
development of theatrical art until now.
There are no subjects for drama in a country that has not witnessed
great political catastrophes
j
and where love always leads by a direct and
easy road to marriage. Men who use every day of the week for making
h. I am moreover obliged to admit, and perhaps it is proper to do so, that in this
matter America cannot serve as an example. By what is happening in the United
States, it is difcult to judge the direction that the American democracy would give
to theatrical art, since the American democracy has so to speak no theaters. Forty
years ago I do not think that you would ever have attended a dramatic presentation
in this part of the New World. Since then halls for spectacles [v: theaters] have been
built in two or three great cities of the Union, but these places of pleasure are closed
part of the year and during the rest of the time the native population frequents them
little (Rubish, 1). Cf. Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 39496.
j. The manuscript reads: public catastrophes.
their fortune and Sunday for praying to God do not lend themselves to
the comic muse.
A single fact sufces to show that the theater is not very popular in the
United States.
The Americans, whose laws authorize freedom and even license of
speech ineverything, have nonetheless subjecteddramatic authors toa kind
of censorship.
k
Theatrical presentations can only take place when the ad-
ministrators of the townallowthem. This demonstrates clearlythat peoples
are like individuals. They give themselves without cautiontotheir principal
passions, and then they are very careful not to yield to the impetus of tastes
that they do not have.
There is no portion of literature that is tied by tighter and more nu-
merous bonds to the current state of society than the theater.
The theater of one period can never suit the following periodif, between
the two, an important revolution has changed mores and laws.
The great writers of another century are still studied. But plays written
for another public are no longer attended. Dramatic authors of past time
live only in books.
The traditional taste of a fewmen, vanity, fashion, the genius of anactor
can for a time sustain or bring back an aristocratic theater within a democ-
racy; but soon it collapses by itself. It is not overthrown; it is abandoned.
k. With a note in the rubish: Ask new clarications from Niles (Rubish, 1).
853
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 0
a
Of Some Tendencies Particular to
Historians in Democratic Centuries
b
Historians who write in aristocratic centuries ordinarily make all events
depend onthe particular will andthe moodof certainmen, andtheyreadily
link the most important revolutions to the slightest accidents. They wisely
make the smallest causes stand out, and often they do not see the greatest
ones.
Historians who live in democratic centuries show completely opposite
tendencies.
Most of them attribute to the individual almost no inuence on the
destiny of the species, or to citizens onthe fate of the people. But, inreturn,
they give great general causes to all the small particular facts. [In their eyes,
a. 1. Aristocratic historians attribute all events to a few men. Democratic historians
are led to deny the particular inuence of men on the destiny of the species and of
the people and to search only for general causes. There is exaggeration on both sides.
In all events, one part must be attributed to general facts and another to particular
inuences. But the relationship varies depending on the times. General facts explain
more things in democratic centuries and particular inuences fewer.
2. Democratic historians are led not only to attribute each fact to a great cause,
but also to link facts together and to produce historical systems.
3. Not only are they inclined to contest the power of individuals to lead peoples,
but they are easily led to contest the ability of peoples to modify their destinies by
themselves and they subject them to a sort of blind fatality (YTC, CVf, p. 21).
One of the titles of the chapter in the rubish is: influence of equality of con-
ditions on the manner of envisaging and writing history.
b. On the jacket of the manuscript, in pencil: Historians of antiquity did not treat
history like Mignet and company.
hi s tori ans i n democrati c centuri es 854
all events are linked together by a tight and necessary chain, and therefore
they sometimes end up by denying nations control over themselves and by
contesting the liberty of having been able to do what they did.]
c
These
contrasting tendencies can be explained.
When historians in aristocratic centuries cast their eyes on the world
theater, they notice rst of all a very small number of principal actors who
leadthe whole play. These great characters, whokeepthemselves at thefront
of the stage, stop their view and hold it; while they apply themselves to
uncovering the secret motives that make the latter act andspeak, they forget
the rest.
The importance of the things that they see a few men do gives them an
exaggerated idea of the inuence that one man is able to exercise, and nat-
urally disposes them to believe that you must always go back to the partic-
ular action of an individual to explain the movements of the crowd.
When, on the contrary, all citizens are independent of each other, and
when each one of them is weak, you do not discover any one of themwho
exercises a very great or, above all, a very enduring power over the mass. At
rst view, individuals seem absolutely powerless over the mass, and you
would say that society moves all by itself by the free and spontaneous par-
ticipation of all the men who compose it.
d
That naturally leads the human mind to search for the general reason
c. In the margin: <Perhaps to delete. This relates only to the last idea of the chap-
ter.> Cf. p. 858.
A note in the Rubish explains: This chapter is very closely linked to that on general
ideas. It must be combined there or be kept very separate from it (Rubish, 1).
d. Be careful while treating this subject about wanting to portray history and not
historians, what is happening in the world and not the manner in which historians explain
it (Rubish, 1).
In the article Movement of the French Press in 1836, Revue des deux mondes, 4th
series, X, 1837, pp. 45398, which Tocqueville utilized for the draft of chapter 2, you nd
similar afrmations. It is no longer only a matter, you read on p. 464, as in the past,
of putting in the forefront the gures of great men and of moving into the background
the vague and unappreciated action of the masses. Our century, which wants to know
everything and which doubts everything, seems to prefer facts and proofs to these strik-
ing tableaux in which the art of composition and the wisdom of judgments testify to
the power of the writer better than the clutter of citations.
that has been able to strike so many minds all at once in this way and turn
them simultaneously in the same direction.
e
I am very persuaded that, among democratic nations themselves, the
genius, the vices or the virtues of certain individuals delay or precipitate
the natural course of the destiny of the people; but these sorts of fortuitous
and secondary causes are innitely more varied, more hidden, more com-
plicated, less powerful, and consequently more difcult to disentangle and
to trace in times of equality than in the centuries of aristocracy, when it is
only a matter of analyzing, amid general facts, the particular action of a
single man or of a few men.
f
The historian soon becomes tired of such a work; his mind becomes lost
amid this labyrinth, and, not able to succeed in seeing clearly and in bring-
ing sufciently to light individual inuences, he denies them. He prefers
to speak to us about the nature of races, about the physical constitutionof
a country, or about the spirit of civilization[<great words that I cannot hear
said without involuntarily recalling the abhorrence of a vacuum that was
e. <That necessarily leads their minds back toward the search for general causes,
about which you always have at least something to say, andoftenthey content themselves
with the rst one they nd> (Rubish, 1).
f. There are two ideas in this chapter which must not be confused.
A people can have its destiny modied or changed by the accidental inuence of
a powerful man, like Napoleon, I suppose.
Or, as well, by an accident due to chance such as a plague, the loss of a battle . . .
You can refuse to believe in the inuence of individuals and believe in that of
accidents.
In democratic centuries, the inuence of individuals is innitely smaller than in
aristocratic centuries, but the inuence of accidents is not less.
Now, the modern historical system consists of saying not only that individuals
cannot modify .-.-.-.- peoples, but also that accidents cannot do so. So that the nature
of some battle, for example, would not have been able denitively to prevent some
nation from succumbing, because there was a sequence of old causes that destined it
invincibly to perish.
It is clear that all that I say in the preceding chapter applies to individuals and not
to accidents. This is exaggerated because, when you go back to the originof accidents,
you almost always arrive at individual action (Rubish, 1).
attributed to nature before the heaviness of air was discovered>]. That
shortens his work, and, at less cost, better satises the reader.
g
M. de Lafayette said somewhere in his Memoires
h
that the exaggerated
system of general causes brought marvelous consolations to mediocre pub-
lic men. I add that it gives admirable consolations to mediocre historians.
It always provides them with a few great reasons that promptly pull them
through at the most difcult point in their book, and it favors the weakness
or laziness of their minds, all the while honoring its depth.
For me, I think that there is no period when one part of the events of
this world must not be attributed to very general facts, and another to very
particular inuences. These two causes are always found; only their rela-
tionship differs. General facts explain more things in democratic centuries
than in aristocratic centuries, and particular inuences fewer. In times of
aristocracy, it is the opposite; particular inuences are stronger, and general
causes are weaker, as long as you do not consider as a general cause the very
fact of inequality of conditions, which allows a few individuals to thwart
the natural tendencies of all the others.
So historians who try to portray what is happening in democratic so-
cieties are right to give a large role to general causes and to apply themselves
principally to discovering them; but they are wrong to deny entirely the
particular action of individuals, because it is difcult to nd and to follow
g. In the margin: <This is not in perfect agreement with what precedes and draws
the mind in another direction. What I say above is that historians prefer looking for
general causes than for particular facts. What I say here is that they are content with bad
general reasons, which is another idea. My comparison applies only to the last one, for
the heaviness of air is a general cause, as well as the abhorrence of a vacuum. Perhaps
delete.>
h. Marquis de Lafayette, Me moires, correspondance et manuscrits du ge ne ral Lafayette
(Paris: H. Fournier a ne, 18371838), 6 vols. In May 1837, Tocqueville received fromCor-
celle, who was the editor, the rst three volumes of this work. It is probable that the
author, who did not sympathize with the general, did not read his memoirs (we know
that he considered him to be a well-intentioned man but with a mediocre mind ), and
that he foundthis quotationinthe secondpart of the reviewdone bySainte-Beuve(Revue
des deux mondes, 4th series, 15, 1838, pp. 35581, in which the same quotation appears on
page 359).
it [andto content themselves oftenwithgreat words whengreat causes elude
them].
Not only are historians who live in democratic centuries drawnto giving
a great cause to each fact, but also they are led to linking facts and making
a system emerge.
In aristocratic centuries, since the attention of historians is diverted at
every moment toward individuals, the sequence of events escapes them, or
rather they do not believe in such a sequence. The thread of history seems
to them broken at every instant by the passage of a man.
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, the historian, seeing far fewer
actors and many more actions, can easily establish a relationship and a me-
thodical order among them.
Ancient literature, which has left us such beautiful histories, offers not
a single great historical system, while the most miserable modernliteratures
are swarming with them. It seems that ancient historians did not make
enough use of these general theories that our historians are always ready to
abuse.
Those who write in democratic centuries have another, more dangerous
tendency.
When the trace of the action of individuals or nations becomes lost, it
often happens that you see the world move without uncovering the motor.
Since it becomes very difcult to see and to analyze the reasons that, acting
separately on the will of each citizen, end by producing the movement of
the people, you are tempted to believe that the movement is not voluntary
and that societies, without knowing it, obey a superior force that dominates
them.
Even if you should discover on earth the general fact that directs the
particular will of all individuals, that does not save human liberty. A cause
vast enough to be applied at the same time to millions of men, and strong
enough to bend all of them in the same direction, easily seems irresistible;
after seeing that you yielded to it, you are very close to believing that it
could not be resisted.
So historians who live indemocratic times not only deny to a fewcitizens
the power to act on the destiny of the people, they also take away from
peoples themselves the ability to modify their own fate, and subject them
either to an inexible providence or to a sort of blind fatality. According
to these historians, each nation is invincibly tied, by its position, its origin,
its antecedents, its nature, to a certain destiny that all its efforts cannot
change. They make the generations stand together with each other, and,
going back in this way, from age to age and from necessary events to nec-
essary events, to the origin of the world, they make a tight and immense
chain that envelops the entire human species and binds it.
It is not enough for them to show how facts happened; they like as well
to reveal that it could not have happened otherwise. They consider a nation
that has reached a certain place in its history, and assert that it has been
forced to follow the road that led it there. That is easier than teaching what
it could have done to take a better route.
j
It seems, while reading the historians of aristocratic ages andparticularly
those of antiquity, that, in order to become master of his fate and govern
his fellows, man has only to know how to control himself. You would say,
while surveying the histories written in our time, that man can do nothing,
either for himself or around him. The historians of antiquity taught how
to command; those of our days scarcely teach anything except howtoobey.
In their writings, the author often appears great, but humanity is always
small.
If this doctrine of fatality, which has so many attractions for those who
write history in democratic times, by passing from the writers to their read-
ers, in this way penetrated the entire mass of citizens and took hold of the
public mind, you can predict that it would soon paralyze the movement of
new societies and would reduce Christians to Turks.
k
I will say, moreover, that such a doctrine is particularly dangerous inthis
period in which we live; our contemporaries are all too inclined to doubt
free will, because each of them feels limited on all sides by his weakness,
j. I believe that in nearly each instant of their existence nations, like men, are free
to modify their fate (Rubish, 1).
k. Show how the idea of the powerlessness of individuals over the mass leads them
to the idea of the powerlessness of the mass over itself and thus leads themto the fatality
of the Moslems (Rubish, 1).
but they still readily grant strength and independence to men gathered in
a social body. Care must be taken not to obscure this idea, for it is a matter
of lifting up souls and not nally demoralizing them.
m
m. In the rubish you nd this small chapter on religious eloquence, deleted in the
nal version:
religious eloquence or preaching.
.-.-.-.-.- the inuence that democracy exercises on works of the human mind, it
would probably have been enough for me to reveal how it modies the language of
the pulpit.
[In the margin: Perhaps and even probably delete this chapter. It cannot be applied
to America. In America, by exception, religious beliefs are very rm and the language
of priests is not a plea in favor of Christianity.]
There is nothing so little variable by their nature as religions and it cannot be
otherwise. The true religion rests on absolute truth; other religions claim to be sup-
ported by it; so all are immobile, and it is easier to destroy themthan to modify them.
This immobility extends to everything that is related to religion no matter how
distantly. There is no religious custom so unimportant that it is not more difcult to
change [v: destroy] than the constitution of a people.
So when any cause whatsoever leads men to vary style and method in holy things,
be sure that this is only one of the last effects of a much more general revolution and
that the same cause had already long ago changed the manner of treating all other
subjects.
.-.-.-.- Catholic and I enter a church. I see the priest mounting the steps of the
pulpit. He is young. He wears priestly vestments, but beyond that there is already
nothing of the traditional or of the conventional in his bearing, in his gestures, or in
his voice. He doesnt say My brothers, but Sirs. He doesnt recite, but he im-
provises. He does not talk about the growing pain that our sins cause him; our good
works do not ll him with ineffable joy. He engages his listener hand to hand, and
armed like him, takes him on. He feels that it is no longer a matter of touching us,
but of convincing us. He addresses himself not to faith, but to reason; he doesnt
impose belief, he discusses it and wants to have it freely accepted. He does not go to
search for arguments in the old arsenal of scholastic theology, in the writings of the
Doctors, any more than in the decrees of the Popes andthe decisions of the Councils.
He borrows his proofs from secular science; he draws his comparisons fromeveryday
things; he bases himself on the most general, the clearest and most elementary truths
[v: notions] of human philosophy.
He cites the poets and orators of today almost as much as the Fathers of the
Church. Rarely does it happen that he speaks Latin, and I cannot prevent myself
from suspecting that the Kyrie Eleison of the Mass is all the Greek he knows.
Sometimes disorganized, incorrect, incomplete, he is nearly always original, bril-
liant, unexpected, above all fruitful. Give up reading him, but go to hear him.
If, back in the solitude of your dwelling, you happen to compare the man whom
you have just heard with the great Christian orators of past centuries, you will dis-
cover, not without terror, what the strange power that moves the world is able to do;
and you will understand that democracy, after remaking in passing all the ephemeral
[v: changing] institutions of men, nally reaches the things most immobile by their
nature, and that, not able to change the substance of Christianity, which is eternal,
it at least modies the language and the form (Rubish, 1).
861
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 1
a
Of Parliamentary Eloquence
b
a. 1. The discussions of the English Parliament are led by only a few men, which
makes them clear, plain and concise. Why it is not the same in Congress.
1. In aristocratic countries, the members of the legislature study the parliamentary
art in advance and for a longer time. This reason is good, but insufcient.
2. The habit of hierarchy and subordination that men have in aristocratic society
follows them into the assembly. It is not the same in democratic countries.
3. Aristocratic deputies, all being of considerable importance by themselves, are
easily consoled about not playing a role in the assembly and do not want a mediocre
one. Democratic deputies have in the country only the rank that they have in the
assembly; that necessarily pushes them ahead.
4. They are, moreover, pushed to speak by the voters; and as they depend much
more on the voters, they yield to them on this point.
2. That is the petty side of democratic discussions. Here is the great one.
1. Since there are no distinct classes, orators always speak to and about the whole
nation.
2. Since they cannot rely on the (illegible word) the privileges of wealth, of corps,
or of persons, they are obliged to go back to the general truths provided by the ex-
amination of human nature. That gives a great character of grandeur to their elo-
quence and pushes its effects to the furthest ends of the earth (YTC, CVf, pp. 21
23).
b. There would be two subjects that you could still treat here:
1. The rst would consist of nding out if eloquence strictly speaking is as natural
to democratic assemblies as to others. I do not think so.
2. Why the reports of the Presidents to Congress have always been, until now, so
simple, so clear, so noble. This would be more appropriate to the subject (Rubish, 1).
On the rst page of a draft of the chapter: This chapter is an attempt. It probably
must be deleted (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville adds in another place: I believe that nothing
must be said about this subject. Since eloquence of the pulpit, which is the most con-
ventional, is modied by democracy, the mind is sufciently struck by the power of the
latter on all types of eloquence (Rubish, 1).
parli amentary eloquence 862
Among aristocratic peoples all men stand together and depend on each
other; among all men there is a hierarchical bond by the aid of which each
one can be kept in his place and the whole body can be kept in obedience.
Something analogous is always found within the political assemblies of
these peoples. Parties there line up naturally behind certain leaders, whom
they obey by a kind of instinct that is only the result of habits contracted
elsewhere. They bring to the small society of the assembly the mores of the
larger society.
[In the public assemblies of aristocratic nations there are only a fewmen
who act as spokesmen. All the others assent and keep quiet. Orators speak
only when something is useful to the party. They say only what can serve
the general interests of the party and they do not needlessly repeat what
has already been said. The discussion is clear, rapid and concise.
Breadth and depth are often lacking in the discussions of the Parliament
of England, but the debate is almost always conducted admirably and
speeches are very pertinent to the subject. It is not always soinCongress.
I at rst believed that this way of treating public affairs came from the
long use that the English have of parliamentary life. But it must be clearly
admitted that it is due to some other cause, since the Americans, with the
same experience, do not follow the same method.
In the democratic countries most accustomed to the representative re-
gime, it often happens that a great number of those who are part of the
assemblies have not sufciently reected in advance about the suitable way
to act there. The reason is that among these peoples public life is rarely a
career. You go there by chance; you soon depart. It is a road that you cross
and that you do not follow. So to it you bring your natural enlightenment,
and not an acquired knowledge.
In aristocratic countries that have had assemblies for a long time, it is
not the same. Since there is only a small number of men who can enter
national councils, those men apply themselves to becoming part of those
councils and study in advance the art of how to conduct themselves there.
Since the same men are part of the legislature over a long period of time,
they have the time to recognize the methods that best serve the conduct of
affairs, and they are always numerous enough to force the new arrivals to
conform.
This reason seems good, but it does [not (ed.)] sufce to explain the
difference that is noticeable here between the Americans and the English.
In the United States, deliberative bodies are so numerous and public as-
semblies so multiplied that there is no man, who has reached maturity, who
has not very often had the occasion to enter into some gathering of this
type and who has not been able to see the game. If there are no classes in
America that are specially destined for public affairs, all classes get actively
involved and constantly think about them. Almost all of even those who
remain in private life thus receive a political education. So you must look
for a more general and deeper cause than the one indicated above.
Not only do the Americans not always have very precise notions about
the parliamentary art, but also they are more strongly inclined to violate
the rules of that art when they know them.]
Indemocratic countries, a great number of citizens oftenhappentohead
toward the same point; but each one marches or at least professes to march
there only by himself. Accustomed not to regulate his movements except
according to his personal impulses, he yields with difculty to receiving his
rules from outside. This taste for and this practice of independence follow
him into national councils. If he agrees to associate himself with others for
the pursuit of the same plan, he at least wants to remain master of his own
way of cooperating in the common success.
That is why, in democratic countries, parties so impatiently endure
someone leading themand appear subordinate only whenthe danger is very
great. Even so, the authority of leaders, which in these circumstances can
go as far as making parties act and speak, almost never extends to the power
of making parties keep quiet.
Among aristocratic peoples, the members of political assemblies are at
the same time members of the aristocracy. Each one of them possesses by
himself a high and stable rank, and the place that he occupies in the as-
sembly is often less important in his eyes than the one that he lls in the
country. That consoles him for not playing a role in the discussion of
public affairs, and disposes him not to seek a mediocre role with too much
ardor.
In America, it ordinarily happens that the deputy amounts to something
only by his position in the assembly. So he is constantly tormented by the
need to gain importance, and he feels a petulant desire to bring his ideas
fully to light every moment.
c
He is pushed in this direction not only by his vanity, but also by that of
his constituents and by the continual necessity to please them.
Among aristocratic peoples, the member of the legislature rarely has a
narrow dependence on voters; for them he is often in some way a necessary
representative; sometimes he holds them in a narrow dependency, and if
they come nally to refuse him their vote, he easily has himself appointed
elsewhere; or, renouncing a political career, he shuts himself up in an idle-
ness that still has splendor.
In a democratic country, like the United States, the deputy hardly ever
has an enduring hold on the mind of his constituents. However small the
electoral body, democratic instability makes it change face constantly. So it
must be captivated every day. He is never sure of them; andif they abandon
him, he is immediately without resources; for he does not naturally have a
position elevated enough to be easily noticed by those who are not nearby;
and, in the complete independence in which citizens live, he cannot hope
that his friends or the government will easily impose him on an electoral
body that will not know him. So it is in the district that he represents that
all the seeds of his fortune are sown; it is from this corner of the earth that
he must emerge in order to rise to command the people and to inuence
the destinies of the world.
Thus, it is natural that, indemocratic countries, the members of political
assemblies think more about their constituents thanabout their party, while
in aristocracies, they attend more to their party than to their constituents.
d
c. I do not believe, moreover, that what happens on this point in the United States
indicates a general law applicable to all democracies. I believe that there exists at the
bottom of the soul of a people a secret disposition that leads it to keep the most
capable away from power when it can do so without danger. The people, moreover,
when it leads affairs, is like kings who, Montesquieu says, always imagine that their
courtiers are their best subjects. Peoples are princes in this. But I believe that this fatal
tendency can be combatted naturally by circumstances or articially by laws, and in
America both favor it (Rubish, 1).
d. Add that the member of a democratic legislature, just as he does not have the
natural taste for parliamentary discipline, does not have a particular interest in sub-
Now, what must be said to please voters is not always what would be
suitable for serving well the political opinion that they profess.
The general interest of a party is often that the deputy who is a member
never speak about the great public affairs that he understands badly; that
he speak little about the small affairs that would hinder the march of the
great one; and most often nally, that he keep completely quiet. To main-
tain silence is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to
public matters.
But this is not the way that the voters understand it.
The population of a district charges a citizen to take part in the govern-
ment of the State, because it has conceived a very grand idea of his merit.
Since men appear greater in proportion to being surrounded by smaller
objects, it may be believed that the rarer the talents among those repre-
sented, the higher the opinion that will be held about the representative.
So it often happens that the less the voters have to expect fromtheir deputy,
the more they will hope from him; and, however incompetent he may be,
they cannot fail to require from him signal efforts that correspond to the
rank that they give him.
Apart from the legislator of the State, the voters see also in their repre-
sentative the natural protector of the district in the legislature; they are not
even far fromconsidering himas the agent of each one of those whoelected
him, and they imagine that he will display no less ardor insisting on their
particular interests than on those of the country.
Thus, the voters hold it as certain in advance that the deputy they will
choose will be an orator; that he will speak often if he can, and that, in the
case where he would have to limit himself, he will at least try hard in his
mitting himself to it. In aristocracies, the leaders of parties are often men powerful
in themselves, or men who have easily at their disposal all of the party forces. They
have in their hands great means to serve and to harm. It frequently happens, for
example, that they are in a position to impose their choice on the voters. The party
itself, hierarchically organized in the society as in the assembly, can force all the mem-
bers to cooperate toward a general end that it sets.
In democracies, on the contrary, parties are not better organized outside the as-
semblies than within. Within parties, there exists a common will to act, but not a
government that directs it. So the deputy has truly speaking nothing either to hope
or to fear except from his constituents (Rubish, 1).
rare speeches to include the examination of all the great affairs of the State
along with the account of all the petty grievances that they themselves have
complained about; so that, not able to appear often, he shows on each oc-
casion that he knows what to do, and, instead of spouting forthincessantly,
he every now and then compresses his remarks entirely into a small scope,
providing in this way a kind of brilliant and complete summary of his
constituents and of himself. For this price, they promise their next votes.
This pushes into despair honest, mediocre men who, knowing them-
selves, would not have appeared on their own. The deputy, carried away in
this way, speaks up to the great distress of his friends, and, throwinghimself
imprudently into the middle of the most celebrated orators, he muddles
the debate and tires the assembly.
All the laws that tend to make the elected more dependent on the voter
therefore modify not only the conduct of the legislators, as I noted else-
where, but also their language. They inuence at the very same time public
affairs and the manner of speaking about them.
[I think as well that the more the electoral body is divided into small
parts, the more discussions will become droning withinthe legislativebody.
You can count on the fact that such a system will ll the assembly with
mediocre men
[
*
]
and that all the mediocre men whom it sends there will
make as many efforts to appear as if they were superior men.]
[*]. Note:
This effect is explained by two very perceptible reasons.
The smaller the electoral district, the more limited is the view of the voter and the
more his good choice depends on the chance birth of a capable man near him.
So small electoral circumscriptions will necessarily produce a crowd of mediocre
representatives, for the superior men of a nation are not spread equally over the dif-
ferent points of its surface.
The smallness of the electoral body will, moreover, very often prevent voters from
choosing those men when by chance they are found near them.
When voters are very numerous and spread over a great area, there is only a small
number of them who can have personal relationships with the man they choose, and
they elect him because of the merit attributed to him. When they are very few in
number, they readily name himbecause of the friendship that they have for him. The
election becomes always an affair of a coterie and often of a family. In an election of
this type the superior man loses all of his natural advantages. He can scarcely aspire
to stay equal.
There is, so to speak, not a member of Congress who agrees to return
home without having given at least one speech, or who bears being inter-
rupted before he is able to include within the limits of his harangue every-
thing that can be said about what is useful to the twenty-four states that
compose the Union, and especially to the district he represents. So he puts
successively before the minds of his listeners great general truths that he
often does not notice himself and that he points out only in a confused
way, and small highly subtle particularities that he does not ndandexplain
very easily. Consequently, it often happens that, within this great body, dis-
cussion becomes vague and muddled, and it seems to crawl toward the goal
that is proposed rather than marching toward it.
Something analogous will always be revealed, I believe, in the public
assemblies of democracies.
Happy circumstances and good laws could succeed in drawing to the
legislature of a democratic people men much more noteworthy than those
who are sent by the Americans to Congress; but you will never prevent the
mediocre men who are found in it from putting themselves on public dis-
play, smugly and on all sides.
The evil does not appear entirely curable to me, because it is due not
only to the regulations of the assembly, but also to its constitutionandeven
to that of the country.
The inhabitants of the UnitedStates seemthemselves toconsider themat-
ter from this point of view, and they testify to their long practice of parlia-
mentary life not by abstaining from bad speeches, but by subjecting them-
selves courageously to hearing them. They resignthemselves tohearingthem
as if to an evil that experience had made them recognize as inevitable.
[<Some insist that sometimes they are sleeping, but they never grumble.>]
We have shown the petty side of political discussions in democracies;
let us reveal the great one.
In YTC, CVk, 1, p. 82, next to this fragment, you nd this note: This should probably
be entirely deleted. Constant harping on electoral matters./
I would in fact delete that.
To delete.
What has happenedfor the past one hundredfty years inthe Parliament
of England has never caused a great stir outside; the ideas and sentiments
expressed by orators have never found much sympathy among the very
peoples who found themselves placed closest to the great theater of British
liberty, while, from the moment when the rst debates took place in the
small colonial assemblies of America in the period of the revolution, Eu-
rope was moved.
e
That was due not only to particular and fortuitous circumstances, but
also to general and lasting causes.
I see nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great orator dis-
cussing great affairs within a democratic assembly. Since there is never a
class that has its representatives in charge of upholding its interests, it is
always to the whole nation, and in the name of the whole nation that they
speak.
f
That enlarges thought and elevates language.
g
Since precedents there have little sway; since there are no more privileges
linked to certain properties or rights inherent to certain bodies or certain
men, the mind is forced to go back to general truths drawn from human
nature, in order to treat the particular affairs that concern it. Out of that
e. The English orators of the last century constantly quoted Latin and even Greek
at the rostrum.
Their sons of America quote only Shakespeare, the democratic author par excel-
lence (Rubish, 1).
f. The political discussions of a small democratic people cause a stir in the entire
universe. Not only because other peoples, also turning toward democracy, have anal-
ogous interests, but also because the political discussions of a democratic people,
however small it may be, always have a character of generality that makes them in-
teresting to the human species. They talk about man in general and treat rights that
he holds by his nature, which is the same everywhere.
Among aristocratic peoples it is almost always a question of the particular rights
of a class, which interests only this class or at most the people among whomthe class
is found.
This explains the inuence of the French revolution even apart from the state of
Europe, and incontrast, the slight stir causedby the debates of the EnglishParliament
(Rubish, 1).
g. In the margin: I would say something analogous about our time and about our-
selves. The debates of our chambers immediately cause a stir in the entire universe and
agitate all classes in each country.
is born, in the political discussions of a democratic people, however small
it may be, a character of generality that often makes those discussions cap-
tivating to the human species. All men are interested in them because it is
a question of man, who is everywhere the same.
Among the greatest aristocratic peoples, on the contrary, the most gen-
eral questions are almost always dealt withby a fewparticular reasons drawn
from the customs of a period or from the rights of a class; this interests
only the class in question, or at most the people among whom this class is
found.
It is to this cause as much as to the grandeur of the French nation, and
to the favorable dispositions of the peoples who hear it, that you must at-
tribute the great effect that our political discussions sometimes produce in
the world.
Our orators often speak to all men, even when they are only addressing
their fellow citizens.
h
h. In the Rubish, after the rough drafts of these chapters, you nd a jacket with these
notes:
[At the head: Inuence of equality on education./
There would have been many things to say about this subject, but I have already
so many things in the book, that this one must, I believe, be left aside.]
Inuence of democracy on the education of men or rather their instruction is a
necessary chapter. The useful and practical direction that it gives, the change inmeth-
ods that it brings about. The study of ancient languages, theoretical sciences, spec-
ulative studies that they subordinate to other studies.
To place somewhere in the chapter on ideas.
[To the side: To put a small chapter VI before the large chapter on sciences, lit-
erature and the arts, which must be the VIIth.] (Rubish, 1).
A draft contains, for the chapter on education, the following plan:
[As title on the jacket] Inuence of democracy on ideas./
Of academic institutions under democracy.
An academy having the purpose of keeping minds on a certain path, of imposing
a method on them, is contrary to the genius of democracy; it is an aristocratic
institution.
An academy having the goal of making the men who apply themselves to the arts
or to the sciences famous and giving them at State expense the comfort and leisure
that the democratic social state often denies to them, is an institution that can be not
to the taste of a democratic nation, but one that is never contrary to and can some-
times be necessary to the existence of a democracy. It is an eminently democratic
institution.
[Inside, on a page] Of the need for paid learned bodies in democracies. This need
increases as peoples turn toward democracy.
This truth understood with difculty by the democracy. Opposite natural incli-
nation that you must combat. The Americans give way to it.
Effect of this: science left to the ordinary encouragement that democracy can pro-
vide, that is to say that the men who are working produce only applications, no
theories.
[To the side: Ask Monsieur Biot for ideas.]
That the English set about badly to encourage the sciences. They give easy and
honorable rest in the hope of work. These things must be proposed as the fruit of
work.
Elsewhere: Of Education in the United States and in democratic countries in general.
Perhaps I should begin by portraying man in infancy and in the family before leading
him to manhood.
The trouble with this plan is that egoism dominates even the primordial relations
(YTC, CVa, pp. 23). Jean-Baptiste Biot, scientist and political writer of legitimist ten-
dencies, was a professor at the Colle`ge de France. On Tocqueville and the question of
education after Democracy, see Edward Gargan, The Silence of Tocqueville on Edu-
cation, Historical Reections, 7, 1980, pp. 56575.
871
s4s4s4s4s4
second part
Inuence of Democracy on the
a
a. [As the title] Inuence of democracy on sentiments, tastes, or mores./
Ideas that must never be entirely lost from view.
After making known each aw or each quality inherent in democracy, try to point
out with as much precision as possible the means that can be taken to attenuate the
rst and to develop the second. Example. Men in democracies are naturally led to
concentrate on their interests. To draw them away from their interests as much as
possible, to spiritualize them as much as possible, and nally if possible to connect
and merge particular interest and general interest, so that you scarcely know how to
distinguish the one from the other.
That is the political side of the work that must never be allowed to be entirely lost
from view.
But do not do that in a monotonous and tiring way, for fear of boredom, or in
too practical and too detailed a way, for fear of leaving myself open to criticism.
Reserve a part of these things for the introduction of the nal chapter (YTC, CVa,
pp. 3132).
On the back of the jacket of the Rubish that contains the drafts of the part on material
enjoyments and that bears number X:
First chapters on sentiments./
First system./
Democracy leads men toward the taste for material well-being.
It leads them to commerce, industry, to everything that is produced quickly.
It gives birth to an immoderate desire for happiness in this world.
It favors restlessness of the heart.
Here perhaps spirit of religion (Rubish, 1).
872
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1
a
Why Democratic Peoples Show a
More Ardent and More Enduring Love
for Equality Than for Liberty
b
a. This chapter, one of the best known of Democracy, is not found in the manuscript,
where you pass directly from the previous chapter (number 19) to the one on individ-
ualism (number 20). Nor does it appear in notebook CVf.
A rst version of it exists in pages 1 to 14 of notebook CVk, 2. The inclusion in the
nal version is due to the insistence of Louis de Kergorlay, as is witnessed by this note
on the jacket that contains it:
L[ouis (ed.)]. thinks that this piece must absolutely appear in the work, either in the
current form or by transporting the ideas elsewhere. I believe in fact that he is right.
I see that it could be introduced in this way into the present chapter, which would
then be divided into three principal ideas:
1. How equality gives the idea and the taste for political liberty.
2. How in the centuries of equality men are much less attached to being free than
to remaining equal.
3. How equality suggests ideas and tastes to them that can make them lose liberty
and lead them to servitude.
In this way the piece would remain more or less as it is. It would only have to be
concluded differently and in such a way as to t into the general idea of the chapter,
more or less like this:
Thus, love of liberty cannot be the principal passion of men during democratic
centuries and it occupies in their heart only the space left for it by another passion.
Before including this section, to see clearly whether all that I say there is not a
useless repetition of what I already said in the following sections. I am afraid it is
(YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 12). See note a for p. 1200.
b. The rubish of chapter 10 of this part contains a jacket cover on which you can
read: How equality of ranks suggests to men the taste for liberty [v: equality] and why
democratic peoples love equality better than liberty./
Piece that I will probably make the second section of the chapter and that must be
love for equali ty and for li berty 873
The rst and most intense of the passions given birth by equality of con-
ditions, I do not need to say, is the love of this very equality. So no one will
be surprised that I talk about it before all the others.
Everyone has noted that in our time, and especially in France, this pas-
sion for equality has a greater place in the human heart every day. It has
been said a hundred times that our contemporaries have a much more ar-
dent and much more tenacious love for equality than for liberty; but I do
not nd that we have yet adequately gone back to the causes of this fact. I
am going to try.
c
reexamined with care while reviewing this chapter. 4 September 1838 (Rubish, 1). The
notes that are found in this jacket belong in large part to the nal chapter of the book.
In a partial copy from the Rubish, they are found precisely with the rough drafts of the
fourth part (YTC, CVg, 2, p. 16 and following). Among these notes you nd this one:
Some ideas on the sentiment of equality (2 February 1836)./
What must be understood by the sentiment of equality among democratic peo-
ples./
The taste for equality among most men is not: that no one be lower than I, but:
that no one be higher than I, which, in practice, can come to the same thing, but
which is far from meaning the same thing./
So does a real and true taste for equality exist in this world? Among some elite
souls. But you must not base your reasoning on them./
What produced aristocracies? The desire among a few to raise themselves. What
leads to democracy? The desire of all to raise themselves. The sentiment is the same;
there is only a difference in the number of those who feel it. Each man aims as high
as possible, and a level comes about naturally, without anyone wanting to be leveled.
When everyone wants to rise at once, the rule of equality is quite naturally found
to be what is most suitable for each man. A thousand runners all have the same goal.
Each one burns with the desire of coming in rst. For that, it would be good to
precede the others in the course. But if I do that, who will assure me that the others
will not do so? If there were only ve or six who had to run with me, I could perhaps
attempt it, but racing with a thousand, you cannot succeed in doing so. What to do?
The only means is to prevent anyone from having any privilege and to leave each one
to his natural resources. [v: All, however, agree to depart at the same time from the
same place.] It is not that they truly love equality, but they are all obliged to resort to
it./
To reect again about all of that (Rubish, 1). See note d for p. 1203.
c. First draft of this opening of the chapter:
When conditions are more or less equal among men, each one, feeling independent
of his fellows, contracts the habit and the need to follow only his will in his particular
You can imagine an extreme point where liberty and equality meet and
merge.
Suppose that all citizens participate in the government and that eachone
has an equal right to take part in it.
Since no one then differs from his fellows, no one will be able to exercise
a tyrannical power; men will be perfectly free, because they will all be en-
tirely equal; and they will all be perfectly equal, because they will be entirely
free. Democratic peoples tend toward this ideal.
That is the most complete formthat equality can take onearth; but there
are a thousand other forms that, without being as perfect, are scarcely less
dear to these peoples.
Equality can become established in civil society and not reign in the
political world. Everyone can have the right to pursue the same pleasures,
to enter the same professions, to meet in the same places; in a word, to live
in the same way and to pursue wealth by the same means, without all taking
the same part in government.
A kind of equality can even become established in the political world,
even if political liberty does not exist. Everyone is equal to all his fellows,
actions. This naturally leads the human mind to the idea of political liberty and sug-
gests the taste for it.
Take one man at random from within a democratic people [v: in a country where
equality reigns], put him if possible outside of his prejudices, of his interests of
the moment, of his memories, so that he gives himself only to the sole interests
that the social state suggests to him, and you will discover that among all govern-
ments the one that he most easily imagines rst and that he loves best is government
based on sovereignty of the people.
<So, as the social state of a people becomes democratic, you see the spirit of liberty
born within it. These two things generally go together so closely that one makes me
consider the other. The attempts that a nation makes to establish liberty within it
only teach me that the principle of equality is developing there, and the equality that
I see reigning among a people makes me suppose the approach of revolutions.>
So equality of conditions cannot be established among a people without the spirit
of liberty being revealed there, and it is never entirely extinguished as long as equality
of conditions remains.
Love of political liberty, however, is not the principal passion of these democratic
peoples.
You can imagine an extreme point . . . (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 24).
except one, who is, without distinction, the master of all, and who takes
the agents of his power equally from among all.
It would be easy to form several other hypotheses according to which a
very great equality could easily be combined with institutions more or less
free, or even with institutions that would not be free at all.
So although men cannot become absolutely equal without beingentirely
free, and consequently equality at its most extreme level merges withliberty,
you are justied in distinguishing the one from the other.
d
The taste that men have for liberty and the one that they feel for equality
are, in fact, two distinct things, and I am not afraid to add that, among
democratic peoples, they are two unequal things.
If you want to pay attention, you will see that in each century, a singular
and dominant fact is found to which the other facts are related; this fact
almost always gives birth to a generative thought, or to a principal passion
that then ends by drawing to itself and carrying along in its course all sen-
timents and all ideas. It is like the great river toward which all of the sur-
rounding streams seem to ow.
Liberty has shown itself to men in different times and indifferent forms;
it has not been linked exclusively to one social state, and you nd it else-
where than in democracies. So it cannot form the distinctive characteristic
of democratic centuries.
The particular and dominant fact that singles out these centuries is
equality of conditions; the principal passion that agitates men in those
times is love of this equality.
Do not ask what singular charm the men of democratic ages nd in
living equal; or the particular reasons that they can have to be so stubbornly
attached to equality rather thanto the other advantages that societypresents
to them. Equality forms the distinctive characteristic of the periodinwhich
they live; that alone is enough to explain why they prefer it to everything
else.
d. <Equality of conditions does not lead to liberty in an irresistible way, but it leads
to it; this is our plank of salvation> (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 6).
But, apart from this reason, there are several others that, in all times, will
habitually lead men to prefer equality to liberty.
If a people could ever succeed in destroying by itself or only in decreas-
ing the equality that reigns within it, it would do so only by long and dif-
cult efforts. It would have to modify its social state, abolishits laws, replace
its ideas, change its habits, alter its mores. But, to lose political liberty, it is
enough not to hold on to it, and liberty escapes.
So men do not hold on to equality only because it is dear to them; they
are also attached to it because they believe it must last forever.
You do not nd men so limited and so supercial that they do not dis-
cover that political liberty may, by its excesses, compromise tranquillity,
patrimony, and the life of individuals. But only attentive and clear-sighted
men see the dangers with which equality threatens us, and ordinarily they
avoid pointing these dangers out. They know that the miseries that they
fear are remote, and they imagine that those miseries affect only the gen-
erations to come, about whom the present generation scarcely worries. The
evils that liberty sometimes brings are immediate; they are visible to all, and
more or less everyone feels them. The evils that extreme equality can pro-
duce appear only little by little; they gradually insinuate themselves into
the social body; they are seen only nowand then, and, at the moment when
they become most violent, habit has already made it so that they are no
longer felt.
The good things that liberty brings showthemselves only over time, and
it is always easy to fail to recognize the cause that gives them birth.
The advantages of equality make themselves felt immediately, andevery
day you see them ow from their source.
Political liberty, from time to time, gives sublime pleasures to a certain
number of citizens.
Equality provides a multitude of small enjoyments to each man every
day. The charms of equality are felt at every moment, and they are
within reach of all; the most noble hearts are not insensitive to them,
and they are the delight of the most common souls. So the passion to
which equality gives birth has to be at the very same time forceful and
general.
Men cannot enjoy political liberty without purchasing it at the cost of
some sacrices, and they never secure it except by a great deal of effort. But
the pleasures provided by equality are there for the taking. Each one of the
small incidents of private life seems to give birth to them, and to enjoy
them, you only have to be alive.
Democratic peoples love equality at all times, but there are certain pe-
riods when they push the passion that they feel for it to the point of delir-
ium. This happens at the moment whenthe oldsocial hierarchy, threatened
for a long time, is nally destroyed, after a nal internal struggle, when the
barriers that separated citizens are at last overturned. Menthenrushtoward
equality as toward a conquest, and they cling to it as to a precious goodthat
someone wants to take away fromthem. The passionfor equalitypenetrates
the human heart from all directions, it spreads and lls it entirely. Do not
tell men that by giving themselves so blindly to one exclusive passion, they
compromise their dearest interests; they are deaf. Do not show them that
liberty is escaping from their hands while they are looking elsewhere; they
are blind, or rather they see in the whole universe only one single good
worthy of desire.
What precedes applies to all democratic nations. What follows concerns
only ourselves.
Among most modern nations, and in particular among all the peoples
of the continent of Europe, the taste and the idea of liberty only began to
arise and to develop at the moment when conditions began to become
equal, and as a consequence of this very equality. It was absolute kings who
worked hardest to level ranks among their subjects. Among these peoples,
equality preceded liberty; so equality was an ancient fact, when liberty was
still something new; the one had already created opinions, customs, laws
that were its own, when the other appeared alone, and for the rst time, in
full view. Thus, the second was still only in ideas and in tastes, while the
rst had already penetrated habits, had taken hold of mores, and had given
a particular turn to the least actions of life. Why be surprised if men today
prefer the one to the other?
e
e. Not only are these two things different, but I can easily prove that they are some-
I think that democratic peoples have a natural taste for liberty; left to
themselves, they seek it, they love it, and it is only with pain that they see
themselves separated from it. But they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal,
invincible passion for equality; they want equality in liberty, and if they
cannot obtain that, they still want equality in slavery. They will suffer pov-
erty, enslavement, barbarism, but they will not suffer aristocracy.
This is true in all times, and above all in our own. All men and all powers
that would like to ght against this irresistible power will be overturned
and destroyed by it.
f
In our day, liberty cannot be established without its
support, and despotism itself cannot reign without it.
times opposed. It is clear for example that men must exercise political rights only to
the extent that they are capable of doing so. Without that youwouldarrive at anarchy,
which is only a particular form of tyranny. Now, it is certain that the sentiment of
equality is less offended by the subjugation of all to one master, than by the sub-
mission of a great number to the government of a few. So the sentiment of equality
leads here either to giving (illegible word) rights to everyone, which leads to anarchy,
or to giving them to no one, which establishes despotism.
[To the side: The despot is a distant enemy, the noble is an enemy who touches
you.]
You can satisfy the taste of men for equality, without giving them liberty. Often
they must even sacrice a part of the second in order fully to enjoy the rst.
So these two things are easily separable.
The very fact that they are not intimately united and that the one is innitely more
precious than the other would make it very easy and natural to neglect the second in
order to run after the rst./
So let us hold onto liberty with a desperate attachment, let us hold on to it as a
good to which all other good things are attached.
[To the side] If, on the one hand, among a democratic people, men are more gen-
erally enlightened about their rights, on the other hand, it must be acknowledged
that they are less able to defend them, because individually they are very weak and
the art of acting in common is difcult and demands institutions that are not pro-
videdandanapprenticeshipthat is not allowedtobe undertaken(YTC, CVd, pp. 24
25).
f. [On the jacket of a draft] Equality is not suitable for barbaric peoples; it prevents
them from becoming enlightened and civilized./
Idea to introduce perhaps in the chapters on literature or the sciences.
[The beginning is missing (ed.)] and rst, I do not believe that in all the ages of
the life of peoples a democratic social state must produce the effects that I have just
pointed out.
I have never thought that equality of conditions was suitable for the infancy of
societies. When men are uncivilized as well as equal, each one of them feels too weak
and too limited to look for enlightenment separately and it is almost impossible for
all to try to nd it at the same time by a common accord.
Nothing is so difcult to take as the rst step out of barbarism. I do not doubt
that more effort is required for a savage to discover the art of writing than for a
civilized man to penetrate the general laws that regulate the world. Now it is not
believable that men could ever conceive the need for such an effort without having
it clearly shown to them, or that they would make such an effort without grasping
the result in advance. In a society of barbarians equal to eachother, since the attention
of each man is equally absorbed by the rst needs and the most coarse interests of
life, the idea of intellectual progress can come to the mind of any one of them only
with difculty, and if by chance it is born, it would soon be as if suffocated amid the
nearly instructive [instinctive? (ed.)] thoughts to which the poorly satised needs of
the body always give birth. The savage lacks at the very same time the idea of study
and the possibility of devoting himself to it.
I do not believe that history presents a single example of a democratic people who
have risen gradually and by themselves toward enlightenment and that is easily un-
derstood. We have seen that among a nation where equality and barbarism reign at
the same time it was very difcult for an individual to develop his intelligence sep-
arately. But if, exceptionally, he happens to do so, the superiority of his knowledge
suddenly gives him such a great preponderance over all those who surround himthat
he does not take long to want to make use of it to put an end to equality to his
advantage. So, if peoples {anemerging people} remaindemocratic, civilizationcannot
arise within them, and if civilization comes by chance to penetrate among them, they
cease to be democratic. I ampersuaded that humanity owes its enlightenment tosuch
strokes of fortune, and I {think that it is in losing their liberty that men acquired
the means to reconquer it}that it is under an aristocracy or under a prince that men
still half-savage have gathered the various notions that later would allow them to live
civilized, equal and free.
[In the margin: So I think that this same equality of conditions that seems to me
very appropriate for precipitating the march of the human mind could prevent it
from taking its rst steps.]
If I admit that boldness of mind and the taste for general ideas are not necessarily
found among peoples whose social state is democratic, I am equally far fromclaiming
that you can hope to nd them only there.
There are particular accidents that, among certain peoples, can give a particular
impulse to the human mind. Among the accidents, I will put in the rst rank the
inuence that some men exercise over the fate of societies. It seems that Providence,
after tracing the various paths that nations can follow and xing the nal end of their
course, leaves to individuals the task of slowing or hurrying this march of humanity
that they can neither divert nor halt.
Men are found here and there whose vigorous and unyielding minds scoff at the
impediments that the social state and laws have formed, and whose minds enjoy pur-
suing their course even amid the obstacles that are strewn over it.
Such men rarely gain great sway over their fellow-citizens, but in the long run they
exercise a powerful inuence over their society and they draw the ideas of their de-
scendants in their direction.
When political liberty . . . [interrupted text (ed.)] (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 1821).
881
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2
a
Of Individualism in
Democratic Countries
I have shown how, in centuries of equality, each man looked for his beliefs
within himself; I want to show how, in these same centuries, he turns all
his sentiments toward himself alone.
Individualism
b
is a recent expression given birth by a new idea. Our
fathers knew only egoism.
a. 1. What individualism is; how it differs from egoism and ends by coming back
to it.
2. Individualism is a sickness peculiar to the human heart in democratic times.
Why?
1. Democracy makes you forget ancestors.
2. It hides descendants.
3. It separates contemporaries by destroying classes and by making them men in-
dependent of each other.
3. So in democratic centuries man is constantly brought back to himself alone and
is preoccupied only with himself.
4. It is so above all at the outset of democratic centuries because of the jealousies
and hatreds to which the democratic revolution has given birth (YTC, CVf, p. 23).
Tocqueville had thought about beginning the 1840 Democracy with this chapter (see
note a for p. 697).
b. In the rubish, the chapter, which bears the title of individualism in democ-
racies and of the means that the americans use to combat it, begins in
this way: I am not afraid to use new words when they are necessary to portray a new
thing. Here the occasion to do so presents itself. Individualismis a recent expression. . .
(Rubish, 1).
The word individualism, which seems to echo the amour propre (self-love) of Rous-
seau, was not invented by Tocqueville, but he is largely responsible for its denition and
its usage. The word appears for the rst time in this volume. James T. Schleifer dated its
rst use as 24 April 1837 (see note u for pp. 70910). The novelty of the word must not
i ndi vi duali s m 882
Egoism is a passionate and exaggerated love of oneself, which leads man
to view everything only in terms of himself alone and to prefer himself to
everything.
c
Individualism is a considered and peaceful sentiment that disposes each
citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw to
the side with his family and his friends; so that, after thus creating a small
society for his own use, he willingly abandons the large society to itself.
Egoism is born out of blind instinct; individualism proceeds from an
erroneous judgment rather thanfroma depravedsentiment. It has its source
in failings of the mind as much as in vices of the heart.
d
Egoismparches the seed of all virtues; individualismat rst dries uponly
the source of public virtues, but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all
the others and is nally absorbed into egoism.
Egoism is a vice as old as the world. It hardly belongs more to one form
of society than to another.
make us forget that Tocqueville several times used the expression individual egoism in a
rather similar sense (as in note e of p. 511 in the second volume, and in p. 448, also in
the second volume). During his 1835 voyage in England (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2,
p. 60), Tocqueville also used another expression to designate almost the same idea. He
spoke about the spirit of exclusion, a sentiment that leads each man or each association
of men to enjoy its advantages as much as possible by itself all alone, to withdraw as
much as possible into its personality and not to allow whomever to see or to put a foot
inside. The interesting concept of collective individualism appears only in LAncien
Re gime et la Re volution (OC, II, 1, p. 158).
Some of Tocquevilles reading, the inuence of Kergorlay (who knew Saint-
Simonianism well), or the popularization of the word perhaps pushed Tocqueville af-
terward to use the word individualism. In his theory, the term is always accompanied by
its opposite, the spirit of individuality, which Tocqueville denes in note 2 for p. 1179.
Sometimes he also adopts the terms individual strength, spirit of independence, and in-
dividual independence.
Koenrad W. Swart (Individualism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 18261860,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 23, 1962, pp. 7786) points out that Tocqueville perhaps
borrowed the term from Saint-Simon. For a discussion of the ideas of Tocqueville on
individualism, see Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux De mocraties (Paris: PUF,
1983), pp. 21740, and La Notion dindividualisme chez Tocqueville (Paris: PUF, 1970);
see James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America, pp. 25257.
c. In the manuscript: prefer himself to all others.
d. Egoism, vice of the heart.
Individualism, of the mind (Rubish, 1).
Individualismis of democratic origin, and it threatens todevelopas con-
ditions become equal.
Among aristocratic peoples, families remain for centuries in the same
condition, and often in the same place. That, so to speak, makes all gen-
erations contemporaries. A man almost always knows his ancestors and re-
spects them; he believes he already sees his grandsons, and he loves them.
He willingly assumes his duty toward both, and he often happens to sac-
rice his personal enjoyments for these beings who are no more or who do
not yet exist.
Aristocratic institutions have, moreover, the effect of tying each man
closely to several of his fellow citizens.
Since classes are very distinct and unchanging withinanaristocratic peo-
ple, each class becomes for the one who is part of it a kind of small country,
more visible and dearer than the large one.
Because, in aristocratic societies, all citizens are placed in xedpositions,
some above others, each citizen always sees above him a man whose pro-
tection he needs, and below he nds another whose help he can claim.
So men who live in aristocratic centuries are almost always tied in a close
way to something that is located outside of themselves, and they are often
disposed to forget themselves. It is true that, in these same centuries, the
general notion of fellow is obscure, and that you scarcely think to lay down
your life for the cause of humanity; but you often sacrice yourself for
certain men.
e
e. Aristocracy, which makes citizens depend on each other, leads them sometimes to
great devotion, often to implacable hatreds. Democracy tends to make them indif-
ferent to each other and disposes them to act as if they were alone.
Aristocracy forces man at every moment to go outside of himself inorder toattend
to others [v: interests other than his own], democracy constantly leads him back to-
ward himself and threatens nally to enclose him entirely within the solitude of his
own heart.
If democratic peoples abandonthemselves immoderately tothis tendency, it is easy
to foresee that great evils will result for humanity.
[In the margin] Period of transition. Isolation much more complete. The hatreds
of aristocracy and the indifference of democracy are combined. You isolate yourself
by instinct and by will (Rubish, 1).
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each in-
dividual toward the species are much clearer, devotiontowardone man[<or
one class>] becomes more rare; the bond of human affections expands and
relaxes.
Among democratic peoples, newfamilies emerge constantlyout of noth-
ing, others constantly fall back into nothing, and all those that remain
change face; the thread of time is broken at every moment, and the trace
of the generations fades. You easily forget those who preceded you, andyou
have no idea about those who will follow you. Only those closest to you
are of interest.
Since each class is coming closer to the others and is mingling withthem,
its members become indifferent andlike strangers toeachother. Aristocracy
had made all citizens into a long chain that went from the peasant up to
the king; democracy breaks the chain and sets each link apart.
As conditions become equal, a greater number of individuals will be
found who, no longer rich enough or powerful enough to exercise a great
inuence over the fate of their fellows, have nonetheless acquired or pre-
served enough enlightenment and wealth to be able to be sufcient for
themselves. The latter owe nothing to anyone, they expect nothing so to
speak from anyone; they are always accustomed to consider themselves in
isolation, and they readily imagine that their entire destiny is intheir hands.
Thus, not only does democracy make each man forget his ancestors, but
it hides his descendants from him and separates him from his contempo-
raries; it constantly leads him back toward himself alone and threatens -
nally to enclose him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.
[
*
]
[*]. I believe that if I leave the piece that follows on the period of transition, it must
simply be put there without making it a separate chapter.
885
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 3
How Individualism Is Greater
at the End of a Democratic Revolution
than at Another Time
a
It is above all at the moment when a democratic society nally takes form
on the debris of an aristocracy, that this isolation of men from each other,
and the egoism that follows are most easily seen.
These societies not only containa great number of independent citizens,
they are lled daily with men who, having reached independence only yes-
terday, are intoxicated with their new power; these men conceive a pre-
sumptuous condence in their strength, and not imagining that fromthen
on they might need to ask for the help of their fellows, they have no dif-
culty showing that they think only of themselves.
An aristocracy usually succumbs only after a prolonged struggle, during
which implacable hatreds are kindled among the different classes. These
passions survive victory, and you can follow their traces amid the demo-
cratic confusion that follows.
b
Those among the citizens who were rst in the destroyed hierarchy can-
not immediately forget their former greatness; for a long time they consider
themselves like strangers within the new society. They see in all the men
made equal to them by this society, oppressors whose destiny cannot pro-
a. On the jacket of the manuscript: Idea treated further on in the political chapters
that end the book. Only after examining it in the two places will I be able to see if it
must be deleted in one of the two or if it must only be expressed in a different way.
This chapter, which is not found on the list of notebook CVf and does not exist in the
Rubish, bears the number 20bis in the manuscript.
b. Aristocracies have beenseenthat protectedliberty. But every contestedaristocracy
becomes tyrannical. This is what is happening to the doctrinaires (YTC, CVa, p. 1).
at the end of a democrati c revoluti on 886
voke sympathy; they have lost sight of their former equals and no longer
feel tied by a common interest to their fate; so each one, withdrawingapart,
thinks he is reduced to being concerned only with himself. Those, on the
contrary, who formerly were placed at the bottom of the social ladder, and
who had been brought closer to the general level by a sudden revolution,
enjoy only with a kind of secret uneasiness their newly acquired indepen-
dence; if they nd at their side a few of their former superiors, they look
at them with triumph and fear, and move apart from them.
So it is usually at the beginning of democratic societies that citizens show
themselves most disposed to separate themselves.
Democracy leads mennot to drawnearer totheir fellows; but democratic
revolutions dispose them to ee each other and perpetuate within equality
the hatreds given birth by inequality.
The great advantage of the Americans is to have arrived at democracy
without having to suffer democratic revolutions, and to have been born
equal instead of becoming so.
c
c. Idea to bring very much forward.
[In the margin: Idea to show fully at the head or at the end of the book and also
to present in outline in different parts.]
Effects of democracy and particularly harmful effects that are exaggerated in the
period of revolution when the democratic social state, mores and laws become
established.
Example: democracy has the end of making beliefs less stable, like fortunes and
ranks. But at the moment when democracy comes to be established, a shaking of
everything occurs that makes doubtful even the notion of good and evil, which is
nonetheless the notion that men most easily understand.
That comes not only from {the state of} democracy, but also from the state of
revolution. Produced by whatever cause, it will produce effects if not as great at least
analogous. A revolution is an accident that temporarily makes all things unstable, and
above all it has this effect when it (illegible word) to establisha permanent state whose
tendency is in a way to establish instability. The great difculty in the study of de-
mocracy is to distinguish what is democratic from what is only revolutionary. This
is very difcult because examples are lacking. There is no European people among
whom democracy has settled down, and America is in an exceptional situation. The
state of literature in France is not only democratic, but revolutionary.
Public morality, id.
Religious opinions, id.
Political opinions, id. (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 5153).
887
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 4
a
How the Americans Combat Individualism
with Free Institutions
b
Despotism, which, by its nature, is fearful, sees in the isolation of men the
most certain guarantee of its own duration, and it ordinarily puts all its
efforts into isolating them. There is no vice of the human heart that pleases
it as much as egoism: a despot easily pardons the governed for not loving
him, provided that they do not love each other.
c
He does not ask them to
help him lead the State; it is enough that they do not claim to run it them-
a. 1. Despotism tends to isolate men constantly. So it is particularly dangerous in
times when the social state has the same tendency.
2. Liberty is, on the contrary, particularly necessary in these times. Why:
1. By occupying citizens with public affairs, it draws them out of themselves.
2. By making them deal in common with their affairs, it makes them feel their
reciprocal dependence.
3. By making the choice of magistrates depend on the public, it gives to all those
who have some ambition the desire to serve their fellows in order to merit being their
choice.
3. Example of all this drawn from the United States. How the Americans are not
only content to combat individualism by creating national liberty, but have also es-
tablished provincial liberties (YTC, CVf, pp. 2324).
b. At one moment during the writing, this chapter had as a title: how the amer-
icans combat the tendencies that lead men to separate themselves by
municipal institutions and the spirit of association (Rubish, 1).
The defect of these chapters is that, in those that follow, I have already treated a part
of the effects of individualism, without naming it (Rubish, 1).
c. The circulation of ideas is to civilization what the circulation of blood is to the
human body (Rubish, 1).
i ndi vi duali s m and free i ns ti tuti ons 888
selves.
d
Those who claim to unite their efforts in order to create common
prosperity, he calls unruly and restless spirits; and, changing the natural
meaning of words, he calls good citizens those who withdrawnarrowlyinto
themselves.
e
d. In the margin: I have made known how, in democratic centuries, each man
looked within himself alone for his beliefs; I want to show how in these same centuries
he turns all his sentiments toward himself alone.
e. You must take great notice of the social state of a people before deciding what
political laws are suitable for them. Whena nationadopts a government whosenatural
defects are unfortunately in accord with the natural defects of the social state, the
nation must expect the latter to grow beyond measure.
Liberty, onthe contrary, by creating great commonaffairs, tends constantlytodraw
citizens closer together, and it shows them every day in a practical way the tight bond
that unites them. Among free peoples, it is the public that distributes honors and
power, and it is only by working for the public that you succeed in gaining its favors.
So it happens that among these peoples you think about your fellows out of ambition
as much as out of disinterestedness, and often you in a way nd your interest by
forgetting about yourself.
The free institutions that certain peoples can if necessary do without, are therefore
particularly necessary to men who are led by a secret instinct constantly to separate
themselves from each other and to withdraw within the narrow limits of personal
interest.
Despotism . . . [interrupted text (ed.)] (Rubish, 1).
In the manuscript this other beginning can be read:
Equality of conditions not only disposes men to be interested only in themselves;
it also leads them not to communicate with each other.
In aristocratic countries the members of the upper class get together from time to
time for their pleasures, when they have no common affairs.
Among democratic peoples each man, having only a mediocre fortune that he
oversees himself, does not have the leisure to seek out the company of his fellows. A
great interest must force him to do so.
If the men of democratic countries were abandoned entirely to their natural in-
stincts, they would end up not only by not making use of each other, but by not know-
ing one another. The circulation of sentiments and ideas would be as if suspended.
[In the margin: <This seems contestable to me for equality suggests a host of rest-
less passions that must necessarily lead men to see each other a great deal even if they
are indifferent./
This as well seems contrary to what I said previously that democratic periods were
periods when all men came to resemble each other because they saw and heard each
other constantly.>]
These are great dangers on which the attention of the legislator must be constantly
xed.
Thus, the vices given birth by despotism are precisely those that equality
favors. The two things complement each other and help one another in a
fatal way.
Equality places men side by side, without a common bond to holdthem.
Despotism raises barriers between them and separates them. It disposes
them not to think about their fellows and makes indifference into a kind
of public virtue.
So despotism, which is dangerous in all times, is to be particularly feared
in democratic centuries.
f
It is easy to see that in these same centuries men have a particular need
for liberty.
When citizens are forced to occupy themselves with public affairs, they
are necessarily drawn away from the middle of their individual interests
and are, from time to time, dragged away from looking at themselves.
From the moment when common affairs are treated together, each man
notices that he is not as independent of his fellows as he rst imagined, and
that, to gain their support, he must often lend them his help.
When the public governs, there is no man who does not feel the value
of the publics regard and who does not seek to win it by gaining the esteem
and affection of those among whom he must live.
Several of the passions that chill and divide hearts are then forced to
withdrawdeepinto the soul andhide there. Pride conceals itself; scorndares
not to show itself. Egoism is afraid of itself. [You dread to offend and you
love to serve.]
Under a free government, since most public functions are elective, the
men who feel cramped in private life because of the loftiness of their souls
or the restlessness of their desires, sense every day that they cannot do with-
out the population that surrounds them.
It then happens that you think about your fellows out of ambition, and
that often, in a way, you nd it in your interest to forget yourself. [This
f. Despotism would not only destroy liberty among these people, but in a way so-
ciety (Rubish, 1).
nally produces within democratic nations something analogous to what
was seen in aristocracies.
In aristocratic countries men are bound tightly together by their very
inequalities. In democratic countries where the various representatives of
public power are elected, men attach themselves to each other by the ex-
ertion of their own will, and it is in this sense then that you can say that
in those countries election replaces hierarchy to a certain degree.]
g h
I
know that you can raise the objection here of all the intrigues given birth
by an election, the shameful means that the candidates often use and the
slanders that their enemies spread. Those are occasions of hatred, and they
present themselves all the more often as elections become more frequent
[which never fails to happen in proportion as municipal liberties
develop].
j
These evils are no doubt great, but they are temporary, while the good
things that arise with them endure.
The desire to be elected can, for a short while, lead certain men to make
war on each other; but this same desire leads all men in the long run to lend
each other natural support; and, if it happens that an election accidentally
divides two friends, the electoral system draws closer together in a per-
manent way a multitude of citizens whowouldalways have remainedstran-
gers to each other. Liberty creates particular hatreds, but despotism gives
birth to general indifference.
g. <If in my mind I wanted to portray with the aid of a physical image how men are
connected to each other in aristocracies, I would imagine a chain all of whose links,
of unequal shape and unequal thickness, would be passed [along (ed.)] equal spokes
that would all end up attached together at the same center.
And if I wanted to understand how they can be connected to each other in de-
mocracies, I would imagine a multitude of equal spokes all ending up at the same
center, so that, although all turn together, there would never be two of them that
touch each other> (Rubish, 1).
h. In the margin: Probably shorten this paragraph. The last sentence of the chapter
is the same thing and better.
j. To the side: <Perhaps this must be deleted, though good. This gives too much of
a role to election in free institutions and perhaps in the mind of many readers damages
my cause more than serving it.>
The Americans fought, by means of liberty, against the individualism
given birth by equality, and they defeated it.
The law-makers of America did not believe that to cure an illness so
natural and so fatal to the social body in democratic times, it was sufcient
to grant the nation a single way of representing itself as a whole; they
thought, as well, that it was appropriate to give political life to each portion
of the territory, in order innitely to multiply for citizens the occasions to
act together, and to make the citizens feel every day that they depend on
each other.
k
This was to behave with wisdom.
The general affairs of a country occupy only the principal citizens. The
latter gather together in the same places only from time to time; and, as it
often happens that afterward they lose sight of each other, no lasting bonds
are established among them. But, when it is a matter of having the partic-
ular affairs of a district regulated by the men who live there, the same in-
dividuals are always in contact, and they are in a way forced to know each
other and to please each other.
You draw a man out of himself with difculty in order to interest him
in the destiny of the entire State, because he poorly understands the inu-
ence that the destiny of the State can exercise on his fate. But if it is nec-
essary to have a road pass by the end of his property, he will see at rst
glance that there is a connection between this small public affair and his
greatest private affairs, and he will discover, without anyone showing him,
the close bond that here unites particular interest to general interest.
So it is by charging citizens with the administration of small affairs,
much more than by giving them the government of great ones, that you
k. So the great object of law-makers indemocracies must be to create commonaffairs
that force men to enter into contact with each other.
Laws that lead to this result are useful to all peoples; to democratic peoples they
are necessary. Here they increase the well-being of society; there they make society
continue to exist, for what is society for thinking beings, if not the communication
and connection of minds and hearts?/
That should lead me easily to free institutions that give birth to common affairs
(Rubish, 1).
interest them in the public good and make them see the need that they
constantly have for each other in order to produce that good.
You can, by a dazzling action, suddenly capture the favor of a people;
but, to win the love and respect of the populationthat surrounds you, there
must be a long succession of small services provided, humble good ofces,
a constant habit of benevolence and a well-established reputation of
disinterestedness.
So local liberties, which make a great number of citizens put value on
the affection of their neighbors and of those nearby, constantly bring men
back toward each other despite the instincts that separate them, and force
them to help each other.
In the United States, the most opulent citizens are very careful not to
isolate themselves from the people; on the contrary, they constantly draw
closer to them, they readily listen to them and speak with them every day.
They know that in democracies the rich always need the poor and that, in
democratic times, the poor are attached by manners more than by benets.
The very grandeur of these benets, which brings out the difference of
conditions, causes a secret irritation to those who prot from them; but
simplicity of manners has nearly irresistible charms; familiarity of manners
seduces and even their coarseness does not always displease.
This truth does not at rst sight penetrate the mind of the rich. Usually,
they resist it as long as the democratic revolution lasts, and they do not even
admit it immediately after the revolution is accomplished. They willingly
agree to do good for the people; but they want to continue to hold them
carefully at a distance. They believe that is enough; they are wrong. They
wouldruinthemselves inthis way without rekindlingthe heart of thepopu-
lation that surrounds them. It is not the sacrice of their money that is
demanded of them; it is the sacrice of their pride.
m
You would say that in the United States there is no imaginationthat does
not exhaust itself inventing means to increase wealth and to satisfy the
needs of the public. The most enlightened inhabitants of each district are
constantly using their knowledge to discover new secrets appropriate for
m. This paragraph and the preceding one are not found in the manuscript.
increasing common prosperity; and, when they have found some, they has-
ten to give them to the crowd.
n
While closely examining the vices and weaknesses often shown by those
who govern in America, you are astonished by the growing prosperity of
the people, and you are mistaken.
o
It is not the elected magistrate who
makes the American democracy prosper; but it prospers because the mag-
istrate is elective.
p
It would be unjust to believe that the patriotism of the Americans and
the zeal that each of them shows for the well-being of his fellow citizens
has nothing real about it. Although private interest directs most human
actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not determine all
of them.
I must say that I have oftenseenAmericans make great andtrue sacrices
for public affairs, and I have observed a hundred times that they hardly ever
fail to lend faithful support to each other as needed.
The free institutions that the inhabitants of the United States possess,
and the political rights that they use so much, recall constantly, and in a
thousand ways, to each citizen that he lives in society. They lead his mind
at every moment toward this idea, that the duty as well as the interest of
men is to make themselves useful to their fellows; and, as he sees no par-
ticular cause to hate them, since he is never either their slave or their master,
his heart inclines easily in the direction of benevolence. You rst get in-
volved in the general interest by necessity, and then by choice; what was
calculation becomes instinct; and by working for the good of your fellow
citizens, you nally acquire the habit and taste of serving them.
[When men, unequal to each other, put all their political powers in the
hands of one man, that is not enough for them to become indifferent and
cold towardeachother, because they continue toneedeachother constantly
in civil life.
But when equal men do not take part in government, they almost en-
n. In the margin, in pencil: Not only, but. Ampe`re.
o. It is not those who are elected to public ofces who make democracies prosper,
but those who want to be (Rubish, 1).
p. In the margin, in pencil: A connection is desired here. Ampe`re.
tirely lack the occasion to harm each other or to make use of each other.
Each one forgets his fellows to think only of the prince and himself.
So political liberty, which is useful when conditions are unequal, be-
comes necessary in proportion as they become equal.]
q
Many people in France consider equality of conditions as a rst evil, and
political liberty as a second. When they are forced to submit to the one,
they try hard at least to escape the other. As for me, I say that, to combat
the evils that equality can produce, there is only one effective remedy: po-
litical liberty.
q. When the government [v: sources of power] is found in the population itself and
not above it, you feel for the people something of the good andbadsentiments that kings
inspire in absolute monarchies; you fear him, you adulate him, and often you love him
passionately. Base souls take him as the object of their attery and lofty ones as the focus
of their devotion (Rubish, 1).
895
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 5
a
Of the Use That Americans Make of
Association in Civil Life
b
I do not want to talk about those political associations by the aid of which
men seek to defend themselves against the despotic action of a majority or
against the encroachments of royal power. I have already treatedthis subject
elsewhere. It is clear that, if each citizen, as he becomes individually weaker
and therefore more incapable of preserving his liberty by himself alone,
did not learnthe art of uniting withhis fellows todefendhis liberty, tyranny
a. 1. Here it is not a matter of political associations. I treated this subject in the rst
work.
2. The Americans are at the very same time the most democratic people and the
ones who have made the most use of association. These two things go together, in
fact.
1. In aristocratic countries there are permanent and established associations, com-
posed of a few powerful men and of all those who depend on them.
2. In democratic countries, where all citizens are equal and weak, temporary and
voluntary associations must be formed, or civilization is in danger.
3. Not only are industrial associations necessary, but moral and intellectual asso-
ciations. Why:
1. In order for sentiments and ideas to be renewed and for the human mind to
develop, men must act constantly upon each other.
2. Now, in democratic countries, only the government naturally has this power of
action. And it exercises it always incompletely and tyrannically.
3. So there associations must come to replace the powerful individuals who in
aristocracies take charge of bringing sentiments and ideas to light.
4. Summary. In order for men to remain civilized or to become so, the art of as-
sociation among them must be developed and perfected in the same proportion as
equality (illegible word) (YTC, CVf, pp. 2425).
b. Remark of E
douard: chapter weakly written (Rubish, 1).

as s oci ati on i n ci vi l li fe 896
would necessarily grow with equality.
c
Here it is a matter only of the as-
sociations that are formed in civil life and whose aim has nothing political
about it.
The political associations that exist in the United States form only a
detail amid the immense tableau that associations as a whole present there.
Americans of all ages, of all conditions, of all minds, constantly unite.
Not only do they have commercial andindustrial associations inwhichthey
all take part, but also they have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral,
[intellectual,] serious ones, useless ones, very general and very particular
ones, immense and very small ones;
d
Americans associate to celebrate hol-
idays, establish seminaries, build inns, erect churches, distribute books,
send missionaries to the Antipodes; in this way they create hospitals, pris-
ons, schools. If, nally, it is a matter of bringing a truth to light or of de-
veloping a sentiment with the support of a good example, they associate.
Wherever, at the head of a new undertaking, you see in France the gov-
ernment, and in England, a great lord, count onseeing inthe UnitedStates,
an association.
c. A great publicist of today has said:
It is not by exterminating the civilized men of the IVth century that the barbarians
managed to destroy the civilization of that time. It was enough for them to come
between them so to speak and by separating them to make them like strangers to one
another.
[To the side: To nish associations there, to turn G[uizot (ed.)] against himself.]
It is by a similar path that the men of today could well return to barbarism, if they
were not careful.
[In another place] M. G[uizot (ed.)]. wants to speak about the prevention of com-
municating with rather than about the impossibility of acting on each other. These
ideas are close but different. In order to act oneachother, they must rst communicate
with each other. But you can communicate without acting. This is the case of men
in democratic countries.
[To the side: If a government forbid citizens to associate or undertook to take away
their taste for doing so, it would behave precisely as the barbarians./
to communicate-----newspaper
to act-----association. ] (Rubish, 1). See note a of p. 18 of the rst volume.
d. Athousand types of associations inAmerica. Harmony. C. B. 2. Shakingquakers
(Rubish, 1 and YTC, CVa, p. 4).
I found in America some kinds of associations
e
of which, I confess, I
had not even the idea, and I often admired the innite art with which the
inhabitants of the United States succeeded in setting a common goal for
the efforts of a great number of men, and in making them march freely
toward it.
I have since traveled across England, from where the Americans took
some of their laws and many of their customs, and it seemed to me that
there one was very far from making such constant and skillful use of
association.
It often happens that the Englishindividually carry out very great things,
while there is scarcely so small an enterprise for which the Americans do
not unite. It is clear that the rst consider association as a powerful means
of action; but the second seem to see it as the only means they have to act.
Thus the most democratic country on earth is, out of all, the one where
men today have most perfected the art of pursuing in common the object
of their common desires and have applied this new science to the greatest
number of things.
f
Does this result from an accident, or could it be that in
fact a necessary connection exists between associations and equality?
e. Three great categories of associations:
Industrial associations.
Religious associations. Moral associations: Intellectual.
[In another place] Legal associations, voluntary associations: Articial.
The government, in some fashion, can well take the place of legal associations,
but not of voluntary associations. All of that moreover goes together; legal associa-
tions teach men about voluntary associations and the latter about legal associations./
Among voluntary associations also distinguish political and civil associations
(Rubish, 1).
f. Means to take to facilitate the spirit of association.
1. Make the will to associate very easy to carry out.
2. Do yourself only what associations can absolutely not carry out. If, on the con-
trary, the government marches in the direction of the social state, individualismhas
no limit. This requires that many nuances be pointed out. For if democratic peoples
need more than others to be allowed to do things by themselves, they also sometimes
have a greater need than others to have things done for them.
[In the margin: Marvels that democracy can accomplish with the aid of the spirit
of association. See the railroads in America. Revue des deux mondes (1836).]
Aristocratic societies always contain within them, amid a multitude of
individuals who can do nothing by themselves, a small number of very
powerful and very rich citizens; each of the latter can by himself carry out
great enterprises.
In aristocratic societies, men do not need to unite inorder to act, because
they are held tightly together.
There, each citizen, rich and powerful, is like the head of a permanent
and compulsory association that is composed of all those who are depen-
dent on him and who are made to cooperate in the execution of his plans.
Among democratic peoples, on the contrary, all citizens are independent
and weak; they can hardly do anything by themselves, and no one among
them can compel his fellows to lend him their help. So they all fall into
impotence if they do not learn to help each other freely.
g
If men who live in democratic countries had neither the right nor the
taste to unite for political ends, their independence would run great risks,
but they could for a long time retain their wealth and their enlightenment;
while, if they did not acquire the custom of associating in ordinary life,
civilization itself would be in danger.
h
A people among whom individuals
3. Give enlightenment, spread liberty and allowmen to solve things by themselves.
Comparison with the child that you make walk not in order to have the right to be
kept always in leading-strings, but on the contrary to make him able to run all alone
someday. But it is not in this way that governments understand it. They treat their
subjects more or less as women are treated in China. They force them to wear the
shoes of infancy all their lives (Rubish, 1).
It is possible that Tocqueville is referring here to the article of Michel Chevalier, Des
chemins de fer compares aux lignes navigables (Revue des deux mondes, 4th series, 1838,
pp. 789813).
g. In aristocratic countries, enterprises larger and associations smaller.
In democratic countries, enterprises smaller and associations larger (Rubish, 1).
h. Civil associations./
[In the margin: Necessary remedy for egoism, more intelligent but more indis-
pensable [and (ed.)] not less natural than sociability.]
Political associations are necessary in democracies as the executive power there is
weaker. Without that, the majority is tyrannical.
lost the power to do great things separately without acquiring the ability to
achieve them together would soon return to barbarism.
Unfortunately, the same social state that makes associations so necessary
to democratic peoples makes themmore difcult for themthanfor all other
peoples.
When several members of an aristocracy want to associate, they easily
succeed in doing so. As each one of them has great strength in society, the
number of members of the association can be very small, and, when the
numbers are few, it is very easy for themto knowand understandeachother
and to establish xed rules.
The same facility is not found among democratic nations, where those
in the association must always be very numerous so that the associationhas
some power.
[The liberty to associate is, therefore, more precious and the science of
association more necessary among those peoples than among all others and
<it becomes more precious and more necessary as equality is greater.>]
I know that there are many of my contemporaries who are not hin-
dered by this. They claim that as citizens become weaker and more in-
capable, the government must be made more skillful and more active, in
order for society to carry out what individuals are no longer able to do.
They believe they have answered everything by saying that. But I think
they are mistaken.
A government could take the place of a few of the largest American
associations, and within the Union several particular states have already
Civil associations are useful in aristocratic countries; they are so necessary in de-
mocracies that it may be believed that a democratic people among whom civil asso-
ciations could not formor could formwith difculty would have difculty not falling
into barbarism.
So the legislator in democracies must work hard to favor and to facilitate in all
ways the developments of the right of association.
Unfortunately it is a chimera to believe that civil association can undergo great
development where political association cannot exist (Rubish, 1).
tried to do so. But what political power would ever be able to be sufcient
for the innumerable multitude of small enterprises that the American cit-
izens carry out every day with the aid of the association?
j
It is easy to foresee that the time is coming when man will be less and
less able to produce by himself alone the things most common and most
necessary to his life.
k
So the task of the social power will grow constantly,
and its very efforts will make it greater every day. The more it puts itself in
the place of associations, the more individuals, losing the idea of associ-
ating, will need it to come to their aid. These are causes and effects that
engender each other without stopping. Will the public administrationend
up directing all the industries for which an isolated citizen cannot sufce?
m
And if a moment nally arrives when, as a consequence of the extreme
division of landed property, the land is innitely divided, so that it can no
longer be cultivated except by associations of farm workers, will the head
of government have to leave the tiller of the State in order to come to hold
the plow?
The morals and intelligence of a democratic people would run no lesser
dangers than their trade and industry, if the government came to take the
place of associations everywhere.
n
Sentiments and ideas are renewed, the heart grows larger and the human
mind develops only by the reciprocal action of men on each other.
I have demonstrated that this action is almost nil in democratic coun-
tries. So it must be created there articially. And this is what associations
alone are able to do.
When the members of an aristocracy adopt a new idea or conceive of a
j. If these things are no longer done by anyone, the people gradually return to bar-
barism, and if you charge the great general association, which is called the government,
with them, tyranny is inevitable (Rubish, 1).
k. It is easy to foresee that the day is approaching when men will be forced to
associate in order to carry out a portion of the things most necessary to life. Fourierism
(Rubish, 1).
m. Commercial associations are the easiest and the rst; they are the ones that a
government has the most interest in encouraging (Rubish, 1).
n. In this, as in nearly everything else, the greatest effort of the government must
tend toward teaching citizens the art of doing without its help (Rubish, 1).
new sentiment, they place them, in a way, next to them on the great stage
where they are themselves, and, in this way exposing those new ideas or
sentiments to the sight of the crowd, they introduce them easily into the
mind or heart of those who surround them.
In democratic countries only the social power is naturally able to act in
this way, but it is easy to see that its action is always insufcient and often
dangerous.
o
A government can no more sufce for maintaining alone and for renew-
ing the circulation of sentiments and ideas among a great people than for
conducting all of the industrial enterprises. From the moment it tries to
emerge from the political sphere in order to throw itself into the new path,
it will exercise an unbearable tyranny, even without wanting to do so; for
government only knows how to dictate precise rules; it imposes the senti-
ments and ideas that it favors, and it is always difcult to distinguish its
counsels from its orders.
p
It will be still worse if a government believes itself really interested in
having nothing move. It will then keep itself immobile and allow itself to
become heavy with a voluntary sleep.
So it is necessary that it does not act alone.
Associations, among democratic peoples, must take the place of the
powerful individuals that equality of conditions has made disappear.
As soon as some inhabitants of the United States have conceived of a
sentiment or an idea that they want to bring about in the world, they seek
each other out, and when they have found each other, they unite. From
that moment, they are no longer isolated men, but a power that is seen
from afar, and whose actions serve as an example; a power that speaks and
to which you listen.
The rst time I heard in the United States that one hundred thousand
men
[
*
]
had publicly pledged not to use strong liquor, the thing seemed to
o. The dominion of the majority is absolute, but it would be too permanent if there
were not associations to combat it and to drag it out of its old ways (Rubish, 1).
p. The manuscript says: . . . to distinguish in it the teacher from the master.
[*]. There are more than that. Look for the gure in the Penitentiary System.
me more amusing
q
than serious, and I did not at rst see clearly why these
citizens, whowere sotemperate, wouldnot be content todrinkwater within
their families.
I ended by understanding that these hundred thousand Americans,
frightened by the progress that drunkenness was making around them, had
wanted to give their patronage to temperance. They had actedpreciselylike
a great lord who dressed very plainly in order to inspire disdain for luxury
among simple citizens. It may be believed that if these hundred thousand
men
r
lived in France, each one of them would have individually addressed
the government in order to beg it to oversee the taverns throughout the
entire kingdom.
There is nothing, in my opinion, that merits our attention more than
the intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and in-
dustrial associations of the Americans easily fall within our grasp, but the
others escape us; and, if we discover them, we understand them badly, be-
cause we have hardly ever seen anything analogous. You must recognize,
however, that the intellectual and moral associations are as necessary as the
political and industrial ones to the American people, and perhaps more.
In democratic countries, the science of associationis the mother science;
the progress of all the others depends on the progress of the former.
s
Among the laws that govern human societies, there is one that seems
more denitive and clearer than all the others. For men to remain civilized
or to become so, the art of associating must become developedamongthem
and be perfected in the same proportion as equality of conditions grows.
q. The manuscript says: ridiculous.
r. The manuscript cites: three hundred thousand.
s. So I am far from claiming that a democratic government must abandon all im-
portant enterprises to the industry of individuals, or eventhat there is not a certainperiod
in the life of a democratic people when the government must more or less mingle in a
great number of enterprises, but I do not believe that in that [interrupted text (ed.)]
(Rubish, 1).
[Of the Manner in Which American
Governments Act toward Associations]
t
[In England, the State mingles strictly only in its own affairs. Often it even
relies on individuals for the task of undertaking and of completing works
whose usefulness or grandeur has an almost national appearance.
The English think they have done enough for the citizens by allowing
themto give themselves unreservedly to their industry, or by allowing them
to associate freely if they need to do so.
The Americans go further: it often happens that they lend to certain
associations the support of the State or even charge the State with taking
their place.
There are works that do not precisely have a national character, but
whose execution is very difcult, in which the government takes part inthe
United States, or that it carries out at its expense. Such a thing is hardly
seen in England.
That is explained when you consider that, if associations are more nec-
essary in a democratic country, they are at the same time more difcult.
Among an aristocratic people, an association can have very great power
and be composed of only a few men. In democratic countries, in order to
create a similar association, you must unite a multitude of citizens all with-
t. Short unpublished chapter that is found with the manuscript of the chapter:
This chapter contains some good ideas and some good sentences. Nonetheless, I be-
lieve it useful to delete it.
1. Because it treats very briey and very incompletely a very interesting subject that
has been treated at great length by others. Among others, Chevalier.
2. Because it gets into the order of ideas of the great political chapters of the
end./
Consult L[ouis (ed.)]. and B[eaumont (ed.)]./
It is clear in any case that this chapter is too thin to go alone. It must be deleted
or joined to another. Perhaps to the general chapter on associations.
Tocqueville is alluding to Michel Chevalier, author of Lettres sur lAme rique du Nord,
1836.
out defenses, keep them together and lead them. So inaristocratic countries
the State can rely on individuals and associations for everything. In dem-
ocratic countries it cannot do the same.
Those who govern democratic societies are in a very difcult position.
If they always want to take the place of great associations, they prevent the
spirit of association from developing and they take on a burden that weighs
them down; and if they rely only on associations, very useful and often
necessary things are not done by anyone.
Men who live in democratic centuries have more need than others to be
allowed to do things by themselves, and more than others, they sometimes
need things to be done for them. That depends on circumstances.
The greatest art of government in democratic countries consists in
clearly distinguishing the circumstances and acting according to how cir-
cumstances lead it.
I will say only in a general way that since the rst interest of a people of
this type is that the spirit of association spreads and becomes secure within
it, all the other interests must be subordinated to that one.
So the government [v. social power], even when it lends its support to
individuals, must never discharge thementirely fromthe trouble of helping
themselves by uniting; often it must deny them its help in order to let them
nd the secret of being self-sufcient, and it must withdrawits handas they
better understand the art of doing so.
This is, moreover, not particular to the subject of associations or todem-
ocratic times.
The principal aim of good government has always been to make the
citizens more and more able to do without its help. That is more useful than
the help can be.
If men learn in obedience only the art of obeying and not that of being
free, I do not know what privileges they will have over the animals except
that the shepherd would be taken from among them.]
u
u. In the margin: There is the kernel of the thought. There is no correlationbetween
help and obedience. You can lend help to a man that you do not command.
905
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 6
a
Of the Relation between
Associations and Newspapers
b
a. 1. When men are independent of one another you can only make a large number
of them act in common by persuading each one separately but simultaneously of the
utility of the enterprise.
And only a newspaper can thus succeed in putting the same thought in a thousand
ears at the same time.
So newspapers are necessary in proportion as conditions are more equal.
2. A newspaper not only suggests the same plan to a large number of men at the
same time, it provides them the means to carry out in common the plans that they
had conceived themselves.
1. First, it makes them know each other and it puts them in contact.
2. Then, it binds them together; it makes them talk with each other without seeing
each other and march in agreement without gathering together.
3. Since newspapers increase with associations, it is easy to understand that the less
centralization there is among a people, the more newspapers there must be. For each
district then forms a permanent association in which the need for a newspaper makes
itself felt much more than when there is only a large national association.
4. Since a newspaper always represents an association, it explains why, the greater
equality is and the weaker each individual is, the stronger the press is. The news-
paper overpowers each of its readers in the name of all the others (YTC, CVf,
pp. 2627).
b. The Rubish contains two jackets with notes and drafts for this chapter. One bears
the same title as the chapter; the other bears the following title:
particular utility that democratic peoples draw from liberty of
the press and in particular from newspapers./
Chapter scarcely roughed out and weakly conceived, to review and perhaps to de-
lete. To put in the middle of associations./
E
douard notes rightly: 1. that the subject of newspapers is of all democratic subjects
the one most familiar to the French, that consequently I must hesitate to treat it. 2. that
in any case it is too important to treat it accidentally in relation to associations.
as s oci ati ons and news papers 906
When men are no longer bound together in a solid and permanent way,
you cannot get a large number to act in common, unless by persuading
each one whose help is needed that his particular interest obliges him to
unite his efforts voluntarily with the efforts of all the others.
That can usually and conveniently be done only with the aid of a news-
paper;
c
only a newspaper can succeed in putting the same thought in a
thousand minds at the same instant.
A newspaper is an advisor that you do not need to go to nd, but which
appears by itself and speaks to you daily and briey about common affairs,
without disturbing you in your private affairs.
So newspapers become more necessary as men are more equal and
individualism more to be feared. It would diminish their importance
to believe that they serve only to guarantee liberty; they maintain civili-
zation.
I will not deny that, in democratic countries, newspapers often lead cit-
He proposes that I only show the relation that exists between newspapers and
associations. A newspaper is the voice of an association. You can consider it as the
soul of the association, the most energetic means that the association uses to form
itself. If, on the one hand, there is a connection between the number of associations
and equality of conditions, there is a connection between the number of newspapers
and that of associations.
An association that has only one newspaper to read is only rough-hewn, but it
already exists.
To that I propose to join what I say about how the power of newspapers grows in
proportion as conditions become equal./
Associations in democracies can form only from a multitude of weak and humble
individuals who do not see each other from far away, who do not have the leisure to
seek each other out, or the ability to consult and to agree with each other (in aris-
tocracies, on the contrary, a powerful association can form from a small number of
powerful citizens; the latter know each other and they do not need newspapers to
consult and to agree with each other). All of these things can take place only because
of newspapers and in general because of the free publications of the press. So news-
papers are necessary in democracies in proportion as associations themselves are nec-
essary (the central idea is found! ) (Rubish, 1).
c. Make a note to point out that it is a matter here not only of political newspapers,
but also and above all of scientic, industrial, religious, moral newspapers . . . (Rub-
ish, 1).
izens to do in common very ill-considered undertakings; but if there were
no newspapers, there would be hardly any common action. So the evil that
they produce is much less than the one they cure.
A newspaper not only has the effect of suggesting the same plan to a
large number of men; it provides them with the means to carry out in
common the plans that they would have conceived by themselves.
The principal citizens who inhabit an aristocratic country see each other
from far away; and, if they want to combine their strength, they march
toward each other, dragging along a multitude in their wake.
It often happens, on the contrary, in democratic countries, that a large
number of men who have the desire or the need to associate cannot do so;
since all are very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other
and do not know where to nd each other. Along comes a newspaper that
exposes to view the sentiment or the idea that came simultaneously, but
separately, to each of them. All head immediately for this light, and these
wandering spirits, who have been looking for each other for a long time in
the shadows, nally meet and unite.
[<In aristocratic countries you group readily around one man, and in
democratic countries around a newspaper, and it is in this sense that you
can say that newspapers there take the place of great lords.>]
The newspaper has drawn them closer together, and they continue to
need it to hold them together.
For an association among a democratic people to have some power it
must be numerous. Those who compose it are thus spread over a large area,
and each of them is kept in the place that he inhabits by the mediocrity of
his fortune and by the multitude of small cares that it requires. They must
nd a means to talk together every day without seeing each other, and to
march in accord without getting together. Thus there is hardly any dem-
ocratic association that can do without a newspaper.
d
d. That also explains the power of newspapers in democracies. They are not natu-
rally stronger than in aristocracies, but they speak amid the universal silence; they act
amid the common powerlessness. They take the initiative when no one dares to take it.
(Rubish particular utility that democratic peoples draw from liberty
of the press and in particular from newspapers, Rubish, 1).
So a necessary relationexists betweenassociations andnewspapers; news-
papers make associations, and associations make newspapers; and if it was
true to say that associations must multiply as conditions become equal, it
is no less certain that the number of newspapers grows as associations
multiply.
e
Consequently America is the only country inthe worldwhere at thesame
time you nd the most associations and the most newspapers.
This relationship between the number of newspapers and that of as-
sociations leads us to discover another one between the condition of the
periodical press and the administrative form of the country, and we learn
that the number of newspapers must decrease or increase among a dem-
ocratic people in proportion as administrative centralization is more or less
great. For among democratic peoples, you cannot entrust the exercise of
local powers to the principal citizens as in aristocracies. These powers must
be abolished, or their use handed over to a very great number of men. These
men form a true association established in a permanent manner by the law
for the administrationof one portionof the territory, andthey needa news-
paper to come to nd them each day amid their small affairs, and to teach
them the state of public affairs. The more numerous the local powers are,
the greater is the number of those called by the law to exercise them; and
the more this necessity makes itself felt at every moment, the more news-
papers proliferate.
It is the extraordinary splitting up of administrative power, muchmore
than great political liberty and the absolute independence of the press,
that so singularly multiplies the number of newspapers in America. If all
the inhabitants of the Union were voters under the rule of a system that
limited their electoral right to the choice of the legislators of the State,
they would need only a small number of newspapers, because they could
have only a few very important, but very rare occasions to act together;
but within the great national association, the law established in eachprov-
ince and in each city, and so to speak in each village, small associations
e. Thus the number of newspapers grows not only according to the number of vol-
untary associations; it also increases in proportion as the political power [v: administra-
tion] becomes decentralized and as the local power passes from the hands of the few
into those of all (Rubish, 1).
with the purpose of local administration. The law-maker in this way
forced each American to cooperate daily with some of his fellow citizens
in a common work, and each of them needs a newspaper to teach him
what the others are doing.
I think that a democratic people,
1
who would not have national repre-
sentation, but a great number of small local powers, would end by having
more newspapers than another people among whom a centralized admin-
istration would exist alongside an elected legislature. What best explains to
me the prodigious development that the daily press has undergone in the
United States, is that I see among the Americans the greatest national liberty
combined with local liberties of all types.
It is generally believed in France and in England that it is enough to
abolish the duties that burden the press in order to increase newspapers
indenitely. That greatly exaggerates the effects of such a reform. News-
papers multiply not only following low cost, but also following the more
or less repeated need that a large number of men have to communicate
together and to act in common.
I would equally attribute the growing power of newspapers tomore gen-
eral reasons than those that are often used to explain it.
A newspaper can continue to exist only on the conditionof reproducing
a common doctrine or common sentiment for a large number of men. So
a newspaper always represents an association whose members are its habit-
ual readers.
This association can be more or less dened, more or less limited, more
or less numerous; but it exists in minds, at least in germ; for that reason
alone the newspaper does not die.
This leads us to a nal reection that will end this chapter.
The more conditions become equal, the weaker men are individually,
1. I say a democratic people. The administration can be very decentralized among an
aristocratic people, without making the need for newspapers felt, because local powers then
are in the hands of a very small number of men who act separately or who know each other
and can easily see and understand each other.
the more they allow themselves to go along easily with the current of the
crowd and the more difculty they have holding on alone to an opinion
that the crowd abandons.
The newspaper represents the association; you can say that it speaks to
each one of its readers in the name of all the others, and the weaker they
are individually, the more easily it carries them along.
f
So the dominion of newspapers must grow as men become more
equal.
f. The press that much more powerful among a democratic people as the spirit of
association is less widespread. It is not that it is itself stronger, but that those whom it
wants to dominate are weaker (Rubish particular utility that democratic
peoples draw from liberty of the press and in particular from news-
papers, Rubish, 1).
911
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 7
a
Relations between Civil Associations
and Political Associations
b
a. 1. When men have contracted the habit of associations in civil life, that gives them
great facility for associating in political life.
2. Political associations are on their side very powerful for giving men the thought
and the art of associating in civil life.
1. Politics provides common interests to a multitude of men at the same time,
provides them with natural occasions to associate, which generalizes the theory of
association and makes it studied.
2. You can in general become familiar withthe theory of associationonly byrisking
your money. Associations are the free schools of association.
3. So political associations neutralize in the long run most of the evils that they
create. For if they put the tranquillity of the State at risk, they multiply the number
of civil associations that favor this tranquillity (YTC, CVf, p. 27).
b. This chapter absolutely needs a general reworking. Its movement is confusedand
difcult, and several of the ideas that it contains are questionable./
You would say that I come to prove that civil association arises from political as-
sociation, which is false according to myself, since I say that in countries where po-
litical association is forbidden, civil association is rare.
1. The rst aim of the chapter is to show that civil association is always weak,
lethargic, limited, clumsy wherever political association does not exist. Civil associ-
ation does not arise from political association any more than the latter from civil
association. They develop mutually. In a country where political associations are very
numerous, civil associations cannot fail to be so as well, just as men who already have
the habit of associating in civil matters have a great facility for associating in politics.
2. The second objective of the chapter is to show that a people can have an interest
in allowing liberty of political association in order to favor civil association, which is
more necessary to its tranquillity than the other is harmful./
There are free associations other than political associations, but they are not
striking.
You can undoubtedly study the laws of association in the Norman association, but
who thinks of doing so? (Rubish, 1).
ci vi l as s oci ati ons and poli ti cal as s oci ati ons 912
There is only one nation
c
on earth where the unlimited liberty of associ-
ating for political ends is used daily. This same nation is the only one in
the world where the citizens have imagined making continual use of the
right of association in civil life and have succeeded in gaining in this way
all the good things civilization can offer.
Among all peoples where political association is forbidden, civil associ-
ation is rare.
It is hardly probable that this is a result of an accident; but you must
instead conclude from it that there exists a natural and perhaps necessary
relationship between the two types of associations.
[Men can associate in a thousand ways, but the spirit of association is
a whole, and you cannot stop one of its principal developments without
weakening it everywhere else.]
Some men have by chance a common interest in a certain affair. It con-
cerns a commercial enterprise to direct, anindustrial operationtoconclude;
they meet together and unite; in this way they become familiar little by
little with association [and when it becomes necessary to associate for a
political end, they feel more inclined to attempt it and more capable of
succeeding in doing so.]
The more the number of these small common affairs increases, the more
men acquire, even without their knowing, the ability to pursue great affairs
together.
Civil associations therefore facilitate political associations; but, on the
other hand, political association develops and singularly perfects civil
association.
In civil life, each man can, if need be, believe that he is able to be self-
sufcient. In politics, he can never imagine it. So whena people has a public
life, the idea of association and the desire to associate present themselves
each day to the mind of all citizens; whatever natural reluctance men have
to act in common, they will always be ready to do so in the interest of a
party.
Thus politics generalizes the taste and habit of association; it brings
c. In a rst version: . . . there are only two nations.
about the desire to unite and teaches the art of associating to a host of men
who would have always lived alone.
Politics not only gives birth to many associations, it creates very vast
associations.
In civil life it is rare for the same interest to attract naturally a large num-
ber of men toward a common action. Only with a great deal of art can you
succeed in creating something like it.
In politics, the occasion presents itself at every moment. Now, it is only
in great associations that the general value of association appears. Citizens
individually weak do not form in advance a clear idea of the strength that
they can gain by uniting; you must show it to them in order for them to
understand it. The result is that it is often easier to gather a multitude for
a common purpose than a few men; a thousand citizens do not see the
interest that they have in uniting; ten thousand see it. In politics, menunite
for great enterprises, and the advantage that they gain from association in
important affairs teaches them, in a practical way, the interest that theyhave
in helping each other in the least affairs.
A political association draws a multitude of individuals out of them-
selves at the same time; however separated they are naturally by age, mind,
fortune, it brings themcloser together and puts themincontact. Theymeet
once and learn how to nd each other always.
You can become engaged in most civil associations only by risking a
portion of your patrimony; it is so for all industrial and commercial
companies. When men are still little versed in the art of associating and
are ignorant of its principal rules, they fear, while associating for the rst
time in this way, paying dearly for their experience. So they prefer doing
without a powerful means of success, to running the dangers that accom-
pany it. But they hesitate less to take part in political associations, which
seem without danger to them, because in them they are not risking their
own money. Now, they cannot take part for long in those associations
without discovering how you maintain order among a great number of
men, and by what process you succeed in making them march, in agree-
ment and methodically, toward the same goal. They learn to submit their
will to that of all the others, and to subordinate their particular efforts to
common action, all things that are no less necessary to know in civil as-
sociations than in political associations.
So political associations can be considered as great free schools, where
all citizens come to learn the general theory of associations.
So even if political association would not directly serve the progress of
civil association, it would still be harmful to the latter to destroy the rst.
When citizens can associate only in certain cases, they regard association
as a rare and singular process, and they hardly think of it.
When you allow them to associate freely in everything, they end up
seeing in association the universal and, so to speak, unique means that
men can use to attain the various ends that they propose. Each new need
immediately awakens the idea of association. The art of association then
becomes, as I said above, the mother science; everyone studies it and ap-
plies it.
When certainassociations are forbiddenandothers allowed, it is difcult
in advance to distinguish the rst from the second. In case of doubt, you
refrain fromall, and a sort of public opinionbecomes establishedthat tends
to make you consider any association like a daring and almost illicit
enterprise.
1
1. That is true, above all, when it is the executive power that is charged with allowing or
forbidding associations according to its arbitrary will.
When the law limits itself to prohibiting certain associations and leaves to the courts the
task of punishing those who disobey, the evil is very much less; each citizen then knows in
advance more or less what is what; in a way he judges himself before his judges do so, and,
avoiding forbidden associations, he devotes himself to permitted associations. All free peoples
have always understood that the right of association could be limited in this way. But, if it
happened that the legislator charged a man with disentangling in advance which associations
are dangerous and which are useful, and left him free to destroy the seed of all associations or
to allow them to be born, no one would be able any longer to foresee in advance in what case
you can associate and in what other you must refrain from doing so; so the spirit of association
would be completely struck with inertia. The rst of these two laws attacks only certain as-
sociations; the second is addressed to society itself and wounds it. I conceive that a regular
government might resort to the rst, but I recognize in no government the right to bring about
the second.
So it is a chimera to believe that the spirit of association, repressed at
one point, will allow itself to develop with the same vigor at all the others,
and that it will be enough to permit men to carry out certain enterprises
together, for them to hurry to try it. When citizens have the ability and the
habit of associating for all things, they will associate as readily for small
ones as for great ones. But if they can associate only for small ones, they
will not even nd the desire and the capacity to do so. In vain will youallow
them complete liberty to take charge of their business together; they will
only nonchalantly use the rights that you grant them; and after you have
exhausted yourself with efforts to turn them away from the forbidden as-
sociations, you will be surprised at your inability to persuade them to form
the permitted ones.
I am not saying that there can be no civil associations in a country where
political association is forbidden; for men can never live in society without
giving themselves to some common enterprise. But I maintain that in such
a country civil associations will always be very few in number, weakly con-
ceived, ineptly led, and that they will never embrace vast designs, or will
fail while wanting to carry them out.
This leads me naturally to think that liberty of association in political
matters is not as dangerous for public tranquillity as is supposed, and that
it could happen that after disturbing the State for a time, liberty of asso-
ciation strengthens it.
d
In democratic countries, political associations form, so tospeak, the only
powerful individuals who aspire to rule the State. Consequently the gov-
ernments [v. princes] of today consider these types of associations in the
same way that the kings of the Middle Ages saw the great vassals of the
crown: they feel a kind of instinctive horror for them and combat them at
every occasion.
They have, on the contrary, a natural favor for civil associations, because
they have easily discovered that the latter, instead of leading the mind of
citizens toward public affairs, serve to distract it from these affairs, and by
d. According to Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville is referring here to the law on
association of 16 February 1834. Tocqueville et les deux De mocraties (Paris: PUF, 1983),
p. 104, note 42.
engaging citizens more and more in projects that cannot be accomplished
without public peace, civil associations turn them away from revolutions.
But the governments of today do not notice that political associations mul-
tiply and prodigiously facilitate civil associations, and that by avoiding a
dangerous evil, they are depriving themselves of an effective remedy. When
you see the Americans associate freely each day, with the purpose of making
a political opinion prevail, of bringing a statesman to the government, or
of wresting power from another man, you have difculty understanding
that men so independent do not at every moment fall into license.
If, on the other hand, you come to consider the innite number of in-
dustrial enterprises that are being pursued in common in the UnitedStates,
and you see on all sides Americans working without letup on the execution
of some important and difcult plan, which would be confounded by the
slightest revolution, you easily conceive why these men, so very busy, are
not tempted to disturb the State or to destroy a public peace from which
they prot.
Is it enough to see these things separately? Isnt it necessary to nd the
hidden bond that joins them? It is within political associations that the
Americans of all the states, all minds and all ages, daily acquire the general
taste for association and become familiar with its use. There they see each
other in great number, talk together, understand each other and become
active together in all sorts of enterprises. They then carry into civil life the
notions that they have acquiredinthis way andmake themserve a thousand
uses.
So it is by enjoying a dangerous liberty that the Americans learn the art
of making the dangers of liberty smaller.
If you choose a certain moment in the existence of a nation, it is easy
to prove that political associations disturb the State and paralyze industry;
but when you take the entire life of a people, it will perhaps be easy to
demonstrate that liberty of association in political matters is favorable to
the well-being and even to the tranquillity of citizens.
I said in the rst part of this work: The unlimited freedom of associ-
ation cannot be confused with the freedom to write: the rst is both less
necessary and more dangerous than the second. A nation can set limits on
the rst without losing control over itself; sometimes it must set limits in
order to continue to be in control. And later I added: You cannot conceal
the fact that, of all liberties, the unlimited freedom of association, in po-
litical matters, is the last one that a people can bear. If unlimited freedom
of association does not make a people fall into anarchy, it puts a people on
the brink, so to speak, at every moment.
Thus, I do not believe that a nation is free at all times to allowits citizens
the absolute right to associate in political matters; and I even doubt that
there is any country in any period in which it would be wise to set no limits
to the liberty of association.
A certain people, it is said, cannot maintain peace internally, inspire re-
spect for the laws or establish enduring government, if it does not enclose
the right of associationwithinnarrowlimits. Suchbenets areundoubtedly
precious, and I conceive that, to acquire or to retain them, a nation agrees
temporarily to impose great burdens on itself; but still it is good that the
nation knows precisely what these benets cost it.
That, to save the life of a man, you cut off his arm, I understand; but I
do not want you to assure me that he is going to appear as dexterous as if
he were not a one-armed man.
918
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 8
a
How the Americans Combat
Individualism by the Doctrine of Interest
Well Understood
b
[I showed in a preceding chapter how equality of conditions developed
among all men the taste for well-being, and directed their minds toward
the search for what is useful.
Elsewhere, while talking about individualism, I have just shownhowthis
same equality of conditions broke the articial bonds that united citizens
in aristocratic societies, and led each man to search for what is useful to
himself alone.
These various changes in the social constitution and in the tastes of hu-
manity cannot fail to inuence singularly the theoretical idea that menform
of their duties and their rights.]
c
When the world was led by a small number of powerful and rich in-
dividuals, the latter loved to form a sublime idea of the duties of man; they
took pleasure in professing that it is glorious to forget self and that it is right
a. 1. As men are more equal and more detached from their fellows, the idea of de-
votion becomes more foreign, and it is more necessary to showhowparticular interest
merges with general interest.
2. This is what is done in America. Not only is the doctrine of interest well un-
derstood openly professed there, but it is universally admitted.
3. The doctrine of interest well understood is the most appropriate one for the
needs of a democratic people, and the moralists of our time should turn toward it
(YTC, CVf, p. 28).
b. Former title in the manuscript: of interest well understood as philo-
sophical doctrine.
c. In the margin, with a bracket indicating this beginning: Probably delete this.
doctri ne of i nteres t well unders tood 919
to do good without interest, just like God. That was the ofcial doctrine
of this time in the matter of morality [{moral philosophy}].
I doubt that men were more virtuous in aristocratic centuries than in
others, but it is certain that they then talked constantly about the beauties
of virtue; they only studied in secret how it was useful. But as imagination
soars less and as each person concentrates on himself, moralists become
afraid of this idea of sacrice, and they no longer dare to offer it to the
human mind; so they are reduced to trying to nd out if the individual
advantage of citizens would not be to work toward the happiness of all,
and, when they have discovered one of these points where particular in-
terest meets with general interest and merges with it, they hasten to bring
it to light; little by little similar observations multiply. What was only an
isolated remark becomes a general doctrine, and you believe nally that you
see that man, by serving his fellows, serves himself, and that his particular
interest is to do good.
d
[<But this doctrine is not accepted all at once or by all. Many receive a
few parts of it and reject the rest. Some adopt it at the bottom of their hearts
and reject it with disdain before the eyes of the world.>]
e
I have already shown, in several places in this work, how the inhabitants
of the United States almost always knew how to combine their own well-
being with that of their fellow citizens. What I want to note here is the
general theory by the aid of which they succeed in doing so.
f
d. Democracy destroys the instinct for devotion, reason for it [devotion] must be
found (Rubish, 1).
e. In the margin: To delete I think./
These paragraphs seem to E
douard to merit some small development./

Explain why some affect to despise this theory.
f. Democracy pushes each man to think only of himself; on the other hand, reason
and experience indicate that it is sometimes necessary in his own interest to be con-
cerned about others.
The philosophical doctrine of interest well understood as principal rule of human
actions has presented itself to the human mind from time to time in all centuries,
but in democratic centuries it besieges the human mind and entirely dominates the
moral world.
[To the side] The barbarians forced each man to think only of himself; democracy
leads them by themselves to want to do so (Rubish, 1).
In the United States, you almost never say that virtue is beautiful. You
maintain that it is useful, and you prove it every day. American moralists
do not claim that you must sacrice yourself for your fellows because it is
great to do so; but they say boldly that such sacrices are as necessary to
the person who imposes them on himself as to the person who prots from
them.
g
They have noticed that, in their country and time, man was led back
toward himself by an irresistible force and, losing hope of stopping him,
they have thought only about guiding him.
So they do not deny that each man may follow his interest, but they
strive to prove that the interest of each man is to be honest.
Here I do not want to get into the details of their reasons, which would
take me away from my subject; it is enough for me to say that they have
persuaded their fellow citizens.
A long time ago, Montaigne said: When I would not follow the right
road because of rectitude, I would follow it because I found by experience
that in the end it is usually the happiest and most useful path.
h
So the doctrine of interest well understood is not new; but, among
the Americans of today, it has been universally admitted; it has become
popular; you nd it at the bottom of all actions; it pokes through all dis-
cussions. You nd it no less in the mouths of the poor than in those of
the rich.
In Europe the doctrine of interest is much cruder than in America, but
at the same time, it is less widespread and above all less evident, and great
devotions that are felt no more are still feigned among us every day.
The Americans, in contrast, take pleasure in explaining almost all the
g. In aristocratic centuries, you know your interest, but the philosophical doctrine is
to scorn it.
In democratic centuries, you maintain that virtue and interest are in agreement.
[To the side] I needAmerica to prove these two propositions, soI must nishrather
than begin with it, in order to gather light on this essential point (Rubish, 1).
h. A note of the manuscript indicates that this quotation belongs to book II, chapter
XVI of the Essais. The library of the Tocqueville chateau hadaneditioninthree volumes
dating from 1600.
actions of their life with the aid of interest well understood; they showwith
satisfaction how enlightened love of themselves leads them constantly to
help each other and disposes them willingly to sacrice for the good of the
State a portion of their time and their wealth. I think that in this they often
do not do themselves justice; for you sometimes see in the United States,
as elsewhere, citizens give themselves to the disinterested and unconsidered
impulses that are natural to man; but the Americans hardly ever admit that
they yield to movements of this type; they prefer to honor their philosophy
rather than themselves.
j
I could stop here and not try to judge what I have just described. The
extreme difculty of the subject would be my excuse. But I do not want to
take advantage of it, and I prefer that my readers, clearly seeing my purpose,
refuse to follow me rather than remain in suspense.
Interest well understood is a doctrine not very lofty, but clear and sure.
It does not try to attain great objectives, but without too much effort it
attains all those it targets. Since the doctrine is within reach of all minds,
each man grasps it easily and retains it without difculty. Accommodating
itself marvelously to the weaknesses of men, it easily gains great dominion
and it is not difcult for it to preserve that dominion, because the doctrine
turns personal interest back against itself and, to direct passions, uses the
incentive that excites them.
The doctrine of interest well understood does not produce great devo-
tions; but it suggests small sacrices every day; by itself, it cannot make a
j. Some enlightenment makes men see how their personal interest differs from that
of their fellows. A great deal of enlightenment shows them how the two interests
often come to merge./
Three successive states:
1. Ignorance. Instinctive devotion.
2. Half-knowledge. Egoism.
3. Complete enlightenment. Thoughtful sacrice./
There are two ways to make that understood by a people:
1. Experience. 2. Enlightenment.
The most difcult task of governments is not to govern, but to instruct men in
governing them[selves (ed.)]./
The worst effect of a bad government is not the evil that it does, but the one that
it suggests (Rubish, 1).
man virtuous, but it forms a multitude of steady, temperate, moderate, far-
sighted citizens who have self-control; and, if it does not lead directly to
virtue by will, it imperceptibly draws closer to virtue by habits.
k
If the doctrine of interest well understood came to dominate the moral
world entirely, extraordinary virtues would undoubtedly be rarer. But I also
think that then the coarsest depravities would be less common. The doc-
trine of interest well understood perhaps prevents some men from rising
very far above the ordinary level of humanity; but a great number of others
who fall below encounter the doctrine and cling to it. Consider a few in-
dividuals, it lowers them. Envisage the species, it elevates it.
I will not be afraid to say that the doctrine of interest well understood
seems to me, of all philosophical theories, the most appropriate tothe needs
of the men of our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee
remaining to them against themselves. So it is principally toward this doc-
trine that the mind of the moralists of today should turn. Evenif they were
to judge it as imperfect, it would still have to be adopted as necessary.
I do not believe, everything considered, that there is more egoismamong
us than in America; the only difference is that there it is enlightened and
here it is not. Each American knows how to sacrice a portion of his par-
ticular interests in order to save the rest. We want to keep everything, and
often everything escapes us.
I see around me only men who seem to want to teach their contem-
poraries, every day by their word and their example, that what is useful
is never dishonorable. Will I never nally nd some men who undertake
to make their contemporaries understand how what is honorable can be
useful?
There is no power on earth that can prevent the growing equality of
k. The beauty of virtue is the favorite thesis of moralists under aristocracy. Its utility
under democracy (Rubish, 1).
Interest well understood is not contrary to the disinterested advance of the good.
These are two different things, but not opposite. Great souls for whom this doctrine
cannot be enough, pass in a way through it and go beyond it, while ordinary souls stop
there (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 85).
conditions from leading the human mind toward the search for what is
useful, and from disposing each citizen to become enclosed withinhimself.
So you must expect individual interest to become more than ever the
principal, if not the sole motivating force of the actions of men; but how
each man will understand his individual interest remains to be known.
If citizens, while becoming equal, remained ignorant and coarse, it is
difcult to predict to what stupid excess their egoism could be led, and you
cannot say in advance into what shameful miseries they would plunge
themselves, out of fear of sacricing something of their well-being to the
prosperity of their fellows.
m
I do not believe that the doctrine of interest, as it is preachedinAmerica,
is evident in all its parts; but it contains a great number of truths so evident
that it is enough to enlighten men in order for them to see them. So en-
lighten them at all cost, for the century of blind devotions and instinctive
virtues is already eeing far from us, and I see the time drawing near when
liberty, the public peace and the social order itself will not be able to do
without enlightenment.
n
m. Utility of provincial institutions in order to create centers of common interest
in democracy. National interest is not enough. It is necessary to multiply links, to bring
men to see each other, understand each other, and have ideas, sentiments in common
(Rubish, 1).
n. Fragment that belongs to the rubish of the chapter:
Doctrine of interest./
[To the side: This could be placed as well in sentiments and tastes. To think about
it.]
Not very elevated point of view from which the Americans envisage human ac-
tions. Doctrine of interest followed elsewhere, professed in America. Effort to make
it a social doctrine. Succeeds in fact in making society proceed comfortably, but without
grandeur.
{To put perhaps before or after what I say about religion as political element.}/
This, among the Americans in particular and among democratic peoples in gen-
eral, is clearly the result: 1. of egoism above all that makes you think only of yourself;
2. of the concentration of the soul in material things.
So this must be treated only after these two ideas are known; this chapter will be
only their corollary./
I will rst demonstrate that the Americans are led in general to concentrate on
their interest and then, that they have made this way of acting into a philosophical
theory./
That the legislators of democracies are not able to prevent the establishment and
development of this doctrine, that all their effort should be limited to getting the
most out of it, to making it so that men have a real interest in doing good, or at least
to making this interest clear to all. That is useful in all societies, but very much more
useful in those in which men cannot withdraw to the platonic enjoyment of doing
good and in which they see the other world ready to escape them.
It is equally necessary that men, having reached this point, be enlightened at all
cost, for there is enough truth in the notion that man has an interest in doing good,
that widespread enlightenment cannot fail to make man discover it.
Proof of this, morality of the well-enlightened man.
Political consequences. Extreme efforts that the legislator must make indemocracies
to spiritualize man. Particular necessity for religions in democracy; even dogmatic
and not very reasonable religions, for lack of anything better. Show heaven even if
it is through the worst instruments./
Distinctions to make between the different doctrines of interest./
There is a doctrine of interest that consists of believing that you must make the
interest of other men yield before your own and that it is natural and reasonable to
embrace only the latter. This is an instinctive, crude egoism that hardly merits the
name of doctrine.
[In the margin: The doctrine of interest can teach how to live, but not how to
die./
The doctrine of interest must not be confused with the doctrine of the useful. It
is contained in that of the useful, but it is only a part of it.]
There is another doctrine of interest that consists of believing that the best way
to be happy is to serve your interest and to be good, honest . . . in a word, that interest
well understood requires you often to sacrice your interest or rather, that to follow
your interest over all, you often have to neglect it in detail.
This is a philosophical doctrine that has its value.
[In the margin: Great passions of the true, the beautiful and the good. Analogous
things owing from [the (ed.)] same source, equally rare, producing great men of
learning, great men of literature and great virtues.]
There is, nally, a doctrine innitely purer, more elevated, less material, according
to which the basis of actions is duty. Man penetrates divine thought with his intel-
ligence. He sees that the purpose of God is order, and he freely associates himself as
much as he is able with this great design. He cooperates with it in his humble sphere,
depending on his strength, in order to fulll his destination and to obey his mandate.
There is still personal interest there, for there is a proud and private enjoyment in
such points of view and hope for remuneration in a better world; but interest there
is as small, as secretive and as legitimate as possible.
Positive religions render this interest more visible; they render these sentiments
stronger, more popular. They generally mix the two things in a clever way that fa-
cilitates practice. In Christianity, for example, we are told that it is necessary to do
good out of love of God (magnicent expression of the doctrine that I have just ex-
plained) and also to gain eternal life.
Thus Christianity at one end touches the doctrine of interest well understoodand
at the other the doctrine that I developed afterward and that I could call with Chris-
tianity itself, the doctrine of the love of God. In sum, a religionvery superior interms
of loftiness to the doctrine of interest well understood because it places interest in
the other world and draws us out of this cesspool of human and material interests.
The doctrine of interest well understood can make men honest.
But it is only that of the love of God that makes men virtuous. The one teaches
how to live, the other teaches how to die, and how can you make men who do not
want to die live well for long?
Why aristocratic peoples are led more than democratic peoples toadopt the second
doctrines more than the rst.
Class that has material happiness without thinking about it, that can think and is
not preoccupied by the trouble to work and to acquire. Another class that by working
can scarcely hope to reach material happiness and that turns naturally toward the
non-material world.
On the contrary, in democracies each man has just enough material happiness to
desire more of it, enough of a chance of gaining it to x the mind on material hap-
piness or at least that of this world./
Another point of view.
The philosophical doctrine that I spoke about is based on interest.
Religious doctrines are also based on interest.
But there is this great difference between them, that the rst places this interest in
this world and the others outside of it, which is enough to give actions an innitely
less material and loftier purpose; that the ones out of necessity profess to scorn ma-
terial goods, while the other, restricting itself to that life, cannot fail to hold material
goods in a certain esteem. So although the cause of actions is the same, these actions
are very different./
Religions have, by design, made such an intimate union of the doctrine of the
love of God and of that of interest, that those who are sincerely devout are constantly
mistaken, and it happens that they believe that they are doing actions solely in view
of the reward to come, actions that are principally suggested to them by the most
pure, most noble and most disinterested instincts of human nature (Rubish, 1).
926
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 9
a
How the Americans Apply the Doctrine
of Interest Well Understood
in the Matter of Religion
b
If the doctrine of interest well understood had only this world in view, it
would be far from enough; for a great number of sacrices can nd their
reward only in the other; and whatever intellectual effort you make to feel
the usefulness of virtue, it will always be difcult to make a man live well
who does not want to die.
So it is necessary to know if the doctrine of interest well understoodcan
be easily reconciled with religious beliefs.
The philosophers who teach this doctrine say to men that, to be happy
in life, you must watch over your passions and carefully repress their ex-
cesses; that you cannot gain lasting happiness except by denying yourself
a. 1. If the doctrine of interest well understood had only this life in view, it would
be far from enough; so we must see if it is not contrary to religions that promote
action with the other in view.
2. If you look closely you will see that interest is the motivating force of nearly all
religious men, and the lever used by nearly all the founders of religion.
So the doctrine of interest well understood in itself is not contrary to religions,
since religions only apply it in another way.
It is easy as well to prove that the men who adopt it are very disposed than [sic ]
others to submit to religious beliefs and practices.
3. Examples of the Americans (YTC, CVf, pp. 2829). There is no rubish for this
chapter.
b. At the rst page of the manuscript: 
i nteres t well unders tood i n reli gi on 927
a thousand passing enjoyments, and that nally you must triumph over
yourself constantly in order to serve yourself better.
The founders of nearly all religions adhered more or less to the same
language. Without pointing out another path to men, they only placed the
goal further away; instead of placing in this world the prize for the sacrices
that they impose, they put it in the other.
c
Nonetheless, I refuse to believe that all those who practice virtue because
of the spirit of religion act only with a reward in view.
I have met zealous Christians who constantly forgot themselves in order
to work with more fervor for the happiness of all, and I have heard them
claim that they acted this way only to merit the good things of the other
world; but I cannot prevent myself from thinking that they are deluding
themselves. I respect them too much to believe them.
Christianity tells us, it is true, that you must prefer others to self inorder
to gain heaven; but Christianity also tells us that you must do good to your
fellows out of love of God. That is a magnicent expression; man pene-
trates divine thought with his intelligence, he sees that the purpose of God
is order; he associates freely with this great design; andevenwhile sacricing
his particular interests to this admirable order of all things, he expects no
other recompense than the pleasure of contemplating it.
So I do not believe that the sole motivating force of religious men is
interest; but I think that interest is the principal means that religions them-
selves use to lead men, and I do not doubt that it is from this side that they
take hold of the crowd and become popular.
So I do not see clearly why the doctrine of interest well understood
would put off men of religious beliefs, and it seems to me, on the contrary,
that I am sorting out how it brings them closer.
[All the actions of the human mind are linked together, and once man
is set by his will on a certain path, he then marches there without wanting
to, and he feels himself carried along by his own inertia.]
I suppose that, to attain happiness in this world, a man resists instinct
in all that he encounters and coldly considers all the actions of his life, that
c. In the margin: and that alone is enough to give to religions a great advantage over
philosophy . . .
instead of yielding blindly to the heat of his rst desires, he has learned the
art of combating them, and that he has become accustomed to sacricing
effortlessly the pleasure of the moment to the permanent interest of his
entire life.
If such a man has faith in the religion that he professes, it will hardly
cost him anything to submit to the inconveniences that it imposes. Reason
itself counsels himto do it, and customprepared himin advance to endure
it.
If he has conceived doubts about the object of his hopes, he will not let
himself be stopped easily, and he will judge that it is wise to risk a few of
the good things of this world in order to maintain his rights tothe immense
heritage that has been promised to him in the other.
To be mistaken in believing the Christian religion true, said Pascal,
there is not much to lose; but what misfortune to be mistaken in believing
it false!
d
The Americans do not affect a crude indifference for the other life; they
do not assume a puerile pride inscorning the perils that they hope toescape.
So they practice their religion without shame and without weakness; but
you ordinarily see, even amid their zeal, something so tranquil, so me-
thodical and so calculated, that it seems that it is the reason much more
than the heart that leads them to the steps of the altar.
e
Not only do Americans follow their religion by interest, but they often
place in this world the interest that you can have in following religion. In
the Middle Ages, priests spoke only about the other life: they hardlyworried
about proving that a sincere Christian can be a happy man here below.
But American preachers come back to earth constantly, and only with
d. To the side: This thought, which does not seem to me worthy of the great soul
of Pascal, sums up perfectly well the state of souls in the countries where reason is be-
coming enlightened and stronger at the same time that religious beliefs falter. Pense e 36
in the Lafuma edition.
e. In the margin: <So the doctrine of interest well understoodcanbecome the ruling
philosophy among a people without harming the spirit of religion; but it cannot fail to
give the spirit of religion a certain character, and you must expect that, in the soul of
the devout, it will make the desire to gain heaven predominate over the pure love of
God.>
great pain can they take their eyes away from it. To touch their listeners
better, they show them every day how religious beliefs favor liberty and
public order, and it is often difcult to know, hearing them, if the principal
object of religion is to gain eternal felicity in the other world or well-being
in this one.
930
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 0
a
Of the Taste for
Material Well-Being in America
b
a. 1. The taste for material well-being is universal in America. Why?
1. In aristocracies, the upper classes, since they have never acquired well-being or
feared losing it, readily apply their passions elsewhere and on a more lofty level. Since
the lower classes do not have the idea of bettering their lot and are not close enough
to well-being to desire it, their imagination is thrown toward the other world.
2. In democratic centuries, on the contrary, each person tries hard to attain well-
being or fears losing it. That constantly keeps the soul insuspense onthis point (YTC,
CVf, p. 29).
First organization of this part of the book in the Rubish:
of the taste for material enjoyments in democracies./
1. Of the taste for material enjoyments in America.
2. Of the different effects that the taste for material enjoyments produces in an
aristocracy and in a democracy.
3. Of some bizarre sects that are arising in America.
4. Of restlessness of the heart in America.
5. How the taste for material enjoyments is combined among the Americans with
love of liberty and concerns for public affairs.
6. How equality of conditions (or democracy) leads Americans toward industrial
professions.
7. How the religious beliefs of the Americans hold within certain limits the ex-
cessive taste for material well-being (Rubish of chapter 15 of this part, Rubish, 1).
b. In the Rubish there is a voluminous sheaf bearing the title rubish and ideas
relating to the chapters on material enjoyments. It contains notes and
pages of rubish for this chapter and for those that follow, up to and including chapter
18. The rubish for this chapter retains another sheaf with this note on the cover:
what makes the love of riches predominate over all other passions
in democratic centuries./
Chapter to insert in the course of the book, probably before industrial careers./
of the tas te for materi al well- bei ng 931
In America, the passion for material well-being is not always exclusive, but
it is general; if everyone does not experience it in the same way, everyone
feels it. The concern to satisfy the slightest needs of the body andtoprovide
for the smallest conveniences of life preoccupies minds universally.
Something similar is seen more and more in Europe.
Among the causes that produce these similar effects in two worlds, sev-
eral are close to my subject, and I must point them out.
When wealth is xed in the same families by inheritance, you see a great
number of men who enjoy material well-being, without feeling the exclu-
sive taste for well-being.
What most strongly holds the humanheart is not the peaceful possession
of a precious object but the imperfectly satised desire to possess it and the
constant fear of losing it.
In aristocratic societies the rich, never knowing a state different from
their own, do not fear its changing; they scarcely imagine another one. So
for them material well-being is not the goal of life; it is a way of living.
They consider it, in a way, like existence, and enjoy it without thinking
about it.
Since the natural and instinctive taste that all men feel for well-being is
thus satised without difculty and without fear, their soul proceeds else-
At ambition, what diverts from great ambition, it is the petty ambition for
money.
You devote yourself to the petty ambition for money as preliminary to the other
and, when you have devoted yourself to it for a long time, you are incapable of mov-
ing away from it./
To put I think before material enjoyments. The desire for wealth is close to the
desire for material enjoyments, but is distinct.
The only page of the sheaf bears particularly the following notes:
Regularity. Monotony of life./
That is not democratic but commercial, or at least it is democratic only in so far as
democracy pushes toward commerce and industry.
There are also religious habits in the middle of that.
In another place: In aristocracies, even the life of artisans is varied; they have games,
ceremonies, a form of worship that serves as a diversion from the monotony of their
works. Their body is attached to their profession, not their soul.
It is not the same thing with democratic peoples (Rubish, 1).
where and attaches itself to some more difcult and greater enterprise that
animates it and carries it away.
In this way, in the very midst of material enjoyments, the members of
an aristocracy often demonstrate a proud scorn for these very enjoyments
and nd singular strength when they must nally do without them. All the
revolutions that have disturbed or destroyed aristocracies have shown with
what ease men accustomed to superuity were able to do without neces-
sities, while men who have laboriously attained comfort are hardly ever able
to live after losing it.
c
If, from the upper ranks, I pass to the lower classes, I will see analogous
effects produced by different causes.
Among nations where aristocracy dominates society and keeps it im-
mobile, the people end by becoming accustomed to poverty as the rich are
to their opulence. The latter are not preoccupied by material well-being,
because they possess it without difculty; the former do not think about
material well-being, because they despair of gaining it and do not know it
well enough to desire it.
d
c. Byron remarks somewhere that in his voyages, he easily bore andsufferedalmost
without complaint the privations that made his valet despair. The same remark could
have been made by a thousand others (Rubish, 1). Letter of Byron to his mother,
Athens, 17 January 1831; reproduced in Correspondence of Lord Byron with a Friend . . .
(Paris: A. and W. Calignani, 1825), I, pp. 2122; the same publishing house published a
French version of this text.
d. How the different forms of government can more or less favor the taste for money
among men./
Among nations that have an aristocracy you seek money because it leads to power.
Among nations that have a nobility you seek it to console yourself for being excluded
from power. It seems that it is among democratic peoples that you have to seek it the
least. There as elsewhere, ordinary souls undoubtedly continue to be attached to it;
but ambitious spirits take it neither as principal goal and as a makeshift equivalent [?
(ed.)].
You object to me in vain that in the United States, which forms a democracy, the
love of money is excessive and that in France, where we turn daily towarddemocracy,
love of money is becoming more and more the dominant passion. I will reply that
political institutions denitively exercise only a limitedinuence over the inclinations
of the human heart. If love of money is great in France and in the United States,
that comes from the fact that in France mores, beliefs and characters are becoming
depraved, and that inthe UnitedStates the material conditionof the countrypresents
continual opportunities to the passion to grow rich. In the two countries you love
In these sorts of societies the imagination of the poor is pushed toward
the other world; the miseries of real life cramp their imagination; but it
escapes those miseries and goes to nd its enjoyments beyond.
When, onthe contrary, ranks are mingledandprivileges destroyed, when
patrimonies divide and enlightenment and liberty spread, the desire togain
well-being occurs to the imagination of the poor, and the fear of losing it
to the mind of the rich.
e
A multitude of mediocre fortunes is established.
Those who possess them have enough material enjoyments to conceive the
taste for these enjoyments, and not enough to be content with them. They
never obtain these enjoyments except with effort and devote themselves to
them only with trepidation.
So they are constantly attached to pursuing or to retaining these enjoy-
ments so precious, so incomplete and so eeting. [Preoccupied by this sole
concern, they often forget all the rest.
It is not the wealth, but the work that you devote to obtaining it for
yourself that encloses the human heart within the taste for well-being.]
f
I seek a passion that is natural to men who are excited and limited by
the obscurity of their origin or the mediocrity of their fortune, and I nd
none more appropriate than the taste for well-being. The passion for well-
being is essentially a passion of the middle class; it grows and spreads with
money not because there are democratic institutions, but even though there are dem-
ocratic institutions (YTC, CVa, pp. 5354).
On 28 May 1831, Tocqueville writes from New York to his brother, E
douard:
We are very truly here in another world; political passions here are only onthe surface.
The profound passion, the only one that profoundly moves the human heart, the
passion of every day, is the acquisition of wealth, and there are a thousand means to
acquire it without disturbing the State. You have to be very blind in my opinion to
want to compare this country to Europe and to adapt to one what suits the other; I
believed it before leaving France; I believe it more and more while examining the
society in the midst of which I now live; it is a people of merchants who are busy
with public affairs when its [sic ] work leaves it the leisure (YTC, BIa2).
e. What makes democratic nations egotistic is not even so much the great number
of independent citizens that they contain as the great number of citizens who are con-
stantly reaching independence (YTC, CVa, pp. 78).
f. To the side: <This sentence is good, but interrupts the ow of the idea.>
this class; it becomes preponderant with it. From there it gains the upper
ranks of society and descends to the people.
I did not meet, in America, a citizen so poor who did not cast a look of
hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich, and whose imagination did
not grasp in advance the good things that fate stubbornly refused him.
On the other hand, I never saw among the rich of the United States this
superb disdain for material well-being that is sometimes shownevenwithin
the heart of the most opulent and most dissolute aristocracies.
Most of these rich have been poor; they have felt the sting of need; they
have long fought against a hostile fortune, and now that victory is won, the
passions that accompanied the struggle survive it; they remain as if intox-
icated amid these small enjoyments that they have pursued for forty years.
It is not that in the United States, as elsewhere, you do not nd a fairly
large number of rich men who, holding their property by inheritance, pos-
sess without effort an opulence that they have not gained. But even these
do not appear less attached to the enjoyments of material life. The love of
well-being has become the national and dominant taste. The great current
of human passions leads in this direction, it sweeps everything along in its
wake.
g
g. Other reason. In a democratic society the only visible advantage that youcanenjoy
over your fellows is wealth. This explains the desire for riches, but not that for material
enjoyments. These two things are close, but are nonetheless distinct. While it comes to
the aid of sensuality here, pride in aristocracies often runs counter to it; you want to
distinguish yourself from those who do not have money (Rubish, 1).
935
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 1
a
Of the Particular Effects Produced by
the Love of Material Enjoyments
in Democratic Centuries
b
a. When an aristocracy gives itself to the passion for material enjoyments, it aims at
extraordinary pleasures; it falls into a thousand excesses that shame human nature
and disturb society.
In democratic countries the taste for material enjoyments is a universal passion,
constant, but contained. Everyone conceives it and gives himself to it constantly, but
it leads no one to great excesses. Everyone seeks to satisfy the slightest needs easily
and without cost rather than to obtain great pleasures.
This type of passion for material enjoyments can be reconciled with order and to
a certain point with religion and morality. It does not always debilitate souls, but it
softens them and silently relaxes their springs of action (YTC, CVf, p. 30).
b. Title in the rubish: of the different effects that the taste for ma-
terial enjoyments produces in an aristocracy and in a democracy.
At another place in the rubish: that the taste for well-being and for ma-
terial enjoyments in democracies is more tranquil, leads to less ex-
cess than in aristocracies and can be combined with a sort of spirit
of order and morality. 2nd chapter.
Honest materialism (Rubish, 1). In a letter addressed to an unidentied person,
Tocqueville had expressed the same idea in this way:
Author of all these revolutions, carried away himself by the movement that he
brought about, the American of the United States ends by feeling pushed by an ir-
resistible need for action; in Europe there are philosophers who preach human per-
fection; for him, the possible has hardly any limit. To change is to improve; he has
constantly before his eyes the image of indenite perfection that throws deep within
his heart an extraordinary restlessness and a great distaste for the present.
Here, the enjoyments of the soul are not very important, the pleasures of imagi-
nation do not exist, but an immense door is open for achieving material happiness
and each man rushes toward it. In order to reach it, you abandon parents, family,
country; you try in the course of one life ten different roads to attain wealth. The
same man has been priest, doctor, tradesman, farmer.
I do not know if you live here more happily than elsewhere, but at least you feel
the love of materi al enj oyments 936
Youcould believe, fromwhat precedes, that the love of material enjoyments
must constantly lead the Americans towarddisorder inmorals, disturbfam-
ilies and in the end compromise the fate of society itself.
But this is not so; the passion for material enjoyments produces within
democracies other effects than among aristocratic peoples.
It sometimes happens that weariness with public affairs, the excess of
wealth, the ruin of beliefs, the decadence of the State, little by little turn
the heart of an aristocracy toward material enjoyments alone. At other
times, the power [v. tyranny] of the prince or the weakness of the people,
without robbing the nobles of their fortune, forces them to withdrawfrom
power, and by closing the path to great undertakings to them, abandons
them to the restlessness of their desires; they then fall heavily back onto
themselves, and they seek in the enjoyments of the body to forget their past
grandeur.
When the members of an aristocratic body turn exclusively in this way
toward material enjoyments, they usually gather at this point alone all the
energy that the long habit of power gave them.
To such men the pursuit of well-being is not enough; they require a
sumptuous depravity and a dazzling corruption. They worshipthe material
magnicently and seem to vie with one another in their desire to excel in
the art of making themselves into brutes.
The more an aristocracy has been strong, glorious and free, the more it
will appear depraved, and whatever the splendor of its virtues had been, I
dare to predict it will always be surpassed by the brilliance of its vices.
c
The taste for material enjoyments does not lead democratic peoples to
existence less; and you arrive at the great abyss without having had the time to notice
the road that you followed.
These men call themselves virtuous; I deny it. They are steady, that is all that I am
able to say in their favor. They steal from the neighbor and respect his wife, which I
can only explain to myself because they love money and do not have the time tomake
love (Letter of 8 November 1831, YTC, BIa2).
c. I know nothing more deplorable than the spectacle presented by an aristocracy
that, losing its power, has remained master of its wealth (Rubish, 1).
such excesses.
d
There the love of well-being shows itself to be a tenacious,
exclusive, universal passion, but contained. It is not a question of building
vast palaces, of vanquishing or of deceiving nature, of exhausting the uni-
verse, in order to satisfy better the passions of a man; it is a matter of adding
a few feet to his elds, of planting an orchard, of enlarging a house, of
making life easier and more comfortable each moment, of avoiding dis-
comfort and satisfying the slightest needs effortlessly and almost without
cost. These goals are small, but the soul becomes attached to them; it thinks
about them every day and very closely; these goals nish by hiding from
the soul the rest of the world, and they sometimes come to stand between
the soul and God.
This, you will say, cannot be applied except to those among the citizens
whose fortune is mediocre; the rich will show tastes analogous to those that
the rich reveal in aristocratic centuries. That I dispute.
e
Concerning material enjoyments, the most opulent citizens of a de-
mocracy will not show tastes very different from those of the people,
whether, because having emerged from the people, they really share their
tastes, or whether they believe they must submit to them. In democratic
societies, the sensuality of the public has taken on a certain moderate and
tranquil appearance, to which all souls are obliged to conform. It is as dif-
cult to escape the common rule in its vices as in its virtues.
So the rich who live amid democratic nations aim for the satisfactionof
their slightest needs rather than for extraordinary enjoyments; they satisfy
a multitude of small desires and do not give themselves to any great dis-
ordered passion. They fall therefore into softness rather than debauchery.
This particular taste that the men of democratic centuries conceive for
d. In aristocracies the taste for material well-being breaks the bonds of society, in
democracies it tightens them (Rubish, 1).
e. In the rubish, the sentence says: cannot be applied except to the poor of democ-
racies. On this subject, you read as well the following note: The remark of E
douard
on this point is this:
I am speaking here, he says, only about the poor or at most about people who are
well-off, but there are rich people in democracies and it must be explained why these rich
men are also forced to pursue material enjoyments in small ways and share on this point
the instincts of the poor.
True remark (Rubish, 1).
material enjoyments is not naturally opposed to order; on the contrary, it
oftenneeds order tosatisfy itself. Nor is it the enemy of regularityof morals;
for good morals are useful to public tranquillity and favor industry. Often
it even comes to be combined with a sort of religious morality; you want
to be as well-off as possible in this world, without renouncing your chances
in the other.
Among material goods, there are some whose possession is criminal; you
take care to do without them. There are others whose use is allowed by
religion and morality; to the latter you give unreservedly your heart, your
imagination, your life, and by trying hard to grasp them, you lose sight of
these more precious goods that make the glory and the grandeur of the
human species.
What I reproach equality for is not carrying men toward the pursuit of
forbidden enjoyments; it is for absorbing them entirely in the pursuit of
permitted enjoyments.
In this way there could well be established in the world a kind of honest
materialism that would not corrupt souls, but would soften them and end
by silently relaxing all their springs of action.
939
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 2
a
Why Certain Americans Exhibit
So Excited a Spiritualism
b
Although the desire to acquire the goods of this world is the dominant
passion of the Americans, there are moments of respite when their soul
seems suddenly to break the material bonds that hold it and to escape im-
petuously toward heaven.
c
In all of the states of the Union, but principally in the half-populated
regions of the West, you sometimes meet itinerant preachers who peddle
the divine word from place to place.
Entire families, old people, women and children cross difcult places
and go through uninhabited woods in order to come from far away to hear
them; and when these people have found the preachers, for several days and
a. Although the Americans have as a dominant passion the acquisition of the goods
of this world, spiritualism shows itself from time to time among all, and exclusively
among some, with singular forms and a fervor that often goes nearly to extravagance.
Camp meetings.
Bizarre sects.
These different effects come from the same cause.
The soul has natural needs that must be satised. If you want to imprison it in
contemplation of the needs of the body, it ends by escaping and in its momentum
it does not stop even at the limits of common sense (YTC, CVf, pp. 3031).
b. Original title in the rubish: of some bizarre sects that arise in america.
See the appendix sects in america.
c. On the jacket of the manuscript: Small chapter that must be retained only if
someone formally advises me to do so.
The core of the idea is questionable. Everything consideredthere were more mystical
extravagances in the Middle Ages (centuries of aristocracy) than in America today.
Moreover, several of these ideas reappear or have already appeared (I believe ) in the
book!
ameri cans and s pi ri tuali s m 940
several nights, while listening to them, they forget their concern for public
and private affairs and even the most pressing needs of the body.
[<America is assuredly the country inthe worldinwhichthe sentiment
of individual power has the most sway. But several religious sects have been
founded in the United States that, despairing of moderating the taste for
material enjoyments, have gone as far as destroying the incentive of prop-
erty by establishing community of goods within them.>]
d
Youndhere andthere, withinAmericansociety, some souls totallylled
with an excited and almost erce spiritualism that you hardly nd in Eu-
rope. From time to time bizarre sects arise there that try hard to open ex-
traordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious madness is very common
there.
This must not surprise us.
Man has not given himself the taste for the innite and the love of what
is immortal. These sublime instincts do not arise from a caprice of the will;
they have their unchanging foundation in his nature; they exist despite his
efforts. He can hinder and deform them, but not destroy them.
The soul has needs that must be satised; and whatever care you take to
distract it from itself, it soon grows bored, restless and agitated amid the
enjoyments of the senses.
e
If the spirit of the great majority of humanity ever concentrated solely
on the pursuit of material goods, you can expect that a prodigious reaction
would take place in the souls of some men. The latter would throw them-
selves frantically into the world of spirits, for fear of remaining hampered
in the overly narrow constraints that the body wanted to impose on them.
So you should not be astonished if, within a society that thinks only
about the earth, you would nd a small number of individuals who wanted
d. In the margin: All this shows the weakness of the idea by recalling the monas-
teries, institutions quite differently spiritualist thanthe small associations that I amspeak-
ing about.
e. When I {read the impractical laws of Plato} see Plato in his sublime reveries
want to forbid commerce and industry to the citizens and, in order to release thembetter
from coarse desires, want to take away even the possession of their children, I think of
his contemporaries, and the sensual democracy of Athens makes me understandthe laws
of this imaginary republic whose portrait he has drawn for us (Rubish, 1).
ameri cans and s pi ri tuali s m 941
to look only to heaven. I would be surprised if, among a people solely pre-
occupied by its well-being, mysticism did not soon make progress.
f
It is said that the persecutions of the emperors and the tortures of the
circus populated the deserts of the Thebaid; as for me, I think that it was
muchmore the delights of Rome andthe Epicureanphilosophyof Greece.
g
If the social state, circumstances and laws did not so narrowly conne
the American spirit to the pursuit of well-being, it is to be believed that
when the American spirit came to occupy itself with non-material things,
it would show more reserve and more experience, and that it would control
itself without difculty. But it feels imprisoned within the limits beyond
which it seems it is not allowed to go. As soon as it crosses those limits, it
does not know where to settle down, and it often runs without stopping
beyond the bounds of common sense.
h
f. I would not be surprised if the rst monasteries to be established in America are
trappist monasteries (Rubish, 1).
g. There is in the very nature of man a natural andpermanent dispositionthat pushes
his soul despite habits, laws, customs . . . toward the contemplation of elevated and
intellectual things.
This natural disposition is found in democracies as elsewhere. And it can even be
exalted and perfected there by a sort of reaction to the material and the ordinary that
abound in these sorts of societies.
When society presents elevated and grand points of view, the kinds of souls that
I have just spoken about can allow themselves to be caught by and attach themselves
to this half-good, instead of detaching themselves entirely from the earth in order to
go to nd absolute good.
The dissolute orgies of Rome lled the deserts of Thebaid.
K[ergorlay (ed.)]., 13 March 1836 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 5).
h. If the Americans had a literature this would be even more perceptible. Some
would want to escape from monotony by the bizarre, the singular. You could see a mys-
tical literature within a materialistic society./
Exalted spiritualism. Intellectual orgies. (Rubish, 1).
942
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 3
a
Why the Americans Appear So Restless
Amid Their Well-Being
You still sometimes nd, in certain remote districts of the OldWorld, small
populations that have been as if forgotten amid the universal tumult and
that have remainedunchangedwheneverythingaroundthemmoved. Most
of these peoples are very ignorant and very wretched; they are not involved
in governmental affairs and oftengovernments oppress them. But theyusu-
ally show a serene face, and they often exhibit a cheerful mood.
I saw in America the most free and most enlightened men placed in the
a. Of restlessness of the heart in America. Although the Americans are a very pros-
perous people, they seem almost always restless and care-ridden; they constantly
change places, careers, desires.
That comes principally from these causes:
Equality makes the love of the enjoyments of this world predominate. Now
1. Men who restrict themselves to the pursuit of the enjoyments of this world are
always pressed by the idea of the brevity of life. They fear having missed the shortest
road that could lead them to happiness.
2. The taste for material enjoyments causes intense desires, but leads easily to dis-
couragement. For the effort that you make to attain the enjoyment must not surpass
the enjoyment.
3. Equality suggests a thousand times more desires than it can satisfy. It excites
ambition and deceives it. Men can achieve anything, but their individual weakness
and competition limit them (YTC, CVf, p. 31).
This chapter appears with the same title of restlessness of the heart in america
in the rubish and manuscript. A page of the rubish contains the following note: Small
chapter done with great difculty. To delete perhaps, but to review in any case. Perhaps
in order to avoid the commonplace, I fell into the forced./
Immoderate desire for happiness in this world, that arises from democracy. Idea to
make emerge better from the chapter (Rubish, 1).
res tles s nes s ami d well- bei ng 943
happiest condition in the world; it seemed to me that a kind of cloud ha-
bitually covered their features; they appeared to me grave and almost sad,
even in their pleasures.
b
The principal reason for this is that the rst do not think about the evils
that they endure, while the others think constantly about the goods that
they do not have.
c
It is a strange thing to see with what kind of feverishardor the Americans
pursue well-being, and how they appear tormented constantly by a vague
fear of not having chosen the shortest road that can lead to it.
d
The inhabitant of the United States is attached to the goods of this
world, as if he was assured of not dying, and he hastens so much to seize
those goods that pass within his reach, that you would say that at every
instant he is afraid of ceasing to live before enjoying them. He seizes all of
b. I arrived one night in the company of several savages at the house of an American
planter. It is the dwelling of a rich planter and at the same time a tavern. You saw
reigning there great ease and even a sort of rustic luxury. I was brought into a well-
lighted and carefully heated room in which several men of leisure from the neigh-
borhood were already gathered around a table laden with grain whiskey. These men
were all more or less drunk, but their drunkenness had a grave and somber character
that struck me. They talked painfully about public affairs, about the price of houses,
about the hazards of commerce and the cycles of industry. The Indians remained
outside, although the night was rainy and they had [only (ed.)] a few bad rags of
blankets to cover themselves. They had lighted a large re and sat around on the
humid earth. They spoke happily among themselves. I did not understandthe mean-
ing of their speeches, but the noisy bursts of their joy at each instant penetrated the
gravity of our banquet (Rubish, 1).
c. The inhabitant of the United States has all the goods of this world within reach,
but can grasp none of them without effort (Rubish, 1).
d. All of that still much more marked in the revolutionary period and in unbelieving
democracies./
The Americans are materialistic by their tastes, but they are not by their ideas. They
ardently pursue the goods of this world, but they have not ceased believing in the ex-
istence of another one (Rubish, 1).
them, but without gripping them, and he soon lets them escape from his
hands in order to run after new enjoyments.
e
A man, in the United States, carefully builds a house in which to spend
his old age, and he sells it while the ridgepole is being set; he plants a garden
and he rents it as he is about to taste its fruits; he clears a eld, and he leaves
to others the trouble of gathering the harvest. He embraces a profession,
and he leaves it. He settles in a place that he soon leaves in order to carry
his changing desires elsewhere. If his private affairs give him some respite,
he immediately plunges into the whirl of politics. And when, near the end
of a year lled with work, he still has a little leisure, he takes his restless
curiosity here and there across the vast limits of the United States. He will
do as much as ve hundred leagues in a fewdays in order to distract himself
better from his happiness.
Death nally intervenes and stops him before he has grown weary of
this useless pursuit of a complete felicity that always escapes.
You are at rst astounded contemplating this singular agitationexhibited
by so many happy men, in the very midst of abundance. This spectacle is,
however, as old as the world; what is new is to see it presented by an entire
people.
The taste for material enjoyments must be considered as the primary
source of this secret restlessness that is revealed inthe actions of Americans,
and of this inconstancy that they daily exemplify.
The man who has conned his heart solely to the pursuit of the goods
of this world is always in a hurry, for he has only a limited time to nd
them, to take hold of them and to enjoy them. The memory of the brevity
of life goads himconstantly. Apart fromthe goods that he possesses, at every
instant he imagines a thousand others that death will prevent him from
tasting if he does not hurry. This thought lls him with uneasiness, fears,
e. In a rst version of the rubish:
I met a man in the United States who, after having for a long time hiddengreat talents
in poverty, nally became the wealthiest man of his profession. At the same time in
England lived another individual who, following the same career as the rst man,
had amassed greater wealth. News of it reached the American and this colleague
who was on the other side of the ocean troubled his sleep and kept his joy in check
(Rubish, 1).
and regrets, and keeps his soul in a kind of constant trepidation that leads
him to change plans and places at every moment.
If the taste for material well being is joined with a social state in which
neither law nor custom any longer holds anyone in his place, it is one more
great excitement to this restlessness of spirit; you will then see men con-
tinually change path, for fear of missing the shortest road that is to lead
them to happiness.
It is easy to understand, moreover, that if the men who passionately seek
material enjoyments do desire strongly, they must be easily discouraged;
since the nal goal is to enjoy, the means to get there must be quick and
easy, otherwise the difculty of obtaining the enjoyment would surpass the
enjoyment. So most souls are at the same time ardent and soft, violent and
enervated. Often death is less feared than constant efforts toward the same
goal.
Equality leads by a still more direct road toward several of the effects
that I have just described.
When all the prerogatives of birth and fortune are destroyed, when all
the professions are open to everyone, and when you can reach the summit
of each one of them on your own, an immense and easy career seems to
open before the ambition of men, and they readily imagine that they are
called to great destinies.
f
But that is an erroneous view that experience cor-
rects every day. The same equality that allows each citizen to conceive vast
hopes makes all citizens individually weak. It limits their strengths on all
sides, at the same time that it allows their desires to expand.
Not only are they powerless by themselves, but also they nd at each
step immense obstacles that they had not at rst noticed.
They destroyed the annoying privileges of a few of their fellows; they
encounter the competition of all. The boundary marker has changed form
rather than place. When men are more or less similar and follow the same
road, it is very difcult for any one of them to march quickly and cut
through the uniform crowd that surrounds and crushes him.
f. In the margin: <This idea must necessarily be found in the chapter on ambition.
Do not let it appear without reviewing both of them at the same time.>
This constant opposition that reigns between the instincts given birth
by equality and the means that equality provides to satisfy them torments
and fatigues souls.
g
You can imagine men having arrived at a certain degree of liberty that
satises them entirely. They then enjoy their independence without rest-
lessness and without fervor. But men will never establish an equality that
is enough for them.
Whatever efforts a people may make, it will not succeed in making con-
ditions perfectly equal within it; and if it had the misfortune to arrive at
this absolute and complete leveling, there would still be inequality of in-
telligence that, coming directly from God, will always escape the laws.
No matter how democratic the social state and political constitution of
a people, you can therefore count on each of its citizens always seeing near
himself several points that are above him, and you can predict that he will
obstinately turn his attention solely in their direction. When inequality is
the common law of a society, the greatest inequalities do not strike the eye.
Whenall is nearly level, the least inequalities offendit. This is whythe desire
for equality always becomes more insatiable as equality is greater.
h
Among democratic peoples, men easily gain a certain equality; they can-
not attain the equality they desire. The latter retreats from them every day,
but without ever hiding fromtheir view, andby withdrawing, it draws them
in pursuit. They constantly believe that they are about to grasp it, and it
constantly escapes their grip. They see it close enough to know its charms,
they do not come close enough to enjoy it, and they die before having fully
savored its sweet pleasures.
It is to these causes that you must attribute the singular melancholy that
the inhabitants of democratic countries often reveal amid their abundance,
and this disgust for life that sometimes comes to seize them in the middle
of a comfortable and tranquil existence.
Some complain in France that the number of suicides is growing; in
g. The four paragraphs that follow do not appear in the manuscript.
h. <Envy is a sentiment that develops strongly only among equals, that is why it is so
common and so ardent in democratic centuries> (Rubish, 1).
America suicide is rare, but we are assured that insanity is more common
than anywhere else.
These are different symptoms of the same disease.
Americans do not kill themselves, however agitated they are, because
religion forbids them to so do, and because among them materialism does
not so to speak exist, although the passionfor material well-being is general.
Their will resists, but often their reason gives way.
j
In democratic times enjoyments are more intense than in aristocratic
centuries, and above all the number of those who sample them is innitely
greater; but on the other hand, it must be recognized that hopes anddesires
are more often disappointed there, souls more excited and more restless,
and anxieties more burning.
k
j. To the side: <Perhaps remove all of this as too strong.>
k. Men of democracies are tormented by desires more immense and more unlimited
than those of all other men. Their desires generally lead them however to less sus-
tained, less energetic, less persevering actions. The desires have enough power over
them to agitate them, to make them lose hope, and not enough to lead them to these
great and persevering efforts that bring great and enduring results. They have enough
desires to become disgusted with life and to kill themselves, not enough to overcome
themselves and to prevail, live and act. They have constantly recurring weak desires,
rather than will.
Examine this phenomenon very closely and portray it, probably in the chapter
entitled of restlessness of the heart, which comes after material enjoyments, true cause
of what precedes.
12 March 1838 (Rubish, 1).
948
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 4
a
How the Taste for Material Enjoyments Is
United, among the Americans, with the Love of
Liberty and Concern for Public Affairs
When a democratic State
b
turns to absolute monarchy, the activity that
was brought previously to public and private affairs comes suddenly to be
concentrated on the latter, and a great material prosperity results for some
time; but soon the movement slows and the development of production
stops.
c
a. Liberty is useful for the production of well-being among all peoples, but princi-
pally among democratic peoples.
It often happens among these peoples, however, that the excessive taste for well-
being causes liberty to be abandoned.
Men there are so preoccupied by their petty private affairs that they regard the
attention that they give to great public affairs as a waste of time. That delivers them
easily to the despotism of one man or to the tyranny of a party. The Americans offer
the opposite example. They concern themselves with public affairs attentively and
with the same ardor as with their private interests, which shows clearly that in their
mind these two things go together (YTC, CVf, p. 32).
b. The manuscript says republic.
c. I said in another part of this work the reasons that led me to believe that, if des-
potism came to be established in a lasting way among a democratic people, it would
show itself more ordered and heavier than anywhere else. The more I advance into
my subject, the more it seems to me that I am nding new reasons to think so.
[In the margin: All of that is weak because these are general truths that do not
apply to democratic peoples more than to others. It is the special reasons that I must
seek.
The special reason here would be the particularly suffocating nature of despotism
among democratic peoples.]
materi al enj oyments and love of li berty 949
Now, the necessary effect of a despotismof this type is to constrict the imagination
of man, to narrow in all ways the limits of his faculties and nally to make him
indifferent and as if useless to himself. But perhaps I am exaggerating the danger.
Who could believe in such excesses amid the enlightenment of our {Europe} age? So
it is claimed. I agree, so I will not speak about the wars undertaken for a particular
interest, the misappropriations of public wealth, the plundering by the agents of
power, the general uncertainty of private fortunes, things still more fatal to the pros-
perity of citizens, that are like the usual consequence of the establishment of such a
government and whose effect will soon make itself felt on the well-being of the cit-
izens. All these things can be considered as accidents. I want to seek a permanent
cause of the evil that I suppose, and I imagine a soft and intelligent despotism that,
limiting itself to conscating liberty, leaves men in possession of all the goods given
birth by liberty.
[In the margin: Commerce cannot bear war; but the character of democratic des-
potism is not tyrannical, but minutely detailed and annoying.]
Some maintain that such a government {favors} would save human morality and
is, everything considered, more favorable to happiness; I do not believe it. Nonethe-
less, it can be claimed. But you certainly cannot claim that such a government favors
as well the development of material well-being and the acquisition of wealth.
There is a more intimate connection than is thought between political activity and
industrial activity. There is nothing that awakens the imagination of a people, that
expands the circle of its ideas, that gives it the taste for enterprises of all types and
the boldness to execute them, nally that forces citizens to see each other and to
enlighten each other mutually with their knowledge, like the concern for public af-
fairs. Men being so disposed, there is no progress that they do not imagine, and, from
the simultaneous efforts of all, universal well-being is born.
That is so true that I do not know if you can cite the example of a single manu-
facturing and commercial people, fromthe Tyrians to the English, who have not been
at the same time a free people. You saw the industrial genius of the Florentines do
wonders amid the constantly recurring revolutions that devoured the products of the
work of man as they came from his hands. Florence, amid the very excesses of its
independence, was rich; it became poor as soon as it wanted to rest under the tranquil
and regular government [v: despotism] of the Medicis. So there is a hidden but very
close bond between these two things: liberty and industry.
1
[To the side: Perhaps do not speak about the Florentines, already cited by others
on analogous occasions.]
You do not notice this at rst. When the absolute authority of a prince follows the
government of all, this great human activity that went toward public affairs and pri-
vate affairs suddenly nds itself concentrated on the second, and for a time, a pro-
digious impetus and an unparalleled prosperity usually result. But soon movement
slows. New ideas cease to circulate with the same rapidity. Men only communicate
with each other from time to time, cease counting on their fellows, and end by no
longer having condence in themselves. No longer having the habit or the right to
I do not know if you can cite a single manufacturing and commercial
people, from the Tyrians to the Florentines and to the English, who have
not been a free people. So there is a close bond and a necessary connection
between these two things: liberty and industry.
That is generally true of all nations, but especially of democraticnations.
I showed above how men who live in centuries of equality had a con-
tinual need for association in order to obtain nearly all the goods they covet,
and on the other hand, I showed how great political liberty perfected and
spread widely within their midst the art of association. So liberty, in these
centuries, is particularly useful for the production of wealth. You can see,
on the contrary, that despotismis particularly the enemy of the production
of wealth.
The nature of absolute power, in democratic centuries, is neither cruel
nor savage, but it is minutely detailed and irksome. A despotism of this
type, although it does not trample humanity underfoot, is directly opposed
to the genius of commerce and to the instincts of industry.
Thus the men of democratic times need to be free, in order to obtain
more easily the material enjoyments for whichthey are constantlyyearning.
It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste that they con-
ceive for these very enjoyments delivers them to the rst master who pres-
ents himself. The passion for well-being then turns against itself and, with-
out noticing, drives away the object of its desires.
act in common in principal matters, they lose as well the practice of associating for
secondary ends. The ardor for enterprises becomes dull, the taste for progress becomes
less intense. Society marches at rst with a more tranquil step, then it stops andnally
settles into a complete immobility.
1. To see again concerning this piece something analogous written in England in
1835 (Rubish, 1).
In notebook CVa, p. 4, with the date 3 August 1836, there is a copy of a fragment of a
letter by Machiavelli on the danger of the streets of Rome during the night. In August
1836, Tocqueville spent his vacationin SwitzerlandandreadMachiavellis History of Flor-
ence. See Luc Monnier, Tocqueville et la Suisse, in Alexis de Tocqueville. Livre du cen-
tenaire (Paris: CNRS, 1960), pp. 10113.
There is, in fact, a very perilous transition in the life of democratic
peoples.
When the taste for material enjoyments develops among one of these
peoples more rapidly than enlightenment and the habits of liberty, there
comes a moment when men are carried away, as if beyond themselves, by
the sight of these new goods that they are ready to grasp. Preoccupied by
the sole concern to make a fortune, they no longer notice the close bond
that unites the particular fortune of each one of them to the prosperity of
all. There is no need to take away from such citizens the rights that they
possess; they willingly allow them to escape. The exercise of their political
rights seems to them a tiresome inconvenience that distracts them from
their industry. Whether it is a matter of choosing their representatives,
coming to the assistance of the authorities, dealing together with common
affairs, they lack the time; they cannot waste such precious time on useless
works. Those are games for idle men that are not suitable for grave men
who are busy with the serious interests of life. The latter believe that they
are following the doctrine of interest, but they have only a crude idea of
it, and in order to see better to what they call their affairs, they neglect the
principal one which is to remain their own masters.
Since the citizens who work do not want to think about public matters,
and since the class that could ll its leisure hours by shouldering these con-
cerns no longer exists, the place of the government is as though empty.
If, at this critical moment, a clever man of ambition comes to take hold
of power, he nds that the path to all usurpations is open [<and he will
have no difculty turning against liberty the very passions developed or
given birth by liberty>].
As long as he sees for a while that all material interests prosper, he will
easily be discharged from the rest. Let him, above all, guarantee goodorder.
Men who have a passion for material enjoyments usually nd how the ag-
itations of liberty disturb well-being, before noticing how liberty serves to
gain it; and at the slightest noise of public passions that penetrates into the
petty enjoyments of their private life, they wake up and become anxious;
for a long time the fear of anarchy keeps them constantly in suspense and
always ready to jump away from liberty at the rst disorder.
I agree without difculty that public peace is a great good, but I do not
want to forget that it is through good order that all peoples have arrived at
tyranny. It assuredly does not followthat peoples shouldscornpublic peace;
but it must not be enough for them. A nation that asks of its government
only the maintenance of order is already a slave at the bottom of its heart.
The nation is a slave of its well-being, and the manwho is to put it inchains
can appear.
The despotism of factions is to be feared no less than that of one
man.
When the mass of citizens wants only to concern itself with private af-
fairs, the smallest parties do not have to despair of becoming masters of
public affairs.
It is then not rare to see on the worlds vast stage, as in our theaters, a
multitude represented by a few men. The latter speak alone in the name
of the absent or inattentive crowd; alone they take action amid the uni-
versal immobility; they dispose of everything according to their caprice;
they change laws and tyrannize mores at will; and you are astonished to
see into what a small number of weak and unworthy hands a great people
can fall.
Until now, the Americans have happily avoided all the pitfalls that I have
just pointed out; and in that they truly merit our admiration.
There is perhaps nocountry onearthwhere youndfewer menof leisure
than in America, and where all those who work are more inamed in the
pursuit of well-being. But if the passion of the Americans for material en-
joyments is violent, at least it is not blind, andreason, powerless tomoderate
it, directs it.
An American is busy with his private interests as if he were alone in
the world, and a moment later, he devotes himself to public matters as if
he had forgotten his private interests. He seems sometimes animated by
the most egotistical cupidity and sometimes by the most intense patri-
otism. The human heart cannot be divided in this manner. The inhabi-
tants of the United States bear witness alternately to such a strong and so
similar a passion for their well-being and for their liberty that it is to be
believed that these passions unite and blend some place in their soul. The
Americans, in fact, see in their liberty the best instrument and the greatest
guarantee of their well-being. They love both of these two things. So they
do not think that getting involved in public matters is not their business;
they believe, on the contrary, that their principal business is to secure by
themselves a government that allows them to acquire the goods that they
desire, and that does not forbid them to enjoy in peace those they have
acquired.
954
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 5
a
How from Time to Time Religious Beliefs
Divert the Soul of the Americans
toward Non-Material Enjoyments
b
[However animated the Americans are in the pursuit of well-being, there
are moments when they stop and turn away for a moment to think about
God and about the other life.]
In the United States, when the seventh day of each week arrives, com-
mercial and industrial life seems suspended; all noise ceases. A profound
rest, or rather a kind of solemnrecollectionfollows; the soul, nally, regains
self-possession and contemplates itself.
During this day, the places consecrated to commerce and industry are
deserted; each citizen, surrounded by his children, goes to church; there
strange discourses are held forth that do not seem much made for his ears.
He hears about the innumerable evils caused by pride and covetousness.
a. InAmerica, Sunday andthe use made of it interrupt eachweekthe course of purely
material thoughts and tastes. It breaks the chain of them. Particular advantages of
this.
The democratic social state leads the human mind toward materialistic opinions
by sometimes developing beyond measure the taste for well-being. That is a tendency
that you must struggle against, just as in aristocratic times you must ght against an
opposite excess.
Effect of religions which is to keep spiritualism in honor. So religions are particu-
larly necessary among democratic peoples. What the government of these peoples
can do to uphold religions and the spiritualistic opinions that they suggest (YTC,
CVf, pp. 3233).
b. On the jacket of the chapter in the manuscript: The utility of religions to temper
the taste for material enjoyments in democratic centuries has already been touched upon
in chapter V, but so lightly that I believe that it can be developed here. It concerns
chapter V of the rst part.
reli gi ous beli efs and nonmateri al enj oyments 955
He is told about the necessity to control his desires, about the ne enjoy-
ments attached to virtue alone, and about the true happiness that accom-
panies it.
Back at home, you do not see him run to his business ledgers. He opens
the book of the Holy Scriptures; there he nds sublime or touching por-
trayals of the grandeur and the goodness of the Creator, of the innite
magnicence of the works of God, of the elevateddestinyreservedfor men,
of their duties and their rights to immortality.
This is how, from time to time, the American escapes in a way from
himself, and how, tearing himself away for a moment from the petty pas-
sions that agitate his life andfromthe transitory interests that ll it, heenters
suddenly into an ideal world where everything is great, pure, eternal.
[So I am constantly led to the same subjects by different roads; and I
discover more and more the close bond that unites the two parts of my
subject.]
In another place in this work, I looked for the causes to which the main-
tenance of political institutions in America had to be attributed, and reli-
gion seemed to me one of the principal ones. Today, when I am concerned
with individuals, I nd religion again and notice that it is no less useful to
each citizen than to the whole State.
The Americans show, by their practice, that they feel the entire necessity
of moralizing democracy by religion. What they think in this regard about
themselves is a truth that must penetrate every democratic nation.
I do not doubt that the social and political constitution of a people dis-
poses them to certain beliefs and to certain tastes in which they easily
abound afterward; while these same causes turn them away from certain
opinions and certain tendencies without their working at it themselves, and
so to speak without their suspecting it.
All the art of the legislator consists in clearly discerning in advance these
natural inclinations of human societies, in order to know where the effort
of the citizens must be aided, and where it would instead be necessary to
slow it down. For these obligations differ according to the times. Only the
end toward which humanity must always head is unchanging; the means
to reach that end constantly vary.
[There are vices or erroneous opinions that can only be established
among a people by struggling against the general current of society. These
are not to be feared; they must be considered as unfortunate accidents. But
there are others that, having a natural rapport with the very constitution
of the people, develop by themselves and effortlessly among the people.
Those, however small they may be at their beginning and however rare they
seem, deserve to attract the great care of the legislator.]
c
If I were born in an aristocratic century, amid a nation in which the
hereditary wealth of some and the irremediable poverty of others diverted
men from the idea of the better and, as well, held souls as if benumbed in
the contemplation of another world, I would want it to be possible for me
to stimulate among such a people the sentiment of needs; I would think
about nding more rapid and easier means to satisfy the new desires that I
would have brought about, and, diverting the greatest efforts of the human
mind toward physical study, I would try to excite the human mind in the
pursuit of well-being.
d
If it happened that some men caught re thoughtlessly in the pursuit
of wealth and exhibited an excessive love for material enjoyments, I would
not become alarmed; these particular traits would soon disappear in the
common physiognomy.
Legislators of democracies have other concerns.
Give democratic peoples enlightenment and liberty and leave them
alone. They will easily succeed in drawing from this world all the [material]
goods that it can offer; they will perfect each one of the useful arts anddaily
make life more comfortable, easier, sweeter; their social state pushes them
naturally in this direction. I am not afraid that they will stop.
c. In the margin: To delete this piece perhaps which slows, although it claries. I
have moreover expressed this idea in the rst part while speaking about laws.
d. If I had been born in the Middle Ages, I would have been the enemy of super-
stitions, for then the social movement led there.
But today, I feel indulgent toward all the follies that spiritualism can suggest.
The great enemy is materialism, not only because it is initself a detestable doctrine,
but also because it is unfortunately in accord with the social tendency (Rubish, 1).
But while man takes pleasure in this honest and legitimate pursuit of
well-being, it is to be feared that in the end he may lose the use of his most
sublime faculties, and that by wanting to improve everything around him,
he may in the end degrade himself. The danger is there and nowhere else.
So legislators in democracies and all honest and enlightened men who
live indemocracies must apply themselves without respite toliftingupsouls
and keeping them pointed toward heaven. It is necessary that all those who
are interested in the future of democratic societies unite, and that all in
concert make continual efforts to spread within these societies the taste for
the innite, the sentiment for the grand and the love for non-material
pleasures.
If among the opinions of a democratic people there exist a few of these
harmful theories that tend to make you believe that everything perishes
with the body, consider the men who profess them as the natural enemies
of the people.
There are many things that offendme inthe materialists. Their doctrines
seem pernicious to me, and their pride revolts me. If their system could be
of some use to man, it seems that it would be in giving him a modest idea
of himself. But they do not show that this is so; and when they believe that
they have sufciently established that men are only brutes, they appear as
proud as if they had demonstrated that men were gods.
e
Materialism is, among all nations, a dangerous sickness of the human
mind; but it must be particularly feared among a democratic people, be-
cause it combines marvelously with the vice of the heart most familiar to
these people.
e. Baden, 2 August 1836.
Of the pride of the materialists./
There are many things that shock me among the materialists, but the most dis-
pleasing in my view is the extreme pride that most of them exhibit. If the doctrine
that they profess could be of some use to men, it seems that it would be in inspiring
in them a modest idea of themselves and in leading them to humility. But they do
not indicate that this is so, and after making a thousand efforts to prove that they are
only brutes, they show themselves as proud as if they had demonstrated that they
were gods (In the rubish of chapter XVII of this part. Rubish, 1).
Democracy favors the taste for material enjoyments. This taste, if it
becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that everything is only
matter; and materialism, in turn, nally carries them with an insane fervor
toward these same enjoyments. Such is the fatal circle into which demo-
cratic nations are pushed. It is good that they see the danger and restrain
themselves.
Most religions are only general, simple and practical means to teachmen
the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest advantage that a democratic
people draws from belief, and what makes these beliefs more necessary for
such a people than for all others.
So when no matter which religion has put down deep roots within a
democracy, be careful about weakening it; but instead protect it carefully
as the most precious heritage of aristocratic centuries;
f
do not try to tear
men away from their ancient religious opinions in order to substitute new
ones, for fear that, during the transition from one faith to another, when
the soul nds itself for one moment devoid of beliefs, love of material
enjoyments comes to spread and ll the soul entirely.
[I do not believe that all religions are equally true and equally good, but
I think that there is none so false or so bad that it would not still be ad-
vantageous for a democratic people to profess.]
Assuredly, metempsychosis is not more reasonable thanmaterialism; but
if it were absolutely necessary for a democracy to make a choice between
the two, I would not hesitate, and I would judge that its citizens risk be-
coming brutalized less by thinking that their soul is going to pass into the
body of a pig than by believing that it is nothing.
g
The belief in a non-material and immortal principle, united for a time
to matter, is so necessary for the grandeur of man, that it still produces
beautiful effects even when you do not join the opinion of rewards and
punishments with it and when you limit yourself to believing that after
f. To the side: {Remark by E
douard.}
g. In the margin: It is above all from there that the piece becomes weak because
what I say no longer relates exclusively to democracies./
What follows is a beautiful digression on the general advantages of spiritualisms and
nothing more, thrown across the idea of the utility of a religion and of the means for
preserving it.
death the divine principle contained in man is absorbed in God or goes to
animate another creature.
h
Even the latter consider the body as the secondary and inferior portion
of our nature; and they scornit evenwhenthey undergo its inuence; while
they have a natural esteem and secret admiration for the non-material part
of man, even though they sometimes refuse to submit themselves to its
dominion. This is enough to give a certain elevated turn to their ideas and
their tastes, and to make themtend without interest, and as if ontheir own,
toward pure sentiments and great thoughts.
It is not certain that Socrates and his school had well-xed opinions on
what must happen to man in the other life; but the sole belief on which
they were settled, that the soul has nothing in common with the body and
survives it, was enough to give to platonic philosophy the sort of sublime
impulse that distinguishes it.
When you read Plato, you notice that in the times prior to him and in
his time, many writers existed who advocated materialism. These writers
have not survived to our time or have survived only very incompletely. It
has been so in nearly all the centuries; most of the great literary reputations
are joined with spiritualism. The instinct and the taste of humanity uphold
this doctrine; they often save this doctrine despite the men themselves and
make the names of those who are attached to it linger on. So it must not
be believed that in any time, and in whatever political state, the passionfor
material enjoyments and the opinions that are linked with it will be able
h. Immortality of the soul./
The need for the innite and the sad experience of the nite that we encounter at
each step, torments [sic ] me sometimes, but does not distress me. I see in it one of
the greatest proofs of the existence of another world and of the immortality of our
souls. From all that we know about God by his works, we know that he does nothing
without a near or distant end. This is so true that in the physical world, it is enough
for us to nd an organ in order to conclude from it in a certain way that the animal
that possessed this organ used it in this or that way, and experience comes to prove
it. Argument by analogy. I cannot believe that God put in our souls the organ of the
innite, if I can express myself in this way, in order to give our soul eternally only to
the nite, that he gave it the organ of hope in a future life, without future life (CVa,
p. 57).
to sufce for an entire people.
j
The heart of man is more vast than you
suppose; it can at the same time enclose the taste for the good things of the
earth and the love of the good things of heaven; sometimes the heart seems
to give itself madly to one of the two; but it never goes for a long time
without thinking of the other.
k
j. In a rst version you read:
I am moreover very far from believing that men can[not (ed.)] reconcile the taste for
well-being that democracy develops and the religious [v: spiritualistic] beliefs that
democracy needs. To prove it, I will not use the example of the Americans; their origin
sets them aside. But I will cite before all the others that of the English.
The middle classes of England form an immense democracy in which each man
is occupied without respite with the concern of improving his lot, and in which all
seem devoted to the love of wealth. But the middle classes of Englandremainfaithful
to their religious beliefs and they show in a thousand small ways that these beliefs are
powerful and sincere [v: true]. England, with its traditions and its memories, is not
however relegated to a corner of the universe. Unbelief is next door. The English
themselves have seen several of the most celebrated unbelievers arise within it. But
the middle classes of England have remained rmly religious until today and are
sincere Christians who have produced these industrial wonders that astonish the
world.
So the heart of man is . . . (Rubish, 1).
A variant from the Rubish species: unbelievers. Several have been powerful because of
their genius. Hume, Gibbon, Byron (Rubish, 1).
k. To be concerned only with satisfying the needs of the body and to forget about
the soul. That is the nal outcome to which materialism leads.
To ee into the deserts, to inict sufferings and privations on yourself in order to
live the life of the soul. That is the nal outcome of spiritualism. I notice at the one
end of this tendency Heliogabalus and at the other St. Jerome.
I would very much want us to be able to nd between these two paths a road that
would not be a route toward the one or toward the other. For if each of these two
opposite roads can be suitable for some men, this middle road is the only one that
can be suitable for humanity. Can we not nd a path between Heliogabalus and St.
Jerome? (Rubish, 1).
At another place in the rubish:
I proved sufciently in material tastes that it was to be desired that the taste for well-
being did not repress the impulses [of (ed.)] spiritualism of the soul, were it only so
that man could obtain for himself those material enjoyments that they [sic ] desire.
For the subject to be exhausted and my philosophical position clearly established,
it would be necessary to be able to add a small chapter in which, turning myself away
from considering the fanatical spiritualists, I would show that in the very interest of
If it is easy to see that, particularly in times of democracy, it is important
to make spiritual opinions reign, it is not easy to say what those who govern
democratic peoples must do for those opinions to reign.
I do not believe inthe prosperity any more thaninthe durationof ofcial
philosophies, and as for State religions, I have always thought that if some-
times they could temporarily serve the interests of political power, they
always sooner or later become fatal to the Church.
Nor am I one of those who judge that in order to raise religion in the
eyes of the people, and to honor the spiritualism that religion professes, it
is good to grant indirectly to its ministers a political inuence that the law
refuses to them.
[I would even prefer that you gave the clergy a denite power than to
allow them to hold an irregular and hidden power. For, in the rst case,
the soul the body must prosper; I would rehabilitate the esh as the Saint-Simonians
said. I would search for this intermediate path between Saint Jerome and Heliogab-
alus that will always be the great route of humanity.
I would show there
1. That in order to get men to concern themselves with the needs of their souls,
you must not say to them to neglect the needs of the body, for both exist, man being
neither a pure spirit nor an animal, but that the problem to solve is to nd a means
to reconcile these two needs.
2. That in itself it is desirable that sublime virtues do not hide under rags (or at
least exceptions that show nothing), that a certain well-being of the body is necessary
for the development of the soul, that efforts made by the soul to attain that devel-
opment are healthy for it, that they give it habits of order, work, that they sharpen
its abilities . . ./
In a word, it is necessary to tie this world to the other or one of the two escapes us
(Rubish, 1).
In a letter of 1843, Tocqueville will repeat the same ideas to Arthur de Gobineau:
Our society has moved away much more from theology than from Christian philos-
ophy. Since our religious beliefs have become less rmandthe viewof the other world
more obscure, morality must show itself more indulgent for material needs and plea-
sures. It is an idea that the Saint-Simonians expressed, I believe, by saying that it was
necessary to rehabilitate the esh (Correspondance avec Gobineau, OC, IX, p. 46).
See Joshua Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom. Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy and the
American Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
you at least see clearly the political circle in which priests can act; while in
the other, there are no limits at which the imagination of the people must
stop, or public misfortunes for which the people will not be tempted to
blame the priests.]
m
I feel so convinced of the nearly inevitable dangers that beliefs runwhen
their interpreters mingle in public affairs, and I am so persuaded that
Christianity must at all cost be maintained within the new democracies,
that I would prefer to chain priests within the sanctuary than to allowthem
out of it.
So what means remain for authority to lead men back toward spiritu-
alistic opinions or keep them in the religion that suggests these opinions?
What I am going to say is going to do me harm in the eyes of politicians.
I believe that the only effective means that governments can use to honor
the dogma of the immortality of the soul is to act each day as if they be-
lieved it themselves; and I think that it is only by conforming scrupulously
to religious morality in great affairs that they can claim to teach citizens to
know, love and respect religious morality in little affairs.
n
m. Inthe rubish, the passage continues inthis way: It is rare moreover that youwisely
use a precarious and disputed power that you can exercise only in the shadows. For me,
I am so persuaded that the spirit of religion must at all cost be maintained within de-
mocracies and I feel, on the contrary, so convinced of the nearly inevitable dangers . . .
(Rubish, 1).
n. To put after egoism and the material tendency of democracy, when I will say that
it is necessary at all cost to throw some non-material ideas, some poetry, some taste
for the innite into the midst of democratic peoples.
Legislators of democracy, if by chance a positive religion exists, respect it, preserve
it as a precious ame that is tending to go out, as the most precious heritage of aris-
tocratic centuries . . .
In aristocratic centuries I would work hard to turn the human spirit toward physi-
cal studies, in democratic centuries toward the moral sciences. Draw a short parallel
between these two tendencies against which you must alternately struggle in order to
reveal clearly the higher place at which I position myself and show that I am not a
slave to my own ideas (Rubish, 1).
963
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 6
a
How the Excessive Love of Well-Being
Can Harm Well-Being
b
There is more of a connection than you think between the perfection of
the soul and the improvement of the goods of the body; man can leave
these two things distinct and alternately envisage each one of them; but he
cannot separate them entirely without nally losing sight of both of them.
Animals have the same senses that we have and more or less the same
desires: there are no material passions that we do not have in commonwith
them and whose germ is not found in a dog as well as in ourselves.
So why do the animals only know how to provide for their rst andmost
crude needs, while we innitely vary our enjoyments and increase them
constantly?
What makes us superior in this to animals is that we use our soul to nd
the material goods towardwhichtheir instinct alone leads them. Withman,
the angel teaches the brute the art of satisfying himself. Man is capable of
rising above the goods of the body andevenof scorning life, anideaanimals
a. It is the soul that teaches the body the art of satisfying itself. You cannot neglect
the one up to a certain point without decreasing the means to satisfy the other (YTC,
CVf, p. 33).
b. The perfection of the soul serves not only to nd new means to satisfy the body,
but it also increases the ability that the body has to enjoy.
Idea of L[ouis (ed.)].
I am persuaded in fact that a man of spirit, imagination, genius, feels material en-
joyments a thousand times more when he gives himself to them than a fool, a dull or
coarse being (Rubish, 1).
exces s i ve love of well- bei ng 964
do not even conceive; he therefore knows how to multiply these very ad-
vantages to a degree that they also cannot imagine.
Everything that elevates, enlarges, expands the soul, makes it more ca-
pable of succeeding at even those enterprises that do not concern it.
Everything that enervates the soul, on the contrary, or lowers it, weakens
it for all things, the principal ones as well as the least ones, and threatens
to make it almost as powerless for the rst as for the second. Thus, the soul
must remain great and strong, if only to be able, from time to time, to put
its strength and its greatness at the service of the body.
If men ever succeed in being content with material goods, it is to be
believed that they would little by little lose the art of producing them, and
that they would end by enjoying them without discernment and without
progress, like the animals.
965
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 7
a
How, in Times of Equality and Doubt,
It Is Important to Push Back the
Goal of Human Actions
b
In centuries of faith, the nal aim of life is placed after life.
So men of those times, naturally and so to speak without wanting to,
become accustomed to contemplating over a long period of years an un-
changing goal toward which they march constantly, and they learn, by tak-
ing imperceptible steps forward, to repress a thousandsmall passingdesires,
the better to arrive at the satisfaction of this great and permanent desire
that torments them. When the same men want to concern themselves with
a. In centuries of faith, men become accustomed to directing all of their actions in
this world with the other in view.
That gives them certain habits and leads them as well to set for themselves very
distant goals in life and to march toward them obstinately.
In centuries of unbelief, on the contrary, men are naturally led to want to think
only about the next day.
So the great matter for philosophers and for those who govern in the centuries of
unbelief and democracy must be to push back the goal of human affairs in the eyes
of men. Means that they can use to succeed in doing so (YTC, CVf, pp. 3334).
b. On the jacket of the rubish:
How, in centuries of democracy and doubt, all the effort of the social power must
tend toward again giving men the taste for the future./
After all the chapters on material enjoyments. Democratic peoples have a general
taste for easy and quick enjoyments. That is true of material enjoyments as well as
others. So this idea must be treated separately from that of material enjoyments, but
it must be treated after, because the predominance of the taste for material enjoy-
ments is a great cause of the preeminence of the general taste for current enjoyments
(Rubish, 1).
goal of human acti ons 966
earthly things, these habits recur. They readily set for their actions here
below a general and certain goal, toward which all their efforts are directed.
You do not see them give themselves each day to new attempts; but they
have settled plans that they do not grow weary of pursuing.
This explains why religious peoples
c
have often accomplished such en-
during things. By concerning themselves with the other world, they found
the great secret of succeeding in this one.
Religions give the general habit of behaving with the future in view. In
this they are no less useful to happiness in this life than to felicity in the
other. It is one of their great political dimensions.
But, as the light of faith grows dim, the view of men narrows; and you
would say that each day the goal of human actions appears closer to them.
Once they become accustomedtonolonger being concernedabout what
must come after their life, you see them fall easily back into that complete
and brutal indifference about the future that is only too suited to certain
instincts of the human species. As soon as they have lost the custom of
putting their principal hopes in the long run, they are naturally led to want-
ing to realize their slightest desires without delay, and it seems that, from
the moment they lose hope of living eternally, they are disposed to act as
if they had only a single day to exist.
In the centuries of unbelief, it is therefore always to be feared that men
will constantly give themselves to the daily whims of their desires and that,
renouncing entirely what cannot be acquired without long efforts, they will
establish nothing great, peaceful and lasting.
If it happens that, among a people so disposed, the social state becomes
democratic, the danger that I am pointing out increases.
[<In aristocracies, the xity of conditions and the immobility of the
social body direct the human mind toward the idea of the future and hold
it there.>]
When each man seeks constantly to change place, when an immense
competition is open to all, when wealth accumulates and disappears in a
few moments amid the tumult of democracy, the idea of a suddenand easy
fortune, of great possessions easily gained and lost, the image of chance in
c. The manuscript says: most religious peoples.
all its forms occurs to the human mind. The instability of the social state
comes to favor the natural instability of desires. In the middle of these
perpetual uctuations of fate, the present grows; it hides the future that
fades away, and men want to think only about the next day.
In these countries where by an unhappy coincidence irreligion and de-
mocracy meet, philosophers and those governing must apply themselves
constantly to pushing back the goal of human actions in the eyes of men;
that is their great concern.
While enclosing himself within the spirit of his century andhis country,
the moralist must learn to defend himself. May he try hard each day to
showhis contemporaries how, even amid the perpetual movement that sur-
rounds them, it is easier than they suppose to conceive and to carry out
long-term enterprises. May he make them see that, even though humanity
has changed appearance, the methods by which men can obtain the pros-
perity of this world have remained the same, and that, among democratic
peoples, as elsewhere, it is only by resisting a thousand small particular ev-
eryday desires that you can end up satisfying the general passion for hap-
piness that torments.
The task of those who govern is not less marked out.
At all times it is important that those who govern nations conduct
themselves with a view toward the future. But that is still more necessary
in democratic and unbelieving centuries than in all others. By acting in
this way, the leaders of democracies not only make public affairs prosper,
but by their example they also teach individuals the art of conducting
private affairs.
Above all they must try hard to banish chance, as much as possible, from
the political world.
The sudden and unmerited elevation of a courtier produces only a pass-
ing impression in an aristocratic country, because the ensemble of insti-
tutions and beliefs usually forces men to move slowly along paths that they
cannot leave.
But nothing is more pernicious than such examples offered to the view
of a democratic people. Such examples end by hurrying the heart of a dem-
ocratic people down a slope along which everything is dragging it. So it is
principally intimes of skepticismandequality that youmust carefullyavoid
having the favor of the people, or that of the prince, granted or denied by
chance, take the place of knowledge and services. It is to be hoped that
every advance there appears to be the fruit of effort, sothat there is nooverly
easy greatness, and that ambition is forced to set its sights on the goal for
a long time before achieving it.
Governments must apply themselves to giving back to men this taste for
the future that is no longer inspired by religion and the social state; and
without saying so, they must teach citizens every day in a practical way that
wealth, fame, and power are the rewards of work; that great successes are
found at the end of long desires, and that nothing lasting is gained except
what is acquired with pain.
When men become accustomed to foreseeing froma great distance what
must happen to them here below, and to nding nourishment in hopes, it
becomes difcult for themalways to stop their thinking at the precise limits
of life, and they are very close to going beyond those limits in order to cast
their sight farther.
So I do not doubt that by making citizens accustomed to thinking about
the future in this world, you lead them closer little by little, and without
their knowing it, to religious beliefs.
Thus, the means that, to a certain point, allows men to do without re-
ligion, is perhaps, after all, the only one that remains to us for leading hu-
manity back by a long detour toward faith.
969
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 8
a
Why, among the Americans, All Honest
Professions Are Considered Honorable
b
Among democratic peoples, where there is no hereditary wealth, each man
works in order to live, or has worked, or is born from people who have
worked. So the idea of work, as the necessary, natural and honest condition
of humanity, presents itself on all sides to the human mind.
Not only is work not held in dishonor among these peoples, it is hon-
ored; prejudice is not against work, it is for it. In the United States, a rich
man believes that he owes to public opinion the consecration of his leisure
to some industrial or commercial operation or to some public duties. He
would consider himself of bad reputation if he used his life only for living.
It is to avoid this obligation to work that so many rich Americans come to
Europe; there, they nd the remnants of aristocratic societies amongwhich
idleness is still honored.
Equality not only rehabilitates the idea of work, it boosts the idea of
work that gains a prot.
a. In America everyone works or has worked. That rehabilitates the idea of work. In
America, since fortunes are all mediocre and temporary, the idea of salary is strongly
joined with the idea of work.
From the moment when work is honorable and when all work is paid, all profes-
sions take on a family resemblance. The salary is a common feature that is found in
the physiognomy of all professions (YTC, CVf, p. 34).
b. This chapter and the following, until the end of the second part, do not exist in
the manuscript, but appear in notebook CVf. There is rubish with the title: (a. b. c.)
Rubish./ why democracy pushes men toward commerce and all types of
industry and in general toward the taste for material well-being. in-
stincts that follow. There is also rubish for the chapter on the industrial
aristocracy.
the hones t profes s i ons 970
In aristocracies, it is not precisely work that is scorned, it is work for
prot. Work is glorious when ambition or virtue alone brings it about. Un-
der aristocracy, however, it constantly happens that the man who works for
honor is not insensitive to the allure of gain. But those two desires meet
only in the depths of his soul. He takes great care to hide from all eyes the
place where they come together. He willingly hides it fromhimself. In aris-
tocratic countries, there are hardly any public ofcials who do not pretend
to serve the State without interest. Their salary is a detail that they some-
times think little about and that they always pretend not to think about at
all.
Thus, the idea of gain remains distinct from that of work. In vain are
they joined in point of fact; the past separates them.
In democratic societies, these two ideas are, on the contrary, always vis-
ibly united. Since the desire for well-being is universal, since fortunes are
mediocre and temporary, since each man needs to increase his resources or
to prepare new ones for his children, everyone sees very clearly that gain is,
if not wholly, at least partially what leads them to work. Even those who
act principally with glory in viewget inevitably accustomed to the idea that
they are not acting solely for this reason, and they discover, whatever they
may say, that the desire to live combines in them with the desire to make
their life illustrious.
From the moment when, on the one hand, work seems to all citizens an
honorable necessity of the human condition, and when, onthe other hand,
work is always visibly done, in whole or in part, out of consideration for a
salary, the immense space that separated the different professions in aris-
tocratic societies disappears. If the professions are not always similar, they
at least have a similar feature.
There is no profession in which work is not done for money. The salary,
which is common to all, gives all a family resemblance.
This serves to explain the opinions that the Americans entertain con-
cerning the various professions.
American servants do not believe themselves degraded because they
work; for around them, everyone works. They do not feel debased by
the idea that they receive a salary; for the President of the United States
the hones t profes s i ons 971
also works for a salary. He is paid to command, just as they are paid to
serve.
In the United States, professions are more or less difcult, more or less
lucrative, but they are never noble or base. Every honest profession is
honorable.
972
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 9
a
What Makes Nearly All Americans Tend
toward Industrial Professions
I do not know if, of all the useful arts, agriculture is not the one that im-
proves most slowly among democratic nations. Often you would even say
that it is stationary, because several of the other useful arts seem to race
ahead.
On the contrary, nearly all the tastes and habits that arise from equality
lead men naturally toward commerce and industry.
b
I picture an active, enlightened, free man, comfortably well-off, full of
desires. He is too poor to be able to live in idleness; he is rich enough to
feel above the immediate fear of need, and he thinks about bettering his
lot. This man has conceived the taste for material enjoyments; a thousand
a. Democracy not only multiplies the number of workers among different labors, it
makes men chose those of commerce and industry.
Nearly all the passions that arise from equality lead in this direction.
Love of material enjoyments.
Desire to enjoy quickly.
Love of games of chance.
In democratic countries, the rich themselves are constantly carried toward these
careers. Democracy diverts them from politics. It makes commerce and industry into
the most brilliant objects. In democratic countries the rich are always afraid of de-
clining in wealth. Example of the Americans (YTC, CVf, p. 35).
b. Action. Equality of conditions leads men toward commerce.
(Idea of L[ouis (ed.)].)
Reaction. Commercial habits, type of commercial morality favorable to the gov-
ernment of democracy. Repress all the overly violent passions of temperaments. No
anger, compromise, complicated and compromising [sic ] interests in times of revo-
lution (Rubish, 1).
i ndus tri al profes s i ons 973
others abandon themselves to this taste before his eyes; he has begun to give
himself to it, and he burns to increase the means to satisfy it more. But life
passes, time presses. What is he going to do?
For his efforts, cultivation of the earth promises nearly certain, but
slow results. In that way you become rich only little by little and with
difculty. Agriculture is suitable only for the rich who already have a great
excess, or for the poor who ask only to live. His choice is made: he sells
his eld, leaves his home and goes to devote himself to some risky, but
lucrative profession.
c
Now, democratic societies abound in men of this type; and as equality
of conditions becomes greater, their number increases.
So democracy not only multiplies the number of workers; it leads men
to one work rather than another; and, while it gives them a distaste for
agriculture, it directs them toward commerce and industry.
1
This spirit reveals itself among the richest citizens themselves.
c. Of all the means, the most energetic that you can use to push men exclusively
toward love of wealth is the establishment of an aristocracy foundedsolely onmoney.
Nearly all the desires that can agitate the human heart are combined in the love
of wealth, which becomes like the generative passion and which is seen among the
others like the trunk of the tree that supports all the branches.
The taste for money and the ardor for power are then mingled so well in the soul,
that it becomes difcult to discern if it is for ambition that men are greedy, or for
greed that they are ambitious.
That is what happens in England where someone wants to be rich in order to
achieve honors and where someone desires honors as evidence of wealth (Ru-
bish, 1).
1. It has been noted several times that men of industry and men of commerce possessed an
immoderate taste for material enjoyments, and commerce and industry were blamed for that;
I believe that here the effect has been taken for the cause.
It is not commerce and industry that suggest the taste for material enjoyments to men,
but rather this taste leads men toward industrial and commercial careers, where they hope
to be satised more completely and more quickly.
If commerce and industry increase the desire for well-being, that results from the fact that
every passion becomes stronger as it is exercised more, and grows with all the efforts that you
make to satisfy it. All the causes that make the love of the goods of this world predominate in
the human heart develop industry and commerce. Equality is one of these causes. It favors
commerce, not directly by giving men the taste for trade, but indirectly, by strengthening and
generalizing in their souls the love of well-being.
In democratic countries, a man, however wealthy he is assumed to be,
is almost always discontent with his fortune, because he nds himself not
as rich as his father and is afraid that his sons will not be as rich as he. So
most of the rich in democracies constantly dream about the means to ac-
quire wealth, and they naturally turn their sights toward commerce and
industry, which seem to them the quickest and most powerful means to
gain it. On this point they share the instincts of the poor man without
having his needs, or rather they are pushed by the most imperious of all
needs: that of not declining.
d
In aristocracies, the rich are at the same time those who govern. The
d. .-.-.-.- is not by chance that most aristocracies have shown themselves indifferent
to the works of industry or enemies to its progress. Underneath prejudice, it is easy
to discern something real, which is like its seed.
Commerce often has admirable results in view, but it almost always uses very petty
means to attain them.
In aristocracies, it is the same men who have wealth and who hold power, andtheir
business is as much to direct public fortune as to look after their own. Preoccupied
by these great matters, they can only with difculty turn their mind to the run of
small affairs that make up commerce, as well as to the minute and almost innite
concerns that commerce requires. So it is to be believed that they would see trade as
a wearisome and secondary occupation and would neglect it even when they did not
indeed consider it degrading. If some men were found among themwho felt a natural
taste for industry, they would carefully refrain from devoting themselves to it. For it
is useless to resist the dominion of numbers, you never completely escape its yoke;
and even within those aristocratic corps that refuse most stubbornly to acknowledge
the rights of the national majority, there is a particular majority that governs.
With democracy the connection that united government and wealth disappears.
The rich do not know what to do with their leisure; the restlessness of their desires,
the extent of their resources, and the taste for great adventures [v: extraordinary
things], which are almost always felt by men who stand in some way above the crowd,
presses them to action. Only the road to commerce is open to them. In a democracy
there is nothing greater or more brilliant than commerce. That is what attracts the
attention and the prompting of the public; and all energetic passions are directed
toward commerce. Nothing can keep the rich from devoting themselves to it, neither
their own prejudices nor those of anyone else.
Since the great fortunes that are seen within a democracy almost always have a
commercial origin, those who possess those fortunes have kept the habits or at least
the traditions of trade. On the other hand, the rich never make up among a dem-
ocratic people, as within aristocracies, a corps that has [interrupted text (ed.)] (Rub-
ish, 1).
attention that they give constantly to great public affairs diverts themfrom
the small concerns that commerce and industry demand. If the will of one
of them is nonetheless directed by chance toward trade, the will of the
aristocratic corps immediately bars the route to him; for it is useless to resist
the dominion of numbers, you never completely escape its yoke; and,
even within those aristocratic corps that refuse most stubbornly to ac-
knowledge the rights of the national majority, there is a particular majority
that governs.
2
In democratic countries, where money does not lead the one who has it
to power, but often keeps him away from it, the rich do not know what to
do with their leisure.
e
Restlessness and the greatness of their desires, the
extent of their resources, the taste for the extraordinary, which are almost
always felt by those who stand, in whatever way, above the crowd, presses
them to action. Only the road to commerce is open to them. In democ-
racies, there is nothing greater or more brilliant thancommerce; that is what
attracts the attention of the public and lls the imagination of the crowd;
all energetic passions are directed toward commerce. Nothing can prevent
the rich from devoting themselves to it, neither their own prejudices, nor
those of anyone else. The rich of democracies never form a corps that has
its own mores and its own organization; the particular ideas of their class
do not stop them, and the general ideas of their country push them. Since,
moreover, the great fortunes that are seen within a democratic people al-
most always have a commercial origin, several generations must pass before
those who possess those fortunes have entirely lost the habits of trade.
f
2. See the note at the end of the volume.
e. England.
When it is not those who govern who are rich, but the rich who govern (Rub-
ish, 1).
f. Aristocracy of birth and pure democracy form two extremes of the social state of
peoples.
In the middle is found the aristocracy of money. The latter is close to aristocracy
of birth in that it confers on a small number of citizens great privileges. It ts into
democracy in that these privileges can be successively acquired by all. It forms the
natural transition between the two things, and you cannot say whether it is ending
the rule of aristocracy on earth, or whether it is already opening the new era of dem-
ocratic centuries (Rubish, 1).
Conned to the narrow space that politics leaves to them, the rich of
democracies therefore throwthemselves fromall directions intocommerce;
there they can expand and use their natural advantages; and it is, in a way,
by the very boldness and by the grandeur of their industrial enterprises that
you must judge what little value they would have set on industry if they
had been born within an aristocracy.
The same remark, moreover, is applicable to all the men of democracies,
whether they are poor or rich.
Those who live amid democratic instability have constantly before their
eyes the image of chance, and they end by loving all enterprises in which
chance plays a role.
So they are all led toward commerce, not only because of the gain that
it promises, but by love of the emotions that it gives.
The United States of America has only emerged for a half-century
from the colonial dependence in which England held it; the number of
great fortunes is very small there, and capital is still rare. But there is no
people on earth who has made as rapid progress as the Americans in com-
merce and industry. They form today the second maritime nation of the
world; and, although their manufacturing has to struggle against almost
insurmountable natural obstacles, it does not fail to make newgains every
day.
In the United States the greatest industrial enterprises are executedwith-
out difculty, because the entire population is involved in industry, and
because the poorest as well as the wealthiest citizen readily combine their
efforts. So it is astonishing every day to see the immense works that are
executed without difculty by a nation that does not so to speak contain
rich men. The Americans arrived only yesterday on the land that they in-
habit, and they have already overturned the whole natural order to their
prot. They have united the Hudson with the Mississippi and connected
the Atlantic Oceanwith the Gulf of Mexico, across more thanve hundred
leagues of the continent that separates these two seas. The longest railroads
that have been constructed until now are in America.
But what strikes me most in the United States is not the extraordinary
greatness of some industrial enterprises, it is the innumerable multitude of
small enterprises.
Nearly all the farmers of the United States have combined some com-
merce with agriculture; most have made agriculture into a trade.
It is rare for an American farmer to settle forever on the land that he
occupies. In the new provinces of the West principally, you clear a eld in
order to resell it and not to harvest it; you build a farmwith the expectation
that, since the state of the country is soon going to change due to the in-
crease of inhabitants, you will be able to get a good price.
Every year, a swarm of inhabitants from the North descends toward the
South and comes to live in the countries where cotton and sugar cane grow.
These men cultivate the earth with the goal of making it produce in a few
years what it takes to make them rich, and they already foresee the moment
whenthey will be able to returntotheir country toenjoy the comfort gained
in this way. So the Americans bring to agriculture the spirit of trade, and
their industrial passions are seen there as elsewhere.
The Americans make immense progress in industry, because they are all
involved in industry at the same time; and for the same reason, they are
subject to very unexpected and very formidable industrial crises.
Since they are all engaged in commerce, commerce among them is sub-
ject to such numerous and so complicated inuences that it is impossible
to foresee in advance the difculties that can arise. Since each one of them
is more or less involved in industry, at the slightest shock that business ex-
periences, all particular fortunes totter at the same time, and the State
falters.
g
I believe that the recurrence of industrial crises is an illness endemic
among the democratic nations of our day.
h
It can be made less dangerous,
g. In the United States, everyone does commerce or has a portion of his fortune
placed in commerce. Consequently, you see what is happening at this moment (May
1837) and what will perhaps result from it in the political world.
There is a great part of future humanity to which I must give my attention./
The Americans make immense progress in industry because they are all involved
at the same time in industry, and for the same reason, they are subject to very un-
expected and very formidable industrial crises (Rubish, 1).
h. [In the margin: I do not know if I should include this piece or where I should
put it.]
but cannot be cured, because it is not due to an accident, but to the very
temperament of these peoples.
j
I have shown in this chapter how democracy served the developments of industry.
I would have been able to show as well how industry in turn hastened the develop-
ments of democracy. For these two things go together and react on each other. De-
mocracy gives birth to the taste for material enjoyments that pushes men toward
industry, and industry creates a multitude of mediocre fortunes and develops within
the very heart of aristocratic nations a separate class in which ranks are ill dened
and poorly maintained, in which people rise and fall constantly, in which leisure is
not enjoyed, a separate class whose instincts are all democratic. This class forms for
a long time within the very heart of aristocratic nations a kind of small democracy
that has its separate instincts, opinions, laws. As the people expands its commerce
and its industry, this democratic class becomes more numerous and more inuential;
little by little its opinions pass into the mores and its ideas into the laws, until nally,
having become predominant and so to speak unique, it takes hold of power and
directs everything at its will and establishes democracy.
[To the side] All that badly digested (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 1617).
j. Fragment of rubish:
of the relation that .-.-.- commerce and industry, on the one
hand, and on the other hand, democracy./
When you examine the direction that industry and democracy give to mores as
well as to the minds of men, you are struck by the sight of the great similarity that
exists between the effects produced by these two causes.
[In the margin: See in bundle A a good piece by Beaumont on that.]
I want to take as an example the matter that I am treating at this moment ( June
1836) which is the sciences, letters and the arts (perhaps make good use of this general
idea in the article on the sciences and on literature).
When men are engaged in the different commercial and industrial professions,
their minds become accustomed to substituting in everything the idea of the useful
for that of the beautiful, which leads them to cultivate the applied sciences rather
than the theoretical sciences; inexpensive, elementary, productive literature for n-
ished, rened literary works; useful building for beautiful monuments.
When conditions become equal and classes disappear, the same instincts arise. Ex-
cept that instead of being felt by only one part of the nation, they are felt by the
generality of citizens.
But these two causes are .-.-.-.-.- perceived separately.
I am rst able to imagine very clearly a great industrial class in the middle of an
aristocratic people. This class will have its own instincts; and if, as we have seen in
England, it is inuential in public affairs but without being master of them, it will
give a portion of these instincts to all the other classes; and the nation, while keeping
the social and political organization that characterizes an aristocracy, will showinpart
the tastes and the ideas that a democracy displays. This has happened to the English.
But here you will stop me and say: this industrial class is nothing other thana small
democracy enclosed within a great aristocracy. Within it equality of conditions, the
need to work, etc. reign, which do not reign in the larger society within which it is
enclosed. When this class inuences the opinions and ways of life of all the other
classes, you have an incomplete democracy .-.-.-.- so you cannot cultivate industry
without forming a small or large democratic society. When men cultivate industry,
they are democratic, and when they are democratic, they necessarily cultivate
industry.
I will answer that the men who are occupied with industry can be organized vis-
a`-vis each other very aristocratically. Which is what happens in a country in which
industry is invariably directed by a small number of great capitalists who make the
law and a multitude of workers who receive it. But both have nearly the same in-
stincts, as regards the sciences, letters and the arts. So these instincts are due to the
types of their occupations much more than to their social state, since the poor man
and the rich man equally experience them.
[In the margin: The terms industry, commerce are too general. Make them more
specic if I want to understand myself.]
From another perspective, could you not imagine a democracy, that is to say a
people among whom conditions were more or less equal and among whom the taste
for industry would not be found??/
All of this is looking for difculties that do not exist.
.-.-.-.-.- the natural sequence of ideas.
When conditions are more or less equal among a people, there is naturally a great
number of people who have a mediocre fortune, for [they (ed.)] are not so poor as
to despair of bettering their lot and not so rich as to be satised with it. They will
have enough well-being to knowthe attractions of well-being, not enoughto content
themselves with what they have. On the other hand, they will see a thousand ways to
alleviate the material misfortunes that they feel, and the more they see the paths to
deliver themselves from those misfortunes, the more impatiently will they bear them.
This class will be able to exist, to become strong and numerous among aristocratic
nations themselves.
1
But in democracies, it will be dominant; it will be alone so to
speak; it will make the laws and opinions.
Now it is clear that this class will be naturally concentrated on the taste for .-.-.-.-.-
enjoyments, on all the instincts described above, and on commerce and industry at
the same time. Commerce and industry are not the causes of these instincts, but on
the contrary their products. What you can say is that commerce andindustryincrease
these instincts, because every passiongrows withall the efforts that youmake tosatisfy
it and the more you concern yourself with it.
[To the side: As the number of mediocre fortunes increases and as the ease of
making great fortunes grows, all of this more and more true. America.]
1. Here the example of England. This class that ends by giving its instincts to a
people, but that cannot take the aristocratic formaway fromit. Particular causes such
as liberty, maritime commerce, openings to national industries that give this class
more intense tastes for well-being (Rubish, 1).
980
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 0
a
How Aristocracy Could
Emerge from Industry
b
a. Of the aristocratic make-up of some of the industries of today.
I showedhowdemocracy favored the development of industry; I amgoingtoshow
in what roundabout way industry in return leads back toward aristocracy.
It has been discovered in our time that when each worker was occupied only with
the same detail, the work as a whole was more perfect.
It has been discovered as well that to do something with less expense, it is necessary
to undertake it immediately on a very vast scale.
The rst of the two discoveries lowers [v: ruins] and brutalizes the worker. The
second constantly raises the master. They introduce the principles of aristocracy into
the industrial class.
Now, as society in general becomes more democratic, since the need for inexpen-
sive manufactured objects becomes more general and more intense, the two discov-
eries above apply more frequently and more rigorously.
So equality disappears from the small society as it becomes established in the large
one (YTC, CVf, pp. 3536).
Several ideas from this chapter come from the book of Viscount Alban de Villeneuve-
Bargemont, E
conomie politique chre tienne, ou recherches sur la nature et les causes du pau-
pe risme, en France et en Europe . . . (Paris: Paulin, 1834), 2 vols., which Tocqueville had
used for his memoir on pauperism. Chapter XII of the rst volume of Villeneuve-
Bargemonts book has precisely this title, The New Feudalism, and contains in germ
the principal arguments of this chapter. See note s of p. 81 of the rst volume.
b. I do not know where to place this chapter. Three systems:
1. It could perhaps be put in the rst volume after the chapter that considers equal-
ity as the universal fact. It would showthe exception and would complete the picture.
In this case, it must perhaps be developed a bit.
2. It could perhaps be put before the chapter on salaries. In this case, it will have
to be shortened.
3. I think, for the moment, that the best place would be after the chapter where I
say that democracy pushes toward industrial careers. It would then be necessary to
ari s trocracy from i ndus try 981
I showed how democracy favored the development of industry and im-
measurably multiplied the number of industrialists; we are going to see in
what roundabout way industry in turn could well lead men toward
aristocracy.
It has been recognized that when a worker is occupied every day only
with the same detail, the general production of the work is achieved more
easily, more rapidly and more economically.
It has been recognized as well that the more an industry was undertaken
on a large scale, with great capital and large credit, the less expensive its
products were.
c
These truths have been seen dimly for a long time, but they have been
demonstrated in our time. They are already applied to several very impor-
tant industries, and the smallest industries are successively making use of
them.
get into the matter a bit differently and bring out the link between this chapter and
that which precedes. Something like this:
I said that democracy pushes men toward industry, and industry, such as it seems
to want to be constituted today, tends to lead them back toward aristocracy./
Every society begins with aristocracy; industry is subject to this law (Rubish, 2).
c. In the margin, in the rubish: <Now, these discoveries must be considered as the
two sources from which aristocracy can escape once again to cover the world.> 2 July
1837 (Rubish, 2).
There is perhaps no point on which modern critics of Tocqueville are in more agree-
ment than on his ignorance of the changes that took place in America and in Europe
during the rst half of the XIXth century in matters of industry, of the process of ur-
banization, and the little attention that he gave to steamboats, canals, railroads andother
technical progress. The publicationof his travel notes andthe bookof Seymour Drescher
(Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, New York: Harper and Row, 1968) show,
however, that his description of Manchester is largely devoted to the results of indus-
trialization and that, far from being unaware of the problem, he knew about it and was
preoccupied by it.
If Tocqueville evokes the problem of industrialization only rapidly, it is above all
because the purpose of his work, like his anti-materialism, scarcely pushes him there.
What interests him is the energy (acquiring money and the taste for material well-being)
that creates industry andthe effects that it produces (the newmanufacturingaristocracy).
According to Seymour Drescher again (Tocqueville and England, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1964, pp. 6061), the friendship of Senior would have had a
real inuence on Tocquevilles ideas about the economy. See Voyage en Angleterre, OC,
V, 2, especially pages 6768 and 7885.
I see nothing inthe political worldthat shouldoccupythe legislator more
than these two new axioms of industrial science.
When an artisan devotes himself constantly and solely to the fabrication
of a single object, he ends by acquitting himself of this workwitha singular
dexterity. But he loses, at the same time, the general ability to apply his
mind to directing the work. Each day he becomes more skillful and less
industrious, and you can say that in him the man becomes degraded as the
worker improves.
What should you expect from a man who has used twenty years of his
life making pinheads? Andinhis case, towhat inthe future canthepowerful
human intelligence, which has often stirred the world, be applied, if not
to searching for the best way to make pinheads!
When a worker has in this way consumed a considerable portion of his
existence, his thought has stopped forever near the daily object of his labor;
his body has contracted certain xed habits that he is no longer allowed to
give up. In a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the profession
that he chose. Laws and mores have in vain taken care to break down all
the barriers around this man and to open for him in all directions a thou-
sand different roads toward fortune; an industrial theory more powerful
than mores and laws has bound him to an occupation and often to a place
in society that he cannot leave. Amid the universal movement, it has made
him immobile.
As the principle of the division of labor is more completely applied, the
worker becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent. The art makes
progress, the artisan goes backward. On the other hand, as it becomes
clearer that the larger the scale of manufacturing and the greater the capital,
the more perfect and the less expensive the products of anindustry are, very
rich and very enlightened men arise to exploit industries that, until then,
have been left to ignorant and poor artisans. The greatness of the necessary
efforts and the immensity of the results to achieve attract them.
Thus, at the same time that industrial science constantly lowers the class
of workers, it raises the class of masters.
While the worker applies his intelligence more and more to the study
of a single detail, the master casts his sight every day over a broader whole,
and his mind expands in proportion as that of the worker contracts. Soon
nothing will be needed by the worker except physical strength without in-
telligence; the master needs knowledge, and almost genius to succeed. The
one more and more resembles the administrator of a vast empire, and the
other a brute.
So the master and the worker are not in any way similar here, and every
day they differ more. They are no longer held together except as the two
end links of a long chain. Each one occupies a place made for himand does
not leave it. The one is in a continual, narrow and necessary dependence
on the other, and seems born to obey, as the latter to command.
What is this, if not aristocracy?
d
As conditions become more and more equal in the body of the nation,
the need for manufacturedobjects becomes more general andincreases, and
an inexpensive price that puts these objects within reach of mediocre for-
tunes becomes a greater element of success.
So every day more opulent and more enlightened men are found who
devote their wealthand their knowledge toindustry andwhoseek, byopen-
ing great workshops and strictly dividing labor, to satisfy the new desires
that appear on all sides.
Thus, as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, the particular class
that is concerned with industry becomes more aristocratic. Men show
themselves more and more similar in the nation and more and more dif-
ferent in the particular class, and inequality increases in the small society
in proportion as it decreases in the large one.
In this way, when you go back to the source, it seems that you see aris-
tocracy come by a natural effort from the very heart of democracy.
But that aristocracy does not resemble the aristocracies that preceded it.
You will notice rst that, applying only to industry and to a few of the
d. Examine a bit practically the question of knowing how you could re-create an
aristocracy of fortunes, bring together (illegible word), give privileges.
Piece on the impossibility of a new aristocracy, 2nd vol., p. 425 (YTC, CVc, p. 55).
This concerns p. 635 of the second volume.
industrial professions, it is an exception, a monstrosity, within the whole
of the social state.
The small aristocratic societies formed by certain industries amid the
immense democracy of our time include, like the great aristocratic societies
of former times, a few very opulent men and a multitude of very miserable
ones.
These poor have few means to emerge from their condition and to be-
come rich, but the rich constantly become poor, or leave trade after having
realized their prots. Thus, the elements that form the class of the poor are
more or less xed; but the elements that compose the class of the rich are
not. Truly speaking, although there are rich men, the class of the rich does
not exist; for these rich men have neither spirit nor aims in common, nor
shared traditions or shared hopes. So there are members, but not a corps.
Not only are the rich not united solidly with each other, but you can say
that there is no true bond between the poor and the rich.
They are not xed in perpetuity next to each other; at every moment
interest draws them closer and separates them. The worker depends ingen-
eral on the master, but not on a particular master. These two men see each
other at the factory and do not know each other elsewhere, and while they
touch at one point, they remain very far apart at all others. The manufac-
turer asks the worker only for his work, and the worker expects from him
only a salary. The one does not commit himself to protecting, nor the other
to defending, and they are not linked in a permanent way, either by habit
or by duty.
The aristocracy established by trade hardly ever settles amid the indus-
trial population that it directs; its goal is not to govern the latter, but to
make use of it.
An aristocracy thus constituted cannot have a great hold on those it em-
ploys; and if it manages to seize them for a moment, they soon escape. It
does not know what it wants and cannot act.
The territorial aristocracy of past centuries was obligated by law, or be-
lieved itself obligated by mores, to come to the aid of those who served it
and to relieve their miseries. But the manufacturing aristocracy of today,
after impoverishing and brutalizing the men it uses, delivers them in times
of crisis to public charity to be fed. This results naturally from what pre-
cedes. Between the worker and the master, contacts are frequent, but there
is no true association.
I think that, everything considered, the manufacturing aristocracy that
we see arising before our eyes is one of the harshest that has appeared on
the earth; but at the same time it is one of the most limited and least
dangerous.
Nonetheless, it is in this direction that the friends of democracy must
with anxiety constantly turn their attention; for if permanent inequality of
conditions and aristocracy ever penetrate the world again, you can predict
that they will come in through this door.
DEMOCRACY
I N AMERICA
s4s4s4s4s4
volume 4
Indianapolis
All rights reserved
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14 13 12 11 10 p 5 4 3 2 1
(Set)
(Vol. 1)
(Vol. 2)
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(Vol. 4)
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978-0-86597-719-8
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Paperback ISBNs
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III. Title.
jk216.t713 2009
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viii
Contents
Key Terms xxvi
Foreword xxviii
(1835)
v ol ume i
Introduction 3
Part I
contents ix
in America 91
the Union 98
Town District 103
Of Town Life 108
Of the State 135
United States 142
Federal Powers 195
contents x
Election Crisis 222
of the State 244
v ol ume i i
Part II
contents xi
of That Right 309
of Ofcials 340
to Economy 343
Those of France 349
and Those Vices 356
contents xii
United States 427
contents xiii
United States 465
United States 472
Threaten It? 582
of Lasting? 627
United States 637
Conclusion 649
Notes 658
xiv
(1840)
v ol ume i i i
contents xv
Often Bombastic 843
in Civil Life 895
contents xvi
and Newspapers 905
a Spiritualism 939
Public Affairs 948
Harm Well-Being 963
contents xvii
v ol ume i v
Become Equal 987
of the Wife 1048
contents xviii
contents xix
Have to Fear 1245
Notes 1286
Appendixes 1295
Edition 1373
Bibliography 1396
Index 1499
986
s4s4s4s4s4
third part
a
Inuence of Democracy on
a. Action of equality on mores and reaction of mores on equality./
After doing a book that pointed out the inuence exercised by equality of con-
ditions on ideas, customs and mores, another one would have to be done that showed
the inuence exercised by ideas, customs and mores on equality of conditions. For
these two things have a reciprocal action on each other. And to take just one example,
the comparatively democratic social state of European peoples in the XVIth century
allowed the doctrines of Protestantism, based in part on the theory of intellectual
equality, to arise and spread; and on the other hand, you cannot deny that these
doctrines, once accepted, singularly hastenedthe levelingof conditions. If I examined
separately the rst of these inuences, without concerning myself with the second,
it is not that I did not know and appreciate the extent and the power of the latter.
But I believed that in a subject so difcult and so complicated, it was already a lot to
study separately one of the parts, to put the parts separately in relief, leaving to more
skillful hands the task of exposing the entire tableau to view all at once (YTC, CVk,
1, pp. 4849). Tocqueville nishes the third part of this volume at Baugy in April
1838.
See Jean-Louis Beno t, Tocqueville moraliste (Paris: Honore Champion, 2004),
pp. 309442.
987
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1
a
How Mores Become Milder
as Conditions Become Equal
We have noticed for several centuries that conditions are becoming equal,
and we have found at the same time that mores are becoming milder.
b
Are
a. 1. Equality makes mores milder in an indirect manner, by giving the taste for well-
being, love for peace and for all the professions that need peace.
2. It makes them milder directly.
When men are divided into castes, they have a fraternal sentiment for the members
of their caste, but they scarcely regard all the others as men. Great (illegible word)
and great categories.
When all men are similar, what happens within them alerts them to what must
happen in all the others, and they cannot be insensitive to any misery. They are not
devoted, but they are mild.
Example of the Americans (YTC, CVf, pp. 3637).
b. Two peoples have the same origin, they have lived for a long time under the same
laws; they have kept the same language and the same habits of life, but they are not
similar; what causes that?
[In the margin: At the head of civil society. Transition from political society to
civil society. Inuence of laws on character.
Inuence of democracy in America on mores. Everything is modeled on the peo-
ple. The rich man must grow up with the people, must travel with them, must take
his enjoyments with them. He can scarcely protect himself from them in the refuge
of the domestic hearth.
At home the rich man is under permanent suspicion. And he must in a way be
poor or once have been poor to aspire to honors.]
The one is eager to change, the past displeases him, the present tires him, only the
future seems to him to merit his thought. He scorns age and scoffs at experience. He
makes, undoes, remakes his laws without ceasing. Everything changes andis modied
by his indefatigable activity, even the earth that supports him. Superiorities of all
kinds offend and wound him. He even sees the plebeian privileges of wealth only
with disfavor.
how mores become mi lder 988
these two things only contemporaneous, or does some secret link exist be-
tween them, so that the one cannot go ahead without making the other
move?
Several causes can work together to make the mores of a people less
harsh; but, among all these causes, the most powerful one seems to me to
be equality of conditions. So in my view equality of conditions and mores
becoming mild are not only contemporaneous events, but also correlative
facts.
c
[Equality of conditions leads men toward industrial and commercial
professions, which need peace in order for men to devote themselves to
those professions. Equality of conditions suggests to men the taste for ma-
terial enjoyments; it distances them imperceptibly from war and violent
His vanity is constantly uneasy. He seeks praise. There is no attery so small that
he does not receive it with joy. If he fails in his efforts to obtain it, he praises himself
and becomes intoxicated with the incense that his hands have prepared. The laws are
democratic.
The other is prostrated before the past, he mixes everything that comes from an-
tiquity in his idolatry and esteems things not so much because they are good, but
because they are old. So he takes care to change nothing inhis laws or, if the irresistible
march of time forces him to deviate on certain points, there are no ingenious sub-
tleties to which he will not resort in order to persuade himself that he has only found
in the work of his fathers what was already there and only developed a thought that
had formerly occurred to their minds. Do not hope to get him to acknowledge that
he is an innovator; although a very strong logician otherwise, he will agree to go to
the absurd rather than admit himself guilty of such a great crime. Full of veneration
for superiorities of all kinds, he seems to consider birth and wealth as so many natural
and imprescriptible rights [v: privileges] that call certain men to govern society [v. in
the margin: wealth as a virtue and birth as an imprescriptible right]. With him, the
poor man is scarcely considered as a man. Full, moreover, of an immense pride, he
thinks he is sufciently sure of his grandeur not to ask the common people to ac-
knowledge it, and he judges himself so above praise that he does not need to give it.
The laws are aristocratic.
There are men who say that this is the American spirit and I say that it is the
democratic spirit. What is taken for the English spirit is the aristocratic spirit (YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 1416). The copyist, Bonnel, indicates that one part of this piece is not
in Tocquevilles hand. See p. 437 of the second volume.
c. In the margin: You cannot hide fromthe fact that the natural place of war would
be there, for it is only in the absence of wars or in the manner in which it is conducted
that the subject of this chapter is proved.
revolutions. I have already said a portion of these things; I will show the
others in the course of this work.
d
Those are the indirect effects of equality of conditions; its direct effects
are not less.]
When writers of fables want to interest us in the actions of the animals,
they give them human ideas and passions. Poets do the same when they
speak about spirits and angels.
e
No miseries are so deep, or joys so pure that
they cannot capture our minds and take hold of our hearts, if we are pre-
sented to ourselves under other features.
This applies very well to the subject that occupies us presently.
When all men are arranged in an irrevocable manner, according totheir
profession, their property and their birth, within an aristocratic society,
the members of each class, all considering themselves as children of the
same family, experience for each other a continual and active sympathy
f
d. Equality of conditions leads citizens toward industrial andcommercial professions
and makes them love peace, which they need in order to devote themselves to those
professions. Equality of conditions thus imperceptibly little by little takes away from
the citizens the love of violent emotions and suggests to them the taste for tranquil
enjoyments. As conditions become equal, the imagination of men therefore turns
imperceptibly away from the cruel pictures offered by war and feeds more readily on
the mild images presented by well-being. Human passions are not extinguished, they
change objects and become less erce. Accustomed to the charms of a well-ordered
and prosperous life, you are afraid of being saddened by making your fellows suffer
and you fear the sight of the pain almost as much as the pain itself.
[In the margin: I do not believe that this piece should be introduced, however to
consult./
The things it contains are true and important, but they prevent the unity of the
chapter.]
This is how equality of conditions leads indirectly to the mildness of mores. The
direct effects are not less.
When writers of fables . . . (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 56).
e. In the margin: and Milton would never have succeeded in interesting us in the
fate of [a blank (ed.)] if he had not given human feelings to the devils and to the angels.
f. Sympathy./
It is a democratic word. You have real sympathy only for those similar to you and
your equals. The humanity that we notice today is due in part to men being closer
to each other. When there were only great lords and men of the people, men were
that can never be found to the same degree among the citizens of a de-
mocracy.
But it is not the same with the different classes vis-a`-vis each other.
Among an aristocratic people, each caste has its opinions, its sentiments,
its rights, its mores, its separate existence. Thus, the menwhocomposeeach
caste are not similar to any of the others; they do not have the same way
of thinking or of feeling, and they scarcely believe that they are part of the
same humanity.
So they cannot understand well what the others experience, or judge the
latter by themselves.
Yet you sometimes see them lend themselves with fervor to mutual aid;
but that is not contrary to what precedes.
These same aristocratic institutions, which had made beings of the same
species so different, had nevertheless joined them by a very close political
bond.
Although the serf was not naturally interested in the fate of the nobles,
he believed himself no less obligated to devote himself to the one among
the nobles who was his leader; and although the noble believed himself of
another nature than the serf, he nonetheless judged that his duty and his
honor forced him to defend, at the risk of his own life, those who lived on
his domains.
It is clear that these mutual obligations did not arise out of natural right,
but political right, and that society obtained more than humanity alone
was able to do. It was not to the man that you believed yourself obliged to
lend support, it was to the vassal or to the lord. Feudal institutions made
very tangible the misfortunes of certainmen, not the miseries of the human
strangers to each other and above all different; no one could judge by himself what
others felt. So there could not be true sympathy, and mores were hard.
[In the margin: Aristocracy gives birth to great devotions and great hatreds. De-
mocracy leads all men to a sort of tranquil benevolence./
Sympathy less but general.]
17 October 1836.
These classes were indifferent to each others fate not because they were enemies,
but simply because they were different. Sympathy from two Greek words, I believe,
meaning to feel with (Rubish, 2).
species. They gave to mores generosity rather than mildness, and although
they suggested great attachments, they did not give birth to true sympa-
thies; for there are real sympathies only between similar people; and in
aristocratic centuries, you see people similar to you only in the members
of your caste.
When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who all, by their birth or their
habits, belonged to the aristocracy, report the tragic end of a nobleman,
there are innite sorrows; while they recount in one breath and without
batting an eye the massacre and tortures of the men of the people.
It is not that these writers felt a habitual hatred or a systematic disdain
for the people. The war between the various classes of the State had not
yet been declared. They obeyed an instinct rather than a passion; as they
did not form a clear idea of the sufferings of the poor, they were little in-
terested in their fate.
It was the same with the men of the people, as soon as the feudal bond
was broken. These same centuries, which saw so much heroic devotion on
the part of the vassals for their lords, had witnessed unheard of cruelties
exercised from time to time by the lower classes against the upper classes.
g
You must not believe that this mutual insensitivity is due only to the
absence of order and enlightenment; for you again nd its trace in the fol-
lowing centuries that, even while becoming well-ordered and enlightened,
still remained aristocratic.
In the year 1675, the lower classes of Brittany were roused by a new tax.
This tumultuous movement was put downwith unparalleledatrocity. Here
is howMadame de Sevigne, witness tothese horrors, informedher daughter
about them:
Aux Rochers, 30 October 1675.
My heavens, my daughter, howamusing your letter fromAix is! At least
reread your letters before sending them. Allow yourself to be caught up
in their charm, and with this pleasure, console yourself for the burdenyou
have of writing so many of them. So have you kissed all of Provence?
There would be no satisfaction in kissing all of Brittany, unless you loved
to smell of wine. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] Do you want to know the news from
Rennes? [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] A tax of one hundred thousand ecus was imposed,
g. In the margin, in pencil: Example, Jacquerie.
and if this amount was not found within twenty-four hours, it would be
doubled and would be collected by soldiers. One entire great street was
chased away and banished, and the inhabitants were forbidden to come
back under pain of death; so that all these miserable people, new mothers,
old people, children, wandered in tears outside this city, without knowing
where to go, without food or anywhere to sleep. The day before yesterday
the violinist who began the dance and the theft of the stamped paper was
broken on the wheel; he was quartered, and the four parts were displayed
in the four corners of the city. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ] Sixty bourgeois were taken
andtomorrowthey will begintobe hanged. This province is a goodexample
to the others, above all to respect governors and the wives of governors, and
not to throw stones into their gardens.
1
Yesterday Madame de Tarente was in her woods in delightful weather.
It is not a question of either staying there or eating there. She goes in by
the gate and comes out the same way . . .
In another letter she adds:
You talk to me very amusingly about our miseries; we are no longer
broken on the wheel so much; one in eight days in order to upholdjustice.
It is true that hanging now seems refreshing to me. I have an entirely dif-
ferent idea of justice since being in this country. Your men condemned to
the galleys seem to me to be a society of honest men who have withdrawn
from the world in order to lead a pleasant life.
We would be wrong to believe that Madame de Sevigne, whowrote these
lines, was an egotistical and barbarous creature; she passionately loved her
childrenand showed herself very sensitive tothe misfortunes of her friends;
and we even notice, reading her, that she treated her vassals and her servants
with kindness and indulgence. But Madame de Sevigne did not clearly un-
derstand what suffering was when you were not a gentleman.
Today, the harshest man, writing to the most insensitive person, would
not dare to give himself to the cruel banter that I have just reproduced, and
even when his particular mores would permit him to do so, the general
mores of the nation would forbid him.
1. To sense the pertinence of this nal joke, you must recall that Madame de Grignan was
the wife of the Governor of Provence.
What causes that? Are we more sensitive thanour fathers? I do not know;
but certainly our sensibility falls on more things.
When ranks are nearly equal among a people, since all men have more
or less the same way of thinking and feeling, each one of them can judge
in a moment the sensations of all the others; he glances quickly at himself;
that is sufcient. So there is no misery that he cannot easily imagine and
whose extent is not revealed to himby a secret instinct. Whether it concerns
strangers or enemies, imagination immediately puts him in their place. It
mingles something personal in his pity, and makes him suffer as the body
of his fellow man is torn apart.
In democratic centuries, men rarely sacrice themselves for each other;
but they show a general compassion for all the members of the human
species. You do not see them inict useless evils, and when, without
hurting themselves very much, they can relieve the sufferings of others,
they take pleasure in doing so; they are not disinterested, but they are
mild.
Although the Americans have so to speak reduced egoism to a so-
cial and political theory, they have shown themselves no less very open to
pity.
There is no country in which criminal justice is administered more be-
nignly than in the United States. While the English seem to want to pre-
serve carefully in their penal legislation the bloody traces of the Middle
Ages, the Americans have almost made the death penalty disappear from
their legal order.
North America is, I think, the only country on earth where, for the
last fty years, the life of not a single citizen has been taken for political
crimes.
What nally proves that this singular mildness of the Americans comes
principally from their social state, is the manner in which they treat their
slaves.
Perhaps, everything considered, there is no European colony inthe New
World in which the physical condition of the Blacks is less harsh than in
the United States. But slaves there still experience dreadful miseries and are
constantly exposed to very cruel punishments.
It is easy to discover that the fate of these unfortunates inspires little pity
in their masters, and that they see in slavery not only a fact fromwhichthey
prot, but also an evil that scarcely touches them. Thus, the same manwho
is full of humanity for his fellows when the latter are at the same time his
equals, becomes insensitive to their sufferings from the moment when
equality ceases. So his mildness must be attributed to this equality still more
than to civilization and enlightenment.
What I have just said about individuals applies to a certain degree to
peoples.
When each nation has its separate opinions, beliefs, laws and customs,
it considers itself as forming by itself the whole of humanity, and feels
touched only by its own sufferings. If war comes to break out between two
peoples so inclined, it cannot fail to be conducted with barbarism.
At the time of their greatest enlightenment, the Romans cut the throats
of enemy generals, after dragging them in triumph behind a chariot, and
delivered prisoners to the beasts for the amusement of the people. Cicero,
who raises such loud cries at the idea of a citizen crucied, nds nothing
to say about these atrocious abuses of victory. It is clear that in his eyes a
foreigner is not of the same human species as a Roman.
h
On the contrary, as peoples become more similar to each other, they
show themselves reciprocally more compassionate toward their misfor-
tunes, and the law of nations becomes milder.
h. Something analogous is seen from one people to another. When peoples are very
different fromeach other, separated by opinions, beliefs, opposite customs, they seem
as well to be outside of the same humanity. Moreover, aristocratic sentiments also
become established between them. They believe themselves not only different but
also superior to each other. That would lead naturally to a law of nations horrible in
times of war.
Romans. Jugurtha.
Now wars between peoples are like civil wars in antiquity (Rubish, 2).
995
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2
a
How Democracy Makes the
Habitual Relations of the Americans
Simpler and Easier
b
Democracy does not bind men closely together, but it makes their habitual
relationships easier.
Two Englishmen meet by chance at the far ends of the earth; they are
surrounded by strangers whose language and mores they hardly know.
[]
The two men at rst consider each other very curiously and with a sort
a. In aristocracies based solely on birth, since no one is able to climb or descend, the
relationships between men are infrequent, but not constrained.
In aristocracies based principally on money such as the English, aristocratic pride
remains, but since the limits of the aristocracy have become doubtful, each manfears
that his familiarity will be abused. You avoid contact with someone unknown or you
remain icy before him.
When there are no more privileges of birth or privileges of money as in America,
men readily mingle and greet each other familiarly (YTC, CVf, p. 37).
b. influence of democracy on american sociability./
Chapter following those on egoism. Sociability, which is sacrice in small things,
with hope to nd it in turn, is very easily understood on the part of beings indepen-
dent of each other, but equally weak individually, and is not at all contrary to the
egoism that I portrayed above./
Good qualities of the Americans. Sociability, lack of susceptibility. See Beaumont,
C.N.6 (rubish of the chapters on sociability, Rubish, 2). The reference to
Beaumont also appears in YTC, CVa, p. 30.
habi tual relati ons of the ameri cans 996
of secret uneasiness; then they turn away from each other, or, if they greet
each other, they take care to speak only with a restrained and distracted air,
and to say things of little importance.
c
No enmity exists between them, however; they have never seen each
other, and reciprocally regard each other as very respectable. So why dothey
take such care to avoid each other?
We must go back to England in order to understand.
When birth alone, independent of wealth, classies men, each man
knows precisely the place he occupies on the social ladder; he does not try
to climb, and is not afraid of descending. In a society organized inthis way,
men of different castes communicate little with each other; but when
chance puts them in contact, they readily become engrossed, without hope
or fear of intermingling. Their relationships are not based on equality; but
they are not constrained.
When aristocracy of money follows aristocracy of birth, it is no longer
the same.
The privileges of a feware still very great, but the possibility of acquiring
them is open to all; from that it follows that those who possess them are
constantly preoccupied by the fear of losing themor of seeing themshared;
and those who do not yet have them want at any cost to possess them, or,
if they cannot succeed in that, to appear to possess them, which is not
impossible. As the social value of men is no longer xed by blood in a clear
and permanent manner and varies innitely depending on wealth, ranks
always exist, but you no longer see clearly and at rst glance those who
occupy those ranks.
A hidden war is immediately established among all the citizens; some
try hard, by a thousand artices, to join in reality or in appearance those
who are above them; others ght constantly to repulse these men usurping
their rights, or rather the same man does both things, and, while he is trying
to get into the upper sphere, he struggles without respite against the effort
that comes from below.
c. In the margin: <All of this a bit affected, I think, in imitation of La Bruye`re. Read
it without warning in order to see the effect.>
Such is the state of England today, and I think that what precedes must
be principally attributed to this state.
Since aristocratic pride is still very great among the English, and since
the boundaries of aristocracy have become doubtful, each man fears at
every moment that his familiarity will be abused. Not able to judge at rst
glance what the social situation is of those you meet, you prudently avoid
entering into contact with them. You are afraid of forming despite yourself
a badly matched friendship by rendering small services; you fear good of-
ces, and you elude the indiscreet recognition of someone unknown as
carefully as his hatred.
There are many men who explain, by purely physical causes, this sin-
gular unsociability and this reserved and taciturn temperament of the
English.
d
I am willing to agree that blood in fact has some role; but I
believe that the social state has a much greater one. The example of the
Americans proves it.
In America, where privileges of birth have never existed, and where
wealth gives no particular right to the one who possesses it, people who do
not knoweachother readily get together inthe same places, andndneither
advantage nor danger in freely sharing their thoughts. If they meet by
chance, they neither seek each other out nor avoid each other; so their en-
counter is natural, straightforward and open; you see that they neither hope
nor fear hardly anything from each other, and that they try no harder to
d. Today the inuence exercised by race on the conduct of men is spoken about
constantly. The philosophers and men of politics of ancient times have .-.-.-.- race
explains everything in a word. It seems to me that I easily nd why we resort so to
this argument that our predecessors did not use.
It is incontestable that the race that men belong to exercises some power over their
actions, and on the other hand, it is absolutely impossible to specify what the strength
and the duration of this power is; so that you can at will innitely constrict its action
or expand it to everything depending on the needs of the discourse; precious advan-
tages in a time when you expect to reason at little cost, just as you want to grow rich
without difculty.
[In the margin: Some men believe that this reserve of the English comes from the
blood. The example of the Americans proves the opposite.]
After a digression for which the reader will, I hope, pardon an author who rarely
makes them, I return to my subject (rubish of the chapters on sociability,
Rubish, 2). The manuscript says: Race in fact has some role, but I believe . . .
show than to hide the place they occupy. If their countenance is often cold
and serious, it is never either haughty or stiff, and when they do not speak
to each other, it is because they are not in the mood to speak, and not that
they believe that they have a reason to remain silent.
In a foreign country, two Americans are immediately friends, by the very
fact that they are Americans. There is no prejudice that drives them apart,
and the native land in common brings them together. For two Englishmen
the same blood is not enough; the same rank must draw them together.
The Americans notice as well as we this unsociable temperament of the
English with each other, and they are no less astonished by it than we our-
selves are. But the Americans are attached to England by origin, religion,
language, and in part mores; they differ from England only by social state.
So it is permissible to say that the reserve of the English derives from the
constitution of the country much more than from the constitution of the
citizens [<the reserve of the English is not English, but aristocratic>].
[
*
] e
[*]. Form that I believe I have already used; be careful.
e. Relationships of men with each other. Lofty and reserved manners./
Baden, this 14 August 1836./
To put with the good effects of a democratic social state./ One of the characteristic
and most known traits of the English is the care with which they try to isolate them-
selves from each other and the perpetual fear that clearly preoccupies them of pro-
tecting themselves from contact with men who may occupy a position inferior to the
one that they occupy themselves. In a foreign country above all this is carried to an
extreme of which we have no idea.
This fault is innitely less noticeable in countries in which an aristocracy of birth
dominates and in those in which there is no aristocracy at all.
In the rst, since ranks are never doubtful and since privileges are linked to an
inalienable and uncontestable advantage, that of blood, each man remains in his place
and no one fears meeting an intruder who wants to put himself in your place, or
descending without noticing to the lower rank of someone unknown by keeping
company with him.
In the second, since birth or wealth give only slight advantages and do not put the
one who possesses them at a very separate or very desirable rank, connection with an
inferior is not feared.
While in an aristocracy constituted on money, like that of England, privileges are
very great and the conditions for enjoying themare always doubtful; fromthat comes
this continual terror of doing something that may make you fall in rank.
This fault of the English is due so clearly to institutions and not to blood that it
shocks the Americans evenmore thanus. Cooper inhis journey toSwitzerlandreturns
constantly to this unsociability of the English, and although he pretends to scorn it,
he speaks about it too often not to show how much it offends him.
Nothing is more opposed to continual, free, kindly relationships among menthan
the frame of mind that I have just talked about (rubish of the chapters on
sociability, Rubish, 2). Tocqueville is referring to Excursions in Switzerland by
James Fenimore Cooper, published in 1836 in Paris by A.W. Calignani and Co., and
by Baudry (see, for example, p. 71 and p. 143 of these editions).
1000
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 3
a
Why the Americans Have So Little
Susceptibility in Their Country and
Show Such Susceptibility in Ours
b
The Americans have a vindictive temperament like all solemn and serious-
minded peoples. They almost never forget an insult; but it is not easy to
insult them, and their resentment is as slow to are up as to go out.
In aristocratic societies, where a small number of individuals directs ev-
erything, the external relationships of men with each other are subject to
more or less xed conventions. Each man then believes that he knows, in
a precise way, by what sign it is suitable to show his respect or to indicate
his goodwill, and etiquette is a science of which everyone is presumed to
be aware.
These customs of the rst class then serve as a model for all the other
classes, and in addition each one of the latter makes a separate code, to
a. When men of diverse education and fortune meet in the same places, the laws of
good manners are no longer xed; you observe those laws badly vis-a`-vis other men
and you are not hurt when they are not observed in your regard. That is above all
true of free democratic societies in which men, busy together with great affairs, easily
forget the outward aspect of actions in order to consider only the actions themselves.
That explains the tolerance and simplicity of the Americans toward each other.
But why are these same Americans intolerant and self-conscious in Europe? Be-
cause the remnants of rules and fragments of etiquette remain among us. The Amer-
icans, not knowing how to nd their bearings in a society so different from theirs,
are constantly at a loss, touchy, proud (YTC, CVf, p. 38).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: Read this chapter to several people and study
whether it has the effect of being mannered and affected.
s us cepti bi li ty of the ameri cans 1001
which all its members are bound to conform [and nally there is a certain
particular ceremonial that is used only between men of different classes].
The rules of good manners thus form a complicated set of laws, which
is difcult to master completely, yet from which you are not allowed to
deviate without risk; so that each day men constantly are involuntarily ex-
posed to giving or receiving cruel wounds.
But, as ranks fade, as men diverse in their education and birth mix and
mingle in the same places, it is almost impossible to agree on the rules of
good manners. Since the laws are uncertain, to disobey them is not a crime
even in the eyes of those who know them; so you are attached to the sub-
stance of actions rather than to the form, and you are at the very same time
less courteous and less quarrelsome.
There is a host of small considerations that an American does not care
about; he judges that he is not owed them or he supposes that you are
unaware that he is owed them. So he does not notice that he is slighted, or
he pardons the slight; his manners become less courteous, and his mores
simpler and more manly.
This reciprocal indulgence shown by the Americans and this manly con-
dence that they display result also froma more general andmore profound
cause.
I already pointed it out in the preceding chapter.
In the United States, ranks differ only very little in civil society and do
not differ at all in the political world; so an American does not believe him-
self bound to give particular considerations to any of his fellows, nor does
he think about requiring them for himself. As he does not see that his in-
terest is ardently to seek out the company of some of his fellow citizens,
he imagines with difculty that someone is rejecting his; not despising any-
one because of condition, he does not imagine that anyone despises him
because of the same reason, and until he has clearly noticed the insult, he
does not believe that someone wants to offend him.
The social state [v: equality] naturally disposes the Americans not to
become easily offended in small things. And, on the other hand, the dem-
ocratic liberty that they enjoy nally makes this indulgence pass into the
national mores.
Political institutions in the United States constantly put citizens of all
classes in contact and force them to follow great enterprises together. Men
thus occupied hardly have the time to think about the details of etiquette,
and moreover they have too much interest in living together harmoniously
to stop over those details. So they become easily accustomedtoconsidering,
in the men they meet, sentiments and ideas rather than manners, and they
do not allow themselves to be excited over tries.
I noticed many times that, in the United States, it is not an easy thing
to make a man understand that his presence is bothersome. To reach that
point, indirect paths are not always sufcient.
I contradict an American at every point, in order to make himsense that
his speeches fatigue me; and at every instant I see him make new efforts to
persuade me; I keep a stubborn silence, and he imagines that I amreecting
profoundly on the truths that he is presenting; and when nally I suddenly
escape from his pursuit, he assumes that a pressing matter calls me else-
where. This man will not comprehend that he exasperates me unless I tell
him so, and I will be able to save myself from him only by becoming his
mortal enemy.
What is surprising at rst is that this same man transported to Europe
suddenly becomes punctilious and difcult to deal with [<he attaches him-
self stubbornly to the slightest details of etiquette and often he evencreates
imaginary ones that apply only to him>], to the point that often I have as
much difculty in not offending him as I found in displeasing him. These
two so different effects are produced by the same cause.
Democratic institutions in general give men a vast idea of their country
and of themselves.
The American leaves his country with his heart puffed up with pride.
He arrives in Europe and notices rst that we are not as preoccupied as he
imagined with the United States and with the great people that inhabits
them. This begins to upset him.
c
He has heard it said that conditions are not equal in our hemisphere.
He notices, in fact, that among the nations of Europe, the trace of ranks
c. Because with a great deal of national pride, they are still not sure about the rank
that they hold among nations, and because claiming the rst rank, they are not sure that
it is granted to them (Rubish, 2).
is not entirely erased; that wealth and birth retain uncertain privileges that
are as difcult for him to ignore as to dene. This spectacle surprises him
and makes him uneasy, because it is entirely new to him; nothing that he
has seen in his country helps him to understand it. So he is deeply unaware
of what place it is suitable to occupy inthis half-destroyedhierarchy, among
those classes that are distinct enough to hate and despise each other, and
close enough for him to be always ready to confuse them. He is afraid of
putting himself too high, andabove all of being rankedtoolow; this double
danger constantly troubles his mind and continually hinders his actions,
like his conversation.
Tradition taught him that in Europe things ceremonial varied innitely
depending on conditions; this memory of another time really disturbs him,
and he fears all the more not gaining the considerations that are due to him
since he does not know precisely what they consist of. So he is always walk-
ing like a man surrounded by traps; society for him is not a relaxation, but
a serious work. He weighs your slightest moves, questions your looks and
carefully analyzes all your words, for fear that they contain some hidden
allusions that injure him. I do not know if there has ever been a country
gentleman more punctilious than he in the matter of good manners; he
works hard to obey the least laws of etiquette himself, and he does not put
up with anyone neglecting any of those laws in his regard; he is at the very
same time full of scruples and demands; he would like to do enough, but
is afraid of doing too much, and as he does not know very well the limits
of either, he holds himself in an uneasy and haughty reserve.
This is still not all, and here is another twist of the human heart.
An American speaks every day about the admirable equality that reigns
in the United States; he boasts out loud about it concerning his country;
but he is secretly distressed about it concerning himself, and he aspires to
show that, as for him, he is an exception to the general order that he
advocates.
You hardly meet an American
d
who does not want to be connected a bit
d. You nd, with the manuscript of the chapter, a jacket onwhichyouread: rubish
that i leave with the chapter in order to examine it one last time.
Inside Tocqueville species: . . . an American {of New England} who . . .
by his birth to the rst settlers of the colonies, and, as for branches of the
great families of England, America seemed to me totally covered by them.
When an opulent American comes to Europe, his rst concern is to sur-
round himself with all the riches of luxury; and he is so afraidthat someone
will take him for a simple citizen of a democracy that he twists and turns
in a hundred ways in order to present before you every day a new image of
his wealth. He usually nds lodging in the most conspicuous area of the
city; he has numerous servants who surround him constantly. [Still he will
notice that he is badly served and frequently gets worked up against these
people who become familiar with their masters.]
I heard an American complain that, in the principal salons of Paris, you
met only mixed society. The taste reigning there did not seem pure enough
to him, and he adroitly let it be understood that in his opinion, manners
there lacked distinction. He was not used to seeing wit hide in this way
under common forms.
Such contrasts should not be surprising. [The same cause gives birth to
them.]
If the trace of old aristocratic distinctions were not so completely erased
in the United States, the Americans would appear less simple and less tol-
erant in their country, less demanding and less ill-at-ease in ours.
1005
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 4
a
Consequences of the Three Preceding Chapters
When men feel a natural pity for each others misfortunes, when easy and
frequent relationships drawthemcloser each day without any susceptibility
dividing them, it is easy to understand that they will, as needed, mutually
lend each other their aid. WhenanAmericanasks for the helpof his fellows,
it is very rare for the latter to refuse it to him, and I have often observed
that they grant it to him spontaneously with great zeal.
If some unforeseen accident takes place on the public road, people rush
from all directions to the one who is the victim; if some great unexpected
misfortune strikes a family, the purses of a thousandstrangers openwithout
difculty; modest, but very numerous gifts come to the aid of the familys
misery.
It frequently happens, among the most civilized nations of the globe,
that someone unfortunate nds himself as isolated in the middle of the
crowd as the savage in the woods; that is hardly ever seen in the United
States. The Americans, who are always cold in their manners and often
crude, hardly ever appear insensitive, and, if they do not hasten to offer
their services, they do not refuse to render them.
All of this is not contrary to what I said before regarding individualism.
I even see that these things, far from being in conict, are in agreement.
a. Men of democracies naturally show pity for each other; having frequent and easy
relationships together, not easily becoming irritated with each other, it is natural that
they like to help each other in their needs. This is what happens in the United States.
In democracies great services are rarely accorded, but good ofces are rendered con-
stantly. It is rare that a man appears devoted to service, but all are willing to help
(YTC, CVf, pp. 3839). There is no rubish for this chapter.
cons equences of the three precedi ng chapters 1006
Equality of conditions, at the same time that it makes men feel their
independence, shows them their weakness; they are free, but exposed to a
thousand accidents, and experience does not take long to teach them that,
although they do not habitually need the help of others, some moment
almost always occurs when they cannot do without that help.
We see every day in Europe that men of the same profession readily help
each other; they are all exposed to the same evils; that is enough for them
to try mutually to protect themselves from those evils, however hard or
egotistical they are elsewhere. So whenever one of them is in danger, and
when, by a small temporary sacrice or a sudden impulse, the others can
shield him, they do not fail to attempt it. It is not that they are profoundly
interested in his fate; for if, by chance, the efforts that they make to help
him are useless, they immediately forget him and return to themselves; but
a sort of tacit and almost involuntary agreement has been made between
them, according to which each one owes to the others a momentarysupport
that, in his turn, he will be able to ask for himself.
Extend to a people what I say about only a class, and you will understand
my thought.
There exists, in fact, among all the citizens of a democracy, a convention
analogous to the one that I am talking about; everyone feels subject to the
same weakness and to the same dangers, and their interest, as well as their
sympathy, makes it a law for them to lend each other mutual assistance as
needed.
The more similar conditions become, the more men exhibit this recip-
rocal disposition for mutual obligation.
In democracies, where great services are scarcely accorded, good ofces
are rendered constantly. It is rare that a man appears devoted to service, but
all are willing to help.
1007
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 5
a
How Democracy Modies the
Relationships of Servant and Master
An American,
b
who had traveled for a long time in Europe, said to me one
day:
a. 1. Character of domestic service in aristocratic centuries.
1. Servants form a separate class that has its gradations, its prejudices, its public
opinion.
2. The perpetuity and immobility of classes make it that there are families of ser-
vants who remain for centuries next to families of masters. From that arises a con-
fusion of sentiments, opinions, and interests between them.
3. In that time it is easy to obtain a respectful, prompt and easy obedience, because
each master presses on the will of his servants with all the weight of the aristocracy.
2. Character of democratic domestic service. No devoted loyalty, but anexact obe-
dience arising not from a general superiority of the master over the servant, but from
a contract freely accepted.
3. Transitional domestic service, where everything is confused. The master wants
to nd in his servants the devoted loyalty that arose from the aristocratic social state,
and the servants do not even want to grant the obedience that they promised (YTC,
CVf, pp. 3940). In the rubish you nd traces of a rst chapter bearing the title: the
master and the tenant farmer in democracies.
b. Conversation withMr. Robinson, anAmericanengineer of great talents. 22March
1837./
[In the margin: Perhaps introduce this conversation in the text.]
Mr. Robinson told me that the English treated their servants with a contempt, a
haughtiness and with absolute manners that singularly surprised an American.
On the other hand, he remarked that the French often used with their domestics
a familiarity and a courtesy that did not seemless extraordinary to him. He hadheard
a lady say to a domestic who informed her about the execution of an order: I amvery
muchobliged, so andso. This formseems strange tohim. I see some French, he added,
call a porter, Monsieur. It is something I could never do.
relati ons hi ps of s ervant and mas ter 1008
The English treat their servants with a haughtiness and with absolute
manners that surprise us; but, on the other hand, the French sometimes
use a familiarity with theirs, or reveal in their regard a courtesy that we
cannot imagine. You would say that they are afraid of giving orders. The
position of superior and inferior is badly kept.
This remark is correct, and I have made it myself many times.
c
I have always considered England as the country in the world where,
today, the bond of domestic service is the tightest and France the country
on earth where it is most loose. Nowhere has the master appeared to me
higher or lower than in these two countries.
The Americans are placed between these extremes.
That is the supercial and apparent fact. We must go much further in
order to discover its causes.
We have not yet seen societies in which conditions were so equal that
neither rich nor poor were found, and consequently, neither masters nor
servants.
Democracy does not prevent these two classes of men fromexisting; but
it changes their spirit and modies their relationships.
[It is easy to see that all classes that compose a society are so naturally
bound together that all must move at the same time or remain immobile.
It is enough to hold one of them in place for all the others to stop by
themselves.
So from the moment when I nd a caste of perpetual masters composed
of the same families, I understand without difculty that there exists a caste
This same Mr. Robinson, said nally: in the United States domestic servants be-
lieve themselves obliged to do only what is in the contract. They are very independent
and little .-.-.-.-.- relationships with the master, the position of superior and inferior
is always kept.
This conversation gets very much, it seems to me, into the meaning of my chapter
(Rubish, 2). The person speaking to Tocqueville is unidentied.
c. In the margin: <If this remark is correct, the American of the preceding chapter
was therefore not wrong. Clearly to delete either this or the sentence from the other
chapter. That jumps out.>
of servants formed in the same way, and I foresee that this perpetuity is
going to produce similar effects from both sides.]
d
Among aristocratic peoples, servants form a particular class that does
not vary any more than that of the masters. A xed order does not take
long to arise; in the rst as in the second, you soon see a hierarchy, nu-
merous classications, marked ranks, and the generations follow each
other without the positions changing. Servants and masters are two so-
cieties superimposed on each other, always distinct, but governed by anal-
ogous principles.
e
This aristocratic constitution inuences the ideas and mores of the ser-
vants scarcely less than those of the masters, and although the effects may
be different, it is easy to recognize the same cause.
Both form small nations amid the large one; and in the end, in their
midst, certain permanent notions about right and wrong are born. The
different actions of human life are seen in a particular light that does not
change. In the society of servants as in that of the masters, men exercise a
great inuence on each other. They acknowledge xed rules, and lacking a
law, they encounter a public opinion that directs them; well-regulatedhab-
its and an order reign there.
These men, whose destiny is to obey, undoubtedly do not understand
glory, virtue, integrity, honor, in the same way as the masters. But they have
developed a glory, virtues, and an integrity of servants, and they imagine,
if I can express myself in this way, a sort of servants honor.
1
Because a class is low, you must not believe that all those who are part
d. In the margin: <Good sentence, but to delete. This piece must be pruned rather
than added to.>
e. In a society all classes go together. They all move at the same time or all remain
immobile. When a single class becomes immobile all the others stop by themselves.
I stop the wheel of a clock and everything stops (Rubish, 2).
1. If you come to examine closely and in detail the principal opinions that direct these men,
the analogy appears still more striking, and you are astonished to nd among them, as well
as among the most haughty members of a feudal hierarchy, pride of birth, respect for ones
ancestors and descendents, scorn for the inferior, fear of contact, taste for etiquette, for the
traditions of antiquity.
of it have a base heart. That would be a great error. However inferior the
class may be, the man who is rst in it and who has no idea of leaving that
class, nds himself in an aristocratic position that suggests to him elevated
sentiments, a noble pride and a respect for himself, which makes him t
for great virtues and uncommon actions.
Among aristocratic peoples, it was not rare to nd, in the service of the
great, noble and vigorous souls who bore servitude without feeling it, and
who submitted to the will of their master without fearing his anger.
But it was hardly ever like this in the lower ranks of the domestic class.
[<The rst were placed higher in the scale of beings than the modern ser-
vant, the second fell below.>] You conceive that the one who holds the
lowest place of a hierarchy of valets is very low.
The French had created a word expressly for this lowest of the servants
of the aristocracy. They called him a lackey.
[<The lackey was this man abandoned by fate who was born, lived,
died in a hereditary shame, despised and laughed at by all.>]
The word lackey served as anextreme word, whenany other was missing,
to represent human baseness; under the old monarchy, when you wanted
at some moment to portray a vile and degraded being, you said of himthat
he had the soul of a lackey. That alone sufced. The meaning was complete
and understood.
f
Permanent inequality of conditions not only gives servants certain par-
ticular virtues and certain particular vices; it also places themin a particular
position vis-a`-vis the masters.
Among aristocratic peoples, the poor man is trained, from birth, with
the idea of being commanded. In whatever direction he turns his eyes, he
immediately sees the image of hierarchy and the sight of obedience.
[If this man, prepared in this way, consecrates himself to the service of
one of his fellows, he will not fail to bring to this particular state the general
f. In the margin: When Mirabeau, this democrat still so full of the striking vices
and virtues of the aristocracy, wanted to portray in his energetic style a cowardly and
nasty being [interrupted text (ed.)].
notions that the view of society suggests to him. <The image of the large
society will be reproduced in the small one.>]
g
So in countries where permanent inequality of conditions reigns, the
master easily obtains from his servants a prompt, complete, respectful and
easy obedience, because the latter revere in him, not only the master, but
the class of masters. He presses on their will with all the weight of the
aristocracy.
He commands their actions; to a certain degree he even directs their
thoughts. The master, in aristocracies, often exercises, even without his
knowing it, a prodigious sway over the opinions, habits, andmores of those
who obey him; and his inuence extends very much further than even his
authority.
h
In aristocratic societies,
j
not only are there hereditary families of valets,
as well as hereditary families of masters; but also the same families of valets
remain, over several generations, at the side of the same families of masters
(they are like parallel lines that never meet or separate); this prodigiously
modies the mutual relationships of these two orders of persons.
Thus, although, under aristocracy, the master and the servant have be-
tween them no mutual resemblance; although fortune, education, opin-
ions, rights place them, on the contrary, at an immense distance on the
scale of beings, time nevertheless ends up binding them together. A long
community of memories ties them together, and, however different they
may be, they assimilate; while, in democracies, where they are naturally
almost the same, they always remain strangers to each other. [A few slight
differences in conditions separate men, great permanent differences bind
them together.]
So among aristocratic peoples, the master comes to envisage his servants
g. In the margin: <Perhaps delete this.>
h. Variant: <Not only does he direct them without difculty in everything that re-
lates tohim, but his inuence extends tothe entire ensemble of their actions. His example
or his lessons naturally lead their minds toward certain beliefs and open their hearts, as
he pleases, to certain tastes. He modies in a thousand ways their ideas and their mores,
and even when he ceases to be their master, he remains in a way their tutor.>
j. The manuscript says: In aristocratic centuries . . .
like aninferior andsecondary part of himself, andhe ofteninterests himself
in their fate, by a nal effort of egoism.
On their side, the servants are not far from considering themselves from
the same point of view, and they sometimes identify with the person of the
master, so that they nally become an accessory, in their own eyes, as in his.
In aristocracies, the servant occupies a subordinate position that he can-
not leave; near him is found another man, who holds a superior rank that
he cannot lose. On the one hand, obscurity, poverty, obedience forever; on
the other, glory, wealth, command forever. These conditions are always dif-
ferent and always close, and the bond that unites them is as durable as are
the conditions.
In this extreme, the servant ends by becoming disinterested in himself;
he turns away from himself; he deserts himself in a way, or rather he trans-
fers himself entirely to his master; there he creates animaginarypersonality.
He cloaks himself with satisfaction with the riches of those who command
him; he takes pride in their glory, raises himself with their nobility, and
feeds constantly ona borrowedgrandeur, onwhichhe sometimes puts more
value than those who possess it fully and truly.
There is something at once touching and ridiculous in such a strange
confusion of two existences.
These passions of masters carried into the souls of valets take the natural
dimensions of the place that they occupy; they shrink and become lower.
What was pride with the rst becomes childish vanity and miserable pre-
tension with the others. The servants of a great nobleman usually show
themselves very particular about what is owed to him, and they are more
attached to his least privileges than he is.
You still sometimes meet among us one of those old servants of the
aristocracy; he outlives his race and will soon disappear with it.
k
k. In the margin: Caleb.
In the rubish: Caleb. The portrait of this man could only be drawn in an aristocratic
country and can only be understood in a country that was so. The Americans will never
know what Caleb means (Rubish, 2).
In the United States I saw no one who resembled him. Not only do the
Americans not know this man, but you have great difculty making them
understand that he exists. They nd it hardly less difcult to conceive it
than we ourselves have to imagine what a slave was among the Romans, or
a serf in the Middle Ages. All of these men are in fact, although to different
degrees, the products of the same cause. Together they withdraw far from
our sight and ee daily into the obscurity of the past with the social state
that gave them birth.
Equality of conditions makes new beings of the servant and of the mas-
ter, and establishes new relationships between them.
When conditions are nearly equal, men constantly change place; there
is still a class of valets and a class of masters; but it is not always the same
individuals, or above all the same families that compose it; and there is not
more permanence in command than in obedience.
Servants, not forming a separate people, do not have customs, prejudices
or mores that are their own; you do not notice among them a certain turn
of spirit or a particular way of feeling; they know neither the vices nor the
virtues of a condition, but they share the enlightenment, ideas, sentiments,
virtues and vices of their contemporaries; and they are decent or knavish
just as the masters are.
Conditions are no less equal among the servants than among the
masters.
As you do not nd marked ranks or permanent hierarchy in the class of
servants, you must not expect to nd the baseness and the grandeur that
are displayed in the aristocracies of valets as well as in all the others.
I never saw in the United States anything that could have reminded me
of the idea of the elite servant, an idea of which we in Europe have kept
In another place: I have sometimes met Caleb amid the ruins of our aristocratic
society (Rubish, 2). This concerns Balderstone Caleb, the faithful and devoted servant
of the landowner of Ravenswood in The Bride of Lammermoor of Walter Scott.
When he reread this chapter in September 1839, Tocqueville found it too theoretical.
He asked Ampe`re to provide him with some examples, something the latter seems not
to have done (Correspondance avec Ampe `re, OC, XI, pp. 12931).
the memory; but neither did I nd in the United States the idea of the
lackey. The trace of the one as well as the other is lost there.
In democracies, servants are not only equal among themselves; you can
say that they are, in a way, equal to their masters.
This needs to be explained in order to make it well understood.
At every instant, the servant can become the master and aspires to be-
come so; the servant is not therefore a man different from his master.
So why does the rst have the right to command and what forces the
second to obey? The temporary and free agreement of their two wills. They
are not naturally inferior to each other; they become so temporarily only
as a result of the contract. Within the limits of this contract, one is the
servant and the other the master; outside, they are two citizens, two men.
What I beg the reader to understand well is that this is not only the
notion that the servants themselves form of their state. The masters con-
sider domestic service in the same light, and the precise limits of command
and obedience are as well xed in the mind of the one as in that of the
other.
m
m. In the drafts you nd several pages on the relations of master and servant. They
are contained in a jacket with the title: chapter 4, some ideas relative to the
influence exercised on the mores of the americans by their philo-
sophical method (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 29).
On one of these pages in this jacket you can read:
[In the margin: It is clear that this entire piece beginning here and ending at the
bottom of sheet 5 can only with difculty be included in the consequences of just
the philosophical method of the Americans. To reexamine./
This ts into another order of ideas. To equality of conditions itself which makes
the servant higher and the master lower than in Europe, and not to the philosophical
consequences that result fromthis equality. To put in the place where I will see general
causes.
To keep but to transfer I think to another place this entire piece up to in aristocratic
countries . . . ]
If, after examining the relationships of the son with the father, I consider those of
the servant with the master, I no longer discover any analogy between the Americans
and the English.
England is assuredly the country in the world where the two men are placed the
farthest from each other, and America the place on earth where they are the closest
and yet the most independent of each other.
When most citizens have for a long time attained a more or less similar
condition, and when equality is an old and accepted fact, public under-
standing, never inuenced by the exceptions, assigns in a general way to
the value of man certain limits above or below which it is difcult for any
man to remain for long.
In vain do wealth and poverty, commandandobedience put accidentally
great distances between two men; public opinion, which is founded on the
usual order of things, brings them closer to the common level and creates
between them a sort of imaginary equality, despite the real inequality of
their conditions.
This omnipotent opinion ends up penetrating the souls even of those
whose interest could fortify them against it; it modies their judgment at
the same time that it subjugates their will.
At the bottom of their souls, the master and the servant no longer see a
profound dissimilarity between them, and they neither hope nor fear ever
to nd one. So they are without disdain and without anger, and they nd
themselves neither humble nor proud when they look at each other.
The master judges that the contract is the only source of his power, and
the servant nds in it the only cause of his obedience. They do not argue
with each other over the reciprocal position that they occupy; instead each
one easily sees his own position and sticks to it. [You do not see arising
between these two men ardent or deep affections, but as they have <con-
stantly a limited need for each other, they look upon each other with a sort
of tranquil benevolence.>]
In our [{democratic}] armies, the soldier is more or less taken from the
same classes as the ofcers and can reach the same posts; outside of military
ranks, the soldier considers himself as perfectly equal to his leaders, and he
is in fact; but when in military service, he has no difculty obeying, and
That is due to several causes that I want to seek although interest in my subject
does not absolutely oblige me to do so.
When among a people you nd a very small number of great fortunes, a small
number of destitute situations, and a multitude of comfortable fortunes, the result
would seem to have to be that the rich feel stronger there and the poor weaker than
anywhere else, but it is not so. When most citizens have attained . . . (YTC, CVk, 2,
pp. 3031). See note a of p. 696.
his obedience, although voluntary and well-dened, is no less prompt, clear
and easy.
This gives an idea of what happens in democratic societies between the
servant and the master.
It would be insane to believe that there could ever arise between these
two men any of those ardent and deep affections that are sometimes lit
within aristocratic domestic service, or that striking examples of devotion
should be seen to appear.
In aristocracies, the servant and the master see each other only fromtime
to time, and they oftenspeak only by intermediary. But they usuallydepend
closely on one another.
Among democratic peoples, the servant and the master are very close;
their bodies are constantly in contact, their souls do not mingle; they have
shared occupations, they almost never have shared interests.
Among these peoples, the servant always considers himself as a passer-
by in the house of his masters. He has not known their ancestors and will
not see their descendants; he has nothing lasting to expect fromthem. Why
would he confuse his existence with theirs, and from where would this sin-
gular self-abandonment come? The reciprocal position has changed; the
relationship must do so.
I would like to be able to support all that precedes with the example of
the Americans; but I cannot do so without carefully distinguishing peoples
and places.
In the south of the Union, slavery exists. So all that I have just said
cannot apply.
In the North, most servants are emancipated slaves or the sons of those
emancipated. These men occupy a disputed position in public esteem; the
law brings them closer to the level of their master, mores stubbornly push
them away. They themselves do not clearly discern their place, and they
appear almost always insolent or cringing.
But, in these same provinces of the North, particularly inNewEngland,
you nd a fairly large number of whites who consent, in return for a salary,
to subject themselves temporarily to the will of their fellows. I have heard
it said that the servants usually fulll the duties of their condition with
exactitude and intelligence, and that, without believing themselves natu-
rally inferior to the one who is giving them orders, they easily submit to
obeying him.
It seemed to me that those servants brought to their service some of the
manly habits given birth by independence and equality. Once having cho-
sen a hard condition, they did not look for indirect ways to escape from it,
and they respect themselves enough not to refuse to their masters an obe-
dience that they have freely promised.
On their side, the masters demand of their servants only faithful and
strict execution of the contract; they do not ask them for respect; they do
not claim their love or their devotion; it is enough to nd them punctual
and honest.
So it would not be true to say that, under democracy, the relationships
of servant and master are disorderly; they are organized inanother manner;
the rule is different, but there is a rule.
I do not have to search here if this new state that I have just described
is inferior to that which preceded, or if it is only different. It is enough for
me that it is well-ordered and xed; for what is most important to nd
among men is not a certain order, but order.
But what will I say about those sad and turbulent periods during which
equality is being founded amid the tumult of a revolution, while democ-
racy, after being established in the social state, is still struggling with dif-
culty against prejudices and mores?
The law and, in part, opinion already proclaim that no natural and per-
manent inferiority exists between servant and master. But this new faith
has not yet deeply penetrated the mind of the latter, or rather his heart
rejects it. In the secrecy of his soul, the master still considers that he is a
particular and superior species; but he does not dare to say so, and he allows
himself to be drawn trembling toward the standard level. His command
becomes at the very same time timid and hard; already he no longer feels
for his servants the protective and benevolent sentiments that always arise
from a long-standing, uncontested power, and he is astonished that having
himself changed, his servant changes. He wants his servant, who is only so
to speak passing through domestic service, to contract regular and per-
manent habits, to show himself satised with and proud of a servile po-
sition, from which he must sooner or later emerge; he wants his servant to
devote himself to a man who can neither protect nor ruin him, and to
become attached nally, by an eternal bond, to beings who resemble him
and who do not last any longer than he does.
Among aristocratic peoples, it often happens that the condition of do-
mestic service does not debase the souls of those who submit to it, because
they do not know and do not imagine any others, and because the prodi-
gious inequality that is exhibited between them and the master seems to
themthe necessary and inevitable result of some hiddenlawof Providence.
Under democracy, the condition of domestic service has nothing de-
grading about it, because it is freely chosen, temporarily adopted, because
public opinion does not condemn it, and because it creates no permanent
inequality between the servant and the master.
n
But, during the passage from one social condition to another, a moment
almost always comes when the minds of men vacillate between the aris-
tocratic notion of subjection and the democratic notion of obedience.
Obedience then loses its morality in the eyes of the one who obeys; he
no longer considers it as an obligation in a way divine, and he does not yet
see it in its purely human aspect; in his eyes it is neither holy or just, and
he submits to it as to a degrading and useful fact.
At that moment, the confused and incomplete image of equality pres-
ents itself to the mind of the servants; they do not at rst discern if it is in
the very condition of domestic service or outside of it that this equality to
which they have a right is found, and at the bottom of their hearts they
revolt against an inferiority to which they have subjected themselves and
from which they prot. They consent to serve, and they are ashamed to
obey [<and while the masters still refuse to acknowledge equality outside
of domestic service, the second want to nd it even within these very
limits>]; they love the advantages of servitude, but not the master, or, to
say it better, they are not sure if they should not be the masters, and they
are disposed to consider the one who commands themas the unjust usurper
of their right.
n. In the margin, with a bracket that includes this paragraph and one part of the
preceding one: <This is, I believe, the return of an idea already expressed in the chapter.
See.>
That is when you see in the house of each citizen something analogous
to the sad spectacle that political society presents. A hidden and internal
war goes on constantly between always suspicious and rival powers. The
master shows himself ill-willed and soft, the servant ill-willed and intrac-
table; the one wants to shirk constantly, by dishonest limitations, the ob-
ligation to protect and to pay, the other wants to shirk the obligation to
obey. Between them the reins of domestic administration hang loose, and
each one tries hard to seize them. The lines that divide authority from tyr-
anny, liberty from license, right from fact, seem in their eyes muddled and
confused, and no one knows precisely what he is, or what he can do, or
what he should do.
Such a state is not democratic, but revolutionary.
o
o. At the end of the manuscript:
Opinion of Louis on the chapter./
Praise.
The chapter contains a very large number of new ideas. The style is good.
Criticism.
The rst pages do not grab the mind of the reader. In general all of the aristocratic
domestic service is of less intense interest than the rest. That is due not to the fact that
the ideas are known, but to the theoretical way of presenting them.
According to Louis, I have made the moral condition of the servant in aristocracy
worse than it was. But is he right?
The same reproach applies, although to a lesser degree, to the whole piece.
It is done to please philosophical minds. It does not get down enough to the level
of ordinary minds. The subject is such however to interest all minds. It is a chapter
that all readers will like to read and will believe themselves able to understand. So it
must be put within their reach or in relief, and it can be done so only by getting a bit
into facts, examples, details and by keeping myself less in abstractions than I do.
In summary this chapter is a very good piece that must be kept with the idea that
it needs to be revised./
The general order of the piece must be kept./
Observation of E
douard.
He nds the piece good, but he thinks that new efforts must be made to put in
relief my ideas relative to democratic domestic service, to x more rmly by stylistic
artices the mind of the reader on this point, to bring out better than I do what is
gained and what is lost in this new state.
E
douard would like me to use more the example of the Americans to demonstrate,
by example, what should happen in a society where the master and the domestic
servant nd themselves together in the same electoral college.
The difculty is that I know only very imperfectly what they want me to say.
1020
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 6
a
How Democratic Institutions and
Mores Tend to Raise the Cost and Shorten
the Length of Leases
What I said about servants and masters applies to a certain point to land-
owners and tenant farmers. The subject merits, however, to be considered
separately.
In America, there are, so to speak, no tenant farmers; every man owns
the eld that he cultivates.
It must be recognized that democratic laws tend powerfully to increase
the number of landowners and to decrease that of tenant farmers. None-
theless, what is happening in the United States must be attributed much
less to the new institutions of the country than to the country itself. In
America land costs little, and everyone becomes a landowner easily. The
land yields little, and its products canbe shared by a landowner anda tenant
farmer only with difculty.
a. In aristocracies farm rents are paid not only in money, but in respect, in affection,
in services. Under democracy they are paid only in money.
Since a permanent bond no longer exists between families and the land, the land-
owner and the tenant farmer are strangers who meet by chance to discuss a matter.
Since fortunes are becoming divided, the landowner always has a desire to acquire
and fears losing. He rigorously stipulates everything to which he has a right.
The landowner and the tenant farmer have analogous habits of mind and an anal-
ogous social situation. Between two equal citizens in straitened circumstances, the
object of a rental contract cannot be anything other than money.
When you have one hundred tenant farmers, you readily make pecuniary sacrices
to gain their goodwill. You do not care about the goodwill of a single tenant farmer.
When democracy has made the idea of instability penetrate all minds, you have
an instinctive horror for a contract, even an advantageous one, that has to last a long
time (YTC, CVf, pp. 4041).
cos t and length of leas es 1021
So America is unique in this as in other things; and it would be an error
to take it as an example.
I think that in democratic countries as well as in aristocracies, landown-
ers and tenant farmers will be found; but landowners and tenant farmers
will not be bound together in the same way.
Inaristocracies, farmrents are paidnot only inmoney, but alsoinrespect,
in affection and in services. In democratic countries, they are paid only in
money.
b
When patrimonies divide and change hands, and when the per-
manent relationship that existed between families and the land disappears,
it is no longer anything except chance that puts the landowner and the
b. There are no drafts of this chapter in the Rubish. In the manuscript, on the other
hand, you nd a jacket with various notes and fragments. The rst page species:
Pieces that beganthe chapter andthat I believe must be deleted; they hadthe purpose
of explaining what happened under aristocracy. I was afraid that this perpetual return
to two social states was monotonous.
To review one last time. This jacket contains another version of the chapter, iden-
tical enough, except for the beginning:
In aristocracies in which great estates exist and in which custom and law x the own-
ership of these estates in the same families, the landowner, by renting his elds, does
not have as his only goal, or even sometimes as his principal goal, to enrich himself.
Several other concerns share his soul. The tenant farmers with whom he deals are not
strangers in his eyes. Their ancestors lived with his; his children will grow up amid
theirs. They are tied to him and he to them by a long chain of memories and hopes.
So the landowner wants to have his rights not only to the rent that they promised
him, but also to their respect and their love; and he thinks that he owes it to himself
not to impose obligations which are too hard on these men among whom he lives
every day and whose well-being or miseries are necessarily before his eyes; and he is
able to do so, for he enjoys an immense superuity.
The richest and most powerful landowner of an aristocratic country cannot do
without zealous friends and faithful servants, tenants ready to serve him. All those
men are like instruments by the aid of which he seizes the surrounding population
and handles it as he wills. It is through them that he succeeds in enjoying the greatest
non-material advantages that wealth assures. Thus their support must be bought.
So in an aristocratic country the price of lands [v: tenant farms] is not paid only
in money, but in respect, in affection, in services.
It ceases to be so as patrimonies are divided, as fortunes become equal, as the bond
that united the upper and the lower classes comes to loosen <and as the relationship
that existed between political power and possession of the land comes to disappear.>
When patrimonies . . .
tenant farmer in contact. They join together for a moment to debate the
conditions of the contract, and afterward lose sight of each other. They are
two strangers brought together by interest who rigorously discuss a matter
that concerns only money.
As property is divided and wealth is dispersed here and there over the
whole surface of the country, the State lls with men whose old wealth is
in decline and with the newly rich whose needs increase faster than their
resources. For all of them, the least prot is of consequence, and no one
among them feels disposed to allow any one of his advantages to escape,
or to lose any portion whatsoever of his income.
Since ranks are mingling and the very greatest as well as the very smallest
fortunes are becoming rarer, there is less distance every day between the
social condition of the landowner and that of the tenant farmer; the one
does not naturally have an undisputed superiority over the other. Now,
between two equal men in straitened circumstances, what can the subject
of a rental contract be, if not money?
c
A man whose property is an entire district and who owns one hundred
small farms understands that it is a matter of winning the hearts of several
thousand men at the same time; this seems to him to merit his efforts. To
attain such a great objective, he easily makes sacrices.
The one who owns a hundred acres is not burdened by such concerns;
it is hardly important for him to win the particular goodwill of his tenant.
An aristocracy does not die like a man, in a day. Its principle is destroyed
slowly deep within souls, before being attacked in the laws. So a long time
before war breaks out against an aristocracy, you see the bond that until
then united the upper classes to the lower loosen little by little. Indifference
and scorn betray one side; jealousy and hate, the other. Relations between
the poor and the rich become rarer and less mild; the cost of leases rises. It
is not yet the result of the democratic revolution, but it is the sure sign of
it. For an aristocracy that has allowed the heart of the people to escape
c. In the work of Candolle on the subjects of gold and silver, there are on the long
leases of feudal times curious remarks that prove that leases rise and become shorter as
equality increases. As conditions become equal, the costs of leases rise (YTC, CVa,
p. 31).
denitively from its hands, is like a tree with dead roots; the higher it is,
the more easily is it toppled by the winds.
For fty years, the cost of farm rents has grown prodigiously, not only
in France, but in most of Europe. The singular progress made by agricul-
ture and industry during the same period is not enough, in my mind, to
explain this phenomenon. You must resort to some other more powerful
and more hidden cause. I think that this cause must be sought in the dem-
ocratic institutions that several European peoples have adopted and in the
democratic passions that more or less agitate all the others.
I have often heard great English landowners congratulate themselves
that, in our times, they draw much more money from their estates than
their fathers did.
d
Perhaps they are right to be pleased; but certainly they do not knowwhat
they are pleased about. They think they are making a clear prot, and they
are only making an exchange. It is their inuence that they are giving up
for cash; and what they gain in money, they are soon going to lose inpower.
There is still another sign by which you can easily recognize that a great
democratic revolution is being accomplished or is being prepared.
In the Middle Ages, nearly all the land was rented in perpetuity, or at
least at very long term. When you study the domestic economy of that
time, you see that leases of ninety-nine years were more frequent thanthose
of twelve years are today.
Everyone believed then in the immortality of families; conditions
seemed xed forever, and the whole society appeared so immobile that no
one imagined that anything ever had to move within it.
d. Inside the jacket of the manuscript that contains the drafts:
In aristocracies, the clauses of the lease are generally debated between a poor man to
whom necessity has taught the importance of the smallest details, and a rich man
who is accustomed to seeing everything broadly and to scorning small gains. The one
treats the affair with all the erceness given by need, and the other with the noncha-
lance suggested in such matters by a great superuity. It is easy to foresee that the
interest of the rich man must succumb in this unequal struggle.
In democracy, on the contrary, the landowner and the tenant bring the same needs
and same desires.
In centuries of equality, the human mind takes a different turn. It easily
believes that nothing is unchanging. The idea of instability possesses it.
In this frame of mind, the landowner and the tenant himself feel a sort
of instinctive horror for long-term obligations; they fear being limited one
day by an agreement that they prot from today. They vaguely expect some
sudden and unforeseen change in their condition. They are afraid of them-
selves; they fear that, when their taste changes, they will be distressed by
not being able to leave what was the object of their desires, and they are
right to fear it; for in democratic centuries, what is most changeable, amid
the movement of things, is the heart of man.
1025
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 7
a
Inuence of Democracy on Salaries
Most of the remarks that I made previously, when talking about servants
and masters, can be applied to masters and workers.
b
a. Democracy has a general and permanent tendency to bring the worker and master
closer and to equalize their prots more and more.
[In the margin: Chapter that it is not certain that I will include.]
This is the general rule, but in industry, such as it is constituted today in some of
its parts, the opposite is seen.
That is an exceptional fact, but very formidable and that much more formidable
as it is exceptional (YTC, CVf, p. 41).
On the jacket of the manuscript:
The question of knowing whether I should let this chapter remain is still doubtful
and needs to be asked of B[eaumont (ed.)]. and L[ouis (ed.)]./
The subject can seem known and yet redundant because of chapter 34 quarto
where the matter is already treated./
This chapter has the disadvantage of posing the greatest questionof our time with-
out even trying to resolve it. You are disappointed after reading it.
Chapter 34 quarto corresponds to chapter 20 of the second part of volume III, on the
industrial aristocracy.
b. What I say about the servant always more or less applies to the worker. But de-
mocracy tends, more and more, to isolate the latter from the master, and while sepa-
rating him from the master, to raise him to the same level.
Tendency of democracy to raise salaries, to make the worker share in the prots.
How in the current state of commercial science and habits there is an opposite
tendency that accumulates capital in the hands of a few great manufacturers and
reduces the workers to the greatest dependency and to the most extreme poverty.
That this tendency is already noticeable in the United States, although in a much
less pronounced way than in France, and above all in England. To ndout why? That
it is there .-.-.-.-.-.-.- democracy that lls the world. It is the only door open in the
future to the re-formation of an aristocratic society.
s alari es 1026
As [<{conditions become equal}; as ranks blend and>] the rules of so-
cial hierarchy are less observed, while the great descend, the small rise and
poverty as well as wealth ceases to be hereditary, you see the distance that
separates the worker from the master decrease every day in fact and in
opinion.
The worker conceives a higher idea of his rights, of his future, of himself;
a new ambition, new desires ll him, new needs assail him. At every mo-
ment, he casts eyes full of covetousness on the prots of those who employ
him; in order to come to share them, he tries hard to set his work at the
highest price, and he usually ends by succeeding in doing so.
[Thus equality of conditions tends to lead to the gradual elevation of
salaries, and in turn, the elevation of salaries constantly increases equality
of conditions. So the slow and progressive augmentation of salaries seems
to me one of the general laws that govern democratic societies.
But, in our times, a great and unfortunate exception presents itself.
I showed in the rst part of this work how a few of the principles of
aristocracy, after being chased away from political society found refuge in
the industrial world. This profoundly modies, but only in some points,
the general truth that I announced above.]
c
In democratic countries, as elsewhere, most industries are conducted at
little cost by men not placed by wealth and enlightenment above the com-
mon level of those they employ. These entrepreneurs of industry are very
numerous; their interests differ; [their number varies and is constantly re-
Democracy pushes toward commerce and commerce remakes an aristocracy.
This danger cannot be averted except by the discovery of means (associations or
others) by the aid of which you could do commerce without accumulating as much
capital in the same hands.
Immense question.
I believe that I would do well to touch upon these questions, to cast the most
penetrating glance that I could at them, but without stopping there. They demand
a book themselves (Rubish, 2).
c. In the margin: <Perhaps instead of putting the general ideas separately in the rst
volume, they should energetically and in a few words be explained here. The more I
think about it, the more I amof this opinion. I amleaving the notes for this part nearby.>
s alari es 1027
newed] so they cannot easily agree among themselves and combine their
efforts.
On the other side, almost all the workers have some assured resources
that allow them to refuse their services when someone does not want to
give them what they consider as just payment for their work.
In the continual struggle that these two classes wage over salaries,
strength is therefore divided; successes alternate.
It is even to be believed that in the long run the interest of the workers
must prevail; for the high salaries that they have already gained make them
less dependent every day on their masters, and the more independent they
are, the more easily they can gain an increase in salaries.
I will take as example the industry that today is still the most practiced
among us, as among nearly all the nations of the world: the cultivation of
the land.
In France, most of those who rent their services to cultivate the soil
themselves possess a few parcels, which if necessary, allow them to subsist
without working for others. When the latter come to offer their hands to
the great landowner or to a neighboring farmer, andthey refuse togivethem
a certain salary, they withdraw to their small domain and wait for another
occasion to present itself.
d
I think that by taking these things as a whole, you can say that the slow
and progressive elevation of salaries is one of the general laws that govern
democratic societies. As conditions become more equal, salaries rise, and
the higher salaries are, the more equal conditions become.
But, in our times, a great and unfortunate exception is found.
d. The four paragraphs that follow are missing in the manuscript. In their place you
nd the following paragraph:
But there are in our times certain very important industries that must from the start
be undertaken as large, with great capital, numerous relationships and a great credit,
in order to pursue them protably. In these industries, the master provides at great
expense the raw material and the tools; the workers give only their labor. You un-
derstand from the rst that the industrial entrepreneurs should necessarily expect
great prots, for without that, they would remain idle and would not risk their ac-
quired wealth for a small gain.
As it is necessary to be already . . .
s alari es 1028
I showed, in a preceding chapter,
e
how aristocracy, chased frompolitical
society, withdrew into certain parts of the industrial world, and there es-
tablished its dominion under another form.
This powerfully inuences the level of salaries.
f
As it is necessary to be already very rich in order to undertake the great
industries I am talking about, the number of those who undertake them is
very small. Being few, they can easily be in league with each other, and set
the price that they please for work.
g
e. In a rst version, in the rubish, you nd here this note: This chapter is the [blank
(ed.)] of the rst volume. It was not found in the edition of 1834 [sic ] and was only
inserted since (Rubish, 2).
f. All societies that are born begin by organizing themselves aristocratically. Industry
is subject to this law at this moment.
Industry today shows all the advantages and all the disadvantages inherent in
aristocracy.
June 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 12). See note b of p. 980.
g. 1. Why can I call the constitution of a certain industry aristocratic?
2. Why does this constitutiontendto drive downsalaries? What it has of aristocratic.
It can only be exercised by a small number of men, because in order to prot from
this industry, you must have great capital, a great credit, very extensive relationships.
It places a few owners called manufacturers opposite a multitude of proletarians
called workers who work in the factory as the agricultural population cultivated the
land three centuries ago, without spirit of ownership and without gradual partici-
pation in the prots./
No permanent bond between poor and rich./
The poor become rich with difculty, but the rich become poor easily, and if they
remained rich, they would not always be in contact with the same poor./
.-.-.-.- Since the manufacturers are very few, they can easily come to an agreement
and pay only a certain price for work and, if anyone refuses the conditions they pro-
pose, they can wait without ruining themselves. While the workers can reach such
an agreement only with difculty; and they die of hunger if they do not succeed in
their project at the rst blow./
Moreover, these are labors of a particular type that give to the body special habits
that make it unsuitable to something else./
What it has of democratic.
Wealth accumulated in this way does not establish family. It forms an exception
in the general system and does not take long to submit to the common law. There
s alari es 1029
Their workers are, on the contrary, in very great number, and the quan-
tity grows constantly; for extraordinary prosperity arrives fromtime totime
during which salaries rise beyond measure and attract the surrounding
population to manufacturing. Now, once men have entered this career, we
have seen that they cannot come out of it, because they do not take long
to contract the habits of body and mind that make them unsuited to any
other labor.
h
These men in general have little enlightenment, industry and
resources; so they are almost at the mercy of their master. When compe-
tition or other fortuitous circumstances make the gains of the latter de-
crease, he can restrict their salaries almost at will, and easily regain from
them what fortune has taken away from him.
If by common agreement they refuse work, the master, who is a rich
man, can easily wait, without ruining himself, until necessity leads them
back to him; but they must work every day in order to live, for they have
hardly any other property except their hands. Oppression has already for a
long time impoverished them, and they are easier to oppress as they become
poorer. It is a vicious circle from which they can in no way emerge.
[Thus, while in the rest of society ranks mingle each day and conditions
become closer, an immense distance, greater every day, separates the servant
and the master here. Their position, their future, their tastes, their mores
differ profoundly. Nothing in their lot is similar. Between these two men,
contact is purely material; their souls do not know each other. <The master
has only a confused idea of the needs, the sufferings and the joys of the
worker. So he can feel for him only a little sympathy; in his eyes, the worker
is not his fellow, not even his neighbor, for Christian charity hardly warms
are great manufacturing fortunes, but there are no manufacturing families, nor even
a manufacturing class that has its separate spirit, traditions, tastes.
If the children of the rich manufacturer constantly fall back into the crowd, every
day out of the crowd arise men who take their place; thus there is never any classi-
cation or immobility in the social body, which forms nonetheless the characteristics
(Rubish, 2).
h. In a textile mill, on the contrary, the worker is a poor devil who owns only his
hands and who needs them every day (Rubish, 2).
s alari es 1030
hearts in our time.> So in these industries, the master nds himself with
regard to his workers in a position analogous to the one formerly occupied
by the great landed proprietor vis-a`-vis the agricultural class. With this dif-
ference, nonetheless, that the aristocracy based on trade establishes no solid
bondof memory, affection, andinterest withthe populationthat surrounds
it; that it hardly ever settles in a permanent manner amid the surrounding
population and that its goal is not to govern that population, but to make
use of it.]
j
So you should not be astonished if salaries, after sometimes rising
suddenly, go down here in a permanent way, while in other professions,
the cost of labor, which in general grows only little by little, increases
constantly.
This state of dependence and misery in which a part of the industrial
population nds itself in our time is an exceptional fact contrary to all that
surrounds it; but for this very reason, there is no fact more serious, or one
that better deserves to attract the particular attention of the legislator; for
it is difcult, when the whole society moves, to hold one class immobile,
and it is difcult, when the greatest number constantly open new roads to
fortune, to make a few endure their needs and their desires in peace.
j. In the margin: 
1031
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 8
a
Inuence of Democracy on the Family
b
I have just examined how, among democratic peoples, and in particular
among the Americans, equality of conditions modies the relationships of
citizens with each other.
a. After showing how equality modied the relationships of citizens, I want to pen-
etrate further and show how it acts on the relationships of family members.
The father in the aristocratic family is not only the author of the family, he is its
political head, the pontiff. . . .
Democracy destroys everything political and conventional that there was in his
authority, but it does not destroy this authority; it only gives it another character.
The magistrate has disappeared, the father remains.
The same thing with brothers, the articial bond that united brothers in the aris-
tocratic family is destroyed. The natural bond becomes stronger.
This is applicable to all associations based on natural sentiments. Democracy re-
laxes social bonds, it tightens natural bonds (YTC, CVf, pp. 4142).
b. On a jacket containing the manuscript of this chapter:
This chapter seems to me to contain some good things, but it was done by ts and
starts, languidly and slowly. It demands to be reviewed all at once in order for the
thought to circulate more easily. Review the rubish carefully./
Development a bit didactic and a bit heavy. If I could delete the aristocratic as
much as possible and allow the mind of the reader to re-do what I remove. That
would be much better.
Note in the rubish: The difculty is that I do not know well what the intimate re-
lationships of father and sons and of brothers among themselves are in America andthat
I can hardly speak except about France. I believe these relationships not hostile, but very
cold in America (Rubish, 2). On the family as antidote to the democratic disease see
F. L. Morton, Sexual Equality and the Family in Tocquevilles Democracy in America,
Canadian Journal of Political Science XVII, no. 2 (1984): 30924; and Laura Janara, De-
mocracy Growing Up. Authority, Autonomy and Passion in Tocquevilles Democracy in
America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).
the fami ly 1032
I want to penetrate further, and enter the bosom of the family. My goal
here is not to look for new truths, but to show how facts already known are
related to my subject.
Everyone has noticed that in our time new relationships have been es-
tablished among the different members of the family, that the distance that
formerly separatedthe father fromhis sonhas diminished, andthat paternal
authority has been, if not destroyed, at least altered.
Something analogous, but still more striking, is seen in the United
States.
In America, the family, taking this word in its Roman and aristocratic
sense, does not exist.
c
Some remnants are found only during the rst years
following the birth of the children. The father then exercises, without op-
position, the domestic dictatorship that the weakness of his sons requires
and that their interest, as well as his incontestable superiority, justies.
d
c. Former beginning of the chapter in the rubish:
There is a perpetual reaction of mores on the mind and of the mind on mores.
If you carefully studied the private [v: interior and exterior] life of the Americans,
you would not fail to discover in a multitude of details the more or less distant effects
of the philosophical method that they have adopted.
But such a study would take me too far away. I want to limit myself to providing
a small number [of (ed.)] examples. I will show a few links, the detached mind of
the reader will grasp the chain.
When men have accepted as general principle that it is good to judge everything
by yourself, taking the opinion of others as information and not as rule, the rela-
tionship of the father with his children, of the master with his servants, andgenerally
of the superior with the inferior nds itself changed.
[In the margin: Religion is a refuge where the human mind rests.
Politics forms an arena in which in the United States the majority, despite its de-
sires, binds it and tires it out by its very inaction.]
Nothing is more visible than this in America.
In the United States, the family . . .
This fragment belongs to the single sheet found in a jacket on which you can read on
the cover: <S>
It would be good to leave this small chapter after philosophical method in order to
show its consequences. I would say at the end that what I had said about the relationship
of the father and the sons extends to that of servants and masters and in general to all
superiors and inferiors, as we will see elsewhere. This chapter is good (Rubish, 2).
d. The manuscript says legitimates.
the fami ly 1033
But from the moment when the young American approaches manhood,
the bonds of lial obedience loosen day by day. Master of his thoughts,
the young American is soon master of his conduct. In America, there is no
adolescence strictly speaking. Coming out of childhood, the man is re-
vealed and begins to follow his own path.
You would be wrong to believe that this happens following a domestic
struggle, in which the son gained, by a kind of moral violence, the liberty
that his father refused to him. The same habits, the same principles that
push the son to seize independence, dispose the other to consider the use
of that independence as an incontestable right.
So you notice in the rst none of these wild passions, full of hatred, that
agitate men for a long time after they have escaped from an established
power. The second does not feel those regrets, full of bitterness and anger,
that usually outlast the deposed power. The father saw from afar the limits
at which his authority had to expire; and when time has brought him to
those limits, he abdicates without difculty. The son foresaw in advance
the precise period when his own will would become his rule, and he takes
hold of liberty without rushing and without effort, as a good that he is due
and that no one seeks to take away from him.
1
1. The Americans, however, have not yet imagined, as we have in France, removing from
fathers one of the principal elements of power, by taking away from them their liberty to
dispose of their property after death. In the United States, the right to make out your will is
unlimited.
In that as in all the rest, it is easy to notice that, if the political legislation of the Americans
is much more democratic than ours, our civil legislation is innitely more democratic than
theirs. That is easily understood.
The author of our civil legislation was a man who saw his interest in satisfying the dem-
ocratic passions of his contemporaries in everything that was not directly and immediately
hostile to his power. He willingly allowed a few popular principles to rule property and govern
families, provided that you did not want to introduce them into the conduct of the State.
While the democratic torrent lled the civil laws, he hoped to keep himself easily sheltered
behind the political laws. This view is at the same time full of cleverness and egoism; but such
a compromise could not last. For, in the long run, political society cannot fail to become the
expression and the image of civil society; and it is in this sense that you can say that there is
nothing more political among a people than the civil legislation.
e
e. In the manuscript this note appears above, at the word path. At this place you
nd, instead, this other note:
the fami ly 1034
Pieces that probably must be put in notes at the bottom of the pages of this
chapter./
Note (B)./
I know that something analogous to what I have just said shows itself in England,
one of the countries in the world where until today aristocracy has preservedthe most
dominion, and paternal authority the least power. From this juxtaposition you could
conclude that the sentiment of independence in children is more English than dem-
ocratic, and that it is due less to the habits of equality that have been contracted in
the United States than to the political liberty that reigns there.
I do not think that it is so.
The bonds that hold together the various elements of the family seem to me still
much less tight among the Americans thanamong the English, andtheyloosenvisibly
among the latter as their laws and their mores become more democratic. The result,
it seems to me, is that if it is true that a certain sentiment of independence can exist
within a family without equality reigning in the State, at least it must be recognized
that democracy favors and develops it.
You must not forget, moreover, that England is a very aristocratic country in the
middle of which a great number of democratic ideas have circulated from time im-
memorial and whose laws have always been intermingled with some institutions ap-
propriate only to democracy.
What is the sovereign rule of public [v: national] opinion to which all the English
of the last [century (ed.)] constantly declared that you must submit, if not a still
obscure notion of the democratic dogma of the sovereignty of the people?
What does this general principle mean that the money of those paying taxes, who-
ever they are, can only be taxed when the latter have themselves or by their represen-
tatives voted the tax, if not the explicit recognition of the democratic right of all to
participate in the government?
If I glance generally at English society, I see clearly that the aristocracy leads the
State and directs the provinces, but if I look withinthe administrationof theparishes,
I discover that there at least the entire society governs itself; I see that everythingcomes
from it [v: the people] and returns to it.
1
I notice ofcers who, freely elected by the
universality of citizens, are occupied withthe poor, inspect the roads, direct the affairs
of the church, administer in an almost sovereign way common property. The au-
thority created in this way is very limited, I admit, but it is essentially democratic.
Expand the circle of attributions and you will believe yourself suddenly transported
to one of the towns of Massachusetts {New England}.
These reections, which came in relation to a detail, could serve to explain many
important things that are happening at this moment before our eyes.
So nothing that is taking place today among the English is an entirely new devel-
opment. The English are not creating democracy, they are expanding in Englandthe
democratic spirit and democratic customs.
(1) <Here a note. Ask Reeve.>
the fami ly 1035
It is perhaps useful to demonstrate how these changes that took place in
the family are closely tied to the social and political revolutionthat is nally
being accomplished before our eyes.
f
There are certain great social principles that a people apply everywhere
or allow to subsist nowhere.
In countries organized aristocratically and hierarchically, power never
addresses itself directly to the whole of the governed. Since men depend
on each other, you limit yourself to leading the rst ones. The rest follow.
This applies to the family, as to all associations that have a head. Among
aristocratic peoples, society knows, strictly speaking, only the father. It
holds onto the sons only by the hands of the father; it governs him and he
governs them. So the father has not only a natural right. He is given a po-
litical right to command. He is the author and the sustainer of the family;
he is also its magistrate.
In democracies, where the arm of the government goes to nd eachman
in particular in the middle of the crowd in order to bend him separately
to the common laws, there is no need for such an intermediary; the father
is, in the eyes of the law, only a citizen older and richer than his sons.
When most conditions are very unequal, and when inequality of con-
ditions is permanent, the idea of the superior grows in the imagination of
men; should the law not grant him prerogatives, custom and opinion con-
cede themto him.
g
When, on the contrary, mendiffer little fromeachother
and do not always remain dissimilar, the general notion of the superior
See the letter of Henry Reeve to Tocqueville (London, 29 March 1836, YTC, CVa,
pp. 4144); published by James T. Schleifer in Tocqueville and Centralization: Four
Previously UnpublishedManuscripts, Yale University Library Gazette 58, nos. 12(1983):
3336; and Tocquevilles response (Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, 1, pp. 2930).
f. The following paragraph replaces this passage of the manuscript: Thus at the same
time that great changes are taking place today in society, changes no less great are taking
place in the family.
It is perhaps useful to demonstrate how these two things are connected and to show
what the causes and the limits are of the democratic revolution that is nally being ac-
complished before our eyes.
g. In the margin: <Should this sentence be included?/
The great power that the father exercises in aristocratic countries takes its source not
only in a law and in a custom. The spirit {the ensemble} of all the customs and all the
laws comes to his aid.>
the fami ly 1036
becomes weaker and less clear; in vain does the will of the legislator try hard
to place the one who obeys far below the one who commands; mores bring
these two men closer to each other and draw them every day toward the
same level.
So if I do not see, in the legislation of an aristocratic people, particular
privileges accorded to the head of the family, I will not fail to be assured
that his power is very respected and more extensive than within a democ-
racy; for I knowthat, whatever the laws, the superior will always seemhigher
and the inferior lower in aristocracies than among democratic peoples.
When men live in the memory of what was rather than in the preoc-
cupationwithwhat is, andwhenthey are muchmore concernedabout what
their ancestors thought than about trying to think for themselves, the father
is the natural and necessary bond between the past and the present, the link
where these two chains end and join together.
h
In aristocracies, the father
is therefore not only the political head of the family; he is the organ of
traditions, the interpreter of customs, the arbiter of mores. You listen to
him with deference; you approach him only with respect, and the love that
you give him is always tempered by fear.
When the social state becomes democratic, and men adopt as general
principle that it is good and legitimate to judge everything for yourself
while taking ancient beliefs as information and not as a rule, the power of
opinion exercised by the father over the sons, as well as his legal power,
becomes less great.
The division of patrimonies that democracy brings contributes perhaps
more than all the rest to changing the relationships of father and children.
When the father of the family has little property, his son and he live
constantly in the same place and are busy together with the same work.
h. I saw a commune in France in which the inhabitants did not go to church on
Sunday. But they lled the cemetery on All Souls Day; their beliefs revived suddenly at
the memory of the family members they had lost; and they felt the needto pray for them,
even when they forgot to do it for themselves.
To put in the place where I say that democracy makes the sentiments of family
milder. If I must say so, a touching tableau can be made there in a few words (YTC,
CVk, 1, p. 18).
the fami ly 1037
Habit and need draw them closer and force them to communicate with
each other at every moment; so a sort of familial intimacy cannot fail to be
established between them, which makes authority less absolute, and which
is badly adapted to external forms of respect.
j
Now, among democratic peoples, the class that possesses these small for-
tunes is precisely the one that empowers ideas and shapes mores. It at the
same time makes its opinions, like its will, prevail everywhere, and even
those who are most inclined to resist its commands end up letting them-
selves be led by its examples. I have seen ery enemies of democracy who
had their children address them with tu [the familiar form].
Thus, at the same time that power is escaping from aristocracy, you see
disappear what there was of [the] austere, conventional and legal in pa-
ternal power, and a kind of equality becomes established around the do-
mestic hearth.
I do not know if, everything considered, society loses with this change;
but I am led to believe that the individual gains. I think that as mores and
laws are more democratic, the relationships of father and son become more
intimate and milder; rule and authority are encountered less often; con-
dence and affection are often greater, and it seems that the natural bond
tightens, while the social bond loosens.
In the democratic family, the father exercises hardly any power other
than the one that you are pleased to grant to the tenderness and experience
of an old man. His orders would perhaps be unrecognized; but his advice
is usually full of power. If he is not surrounded by ofcial respect, his sons
at least approach him with condence. There is no recognized formula for
speaking to him; but he is spoken to constantly and readily consultedevery
day. The master and the magistrate have disappeared; the father remains.
It is sufcient, to judge the difference between these two social states on
this point, to skim through the domestic correspondence that aristocracies
j. In a variant: The relationships of a rich man with his family are rare and solemn.
He only appears surrounded by a sort of domestic pomp; his sons see him only from
afar. Business, pleasures, a tutor and valets separate him from them. Now, in aristocracy,
the rich form a separate corps and a permanent association, and they regulate customs
as well as laws.
the fami ly 1038
have left us. The style is always correct, ceremonial, rigid, and so cold that
the natural warmth of the heart can hardly be felt through the words.
There reigns, in contrast, in all the words that a son addresses to his
father, among democratic peoples, something free, familiar, and tender at
the same time that reveals at rst glance that new relationships have been
established within the family.
[Here, moreover, as elsewhere, the democratic revolution is accompa-
nied and sometimes followed by great excesses.
When the barriers that separated the different members of the family
go down, before new limits are yet xed and well-known, it often happens
that the father and the children mix in a kind of unnatural equality and
gross familiarity. The father is then no longer a tender, but grave and a bit
austere friend; he is a joyful companion of pleasure and sometimes a vile
comrade of debauchery. He does not work to elevate the reason of his sons
to the level of his. To please them better, he reduces his maturity to the
level of their juvenile passions.
This is anarchy and corruption, and not democracy.]
k
An analogous revolution modies the mutual relationships of the
children.
In an aristocratic family, as well as in aristocratic society, all the places
are marked. Not only does the father there occupy a separate rankandenjoy
immense privileges; the children themselves are not equal to eachother; age
and gender x irrevocably for each his rank and assure him certain prerog-
atives. Democracy overturns or reduces most of these barriers.
In the aristocratic family, the eldest of the sons, since he inherits the
greatest part of the property and almost all the rights, becomes the head
and to a certain point the master of his brothers. Greatness and power are
his; mediocrity and dependence are theirs. Nonetheless, it would be a mis-
take to believe that, among aristocratic peoples, the privileges of the eldest
were advantages to him alone, and that they excited around him only envy
and hate.
k. In the margin: <Piece not to include, I believe, because it reproduces in a mo-
notonous way the idea of the transitional period that is found in several chapters and
notably in the preceding chapter.>
the fami ly 1039
The eldest usually tries hard to obtain wealth and power for his brothers,
because the general splendor of the house is reected on the one who rep-
resents it; and the younger brothers try to facilitate all the enterprises of
the eldest, because the grandeur and strength of the head of the family
make him more and more able to elevate all the branches.
So the various members of the aristocratic family are very tightly bound
together; their interests go together, their minds are in agreement; but it is
rare that their hearts understand each other.
Democracy also joins the brothers to each other; but it goes about it in
another way.
Under democratic laws, the children are perfectly equal, consequently
independent; nothing necessarily draws themcloser together, but alsonoth-
ing pushes them apart; and since they have a common origin, grow up
under the same roof, are the object of the same concerns, and since no
particular prerogative differentiates or separates them, you see arising easily
among themthe sweet and youthful intimacy of childhood. Withthe bond
thus formed at the beginning of life, occasions for breaking that bond
hardly present themselves, for fraternity draws themcloser eachdaywithout
hampering them.
So it is not by interests, it is by the community of memories and the free
sympathy of opinions and tastes that democracy attaches brothers to each
other. It divides their inheritance, but it allows their souls to blend.
The sweet pleasure of these democratic mores is so great that the par-
tisans of aristocracy themselves allow themselves to adopt it, and after en-
joying it for a time, they are not tempted to return to the respectful and
cold forms of the aristocratic family. They willingly keep the domestic hab-
its of democracy, provided that they can reject its social state and its laws.
But these things go together, and you cannot enjoy the rst without un-
dergoing the others.
What I have just said about lial love and fraternal tenderness must be
understood about all the passions that spontaneously have their sources in
nature itself.
When a certain way of thinking or of feeling is the product of a partic-
ular state of humanity, once this state changes, nothing remains. Thus, the
law can tie two citizens very closely together; once the lawis abolished, they
the fami ly 1040
separate [and again become strangers]. There was nothing tighter than the
knot that joined the vassal to the lord in the feudal world. Now these two
men no longer know each other. The fear, the recognition and the love that
formerly bound them have disappeared. You do not nd a trace of them.
But it is not so with the natural sentiments of the human species. It is
rare that the law, by trying hard to bend those sentiments in a certain way,
does not weaken them, that by wanting to add to them, the law does not
take something away from them, and that, left to themselves, those senti-
ments are not always stronger.
Democracy, which destroys or obscures nearly all the old social conven-
tions and prevents men from stopping easily at new ones, makes most of
the sentiments that arise from these conventions disappear entirely. But it
only modies the others, and often it gives them an energy and a sweetness
that they did not have.
I think that it is not impossible to contain in a single sentence the entire
meaning of this chapter and of several others that precede it. Democracy
loosens social bonds, but it tightens natural bonds. It brings family mem-
bers closer together at the same time that it separates citizens.
[This in my view is one of the most incontestable advantages of dem-
ocratic institutions. When men are naturally strangers [v: far apart], it can
be good to draw them toward each other and tie them together in an ar-
ticial way. But when they are naturally close and keep together, the science
of the legislator rarely adds to their union and can harm it.]
m
m. In the margin: <That is not the place.>
1041
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 9
a
Education of Young Girls in the United States
b
There have never been free societies without morals, and as I said in the
rst part of this work, it is the woman who molds the morals. Soeverything
that inuences the condition of women, their habits and their opinions,
has a great political interest in my view.
c
a. Liberty of young girls in the United States.
Firmness and coldness of their reason. They have pure morals rather than chaste
minds.
The Americans wanted them to regulate themselves. They made a constant appeal
to their individual reason.
Democratic education necessary to keep women from the dangers that arise from
democratic mores (YTC, CVf, p. 42). The ideas of this chapter appear almost literally
inMarie (I, pp. 1832). Tocqueville hadalready sketchedthe general features of the chap-
ter on American women in a letter of 28 November 1831 to his sister-in-law, E
milie(YTC,
BIa2). The question had been considered as well at the time of his conversations with
Lieber and Gallatin (non-alphabetic notebooks 1, 2 and 3, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC,
V, 1, pp. 61 and 93).
b. On the jacket which contains the manuscript: Perhaps join 43 and 44 in the same
chapter. This chapter bears number 43 in the manuscript. Number 44 corresponds to
the following chapter. The notes and drafts of this chapter and the following ones are
scattered in several jackets of the Rubish.
c. At rst this chapter began thus:
Nothing struck me more [v: I was strongly] [In the margin: ] in America than the condition of women and I ask permission of
the reader to stop a few moments at this subject. There have never been free societies
without morals, and, as I said in the rst part of this work, it is the womanwho molds
the morals. So everything that inuences the condition of women, their habits and
their opinions, has a great political interest in my view.
The Protestant religion professes higher esteemfor the wisdomof man thanCath-
olicism does. It shows a much greater condence in the light of individual reason.
Protestantism is a democratic doctrine that preceded and facilitated the establish-
educati on of young gi rls 1042
Among nearly all the Protestant nations, young girls are innitely more
in control of their actions than among Catholic peoples.
This independence is still greater in Protestant countries that, like En-
gland, have kept or acquired the right to govern themselves. Liberty then
penetrates the family by political habits and by religious beliefs.
In the United States, the doctrines of Protestantism come to combine
with a very free constitutionanda very democratic social state; andnowhere
is the young girl more quickly or more completely left to herself.
A long time before the young American girl has reached nubile age, she
begins to be freed little by little from maternal protection; she has not yet
entirely left childhood when already she thinks by herself, speaks freely and
acts alone; the great world scene is exposed constantly before her; far from
trying to hide it from her view, it is laid bare more and more every day
before her sight, and she is taught to consider it with a rm and calm eye.
Thus, the vices and perils presented by society do not take long to be re-
vealed to her; she sees them clearly, judges them without illusion and faces
them without fear; for she is full of condence in her strength, and her
condence seems shared by all those who surround her.
So you must almost never expect to nd with the American young girl
this virginal guilelessness amidawakening desires, anymore thanthesena ve
and ingenuous graces that usually accompany the European girl in the pas-
sage from childhood to youth. It is rare that the American, whatever her
age, shows puerile timidity and ignorance. Like the European young girl,
she wants to please, but she knows the cost precisely. If she does not give
ment of social and political equality. Men have, if I can say so, made democracy pass
by heaven before establishing it on earth.
The practical differences of these different religious theories make themselves seen
principally by the way in which the education of women is directed. For it is always
in the circle of the family and domestic affairs that religion exercises the most
dominion.
[In the margin, with a bracket that includes the last three paragraphs and the fol-
lowing three: <Probably delete this. It is dangerous ground on which I shouldgo only
by necessity.>]
Among nearly all . . .
herself to evil, at least she knows about it; she has pure morals, rather than
a chaste mind.
I was often surprised and almost frightened by seeing the singular dex-
terity and happy boldness with which the American young girls knew how
to direct their thoughts and their words amid the pitfalls of a lively con-
versation; a philosopher would have stumbled a hundred times on the nar-
row path that they traveled without accident and without difculty.
It is easy in fact to recognize that, even amid the independence of her
earliest youth, the American girl never entirely ceases to be in control of
herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without abandoning herself to
any one of them, and her reason never relinquishes the reins, although it
often seems to let them hang loosely.
d
In France, where we still mix in such a strange way the debris of all the
ages in our opinions and in our tastes, it often happens that we give women
a timid, secluded and almost monastic education, as in the time of aris-
tocracy; and we then abandon them suddenly, without guide and without
help, amid the disorders inseparable from a democratic society.
The Americans are in better harmony with themselves.
They have seenthat, withina democracy, individual independencecould
not fail to be very great, youth precocious, tastes badly restrained, custom
changeable, public opinionoftenuncertainor powerless, paternal authority
weak and marital power in question.
e
In this state of things, they judged that there was little chance of being
able to repress in the woman the most tyrannical passions of the human
heart, and that it was surer to teach her the art of combatting themherself.
As they could not prevent her virtue from often being in danger, they
wanted her to know how to defend her virtue, and they counted more on
the free effort of her will than onweakenedor destroyedbarriers. Soinstead
of keeping her distrustful of herself, they try constantly to increase her
d. In the margin, beside an earlier version: <Philosophers have argued among
themselves for six thousand years to determine the precise limits that separate licentious-
ness from an innocent liberty, but here is a young girl who seems to have discovered this
precise [v: delicate] point by herself and who settles herself there.>
e. In the manuscript you nd the word limited.
condence in her own strength. Having neither the possibility nor the de-
sire to keep the young girl in a perpetual and complete ignorance, they
hastened to give her a precocious knowledge of everything. Far fromhiding
the corrupt things of the world from her, they wanted her to see them rst
and train herself to ee them, and they preferred to guarantee her honesty
than to respect her innocence too much.
f
Although the Americans are a strongly religious people, they did not rely
on religion alone to defend the virtue of the woman; they sought to arm
her reason. In this, as in many other circumstances, they followed the same
f. On a sheet of the manuscript which bears the title Rubish:
Moreover you would be wrong to believe that in the United States reason alone is
reliedonto guide and assure the rst steps of the young girl [inthe margin: the general
independence of the mind and the Christian faith on certain specic dogmas].
I said elsewhere how in democracies the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty
were marvelously combined. This idea constantly presents itself to me without my
seeking it, and I nd it at each turn of my subject.
In America religious belief has for a long time become a public opinion. It reigns
despotically on the mind [v: intelligence] of the majority and uses democracy itself
to limit the errors of democratic liberty in the moral world.
The Americans have made incredible efforts to get individual independence to
regulate itself and it is only when they have nally arrived at the farthest limits of
human strength that they have nally called religion to their aid and have had them-
selves sustained in its arms.
[In the margin: This entire page seems to me of the sort to be deleted. I have already
spoken many times about the effects of religion. I will speak yet again about it when
it concerns mores. This last idea, moreover, makes the mind suddenly and disa-
greeably enter a path for which it is not prepared.]
In a rough draft of the Rubish the fragment continues in this way:
Thus, in whatever direction I turn my subject, I always notice the same objects at the
end of the course that I want to follow. Always I see American liberty relying on faith
and marching in concert with it. Thus I arrive by a new road at the point that I had
already reached in another part of this work, and I conclude at this time as then that
if nations subjected to an aristocracy or to a despot can, if need be, do without re-
ligious beliefs without ceasing to form a society, it cannot be the same for republican
and democratic peoples; and that if the rst must want to believe in order to nd an
alleviation for their miseries, the second need to believe in order to exist (rubish of
the chapter on the regularity of mores, Rubish, 2).
method. They rst made incredible efforts to get individual independence
to regulate itself, and it is only after arriving at the farthest limits of human
strength, that they nally called religion to their help [and made it sustain
them in its arms].
g
I know that such an education is not without danger; nor am I unaware
that it tends to develop judgment at the expense of imagination, and to
make honest and cold women rather than tender wives and amiable com-
panions to man. If society is more tranquil and better ordered because of
it, private life often has fewer charms. But those are secondary evils that
must be faced because of a larger interest. Having come to the point where
we are, we are no longer allowed to make a choice. A democratic education
is needed to protect the woman from the perils with which the institutions
and mores of democracy surround her.
[Fragment of rubish that was to have served to link this chapter to the one
following.
[The beginning is missing (ed.)] her family? To each she addresses a
word, a smile, a look. Young men who met her in a public gathering ap-
proach her; and while walking, she converses familiarly with them. By the
freedom of all her movements, you easily nd that nothing in her actions
should surprise those who see her or trouble herself. Liberty and at the
same time the discreet reserve of her words show that, despite her young
age, she has already ceased to see the world through the virginal veil of
rst innocence and that, if she has not yet learned at her expense to know
human perversity, the example of others has at least been enough to teach
her about it. Do not be afraid that the ow of a lively conversation will
lead her beyond the limits of propriety; she is the mistress of her thought
like all the rest, andshe knows howto holdherself easily withinthe narrow
space that separates innocent banter from licentious speech. Philosophers
have argued among themselves for six thousand years to determine the
precise point where virtue ends and vice begins, but here is a young girl
who seems to have knownhowto separate themat rst glance. Constantly,
you see her approach with assurance these formidable limits that she al-
most never crosses.
g. In the margin: <Must that be left?>
Do you want more? Do you desire to know her better still? Follow her
in these brilliant circles where, perhaps alone, she is going this evening.
There you will be able to contemplate her in the full use of her indepen-
dence and in all the splendor of triumph. That is where she enjoys beyond
measure, you could almost say that she abuses without regret, the triple
dominion given by spirit, youth and beauty. She carries along in her wake,
she enlivens those around her. You say to her that she is beautiful, and she
does not try to hide that she is pleased to receive these tributes that ad-
miration lavishes on her. Some come forward to listen to her, others draw
her aside in order to enjoy alone the pleasure of hearing her. She speaks
about literature, politics, clothes, morals, love, religion, the ne arts, fol-
lowing the occasionof the moment andher desires. Sometimes she herself
seems intoxicated by her own words.
But then where is her father? Enclosed in a dusty corner of his house,
he is calculating . . . [large blank (ed.)]
And her mother? Her mother consecrates every instant to the care of
a still young family; perhaps at this moment she is breast-feeding a twelfth
infant just sent to her by Providence. The one, like the other, is little con-
cerned about the actions of their daughter. Do not conclude that they are
indifferent to her fate; they trust more in her precocious reason than in
their surveillance.
<I am in truth sorry to nd fortuitously a connection between some-
thing as gracious andas light as the emerging coquetry [v: innocent liberty]
of a young girl and a matter as grave and as austere as philosophy, but the
necessity of my subject forces me.
So I think, since it must be said, that it is in the philosophical method
of the Americans that you must seek one of the rst causes of this great
liberty left to youth by a common [v: tacit] agreement.
The inhabitants of the UnitedStates have acceptedina general manner
that it was good not to chain the human mind by precedents andcustoms,
that you must not bind the mind to form or enslave it to means, but that
to a certain point it must be left to its natural independence, andyoumust
allow each person to march toward truth by his own path.
Starting from this doctrine, they are not afraid to base society on foun-
dations unknown to their predecessors. They have imposed new rules on
comm[erce (ed.)] and uncovered new resources for human industry.
It is by virtue of this same doctrine that young American girls remain
themselves and can without shame obey the free impulses of their nature
in everything that is not criminal.>
It is true that in America the independence of the woman becomes
lost . . . (In the jacket entitled to profit from the ideas of this
chapter (if i have not already done it) by seeing again the
chapters on the woman, Rubish, 2).]
1048
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 0
a
How the Young Girl Is Found Again
in the Features of the Wife
In America, the independence of the woman becomes irretrievably lost
amid the bonds of marriage. If the young girl is less restrained there than
anywhere else, the wife submits to the most strict obligations. The one
makes the paternal home a place of liberty and pleasure, the other lives in
the house of her husband as in a cloister.
b
These two conditions so different are perhaps not so contrary as you
suppose, and it is natural that American women pass by the one in order
to reach the other.
Religious peoples and industrial nations have a particularly serious idea
of marriage. The rst consider the regularity of the life of a woman as
the best guarantee and the most certain sign of the purity of her morals.
The others see in it the sure proof of the order and the prosperity of the
house.
The Americans form at the very same time a Puritan nation and a com-
mercial people; so their religious beliefs, as well as their industrial habits,
a. The American woman makes the house of her parents a place of liberty and plea-
sure. She leads a monastic life in the house of her husband.
These two conditions so different are less contrary than you imagine. American
women pass naturally by the one in order to reach the other.
It is in the independence of their rst youth and in the manly education that they
then received that they have acquired the experience, the power over themselves and
the (illegible word) withwhichthey submit without hesitationandwithout complaint
to the exigencies of the marriage state (YTC, CVf, p. 43).
b. To the side, in a rst version: An analogous spectacle is seen in England, with this
difference nonetheless that the young girl there is less free andthe womanless constrained
than in the United States.
the young gi rl and the wi fe 1049
lead them to require from the woman an abnegation of herself and a con-
tinual sacrice of her pleasures to her business, which it is rare to ask of
her in Europe. Thus, an inexorable public opinion reigns in the United
States that carefully encloses the woman in the small circle of domestic
interests and duties, and that forbids her to go beyond it.
c
Coming into the world, the young American woman nds these notions
rmly established; she sees the rules that derive from them; she does not
take long to be convinced that she cannot escape one moment from the
customs of her contemporaries without immediately endangeringher tran-
quillity, her honor and even her social existence, and in the rmness of her
reason and in the manly habits that her education gave her, she nds the
energy to submit.
You can say that it is from the practice of independence that she drew
the courage to endure the sacrice without struggle andwithout complaint,
when the moment has come to impose it on herself.
The American woman, moreover, never falls into the bonds of marriage
as into a trap set for her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught in
advance what is expected of her, and it is by herself and freely that she puts
herself under the yoke. She courageously bears her new condition because
she has chosen it.
As in America paternal discipline is very lax and the conjugal bond is
very strict, it is only with circumspection and with fear that a young girl
incurs it. Premature unions are scarcely seen. So American women marry
only when their reason is trained and developed; while elsewhere most
women begin to train and to develop their reason only in marriage.
I am, moreover, very far from believing that this great change that takes
place in all the habits of women in the United States, as soon as they are
married, must be attributed only to the constraint of public opinion. Often
they impose it on themselves solely by the effort of their will.
When the time has arrived to choose a husband, this cold and austere
c. Fromthe moment whenthe worldbecomes commercial, the householdis nothing
more than a house of commerce, a name of a rm. K[ergorlay (ed.)] (In the rubish of
the chapter on the family, Rubish, 2).
reason, which the free view of the world has enlightened and strengthened,
indicates to the American woman that a light and independent spirit in the
bonds of marriage is a matter of eternal trouble, not of pleasure; that the
amusements of the young girl cannot become the diversions of the wife,
and that for the woman the sources of happiness are in the conjugal home.
Seeing inadvance andclearly the only roadthat canleadtodomesticfelicity,
she takes it with her rst steps, and follows it to the end without trying to
go back.
This same vigor of will that the young wives of America display, by
bowing suddenly and without complaint to the austere duties of their new
state, is found as well in all the great trials of their life.
There is no country in the world where particular fortunes are more
unstable than in the United States. It is not rare that, in the course of his
existence, the same man climbs and again descends all the degrees that lead
from opulence to poverty.
The women of America bear these [sudden] revolutions with a tranquil
and indomitable energy. You would say that their desires narrowwith their
fortune, as easily as they expand.
Most of the adventurers who go each year to people the uninhabited
areas of the west belong, as I said in my rst work,
d
to the old Anglo-
American race of the North. Several of these men who run with such
boldness toward wealth already enjoyed comfort in their country. They
lead their companions with them and make them share the innumerable
perils and miseries that always signal the beginning of such enterprises. I
often met at the limits of the wilderness young women who, after being
raised amid all of the renements of the great cities of NewEngland, had
passed, almost without transition, from the rich homes of their parents
to a badly sealed hut in the middle of a wood. Fever, solitude, boredom
had not broken the main springs of their courage. Their features seemed
altered and faded, but their view was rm. They appeared at once sad and
resolute.
d. See p. 458 of the second volume.
I do not doubt that these young American women had amassed, in their
rst education, this internal strength that they then used.
So the young girl in the United States is still found in the features of the
wife; the role has changed, the habits differ, the spirit is the same.
1052
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 1
a
How Equality of Conditions Contributes to
Maintaining Good Morals in America
There are philosophers and historians who have said, or implied, that
women were more or less severe in their morals depending on whether they
lived farther from or closer to the equator. That is getting out of the matter
cheaply, and in this case, a globe and a compass would sufce to resolve in
an instant one of the most difcult problems that humanity presents.
I do not see that this materialistic doctrine is established by the facts.
The same nations have shown themselves, in different periods of their
history, chaste or dissolute. So the regularity or the disorderliness of their
a. Climate, race and religion are not enough to explain the great regularity of morals
in the United States.
You must resort to the social and political state.
How democracy favors the regularity of morals.
1. It prevents disorderliness before marriage, because you can always marry.
2. It prevents it afterward.
1. Because you have loved and chosen each other and because it is to be believed
that you suit each other.
2. Because if you were mistaken, public opinion no longer accepts that you fail to
fulll freely accepted commitments.
3. Other causes:
1. Continual occupation of men and women.
2. Nature of these occupations that removes the taste as well as the time to give
themselves without restraint to their passions.
4. Why what is happening in Europe and in France is contrary to this, and this
makes our morals become more lax as our social state more democratic (YTC, CVf,
pp. 4344).
equali ty of condi ti ons and good morals 1053
morals is due to a few changeable causes, and not only to the nature of the
country, which did not change.
I will not deny that, in certain climates, the passions that arise from the
mutual attraction of the sexes are particularly ardent; but I think that this
natural ardor can always be excited or restrained by the social state and the
political institutions.
Although the travelers who have visited North America differ among
themselves on several points, they all agree in noting that morals there are
innitely more severe than anywhere else.
It is clear that, on this point, the Americans are very superior to their
fathers, the English. Asupercial viewof the two nations is enoughtoshow
it.
b
In England, as in all the other countries of Europe, public spite is con-
stantly brought to bear on the weaknesses of women. You often hear phi-
losophers and statesmen complain that morals are not regular enough, and
literature assumes it every day.
b. Good morals./
Democracy is favorable to good morals, even apart from religious beliefs. This is
proved in two ways:
1. In England, same beliefs, but not the same morals. Recall on this subject the
remark that I made in a letter to Basil Hall in which I said that, without allowing
myself to judge alone the morals of American women and English women, I was
however led to believe the rst superior to the second. In America, no one allows
himself to say a single word about the honor of women. Foreigners themselves keep
quiet about it. I have even seen some corrupt enough to regret the purity of morals.
All books, even novels, assume chaste women. In England, the dandies talk about
getting lucky, philosophers complain that the morality of women is decreasing, for-
eigners tell racy escapades and books (illegible word) leave it to be assumed.
2. An aristocracy without beliefs (like that of France, for example, or that of En-
gland under Charles II). Nothing more excessive .-[you (ed.)].- then see what .-[the
(ed.)].- aristocracy can do when it goes in the same direction as passions. The French
aristocracy evenwhenit was enlightenedwas still innitely less regular thanthe Amer-
ican democracy.
[In the margin] Horrible excesses of the Roman aristocracy. See Properce (Rubish,
2). The letter to Basil Hall is cited in note d of p. 819.
In America, all books, without excepting novels, assume women to be
chaste, and no one tells racy escapades.
This great regularity of American morals is undoubtedly due in part to
the country, to race, to religion.
c
But all these causes, which are found else-
where, are still not enough to explain it. For that you must resort to some
particular reason.
This reason appears to me to be equality and the institutions that derive
from it.
Equality of conditions does not by itself alone produce regularity of
morals; but you cannot doubt that it facilitates and augments it.
Among aristocratic peoples, birth and fortune often make men and
women beings so different that they can never succeed in uniting. Passions
draw them together, but the social state and the ideas that the social state
suggests prevent them from joining in a permanent and open way. From
that a great number of eeting and clandestine unions necessarily arise.
Nature compensates in secret for the constraint that the laws impose.
The same thing does not happen when equality of conditions has made
all the imaginary or real barriers that separate the man from the woman
fall. There is then no young woman who does not believe herself able to
become the wife of the man she prefers; this makes disorderliness inmorals
before marriage very difcult. For, whatever the credulity of passions, there
is hardly any way for a womanto be persuaded that someone loves her when
he is perfectly free to marry her and does not do so.
The same cause acts, although in a more indirect manner, in marriage.
Nothing serves better to legitimate illegitimate love in the eyes of those
who feel it or in the eyes of the crowd who contemplate it, than forced
unions or unions made by chance.
1
c. A believing democracy will always be more regular in its morals than a believing
aristocracy (Rubish, 2).
1. It is easy to be convinced of this truth by studying the different literatures of Europe.
When a European wants to retrace in his ction a fewof the great catastrophes that appear
so often among us within marriage, he takes care to excite in advance the pity of the reader
by showing him beings who are badly matched or forced together. Although for a long time
In a country where the woman always freely exercises her choice, and
where education has made her able to choose well, public opinion is un-
relenting about her faults.
The rigor of the Americans arises in part from that. They consider mar-
riage as an often onerous contract, but one by which you are nonetheless
bound strictly to execute all the clauses, because you were able to know
them in advance and you enjoyed complete liberty not to commit yourself
to anything.
d
What makes delity more obligatory makes it easier.
In aristocratic countries the purpose of marriage is to join property
rather than persons; consequently it sometimes happens that the husband
is chosen while in school and the wife while in the care of a wet-nurse. It
is not surprising that the conjugal bond that holds the fortunes of the two
married individuals together allows their hearts to wander at random. That
ows naturally from the spirit of the contract.
When, on the contrary, each person always chooses his owncompanion,
without anything external hindering or even guiding him, it is usually only
our morals have been softened by a great tolerance, it would be difcult to succeedininteresting
us in the misfortunes of these characters if the author did not begin by excusing their failing.
This artice does not fail to succeed. The daily spectacle that we witness prepares us from afar
to be indulgent.
American writers cannot make such excuses credible in the eyes of their readers; their
customs, their laws refuse to do so and, having no hope of making disorderliness amiable, they
do not portray it. It is, in part, to this cause that the small number of novels published in the
United States must be attributed.
d. Fragment at the end of the chapter:
To put in the place where I examine in general if democracy leads to disorderliness.
Somewhere near page 3./
It sometimes happens that in democracies men seem more corrupt than among
aristocratic nations, but here you must be very careful not to be fooled by an
appearance.
Equality of conditions does not make men immoral, but when men are immoral
at the same time that they are equal, the effects of immorality are shown more easily
on the outside.
For, among democratic peoples, since citizens have almost no actiononeachother,
no one takes charge of maintaining order in the society or of keeping humanpassions
in a certain external order.
Thus equality of conditions does not create the corruption of morals, but some-
times it exposes it.
similarity of tastes and ideas that draw the man and the woman closer; and
this same similarity holds and settles them next to one another.
Our fathers had conceived a singular opinion in regard to marriage.
As they had noticed that the small number of marriages by inclination
that took place in their time had almost always had a disastrous outcome,
they had concluded resolutely that in such matters it was very dangerous
to consult your own heart. Chance seemed more clear-sighted thanchoice.
It was not very difcult tosee, however, that the examples theyhadbefore
their eyes proved nothing.
e
I will remark rst that, if democratic peoples grant to women the right
to choose freely their husbands, they take care in advance to provide their
minds with the enlightenment, and their wills with the strength, that can
be necessary for such a choice; while the young women who, among aris-
tocratic peoples, escape furtively from paternal authority in order to throw
themselves into the arms of a man whom they have been given neither the
time to know nor the capacity to judge, lack all of these guarantees. You
cannot be surprised that they make bad use of their free will, the rst time
that they use it; or that they fall into such cruel errors when, not having
received democratic education, they want to follow, in marrying, the cus-
toms of democracy.
But there is more.
When a man and a woman want to come together across the inequalities
of the aristocratic social state, they have immense obstacles to overcome.
After breaking or loosening the bonds of lial obedience, they have to es-
cape, by a nal effort, the rule of custom and the tyranny of opinion; and
when nally they have reached the end of this hard undertaking, they nd
themselves like strangers in the middle of their natural friends and close
relatives; the prejudice that they overcame separates themfromthesefriends
and relatives. This situation does not take long to drain their courage and
to embitter their hearts.
So if it happens that spouses united in this way are at rst unhappy, and
e. There is no man so powerful that he is able to struggle successfully for long against
the whole of the customs and the opinions of his contemporaries, and reason will never
be right against everyone (Rubish, 2).
then guilty, it must not be attributed to the fact that they freely chose each
other, but rather to the fact that they live in a society that does not accept
such choices.
You must not forget, moreover, that the same effort that makes a man
depart violently froma commondelusionalmost always carries himbeyond
reason; that, to dare to declare a war, even a legitimate one, against the ideas
of your century and your country, the spirit must have a certain erce and
adventurous disposition, and that menof this character, whatever direction
they take, rarely attain happiness and virtue. And, to say so in passing, this
is what explains why, in the most necessary and most holy of revolutions,
so few moderate and honest revolutionaries are found.
That, in an aristocratic century, a man dares by chance to consult, con-
cerning the conjugal union, no other preferences than his particular opin-
ion and his taste, and that disorderliness of morals and misery do not sub-
sequently take long toenter his household, must not therefore besurprising.
But, when this same way of acting is the natural and usual order of things,
when the social state facilitates it, when paternal power goes along with it
and when public opinion advocates it, you must not doubt that the internal
peace of families becomes greater and that conjugal faith is better kept.
Nearly all the men of democracies follow a political career or exercise a
profession, and on the other hand, the mediocrity of fortunes obliges the
woman there to enclose herself every day within the interior of her house,
in order to preside herself, and very closely, over the details of domestic
administration.
All these distinct and forced labors are like so many natural barriers that,
separating the sexes, make the solicitations of the one rarer and less intense,
and the resistance of the other easier.
It is not that equality of conditions can ever succeed in making men
chaste; but it gives to the disorderliness of their morals a less dangerous
character. Since no one then has any longer either the leisure or the oc-
casion to attack the virtues that want to defend themselves, you see at the
very same time a great number of courtesans and a multitude of honest
women.
f
f. If that gets to the point that women give themselves to the rst one who comes
Such a state of things produces deplorable individual miseries, but it
does not prevent the social body from being in good form and strong; it
does not destroy the bonds of family and does not enervate national mores.
What puts society in danger is not great corruption among a few, it is the
laxity of all. In the eyes of the legislator, prostitution is less to fear thanlove
affairs.
This tumultuous and constantly fretful life, which equality gives tomen,
not only diverts them from love by removing the leisure to devote them-
selves to it; it also turns them away by a more secret, but more certain road.
All the men who live in democratic times contract more or less the in-
tellectual habits of the industrial and commercial classes; their minds take
a serious, calculating and positive turn; they willingly turn away from the
ideal in order to aimfor some visible and immediate goal that presents itself
as the natural and necessary object of desires. Equality does not in this way
destroy imagination; but it limits it and allows it to y only by skimming
over the earth.
g
No one is less of a dreamer than the citizens of a democracy, and you
hardly see any who want to give themselves to these idle and solitary con-
along without defending themselves, a horrible corruption can result, but it can also
happen that you do not attack women from whom you expect some resistance.
It then happens that there is a multitude of streetwalkers [v: courtesans] and honest
women.
[In the margin: Men always have the time to make love, but not courtship./
Man always attacks no matter what you do. The important thing is that women
defend themselves well] (rubish of the chapters on the woman, Rubish, 2).
g. Love in democracies./
Sentiment rarer but when .-.-.-.- more disorderly, freer from all rules than in
aristocracies.
The greatest love during the century of Louis XIV stopped before certain facts,
certain rules of language, certain ideas that would not stop it today.
[In the margin: See the Romans, the conversations of that time./
A certain moderation of language reigns amid the disorder of the senses.]
I am speaking here only about the barrier that customs present to it and not about
the barrier that virtue presents. The latter is found in all social forms. It weakens or
widens only when the core of mores is altered (rubish of the chapters on the
woman, Rubish, 2).
templations that ordinarily precede and that produce the great agitations
of the heart.
They put, it is true, a great value on gaining for themselves the kind of
profound, regular and peaceful affection that makes the charm and the se-
curity of life; but they do not readily run after the violent and capricious
emotions that disturb and shorten it.
I know that all that precedes is completely applicable only to America
and cannot, for now, be extended in a general way to Europe.
During the half-century that laws and habits have with an unparalleled
energy pushed several European peoples toward democracy, you do not see
that among these nations the relations of man and woman have become
more regular and more chaste. The opposite even allows itself to be seen
in some places. Certain classes are better regulated; general morality seems
more lax. I will not be afraid to note it, for I feel myself no better disposed
to atter my contemporaries than to speak ill of them.
This spectacle must be distressing, but not surprising.
The happy inuence that a democratic social state can exercise on the
regularity of habits is one of those facts that can only be seen in the long
run. If equality of conditions is favorable to good morals, the social effort,
which makes conditions equal, is very deadly to them.
h
During the fty years that France has been undergoing transformation,
we have rarely had liberty, but always disorderliness. Amid this universal
confusion of ideas and this general disturbance of opinions, among this
incoherent mixture of the just and the unjust, of the true and the false, of
the right and the fact, public virtue has become uncertain, and private mo-
rality unsteady.
But all revolutions, whatever their objective or their agents, have at rst
produced similar effects. Even those that ended by tightening the bond of
morals began by loosening it.
h. (Rubish, 2).
So the disorders that we often witness do not seem to be an enduring
fact. Already strange signs herald it.
There is nothing more miserably corrupt than an aristocracy that keeps
its wealth while losing its power, and that, reduced to vulgar enjoyments,
still possesses immense leisure. The energetic passions and great thoughts
that formerly had animated it then disappear, and you hardly ndanything
else except a multitude of small gnawing vices that attach themselves to the
aristocracy like worms to a cadaver.
j
No one disputes that the French aristocracy of the last century was very
dissolute; while ancient habits and old beliefs still maintained respect for
morals in the other classes.
Nor will anyone have any difculty coming to agreement that, in our
time, a certain severity of principles shows itself among the debris of this
same aristocracy, while disorderliness of morals has seemed to spread inthe
middle and inferior ranks of society. So that the same families that ap-
peared, fty years ago, the most lax, appear today the most exemplary, and
that democracy seems to have made only the aristocratic classes moral.
k
[There are men who see in this fact a cause for fears about the future.
I nd in it a reason for hope.]
The Revolution, by dividing the fortunes of the nobles, by forcing them
j. Take away their power and they tear down all the rest themselves. In their obscene
rest, they no longer cultivate even the intellectual tastes that embellished the glorious
leisure of their fathers. But most plunge into a gross well-being and console themselves
with horses and dogs for not being able to govern the State (YTC, CVc, p. 54).
They will be like the Jews among the Christian nations of the Middle Ages [v: after
the destruction of the temple], but different from the Jews on one point; they will not
perpetuate themselves [v: like themthey will await a Messiah who will not come] (YTC,
CVc, p. 60). This same note appears on the back of the jacket of the rubish socia-
bility of the americans. See note c of pp. 126364.
k. Corc[elle (ed.)]. advises me (12 August 1837) to explain my thought when I say
that the loosening of morals is greater today than fty years ago, and to make some
distinctions .-.-.-.- which such a judgment does not seem .-.-.- correct.
His advice seems to me very difcult to follow in the text, whose rapidity does not
allow me to stop, but it can be done in a note at the bottom of the page (rubish of
the chapters on the woman, Rubish, 2). The Corcelles stayed at the Tocqueville
chateau from the end of July to mid-August 1837 (see Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC,
XV, 1, p. 81).
to occupy themselves assiduously with their affairs and with their families,
by enclosing them with their children under the same roof, nally by giving
a more reasonable and more serious turn to their thoughts, suggested to
them, without their noticing it themselves, respect for religious beliefs, love
of order, of peaceful pleasures, of domestic joys and of well-being; while
the rest of the nation, which naturally had these same tastes, was carried
toward [added: moral] disorderliness by the very effort that had to be made
in order to overturn the laws and political customs.
The old French aristocracy suffered the consequences of the Revolution,
and it did not feel the revolutionary passions, or share the often anarchic
impulse that it produced; it is easy to imagine that it experiences in its mor-
als the salutary inuence of this revolution even before those who brought
it about.
So it is permissible to say, although at rst view it seems surprising, that,
today, it is the most anti-democratic classes of the nation who best show
the type of morality that it is reasonable to expect from democracy.
I cannot prevent myself from believing that, when we will have gained
all the effects of the democratic revolution, after emerging fromthe tumult
that arose from it, what is true today only of a fewwill little by little become
true of all.
1062
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 2
a
How the Americans Understand the
Equality of Man and of Woman
b
I showed how democracy destroyed or modied the various inequalities
givenbirthby society; but is that all, anddoes democracy not succeednally
a. 1. The man and the woman mingle less in America than anywhere else.
2. Marital authority is strongly respected.
3. The Americans have, however, tried much harder than we have done inEurope
to raise the woman to the level of the man, but it is in the intellectual and moral
world (YTC, CVf, p. 44).
b. In notebook CVk, 2 (pp. 1425), a copy of the chapter contains this initial note:
Chapter such as I revised it, but without being able to be satised about it in this form
any more than the other. The fact is that I no longer understand anything; my mind is
exhausted. (October 1839).
Have the two versions copied and submit themto my friends (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 14).
On the jacket of the manuscript, in pencil:
It must be condensed more. Remark of Ampe `re and E
douard./
The same thing is noted in England. Comes from the Germanic and Protestant
notion, but stronger in America because of the democratic layer. Good to say ac-
cording to Ampe`re./
The above ideas are original only from the perspective that they are due to aris-
tocracy or to democracy. As for portraits, they are drawn in other authors, principally
Madame de Stael./
Make more clearly felt and seen the systems called emancipation of the woman.
Do not assume that the reader knows them. This will add something piquant much
[sic ] to the chapter. Cite even, either in a note or in the text, the extravagant ideas of
the Saint-Simonians and others on this point.
Tocqueville nished this chapter at the end of August 1837. The Beaumonts, who passed
several days with the Tocquevilles in Normandy, approved this chapter that Tocqueville
read to them.
equali ty of man and of woman 1063
in acting on this great inequality of man and woman, which has seemed,
until today, to have its eternal foundation in nature?
I think that the social movement that brings closer to the same level the
son and the father, the servant and the master, and in general, the inferior
and the superior, elevates the woman and must more and more make her
the equal of the man.
But here, more than ever, I feel the need to be well understood; for there
is no subject on which the coarse and disorderly imaginationof our century
has been given a freer rein.
There are men in Europe who, confusing the different attributes of the
sexes, claim to make the man and the woman beings, not only equal, but
similar.
c
They give to the one as to the other the same functions, impose
the same duties on them, and grant them the same rights; they mix them
in everything, work, pleasures, public affairs. It can easily be imagined that
by trying hard in this way to make one sex equal to the other, both are
degraded; and that from this crude mixture of the works of nature only
weak men and dishonest women can ever emerge.
This is not howthe Americans understood the type of democraticequal-
ity that canbe established betweenthe womanandthe man.
d
They thought
that, since nature had established such a great variation between the physi-
cal and moral constitution of the man and that of the woman, its clearly
indicated goal was to give a different use to their different faculties; and
they judged that progress did not consist of making almost the same things
out of dissimilar beings, but of having each of them fulll his task to the
best possible degree. The Americans applied to the two sexes the great prin-
ciple of political economy that dominates industry today. They carefully
divided the functions of the man and the woman, in order that the great
work of society was better accomplished.
c. In the margin: <In Europe women do not try to become perfect in their line, but
to encroach upon ours.>
d. Variation in the manuscript: . . . and man. <In America no one has ever imagined
joining the sexes in the same careers or making them contribute in the same way to social
well-being, and no one that I know has yet found that the nal consequence of demo-
cratic institutions and principles was to make the woman independent of the man and
to transform her into jurist, judge or warrior.>
America is the country in the world where the most constant care has
been taken to draw clearly separated lines of action for the two sexes, and
where the desire has been that both marched with an equal step, but always
along different paths. You do not see Americanwomenleadmatters outside
of the family, conduct business, or nally enter into the political sphere;
but you also do not nd any who are forced to give themselves to the hard
work of plowing or to any one of the difcult exercises that require the
development of physical strength. There are no families so poor that they
make an exception to this rule.
e
If the American woman cannot escape the peaceful circle of domestic
occupations, she is, on the other hand, never forced to leave it. [<She has
been enclosed in her home, but there she rules.>]
The result is that American women, who often show a male reason and
an entirely manly energy, conserve in general a very delicate appearance,
and always remain women by manners, although they reveal themselves as
men sometimes by mind and heart.
Nor have the Americans ever imagined that the consequence of dem-
ocratic principles was to overturn marital authority and to introduce con-
fusion of authority into the family.
f
They thought that every association,
to be effective, must have a head, and that the natural head of the conjugal
association was the man. So they do not deny to the latter the right to direct
his companion; and they believe that, in the small society of husband and
wife, as in the great political society, the goal of democracy is to regulate
necessary powers andto make themlegitimate, andnot todestroy all power.
[The Americans have, however, drawn the man and the woman closer than
any other people, but it is only in the moral order.]
This opinion is not particular to one sex and contested by the other.
I did not notice that American women considered conjugal authority as
e. All that is equally true of England, although to a lesser degree. This separation
of man and woman exists in several countries of Europe and above all in England, but
no where is it as well-marked (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 16). See note j of p. 1066.
f. Stand up somewhere against divorce and say what I heard repeated in the United
States, that it gave rise to more evils than it cured (Rubish, 2).
a happy usurpation of their rights, or that they believed that it was de-
grading to submit to it. I seemed to see, on the contrary, that they took a
kind of glory in the voluntary surrender of their will, and that they located
their grandeur in bending to the yoke themselves and not in escaping it.
That, at least, was the sentiment expressed by the most virtuous; the others
kept silent, and you do not hear in the United States the adulterous wife
noisily claim the rights of woman, while trampling her most holy duties
under foot.
It has often been remarked that in Europe a certain disdainis foundeven
amid the atteries that men lavish on women; although the Europeanman
often makes himself the slave of the woman, you see that he never sincerely
believes her his equal.
g
In the United States, women are scarcely praised; but it is seen every day
that they are respected.
American men constantly exhibit a full condence in the reason of their
companion, and a profound respect for her liberty. They judge that her
mind is as capable as that of man of discovering the naked truth, and her
heart rm enough to follow the truth; and they have never sought toshelter
the virtue of one more than that of the other from prejudices, ignorance
or fear.
h
It seems that in Europe, where you submit so easily to the despotic rule
of women, you nonetheless refuse them some of the greatest attributes of
the human species [added: while obeying them], and that you consider
themas seductive [v: inferior] andincomplete beings; and, what youcannot
nd too astonishing, women themselves nish by seeing themselves in the
same light, and they are not far from considering as a privilege the ability
that is left to them to appear frivolous, weak and fearful. American women
do not demand such rights.
g. In the margin: This is shownEducation.
h. Although the Americans do not make their daughter ght in the gymnasium as
was formerly practiced in Sparta, you can no less say that they gave them a male edu-
cation, since they teach them to use in a manly way reason, which is the greatest attribute
of man. The exercises of Greece only tended to make the woman as strong as the man.
They do not try to fortify their body, but to make their soul rm (rubish of the
chapters on the woman, Rubish, 2).
Youwouldsay, onthe other hand, that as regards morals, we have granted
to the man a kind of singular immunity; so that there is as it were one virtue
for him, and another one for his companion; and that, according to public
opinion, the same act may be alternatively a crime or only a failing.
The Americans do not knowthis iniquitous divisionof duties andrights.
Among them, [purity of morals in marriage and respect for conjugal faith
are imposed equally on the man and on the woman and] the seducer is as
dishonored as his victim.
It is true that American men rarely show to women these attentive con-
siderations with which we enjoy surrounding them in Europe; but they
always show, by their conduct, that they assume them to be virtuous and
delicate; and they have such a great respect for their moral liberty that in
their presence each man carefully watches his words, for fear that the
women may be forced to hear language that wounds them. In America, a
young girl undertakes a long journey, alone and without fear.
j
The legislators of the United States, who have made nearly all the pro-
visions of the penal code milder, punish rape with death; and there is no
crime that public opinion pursues with a more inexorable ardor. This can
be explained: since the Americans imagine nothing more precious than the
honor of the woman, or nothing so respectable as her independence, they
consider that there is no punishment too severe for those who take them
away from her against her will.
In France, where the same crime is struck by much milder penalties, it
is often difcult to nd a jury that convicts. Would it be scorn for modesty
or scorn for the woman? I cannot prevent myself from believing that it is
both.
Thus, the Americans do not believe that man and woman have the duty
or the right to do the same things, but they show the same respect for the
role of each one of them, and they consider them as beings whose value is
equal, although their destinies differ. They do not give the courage of the
woman the same form or the same use as that of the man; but they never
j. In the margin: All this, says Ampe`re, is Germanic and not democratic. It is found
in Germany and in England, as well as in America.
doubt her courage; and if they consider that the man and his companion
should not always use their intelligence and their reason in the same way,
they judge, as least, that the reason of the one is as certain as that of the
other, and her intelligence as clear.
k
So the Americans, who have allowed the [<natural>] inferiority of the
woman to continue to exist in society, have with all their power elevated
her, in the intellectual and moral world, to the level of the man; and in this
they seem to me to have understood admirably the true notion of demo-
cratic progress. [They have not imagined for the woman a greatness similar
to that of the man, but they have imagined her as great as the man, and
they have made her their equal evenwhenthey have kept the necessaryright
to command her.]
As for me, I will not hesitate to say it: although in the United States the
woman hardly leaves the domestic circle, and although she is, in certain
respects, very dependent, nowhere has her position seemed higher to me;
and if, now that I am approaching the end of this book, in which I have
shown so many considerable things done by the Americans, you asked me
to what I think the singular prosperity and growing strength of this people
must be principally attributed, I would answer that it is to the superiority
of their women.
m
k. Piece of Pascal on the greatness of the different orders, p. 93 [98? (ed.)] (With
the notes of the chapter on mores, Rubish, 2). The edition used by Tocqueville has not
been identied.
m. Say clearly somewhere that the women seem to me very superior to the men
in America (Rubish, 2).
1068
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 3
a
How Equality Divides the Americans
Naturally into a Multitude of
Small Particular Societies
b
You would be led to believe that the ultimate consequence and necessary
effect of democratic institutions is to mix citizens in private life as well as
in public life, and to force them all to lead a common existence [<to mingle
them constantly in the same pleasures and in the same affairs.
Some of the legislators of antiquity had tried it and the Convention
attempted it in our times.>]
That is to understandina very crude andvery tyrannical waythe equality
that arises from democracy.
There is no social state or laws that can make men so similar that edu-
cation, fortune and tastes do not put some difference between them, and
if different men can sometimes nd it in their interest to do the same things
in common, you must believe that they will never nd their pleasure in
doing so. So they will always, whatever you do, slip out of the hand of the
a. In aristocratic countries, each class forms like a great natural friendshipthat obliges
men to see and to meet each other.
When there are no longer any classes that inevitably hold a certain number of men
together, there is nothing more than whim, instinct, taste that draws them together,
which multiplies particular societies innitely.
The Americans who mingle constantly with each other in order to deal with com-
mon affairs, set themselves carefully apart with a small number of friends in order to
enjoy private life (YTC, CVf, p. 45).
b. Variant of the title onthe jacket of the manuscript: how democracy [v: equal-
ity] after destroying the great barriers that separated men, divides
them into a multitude of small particular societies.
s mall parti cular s oci eti es 1069
legislator; and escaping in some way from the circle in which you try to
enclose them, they will establish, alongside the great political society, small
private societies, whose bond will be the similarity of conditions, habits
and mores.
In the United States, citizens do not have any preeminence over each
other; they owe each other reciprocally neither obedience nor respect; they
administer justice together and govern the State, and ingeneral they all join
together to deal with the matters that inuence the common destiny; but
I never heard it said that anyone claimed to lead them all to amuse them-
selves in the same way or to enjoy themselves mixed haphazardly together
in the same places.
The Americans, who mingle so easily within political assemblies and
courtrooms, on the contrary, separate themselves with great care into small
very distinct associations, in order to enjoy the pleasures of private life all
by themselves. Each one of themreadily recognizes all of his fellowcitizens
as his equals, but he receives only a very small number among his friends
and guests.
That seems very natural to me. As the circle of public society expands,
it must be expected that the sphere of private relations will narrow; instead
of imagining that the citizens of new societies are going to end up living
in common, I am afraid indeed that they will nally end up by forming
nothing more than very small cliques.
Among aristocratic peoples, the different classes are like vast enclosures
which you cannot leave and which you cannot enter. The classes do not
communicate with each other; but within the interior of each one of them,
men inevitably talk to each other every day. Even when they do not naturally
suit each other, the general afnity of the same conditiondraws themcloser.
c
c. When men classed within an aristocracy are all part of a hierarchy, each one, at
whatever place in the social chain where he is located, nds above and belowhimone
of his fellows with whom he is in daily contact. He judges that his interest as well as
his duty is to serve these two men in all encounters. But he remains a stranger and
almost an enemy to all the others.
They nish by believing that all men are not part of the same humanity.
It is not a complete insensitivity, it is a (illegible word) sensitivity (YTC, CVa,
pp. 67).
s mall parti cular s oci eti es 1070
But, when neither law nor custom takes charge of establishing frequent
and habitual relations between certain men, the accidental similarity of
opinions and propensities decides it; which varies particular societies
innitely.
In democracies, where citizens never differ much from one another and
are naturally so close that at each instant they can all blend into a common
mass, a multitude of articial and arbitrary classications is created by the
aid of which each man tries to set himself apart, for fear of being dragged
despite himself into the crowd.
It can never fail to be so; for you can change human institutions, but
not man. Whatever the general effort of a society to make citizens equal
and similar, the particular pride of individuals will always try toescape from
the level, and will want to form somewhere an inequality from which he
prots.
In aristocracies, men are separated fromeach other by highimmobile bar-
riers; in democracies, they are divided by a multitude of small, nearly invis-
ible threads, which break at every moment and change place constantly.
Thus, whatever the progress of equality, a large number of small private
associations among democratic peoples will always be formed amid the
great political society. But none of them will resemble, in manners, the
upper class that directs aristocracies.
1071
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 4
a
Some Reections on
American Manners
b
There is nothing, at rst view, that seems less important than the external
form of human actions, and there is nothing to which men attach more
a. Manners come from the very heart of mores and sometimes result as well froman
arbitrary convention between certain men.
Men of democratic countries do not naturally have grand manners because their
life is limited.
Moreover, they do not have studied manners because they cannot agree on the
establishment of the rule of savoir-faire. So there is always incoherence in their man-
ners, above all as long as the democratic revolution lasts.
That aristocratic manners disappear forever witharistocracy, that not eventhe taste
or the idea of them is preserved.
You must not be too distressed about it, but it is permitted to regret it (YTC, CVf,
p. 45).
The manuscript of this chapter contains another version of the beginning, contained
in a jacket that explains: Piece that beganthe chapter whichI removedbecause it seemed
to me to get back into often reproduced deductions of ideas, but which I must have
copied and read. This fragment, with the exception of the description of aristocratic
society (reproduced in note f ) is not very different from the published version.
Tocqueville began the writing of this chapter at the beginning of the month of Sep-
tember 1837. Here I amat manners, a very difcult subject for everyone, but particularly
for me, who nds himself ill at ease in the small details of private life. Consequently I
will be brief. I hope in about a week to have nished and to be able to get into the great
chapters that end the book (Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC, XV, 1, p. 86).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: Courtesy, civility. Neglected words that must
be used by going over it again.
On the jacket of the rubish: To reexamine with more care than the other rubish. A
fairly large number of ideas that I was not able to express at rst are found here in germ
or in development.
Courtesy, civility, civil: words that I have neglected (Rubish, 2).
In another place: I do not think that it is unworthy of the gravity of my subject to
ameri can manners 1072
value; they become accustomed to everything, except living ina societythat
does not have their manners. So the inuence that the social and political
state exercises on manners is worth the trouble to be examined seriously.
c
c. If after having considered the relationships that exist between the superior and the
inferior, I examine the relations of equals among themselves, I discover facts analogous
to those that I pointed out above.
There are a thousand means indeed to judge the social state and political laws of a
people once you have well understood what the various consequences are that ow nat-
urally from these two different things. The most trivial observations of a traveler can
lead you to truth on this point as well as the searching remarks of philosophers. Every-
thing goes together in the constitution of moral man as well as in his physical nature,
and just as Cuvier, by seeing a single organ, was able to reconstruct the whole body of
the entire animal, someone who would know one of the opinions or habits of a people
would often be able, I think, to conceive a fairly complete picture of the people itself.
If an ignorant (illegible word) of the Antipodes told me that, in the country that he
has just traveled across, certain rules of politeness are observed as immutable laws and
that the least actions of men there are subjected to a sort of ceremonial from which no
one can ever depart, I will not be afraid to assert that I already know enough about it to
assert that the inhabitants of the country that he is speaking to me about are divided
among themselves in a profound and permanent way by different and unequal
conditions.
When the human mind is delivered from the shackles that inequality of conditions
imposed on it, it does not fail to attach a certain cachet of individual originality to its
least as to its principal conceptions.
I accept without difculty that men change their laws [v: constitution] more readily
than the customs of etiquette and that they modify the general principles of their morals
more easily than the external form of their words. I know that innovations usually begin
with the important classes of things before arriving at the least important. But nally
they arrive there, and after overturning the dominion of the rule in politics, in sciences,
in philosophy, the human mind escapes from it in the small actions of every day.
It is impossible to live for a time in the United States without discovering that a sort
of chance seems to preside insocial relationships. Politeness is subjectedtolaws less xed,
less detailed, more arbitrary, less complicated than in Europe. It is in some way impro-
vised each day (illegible word), each man following the utility of the moment. More
value is attached there to the intention of pleasing than to the means that are used to do
so. Custom, tone, example inuence the actions of men, but they do not link their
conduct to them in as absolute a manner as in the civilized portions of the Old World.
It would be good to insert here a small portrait in the manner of Lettres persanes or
of Les Caracte `res of La Bruye`re. But I lack the facts. [They (ed.)] must be taken from
France.
You notice something analogous among us in Europe.
examine the inuence that democracy can exercise on manners. Form inuences more
than you think the substance of human actions (Rubish, 2).
Manners generally come from the very heart of mores; and sometimes
they result as well from an arbitrary convention betweencertainmen. They
are at the same time natural and acquired.
Whenmensee that they are rst without questionandwithout difculty;
when every day they have before their eyes the great matters that occupy
them, leaving the details to others, and when they live with a wealth that
they did not acquire and they are not afraid of losing, you easily imagine
that they feel a sort of superb disdain for the petty interests and material
[In the margin: Perhaps the notes of Beaumont will provide [some (ed.)].]
Among the nations of Europe where a great inequality of conditions still reigns, most
of the small daily relationships of men with each other continue to be subjected to xed
and traditional rules that give society, despite the changes that are taking place within it,
an unchanging aspect. On the contrary, among peoples whose social state is already very
democratic, the exceptions to this rule become so numerous every day that it is difcult
to say if the rule exists or where it is found.
So if you see each man dress himself more or less as he pleases, speak or keep quiet
as he desires, accept or reject generally received formulations, subject himself to the rule
of fashion or escape from it with impunity, if each man escapes in some way from com-
mon practice and easily gets himself exempted, do not laugh; the moment has come to
think and to act. These things are trivial, but the cause that produces them is serious.
You have before your eyes the slightest symptoms of a great illness. Be sure that when each
man believes himself entitled to decide alone the form of an item of clothing or the
proprieties of language, he does not hesitate to judge all things by himself, and when
the small social conventions are so badly observed, count on the fact that an important
revolution has taken place in the great social conventions.
So these indications alone should be enough for you to understand that a great rev-
olution has already taken place in human societies, that it is good from now on to think
about tightening the social bond which on all sides is trying to become looser, and that,
no longer able to force all men to do the same things, a means must be found to lead
them to want to do so (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 3337).
You nd this note in the rubish:
There is in the bundle entitled: Detached piece on the philosophical method of the Amer-
icans . . . ideas and sentences that I should make use of when I review the chapters
relative to the relationships of the son with the children [sic ], of the servant with the
master . . ./
Idem when I arrive at the customs of society. In ne good piece./
Idem at the chapter on revolutions. Note at the head of the piece entitled new
sources of beliefs./
26 November 1838 (Rubish, 2).
cares of life, and that they have a natural grandeur in thought that words
and manners reveal.
In democratic countries, manners usually have little grandeur, because
private life in them is very limited. Manners are often common, because
thought has only a few opportunities to rise above the preoccupation with
domestic interests.
d
True dignity of manners consists of always appearing in your place, nei-
ther higher, nor lower;
e
that is within reach of the peasant as of the prince.
In democracies all places seem doubtful; as a result, it happens that man-
ners, which are often arrogant there, are rarely dignied. Moreover, they
are never either very well-ordered or very studied.
f
d. To put with manners./
August 1837.
How under democracy citizens, although perfectly equal civilly and politically,
having daily relationships and no ideas of preeminence over each other, divide them-
selves however into distinct societies for the charm and usefulness of life, according
to their education and their fortune.
That the continual jumble andmeeting inthe same places for the same enjoyments
of dissimilar men is a crude notion of equality (Rubish, 2).
e. I believe that good taste like beauty has its foundation in nature itself. It is or is
not, apart from the will of men; but the natural rules in the matter of good taste can
only be collected and put in order by a select society, enlightened enough and small
enough in number always to hold onto the rules that it acknowledged at one time as the
best. So there is something conventional in matters of taste, whereas there is hardly any
convention possible under democracies (Rubish, 2).
f. So an aristocratic class not only has grand manners, but it also has well-ordered
and studied manners. Although the form of human actions originally emergedthere,
as elsewhere, from the substance of sentiments and ideas, it ended over time by being
independent of sentiments and ideas; and custom there nally became an invisible
and blind force that constrains different beings to act in an analogous manner and
gives all of them a common appearance.
Among the multitude of all the small particular societies into whichthe great dem-
ocratic body is divided, there is not a single one that presents a similar tableau.
There are rich men in a democracy, but there is no rich class. You nd powerful
men there, but not powerful families, or those that have habitually, over several gen-
erations, hereditarily had before their eyes the great spectacle of grandeur; if by
chance there are a few of this kind, they are not naturally or solidly attached to each
other and do not form a separate body within the general society. So they cannot
Men who live in democracies are too mobile for a certain number of
themto succeed in establishing a code of savoir-faire and to be able to make
sure that it is followed. So each man there acts more or less as he likes, and
a certain incoherence in manners always reigns, because manners conform
to the individual sentiments and ideas of each man, rather than to an ideal
model given in advance for the imitation of all.
Nonetheless, this is much more apparent at the moment when aristoc-
racy has just fallen than when it has been destroyed for a long time.
The newpolitical institutions and the newmores thengather inthe same
places men still made prodigiously dissimilar by education and habits and
often force them to live together; this makes great colorful mixtures emerge
at every moment. You still remember that a precise code of politeness ex-
isted; but you no longer know either what it contains or where it is to be
found. Men have lost the common law of manners, and they have not yet
decided to do without it; but each one tries hard to form a certain arbitrary
and changing rule out of the debris of former customs; so that manners
have neither the regularity nor the grandeur that they often exhibit among
aristocratic peoples, nor the simple and free turn that you sometimes notice
in democracy; they are at the very same time constrained and uncon-
strained.
That is not the normal state.
When equality is complete and old, all men, having more or less the
same ideas and doing more or less the same things, have no need to agree
or to copy each other in order to act and to speak in the same way; you
constantly see a multitude of small dissimilarities in their manners; you do
not notice any great differences. They never resemble each other perfectly,
because they do not have the same model; they are never very dissimilar,
regulate in a detailed and invariable way the external actions of their members. If
they had the will to do so, time is lacking. For each day they are themselves swept
along, in spite of their efforts, in the democratic movement that sweeps everything
along.
Fragment contained in the jacket of the manuscript to which note a for p. 1262 makes
reference.
because they share the same condition. At rst view, you would say that
the manners of all Americans are exactly the same. It is only when con-
sidering themvery closely that you notice the particularities by whichthey
all differ.
g
The English have made much fun of American manners; and what is
peculiar is that most of those who have given us such an amusing portrait
belonged to the middle classes of England, to whomthis same portrait very
much applies. So that these merciless detractors usually offer the example
of what they are blaming in the United States; they do not notice that they
are scofng at themselves, to the great delight of the aristocracy of their
country.
h
Nothing harms democracy more than the external form of its mores.
Many men would readily become accustomed to its vices, who cannot bear
its manners.
I cannot, however, accept that there is nothing to praise in the manners
of democratic peoples.
Among aristocratic nations, all those who are near the rst class usually
try hard to resemble it, which produces very ridiculous and very insipid
imitations. If democratic peoples do not possess the model of grand
manners, they at least escape from the obligation of seeing bad copies
every day.
In democracies, manners are never as rened as among aristocratic peo-
ples; but they also never appear as crude. You hear neither the gross words
of the populace, nor the noble and select expressions of the great lords.
There is often triviality in the mores, but not brutality or baseness.
[If it is true that the men who live among these peoples scarcely ever
offer to render small services, they readily oblige youinyour needs; manners
are less polite than in aristocracies and more benevolent.]
I said that in democracies a precise code regarding savoir-faire cannot
evolve. This has its disadvantage and its advantages. In aristocracies, the
g. You can say however that customs, mores are more well-ordered in the United
States than in France. That results from Puritan opinions that order life and from com-
mercial habits that direct it (Rubish, 2).
h. Perhaps Tocqueville is alluding to Basil Hall.
rules of propriety impose on each man the same appearance; they make all
the members of the same class similar, despite their particular propensities;
they adorn the natural and hide it. Among democratic peoples, manners
are neither as studied nor as well-ordered; but they are often more sincere.
They form like a light and poorly woven veil, through which the true sen-
timents and individual ideas of each man are easily seen. So the form and
the substance of human actions there often have an intimate rapport, and,
if the great tableau of humanity is less ornate, it is more true. This is why,
in a sense, you can say that the effect of democracy is not precisely to give
men certain manners, but to prevent them from having manners.
You can sometimes nd again in a democracy some of the senti-
ments, passions, virtues and vices of aristocracy, but not its manners. The
latter are lost and disappear forever, when the democratic revolution is
complete.
j
It seems that there is nothing more durable than the manners of an aris-
tocratic class; for it still preserves them for some time after having lost its
property and its power; nor anything as fragile, for scarcely have they dis-
appeared than any trace of them is no longer found, and it is difcult to
say what they were from the moment that they are no more. A change in
the social state works this wonder; a few generations are enough.
The principal features of aristocracy remain engraved in history when
aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and delicate forms of its mores dis-
appear from the memory of men, almost immediately after its fall. Men
cannot imagine them once they are no longer before their eyes. They escape
without men seeing or feeling it. For, in order to feel the type of rened
pleasure obtained by the distinction and the choice of manners, habit and
education must have prepared the heart, and the taste for manners is easily
lost with the practice.
Thus, not only can democratic peoples not have the manners of aris-
tocracy, but they do not conceive or desire them; they do not imagine them;
j. In democracies individuals very distinguished in taste and manners can be found,
but such a society [v: class] is never found (Rubish, 2).
the manners of aristocracy are, for democratic peoples, as if they had never
been.
[You would be wrong to believe that the model of aristocratic manners
can at least be preserved among a few remnants of the old aristocracy. The
members of a fallen aristocracy can indeed preserve the prejudices of their
fathers, but not their manners.]
Too much importance must not be attached to this loss; but it is per-
mitted to regret it.
k
I know that more than once it has happened that the same men have
had very distinguished mores and very vulgar sentiments; the interior of
courts has shown enough that great appearance could often hide very base
hearts. But, if the manners of aristocracy did not bring about virtue, they
sometimes ornamented virtue itself. It was not an ordinary spectacle to see
a numerous and powerful class, in which all of the external actions of life
seemed, at every instant, to reveal natural nobility of sentiments and
thoughts, renement and consistency of tastes, and urbanity of mores.
k. It is often by necessity as much as by taste that the rich [v: the upper classes] of
democracies copy the peoples ways of acting.Inthe UnitedStates the most opulent
citizens show haughty manners only in the intimacy of their home [v: are very careful
not to aunt their grandeur]. . . . They readily listen to them [the people (ed.)], and
constantly speak to them.
The rich of democracies draw toward them the poor man and attach himto them-
selves by manners more than by benets. The very greatness of the benets, which
brings to light the difference of conditions, causes a secret irritation in those who
prot from them. But simplicity of manners has nearly irresistible charms. Their
familiarity inveigles, and even their crudeness does not always displease. This truth
penetrates only very slowly the mind of the rich.
[In the margin: They go out constantly to mingle with the people. They readily
listen to them and speak to them every day in the countries of Europe that turn to
democracy.]
They usually understand it only when it is too late to make use of it. They agree
to do good to the men of the people, but they want to continue to holdthemcarefully
at a distance. They believe that is enough, but they are wrong. They would ruin
themselves in this way without warming the heart of the population that surrounds
them. It is not the sacrice of their money that is asked of them, it is that of their
pride.
[In the margin: They resist it as long as the revolution lasts and they accept it only
a long time after it has ended.]
26 September 1839 [1837? (ed.)] (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 67).
The manners of aristocracy gave beautiful illusions about humannature;
and, although the tableau was often false, you experienced a noble pleasure
in looking at it.
m
m. Democracy. Manners.
In France the elegant simplicity of manners is hardly found except among men
belonging to old families; the others show themselves either very affected or very
vulgar in their way of acting. That comes, I think, from the state of revolution in
which we are still. It is a time of crisis that must be borne. Amid the confusion that
reigns in all things, new men do not know precisely what must be done in order to
distinguish themselves from the crowd. Some believe that the best means to show
yourself superior is to be rude and forward; others think that on the contrary you
must be particular about even the least details for fear of betraying your common
origin at some point. Both are anxious about the results of their efforts, and their
agitation betrays itself constantly amid their simulated assurance. Men who, on the
contrary, have had a long habit of being without question and by heredity the rst
are not anxious about these things. They have a natural ease, and they attain without
thinking about it the goal toward which the others tend, most often without being
able to attain it. A time will come, I hope, when there will be among us a xed and
settled model of what is suitable and in good taste, and each man will conform to it
without difculty. Then to all well-bred men will happen what happened formerly
within the aristocracy, when there was a certain code of proprieties to which each
man submitted without discussing it and so to speak without knowing it.
You see that my tendencies are always democratic. I am a partisan of democracy
without having any illusion about its faults and without failing to recognize its dan-
gers. I am even all the more so as I believe that I see both more clearly, because I am
profoundly convinced that there is no way to prevent its triumph, and that it is only
by marching with it and by directing its progress as much as possible that you can
decrease the evils it brings and produce the good things that it promises (Rubish, 2).
This fragment is written on the writing paper of Tocqueville.
1080
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 5
a
Of the Gravity of Americans and Why
It Does Not Prevent Them from Often
Doing Thoughtless Things
b
The men who live in democratic countries do not value those sorts of un-
sophisticated, turbulent and crude diversions to which the people devote
themselves in aristocracies; they nd them childish or insipid. They show
scarcely more taste for the intellectual and rened amusements of the aris-
tocratic classes; they must have something productive and substantial in
their pleasures, and they want to mix material enjoyments with their joy.
In aristocratic societies, the people readily abandon themselves to the
impulses of a tumultuous and noisy gaiety that abruptly tears them away
from the contemplation of their miseries; the inhabitants of democracies
do not like to feel drawn violently out of themselves in this way, and they
always lose sight of themselves with regret. To these frivolous transports,
they prefer the grave and silent relaxations that resemble business affairs
and do not cause them to forget them entirely. [In this sense you can say
that gambling is an entirely democratic pastime.]
There is an American who, instead of going during his moments of
leisure to dance joyously in the public square, as the men of his profession
a. The Americans are grave because they are constantly occupied by serious things,
and they are thoughtless because they have only an instant of attention to give to each
one of those things (YTC, CVf, p. 46).
b. The rubish indicates that in the beginning the chapter was divided into three dis-
tinct chapters:
1. Gravity of the Americans.
2. Amusements in democracies.
3. Why democratic peoples despite their gravity act thoughtlessly (Rubish, 2).
gravi ty of ameri cans 1081
continue to do in a great part of Europe, withdraws alone deep within his
house to drink. This man enjoys two pleasures at once: he thinks about his
trade, and he gets drunk decently at home.
c
[I have visited peoples very ignorant, very miserable and completely
strangers to their own affairs; to me, they appeared, in general, joyous. I
have traveled across a country whose inhabitants, enlightened and rich, di-
rected themselves in everything; I always found them grave and often sad
[v: worried and taciturn].]
I believed that the English formed the most serious nation that existed
on earth, but I saw the Americans, and I changed my opinion.
d
[The inhabitant of the United States has an austere appearance, some-
thing anxious and preoccupied reigns in his look; his manner is constrained
and you easily see that he never opens to external impressions anything
except the smallest part of his soul. He is sometimes somber and always
grave.]
I do not want to say that temperament does not count for much in the
character of the inhabitants of the United States. I think, nonetheless, that
the political institutions contribute to it still more.
I believe that the gravity of the Americans arises in part fromtheir pride.
In democratic countries, the poor man himself has a high idea of his per-
sonal value. He views himself with satisfaction and readily believes that
others are looking at him. In this frame of mind, he carefully watches his
words and his actions and does not let himself go, for fear of disclosing
what he lacks. He imagines that, in order to appear dignied, he must re-
main grave.
But I notice another more intimate and more powerful cause that in-
stinctively produces among the Americans this gravity that astonishes me.
Under despotism, peoples give themselves from time to time to out-
bursts of a wild joy; but, in general, they are cheerless and reserved, because
they are afraid.
In absolute monarchies, which custom and mores temper, peoples often
c. Originally, the rst chapter ended here.
d. There is also something Puritan and English in this gravity of the Americans./
Gravity that is often due to an absence of serenity in the soul (Rubish, 2).
display aneven-temperedandlively mood, because having some libertyand
great enough security, they are excluded from the most important cares of
life; but all free peoples are grave, because their minds are habitually ab-
sorbed by the sight of some dangerous or difcult project.
It is so above all among free peoples who are constituted as democracies.
Then, in all classes, an innite number of men is found who are constantly
preoccupied by the serious matters of government, and those who do not
think about directing the public fortune give themselves entirely tothe con-
cern of increasing their private fortune. Among such a people, gravity is no
longer particular to certain men; it becomes a national habit.
You speak about the small democracies of antiquity, whose citizens came
to the public square with crowns of roses, and who spent nearly all their
time in dances and in spectacles. I do not believe in such republics any more
than that of Plato; or, if things happened there as we are told, I am not
afraid to assert that these so-called democracies were formed out of ele-
ments very different from ours, and that they had with the latter only the
name in common.
[<As for me, I cannot prevent myself from believing that a people will
be more serious as its institutions and its mores become more democratic.>]
It must not be believed, however, that amid all their labors, the menwho
live indemocracies consider themselves to be pitied; the opposite is noticed.
There are no men who value their conditions as much as those men do.
They would nd life without savor, if you delivered them from the cares
that torment them, and they are more attached to their concerns than aris-
tocratic peoples to their pleasures.
[Although the Americans are more serious than the English, you meet
among them far fewer melancholy men.
e
Among a people where all citizens
work, there are sometimes great anxieties, miseries and bitter distresses, but
not melancholy.]
e. No melancholy in America. Idea to treat separately afterward.
[In the margin] Louis (Rubish, 2).
I wonder why the same democratic peoples, who are so grave, sometimes
behave in so thoughtless a way.
f
The Americans, who almost always maintain a steady bearing and a cold
manner, nonetheless allow themselves often to be carried very far beyond
the limits of reason by a sudden passion or an unthinking opinion, and it
happens that they seriously commit singular blunders.
This contrast should not be surprising.
[<Amid the tumult and the thousand discordant noises that are heard
within a democracy, sometimes the voice of truth becomes lost.>]
There is a sort of ignorance that arises from extreme publicity. In des-
potic States, men do not know how to act, because they are told nothing;
among democratic nations, they often act haphazardly, because the desire
has been to tell them everything. The rst do not know, and the others
forget. The principal features of each tableau disappear for them among
the multitude of details.
You are astonished by all the imprudent remarks that a public mansome-
times allows himself in free States and above all in democratic States, with-
out being compromised by them; while, in absolute monarchies, a few
words that escape by chance are enough to expose himforever andruinhim
without resources.
That is explained by what precedes. When you speak in the middle of
a great crowd, many words are not heard, or are immediately erased from
the memory of those who hear; but in the silence of a mute and immobile
multitude, the slightest whispers strike the ear.
In democracies, men are never settled; a thousand chance occurrences
make them constantly change place, and almost always something unex-
pected and, so to speak, improvised reigns in their life. Consequently they
are often forced to do what they learned badly, to speak about what they
scarcely understand, and to give themselves to work for which a long ap-
prenticeship has not prepared them.
In aristocracies, each man has only a single goal that he pursues con-
stantly. But among democratic peoples, the existence of man is more com-
f. The third chapter began with this paragraph.
plicated; it is rare that the same mind there does not embrace several things
at once, and often things very foreign to each other. Since he cannot un-
derstand all of them well, he easily becomes satised with imperfect
notions.
When the inhabitant of democracies is not pressed by his needs, he is
at least by his desires; for among all the goods that surround him, he sees
none that is entirely out of his reach. So he does everything with haste,
contents himself with approximations, and never stops except for a mo-
ment to consider each of his actions.
His curiosity is at once insatiable and satised at little cost, for he values
knowing a lot quickly, rather than knowing anything well.
He hardly has time, and he soon loses the taste to go deeper.
Thus, democratic peoples are grave, because their social and political
state leads them constantly to concern themselves with serious things; and
they act thoughtlessly, because they give only a little time and attention to
each one of these things.
The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest vice of the
democratic mind.
1085
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 6
a
Why the National Vanity of the Americans
Is More Anxious and More Quarrelsome
Than That of the English
b
All free peoples take pride in themselves, but national pride does not appear
among all in the same manner.
The Americans, in their relationships with foreigners, seem impatient
with the least censure and insatiable for praise. The slightest praise pleases
them, and the greatest rarely is enough to satisfy them; they badger you
every moment to get you to praise them; and, if you resist their insistent
demands, they praise themselves. You would say that, doubting their own
merit, they want to have its picture before their eyes at every instant. Their
vanity is not only greedy, it is anxious and envious. It grants nothing while
constantly asking. It seeks compliments and is quarrelsome at the same
time.
a. The national vanity of the English is measured and haughty, it neither grants or
asks anything.
[In the margin: Chapter perhaps to delete.]
That of the Americans seeks compliments, is quarrelsome and anxious.
On this point, English mores have taken the turn of ideas of the aristocracywhich,
possessing incalculable and inalienable advantages, enjoys themwithinsouciance and
with pride.
The Americans have equally transferred the habits of their private vanity to their
national vanity (YTC, CVf, p. 46).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: I do not know if this chapter should be kept.
The eternal comparisonis foundthere. Moreover, I have saidanalogous things elsewhere,
particularly in the rst work, relating to the vanity that democratic institutions give to
the Americans. America is a country of liberty, vol. II, pp. 115 and 116. Tocqueville is
alluding to the part devoted to public spirit in the United States, pp. 11621 of the 1835
edition (pp. 38489 of the second volume of this edition).
the nati onal vani ty of the ameri cans 1086
I say to an American that the country that he inhabits is beautiful; he
replies: It is true, there is no country like it in the world! I admire the
liberty enjoyed by the inhabitants and he answers me: What a precious
gift liberty is! But there are very few peoples who are worthy to enjoy it.
I remark on the purity of morals that reigns in the United States: I imag-
ine, he says, that a foreigner, who has been struck by the corruption that
is seen in all the other nations, is astonished by this spectacle. I nally
abandonhimto self-contemplation; but he returns tome anddoes not leave
until he has succeeded in making me repeat what I have just said to him.
You cannot imagine a patriotism
c
more troublesome and more talkative. It
tires even those who honor it.
d
It is not like this with the English. The Englishman calmly enjoys the
real or imaginary advantages that in his eyes his country possesses. If he
grants nothing to other nations, he also asks nothing for his own. The dis-
approval of foreigners does not upset him and their praise hardly graties
him. He maintains vis-a`-vis the entire world a reserve full of disdain and
ignorance. His pride does not need to be fed; it lives on itself.
e
That two peoples, who not long ago sprang from the same stock, ap-
pear so opposite to each other in the manner of feeling and speaking, is
remarkable.
In aristocratic countries, the great possess immense privileges, on which
their pride rests, without trying to feed on the slight advantages that are
c. Patriotism, reasoned egoism (YTC, CVa, p. 4).
d. I recall that one day in New York, I found myself in the company of a young
American woman, daughter of a man whose discoveries in the art of navigation will
be famous forever. I had noticed her [v: M. F. was no less remarkable] because of her
extreme irtatiousness as much as for her stunning beauty. Now, I happened one day
to allow myself to say to her while laughing that she was worthy to be a French
woman. Immediately her gaze became severe; the engaging smile that was usually on
her lips suddenly vanished. Full of indignation, she gave me the most ridiculous and
the most amusing look of a prude {that I hadever seeninmy life} andwrappedherself
in an impassive dignity. Do not think that what offended her so much was to be
irtatious; she would have readily accepted condemnation on this point; it was to be
not completely American (Rubish, 2). It probably concerned Julia Fulton(see George
W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, p. 142).
e. To the side: <It is the aristocracy that on this point has given the turn to the ideas
and habits of the English nation.>
related. Since these privileges came to them by inheritance, they consider
them, in a way, as a part of themselves, or at least as a natural right, inherent
in their person. So they have a calm sentiment of their superiority; they do
not think about praising prerogatives that everyone notices and that no one
denies to them. They are not surprised enough by them to speak about
them. They remain immobile in their solitary grandeur, sure that everyone
sees them without their trying to show themselves, and sure that no one
will undertake to take their grandeur away from them.
When anaristocracy leads public affairs, its national pride naturallytakes
this reserved, unconcerned and haughty form, and all the other classes of
the nation imitate it.
When on the contrary conditions differ little, the least advantages have
importance. Since each man sees around him a million men who possess
all the same or analogous advantages, pride becomes demanding and jeal-
ous; it becomes attached to miserable nothings and defends them stub-
bornly.
In democracies, since conditions are very mobile, men almost always
have recently acquired the advantages they possess; this makes themfeel an
innite pleasure in putting them on view, in order to show to others and
to attest to themselves that they enjoy those advantages; and since, at every
instant, these advantages can happen to escape them, they are constantly
alarmed and work hard to demonstrate that they still have them. Men who
live in democracies love their country in the same way that they love them-
selves, and they transfer the habits of their private vanity to their national
vanity.
The anxious and insatiable vanity of democratic peoples is due so much
to the equality and to the fragility of conditions, that the members of the
proudest nobility show absolutely the same passion in the small parts of
their existence where there is something unstable or disputed.
An aristocratic class always differs profoundly from the other classes of
the nation by the extent and the perpetuity of its prerogatives; but some-
times it happens that several of its members differ from each other only by
small eeting advantages that they can lose and gain every day.
We have seenthe members of a powerful aristocracy, gatheredinacapital
or in a court, argue ercely over the frivolous privileges that depend on the
caprice of fashion or on the will of the master. They then showed toward
one another precisely the same puerile jealousies that animate the men of
democracies, the same ardor to grab the least advantages that their equals
disputed with them, and the same need to put on view to all the advantages
that they enjoyed.
If courtiers ever dared to have national pride, I do not doubt that they
would show a pride entirely similar to that of democratic peoples.
1089
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 7
a
How the Appearance of Society in
the United States Is at the Very Same Time
Agitated and Monotonous
b
It seems that nothing is more appropriate for exciting and feeding curiosity
than the appearance of the United States. Fortunes, ideas, laws vary con-
stantly there. You would say that immobile nature itself is mobile, so much
is it transformed every day under the hand of man.
In the long run, however, the sight of so agitated a society seems mo-
notonous, and after contemplating for a while a tableau so changeable, the
spectator becomes bored.
Among aristocratic peoples, each man is more or less xed in his sphere;
but menare prodigiously dissimilar; they have essentiallydifferent passions,
ideas, habits and tastes. Nothing stirs, everything varies.
In democracies, on the contrary, all men are similar and do more or less
similar things. They are subject, it is true, to great and continual vicissi-
a. The appearance of Americansociety is agitatedbecause menandthings constantly
change place. It is monotonous because all the changes are similar.
There is in America truly speaking only a single passion, love of wealth, which is
monotonous. For this passion to be satised, small regular and methodical actions are
needed, which is also monotonous (YTC, CVf, pp. 4647).
b. The jacket of the chapter bears this date: 4 January 1838. It contains three
loose sheets contained in a jacket on which you read: rubish of the chapter en-
titled: how the appearance of society in the united states and the life
of men is [sic ] at the very same time agitated and monotonous./
This rubish contains more things than usual to see again. Despite Tocquevilles
remark, the notes do not present many differences with the chapter. The other rubish
also contains notes and drafts of this chapter.
appearance of s oci ety i n the uni ted s tates 1090
tudes; but, since the same successes and the same reverses recur continually,
only the name of the actors is different; the play is the same. The appearance
of American society is agitated, because men and things change constantly;
and it is monotonous, because all the changes are the same.
The men who live in democratic times have many passions; but most
of their passions end in the love of wealth or come from it. That is not
because their souls are smaller, but because then the importance of money
is really greater.
c
When fellow citizens are all independent and indifferent, it is only by
paying that you can obtain the cooperation of each one of them; this in-
nitely multiplies the use of wealth and increases its value.
Since the prestige that was attached to ancient things has disappeared,
birth, state, profession no longer distinguish men, or scarcely distinguish
them; there remains hardly anything except money that creates very visible
differences between them and that can put a few of them beyond com-
parison. The distinction that arises from wealth is increased by the disap-
pearance and lessening of all the other distinctions.
c. Among all the passions of the Americans there is one that the inuence of the
social state has made predominate over all the others andhas so tospeakmade unique.
I am speaking about the love of wealth. The inhabitant of the United States has put
his energy and his boldness in the service of this passion, which I would not be afraid
to call central since in America all the movements of the soul end up there. Now,
love of wealth
1
has this singular character that, however disordered it is, it needs order
and rules to be satised. It is methodical even in the greatest deviations. So the same
passion that leads the American, at every moment, to risk his fortune, his reputation,
his life in order to gain well-being, forces him to subject himself to laborious and
peaceful habits and binds his actions to certain precise and detailed rules that do not
vary. It is by a succession of small, regular and uniform actions that [he (ed.)] arrives
at opulence or ruin and despair, and you can say, although at rst it seems surprising,
that it is the very violence of his desires that contributes more than anything else to
making his existence monotonous. His passions disturb and compromise his life, but
do not make it varied.
(1) E
douard observes rightly that it is not all love of wealth and among all people
who have this character, but in certain circumstances and among certain nations,
among certain men, and that that must be made apparent (Rubish, 2).
Among aristocratic peoples, money leads to only a fewpoints onthe vast
circumference of desires; in democracies, it seems to lead to all.
So love of wealth, as principal or accessory, is usually foundat thebottom
of the actions of Americans; this gives all their passions a family air, and
does not take long to make the tableau tiring.
This perpetual return of the same passion is monotonous; the particular
procedures that this passion uses to become satised are monotonous as
well.
In a sound and peaceful democracy, like that of the United States, where
you cannot become rich either by war, or by public employment, or by
political conscations, love of wealth directs men principally toward in-
dustry. Now, industry, which often brings such great disturbances andsuch
great disasters, can nonetheless prosper only with the aid of very regular
habits and by a long succession of small, very uniform actions. Habits are
all the more regular and actions more uniform as the passion is more in-
tense. You can say that it is the very violence of their desires that makes the
Americans so methodical. It disturbs their soul, but it makes their life
orderly.
What I say about America applies, moreover, to nearly all the men
of our times. Variety is disappearing from the human species; the same
ways of acting, thinking and feeling are found in all the corners of the
world.
d
That happens not only because all peoples are frequenting each
d. Originality./
Perhaps to put with monotony./
It is necessary to be different from your fellows in order to envisage the world in
another way [v: to think differently from them].
It is necessary to feel strong and independent from them in order to dare to act in
your own way and to follow alone your own path [v: to show what you think].
These two conditions are found only where conditions are very unequal, and where
men exist who are powerful enough by themselves to dare to show without fear what
distinguishes them from the rest of men and sometimes to glory in it.
The result is that originality of mind and manners [v: of ideas and of actions] is
much more common among aristocratic peoples than among others, above all among
aristocratic peoples who enjoy {great} {political} liberty. The political state thenallows
the differences given birth by the social state to be shown.
other more and are copying each other more faithfully, but also because in
each country men, putting aside more and more the ideas and sentiments
particular to a caste, to a profession, to a family, come simultaneously to
what is closest to the constitution of man, which is everywhere the same.
e
They thus become similar, although they do not imitate each other. They
are like travelers spread throughout a large forest in which all roads lead to
the same point. If all see the central point at the same time and turn their
steps in this direction, they come imperceptibly closer to one another, with-
out seeking each other, without seeing each other, without knowing each
other, and nally they will be surprised to see themselves gathered in the
same place.
f
All peoples who take as the aim of their studies and their im-
itation, not a particular man, but man himself, will end up by meeting with
the same mores, like these travelers at the center point.
Among such a people originality ends by becoming a national habit that is found
afterward among the individuals of all ranks.
1
Each man ends by contracting the habit of following in everything his personal
impulses, and originality becomes a trait of the national physiognomy that is found
among all individuals.
There is no man who gives more prominence to individual [v: capricious] mood
and who pushes singularity closer to peculiar ways and extravagance thanthe English.
There are none of them who depart less from the common road than the Amer-
icans. <The most powerful conne themselves there as narrowly as the least.>
But the Americans and the English have the same origin. The social state alone
makes the difference.
20 April 1838.
1. Can you say that originality is a habit? (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 89).
e. After the prejudices of profession, caste, family have disappeared in order to yield
to generative and general ideas, men are still divided by the prejudices of nation,
which present the nal obstacle to the boldness and generalization of thought, but
this classication of human thought by nation cannot endure for long if several na-
tions adopt a democratic social state at the same time. Since all these nations then
take man himself as goal of their inquiry and since man is the same everywhere, a
multitude of their ideas ends up by being similar, not because they imitate eachother
(whichoftenhappens), but because they are simultaneously coming closer tothesame
thing without consulting about it.
[Inthe margin] The destructionof small sovereignties andthe destructionof castes
and of aristocratic ranks produce analogous effects; from themresult a generalization
of thought and a greater boldness to conceive new thoughts (Rubish, 2).
f. <This central point in philosophy is the study of man> (Rubish, 2).
1093
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 8
a
Of Honor in the United States
and in Democratic Societies
1
It seems that men use two very distinct methods in the public judgment
that they make about the actions of their fellows: sometimes they judge
a. Honor derives from the particular needs of certain men. Every particular associ-
ation has its honor.
This proved by feudal honor, applicable to American honor.
What must be understood by American honor.
1. It differs from feudal honor by the nature of its prescriptions.
2. It differs from it also by the number of its prescriptions, by their clarity, their
precision; the power with which it makes them followed.
That more and more true as citizens become more similar and nations more alike
(YTC, CVf, p. 47).
The drafts of this chapter are found in three different jackets. Two of them bear the
same title as the chapter; the third bears the following title: why men are more
unconcerned about their honor in democracies. To examine separately.
Subtle and perhaps false idea.
In pencil on the rst page of an old version: <The chapter is a bit too theoretical.
General impression of E
douard> (Rubish, 2). In the beginning, the ideas onhonor seem

to have belonged to the chapters on the army (see note b of pp. 107071).
1. The word honor is not always taken in the same sense in French.
1. It means rst the esteem, the glory, the consideration that you get from your fellows; it
is in this sense that you say win honor.
2. Honor also means the ensemble of rules by the aid of which you obtain this glory, this
esteem, and this consideration. This is howyou say that a manhas always conformedstrictly
to the laws of honor; that he has forfeited honor. While writing the present chapter, I have
always taken the word honor in this last sense.
[The reader will perhaps nd this note superuous, but when your language is poor, you
must not be miserly with denitions.]
honor i n the uni ted s tates 1094
them according to the simple notions of the just and the unjust, which are
spread over the whole earth; sometimes they assess them with the aid of
very particular notions that belong only to one country and to one period.
Often it happens that these two rules differ; sometimes they conict with
each other, but never do they merge entirely or cancel each other out.
b
Honor, in the time of its greatest power, governs the will more than
belief, and men, even if they submit without hesitation and without mur-
muring to its commandments, still feel, by a kind of obscure but powerful
instinct, that a more general, more ancient and more holy lawexists, which
they sometimes disobey without ceasing to know it. There are actions that
have been judged upright and dishonoring at the same time. The refusal
of a duel has often been in this category.
I believe that you can explain these phenomena other thanby the caprice
of certain individuals and certain peoples, as has been done until now.
[The whim of men enters into it only partly.]
Humanity feels permanent and general needs, which have given birth
to moral laws; to their disregardall menhave naturally attached, inall places
and in all times, the ideas of blame and shame. They have called doing evil
to evade them, doing good to submit to them.
c
Established as well, within the vast human association, are more re-
stricted associations, which are called peoples, and amid the latter, others
smaller still, which are called classes or castes.
Each one of these associations forms like a particular species within the
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: The capital vice of this entire chapter, what
makes it sound false, is that I give to honor a unique source while it has several. Honor
is without doubt based on particular needs arising either from the social and political
state, or from the physical constitution and climate. It arises as well, whatever I say, from
the whim of men.
Whim has a part, but it is the smallest.
<Baugy, 27 January 1838.>
c. There are certain general rules that are necessary to the existence and to the
well-being of human societies whatever the time, the place, the laws; individual con-
science points these rules out to all men and public reason forces them to conform to
them. Voluntary obedience to each of these general laws is virtue (YTC, CVk, 1,
pp. 5859).
human race; and although it does not differ essentially from the mass of
men, it holds itself a little apart and feels needs that are its own. These are
the special needs that modify in some fashion and in certain countries the
way of envisaging human actions and the esteem that is suitable to give to
them.
d
The general and permanent interest of humanity is that men do not kill
each other; but it can happen that the particular and temporary interest of
a people or of a class is, in certain cases, to excuse and even to honor the
homicide.
e
d. I must be careful, E
d[ouard (ed.)] told me, not to destroy in this way the (illegible
word) of virtue and to bring the mind of the reader to the conclusion that virtue is
not always necessary, or even useful to men. To reect on that./
I fear being too absolute by saying that honor comes from the special needs of a
special society, and that consequently it is always useful and often necessary for its
existence, which would legitimize in a way all its immoralities and its extravagances
to the detriment of virtue. To say that honor is explained by the special constitution
of associations, that is incontestable, but to add that it is necessary for their existence,
isnt that to go too far in a multitude of cases?
There is in honor an element different from the needs and the interests of those
who conceive it. That seems to me at least very probable upon examination.
[To the side: Use the Blacks to prove how the point of honor can become intense
(illegible word) powerful, as soon as the social state departs from nature.]
Religion, climate, race must inuence the notions of honor. Perhaps it would be
necessary to grant a part to all of that. My idea would only be more correct, by be-
coming less general and less absolute.
Let us never lose sight of the fact that honor is the ensemble of opinions relating
to the judgment of human actions, in view of the glory or the shame that our fellows
attach to them. This forms a radical difference between honor and virtue, apart from
all the other differences.
[To the side] Say somewhere that an extraordinary honor announces an extraor-
dinary social state and vice versa. That generalizes the past in a useful way (YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 6162).
e. There is an idea that crosses my mind at every instant; I must nally try to look
at it one moment and confront it.
I fear that the outcome of my chapter is that true and false, just and unjust, good
and evil, vice and virtue are only relative things depending on the perspective from
which you see them, a result that I would be very upset to reach, for I believe it false;
and in addition such an opinion would be in clear contradiction to the ensemble of
my opinions. I am at this moment too tired of my subject to see these questions
clearly, but I must come back to them with a fresh mind./
[In the margin: Good and evil exist apart from the blame or the praise of certain
Honor is nothing other than this particular rule based on a particular
condition, with the aid of which a people or a class distributes blame or
praise.
f
There is nothing more unproductive for the human mind than an ab-
stract idea. So I hasten to run toward facts. An example will cast light on
my thought.
I will choose the most extraordinary type of honor that has ever appeared
in the world, and the one that we know the best: aristocratic honor born
men and even of humanity. What I am looking for here is not what is good or evil
in an absolute way, but what men praise or blame. This is capital.
How, moreover, to dene evil, if not what is harmful to humanity, and good what
is useful to it?
Where is our (three illegible words)?
I do not want to say that there is no absolute good in human actions, but only that
the particular interests of certain men can lead them to attribute arbitrarily to certain
actions a particular value, and that this value becomes the rule of those who act with
praise or blame in view, that is, by honor. ]
To act by virtue, that is to do what you believe good without other motive than
the pleasure of doing it and the idea of complying with a duty. To act by honor, that
is to act not with absolute good or evil in view, but in consideration of what our
fellows think of it and of the shame or the glory that will result from it.
The rule of the rst man is within himself, it is conscience.
The rule of the other is outside, it is opinion.
The goal of this chapter is to showthe origin and the effects of this opinion(YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 6263).
f. The recompense of the man who follows honor is more assured and more im-
mediate than that of the one who follows virtue. That is why men have never taught [that
(ed.)] virtue is in view of God and of yourself, honor in view of opinion. Why? So
that you can place in the other world the recompense of those who submit to the
laws of honor. Judgment, discernment, spiritual effort are necessary for virtue; only
memory is necessary to conform to honor.
[In the margin: Honor, visible rule, convenient for actions, less perfect, more sure./
Sometimes nally the rule makes an action indifferent in the eyes of virtue into
a matter of glory or of shame. Virtue, exible; honor, inexible] (YTC, CVk, 1,
p. 60).
within feudal society. I will explain it with the aid of what precedes, and I
will explain what precedes by it.
g
I do not have to search here when and howthe aristocracy of the Middle
Ages was born, why it separated itself so profoundly from the rest of the
nation, what had established and consolidated its power. I nd it in place,
and I seek to understand why it considered most human actions in such a
particular light.
What strikes me rst is that in the feudal world actions were not always
praised or blamed by reason of their intrinsic value, but that sometimes
they happened to be valued solely in relation to the author or the subject
of the actions, which is repugnant to the general conscience of humanity.
So certain actions that dishonored a nobleman were indifferent on the part
of the commoner; others changed character depending onwhether the per-
son who suffered them belonged to the aristocracy or lived outside of it.
When these different opinions were born, the nobility formed a separate
body, inthe middle of the people, whomit dominatedfromtheinaccessible
heights to which it had withdrawn. To maintain this particular position
that created its strength, it not only needed political privileges; it had to
have virtues and vices for its exclusive use [in order to continue to distin-
guish itself in all things from what was outside or below it].
That some particular virtue or some particular vice belonged to the
nobility rather than to commoners; that some particular action was neu-
tral when it involved a villein or blameworthy when it concerned a no-
bleman, that is what was often arbitrary; but that honor or shame was
attached to the actions of a man depending on his condition, that is what
resulted from the very constitution of an aristocratic society. That was
seen, in fact, in all the countries that had an aristocracy. As long as a single
vestige of it remains, these singularities are still found: to seduce a young
woman of color hardly harms the reputation of an American man; to
marry her dishonors him.
h
g. A draft of what follows exists in YTC, CVk, 1 (pp. 6473). Tocqueville noted on
the jacket: Review carefully these variants [illegible word] this 25 October 1839.
Piece that I reworked so laboriously that I fear that I have ruined it.
October 1839 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 64).
h. E
douard considers it of the greatest [importance? (ed.)] to include this./

In certain cases, feudal honor prescribed vengeance and stigmatizedpar-
doning insults; in others it imperiously commanded men to master them-
selves; it ordered forgetting self. It did not make a law of humanity or of
gentleness; but it praised generosity; it valued liberality more than benev-
olence; it allowed someone to enrich himself by games of chance, by war,
but not by work; it preferred great crimes to small gains. Greed revolted it
less than avarice, violence often pleased it, while guile and treason always
appeared contemptible to it.
These bizarre notions were not born solely out of the caprice of those
who had conceived them.
A class that has succeeded in putting itself above and at the head of all
the others, andthat makes constant efforts tomaintainitself at this supreme
rank, must particularly honor the virtues that have grandeur and brilliance,
and that can be easily combined with pride and love of power. Such a class
It is impossible that there is not something useful to draw from the opinions of
the Americans on Blacks and from the opinion suggested to them by the presence of
Blacks.
In the South of the United States:
It is shameful to become familiar with a Black, to receive one at home even though
he is free and rich, unspeakable to marry one.
It is not shameful to mistreat one, to seduce one. A host of actions, rebuked when
they concern a white, are not suppressed by public opinion when they concern a
Black. There are certain virtues and certain vices that are thought to be principally
appropriate to him.
In the same portion of the Union, it is glorious to be idle, to be a duelist, a good
horseman, a good hunter, to be magnicent in manners, opulent, generous, not to
let others be disrespectful to you, to be very susceptible to insults, to keep your word
scrupulously, little esteem for industry.
These are in a word the opinions of the aristocracy of the Middle Ages (the op-
posite of what is seen in the North, so that from one side aristocratic honor, from
the other democratic) modied and softened by these causes.
It is not a warrior aristocracy.
Its position gives it the taste for the acquisition of wealth and for agriculture.
Its intimate connection with the North suggests to it many opinions not in har-
mony with the social state and that it would not have if it was isolated.
The absence of hierarchy in its ranks./
The difculty of making use of all of that is that what I have just said constitutes
an aristocratic honor and that, as to America, my goal and my interest is to get im-
perceptibly into democratic honor. That is, however, very interesting and could per-
haps be placed at the head of America (Rubish, 2).
is not afraid of upsetting the natural order of conscience, in order to put
these virtues above all the others. You even conceive that it readily raises
certain bold and brilliant vices above peaceful and modest virtues. It is in
a way forced to do so by its condition.
[These singular opinions arise naturally from the singularities of the
social state.]
Before all virtues and in the place of a great number of them, the nobles
of the Middles Ages put military courage [while they considered fear as the
most shameful and most irreparable of weaknesses].
That too was a singular opinion that arose necessarily from the singu-
larity of the social state.
Feudal aristocracy was born by war and for war; it had found its power
in arms and it maintained it by arms; so nothing was more necessary for it
than military courage; and it was natural that the aristocracy gloried it
above all the rest. So everything that exhibited military courage externally,
even if it were at the expense of reason and humanity, was approved and
often commanded by the aristocracy. The whim of men was found only in
the detail.
That a man regarded receiving a slap on the cheek as an enormous insult
and was obliged to kill in single combat the man who had lightly struck
him in this way, that was arbitrary; but that a nobleman could not receive
an insult peacefully and was dishonored if he allowed himself to be struck
without ghting, that sprang from the very principles and needs of a mili-
tary aristocracy.
So it was true, to a certainpoint, to say that honor hadcapricious aspects;
but the caprices of honor were always conned within certain necessary
limits. This particular rule, called honor by our fathers, is so far fromseem-
ing to me an arbitrary law, that I would easily undertake to connect its most
incoherent and most bizarre prescriptions to a small number of xed and
invariable needs of feudal societies.
If I followed feudal honor into the eld of politics, I would not have
any more difculty explaining its workings.
The social state and political institutions of the Middle Ages were such
that national power never directly governed the citizens. National power
did not so to speak exist in their eyes; each man knew only a certain man
whom he was obliged to obey. It was by the latter that, without knowing
it, all the others were attached. So in feudal societies, all public order turned
on the sentiment of delity to the very person of the lord. That destroyed,
you fell immediately into anarchy.
Fidelity to the political head was, moreover, a sentiment whose value all
the members of the aristocracy saw every day, for each one of them was at
the same time lord and vassal and had to command as well as obey.
To remain faithful to your lord, to sacrice yourself for him as needed,
to share his good or bad fortune, to help him in his undertakings whatever
they were, such were the rst prescriptions of feudal honor inpolitical mat-
ters. The treason of the vassal was condemned by opinion with an extraor-
dinary severity. A particularly ignominious name was created for it; it was
called a felony.
[Fidelity to the feudal head becomes {on the contrary, a kind of
religion}.]
You nd, on the contrary, in the Middle Ages only a few traces of a
passion that animated ancient societies [andthat reappearedamongmod-
ern ones as the feudal world was transformed.]. I mean patriotism.
j
The
very noun patriotism is not old in our language.
2
j. Of patriotism.
(How to link this to democracy?)
[In the margin: Parallel of ancient and modern patriotism.
The Romans and the Americans, real, profound, dogmatic, simple, rational, ego-
istic, supercial, talkative.]
To judge patriotism, it must not be taken when it acts in the direction of the
passions that serve it as a vehicle, but on the contrary when it must struggle against
those same passions. When I see the French people rushing to the borders in 1792, I
amindoubt about whether they came todefendFrance or the Revolutionthat assured
the triumph of democracy [v: equality]. But when in Rome the Senate goes as a body
before Varro, man of the people, raised by the caprice of the people to the Consulate,
and thanks him for not having lost hope in the country, I see into the bottom of
hearts and I no longer doubt.
I do not claim that the patriotism that is combined with an interest of party is a
thing without value. I amonly saying that to judge it well, it must be reduced to itself.
Everything that shakes the human heart and calls it beyond the material interests of
life, and raises it above fear of death is a great thing (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 1314).
2. The word patrie itself is found among French authors only after the XVIth century.
Feudal institutions concealed country from view; they made love of it
less necessary. They caused the nation to be forgotten while making you
passionate about one man. Consequently you do not see that feudal honor
ever made it a strict law to remain faithful to your country.
It is not that love of country did not exist in the hearts of our fathers; but
it formed a kind of weak and obscure instinct, which became clearer and
stronger as classes were destroyed and [political] power was centralized.
This is clearly seen in the contrasting judgments that the peoples of Eu-
rope bring to the different facts of their history, depending on the gener-
ation that judges them. What principally dishonored the High Constable
de Bourbon in the eyes of his contemporaries is that he bore arms against
his king; what dishonors him most in our eyes is that he waged war on his
country. We stigmatize his actions as much as our ancestors, but for other
reasons.
I have chosen feudal honor to clarify my thought, because feudal honor
has more marked and better features than any other. I could have takenmy
example from elsewhere; I would have reached the same end by another
road.
k
k. I have only wanted to examine among feudal peoples solely the opinions of the
aristocratic class. But if I had descended into the detail of these complicatedsocieties
and if I had contemplated separately the different classes that formed the social
body, I would have found (illegible word) an analogous spectacle.
In each one of the classes of feudal society as well as within the aristocracy
reigned in fact a public opinion that distributed in a sovereign way praise and blame
according to a rule that it had created for its own use {and that was not always} con-
sistent . . .
[In the margin: All of this is not necessary in itself, but slows and hinders the
movement of the piece. To have it copied separately and probably to delete (illegible
word).
Ideas to introduce somewhere in the portrait of the feudal world.]
The particular conditionof the menwhocomposedthese classes suggestedtothem
a particular esteem for certain human actions and a very special scorn for certain
others, and it led them to attach to some of their actions glory or shame, according
to a measure that was their own. In that time, opinions, althougharistocratic, colored
more or less all human opinions; it was easy, however, to recognize a bourgeois honor,
one of villeins, one of serfs, like an honor of nobles. Each one of them differed from
aristocratic honor in its rules and was similar to it in its cause and in its objective
(YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 7172).
Although we know the Romans less well than our ancestors, we none-
theless know that there existed among them, in regard to glory and dis-
honor, particular opinions that did not ow only from general notions of
good and evil. Many human actions there were considered in a different
light, depending on whether it concerned a citizenor a foreigner, a free man
or a slave; certain vices were gloried, certain virtues were raised above all
others.
Now in that time, says Plutarch in the life of Coriolanus, valor was
honored and valued in Rome above all other virtues. What attests to this
is that it was called virtus, the very noun for virtue, attributing the name
of the common type to a particular species. So much so that virtue in Latin
was just like saying valor. Who does not recognize in that the particular
need of that singular association formed to conquer the world?
Eachnationwill lenditself toanalogous observations; for, as I saidabove,
every time that men gather together in a particular society, a code of honor
becomes immediately established among them, that is to say an ensemble
of opinions that is proper to them about what must be praised or blamed;
and these particular rules always have their source in the special habits and
special interests of the association.
That applies, in a certain measure, to democratic societies as to others.
We are going to nd the proof of it among the Americans.
3
You still nd scattered, among the opinions of the Americans, a few
detached notions of the ancient aristocratic honor of Europe. These tra-
ditional opinions are in very small number; they have weak roots and little
power. It is a religion of which you allowa fewtemples to continue to exist,
but in which you no longer believe.
Amid these half-obliterated notions of anexotic honor, appear a fewnew
opinions that constitute what could today be called American honor.
I have shown how the Americans were pushed incessantly toward com-
3. I am speaking here about the Americans
m
who inhabit the countries where slavery does
not exist. They are the only ones who can present the complete image of a democratic society.
m. In the drafts: I am speaking principally about the Americans of New England
and of the states without slaves (Rubish, 2).
merce and industry. Their origin, their social state, their political institu-
tions, and the very place that they inhabit draw them irresistibly in this
direction. So they form, at present, an almost exclusively industrial and
commercial association, placed at the heart of a new and immense country
that its principal purpose is to exploit. Suchis the characteristic featurethat,
today, most particularly distinguishes the American people from all the
others.
All the peaceful virtues that tend to give a regular bearing to the social
body and tend to favor trade must therefore be especially honored among
this people, and you cannot neglect them without falling into public
scorn.
All the turbulent virtues that often give brilliance, but even more often
give trouble to a society, occupy on the contrary a subordinate rank in the
opinion of this same people. You can neglect them without losing the es-
teem of your fellow citizens, and you would perhaps risk losing it by ac-
quiring them.
The Americans make no less an arbitrary classication of the vices.
There are certain tendencies, blameworthy in the eyes of the general
reason and of the universal conscience of humanity, that nd themselves
in agreement with the particular and temporary needs of the American
association; and it condemns them only weakly, sometimes it praises
them. I will cite particularly the love of wealth and the secondary ten-
dencies that are connected to it. In order to clear, to make fruitful, to
transform this vast uninhabited continent that is his domain, the Amer-
ican must have the daily support of an energetic passion; this passion can
only be the love of wealth; so the passionfor wealthhas nostigma attached
to it in America, and provided that it does not go beyond the limits as-
signed to it by public order, it is honored. The American calls a noble and
estimable ambition what our fathers of the Middle Ages named servile
cupidity; in the same way the American gives the name of blind and bar-
baric fury to the conquering fervor and warrior spirit that threw our fa-
thers into new battles every day.
In the United States, fortunes are easily destroyed and rise again. The
country is without limits and full of inexhaustible resources. The people
have all the needs and all the appetites of a being who is growing, and
whatever efforts he makes, he is always surrounded by more goods than he
is able to grasp. What is to be feared among such a people is not the ruin
of a few individuals, soon repaired, it is the inactivity and indolence of all.
Boldness in industrial enterprises is the rst cause of its rapid progress, its
strength, its grandeur. Industry is for it like a vast lottery in which a small
number of men lose every day, but in which the State wins constantly; so
such a people must see boldness with favor and honor it in matters of in-
dustry. Now, every bold enterprise imperils the fortune of the one who
devotes himself to it and the fortune of all those who trust in him. The
Americans, who make commercial temerity into a kind of virtue, cannot,
in any case whatsoever, stigmatize those who are daring.
That is why in the United States such a singular indulgence is shown
for the merchant who goes bankrupt; the honor of the latter does not
suffer from such an accident. In that, the Americans differ, not only
from European peoples, but from all the commercial nations of today;
but then, in their position and their needs, they do not resemble any of
them.
In America, all the vices that are of a nature to alter the purity of morals
and to destroy the conjugal union are treated with a severity unknown to
the rest of the world. That contrasts strangely, at rst view, with the tol-
erance that is shown there onother points. Youare surprisedtomeet among
the same people a morality so lax and so austere.
These things are not as inconsistent as you suppose. Public opinion, in
the United States, only mildly represses love of wealth, which serves the
industrial greatness and prosperity of the nation; and it particularly con-
demns badmorals, whichdistract the humanmindfromthe searchfor well-
being and disturbs the internal order of the family, so necessary to the suc-
cess of business. So in order to be respected by their fellows, Americans are
forced to yield to regular habits. In this sense you can say that they put their
honor in being chaste.
American honor agrees with the old honor of Europe on one point: it
puts courage at the head of virtues, and makes it the greatest of moral
necessities for man; but it does not envisage courage in the same way.
In the United States, warrior valor is little prized; the courage that is
known the best and esteemed the most is the one that makes you face the
furies of the Ocean in order to arrive earliest in port, bear without com-
plaint the miseries of the wilderness, and its solitude, more cruel than all
the miseries; the courage that makes you almost insensitive to the sudden
reversal of a fortune painfully acquired, and immediately suggests new ef-
forts to build a new one. Courage of this type is principally necessary for
the maintenance and the prosperity of the American association, and it is
particularly honored and gloried by it. You cannot show yourself lacking
in it, without dishonor.
I nd a nal feature; it will really put the idea of this chapter into relief.
In a democratic society, like that of the United States, where fortunes
are small and poorly assured, everyone works, and work leads toeverything.
That has turned the point of honor around and directed it against idleness.
I sometimes met in America rich young men, enemies by temperament
of all difcult effort, who were forced to take up a profession. Their nature
and their fortune allowed them to remain idle; public opinion imperiously
forbid it to them, and they had to obey.
n
I have often seen, on the contrary,
among European nations where the aristocracy still struggles against the
torrent that carries it along, I have seen, I say, men goaded constantly by
their needs and their desires who remain idle in order not to lose the esteem
of their equals, and who subject themselves more easily to boredom and
want than to work.
Who does not see inthese twoso opposite obligations twodifferent rules,
both of which emanate nonetheless from honor?
What our fathers called honor above all was, truly speaking, only one
of its forms. They gave a generic name to what was only a type. [If the
aristocratic honor of the Middle Ages had more marked features and a
physiognomy more extraordinary than all that had preceded and followed
it, that was only because it was born amidst the most exceptional social
state that ever existed and the one most removed from the natural and
ordinary condition of humanity. Never in fact, in our western world, had
men been separated by so many articial barriers and felt more particular
n. To the side: <The question is to know if I must say only that about America. I
believe that the reader expects more and would be surprised.>
needs.]
o
So honor is found in democratic centuries as in times of aris-
tocracy. But it will not be difcult to show that in the former it presents
another physiognomy.
Not only are its prescriptions different, we are going to see that they are
fewer and less clear and that its laws are followed with less vigor.
Acaste is always ina muchmore particular situationthana people. There
is nothing more exceptional in the world than a small society always com-
posed of the same families, like the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, for
example, and whose objective is to concentrate and to hold enlightenment,
wealth and power in its hands exclusively and by heredity.
Now, the more exceptional the position of a society is, the more nu-
merous are its special needs, and the more the notions of its honor, which
correspond to its needs, increase.
So the prescriptions of honor will always be fewer among a people that
is not divided into castes, than among another. If nations come to be es-
tablished where it is difcult even to nd classes, honor will be limitedthere
to a small number of precepts, and those precepts will be less and less re-
moved from the moral laws adopted by the generality of humanity.
Thus the prescriptions of honor will be less bizarre and fewer in a dem-
ocratic nation than in an aristocratic one.
They will also be more obscure; that results necessarily from what
precedes.
Since the characteristic features of honor are less numerous and less sin-
gular, it must often be difcult to discern them.
There are still other reasons.
Among the aristocratic nations of the Middle Ages the generations suc-
ceeded each other in vain; each family was like an immortal andperpetually
immobile man;
p
ideas varied scarcely more than conditions.
o. In the margin: Piece to delete probably. To see again.
p. To the side: <Good sentence, but which is, I believe, found elsewhere.>
So each man had always before his eyes the same objects, which he en-
visaged from the same point of view; little by little he saw into the slightest
details, and his perception could not fail, in the long run, to become clear
and distinct. Thus, not only did the men of feudal times have very extraor-
dinary opinions that constituted their honor, but also each one of these
opinions was shaped in their minds in a clear-cut and precise way.
It can never be the same in a country like America, where all the citizens
are in motion; where society, itself changing every day, changes its opinions
with its needs. In such a country, you catch a glimpse of the rule of honor;
you rarely have the leisure to consider it intently.
Were society immobile, it would still be difcult to x the meaning that
must be given to the word honor.
In the Middle Ages, since each class had its honor, the same opinionwas
never accepted simultaneously by a very great number of men, which al-
lowed giving it a xed and precise form; all the more so since all those who
accepted it, all having a perfectly identical and very exceptional position,
found a natural disposition to agree on the prescriptions of a law that was
made only for them alone.
Honor thus became a complete and detailed code in which everything
was foreseen and ordered in advance, and which presented a xed and al-
ways visible rule to human actions. Among a democratic nation like the
American people, where ranks are mixed and where the entire society forms
only a single mass, all of whose elements are analogous without being en-
tirely the same, youcannever exactly agree inadvance about what is allowed
and forbidden by honor.
There exist indeed, within this people, certain national needs that give
birth to common opinions in the matter of honor; but such opinions never
present themselves at the same time, in the same manner and with equal
force to the mind of all the citizens; the law of honor exists, but it often
lacks interpreters.
The confusion is even still greater in a democratic country like ours,
q
in
which the different classes that composed the old society, starting tomingle
q. The manuscript says: . . . among a people in which the different classes . . .
without yet being able to blend, bring to each other every day the various
and often contradictory notions of their honor; in which each man, fol-
lowing his caprices, abandons one part of the opinions of his fathers and
holds onto the other; so that amid so many arbitrary measures, a common
rule can never be established. It is nearly impossible then to say in advance
what actions will be honored or stigmatized. These are miserable times, but
they do not last.
Among democratic nations, honor, not being well dened, is necessarily
less powerful; for it is difcult to apply with certainty and rmness a law
that is imperfectly known.
r
Public opinion, which is the natural and sov-
ereign interpreter of the law of honor, not seeing distinctly in which di-
rection it is appropriate to tip blame or praise, only delivers its judgment
with hesitation. Sometimes it happens that it contradicts itself; often it re-
mains immobile and lets things happen.
[The lawof honor, were it clear, would still be weakamong democratic
peoples by the sole fact that its not very numerous prescriptions are few.
For the principal strength of a body of laws comes from the fact that it
extends at the same time to a multitude of matters and, every day in a
thousand diverse ways, bends the human mind to obedience. A law that
provides for just a few cases and that is only applied here and there is always
feeble.
Now, the prescriptions of honor are always more numerous and less de-
tailed to the extent that classes, not being as close to each other, have fewer
interests apart from the mass and fewer particular needs.]
The relative weakness of honor in democracy is due to several other
causes.
In aristocratic countries, the same honor is never accepted except by a
certain, often limited number of men, always separated from the rest of
their fellows. So honor easily mixes andmingles, inthe minds of those men,
r. <Delicate idea and a little subtle but true at bottom. To include./
The pleasure that honor gives is an intellectual and moral enjoyment that must lose
its value like all the others of this type in democratic centuries, even if the notions
of honor did not become fewer and more confused> (In the jacket why men . . . ,
Rubish, 2).
with the idea of all that distinguishes them. It appears to them like the
distinctive feature of their physiognomy; they apply its different rules with
all the ardor of personal interest, and if I can express myself in this way,
they bring passion to obeying it.
This truth manifests itself very clearly whenyoureadthe customarylaws
of the Middle Ages, on the point of legal duels.
s
You see there that the
nobles were bound, in their quarrels, to use the lance and the sword, while
the villeins used the cudgel with each other, it being understood, the laws
add, that the villeins have no honor. That did not mean, as we imagine
today, that those men were dishonorable; it meant only that their actions
were not judged by the same rules as those of the aristocracy.
t
s. The duel. Why the duel diminishes as nations become more democratic. The pro-
gress of public reason is not a sufcient cause. The duel is the sanction of the law of
civility. When the law becomes uncertain and is almost abolished, it ceases by itself.
But it remains a means of vengeance.
[In the margin: Almost purposeless efforts of the legislators of today who want to
destroy the duel. The duel is attacked by a general cause more powerful than legis-
lation, and that cause alone is strong enough to destroy it.]
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
No one ghts in the United States for conventional insults, but for insults that are
considered as mortal in the eyes of reason, such as the subornation of a woman or
of a girl, for example. And then they ght to the death. The custom of the duel must
tend to disappear everywhere military aristocratic honor is disappearing. So what I
said in the preceding chapter explains sufciently why the customof the duel is grad-
ually growing weaker among modern peoples and particularly among democratic
nations. But there are still other reasons, and were the duel held in honor by the
opinion of these peoples it would still be more difcult to nd the occasion to ght
a duel.
Great number of those to whom it would be necessary to answer.
Uncertainty of the insult. The duel no longer keeps order. Men do not kill each
other and (illegible word) to take (illegible word); the duel for conventional insult
must rst disappear, then nally the duel for real insult, rarer duel and more cruel.
Example: United States of the South. States of the North.
Here they still ght, there they do almost nothing more than go to court.
The Americans ght when the Romans murdered (YTC, Cva, pp. 5152). During
the judicial year 1828 or 1829, Tocqueville gave a speech on the duel (Andre Jardin,
Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 75). Beaumont dedicated a long commentary to duels in Ma-
rie (I, pp. 37077).
t. This paragraph is not found in the manuscript.
What is astonishing, at rst view, is that, when honor reigns with this
full power, its prescriptions are in general very strange, so that it seems to
be obeyed better the more it appears to diverge from reason; from that it
has sometimes been concluded that feudal honor was strong, because of its
very extravagance.
These two things have, in fact, the same origin; but they are not derived
from each other.
Honor is bizarre in proportion as it represents more particular needs felt
by a smaller number of men; and it is powerful because it represents needs
of this type. So honor is not powerful because it is bizarre; but it is bizarre
and powerful because of the same cause.
I will make another remark.
Among aristocratic peoples, all ranks differ, but all ranks are xed; each
man occupies in his sphere a place that he cannot leave, and in which he
lives amid other men bound around him in the same way. So among these
nations, no one can hope or fear not being seen; there is no man placed so
lowwho does not have his stage, and who can, by his obscurity, escape from
blame or from praise.
In democratic States, on the contrary, where all citizens are merged in
the same crowd and are constantly in motion, public opinion has nothing
to hold on to; its subject disappears at every instant and escapes.
u
So honor
will always be less imperious and less pressing; for honor acts only with the
public in mind, different in that fromsimple virtue,
v
which lives onits own
and is satised with its testimony.
u. <Public opinion, which is the sovereign judge in the matter of honor, is often
uncertain. It does not discern clearly> for it is difcult to apply with certainty and
rmness a rule that is only imperfectly known. So public opinion, whichis the natural
and sovereign interpreter of honor, almost always strikes while hesitating and often
its voice is lost amid the thousand discordant noises that arise on all sides, and since
it constantly changes interpreters you always imagine that its decision is not without
appeal (In the jacket why the men . . . , Rubish, 2).
v. Montesquieu spoke about our honor and not about honor./
Virtue. More perfect rule, less easy to follow./
We must never lose sight of this capital difference between virtue and honor, that
virtue leads men to want to do good for the pleasure of the good, that is at least its
claim, while honor, by its own admission, has for principal and almost unique goal
to be seen and approved. It is always a bit of a theatrical virtue.
All of my deduction of ideas does not, up to now, provide me with the reason for
this (Rubish, 2).
On the jacket of the manuscript you read: Read what Montesquieu wrote on honor,
books III, IV and XXVIII. A jacket of the rubish of this chapter bears the following
note: In these rubish there are several good ideas that I left behind and that it would be
good to reexamine. This jacket contains two unpublished letters. The rst is a letter of
M. Feuillet, of the Royal Institute, to Herve de Tocqueville, in which he mentions that
he has not been able to nd a treatise on the dispositions of the preconception of honor
and that he recommends reading the Encyclopedie and books III, IV, and XXVIII of
LEsprit des lois. The second is a letter from Herve de Tocqueville to his son, that we
reproduce here in full:
Paris, 17 January 1838.
I receivedyour letter the evening before yesterday, my goodfriend. I went yesterday
morning to see M. Feuillet. He asked me for twenty-four hours to research the doc-
uments that could enlighten you. You will see from his response, which I am sending
to you, that he found nothing. I am going to try to gather from my memory some-
thing that may in part compensate for it.
Honor can be dened as the sentiment that leads to sacricing everythingtoescape
the scorn of your fellows, even life, even on some occasions virtue and religion.
In the article of the Encyclope die cited by M. Feuillet you nd the following def-
inition: The sentiment of esteem for yourself is the most delightful of all, but the
most virtuous man is often overwhelmed by the weight of his imperfection andseeks
in the looks, in the bearing of men, the expression of an esteem that reconciles him
with himself.
From that two kinds of honor, that which is based within ourselves, on what we
are; that which is in others, based on what they think of us.
In the man of the people, honor is the esteem that he has for himself, and his
right to the esteem of the public derives from his exactitude in observing certainlaws
established by prejudices and by custom.
Of these laws, some conform to reason, others are opposed to it. Honor among
the most civilized nations can therefore be attached sometimes to estimable qualities
and actions, often to destructive practices, sometimes to extravagant customs, some-
times even to vices.
But why is this changing honor, almost always principal in governments, always
so bizarre? Why is it placed in puerile or destructive practices? Why does it sometimes
impose duties condemned by nature, puried reason and virtue? And why in certain
times is it particularly attributed to certain qualities, certain actions, and in other
times to actions and to qualities of an opposite type?
The great principle of utility of David Hume must be recalled: it is utility that
always decides our esteem. But certain qualities, certain talents are at various times
more or less useful. Honored at rst, they are less so afterward.
If the communal status of women is not established, conjugal delity will be their
honor. Since it is not believed that a woman can fail in delity to a respectable man,
the honor of the husband depends on the chastity of his wife.
Such is the summary of the article from the Encyclopedie relating to the subject
that concerns you. There is a profound sense in the sentence that relates the estab-
lishment andmaintenance of the various types of honor toutility. Infact there existed
in the old monarchy rst a general honor and a special one for each profession. Gen-
eral honor consisted of abstaining from all that merits scorn. Special honor was in-
separable from virtue and from integrity among magistrates, tradesmen, merchants.
Only in the military profession could honor be outside of virtue, act apart from it
and sometimes in opposition to it.
As civilization advanced, the aberrations of military honor penetrated the middle
class and little by little extended to the lowest ranks. Currently it is understood dif-
ferently in many respects. But the prejudice that an insult must be washed away by
blood has survived. This is how a murderer believes he can erase the shame of his
crime and attenuate it in fact by suicide, which is an additional crime.
I am going to speak about special honors. 1. That of the nobility. It obliged the
nobility to devote itself to the service of the State inthe professionof arms, tosacrice
for the State its life and if needed its fortune. The gentleman guilty of a crime was
not dishonored if he was beheaded. Another punishment dishonored him and his
descendants.
He could not marry inappropriately without failing in honor. Nonetheless, in the
XVIIIth century, wealth was accepted in order to compensate for birth.
He could not exercise the mechanical arts, or do commerce. Only in Brittany, he
put down his sword, went to do maritime commerce and, upon returning, took up
his sword again. His quality of nobleman was as if suspended during his absence.
I believe that the nobleman could not subscribe to letters of exchange without
staining his honor. He could indeed not pay suppliers, but the word bankruptcy
would have dishonored him. It was the same if he did not pay gambling debts, wagers
and other debts with written proof of indebtedness.
He had to be sensitive to insults and disposed to demand satisfaction. From that
the proverb: being contradicted is worth being struck with the sword. A blow could
be expiated only by the death of one of the two combatants. The refusal to ght and
even hesitation to accept a duel caused dishonor. But also, the dishonor that should
have accompanied a lot of blameworthy actions was erased by the duel. Youremained
guilty before the law and conscience, but ceased to be so according to honor.
It goes without saying that every base action took away honor. Moreover, there
was, I believe, neither code nor court. Opinion judged, and it was more or less severe.
When it had condemned, the stain was permanent. The unfortunate whom it had
reached was obliged to hide himself to avoid awful affronts. Louis XIV had in truth
created the court of the Marshals of France which exercised a certain jurisdiction as
If the reader has well grasped all that precedes, he must have understood
that there exists, between inequality of conditions and what we have called
honor, a close and necessary connection that, if I am not wrong, had not
yet been clearly pointed out. So I must make a nal effort to bring it clearly
to light.
w
regards honor, but I believe it concerned itself above all with the causes of duels. M.
Feuillet promised me to do research on this subject. In sum, the nobleman was more
dishonored than the commoner for actions that would have stained the honor of the
latter. You saw yourself as dishonored by a blow of the sovereign because you could
not demand satisfaction from him.
The honor of the magistrate was something else entirely. A duel would have dis-
honored him. His honor consisted of integrity, decency of conduct, a quiet life and
a busy existence.
The tradesman was not dishonored if he refused to ght. His honor consisted of
running his company well, of the clarity of his enterprises, exactitude in fullling his
engagements, his delity, integrity in supplies.
There more or less, my good friend, is all that I can say on this subject. All that
formerly existed has left a trace that you can see. Only honor was much more delicate
and punctilious than it is now. Material interests invade the ground of honor and
you allowmany things that would have made you blush formerly, and that inall ranks
and in all classes.
Cold is always hard and I am concerned about you. Tell Marie that I thank her
for her letter. I have begun to answer her. I do not have the time to nish today. Kiss
her for me and tell her to kiss you for me.
A thousand tender regards to E
douard and his family. A thousand friendly greet-

ings from mother Guermarquer.
If I get new information, I will send it immediately./
The man declared dishonored by opinion was forced by his fellows, colleagues or
comrades to give his resignation.
In January 1838, Kergorlay, on a visit to Baugy for four days, probably helpedTocqueville
in drafting this chapter. The author wrote to Beaumont on 18 January: Louis has just
spent four days here; I was at that moment tangled in a system of ideas from which I
could not extricate myself. It was a true intellectual cul-de-sac, which he got me out of
in a few hours. This boy has in him a veritable mine from which he alone cannot and
does not know how to draw (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, p. 279). The
papers of the heirs of Tocqueville contain a manuscript from Kergorlay on honor with
this commentary from the author: Very remarkable piece by Louis de Kergorlay. To see
again, if I do a second edition.
w. <If the reader has clearly grasped all that precedes, he must have understood that
there exists a singular correlation between inequality of conditions and what we have
called honor. These are two facts that derive necessarily from each other.
As conditions become equal within a people and as the citizens become more equal
A nation takes up a separate position within humanity. Apart from cer-
tain general needs inherent in the human species, it has its own particular
interests and needs. Immediately established within the nation in the mat-
ter of blame and praise are certain opinions that are its own and that its
citizens call honor.
Within this same nation, a caste becomes established, which, separating
itself in turn from all the other classes, contracts particular needs, and the
latter, in turn, give rise to special opinions.
x
The honor of this caste, bizarre
mixture of the particular notions of the nation and of the still more par-
ticular notions of the caste, will diverge as far as you can imagine from the
simple and general opinions of men. We have reached the extreme point;
let us go back.
Ranks mingle, privileges are abolished. Since the men who compose the
nation have again become similar and equal, their interests and their needs
blend, andyousee successively vanishall the singular notions that eachcaste
called honor; honor now derives only from the particular needs of the na-
tion itself; it represents its individuality among peoples.
If it were nally allowed to suppose that all races were blended and that
all the peoples of the world had reached the point of having the same in-
terests, the same needs, and of no longer being different from each other
by any characteristic feature, you would cease entirely to attribute a con-
ventional value to human actions; everyone would envisage them in the
same light; the general needs of humanity, whichconscience reveals toevery
man, would be the common measure. Then, you would no longer nd in
this world anything except the simple and general notions of goodandevil,
to which would be linked, by a natural and necessary bond, the ideas of
praise and blame.
and more similar, honor does not disappear, but it becomes less strange inits precepts,
less absolute and less powerful> (Rubish, 2).
x. In the margin: <Here this eternal question presents itself. Is it opinion that gave
birth to fact or fact, opinion?>
Thus nally to contain in a single formula my whole thought, it is
the dissimilarities and the inequalities of men that created honor; it
grows weaker as these differences fade away, and it would disappear with
them.
y
y. On a sheet at the end of the manuscript:
To copy separately./
Of all religions, the one that has most considered the human species in its unity
and has had most in view in its laws the general needs of humanity, leaving aside
social state, laws, times and places, is the Christian religion.
So Christian peoples have always been and will always be very constrainedinusing
honor whatever honor may be. It is [what (ed.)] has beenthe weakness of Christianity
in certain periods and among certain peoples, but that is also what has establishedits
general strength and what assures its perpetuity./
This reection came to me today, 11 February, while reading the Imitation. This
book was written amid all the prejudices of honor of the Middle Ages and in the
country where honor reigned most despotically, and the book combats them all. It
is true that Thomas dA. [Thomas Kempis (ed.)] sometimes, according to me, forgets
the general principles of Christianity in order to start at the particular duties of the
religious state and on this point you could say that he combats the notions of aris-
tocratic honor with those of monastic honor.
1116
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1 9
a
Why in the United States You Find So Many
Ambitious Men and So Few Great Ambitions
b
The rst thing that strikes you in the United States is the innumerable
multitude of those who seek to leave their original condition; and the sec-
ond is the small number of great ambitions which stand out among this
universal movement of ambition.
c
There are no Americans who do not
a. The democratic revolution must be clearly distinguished from democracy.
As long as the revolution lasts, ambitions are very great, but they become small
when the revolution has ended.
Why:
When democracy does not prevent ambitions from being born, it at least gives
them a particular character.
What this character is.
That we must try in our time to purify and to regulate ambition, but we have to
be afraid of hindering it too much and impoverishing it (YTC, CVf, pp. 4748).
b. The chapter should rather be entitled of the greatness of desires (Rubish, 2).
c. In the rubish:
Ambition in democracies./
[In the margin: A great part ideas of Louis.]
When you examine this subject attentively, you arrive at thinking this:
Democracy immensely augments the number of ambitious men and decreases the
number of great ambitions. It makes all men aim a bit beyond where they are; it
prevents almost anyone from aiming very far.
The cause of that is in equality of conditions. Equality of conditions and the
absence of classications gives all men the ability to change their position; these same
causes prevent any man from being naturally and reasonably led to aim for a very
elevated situation.
Kings think naturally of conquering kingdoms, the nobleman of governing the
State or of acquiring glory. Placed very high, these great goals are close to them; and
their situation as well as their taste pushes them naturally to seize them. The poor
aim to acquire a mediocre fortune. Men who have a mediocre fortune aimto become
ambi ti ous men and great ambi ti ons 1117
appear to be devoured by the desire to rise; but you see hardly any who
seem to nourish very vast hopes or to aim very high. All want constantly
to acquire property, reputation, power; few envisage all these things on a
large scale. And at rst view that is surprising, since you notice nothing,
either in the mores or in the laws of America, that should limit desires and
prevent them from taking off in all directions.
d
rich. These goals are not as great as the rst if you consider them in an absolute way;
from a relative point of view they are not smaller. The desires that lead men toward
the rst and toward the second are the same.
Sometimes, however, within democracies immense ambitions are born, for what
happens to the human body in savage life happens there. All the children who are
born weak die there, those who survive become very strong men. The strength that
made them conquer the rst obstacles, pushes them very much farther.
This, moreover, is applicable only to established and peaceful democracies. In de-
mocracies in revolution ambitions are numerous and great; equality of conditions
allows each man to change place, and fortune puts temporarily within reach of each
man the greatest places. This is what has made some think in a general way that
democracies push men toward great ambitions. The exception has been taken for the
rule. France has served as an example for everything in order to prove the rst prop-
osition. This idea is correct in a general way only when you apply it to an army. The
democratic principle introduced into an army cannot fail to create there a multitude
of great ambitions and to push men toward prodigious things. An army at war is
nothing else than a society in revolution. So what I have said above occasionallyabout
society always applies to an army./
Review all of these ideas, reect about them well before accepting them. Know if
what I call a state of revolution is not after all the natural state of democracies.
If what I am saying is true, the consequences to draw from it would be important
and of several sorts. A sort of weakening would result in all sentiments, and even in
ideas; the source of great thoughts, of heroic tastes would be not dried up, but di-
minished. The remedy to that (Rubish, 2).
The rubish of this chapter contains the letter of 2 February 1838 of Tocqueville to Ker-
gorlay and the response of Kergorlay dated 6 January, but clearly from the month of
February of the same year. Tocqueville questions the recipient of his letter about the
increase of small and great ambitions in democracies. Kergorlay answers that democ-
racies increase small ambitions, but that he can say nothing about great ones. These two
letters are published in the Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 2, pp. 1218.
d. On a sheet of the manuscript:
The generative idea of this chapter remains of doubtful truth for two reasons among
others:
It seems difcult to attribute this singular state of things to equality of
conditions [{democracy}]; for, at the moment when the same equality be-
came established among us, it immediately caused almost limitless ambi-
tions to develop.
e
I believe, however, that it is principally in the social state
and democratic mores of the Americans that the cause of what precedes
must be sought.
Every revolution magnies the ambition of men. That is above all true
of the revolution that overthrows an aristocracy.
f
[The revolution that nally creates a democratic social state must be
clearly distinguished from the democratic social state itself.
When a powerful aristocracy disappears suddenly amid the popular
waves raised against it, it is not only men who change place; laws, ideas,
mores are renewed; the entire world seems to change appearance. The old
order on which humanity rested nally collapses and a new order comes to
light. The authors and the witnesses of these wonders, while contemplating
them, feel as if transported beyond themselves; the grandeur of the things
that are taking place before their eyes and by their hands expands their soul
and lls it with vast thoughts and immense desires.
Ambition then takes on an audacious and grandiose character. It appears
sometimes disinterested, often sublime. That is due not to the social state
of the people, but to the singular revolution that it is undergoing.]
g
1. The governmental machine is so powerful in democratic centuries that the one
who succeeded in holding it in his hand can easily imagine immense projects.
2. Since all men are more or less similar, you can hope to be understood by all at
the same time and to act on all, which must expand thought and raise the heart.
e. Is it very sure that if the American statesmen had a great power they would not
have a great ambition?/
Ambition is desire to act on your fellows, to command them (Rubish, 2).
f. It is clear that if I succeeded in presenting as an absolute truththat equalitydestroys
ambition and prevents revolutions, I would contradict a great part of my own ideas pre-
viously put forward.
So I must be very careful there and stick with the possibility of the thing (Rubish, 2).
g. In the margin: All of that upon reading seems to me a bit the amplication of
a man who is groping along. Style of improvisation.
Read all of that to Beaumont before deleting it entirely.
Since the old barriers that separated the crowd from fame and power
have fallen suddenly, an impetuous and universal upward movement takes
place toward these long desired splendors whose enjoyment is nally al-
lowed. In this rst exaltation of triumph, nothing seems impossible toany-
one. Not only do desires have no limits, but the power to satisfy them has
hardly any. Amid this general and sudden renewal of customs and laws, in
this vast confusion of all men and all rules, citizens rise and fall with an
unheard-of rapidity, and power passes so quickly from hand to hand that
no one should despair of seizing it in his turn.
You must remember clearly, moreover, that the men who destroy an ar-
istocracy livedunder its laws; they sawits splendors andallowedthemselves,
without knowing it, to be penetrated by the sentiments and the ideas that
the aristocracy had conceived. So at the moment when an aristocracy dis-
solves, its spirit still hovers over the mass, and its instincts are conservedfor
a long time after it has been vanquished.
So ambitions always appear very great, as long as the democratic
revolution endures; after it has nished, it will still be the same for some
time.
The recollection of the extraordinary events that they have witnessed
does not fade in one day from the memory of men. The passions that rev-
olution had suggested do not disappear with it.
h
The sentiment of insta-
h. Our civil troubles have brought to light men who, by the immensity of their
genius and of their crimes, have remained in the picture of the past like deformed
but gigantesque masses that constantly and from all sides attract the sight of the
crowd.
[In the margin: 19 September 1837.
2 v.
Perhaps to mores strictly speaking.
Depraved ambition.
To ambition perhaps.]
From that is born among us a sort of depraved taste and dishonest admirationfor
everything that diverges in whatever fashion from the ordinary dimensions of hu-
manity. You want to escape the common rule, no matter where. Not able to be dif-
ferent by your acts, you seek at least to make yourself extraordinary by your manners;
if you do not do great things, you at least say bizarre things; and often, after you have
failed to be a hero, you do not scorn becoming a remarkable rogue.
bility is perpetuated amid order. The idea of the ease of success outlives
the strange vicissitudes that have given it birth. Desires remain very vast,
while the means to satisfy them diminishes every day. The taste for great
fortunes subsists, even though great fortunes become rare, and you see tak-
ing re on all sides disproportionate and unfortunate ambitions that burn
secretly and fruitlessly in the heart that harbors them.
Little by little, however, the last traces of the struggle fade; the remnants
of the aristocracy nally disappear. You forget the great events that accom-
panied its fall; rest follows war, the dominion of rules is reborn within the
new world; desires become proportionate to means; needs, ideas and sen-
timents become linked together; men nally come to the same level; dem-
ocratic society is nally established.
If we consider a democratic people having reached this permanent and
normal state, it will present to us a spectacle entirely different fromthe one
that we have just contemplated, and we will be able to judge without dif-
culty that, if ambition becomes great while conditions are becoming
equal, it loses this characteristic when they are equal.
Since great fortunes are divided and knowledge is widespread, no one is
absolutely deprived of enlightenment or of property; since privileges and
disqualications of classes are abolished, andsince menhave forever broken
the bonds that held them immobile, the idea of progress presents itself to
the mind of each one of them; the desire to rise is born at the same time
in all hearts; each man wants to leave his place. Ambition is the universal
sentiment.
But, if equality of conditions gives some resources to all citizens, it pre-
vents any one among them from having very extensive resources; this nec-
essarily encloses desires within rather narrow limits.
Since men of genius have been glorious and powerful despite the disorder of their
lives, many menimagine that, lacking genius, disorder sufces [for (ed.)] leadingthem
to glory and to greatness.
The French Revolution in its inexhaustible fertility produced only a single Mir-
abeau, but today you see swarming a multitude of small disagreeable Mirabeaus who,
lacking the talents of their model, succeed already too well in copying his vices (YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 12).
So among democratic peoples, ambition is ardent and continuous, but
it cannot habitually aimvery high; and life ordinarily is spent there ardently
coveting small objects that you see within your reach.
j
What above all diverts men of democracies from great ambition is not
the smallness of their fortune, but the violent effort that they make to im-
prove it every day. They force their soul to use all its strength in order to
do mediocre things, which cannot soon fail to limit its view and to circum-
scribe its power. They could be very much poorer and remain greater.
The small number of opulent citizens whoare foundwithinademocracy
do not make an exception to this rule. A man who rises by degrees toward
wealth and power contracts, in this long effort, habits of prudence and
restraint which he cannot afterward give up. You do not gradually enlarge
your soul like your house.
k
An analogous remark is applicable to the sons of this same man. They
j. What must above all be pointedout inthe chapter onambitionis not that ambition
is naturally small or aims at rst very low, but [that (ed.)] it is easy to tire by obstacles.
The softness of souls makes it so that when a goal can be obtained only with much
effort and time, you give up obtaining it and limit yourself to a goal less grand but
easier to attain. I have not made this idea come out enough, idea which is however
capital and presents applications without number. That is how, at the moment (April
1838) when I am dealing with the army, I see clearly that in democracies the soldier
would very much want to be made an ofcer, but for that it would be necessary to
study, to impose efforts on himself, to run dangers that put him off. He prefers to
await the end of his time, to return to his elds and to work very quietly toward
obtaining well-being for himself.
[In the margin: Ambition is no longer moderate but effeminate.
It is not ambition which is small, it is courage./ Ambition is vulgar rather than
small. Vulgar, there is the true word of the chapter.]
The ofcer on his part would nd it excellent to have the salary, the power and
the general consideration, and he sees nothing that prevents him absolutely from
reaching them. But for that an energy of will, a brilliance, a splendor that costs him
something would be necessary. He prefers to reach the time of his retirement far from
danger and to go to live in his village without working.
This is what explains the picture of Lamoricie`re.
All this shows my idea with a new face that must be made into one of the principal
ideas of the chapter (Rubish, 2).
k. On the side: <All that is perhaps a bit high and mighty.> The same observation
is also found in the rubish.
are born, it is true, in a high position, but their parents were humble; they
grew up amid sentiments and ideas which are difcult for them to escape
later; and it is to be believed that the sons will inherit at the same time the
instincts of their father and his property.
It can happen, on the contrary, that the poorest offspring of a powerful
aristocracy exhibits a vast ambition, because the traditional opinions of his
race and the general spirit of his caste still sustain him for some time above
his fortune.
What also prevents the men of democratic times from easily devoting
themselves to the ambition for great things is the time that they foresee
must pass before they are able to embark upon them. A great advantage
of quality, Pascal said, is to put a man, at eighteen or twenty years of age,
in as strong a position as another man would be at fty; this is thirty years
gained without difculty.
m
Those thirty years are usually lacking for the
ambitious men of democracies. Equality, which allows eachmanthe ability
to reach everything, prevents him from growing up quickly.
In a democratic society, as elsewhere, there are only a certain number of
great fortunes to make; and because the careers that lead to them are open
to each citizen without distinction, the progress of all must indeed slow
down. Since the candidates appear more or less the same, and since it is
difcult to make a choice fromamong themwithout violating the principle
of equality, which is the supreme law of democratic societies, the rst idea
that presents itself is to make all march with the same step and to subject
them all to the same tests.
So as men become more similar and as the principle of equality pene-
trates institutions and mores more peacefully and profoundly, the rules for
advancement become more inexible, advancement slower; the difculty
of quickly attaining a certain degree of grandeur increases.
By hatred of privilege and by overabundance of choices, you come to
the point of forcing all men, whatever their size, to pass through the same
channel, and you subject them all without distinction to a multitude of
small preliminary exercises, in the middle of which their youth is lost and
m. It refers to pensee 193 of the Lafuma edition.
their imaginationgrows dim; so that they despair of ever being able toenjoy
fully the advantages that you offer to them; and when they are nally able
to do extraordinary things, they have lost the taste for them.
In China, where equality of conditions is very great and very ancient, a
man passes from one public ofce to another only after being subjected to
a competitive examination. This test is found at each step of his career, and
the idea of it has entered the mores so well that I remember reading a Chi-
nese novel in which the hero, after many vicissitudes, nally touches the
heart of his mistress by doing well on an examination. Great ambitions
breathe badly in such an atmosphere.
What I say about politics extends to everything; equality produces the
same effects everywhere; wherever the law does not undertake to regulate
and to slow the movement of men, competition sufces.
In a well-established democratic society, great and rapid rises are there-
fore rare; they form exceptions to the common rule. It is their singularity
that makes you forget their small number.
The men of democracies end up catching sight of all these things; in
the long run they notice that the legislator opens before them a limitless
eld, in which everyone can easily take a few steps, but which no one can
imagine crossing quickly. Between them and the vast and nal object of
their desires, they see a multitude of small, intermediary barriers, which
they must clear slowly; this sight fatigues their ambition in advance and
discourages it. So they renounce these distant and doubtful hopes, in order
to seek less elevated and easier enjoyments close to them. The law does not
limit their horizon, but they narrow it themselves.
I said that great ambitions were more rare in democratic centuries than
in times of aristocracy;
n
I add that, when, despite natural obstacles, great
ambitions are born, they have another physiognomy.
n. <Democratic nations produce great things rather than great men> (Rubish, 2).
In the rubish of the following chapter: Democracy suggests a few immoderate am-
bitions, without check, without limit, of a boldness and an imprudence without parallel
(like that of Thiers), such as you hardly ever see in aristocratic centuries; but in general
it gives rise to a multitude of small, vulgar, commonplace ambitions and diminishes the
number of great proportionate ambitions (Rubish, 2).
In aristocracies, the course of ambition is often extensive; but its limits
are xed. In democratic countries, it moves usually in a narrow eld; but
if it happens to go beyondthose limits, youwouldsay that there is nolonger
anything that limits it. Since men there are weak, isolated and changing,
and since precedents there have little sway and laws little duration, resis-
tance to innovations is soft and the social body never seems very sound or
very settled. So that, when those who are ambitious once have power in
hand, they believe they are able to dare anything; and when power escapes
them, they immediately think about overturning the State in order to
regain it.
o
That gives to great political ambition a violent and revolutionary char-
acter, which is rare to see, to the same degree, in aristocratic societies.
A multitude of small, very judicious ambitions, out of which now and
then spring a few great, badly ordered desires: such usually is the picture
presented by democratic nations. A measured, moderate and vast ambition
is hardly ever found there.
p
o. Charles XII had a great aristocratic ambition; Napoleon, a great democratic
ambition.
Each one is vast in a way.
[To the side] The one wanted above all to make his triumphs talked about, the other
to enjoy them (Rubish, 2).
In a variant of these same notes, in another place in the rubish, Tocqueville adds:
There was something of the parvenu in the ambition of Napoleon (Rubish, 2).
p. M. Guizot, in his article on religion inserted in the Universite catholique for the
month of M[arch (ed.)] 1838 says:
Never has ambition been more impatient and more widespread. Never have so
many hearts been prey to such a thirst for all goods, for all pleasures. Arrogant plea-
sures and coarse pleasures, thirst for material well-being and for intellectual vanity,
taste for activity and for softness, adventures and idleness: everything seems possible,
and desirable, and accessible to all. It is not that passion is strong, nor man disposed
to make much effort for the satisfaction of his desires. He wants feebly, but he desires
immensely. . . . The world has never seen such a conict of weak wills, of fantasies,
of claims, of demands, never heard such a noise of voices being raised all together
to claim as their right what they lack and what pleases them. And it is not toward
God that these voices are being raised. Ambition is at the same time widespread and
lower.
[On the back] Weak wills, this term is precious and expresses well one of my
thoughts. You have an immense and weak will because everything seems open and
permitted; you do not have a rm will because soon the obstacles are revealed. Ap-
I showed elsewhere by what secret strength equality made the passion
for material enjoyments and the exclusive love of the present predominate
in the human heart; these different instincts mingle with the sentiment of
ambition and tinge it, so to speak, with their colors.
I think that the ambitious men of democracies are preoccupied less than
all the others by the interests and judgments of the future; the present mo-
ment alone occupies them and absorbs them. They rapidly complete many
undertakings rather than raising a fewvery enduring monuments; theylove
success much more than glory. What they ask above all from men is obe-
dience. What they want above all is dominion. Their mores almost always
remain less elevated than their condition; this means that very often they
bring very vulgar tastes to an extraordinary fortune, and that they seem to
have risen to sovereign power only in order to gain more easily for them-
selves small and coarse pleasures.
I believe that today it is very necessary to purify, to regulate and to adjust
the sentiment of ambition, but that it would be very dangerous to want to
impoverish it and to curb it beyond measure. You must attempt in advance
to set extreme limits for it, which you will never allow it to surpass; but you
must take care not to hinder its impetus toomuchwithinthe allowedlimits.
I admit that I fear boldness much less, for democratic societies, than
mediocrity of desires; what seems to me most to fear is that, amid the small
incessant occupations of private life, ambition may lose its impetus and its
grandeur; that human passions may become calmer and lower at the same
time, so that each day the bearing of the social body may become more
tranquil and less elevated.
So I think that the heads of these new societies would be very wrong to
want to put the citizens to sleep in a happiness that is too smooth and
pearance and reality are always opposite. The social state awakens ambition and puts
it to sleep, gives great desires and nally leads you to be content with little.
[In the margin] Precious new deduction to include, deduction whichexplains very
well this evident phenomenon of democracies. Immense ambition and petty richmen
(Rubish, 2). It refers to Francois Guizot, Of Religion in Modern Societies, Univ-
ersite catholique 5, no. 27 (March 1838): 23140. The passage cited is found on p. 232.
peaceful, and that it is good that they sometimes give them difcult and
perilous things to do, in order to elevate ambition there and to open a the-
ater to it.
q
Moralists complain constantly that the favorite vice of our period is
pride.
That is true in a certain sense: there is no one, in fact, who does not
believe himself worth more than his neighbor and who agrees to obey his
superior. But that is very false in another sense; for this same man, who
cannot bear either subordination or equality, nonetheless despises himself
to the point that he believes himself made only for appreciatingvulgar plea-
sures. He stops willingly at mediocre desires without daringtoembarkupon
high undertakings; he scarcely imagines them.
So far from believing that humility must be recommended to our con-
temporaries, I would like you to try hard to give them a more vast idea of
themselves and of their species;
r
humility is not healthy for them; what
they lack most, in my opinion, is pride. I would willingly give up several
of our small virtues for this vice.
[In a jacket with the manuscript of the chapter:
Piece of the end that I am not very sure of having correctly deleted. Have
it copied and read./
I must not yet despair of combining this with the original version./
Seeing the general movement of ambition that today torments all men
and the senseless passions that often agitate them, there are many men
who suppose that the principal business of the legislator in democratic
q. A word that M. Thiers said to me one day in 1837 must not be lost from view:
the bourgeois do great things when they are not led in a bourgeois way (Rubish, 2).
r. The great objective of a democratic government must be to give its subjects great
reasonable ambitions (Rubish, 2).
In another place of the rubish: Utility that there can be in favoring philosophical
doctrines that elevate in a general manner the notion of the human species and keep the
human spirit at a certain proud height, like the dogma of the immortality of the soul,
of the predestination of man to a better world, of his high position inthe chainof being.
Philosophical humility is worth nothing in democratic centuries (Rubish, 2).
centuries is to extinguish ambition and to narrowtheir desires. This seems
true to me only to a certain measure.
It is in fact very important in those times to give xed and visible limits
to ambition.

I think that among democratic nations more than among all others
it is important carefully to contain powers, however great they may
be, within known and unsurpassable limits before which immoderate
imaginations stop in advance. I imagine that you must work harder than
elsewhere to make the constitution of the country seem strong and un-
changing [v: unassailable] and, where the law fails, to make public opin-
ion secure enough to raise an immobile barrier against unrestrained
passions.
Thus, I understand that among democratic peoples it is particularly
necessary to limit great ambition, but I believe that it would be dangerous
to hinder its impetus too much within the allowed limits.
I admit straight on that I fear the boldness of desires much less for
future generations than the mediocrity of desires. What, according to me,
is principally to fear in the coming centuries is that in the midst of the
small, incessant and tumultuous occupations of life, ambition may lose
its impetus and its grandeur; that human passions may become exhausted
and lower and that each day the appearance of humanity may become
more peaceful and less elevated.
If, therefore, the legislators of the new world want men to remain at
the level attained by our fathers and to go beyond it, they must take great
care not to discourage the sentiment of ambition too much.
So instead of excessively plunging citizens into the contemplation of
their particular interests so that they more easily abandon the direction of
the State to their leaders, it is important to tear themaway fromthemselves
often in order to occupy them with public affairs and, if possible, to sub-
stitute the love of fame and the taste for great things for the passion for
well-being.
I think as well that in democratic societies you must be very careful not
to imprison rare virtues too narrowly within the ordinary rules; it is good
there to prepare in advance great places which, by great talents andby great
efforts, you can imagine reaching quickly and where you can imagine act-
ing with independence.
This is what occurs naturally with liberty, and nothing shows its ne-
cessity better when conditions are equal.
Free institutions constantly force men to forget the petty affairs of in-
dividuals in order to preoccupy them with the great interests of peoples;
they elevate ambition and open a theater for it.
An absolute prince who becomes established within a people among
whomconditions are equal {democratic} is always obliged, inorder tohave
his power excused, to limit himself in the choice of his agents, to subject
advancement to xed and invariable rules, to profess an exaggerated re-
spect for equality of rights, for there is no power in the world which is
able to make a democratic people bear at the same time tyranny and
privilege.
A self-governing nation never allows itself to be imprisoned by such
fetters, and its omnipotent will constantly creates, despite customs and
laws, great quick fortunes which leave vast hopes for ambition.
So may the legislators of today seek to purify and to regulate ambition,
but may they take care not to want to diminish it too much.
Ambition must be given an honest, reasonable and great end, not
extinguished.
The more I consider what is coming in the future, the more I think
that from now on the great goal of the legislator must be to regulate and
to adjust ambition, rather than to diminish it.
So there is nothing that seems more appropriate to the new social state
than liberties in a monarchy, an hereditary prince and great elective
powers.]
1129
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 0
a
Of Positions Becoming an Industry
among Certain Democratic Nations
[I have talked about how as conditions become equal the sentiment of am-
bition spreads.
That is seen among all peoples whose social state is becoming demo-
cratic, but among them all ambition does not use the same means to satisfy
itself.]
In the United States, as soon as a citizen has some enlightenment and
some resources, he seeks to enrich himself in commerce and industry, or
he buys a eld covered with forest and becomes a pioneer. All that he asks
of the State is not to come to disturb him in his labors and to ensure the
fruit of those labors.
Among most European peoples, when a man begins to feel his strength
and to expand his desires, the rst idea that occurs to him is to gain a public
post.
b
These different results, coming from the same cause, are worth our
stopping a moment here to consider.
a. Among all democratic peoples, the number of ambitions is immense.
But among all, ambition does not take the same paths.
In America, every man seeks to raise himself by industry or commerce.
In France, as soon as [he has (ed.)] the desire to raise himself above his condition,
he asks for a public post.
Princes favor this tendency, and they are wrong. For since the number of positions
that they can give has a limit, and since the number of those who desire positions
increases without limits, princes must necessarily soonndthemselves before apeople
of discontented place seekers (YTC, CVf, p. 48). On the jacket of the manuscript
of the chapter, you read: 10 March 1838. Baugy.
b. In a former version: I have heard it said that in Spain as soon as a man felt himself
in an analogous position, the rst idea that occurred to him was to gain a public post
and that, if he was not able to succeed in doing so, he remained idle (Rubish, 2).
pos i ti ons becomi ng an i ndus try 1130
When public ofces are few, badly paid, unreliable, and on the other
hand, industrial careers are numerous and productive, the new and im-
patient desires that arise every day from equality are led from all directions
toward industry and not toward administration.
But if, at the same time that ranks are becoming equal, enlightenment
remains incomplete or spirits timid, or commerce and industry, hampered
in their development, offer only difcult and slowmeans tomake a fortune,
citizens, losing hope of improving their lot by themselves, rush tumultu-
ously toward the head of the State
c
and ask his help. To make themselves
more comfortable at the expense of the public treasury seems to them to
be, if not the only path open to them, at least, the easiest path and the one
most open to all for leaving a condition that is no longer enough for them.
The search for positions becomes the most popular of all industries.
It must be so, above all, in large, centralized monarchies, in which the
number of paid ofcials is immense and the existence of the ofce holders
is adequately secure, so that no one loses hope of obtaining a post there
and of enjoying it peacefully like a patrimony.
d
I will not say that this universal and excessive desire for public ofce is
a great social evil; that it destroys, within each citizen, the spirit of inde-
pendence and spreads throughout the entire body of the nationa venal and
servile temper; that it suffocates the manly virtues; nor will I make the ob-
servation that an industry of this type creates only an unproductive activity
and agitates the country without making it fruitful: all of that is easily
understood.
But I want to remark that the government that favors such a tendency
risks its tranquillity and puts its very life in great danger.
I know that, in a time like ours, when we see the love and respect that
was formerly attached to power being gradually extinguished, it canappear
necessary to those governing to bind each man more tightly by his interest,
and that it seems easy to them to use his very passions to keep him in order
and in silence; but it cannot be so for long, and what canappear for a certain
c. At rst: . . . toward the power of the State. In the margin: 
d. In the margin, in a rst draft from the Rubish: Spain, great proof of this.
United States, no. A thousand channels for ambition (Rubish, 2).
period as a cause of strength becomes assuredly in the long runa great cause
of trouble and of weakness.
Among democratic peoples, as among all others, the number of public
posts ends by having limits; but among these same peoples, the number of
ambitious men has no limits; the number increases constantly, by a gradual
and irresistible movement, as conditions become equal; the number reaches
its limit only when men are lacking.
So when ambition has no outlet except the administration alone, the
government necessarily ends by encountering a permanent opposition;
for its task is to satisfy with limited means, desires that multiply without
limits. You have to be well aware that, of all the peoples of this world, the
one most difcult to containand to leadis a people of place seekers. What-
ever the efforts made by its leaders, they can never satisfy such a people,
and you must always fear that it will nally overturn the constitution of
the country and change the face of the State, solely for the need to open
up positions.
e
[<It is very insane to want to contain in a single streambed the al-
ways swelling torrent of human ambitions. It would be wiser in my opin-
ion to divide up the mass and to separate it into a thousand various
channels.>
I am persuaded on my part that in a democratic society the interest of
e. When a man succeeds in rising by industrial careers . . . he generally makes a thou-
sand others and sometimes the whole nation prot from his rise. He establishes an
enduring situation in the country.
When, on the contrary, a man succeeds in rising by public ofces, his rise serves
only himself. It does not even offer anything stable for him. It takes all independence
away from him. Finally it prevents, for example, other abilities from being directed
elsewhere. This state of things is very unfortunate for the government itself, consid-
ering it apart from the nation. For individual ambition in democracies has no limits,
and the number of positions to give ends by having limits. When all democratic
ambition concentrates on positions, a government must always expect a terrible, al-
ways permanent opposition. A people of place seekers makes revolutions in order to
have vacant positions when all those that exist are already lled. Industrial (I amusing
this word lacking anything better) ambition can often come to the support of public
stability. Ambitionfor positions ina democracy canonly tendtowardupheavals (Rub-
ish, 2).
those governing as well as that of the governed is to multiply private careers
innitely.]
The princes of our times, who work hard to draw toward themselves
alone all the new desires aroused by equality, and to satisfy them, will there-
fore nish, if I am not mistaken, by regretting being engaged in such an
enterprise; they will discover one day that they have risked their power by
making it so necessary, and that it would have been more honest and more
sure to teach each one of their subjects the art of being self-sufcient.
1133
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 1
a
Why Great Revolutions
Will Become Rare
b
a. This chapter would take a very long time to analyze; since I lack time, I leave it.
(YTC, CVf, p. 49).
On 15 May 1838 Tocqueville read this chapter to Corcelle and Ampe`re. The latter,
noticing the inuence of Rousseau and the tone of the Great Century, couldnot prevent
himself from noting his sadness at seeing the turn that Tocquevilles thought takes here
(Correspondance avec Ampe `re, OC, XI, pp. xvixvii).
The theory of revolutions has had little commentary to this day. See Melvin Richter,
Tocquevilles Contribution to the Theory of Revolution, in C. Friedrich, ed., Revo-
lution (New York: Atherton, 1966), pp. 75121; and Irving Zeitlin, Liberty, Equality and
Revolution in Alexis de Tocqueville (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript:
of revolutionary passions among democratic peoples./
why the americans seem so agitated and are so immobile./
why the americans make so many innovations and so few revo-
lutions./
Take care while going over this chapter to point out better that I amspeakingabout
a nal and remote state and not about the times of transition in which we are still.
That is necessary in order not to appear paradoxical./
Baugy, end of March 1838.
At the end of the chapter in the manuscript:
Note to leave at the head of the chapter. The spirit of the chapter must absolutely
comply with it./
I can say very well, without putting myself in contradiction with myself, that
equality does not lead men to great and sudden revolutions.
But I cannot say, without giving the lie to a thousand passages of this book and
of the one that precedes it, that the natural tendency of equality is to make men
immobile.
Nor is that true.
Equality leads man to continual small changes and pushes him away from great
revolutions; there is the truth.
great revoluti ons 1134
A people who has lived for centuries under the regime of castes and classes
arrives at a democratic social state only through a long succession of more
or less painful transformations, with the aid of violent efforts, and after
numerous vicissitudes during which goods, opinions and power rapidly
change place.
Even when this great revolution is nished, you see the revolutionary
habits that it created still continue to exist, and profound agitation fol-
lows it.
Since all of this occurs at the moment when conditions are becoming
equal, you conclude that a hidden connection and a secret bond exist be-
tween equality itself and revolutions, so that the one cannot exist without
the others arising.
On this point, reasoning seems in agreement with experience.
Among a people where ranks are nearly equal no apparent bond unites
men and holds them rmly in their place. No one among them has the
permanent right or the power to command, and no ones condition is to
obey; but each man, nding himself provided with some enlightenment
and some resources, can choose his path and walk apart from all his
fellows.
The same causes that make citizens independent of each other push
them each day toward new and restless desires, and goad them constantly.
So it seems natural to believe that, in a democratic society, ideas, things
and men must eternally change forms and places, and that democratic cen-
turies will be times of rapid and constant transformations.
What is true as well is that a multitude of these small movements that are taken
for progress are not.
Man goes back and forth in place.
All that I can add is that there is such a political state that, combining withequality
and proting from this fear of revolutions natural to democratic peoples, would be
able to make them entirely stationary./
Hic.
In democratic societies, revolutions will be less frequent, less violent andless sudden
than you believe.
Perhaps it can even happen that society there becomes stationary.
There is the clear idea that must emerge from the chapter. More would be too
much; less, too little.
Is that the case infact? Does equality of conditions leadmenina habitual
and permanent way toward revolutions? Does it contain some disturbing
principle that prevents society from becoming settled and disposes citizens
constantly to renew their laws, their doctrines and their mores? I do not
believe so. The subject is important; I beg the reader to follow me closely.
c
Nearly all the revolutions that have changed the face of peoples have
been made in order to sanction or to destroy inequality. Take away the
secondary causes that have produced the great agitations of men, you will
almost always arrive at inequality. It is the poor who have wanted to steal
the property of the rich, or the richwho have triedtoput the poor inchains.
So if you can establish a state of society in which each man has something
to keep and little to take, you will have done a great deal for the peace of
the world.
I amnot unaware that, among a great democratic people, there are always
very poor citizens and very rich citizens; but the poor, instead of forming
the immense majority of the nation as always happens in aristocratic so-
cieties, are small in number, and the law has not tied them together by the
bonds of an irremediable and hereditary misery.
The rich, on their side, are fewand powerless; they do not have privileges
that attract attention; their wealth itself, no longer incorporated inandrep-
resented by the land, is elusive and as if invisible. Just as there are no longer
races of the poor, there are no longer races of the rich; the latter emerge
each day from within the crowd, and return to it constantly. So they do not
form a separate class that you caneasily dene and despoil; andsince, more-
over, the rich are attached by a thousand secret threads to the mass of their
c. I must be very careful in all of this chapter because everything I say about the
difculty of revolutions depends prodigiously on the nature of political institutions.
That will leap to the attention of the reader and he must not believe that he has
discovered what I have not seen.
It is incontestable that autocracy, combining itself with equality of conditions,
will make the most steady and the most somnolent of governments, but I do not
know if you can say as much about equality combining withpolitical liberty. I believe
it nonetheless, everything considered and once permanent and peaceful equality has
been established, but perhaps it will be necessary to make the distinction (Rubish, 2).
fellow citizens, the people can scarcely hope to strike them without hitting
themselves. Between these two extremes of democratic societies, is found
an innumerable multitude of almost similar men who, without being pre-
cisely rich or poor, possess enough property to desire order, and do not have
enough property to arouse envy.
Those men are naturally enemies of violent movements; their immo-
bility keeps at rest everything above and below them, and secures the social
body in its settled position.
It isnt that those same men are satised with their present fortune, or
that they feel a natural horror for a revolutionwhose spoils they wouldshare
without experiencing its evils; on the contrary, they desire to become rich
with unequaled ardor; but the difculty is to know from whom to take the
wealth. The same social state that constantly suggests desires to them con-
tains those desires within necessary limits. It gives men more liberty to
change and less interest in changing.
d
Not only do men of democracies not naturally desire revolutions, but
they fear them.
There is no revolution that does not more or less threatenacquiredprop-
erty. Most of those who inhabit democratic countries are property owners;
they not only have properties; they live in the condition in which men at-
tach the highest value to their property.
e
If you attentively consider each one of the classes that compose society,
it is easy to see that in no class are the passions that arise from property
more ruthless and more tenacious than among the middle class.
Oftenthe poor hardly worry about what they possess, because theysuffer
from what they lack much more than they enjoy the little that they have.
The rich have many other passions to satisfy than that of wealth, and be-
sides, the long and difcult use of a great fortune sometimes ends by mak-
ing them as if insensitive to its sweet pleasures.
But the men who live in a comfort equally removed from opulence and
d. The manuscript includes in this place the reference to note a. See note z for p. 1152.
e. There is no country in which I saw as much horror for the theory of agrarian law
than in the United States (Rubish, 2).
from misery put an immense value on their property. Since they are still
very close to poverty, they see its rigors close up, and fear them; between
poverty and them, there is nothing except a small patrimony onwhichthey
soon x their fears and their hopes. At every instant, they become more
interested in their property because of the constant concerns that it gives
them, and they become attached to it because of the daily efforts that they
make to augment it. The idea of giving up the least part of it is unbearable
to them, and they consider its complete loss as the greatest of misfortunes.
Now, it is the number of these ardent and anxious small property owners
that equality of conditions increases incessantly.
Thus, indemocratic societies, the majority of citizens does not seeclearly
what it could gain from a revolution, and it feels at every instant and in a
thousand ways what it could lose.
f
I said, in another place in this work, how equality of conditions pushed
men naturally toward industrial and commercial careers, and how it in-
creased and diversied property in land; nally I showed how equality of
conditions inspired in each man an ardent and constant desire to augment
his well-being. There is nothing more contrary to revolutionary passions
than all these things.
f. On a loose sheet at the end of the manuscript of the chapter:
Material bond./
I wonder how, when citizens differ in opinion on so many points as they do among
most democratic peoples, it happens nonetheless that a certain material order is es-
tablished easily enough among them, and I explain it to myself.
In proportion as conditions become equal, the material order becomes a positive
and visible interest for more individuals at the same time. Since everyone has some-
thing to lose and since no one has much to gain fromgreat changes, it is tacitly agreed
not to change beyond a certain measure. This is how the division of property mod-
erates the spirit of change to which it gave birth. On the one hand, it pushes men
towardinnovations of all types; onthe other, it holds themwithinthe limits of certain
innovations.
In democracies the natural taste of citizens perhaps leads themto disturb the State,
but concernfor their interest prevents themfromdoing so. These democraticsocieties
are always agitated, rarely overturned. In aristocracies, on the contrary, where the
opinions of men are naturally more similar and conditions as well as interests more
different, a small event can lead to confusion in everything.
Perhaps here what I said about personal property.
A revolution, in its nal result, can happen to serve industry and com-
merce; but its rst effect will almost always be
g
to ruin the industrialists
and the merchants, because it cannot fail, rst of all, to change the general
state of consumption and to reverse temporarily the relation that existed
between production and needs.
Moreover, I know nothing more opposed to revolutionary mores than
commercial mores. Commerce is naturally hostile to all violent passions. It
loves moderation, takes pleasure in compromises, very carefully ees from
anger. It is patient, exible, ingratiating, and it resorts to extreme means
only when the most absolute necessity forces it to do so. Commerce makes
menindependent of each other; it gives thema highidea of their individual
value; it leads them to want to conduct their own affairs, and teaches them
to succeed in doing so; so it disposes them to liberty, but distances them
from revolutions.
[Thus the effects of equality of conditions are diverse. Equality, mak-
ing men independent of each other, puts them at full liberty to innovate
and at the same time gives them tastes which need stability in order to be
satised.]
In a revolution, the owners of personal property
h
have more to fear than
all the others; for on the one hand, their property is often easy to seize, and
g. The manuscript says: will be always.
h. I said elsewhere that democracy pushed men toward commerce and industry and
tended to augment personal wealth.
Commercial habits in return are very favorable to the maintenance of democracy.
Habit of repressing all too violent passions. Moderation. No anger. Compromises.
Complicated and compromising interests in times of revolution.
As for the effects of property in land, see note (m.n.o.) (Rubish, 2).
Personal wealth (m.n.o.)./
How democracy tends to augment personal wealth. How it gives men a distaste
for slow industries such as the cultivation of the land and pushes them toward
commerce.
Political consequences of this. Idea of Damais: the man rich in capital inlandrisks
in revolutions only his income; the man rich in personal capital risks, on the contrary,
his entire existence. The one is much [more (ed.)] hostile to every appearance of
trouble than the other. Many other consequences to draw from that. To look closely
at this (YTC, CVa, p. 52).
on the other hand, at every moment it can disappear completely. This is
less to be feared by owners of landed property who, while losing the income
from their lands, hope at least throughout the vicissitudes, to keep the land
itself. Consequently you see that the rst are much more frightened than
the second at the sight of revolutionary movements.
So peoples are less disposed to revolutions as personal property is mul-
tiplied and diversied among themand as the number of those whopossess
personal property becomes greater.
Moreover, whatever professionmenembrace andwhatever type of prop-
erty they enjoy, one feature is common to all.
No one is fully satised with his present fortune, and everyone works
hard every day, by a thousand diverse means, to augment it. Consider each
one among them at whatever period of his life, and you will see him pre-
occupied with some new plans whose goal is to increase his comfort; do not
speak to himabout the interests andrights of humanity; this small domestic
enterprise absorbs all of his thoughts for the moment and makes him wish
to put public agitations off to another time.
That not only prevents them from making revolutions, but turns them
away from wanting to do so. Violent political passions have little hold on
men who have in this way attached their entire soul to the pursuit of well-
being. The ardor that they give to small affairs calms them down about
great ones.
It is true that from time to time in democratic societies enterprising and
ambitious citizens arise whose immense desires cannot be satised by fol-
lowing the common path. These men love revolutions and call themforth;
but they have great difculty bringing them about, if extraordinary events
do not come to their aid.
You do not struggle effectively against the spirit of your century and
country; and one man, however powerful you suppose him to be, has dif-
culty getting his contemporaries to share sentiments and ideas that the
whole of their desires and their sentiments reject. So once equality of con-
ditions has become an old and uncontested fact and has stamped its char-
acter on mores, you must not believe that men easily allow themselves to
rush into dangers following an imprudent leader or a bold innovator.
It is not that they resist him in an open way, with the aid of intelligent
contrivances, or even by a premeditated plan to resist. They do not ght
himwith energy; sometimes they even applaud him, but they do not follow
him. To his ardor, they secretly oppose their inertia; to his revolutionary
instincts, their conservative interests; their stay-at-home tastes to his ad-
venturous passions; their good sense to the ights of his genius; to his po-
etry, their prose. With a thousand efforts, he arouses themfor one moment,
and soon they escape him; and as if brought down by their own weight,
they fall back. He exhausts himself, wanting to animate this indifferent and
inattentive crowd, and he nally sees himself reduced to impotence, not
because he is vanquished, but because he is alone.
I do not claim that men who live in democratic societies are naturally
immobile; I think, on the contrary, that within such a society an eternal
movement reigns and that no one knows rest; but I believe that men there
become agitated within certain limits beyond which they hardly ever go.
They vary, alter, or renew secondary things every day; they take great care
not to touch principal ones. They love change; but they fear revolutions.
Although the Americans are constantly modifying or repealing some of
their laws, they are very far from exhibiting revolutionary passions. By the
promptness with which they stop and calm themselves down when public
agitation begins to become threatening, even at the moment whenpassions
seem the most excited, it is easy to discover that they fear a revolution as
the greatest of misfortunes, and that each one among them is inwardly
resolved to make great sacrices to avoid it. There is no country inthe world
where the sentiment of property shows itself more active andmore anxious
than in the United States, and where the majority shows less of a tendency
toward doctrines that threaten to alter in any manner whatsoever the con-
stitution of property.
j
j. The Americans constantly change their opinions in detail, but they are more in-
vincibly attached to certain opinions than any other people on earth. This [is (ed.)]
a singularity that is very striking at rst view and that can only be understood by
thinking about the difculty that men have in acting upon each other in democracies
and in establishing entirely new beliefs in the minds of a great number of men.
[On the back] Great revolutions in ideas, very rare events under democracies.
Great revolutions in facts, something rarer still (Rubish, 2).
I have often remarked that theories that are revolutionary by their
nature, in that they can only be realized by a complete and sometimes
sudden change in the state of property and persons, are innitely less in
favor in the United States than in the great monarchies of Europe. If a
few men profess them, the mass rejects them with a kind of instinctive
horror.
I am not afraid to say that most of the maxims that are customarily
called democratic in France would be proscribed by the democracy of the
United States. That is easily understood. InAmerica, youhave democratic
ideas and passions; in Europe, we still have revolutionary passions and
ideas.
If America ever experiences great revolutions, they will be brought about
by the presence of Blacks on the soil of the United States: that is to say
that it will be not equality of conditions, but on the contrary inequality of
conditions that gives birth to them.
When conditions are equal, each man willingly becomes isolated within
himself and forgets the public. If the legislators of democratic peoples did
not seek to correct this fatal tendency or favored it, with the thought that
this tendency diverts citizens from political passions and thus turns them
away from revolutions, they could themselves end up producing the evil
that they want to avoid. And a moment could arrive when the disorderly
passions of a few men, making use of the unintelligent egoism and faint-
heartedness of the greatest number, would end up forcing the social body
to undergo strange vicissitudes.
In democratic societies,
k
hardly any one other than small minorities de-
sires revolutions; but minorities can sometimes make them.
m
k. The manuscript says: In democratic centuries . . .
m. In an aristocratic country two or three powerful individuals join together and
make a revolution. Among a democratic people millions of independent men must
agree and associate in order to attain the same goal, which is that much more difcult
since among these peoples the State is naturally more skilled and stronger and indi-
viduals more powerless and weaker than anywhere else.
Thus equality not only removes from men the taste for revolutions, to a certain
point it takes the power away from them (Rubish, 2).
I am not saying that democratic nations are safe from revolutions; I am
only saying that the social state of these nations does not lead them to, but
rather distances them from revolutions. Democratic peoples, left to them-
selves, do not easily become engaged in great adventures; they are carried
toward revolutions only unknowingly; they sometimes undergo revolu-
tions, but they do not make them. And I add that, when they have been
permittedto acquire enlightenment andexperience, they donot allowthem
to be made.
n
I know well that in this matter public institutions themselves can do a
great deal; they favor or restrain the instincts that arise fromthe social state.
So I am not maintaining, I repeat, that a people is safe from revolution for
the sole reason that, within it, conditions are equal; but I believe that, what-
ever the institutions of such a people, great revolutions there will always be
innitely less violent and rarer than is supposed; and I easily foresee such
a political state that, combining with equality, would make society more
stationary [<and more immobile>] than it has ever been in our West.
What I have just said about facts applies in part to ideas.
Two things are astonishing in the United States: the great mobility of
most human actions and the singular xity of certain principles. Men stir
constantly, the human mind seems almost immobile.
Once an opinion has spread over the American soil and taken root, you
could say that no power on earth is able to eradicate it. In the United States
the general doctrines in matters of religion, philosophy, morals, and even
of politics, do not vary, or at least they are only modied after a hidden
A note at the end of the manuscript explains:
There are two remarks of E
douard that I must make use of.

1. In political revolutions: in aristocracies it is the majority that has an interest in
revolutions. In democracies, the minority. That is implied several times. Say it clearly.
2. In intellectual revolutions. All men, having a certain smattering of everything,
imagine that they have nothing new to learn or to learn from anyone.
n. To the side of a rst version in the rough drafts:
Perhaps here Athens and Florence./
In this matter I would very much like people to stop citing to us, in relation to
everything, the example of the democratic republics of Greece and Italy . . . (Rubish, 2).
and often imperceptible effort;
o
the crudest prejudices themselves fade only
with an inconceivable slowness amid the friction repeated a thousandtimes
between things and men.
I hear it said that it is in the nature and in the habits of democracies to
change sentiments and thoughts at every moment. That is perhaps true of
small democratic nations,
[
*
]
such as those of antiquity [added: or of the
Middle Ages], which were gathered all together in the public square and
then stirred up at the pleasure of an orator. I saw nothing similar within
the great democratic people that occupies the opposite shores of our ocean.
What struck me in the United States was the difculty experienced in dis-
abusing the majority of an idea that it has conceived and in detaching the
majority froma man that it adopts. Writings or speeches canhardly succeed
in doing so; experience alone achieves it in the end; sometimes experience
must be repeated.
p
This is astonishing at rst view; a more attentive examination ex-
plains it.
[<It is ideas that, most often, produce facts, andinturnfacts constantly
modify ideas.>]
I do not believe that it is as easy as you imagine to uproot the prejudices
of a democratic people; to change its beliefs; to substitute new religious,
philosophical, political and moral principles for those that were once es-
tablished; in a word, to make great and frequent intellectual revolutions. It
o. In metaphysics and in morals and in religion, authority seems to me more nec-
essary and less offensive than in politics, in science and in the arts./
If equality of con.-.-t.-ons [conditions? (ed.)] combined with autocracy, I thinkthat
the most immobile state of things that we have seen until now in our Europe would
result (Rubish, 2).
[*]. Show in a note there, in two words, that these were not democracies. Idle men.
p. In the margin:
Show how what was called democracy in antiquity and in the Middle Ages had no
real analogy with what we see in our times./
In Florence no middle class. Capitalists. Workers. No agricultural class. Manu-
facturing and dense population.
The same cause makes them conceive false opinions and makes them obstinately
keep their false opinions. They adopt such opinions because they do not have the
leisure to examine them carefully and they keep them because they do not want to
take the trouble and the time to review them.
is not that the human mind is idle there; it is in constant motion; but it
exerts itself to vary innitely the consequences of known principles and to
discover new consequences rather than to seek newprinciples. It turns back
on itself with agility, rather than rushing forward by a rapid and direct
effort; it extends its sphere little by little by continuous and quick small
movements; it does not shift ground suddenly.
Men equal in rights, in education, in fortune, and to say everything in
a phrase, of similar condition, necessarily have almost similar needs, habits
and tastes. Since they see matters in the same way, their mind is inclined
naturally toward analogous ideas, and although each one of themcanwith-
drawfromhis contemporaries and create his ownbeliefs, they endup, with-
out knowing it and without wanting to, by nding themselves all with a
certain number of common opinions.
[The intellectual anarchy of democratic societies is more apparent than
real. Men differ innitely on questions of detail, but on the great principles
they are in agreement.]
The more attentively I consider the effects of equality on the mind,
the more I am persuaded that the intellectual anarchy of which we
are witnesses is not, as some suppose, the natural state of democratic peo-
ples.
q
I believe that the intellectual anarchy must instead be considered as
q. On a sheet at the end of the manuscript of the chapter:
I must take great care not to fall into the improbable andthe paradoxical andtoappear
to be conjuring up ghosts.
Equality of conditions, giving individual reason a complete independence, must
leadmentowardintellectual anarchy andbring about continual revolutions inhuman
opinions.
This is the rst idea that presents itself, the common idea, the most likely idea at
rst view.
By examining things more closely, I discover that there are limits to this individual
independence in democratic countries that I had not seen at rst and which make
me believe that beliefs must be more common and more stable than we judge at rst
glance.
That is already doing a great deal to lead the mind of the reader there.
But I want to aim still further and I am going even as far as imagining that the
nal result of democracy will be to make the human mind too immobile and human
opinions too stable.
an accident particular to their youth, and that it shows itself only during
the period of transition when men have already broken the old bonds that
tied them together, and still differ prodigiously by origin, education and
mores; so that, having retained very diverse ideas, instincts and tastes,
nothing prevents them any longer from bringing them forth. The prin-
cipal opinions of men become similar as conditions become alike. Such
seems to me to be the general and permanent fact; the rest is fortuitous
and eeting.
r
I believe that rarely, in a democratic society, will a man come to imagine,
at a single stroke, a system of ideas very removed from the one that his
contemporaries have adopted; andif suchaninnovator appeared, I imagine
that he would at rst have great difculty making himself heard and still
more making himself believed.
s
When conditions are almost the same, one man does not easily allow
himself to be persuaded by another. Since all see each other very close up,
since together they have learned the same things and lead the same life, they
This idea is so extraordinary and so removed from the mind of the reader that I
must make him see it only in the background and as an hypothesis.
Note in the rough drafts:
This idea that the democratic social state is anti-revolutionarysoshocks acceptedideas
that I must win over the mind of the reader little by little, and for that I must begin
by saying that this social state is less revolutionary than is supposed. I begin there and
by an imperceptible curve I arrive at saying that there is room to fear that it is not
revolutionary enough. True idea, but which would seem paradoxical at rst view.
[To the side] Finish and do not begin with intellectual revolutions. The perfection
of the logical order would require beginning there, since facts arise from ideas; but
if I put my fears about the stationary state after social and political revolutions, I
would be thought far-fetched and would not be understood. After intellectual revo-
lutions that will be understood (Rubish, 2).
r. Perhaps distinguish the democratic social state from democratic political institu-
tions, equality of conditions from democracy strictly speaking.
The one leads to stability, the other to revolutions.
[To the side] Equality of conditions with free institutions is still not a revolutionary
constitution; combined with monarchy, it is the most naturally immobile of all states
(Rubish, 2).
s. In the margin: Because the opinions of men are naturally similar, is it a reason for
those opinions not to undergo a revolution?
are not naturally disposed to take one among them as a guide and to follow
him blindly; you hardly believe your fellow or your equal on his word.
It is not only condence in the enlightenment of certainindividuals that
becomes weak among democratic nations; as I said elsewhere, the general
idea of the intellectual superiority that any man can gain over all the others
does not take long to grow dim.
As men become more alike, the dogma of the equality of minds insin-
uates itself little by little in their beliefs, and it becomes more difcult for
an innovator, whoever he may be, to gain and to exercise a great power over
the mind of a people. So in such societies, sudden intellectual revolutions
are rare; for if you cast your eyes over the history of the world, you see that
it is much less the strength of an argument than the authority of a name
that has produced the great and rapid mutations of human opinions.
Note, moreover, that since the men who live in democratic societies
t
are
not attached by any bond to each other, each one of them must be per-
suaded. While in aristocratic societies it is enough to be able to act on the
mind of a few; all the others follow. If Luther had lived in a century of
equality, and if he had not had lords and princes as an audience, he would
perhaps have had more difculty changing the face of Europe.
It is not that the men of democracies are naturally very convinced of
the certitude of their opinions and very rmintheir beliefs; they oftenhave
doubts that no one, intheir view, canresolve. It sometimes happens inthose
times that the human mind would willingly change position; but, since
nothing either pushes it strongly or directs it, it oscillates in place and does
not move.
1
t. The manuscript says: democratic centuries.
1. If I try to nd out what state of society is most favorable to great intellectual revolutions,
I nd that it is found somewhere between the complete equality of all citizens and the absolute
separation of classes.
Under the regime of castes, the generations succeed each other without menchanging place;
some expect nothing more, others hope for nothing better. Imagination falls asleep amid this
When the condence of a democratic people has been won, it is still a
great matter to gain its attention. It is very difcult to make the men who
live in democracies listen, when you are not talking to them about them-
selves.
u
They do not listen to the things that you say to them, because they
are always very preoccupied with the things that they are doing.
There are, in fact, few idle men among democratic nations. Life there
passes amid movement and noise, and men there are so occupied with act-
ing that little time remains to themfor thinking. What I want to note above
all is that not only are they occupied, but they are passionate about their
occupations. They are perpetually in action, and each one of their actions
absorbs their soul; the heat that they bring to their affairs prevents them
from catching re about ideas.
I think that it is very difcult to excite the enthusiasm of a democratic
people for any theory whatsoever that does not have a visible, direct and
immediate connection to the daily conduct of life. So such a people does
not easily abandon its ancient beliefs. For it is enthusiasm that hurls the
human mind out of beaten paths and that creates great intellectual revo-
lutions like great political revolutions.
Thus democratic peoples have neither the leisure nor the taste to go in
search of new opinions. Even when they come to doubt those they possess,
they nevertheless maintain them because it would require too much time
silence and this universal immobility, and the very idea of movement no longer occurs to the
human mind.
When classes have been abolished and conditions have become almost equal, all men move
constantly, but each one of them is isolated, independent and weak. This last state differs
prodigiously from the rst; it is, however, analogous on one point. Great revolutions of the
human mind are very rare there.
But between these two extremes of the history of peoples, an intermediary age is found, a
glorious and troubled period, when conditions are not so xed that intelligence is asleep, and
when conditions are unequal enough that men exercise a very great power over each others
mind, and that a few can modify the beliefs of all. That is when powerful reformers arise and
when new ideas suddenly change the face of the world.
u. In the manuscript: . . . when you are not talking to them about what has a visible
and direct connection to the daily conduct of life, they ordinarily appear very distant.
Their minds constantly escape you.
and investigation for them to change their opinions; they keep them, not
as certain, but as established.
There are still other and more powerful reasons that are opposed to a
great change taking place easily in the doctrines of a democratic people. I
have already pointed it out at the beginning of this book.
If, within such a people, individual inuences are weak and almost non-
existent, the power exercised by the mass on the mind of each individual
is very great. I have given the reasons for it elsewhere. What I want to say
at this moment is that you would be wrong to believe that this depended
solely on the form of government, and that the majority there had to lose
its intellectual dominion with its political power.
In aristocracies men often have a greatness and a strength that is their
own. When they nd themselves in contradictionwiththe greatest number
of their fellows, they withdraw within themselves, sustain and console
themselves apart. It is not the same among democratic peoples. Among
them, public favor seems as necessary as the air that you breathe, and to be
in disagreement with the mass is, so to speak, not to live. The mass does
not need to use laws to bend those who do not think as it does. It is enough
to disapprove of them. The sentiment of their isolation and of their pow-
erlessness overwhelms them immediately and reduces them to despair.
Every time that conditions are equal, general opinion presses with an
immense weight on the mind of each individual; opinion envelops, directs
and oppresses it; that is due to the very constitution of the society much
more than to its political laws. As all men resemble each other more, each
one feels more and more weak in the face of all. Not nding anything that
raises him very far above them and that distinguishes him from them, he
mistrusts himself as soon as they ght him; not only does he doubt his
strength, but he also comes to doubt his right, and he is very close to ac-
knowledging that he is wrong, when the greatest number assert it. The ma-
jority does not need to constrain him; it convinces him.
v
So in whatever way you organize the powers of a democratic society and
v. In the margin: <The majority does not need political power to make life unbear-
able to the one who contradicts it.>
balance them, it will always be very difcult to believe in what the mass
rejects and to profess what it condemns.
This marvelously favors the stability of beliefs.
When an opinion has taken root among a democratic people and has
become established in the mind of the greatest number, it then subsists by
itself and perpetuates itself without effort, because no one attacks it. Those
who had at rst rejected it as false end by receiving it as general, and those
who continue to combat it at the bottom of their hearts reveal nothing;
they are very careful not to become engaged in a dangerous and useless
struggle.
It is true that, when the majority of a democratic people changes opin-
ion, it can at will bring about strange and sudden revolutions in the intel-
lectual world; but it is very difcult for its opinion to change, and almost
as difcult to notice that it has changed.
It sometimes happens that time, events or the individual and solitary
effort of minds, end by shaking or by destroying a belief little by little
without anything being outwardly visible. It is not fought openly. Men do
not gather together to make war on it. Its partisans leave it quietly one by
one; but each day a few abandon it, until nally it is shared only by a small
number.
In this state, it still reigns.
Since its enemies continue to be silent, or communicate their thoughts
only surreptitiously, they themselves are for a long time unable to be sure
that a great revolution has taken place, and indoubt they remainimmobile.
They observe and they are silent. [<They still tremble before the power that
no longer exists and yield in a cowardly way to an imaginary authority.>]
The majority no longer believes; but it still has the appearance of believing,
and this empty phantom of public opinion is enough to chill innovators
and to keep them in silence and respect.
[That is seen in all centuries but particularly in democratic cen-
turies.
Take liberty of the press away from a democratic nation and the human
mind falls asleep.]
We live in a period that has seen the most rapid changes take place in
the mind of men. It could happen, however, that soonthe principal human
opinions will be more stable than they have been in the preceding centuries
of our history; this time has not come, but perhaps it is approaching.
As I examine more closely the natural needs and instincts of democratic
peoples, I am persuaded that, if equality is ever established in a general and
permanent way in the world, great intellectual and political revolutions will
become very difcult and rarer than we suppose.
w
Because the men of democracies appear always excited, uncertain,
breathless, ready to change will and place, [<thoughts, careers]> you imag-
ine that they are suddenly going to abolish their laws, to adopt new beliefs
and to take up new mores. You do not consider that, if equality leads men
to change, it suggests to theminterests and tastes that need stability inorder
to be satised; it pushes them and, at the same time, stops them; it spurs
them on and ties them to the earth; it inames their desires and limits their
strength.
This is what is not revealed at rst. The passions that push citizens away
from each other in a democracy appear by themselves. But you do not no-
tice at rst glance the hidden force that holds them back and gathers them
together.
Will I dare to say it amid the ruins that surround me? What I dread most
for the generations to come is not revolutions.
x
If citizens continue to enclose themselves more and more narrowly
withinthe circle of small domestic interests andtobe agitatedtherewithout
respite, you can fear that they will end by becoming as if impervious to
these great and powerful public emotions that disturb peoples, but which
develop and renew them. When I see property become so mobile, and the
love of property so anxious and so ardent, I cannot prevent myself from
fearing that men will reach the point of regarding every new theory as a
danger, every innovation as an unfortunate trouble, every social progress as
a rst step toward a revolution, and that they will refuse entirely to move
w. I understand by great revolutions changes that profoundly modify the social state,
the political constitution, the mores, the opinions of a people (Rubish, 2).
x. Will I dare to say it? What I dread most for the generations to come is not great
revolutions, but apathy (Rubish, 2).
for fear that they would be carried away. I tremble, I confess, that they will
nally allowthemselves to be possessedso well by a cowardly love of present
enjoyments, that the interest in their own future and that of their descen-
dants will disappear, and that they will prefer to follow feebly the course of
their destiny, than to make, if needed, a sudden and energetic effort to
redress it.
You believe that the new societies are going to change face every day, and
as for me, I fear that they will end by being too invariably xed in the same
institutions, the same prejudices, the same mores; so that humanity comes
to a stop and becomes limited; that the mind eternally turns back on itself
without producing newideas; that manbecomes exhaustedinsmall solitary
and sterile movements, and that, even while constantly moving, humanity
no longer advances.
[At the end of the manuscript of this chapter:
This piece interrupted the natural course of ideas. Put it in a note.
y
<It is not only the results of revolutions that frighten democratic peo-
ples. The extreme violence of revolutionary methods is repugnant to
them.>
[
*
]
I showed how equality of conditions, by making men alike, interested
them mutually in their miseries and made their mores milder.
These habits of private life are found again in public life and prevent
political passions [v: hatreds] from being too cruel and too implacable.
Here youmust not confuse revolutions that are made toestablishequal-
y. In the margin: <Where to place this idea which is necessary, but which can only
be introduced with difculty into an argument without interrupting it?
R: In a note.
Democracy not only distances men from revolutions by their interests but also by
their tastes.> The indications in the manuscript show that this piece should have been
placed immediately before I am not unaware . . .
[*]. Is that true in a general way? What is more favorable to revolutionary methods
than this maxim that the individual is nothing, society everything? What social state
better permits giving yourself to those methods andapplying themthanthe one inwhich
the individual is in fact so weak that you can crush him with impunity?
ity with those that take place after equality is established, and you must
be very careful about applying to the second the character of the rst.
Revolutions that are made to establish equality are almost always cruel
because the struggle takes place between men who are already equal
enough to be able to make war on each other and who are dissimilar
enough to strike each other without pity.
z
This harshness of sentiments no longer exists from the moment when
citizens have become equal and alike. Among a democratic people the
general and permanent mildness of mores imposes a certain restraint on
the most intense political hatreds. Men willingly allow a revolution to go
as far as injustice, but not as far as cruelty. The conscation of property
is repugnant to them, the sight of human blood is offensive to them; they
allow you to oppress, but they do not want you to kill.
This softening of political passions is seen clearly in the United States.
America is, I believe, the only country in the world where for the last fty
years not a single man has been condemned to death for a political offense.
There have, nonetheless, been a few great political crimes; there has been
no scaffold. It is true that several times in the United States and above all
in more recent times, you have seen the population give itself to horrible
excesses against Blacks and concerning slavery. But even that proves what
I am asserting. The political passions of the Americans become barbaric
only when an aristocratic institution is found (this is good but has already
been said previously).]
z. In the margin:
<What makes democratic revolutions milder is that the interests that they engage are
or seem less great. Men are always cruel when their passions are violently excited by
a great interest. This could be of use to me as a transition.>
(a) The same reason that causes men to have less interest in making great revolu-
tions in democratic centuries than in others makes revolutions there milder and less
complete. For what contributes most to iname passions and to push them toward
violence is the greatness of the goal that they pursue.
There is still another reason. I showed . . . [interrupted text (ed.)]
1153
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 2
a
Why Democratic Peoples Naturally
Desire Peace and Democratic Armies
Naturally Desire War
The same interests, the same fears, the same passions that divert democratic
peoples from revolutions distance them from war; the military spirit and
the revolutionary spirit grow weaker at the same time and for the same
reasons.
b
a. What I said in the preceding chapter explains why democratic peoples naturally
love peace.
Democratic armies naturally love war, because in these armies ambition is much
more general and more (illegible word) than in all others, and because in times of peace
advancement is more difcult.
These opposite dispositions of the people andof the army make democraticsocieties
run great dangers.
Remedies indicated for averting these dangers (YTC, CVf, p. 49).
In the Rubish, all the manuscripts belonging to the chapters on war are gathered in
the same jacket with the title: influence of equality on warrior passions.
Initially the titles of the chapters were the following:
military spirit. [Chapter 22]
how a democratic army could cease to be warlike and remain tur-
bulent. [This section constitutes the current chapter 22.]
which class in the democratic army is the most naturally warlike
and revolutionary. [Chapter 23]
rubish of chapter 4. [Chapter 24]
influence of equality on military discipline. [Chapter 25]
rubish of chapter 6. [Chapter 26]
Tocqueville nished drafting these chapters at the end of the month of April 1838.
The objection which presents itself to all these chapters is that I do not have a suf-
cient personal knowledge of the matter (Rubish, 2).
b. At this place you nd in the manuscript a reference to note (a). In the rubish, a
peace and war 1154
The ever-increasing number of property owners friendly to peace, the
development of personal wealth, which war so rapidly devours, this le-
niency of morals, this softness of heart, this predispositiontowardpity that
equality inspires, this coldness of reason that makes men hardly sensitive
to the poetic and violent emotions which arise among arms, all these causes
join together to extinguish military spirit.
I believe that you can accept as a general and constant rule that, among
civilized peoples, warrior passions will become rarer and less intense, as
conditions will be more equal.
War, however, is an accident to which all peoples are subject, democratic
peoples as well as others. Whatever taste these nations have for peace, they
must clearly keep themselves ready to repulse war, or in other words, they
must have an army.
Fortune, which has done such distinctive things to favor the inhabitants
of the United States, placed them in the middle of a wilderness where they
have, so to speak, no neighbors. A few thousand soldiers are sufcient for
them, but this is American and not democratic.
Equality of conditions, and the mores as well as the institutions that
derive from it, do not release a democratic people from the obligation to
maintain armies, and its armies always exercise a very great inuence on its
fate. So it is singularly important to inquire what the natural instincts are
of those who compose its armies.
Among aristocratic peoples, among those above all in which birth alone
determines rank, inequality is found in the army as in the nation; the ofcer
is the noble, the soldier is the serf. The one is necessarily calledtocommand,
the other to obey. So in aristocratic armies, the ambition of the soldier has
very narrow limits.
jacket bears the notation Piece that originally was inserted at sign (a) and that must not
be denitively deleted except after consultation.
To have copied after reestablishing page 2, which I took out for another use. This
jacket contains ideas that already appear in the chapter. A copy, reproduced in YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 8991, bears this commentary: Piece copied separately; I must pay attention
to it at the nal examination./
Piece that originally began the chapter. I removed it as extending and reproducing
ideas if not entirely similar, at least very analogous to those contained in the preceding
chapter. To see again (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 89).
peace and war 1155
Nor is that of the ofcers unlimited.
An aristocratic body is not only part of a hierarchy; it always contains
an internal hierarchy; the members who compose it are placed some above
the others, in a certain way that does not vary. This one is naturally called
by birth to command a regiment, and that one a company; having reached
the extreme limits of their hopes, they stop on their own and remain sat-
ised with their lot.
There is rst of all one great cause that in aristocracies tempers the desire
of the ofcer for advancement.
Among aristocratic peoples, the ofcer, apart from his rank in the army,
still occupies an elevated rank in society; the rst is almost always in his
eyes only an accessory to the second; the noble, by embracing the career of
arms, obeys ambition less than a sort of duty that his birth imposes onhim.
He enters the army inorder to employ honorably the idle years of his youth,
and in order to be able to bring back to his household and to his peers a
few honorable memories of military life; but his principal objective there
is not to gain property, consideration and power; for he possesses these ad-
vantages on his own and enjoys them without leaving home.
In democratic armies, all the soldiers can become ofcers, which gen-
eralizes the desire for advancement and extends the limits of military am-
bition almost innitely.
On his side, the ofcer sees nothing that naturally and inevitably stops
himat one rank rather than at another, and each rank has animmense value
in his eyes, because his rank in society depends almost always on his rank
in the army.
Among democratic peoples, it oftenhappens that the ofcer has noprop-
erty except his pay, and can expect consideration only from his military
honors. So every time he changes ofces, he changes fortune and is in a way
another man. What was incidental to existence in aristocratic armies has
thus become the main thing, everything, existence itself.
Under the old French monarchy,
c
ofcers were given only their title of
c. Under the old regime and still currently in England generals were called by their
peace and war 1156
nobility. Today, they are given only their military title. This small change
in the conventions of language is sufcient to indicate that a great revo-
lution has taken place in the constitution of society and inthat of the army.
Within democratic armies, the desire to advance is almost universal; it
is ardent, tenacious, continual; it increases with all the other desires, and is
extinguished only with life. Now, it is easy to see that, of all the armies of
the world, those in which advancement must be slowest in time of peace
are democratic armies. Since the number of ranks is naturally limited, the
number of competitors almost innumerable, and the inexible law of
equality bears on all, no one can make rapid progress, and many cannot
budge. Thus the need to advance is greater, and the ease of advancing less
than elsewhere.
d
title of nobility. In France they are given only their military title. There is a great
political revolution mixed with this revolution in the conventions of language.
They count on their salary to live, on their military cross, on their ranks to appear,
shine . . . , even more, all can equally attain everything. When a great prince said to
young soldiers that the baton of Marechal de France could be found in the knapsack
of each one of them, he was only translating into an energetic and original form the
common thought (Rubish, 2).
d. Democratic army./
L[ouis (ed.)]. said to me today (17 March 1837) about the army of Africa some
damning things if they are true, which I still doubt to the extent that he said.
He told me that this army was not very warlike, that you had all the difculty in
the world making it ght, that the soldier thought only about nishing his time and
returning to France, the ofcer thought only about reaching with the least danger
possible the time of his retirement, that the softness there was surprising, that the
regiments arrived in Africa only grudgingly, that there they took part in expeditions
only grudgingly and that in the expeditions they exposed themselves as little as they
could.
He claims that the army presented the same spectacle at Anvers, and he adds that
if we enter into war with Europe we will without fail be defeated.
[In the margin: L[ouis (ed.)]. fell into agreement that nothing similar was seen
before 1830.]
It seems to me that I am able to conclude from all that he said that the principal
causes of this state of things could be reduced to this:
1. Disorganization caused by the Revolution of 1830. A great number of good
subjects dismissed or retiring.
peace and war 1157
All of the ambitious men contained in a democratic army therefore wish
vehemently for war, because war empties places and nally allows violation
of the right of seniority, which is the only privilege natural to democracy.
We thus arrive at this singular consequence that, of all armies, the ones
that most ardently desire war are democratic armies, and that, among peo-
ples, those who most love peace are democratic peoples; and what really
makes the thing extraordinary is that it is equality which produces these
opposite effects simultaneously.
Citizens, being equal, conceive daily the desire and discover the possi-
bility of changing their condition and of increasing their well-being; that
disposes themto love peace, which makes industry prosper and allows each
2. Moral effect caused by this revolution. The soldier not only inferior to the ci-
vilian, which must be so, but beaten by the civilian who has suddenly become a better
soldier than he is.
3. Old remnants of the Empire with which the regiments were inundated. Old
non-commissioned ofcers who have been made ofcers. Four hundred battalions
created and disbanded almost immediately, forming afterward an immense mass of
ofcers which stops advancement. Almost all the lower ranks occupied by old men.
In a word, the disorder of a great revolution without the movement and the impetus
that it causes. It has been disorganizing without creating anything.
4. General deterioration of morals resulting from the deceptions that followed
1830, of the baseness of the government, of tricks, of the cult of cleverness. . . . This
deterioration makes itself felt in the army as elsewhere. Civilians sell their conscience
and military men seek to save their skin.
5. The inferior condition in which the army is found. The ofcer is paid little; he
is taken from the secondary classes and not mixed with the upper classes; he is not
received in society; he is inferior in education and in enlightenment. The civilization
of the army is very inferior to that of the country. The ofcer is abased in all ways
in his own eyes and becomes a stranger to the great sentiments and to the great
thoughts that cause great things. This inferiority of the army has increased since 1830
when the aristocratic element of the army disappeared.
The rst four causes that I have just talked about are accidental and transitory, but
it is not sure that the fth is not due profoundly to the state of a democratic army in
peace, and it necessitates attracting my most serious attention (In the Rubish how
a democratic army could cease to be warlike and remain turbu-
lent). Certain ideas of these chapters are already found in a letter of 10 November
1836 to Kergorlay (Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, pp. 41617).
peace and war 1158
manto push his small enterprises tranquilly to their end; andfromthe other
side, this same equality, by augmenting the value of military honors in the
eyes of those who follow the career of arms, and by making honors acces-
sible to all, makes soldiers dream of battleelds. From both sides, the rest-
lessness of heart is the same, the taste for enjoyments is as insatiable, am-
bition is equal; only the means to satisfy it is different.
These opposing predispositions of the nation and of the army make
democratic societies run great dangers.
When the military spirit deserts a people, the military career immedi-
ately ceases to be honored, and men of war fall to the lowest rank of public
ofcials. They are little esteemed and no longer understood. Then the op-
posite of what is seen in aristocratic centuries happens. It is no longer the
principal citizens who enter the army, but the least. Men give themselves
to military ambition only when no other is allowed. This forms a vicious
circle from which it is difcult to escape. The elite of the nation avoids the
military career, because this career is not honored; and it is not honored,
because the elite of the nation no longer enters it.
[Although the military man has in general a better-regulated and
milder existence in democratic times than in all the others, he nonetheless
experiences an unbearable uneasiness there; his body is better nourished,
better clothed, but his soul suffers.]
So youmust not be astonishedif democratic armies oftenappear restless,
muttering, and poorly satised with their lot, eventhoughthe physical con-
dition there is usually very much milder and discipline less rigid than in all
the others. The soldier feels himself in an inferior position, and his
wounded pride ends by giving him the taste for war, which makes him
necessary, or the love of revolutions, during which he hopes to conquer,
weapons in hand, the political inuence and the individual consideration
that others deny him.
The composition of democratic armies makes this last danger verymuch
to be feared.
In democratic society, nearly all citizens have some property to preserve;
but democratic armies are led, in general, by proletarians. Most among
them have little to lose in civil disturbances. The mass of the nation nat-
peace and war 1159
urally fears revolutions more thanincenturies of aristocracy; but the leaders
of the army fear them much less.
Moreover, since among democratic peoples, as I have said before, the
wealthiest, most educated, most capable citizens hardly enter the military
career, it happens that the army, as a whole, ends up becoming a small
nation apart, in which intelligence is less widespread and habits are cruder
than in the large nation. Now, this small uncivilized nation possesses the
weapons, and it alone knows how to use them.
What, in fact, increases the danger that the military and turbulent spirit
of the army presents to democratic peoples is the pacic temperament of
the citizens; there is nothing so dangerous as an army within a nation that
is not warlike; the excessive love of all the citizens for tranquillity daily puts
the constitution at the mercy of soldiers.
So you can say in a general way that, if democratic peoples are naturally
led toward peace by their interests and their instincts, they are constantly
drawn toward war and revolutions by their armies.
Military revolutions, which are almost never to be fearedinaristocracies,
are always to be fearedindemocratic nations. These dangers must be ranked
among the most formidable of all those that their future holds; the atten-
tion of statesmen [v: of good citizens] must be applied unrelentingly to
nding a remedy for them.
When a nation feels itself tormented internally by the restless ambition
of its army, the rst thought that presents itself is to give war as a goal for
this troublesome ambition.
I do not want to speak ill of war; war almost always enlarges the thought
of a people and elevates the heart. There are cases where it alone can arrest
the excessive development of certain tendencies that arise naturally from
equality, and where war must be considered as necessary for certain invet-
erate illnesses
e
to which democratic societies are subject.
e. In the manuscript: . . . as a necessary remedy for certain moral illnesses . . .
peace and war 1160
War has great advantages; but it must not be imagined that war decreases
the danger that has just been indicated. It only defers it, and it comes back
more terrible after the war, for the army bears peace muchmore impatiently
after having tasted war. War would only be a remedy for a [democratic]
people who always wanted glory.
[Napoleon often let it be understood that he would have willingly
stopped in the middle of his triumphs if the passions of his soldiers had
not, so to speak, compelled him to throw himself constantly into new
endeavors.]
f
I foresee that all the warrior princes who arise within great democratic
nations will nd that it is much easier for them to conquer with their army
than to make the army live in peace after the victory. There are two things
that a democratic people will always have a great deal of difculty doing:
beginning a war and ending it.
g
If, moreover, war has particular advantages for democratic peoples, on
the other hand it makes them run certain dangers that aristocracies do not
have to fear to the same degree. I will cite only two of them.
If war satises the army, it hinders and often drives to despair that in-
numerable crowd of citizens whose small passions daily need peace to be
satised. So it risks bringing about in another form the disorder that it
should prevent.
There is no long war that, in a democratic country, does not put liberty
at great risk. It is not that you must fear precisely to see, after each victory,
conquering generals seize sovereign power by force, in the manner of Sylla
or of Caesar.
h
The danger is of another kind. War does not always deliver
democratic peoples to military government; but it cannot fail to increase
immensely, among these peoples, the attributions of the civil government;
f. <That was not due to a particular disposition of his soldiers, but to the very con-
stitution of his army.>/
<Such an idea never occurred to the mind of Frederick II or that of Louis XIV>
(Rubish, 2).
g. When a democracy makes war, it must do it admirably, because the entire desire
of amelioration that torments all individuals turns toward ranks, salaries, glory. War is
then nourished by all the possible industries that it destroys (Rubish, 2).
h. In a rst version of the rubish, he adds: or of Bonaparte (Rubish, 2).
peace and war 1161
it almost inevitably centralizes in the governments hands the direction of
all men and the use of everything. If it does not lead suddenly to despotism
by violence, it goes there softly by habits.
j
j. War bringing about and cementing the union of the clerk and the soldier./
It is by this path that I must arrive at this idea:
At rst paint administrative tyranny preparing and establishing itself under the
government whose general forms are liberal.
Then an accident, among others, war, giving the opportunity to concentrate the
higher powers and leading to the union cited above.
[To the side: Military monarchy becomes established in this way, not by brutal,
violent, irregular military power, but on the contrary, by regular, plain, clear, absolute
military power, society having become an army, and the military before all the others,
not as a warrior, but as master and administrator. The warrior will always be at the
second rank in democratic societies, capital idea. ]
That will be striking, because the danger is not imaginary.
Reread the chapter on the military spirit at that point.
10 April 1838 (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 1011).
In another draft:
War unites many wills in the same end; it suggests very energetic and very noble
passions; it creates enthusiasm, elevates the soul, suggests devotion. In these regards
war gets into the health of a democratic people, which without war could collapse
indenitely.
But to make war, a very energetic and almost tyrannical central power must be
created; it must be allowed many arbitrary or violent acts. The result of war can put
in the hands of this power the liberty of the nation, always badly guaranteed in de-
mocracies, above all in emerging democracies.
War, which can be good from time to time when a people is strongly and long
organized democratically, must therefore be avoided with great care during the entire
period of transition.
M. Thiers told me one day last year (1836): War will show the weakness of dem-
ocratic governments; it will cover them with confusion and will force peoples, out of
the sentiment of their preservation, to put their affairs back into a few hands. War
cannot fail to make understood the insufciency of the government of journalists
and of lawyers, he added.
M. LAd., one of the ardent and unintelligent partisans of M. Thiers, said the
other day (18 April) in front of me that representative government was a sad thing;
that liberty of the press notably would be incompatible with our security, if we were
at war, and that at the rst general war it would have to be suppressed.
All that shows why those who aim for despotism must desire war and why in fact
they desire it and push for it (YTC, CVd, pp. 1415).
peace and war 1162
All those who seek to destroy liberty within a democratic nation should
know that the surest and shortest means to succeed in doing so is war. That
is the rst axiom of the science.
A remedy seems to offer itself when the ambition of ofcers and of
soldiers comes to be feared; it is to increase the number of places available,
by augmenting the army. This relieves the present evil, but mortgages the
future even more.
To augment the army can produce a lasting effect in an aristocratic so-
ciety, because in these societies military ambition is limited to a single type
of men, and stops, for each man, at a certain limit; so that you can manage
to satisfy almost all of those who feel military ambition.
But among a democratic people, nothing is gained by increasing the
army, because the number of ambitious men always increases in exactly the
same proportion as the army itself. Those whose wishes you have fullled
by creating new posts are immediately replaced by a new crowd that you
cannot satisfy, and the rst soon begin to complain again; for the same
agitationof spirit that reigns among the citizens of a democracyshows itself
in the army;
k
what men want there is not to gain a certain rank, but always
to advance. If the desires are not very vast, they are reborn constantly. So
a democratic people that augments its army only softens, for a moment,
In the same notebook you nd, a bit before, this other note on the same subject:
There are two ways to arrive at despotism by liberty:
Two systems:
Local liberties--------no great liberty.
Great liberty---------no local liberties.
DArgenson----------Thiers.
I want to say it not for the instruction of governments, which have nothing to
learn in this matter, but for that of peoples (YTC, CVd, pp. 4849).
Tocqueville is referring very probably to the ideas on decentralization set forth by
Argenson in Conside rations sur le gouvernement ancien et pre sent de la France (Amsterdam,
1784), in particular chapters 6, 7, and 8.
k. In the margin: <When I see a democratic people, out of fear of men of war,
augment the number of places in the army, I cannot prevent myself from thinking of
the Romans of the decadence who bought peace with the barbarians and soon found
them again the following year more enterprising and more numerous.>
peace and war 1163
the ambition of men of war; but soonit becomes more formidable, because
those who feel it are more numerous.
m
I think, for my part, that a restless and turbulent spirit is an evil inherent
in the very constitution of democratic armies, and that we must give up
on curing it. The legislators of democracies must not imagine nding a
military organization that by itself has the strength to calm and to con-
tain men of war; they would exhaust themselves in vain efforts before
attaining it.
It is not in the army that you can nd the remedy for the vices of the
army, but in the country.
Democratic peoples naturally fear trouble and despotism. It is only a
matter of making these instincts into thoughtful, intelligent and stable
tastes. When citizens have nally learned to make peaceful and useful use
of liberty and have felt its benets; when they have contracted a manly love
of order and have voluntarily yielded to the established rule, these same
citizens, while entering into the career of arms, bring these habits and these
mores to the army without knowing it and as if despite themselves. The
general spirit of the nation, penetrating the particular spirit of the army,
tempers the opinions and the desires that arise from the military state, or
by the omnipotent force of public opinion, it suppresses them. Have en-
lightened, well-ordered, steady and free citizens, and you will have disci-
plined and obedient soldiers.
Every law that, while repressing the turbulent spirit of the army, would
tend to diminish, within the nation, the spirit of civil liberty andtoobscure
m. The more I reect on this the more I think that it is by armies that democracies
will perish, that that is the great danger of modern times, the chance for democratic
despotism for the future. Difculty of cutting down on a democratic army when it
exists. Difculty of not having an army when the neighbors have one. Near impos-
sibility of not being dragged into war or into seditions if armed.
To work on this fact. There are great truths there to put into relief./
29 September 1836.
You nd on the same page this other note, which seems to be later: Periods of transition.
Ease of pushing democratic peoples toward war, of seizing power by arms. Danger to
which you must always have your eyes open. Thiers (Rubish, 2).
peace and war 1164
the idea of lawandof rights wouldtherefore goagainst its purpose. It would
favor the establishment of a military tyranny much more than it would
harm it.
After all, and no matter what you do, a great army within a democratic
people will always be a great danger; and the most effective means of de-
creasing this danger will be to reduce the army; but it is a remedy that not
all peoples are able to use.
n
n. On a page of the manuscript, next to a variant of the paragraphs that nish the
chapter: Two things to do:
1. Make the men who enter the army be penetrated by the advantages of order and
of liberty.
2. Give to the citizens a moral or material power that allows them to contain the
soldiers as needed.
1165
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 3
a
Which Class, in Democratic Armies,
Is the Most Warlike and
the Most Revolutionary
It is the essence of a democratic army to be very numerous, relative to the
people who furnish it; I will talk about the reasons further along.
On the other hand, the men who live in democratic times scarcely ever
choose the military career.
So democratic peoples are soon led to renounce voluntary recruitment
in order to resort to compulsory enlistment.
b
The necessity of their con-
dition obliges themto take this last measure, and you can easily predict that
all will adopt it.
Since military service is compulsory, the burden is shared indiscrimi-
nately and equally by all citizens. That again follows necessarily from the
condition of these peoples and from their ideas. The government canmore
or less do what it wants provided that it addresses itself to everyone at the
a. In democratic armies, soldiers, having to spend only a little time in the service, and
being drawn to it in spite of themselves, never completely take on the spirit of the
army. These are the ones who remain citizens the most. The ofcers on the contrary,
since they are someone in society only because of their military rank, become entirely
attached to the army and can become like strangers to the country. Their turbulent
spirit is often weakened, however, by the stability and the sweet pleasures of the sit-
uation already acquired.
These reasons are not found to temper the restless ambition of the non-
commissioned ofcers. The latter form the really military and revolutionary element
of democratic armies (YTC, CVf, pp. 4950).
b. The natural tendency of a democratic people is to have an army of mercenaries
(Rubish, 2).
the mos t warli ke clas s 1166
same time; it is the inequality of the burden and not the burden itself that
ordinarily makes you resist.
Now, since military service is common to all citizens, the clear result is
that each of them remains in the service only a few years.
Thus in the nature of things the soldier is in the army only in passing,
while among most aristocratic nations, the military state is a professionthat
the soldier takes or that is imposed on him for life.
This has great consequences. Among the soldiers who make up a dem-
ocratic army, some become attached to military life; but the greatest num-
ber, brought in spite of themselves into the service and always ready to
return to their homes, do not consider themselves seriously engaged in the
military career and think only about getting out of it. The latter do not
contract the needs and only half-share the passions that arise from this ca-
reer. They comply withtheir military duties, but their soul remains attached
to the interests and the desires that occupied it in civilian life. So they do
not take on the spirit of the army; instead they bring into the army the
spirit of the society and preserve it there. Among democratic peoples, it is
the simple soldiers who most remain citizens; national habits retain the
greatest hold and public opinion the most power over them. It is through
the soldiers above all that you can hope to make the love of liberty and
respect for rights, which you knew how to inspire among the people them-
selves, penetrate into a democratic army. The opposite happens amongaris-
tocratic nations, in which the soldiers end up having nothing at all in com-
mon with their fellow citizens, living among them like strangers and often
like enemies.
In aristocratic armies, the conservative element is the ofcer, because the
ofcer alone has kept close ties to civilian society and never gives up the
will to resume sooner or later his position there; in democratic armies, it is
the soldier and for entirely similar reasons.
It often happens, on the contrary, that in these same democratic armies,
the ofcer contracts tastes and desires entirely separate from those of the
nation. That is understandable.
Among democratic peoples, the man who becomes an ofcer breaks all
the ties that attached him to civilian life; he emerges from it forever and he
has no interest in returning to it. His true country is the army, since he is
nothing except by the rank that he occupies there; so he follows the fortune
of the army, grows or declines with it, and it is toward the army alone that
from now on he directs his hopes. Since the ofcer has needs very distinct
from those of the country, it can happen that he ardently desires war or
works for a revolution at the very moment when the nation aspires most
to stability and peace.
Nonetheless there are causes that temper the warrior and restless tem-
perament in him. If ambition is universal and continuous among demo-
cratic peoples, we have seen that it is rarely great there. The manwho, com-
ing out of the secondary classes of the nation, has arrived, throughthelower
ranks of the army, at the rank of ofcer, has already taken animmense step.
He has entered into a sphere superior to the one he occupiedwithincivilian
society, and he has acquired rights there that most democratic nations will
always consider as inalienable.
1
He stops willingly after this great effort, and
thinks about enjoying his conquest. The fear of compromising what he
possesses already softens in his heart the desire to acquire what he does not
have. After having overcome the rst and the greatest obstacle that stopped
his progress, he resigns himself with less impatience to the slowness of his
march. This cooling of ambition increases as, rising higher inrank, he nds
more to lose from risks. If I am not mistaken, the least warlike as well as
the least revolutionary part of a democratic army will always be the head.
What I have just said about the ofcer and the soldier is not applicable
to a numerous class that, in all armies, occupies the intermediary place be-
tween them; I mean the non-commissioned ofcers.
This class of non-commissioned ofcers, which before the present cen-
tury had not yet appeared in history, is henceforth called, I think, to play
a role.
Just like the ofcer, the non-commissioned ofcer has broken in his
thought all the ties that attached him to civilian society; just like him, he
1. The position of the ofcer is, in fact, much more secure among democratic peoples than
among the others.
c
The less the ofcer is worth by himself, the more valuable rank is com-
paratively, and the more the legislator nds it just and necessary to assure its enjoyment.
c. The manuscript says: . . . than within aristocracies.
has made the military life his career and, more than the ofcer perhaps, he
has turned all of his desires solely in this direction; but unlike the ofcer
he has not yet reached an elevated and solid place where it is permissible
for himto stopandto breathe comfortably, while waiting tobe able toclimb
higher.
By the very nature of his functions that cannot change, the non-
commissioned ofcer is condemned to lead an obscure, narrow, uneasy and
precarious existence. So far he sees only the perils of the military life. He
knows only privations and obedience, more difcult to bear thanthe perils.
He suffers all the more from his present miseries, because he knows that
the constitution of society and that of the army allow him to free himself
from these miseries; from one day to the next, in fact, he can become an
ofcer. Then he commands, has honors, independence, rights, enjoyments;
not only does this object of his hopes seem immense to him, but before
grasping it, he is never sure of attaining it. There is nothing irrevocable
about his rank; he is left each day entirely to the arbitrariness of his leaders;
the needs of discipline require imperatively that it be so. A slight fault, a
caprice, can always make him lose, in a moment, the fruit of several years
of workandefforts. Until he has reachedthe rankhe covets, he has therefore
done nothing.
d
Only then does he seem to enter into the career. With a
man thus incited constantly by his youth, his needs, his passions, the spirit
of his times, his hopes and his fears, a desperate ambition cannot fail to
catch re.
So the non-commissioned ofcer wants war, he wants it always and at
any price, and if you refuse him war, he desires revolutions which suspend
the authority of the rules; in the midst of these revolutions he hopes, by
means of confusion and political passions, to expel his ofcer and take his
place; and it is not impossible for him to bring about revolutions, because
he exercises a great inuence over the soldiers by shared origins and habits,
even though he differs greatly from them by passions and desires.
You would be wrong to believe that these various predispositions of the
d. The manuscript of the chapter ends here. In the margin, with a bracket that goes
from the beginning of the paragraph to this place: All of this is the weak part of the
piece. Developed and yet incomplete.
ofcer, of the non-commissioned ofcer and of the soldier depend on a
time or a country. They will appear in all periods and among all democratic
nations.
Inevery democratic army, it will always be the non-commissionedofcer
who will least represent the pacic and regular spirit of the country, and
the soldier who will best represent it. The soldier will bring to the military
career the strength or the weakness of national mores; there he will manifest
the faithful image of the nation. If the nation is ignorant and weak, he will
allow himself to be carried away to disorder by his leaders, without his
knowing or despite himself. If the nation is enlightened and energetic, he
will keep them in order himself.
1170
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 4
a
What Makes Democratic Armies Weaker
Than Other Armies While Beginning
a Military Campaign and More Formidable
When the War Is Prolonged
b
a. 1. A democratic army is more unsuited than another to war after a long peace.
1. Because all the ofcers in all the ranks are old there.
2. Because they have allowed themselves to be penetrated by the malaise of the
national mores.
3. Because they have fallen morally below the level of the people.
2. A democratic army is more formidable than another after a long war.
1. Because, since competition is immense and since the war pushes each man forc-
ibly into his place, you always end by discovering great men of war.
2. Because war, having destroyed all the peaceful industries, becomes the sole in-
dustry, so that toward it alone are turned all the ambitious and restless desires that
arise from equality.
Of military discipline in democratic armies (YTC, CVf, pp. 5051).
Former titles of the chapter in the manuscript: why a democratic people risks
more than another to be conquered during the first military cam-
paigns./
why the chances for a democratic army increase as the war con-
tinues./
effects produced by a long peace and a long war on a democratic
army.
b. The soldier./
Modication of the soldier in democracies./
Military discipline. Relationship of the soldier and of the ofcer. Driving force of
actions./
Reaction of this on the sentiment of honor. An aristocratic body of ofcers for-
mulates arbitrary laws of honor./
[Note, which seems later] Of honor in general in American society. That a dem-
ocratic society can have virtue, but not what we call honor. Honor is an arbitrary
democrati c armi es on mi li tary campai gn 1171
Every army that begins a military campaign after a long peace risks being
defeated; every army that has waged war for a long time has great chances
to win: this truth is particularly applicable to democratic armies.
In aristocracies, the military life, being a privileged career, is honored
even in times of peace. Men who have great talents, great enlightenment
and a great ambition embrace it; the army is, in everything, at the level of
the nation; often it even surpasses it.
We have seen how, on the contrary, among democratic peoples, the elite
of the nation moves little by little away from the military career in order
to seek, by other roads, consideration, power and above all wealth. After a
long peace, and in democratic times periods of peace are long, the army is
always inferior to the country itself. War nds it in this state;
c
and until war
has changed it, there is a danger for the country and for the army.
I showed how, in democratic armies and in times of peace, the right of
seniority is the supreme and inexible law for advancement. That follows
law, a convention that needs to be minutely detailed and interpreted by a body of
arbiters.
[In the margin: Honor is anaristocratic conventionrelative tothe manner inwhich
you must envisage human actions./
What I have to say about honor seems to me too important to be said in relation
to other things.]
Precede this with an oratorical turn. If I am understood, I am assured of not hurt-
ing anyone. But I am afraid of not being able to make myself easily understood
(Rubish, 2).
c. In the manuscript:
<But war does not take long to change it.
As the military spirit awakens to the noise of arms, as great national dangers draw
all eyes toward the army, as great fortunes suddenly occur on the elds of battle, the
military life rises in the esteem of men and the most immense and boldest ambitions
turn toward it.
This revolution is inevitable, but it cannot take place in a moment; and there is a
danger for the army and for the State until it is accomplished.>
[In the margin] To delete I think because it is not necessary there and is necessary
further along.
French of the XIXth century.
not only, as I said, from the constitution of these armies, but also from the
very constitution of the people, and will always be found.
Moreover, since among these peoples the ofcer is something in the
country only because of his military position, and since he draws all his
consideration and all his comfort from it, he only withdraws or is excluded
from the army at the very end of life.
The result of these two causes is that when, after a long peace, a dem-
ocratic people nally takes up arms, all the leaders of its army are found to
be old men. I am not speaking only about the generals, but about the sub-
ordinate ofcers, most of whom have remained immobile, or have been
able to move only step by step. If you consider a democratic army after a
long peace, you see with surprise that all the soldiers are not far fromchild-
hood and all the leaders are in their waning years; so that the rst lack
experience; and the second, vigor.
That is a great cause of reverses; for the rst condition to conduct war
well is to be young; I would not have dared to say it, if the greatest captain
of modern times had not said so.
These two causes do not act in the same way on aristocratic armies.
Since you advance there by right of birth much more than by right of
seniority, you always nd in all the ranks a certain number of young men
who bring to war all the rst energy of body and soul.
Moreover, as menwhoseekmilitary honors among anaristocraticpeople
have an assured position in civilian society, they rarely wait in the army for
the approach of old age to surprise them. After devoting to the career of
arms the most vigorous years of their youth, they withdrawandgotospend
the remainder of their mature years at home.
A long peace not only lls democratic armies with old ofcers, it also
gives to all the ofcers habits of body and mind that make themlittle suited
to war. The man who has lived for a long time amid the peaceful and half-
hearted atmosphere of democratic mores yields with difculty at rst to
the hard work and austere duties that war imposes. If he does not absolutely
lose the taste for arms, he at least takes on ways of living that prevent him
from winning.
Among aristocratic peoples, the softness of civilian life exercises less in-
uence on military mores, because among these peoples the aristocracy
leads the army. Now, an aristocracy, however immersed in delights it may
be, always has several other passions than that of well-being, and it readily
makes the temporary sacrice of its well-being in order to satisfy those pas-
sions better.
I showed how in democratic armies, in times of peace, the delays in
advancement are extreme. The ofcers at rst bear this state of things with
impatience; they become agitated, restless and despairing; but in the long
run, most of them resign themselves to it. Those who have the most am-
bition and resources leave the army; the others, nally adjusting their tastes
and their desires to their mediocre lot, end up considering the military life
from a civilian perspective. What they value most about it is the comfort
and the stability that accompany it; on the assurance of this small fortune,
they base the entire picture of their future, and they ask only to be able to
enjoy it peacefully.
Thus, not only does a long peace ll democratic armies with old ofcers,
but it often gives the instincts of old men even to those who are still at a
vigorous age.
d
I have equally shown how among democratic nations, in times of peace,
the military career was little honored and not much followed.
This public disfavor is a very heavy burden that weighs on the spirit of
the army. Souls are as if bent down by it; and when war nally arrives, they
cannot regain their elasticity and their vigor in a moment.
A similar cause of moral weakness is not found in aristocratic armies.
d. In the margin:
<Perhaps here this idea (I do not believe so).
This troublesome inuence of peace makes itself much less felt in aristocratic ar-
mies because the ofcers who are found there, having an assured well-being before
entering the career of arms, are only seeking reputation, the sole good that they are
lacking. This same need is felt by them at all times. The length of peace does not
weaken it and war, no matter when it occurs, always seems to them the best occasion
to satisfy it.>
[<Among aristocratic peoples the career of arms is always honored, what-
ever the current of public opinion might otherwise be.>] Ofcers there
never nd themselves lowered in their own eyes and in those of their
fellows, because apart from their military grandeur, they are great by
themselves.
If the inuence of peace made itself felt in the two armies in the same
way, the results would still be different.
When the ofcers of an aristocratic army have lost the warrior spirit and
the desire to raise themselves by the profession of arms, they still keep a
certain respect for the honor of their order and an old habit of being rst
and giving the example. But when the ofcers of a democratic army no
longer have love of war and military ambition, nothing remains.
So I think that a democratic people who undertakes a war after a long
peace risks being defeated much more than another; but it must not allow
itself to be easily demoralized by reverses, for the chances of its army in-
crease with the very duration of the war.
When war, by continuing, has nally torn all citizens away from their
peaceful labors and made all their small undertakings fail, it happens that
the same passions that made them attach so much value to peace turn to-
ward arms. War, after destroying all industries, becomes itself the great and
sole industry, and then the ardent and ambitious desires given birth by
equality are directed from all sides toward it alone. This is why these same
democratic nations that are so hard to drag onto the eld of battle some-
times do such prodigious things there, once you have nally succeeded in
having them take up arms.
As war more and more draws all eyes toward the army, as you see it create
in a short time great reputations and great fortunes, the elite of the nation
takes up the career of arms; all the naturally enterprising, proudandwarlike
spirits produced not only by the aristocracy, but by the entire country, are
drawn in this direction.
Since the number of competitors for military honors is immense, and
since war pushes each man roughly into his place, great generals always end
up being found. A long war brings about in a democratic army what a
revolution brings about in the people itself. It breaks the rules and makes
all the extraordinary men appear suddenly. The ofcers whose soul and
body have become old during the peace are pushed aside, retire or die. In
their place presses a crowd of young men whom the war has already hard-
ened and whose desires it has expanded and inamed. The latter want to
grow greater at any price and constantly; after them come others who have
the same passions and the same desires; and after those, others still, without
nding any limits except those of the army. Equality allows ambition to
all, and death takes care of providing chances to all ambitions. Death con-
stantly opens ranks, empties places, closes and opens careers.
There is, moreover, a hidden connection between military mores and
democratic mores that war exposes.
Men of democracies naturally have the passionate desire to acquire
quickly the goods that they covet and to enjoy them easily. Most of them
adore chance and fear death much less than pain. In this spirit they conduct
commerce andindustry; andthis same spirit, carriedby themontothe elds
of battle, leads them readily to risk their lives in order to assure, in one
moment, the rewards of victory. Nogreatness is more satisfyingtotheimag-
ination of a democratic people than military greatness, a brilliant and sud-
den greatness that is obtained without work, by risking only your life.
Thus, while interest and tastes move the citizens of a democracy away
from war, the habits of their soul prepare themto wage war well; they easily
become good soldiers as soon as you have been able to tear themaway from
their affairs and their well-being.
If peace is particularly harmful to democratic armies, war therefore as-
sures them advantages that other armies never have; and these advantages,
although not very noticeable at rst, cannot fail, in the long run, to give
them victory.
e
An aristocratic people who, ghting against a democratic nation, does
not succeed in destroying it immediately with the rst military campaigns,
always greatly risks being defeated by it.
e. In the margin: I had had the idea of introducing there chapter a but that would
interrupt the thread of the discourse. Chapter a is the one that follows.
1176
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 5
a
Of Discipline in
Democratic Armies
It is a very widespread opinion, above all among aristocratic peoples, that
the great social equality that reigns within democracies makes the soldier
independent of the ofcer in the long run and thus destroys the bond of
discipline.
It is an error. There are, in fact, two types of discipline that must not be
confused.
When the ofcer is the noble and the soldier the serf; the one the rich
man, and the other the poor man; when the rst is enlightened and strong,
and the second ignorant and weak, it is easy to establish between these two
men the closest bond of obedience. The soldier has yielded to military dis-
cipline before entering the army, so to speak, or rather military discipline
is only a perfecting of social servitude. In aristocratic armies, the soldier
ends up easily enough being as though indifferent to everything except to
the order of his leaders. He acts without thinking, triumphs without ardor,
and dies without complaining. In this state, he is no longer a man, but more
a very fearsome animal trained for war.
Democratic peoples must give up hope of ever obtaining fromtheir sol-
diers this blind, scrupulous, resigned and totally constant obedience that
aristocratic peoples impose on their soldiers without difculty. The state of
society does not prepare their soldiers for it; democratic peoples risk losing
their natural advantages by wanting to gain that obedience articially.
a. As has been pointed out, in notebook YTC, CVf, p. 51, this chapter was part of
the preceding one. In the jacket of the rubish you nd this note: Chapter too small and
of too little importance to be alone, but I do not know what to combine it with./
I am not sure that it is not mediocre (Rubish, 2).
di s ci pli ne i n democrati c armi es 1177
Among democratic peoples, military discipline must not try to obliterate
the free impulse of souls; it can only aspire to direct it; the obedience that
it creates is less exact, but more impetuous and more intelligent. Its root is
in the very will of the man who obeys; it rests not on his instinct alone,
but on his reason; consequently discipline often grows tighter on its own
as danger makes it more necessary. The discipline of an aristocratic army
readily relaxes in war, because this discipline is based on habits, andbecause
war disturbs these habits. The discipline of a democratic army, on the con-
trary, becomes rmer before the enemy, because each soldier then sees very
clearly that to conquer he must remain silent and obey.
The peoples who have done the most considerable things by war have
known no other discipline than the one I am talking about. Among the
ancients, only free men and citizens, who differed little fromeachother and
were accustomed to treating each other as equals, were received in the ar-
mies. In this sense, you can say that the armies of antiquity were demo-
cratic, although they came from the aristocracy; consequently in those ar-
mies a sort of fraternal familiarity reigned between the ofcer and the
soldier. You will be convinced by reading Plutarchs Lives of the Great Cap-
tains. The soldiers there speak constantly and very freely to their generals,
and the latter listen willingly to the speeches of their soldiers and respond
to them. It is by these words and these examples, much more than by com-
pulsion and punishments that they lead them. You would say they were
companions as much as leaders.
I do not know if Greek and Roman soldiers ever perfected to the same
degree as the Russians
b
the small details of military discipline; but that did
not prevent Alexander from conquering Asia, and Rome, the world.
b. In a version of the drafts: . . . the Russians or the English . . . (Rubish, 2).
1178
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2 6
a
Some Considerations on War
in Democratic Societies
[<War exercises such a prodigious inuence on the fate of all peoples that
you will pardon me, I hope, for not abandoning the subject that deals with
it without trying to exhaust it.>]
When the principle of equality develops not only in one nation, but
at the same time among several neighboring nations, as is seen today in
Europe, the men who inhabit these various countries, despite the disparity
of languages, customs and laws, are nevertheless similar on this point that
they equally fear war and conceive the same love for peace.
1
In vain does
a. All democratic peoples are similar in the love of peace. All are equally led to com-
merce by equality, and commerce links their interests so that they cannot hurt their
neighbor without harming themselves. So wars are rare. But they are great because
these two peoples cannot set about to make war on a small scale.
Since men are similar, only numbers decide, from that the obligation for large
armies. Thus armies seem to grow as the military spirit fades.
Great changes take place as well in the manner of making war.
A democratic people can more easily than another conquer and be conquered (il-
legible word). Why you always march on the capitals. Why civil wars become very
difcult (YTC, CVf, pp. 5152).
On the jacket of the chapter: Perhaps all that will be to delete./
Chapter to look at again closely, done a bit too hastily.
The idea that decentralization hinders the rapidity of reaction but increases the ca-
pacity of resistance is already found set forth in a letter of 1828 to Beaumont. This letter
comments at length on the History of England of John Lingard (Correspondance avec
Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, p. 53).
1. The fear that European peoples showfor war is not only due to the progress that equality
war 1179
ambition or anger armprinces; a sort of apathy and universal benevolence
pacies them in spite of themselves and makes them drop the sword from
their hands. Wars become rarer.
As equality, developing at the same time in several countries, simulta-
neously pushes the men who inhabit themtoward industry andcommerce,
not only are their tastes similar, but also their interests mingle and become
entangled, so that no nation can inict harm on others that does not come
back on itself, and all end by considering war as a calamity almost as great
for the victor as for the defeated.
Thus, onthe one hand, it is very difcult indemocratic centuries tobring
peoples to ght with each other, but, on the other hand, it is almost im-
possible for two of them to make war in isolation. The interests of all are
so intertwined, their opinions and their needs so similar, that no people can
keep itself at rest when the others are agitated. So wars become rarer; but
when they arise, they are on a eld more vast.
Democratic peoples who are neighbors do not become similar only on
a few points, as I have just said; they end by resembling each other innearly
everything.
2
has made among them; I do not need, I think, to point it out to the reader. Apart from this
permanent cause, there are several accidental ones that are very powerful. I will cite, before
all the others, the extreme weariness that the wars of the Revolution and of the Empire have
left.
2. That comes not solely from the fact that peoples have the same social state, but from the
fact that this same social state is such that it leads men naturally to imitate each other and to
blend.
When citizens are divided into castes and into classes, not only do they differ from each
other, but also they have neither the taste or the desire to become alike; each man, on the
contrary, seeks more and more to keep intact his own opinions and habits and to remain
himself. The spirit of individuality is very robust.
When a people has a democratic social state, that is to say that neither castes nor classes
exist within it any longer and that all citizens there are more or less equal in enlightenment
and in property, the human spirit heads in the opposite direction. Men are similar, and more-
over they suffer in a way from not being similar. Far from wanting to preserve what can still
make each one of them different, they ask only to lose that singularity in order to blend into
the common mass, which alone in their eyes represents right and strength. The spirit of in-
dividuality is almost destroyed.
war 1180
Now this similitude of peoples has very important consequences con-
cerning war.
When I ask myself why the Helvetic confederation of the XVthcentury
made the largest and most powerful nations of Europe tremble, whiletoday
its power is in exact proportion to its population, I nd that the Swiss have
become similar to all the men who surround them, and those men to the
Swiss; so that, since numbers alone make the difference between them, vic-
tory necessarily belongs to the biggest battalions. One of the results of the
democratic revolution taking place in Europe is therefore to make the force
of numbers prevail on every battleeld, and to compel all the small nations
to become incorporated into the large ones, or at least to take part in the
policy of the latter.
c
In times of aristocracy, even those who are naturally similar aspire to create imaginary
differences between them. In times of democracy, even those who naturally are not alike ask
only to become similar and copy each other, so much is the spirit of each man always carried
along by the general movement of humanity.
Something similar makes itself noticed as well from people to people. Two peoples would
have the same aristocratic social state; they would be able to remain very distinct and very
different, because the spirit of aristocracy is to become more individual. But two neighboring
peoples could not have the same democratic social state without immediately adopting similar
opinions and mores, because the spirit of democracy makes men tend to assimilate.
b
b. In the manuscript, this note is part of the text and continues in this way:
. . . to assimilate. <In centuries of inequality each nation takes great care therefore
to keep itself apart and to remain distinct, while in centuries of equality all nations
come closer together, follow each other and help each other.
The democratic social state, coming to be established at the same time among
several peoples, makes all citizens there more or less similar and this same social state
makes them all individually weak. Two causes which powerfully facilitate <in these
same periods> the birth and the consolidation of great empires. For the rst gives to
the latter countries a natural propensity to live in common and the second allows
forcing them to do so [v: prevents them from separating from each other] once you
have succeeded in uniting them. Thus you can say in a general way that, as the social
state of men becomes more democratic, small nations tend to disappear and large
ones are established, which makes wars become rarer and embrace a larger space.>
c. Baden, 5 August 1836.
I wondered today to myself why certain small peoples of Europe such as the Swiss
for example had formerly played such a great role, while today their power had be-
war 1181
[This must necessarily make wars rarer and greater.
This resemblance that the citizens of different peoples have with each
other has still many other consequences.]
Since the determining factor for victory is numbers, the result is that
each people must with all its efforts strain to bring the most men possible
onto the eld of battle.
When you could enroll under the colors a type of troops superior to all
the others, such as the Swiss infantry or the French cavalry of the XVIth
century, you did not consider that you had the need to levy very large ar-
mies; but it is not so when all soldiers are equally valuable.
The same cause that gives birth to this newneed also provides the means
to satisfy it. For, as I said, when all men are similar, they are all weak. The
social power is naturally much stronger among democratic peoples than
anywhere else. So these peoples, at the same time that they feel the desire
to call all the male population to arms, have the ability to assemble them
there; this means that, in centuries of equality, armies seem to grow as the
military spirit fades.
d
In the same centuries, the manner of making war is also changed by the
same causes.
come in exact proportion to their number and their strength, so that while the con-
federation of the XVth century made the greatest continental powers tremble, today
there is no people of Europe having four or ve million inhabitants that cannot in
the long run oppress Switzerland, which has only two.
The reason is that the Swiss have become more or less similar in everything to the
peoples who are around them and the latter to the Swiss, so that, since numbers alone
make the difference between them, to the biggest battalions necessarily belongs
victory.
One of the results of the great democratic revolution that is taking place among
peoples as well as between individuals will therefore have as a nal result to make the
force of numbers prevail everywhere and to deliver small nations without hope to
the tyranny of large ones [v: they are forced to become incorporated into the large
ones or to take part in their policy] (Rubish, 2).
d. In the margin: <Comfort does not prevent the military from ghting but it pre-
vents the bourgeois from taking up arms.>
war 1182
Machiavelli
e
says in his book The Prince that it is much more difcult
to subjugate a people who have a prince and barons for leaders thana nation
which is led by a prince and slaves. Let us put, in order not to offend
anyone, public ofcials in the place of slaves and we will have a great truth,
very applicable to our subject.
It is very difcult for a great aristocratic people to conquer its neighbors
and to be conquered by them. It cannot conquer them, because it cannever
gather all its forces and hold men together for a long time; and it can never
be conquered, because the enemy nds everywhere small centers of resis-
tance that stop it. I will compare war in an aristocratic country to war in a
country of mountains; the defeated nd at every instant the occasion to
rally in new positions and to hold rm there.
e. Machiavelli in his horrible work The Prince expresses a true and profound idea
when he says in chapter IV that among principalities those that are governed by a
prince and slaves must be clearly distinguishedfromthose that are governedby a prince
and barons.
The rst, he says, are difcult to conquer because you cannot nd within them
subjects powerful enough to aid the conquest, and because the sovereignwhogoverns
them can easily gather all the forces of the empire against you.
Conquest accomplished, the same reasons allow you to preserve it easily.
The second are easy to penetrate because it is not difcult to win over a few of the
great men of the kingdom. But does the conqueror want to hold on? He experiences
all sorts of difculties. It is not enough for him to extinguish the race of the prince;
a crowd of powerful lords will always remain who will put themselves at the head of
the malcontents, and since it is impossible for him to make every one content and to
destroy those powerful lords, he will soon be chased away.
Machiavelli explains in this way the ease that Alexander had establishing himself
on the throne of Darius and the difculty that has always been encountered in con-
quering France.
Machiavelli who after all is only a supercial man, clever at discovering secondary
causes, but from whom great general causes escape, touches there accidentally and
without seeing it one of the great political consequences that clearly follow from a
democratic or aristocratic social state.
Democratic States in fact make very much greater efforts to defend themselves
than others, but once beaten and conquered, there is less of a remedy than among
aristocratic nations.
To this cause you must equally attribute the difculty of making long civil wars
among democratic peoples.
As democratic peoples become more democratic you can count on the fact that
civil wars there will become rarer and shorter. This is what explains the lengthof wars
as regards religion, unless in a democratic country there are provinces strongly con-
stituted, in which case there will be foreign wars in the form of civil war (Rubish, 2).
war 1183
Precisely the opposite makes itself seen among democratic nations.
The latter easily bring all their available forces to the eld of battle, and
when the nation is rich and numerous, it easily becomes victorious; but
once it has beendefeated and its territory has beenpenetrated, fewresources
remain to it, and if it gets to the point of having its capital taken, the nation
is lost. That is very easily explained; since each citizen is individually very
isolated and very weak, no one can either defend himself or offer a point
of support to others. In a democratic country only the State is strong; since
the military strength of the State is destroyed by the destructionof its army
and its civil power paralyzed by the taking of its capital, the rest forms
nothing more than a multitude without rule and without strengththat can-
not struggle against the organized power that attacks it. I know that you
can reduce the danger by creating liberties and, consequently, provincial
entities, but this remedy will always be insufcient.
Not only will the population then no longer be able to continue the war,
but it is to be feared that it will not want to try.
[The greatest difculty that a democratic population nds is not to
defend itself with weapons in hand, but to want to defend itself in such a
way.]
f
According to the law of nations adopted by civilized nations, wars do
not have as a purpose to appropriate the goods of individuals, but only to
seize political power. Private property is destroyed only accidentally and in
order to attain the second objective.
When an aristocratic nation is invaded after the defeat of its army, the
nobles, although they are at the same time the rich, prefer to continue to
defend themselves individually rather than to submit; for if the conqueror
remained master of the country, he would take away their political power
to which they are even more attached than to their property; so they prefer
combat to conquest, which is for them the greatest misfortune, and they
easily carry the people with them, because the people have contracted the
long customof following and obeying them, and besides have almost noth-
ing to risk in war.
f. In the margin: Bad in form but the idea of transition good.
war 1184
In a nation where equality of conditions reigns,
g
each citizen takes, on
the contrary, only a small part in political power, and often takes no part
at all; on the other hand, everyone is independent and has property to lose;
so that there conquest is feared much less and war much more than among
an aristocratic people. It will always be very difcult to cause a democratic
population to take up arms when war is brought to its territory.
h
This is
why it is necessary to give to these peoples rights and a political spirit that
suggests to each person some of the interests that cause nobles to act in
aristocracies.
It is very necessary that princes and other leaders of democratic nations
remember: only the passion and the habit of liberty can, with advantage,
combat the habit and the passion of well-being. I imagine nothing better
prepared for conquest, in case of reverses, than a democratic people who
does not have free institutions.
Formerly you began military campaigns with few soldiers; you fought
small battles and conducted long sieges. Now you ght great battles, and
as soon as you can march freely ahead, you race toward the capital in order
to end the war with one blow.
Napoleon, it is said, invented this new system. It did not depend on one
man, whoever he was, to create such a system. The manner in which Na-
poleon made war was suggested to him by the state of society of his time,
and it succeeded for him because it was marvelously suited to this state and
because he put it to use for the rst time. Napoleon is the rst to have
traveled at the head of an army the path to all the capitals. But it is the ruin
of feudal
j
society that had opened this road to him. It is to be believed that,
if this extraordinary man had been born three centuries ago, he would not
have gathered the same fruits from his method, or rather he would have
had another method.
g. The manuscript says: In a democratic nation.
h. Difculty of making a democratic people take up arms.
That is true in all democratic countries, but above all in democratic countries that
do not have free institutions (Rubish, 2).
j. The manuscript says: But it is the progress of equality of conditions that had
opened it.
war 1185
I will add only one more word about civil wars, for I am afraid of tiring
the patience of the reader.
Most of the things I have said concerning foreign wars apply with
stronger reason to civil wars [<and it is there above all that the strength of
the State and the weakness of individuals are revealed>]. Men who live in
democratic countries do not naturally have the military spirit; they some-
times take it on when they are dragged, despite themselves, onto the elds
of battle. But to rise up by himself, in a body, and to expose himself will-
ingly to the miseries that war and above all civil war bring, is a choice that
the manof democracies does not make. Only the most adventurous citizens
agree to throw themselves into such a risk; the mass of the population re-
mains immobile.
Even when the mass of the population would like to act, it does not
easily succeed in doing so; for it does not nd within it ancient and well-
established inuences to which it wishes to submit, no already knownlead-
ers to gather the malcontents, to regulate and to lead them; no political
powers placed below the national power, which effectively come tosupport
the resistance put up against the nations power.
In democratic countries, the moral power of the majority is immense,
and the material forces at its disposal are out of proportion with those that,
at rst, it is possible to unite against it. The party in the majoritys seat,
which speaks in its name and uses its power, triumphs therefore, in one
moment and without difculty, over all particular resistances. It does not
even allow them the time to be born; it crushes them in germ.
So those who, among these peoples, want to make a revolution by arms,
have no other resources than to seize unexpectedly the already functioning
machine of the government, which can be carried out by a surprise attack
rather than by a war; for from the moment when a war is ofcial, the party
which represents the State is almost always sure to win.
The only case in which a civil war could arise would be the one inwhich,
the army being divided, one portion raised the banner of revolt and the
other remained faithful. Anarmy forms a very tightly boundandveryhardy
small society which is able to be self-sufcient for a while. The war could
be bloody, but it would not be long; for either the army in revolt would
draw the government to its side just by showing its strength or by its rst
war 1186
victory, and the war would be over; or the battle would begin, and the
portion of the army not supported by the organized power of the State
would soon disperse on its own or be destroyed.
So you can accept, as a general truth, that in the centuries of equality,
civil wars will become much rarer and shorter.
3
3. It is well understood that I am speaking here about single democratic nations and not
about confederated democratic nations. In confederations, since the preponderant power al-
ways resides, despite ctions, in the government of the state and not in the federal government,
civil wars are only disguised foreign wars.
1187
s4s4s4s4s4
fourth part
a
a. Plan of this part in a draft:
General inuence of democratic ideas and mores on government./
1. How democratic ideas favor the establishment of a centralized government.
2. How id. mores do id.
3. Particular causes, but related to the great democratic cause, that can lead there.
4. Type of despotism to fear. Here show administrative despotismand the manner
in which it could successively take hold of private life. Dangers of this state.
5. Remedies. Here all that I can say on association, aristocratic persons, liberty,
great passions . . ./
Last chapter./
1. New afrmation of the irresistible march of democracy.
2. General judgment of this new state.
3. Nations can turn it to good or to detestable account andthey hang inthe balance
(YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 7374).
Plan of the chapter in the rubish:
General idea of the last chapter./
To do well, this chapter must t together well with those that precede, which are:
1. Ambition, in which I show the sentiment of ambition universal and small.
2. Revolutions, in which I show that great revolutions will be rare.
3. The army, inwhichI showthe restlessness andhabitual discontent of democratic
armies.
I believe that what would have to be done now would be this:
1. Show how the human mind plunges on all sides among democratic peoples into
the idea of unity, of uniformity.
2. Show afterward how that idea leads to administrative despotism.
[To the side: A fact certainly new in our hemisphere, for if I am not mistaken the
thing has existed for two thousand years in the Antipodes.]
the tas te of free i ns ti tuti ons 1188
3. Necessity of upholding humanindividuality. Unionof liberty andequality. Sep-
aration of the revolutionary element.
[To the side: Here idea of aristocratic persons.]/
These are three ideas that follow each other well.
This is found in a jacket placed with the rubish of the chapter on material well-being
(chapter 10 of the second part). The jacket bears this commentary: How equality of
ranks suggests to men the taste for liberty and for equality. Why democratic peoples love
equality better than liberty./
Piece from which I will probably have to make the second section of the chapter and
that must be carefully reexamined while reviewing this chapter. 4 September 1838 (Rub-
ish, 1).
The drafts reproduced in notebook CVd bear this commentary at the head:
Ideas and fragments that all relate more or less to the great chapter entitled: Howthe
ideas and the sentiments suggested by equality inuence the political constitution./
Sketch of the nal chapter./
Individualism. Natural [Material (ed.)] enjoyments./
Perhaps put a part of all that in the chapter on sentiments that favor the concen-
tration of power.
Particularly what I say about the taste for material enjoyments, andindividualism.
The piece.
More probably place in the work a chapter on material enjoyments and individu-
alism, pieces of this section which merit being kept (28 July 1838).
1bis. 1. Summary of the book. That equality of conditions is an irresistible, ac-
complished fact, which will break all those who want to struggle against it. This above
all true when equality (illegible word).
[To the side: Order of ideas of this chapter.
2. Equality of conditions suggests equally to men the taste for liberty and the taste
for equality.
But the one is a supercial and passing taste. The other a tenacious and ardent
passion.]
2. That despotism can hope to succeed in becoming established only by respecting
equality and by attering democratic tendencies.
3. How a government that aspires to despotism must set about doing so and the
opportunities that the ideas, the habits and the instincts of democracy provide for it.
I. Why democratic peoples are naturally led to the centralization of power.
Theory of centralization presents itself naturally to the mind of men when equal-
ity exists.
Difculty of knowing to whom to return intermediary powers. Jealousy of the
neighbor. All this increased by revolutions.
II. Democratic taste for material well-being which leads men to become absorbed
in searching for it or in enjoying it.
Of the Inuence That
Democratic Ideas and Sentiments
Exercise on Political Society
b
III. Individualism which makes each man want to be occupied only with himself.
4. Since the government is, in this way, master of everything, it only needs war to
destroy even the shadow of liberty.
1. Facility that it also nds in the democratic social state for that.
2. By this means, which will establish despotism, despots will be successively over-
turned. Picture analogous to that at the end of the Roman empire.
Aristocracy of men of war.
Having reached this point, you can hope to see the end of a tyrant, but not that
of tyranny.
[To the side: Opposing view to all (illegible word).
1. To unite the spirit of liberty to the spirit of equality.
2. To separate the spirit of equality from the revolutionary spirit. Why the revo-
lutionary spirit is more natural to democratic peoples and more (illegible word). Par-
ticular necessity in these democratic centuries for the spirit of equality. Indemocratic
centuries, you must be scrupulous, extraordinarily respectful on this point] (YTC,
CVd, pp. 13).
This part is missing in notebook CVf.
b. In the manuscript: Do only a single chapter from all of that beginning with the
foreword (a) and then divided into sections. This fourth part forms one single chapter
in the manuscript and bears the number 60. The conclusion, which constitutes the last
chapter, bears the number 61. Apart from the drafts of the chapter, there exist various
drafts contained in jackets and bearing the following titles: unity, centralization,
administrative despotism; notes of the chapter; relative to the idea
of unity; ideas which i can hope to use; and thoughts to add on the
influence exercised by democratic ideas on the forms of government.
In July 1838 (OCB, VII, pp. 16768), Tocqueville writes to his brother, E
douard, that
he is working on the last part of his book and that this is composedof twoshort chapters.
At the end of the month of August, he notes that he has already nished the draft of
the rst version; on October 1 he begins to work on the last chapter. Writing the draft
and revision will take an entire year, and the two initial chapters will be replaced by a
total of eight chapters. The quantity of notes and drafts testies to Tocquevilles efforts
to nish the part that he considered the most important of his work.
The manuscript and the drafts seem to indicate that the rst chapter of this part was
added at the end, and that the second and third chapters formed only one in the rst
drafts.
After having shown the ideas and the sentiments suggested by equality, I
would badly fulll the purpose of this book if, while concluding, I did not
show what general inuence these same sentiments and these same ideas
can exercise on the government of human societies.
To succeed in doing that, I will often be obliged to retrace my steps. But
I hope that the reader will not refuse to followme whenroads that he knows
lead him toward some new truth.
1191
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 1
Equality Naturally Gives Men
the Taste for Free Institutions
Equality, which makes men independent of each other, makes them con-
tract the habit andthe taste tofollowonly their will intheir personal actions.
This complete independence, which they enjoy continually vis-a`-vis their
equals and in the practice of private life, disposes them to consider all au-
thority with a discontented eye, and soon suggests to them the idea and the
love of political liberty. So men who live in these times march on a natural
slope that leads them toward free institutions. Take one of themat random;
go back, if possible, to his primitive instincts; youwill discover that, among
the different governments, the one that he conceives rst and that he prizes
most, is the government whose leader he has elected and whose actions he
controls.
a
Of all the political effects that equality of conditions produces, it is this
love of independence that rst strikes our attention and that timid spirits
fear even more; and we cannot say that they are absolutely wrong to be
afraid, for anarchy has more frightening features in democratic countries
than elsewhere.
b
Since citizens have no effect on each other, at the instant
a. In the manuscript: . . . government based on the principle of sovereignty of the
people.
b. What to do to combine the spirit of equality and the spirit of liberty and make
liberty reign amid a leveled society.
This part is the most important for me./
The hydra of anarchy is the sacramental phrase of all the enemies of liberty. The
cowardly, the corrupt, the servile try to outdo each other in repeating it. The weak
and the honest say it also.
It is a monster that I must look in the face. For it is after all the great enemy of
my ideas. What I want to bring along and to convince are honest souls. Well! The
when the national power that keeps them all in their place becomes absent,
it seems that disorder must immediately be at its height and that, with each
citizen on his own, the social body is suddenly going to nd itself reduced
to dust.
I am convinced nevertheless that anarchy is not the principal evil that
democratic centuries must fear, but the least.
latter, at the point we have reached, are not afraid of despotism. They tremble before
the hydra of anarchy. The fact is that there exists today a singular phenomenon for
which we must account.
[To the side: It is honest men led by rogues who have always enslaved the world.
They do not see that in this way they are preparing habits, ideas, laws for all types
of despotism, that of all or of one man. These men who today ask of power only to
save them from anarchy resemble those drowning men who cling to a dead body and
drag it away with them. By violent and reactionary laws, by the violation of existing
laws, by the absence of laws, they destroy the ideas of the just and the unjust, of the
permissible and the forbidden, of the legal and the illegal, and they thus open the
door to all anarchical tyrannies. They are the pioneers of anarchy.]
Liberty and power gradually become weaker and each one in its own way. They
are two exhausted and stiff old men who struggle with each other without either one
winning, because their weaknesses, not their strengths, are equal; and grappling with
each other, they roll together in the same dust.
Thus, those who say that liberty is weak are right. Those who maintain that power
is weak are also right. What to conclude from that? Fix all the force of my mind on
that.
[To the side: I believe, moreover, that the same symptoms presented themselves
before the temporary or denitive enslavement of all peoples.]
To show that arbitrary and anti-liberal measures will not save us from the hydra
of anarchy and to demonstrate that legal and liberal measures will not leadthere, that
is what we must above all work hard to do.
What modern nation (three illegible words) despotism, and how to break despo-
tism without anarchy. Despotism is party to anarchy.
[To the side] What to think of the future of an unfortunate country inwhichthere
is an honest and pure man who says that he is not concerned about its posterity, but
about himself; who says that country in the general sense is a word, that he very much
wants the country to be and to remain free, provided that his fortune and his life
remain sure, but that rather than putting these things in dogma [danger (ed.)], tyr-
anny seems better to him; who says that he prefers a permanent, meddlesome, civi-
lizing despotism to a temporary anarchy? And what to hope for his century when the
other honest and pure men who surround the former approve his language? This
is [illegible word] the sad spectacle that I had today, 7 February 1837 (YTC, CVd,
pp. 1618).
Equality produces, in fact, two tendencies: one leads men directly to
independence and canpush themsuddenly as far as anarchy; the other leads
them by a longer, more secret, but surer road toward servitude.
Peoples easily see the rst and resist it; they allowthemselves tobe carried
along by the other without seeing it; it is particularly important to showit.
As for me,
c
far from reproaching equality for the unruliness that it in-
spires, I praise it principally for that. I admire equality when I see it deposit
deep within the mind and heart of each man this obscure notion of and
this instinctive propensity for political independence. In this way equality
prepares the remedy for the evil to which it gives birth. It is from this side
that I am attached to it.
c. As for me, I consider this taste for natural independence as the most precious
present that equality has given to men (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 4546).
1194
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 2
a
That the Ideas of Democratic Peoples in
Matters of Government Naturally Favor
the Concentration of Powers
b
a. Order of this section.
The theoretical and philosophical idea of government among democratic peoples
is uniformity and centralization.
[To the side: That democratic peoples imagine liberty only in the form of a great
assembly of representatives with strong and regulative executive power.]
Diverse instincts which lead democratic peoples to love centralization of power.
1. Difculty of knowing to whom to deliver provincial administration.
2. The noble having disappeared, incapacity of local [v: new] men, ignorance,
above all at the beginning.
3. Envy of the neighbor. Sentiments above all visible when aristocracy has long
reigned in a country
4. That a despot in embryo must loudly profess these doctrines, favor and approve
interests.
5. Establish only a sole representative assembly, a strong and regulative executive
power.
5. Establish only national representation, next to it an executive power which
would be more or less subject to it, but which wouldbe strong, inquisitorial, regulative.
[To the side: Among democratic peoples, it is not impossible that a government
is centralizing and popular at the same time, and it can go so far as calling itself
centralizing and liberal, and it is not impossible that it is believed.]
6. Individualism, material enjoyments (YTC, CVd, pp. 3132).
b. Titles on the jacket that contains the manuscript: what ideas men naturally
conceive in the matter of government in centuries of equality./
how the ideas that naturally present themselves to men in cen-
turies of equality lead them to concentrate all powers.
concentrati on of powers 1195
[The principal notions that men form in the matter of government are not
entirely arbitrary. They are born in each period out of the social state, and
the mind receives them rather than creating them.]
c
The idea of secondary powers, placed between the sovereign and the
subjects, presented itself naturally to the imagination of aristocratic peo-
ples, because these powers includedwithinthemindividuals or families that
birth, enlightenment, wealth kept unrivaled and that seemed destined to
command. This same idea is naturally absent from the minds of men in
centuries of equality because of opposite reasons; you can only introduce
it to their minds articially, and you can only maintain it there with dif-
culty; while without thinking about it, so to speak, they conceive the idea
of a unique and central power that by itself leads all citizens.
In politics, moreover, as in philosophy and in religion, the minds of
democratic peoples receive simple and general ideas with delight. They are
repulsed by complicated systems, and they are pleased to imagine a great
nation all of whose citizens resemble a single model and are directed by a
single power.
After the idea of a unique and central power, the one that presents itself
most spontaneously to the minds of men in centuries of equality is the idea
of a uniform legislation. As each one of them sees himself as little different
from his neighbors, he understands poorly why the rule that is applicable
to one man would not be equally applicable to all the others. The least
privileges are therefore repugnant to his reason. The slightest dissimilarities
in the political institutions of the same people wound him, and legislative
uniformity seems to him to be the rst condition of good government.
I nd, on the contrary, that the same notion of a uniform rule, imposed
equally on all the members of the social body, is as if foreign to the human
mind in aristocratic centuries. It does not accept it, or it rejects it.
These opposite tendencies of the mind end up, on both sides, by be-
coming such blind instincts and such invincible habits, that they still direct
actions, in spite of particular facts. Sometimes, despite the immense variety
c. To the side: Be careful that this does not too muchresemble the openingregarding
honor.
of the Middle Ages, perfectly similar individuals were found; this did not
prevent the legislator from assigning to each one of themdiverse duties and
different rights. And, on the contrary, in our times, governments wear
themselves out in order to impose the same customs and the same laws on
populations that are not yet similar.
As conditions become equal among a people, individuals appear smaller
and society seems larger; or rather, each citizen, having become similar to
all the others, is lost in the crowd, and you no longer notice anything except
the vast and magnicent image of the people itself.
d
This naturally gives men of democratic times a very high opinion of the
privileges of the society and a very humble idea of the rights of the indi-
vidual.
e
They easily agree that the interest of the one is everything and that
the interest of the other is nothing. They grant readily enough that the
power that represents the society possesses much more enlightenment and
wisdom than any one of the men who compose it, and that its duty, as well
as its right, is to take each citizen by the hand and to lead him.
f
If you really want to examine our contemporaries closely, and to pen-
etrate to the root of their political opinions, you will nd a few of the ideas
that I have just reproduced, and you will perhaps be astonished to nd so
much agreement among men who are so often at war with each other.
d. Note to the side of a rst version: Perhaps all these ideas, which seem to me clear
and even too evident, will seem too metaphysical, and perhaps it will be necessary to
put them within the reach of the ordinary reader by more detailed explanations? (Rub-
ish, 2).
e. To show better also how in the United States the state breaks individuals and even
organizedgroups of men[corps ] witha prodigious ease, since the idea of individual rights
there is weaker and more obscure than in England. Jacket, thoughts to add on
the influence exercised by democratic ideas on the forms of govern-
ment (Rubish, 2).
f. A note in the manuscript: Can introduce piece (a) there.
This piece (a) species: <A unique and central government [v: power] charged with
dispensing the same laws to the entire State and with regulating in the same way each
one of those who inhabit it, an intelligent, far-sighted and strong administration that
enlightens, aids, constantly directs individuals, such is the ideal that in democratic times
will always occur by itself to the imagination of men as soon as they come to thinkabout
government.>
The Americans believe that, in each state,
TN8
social power must emanate
directly from the people; but once this power is constituted, they imagine,
so to speak, no limits for it; they readily recognize that it has the right to
do everything.
As for the particular privileges granted to cities, to families or to indi-
viduals, they have lost even the idea. Their minds have never foreseen that
the same law could not be applied uniformly to all the parts of the same
state and to all the men who inhabit it.
[In Europe we reject the dogma of sovereignty of the people that the
Americans accept; we give power another origin.]
g
These same opinions are spreading more and more in Europe; they are
being introduced within the very heart of nations that most violently reject
the dogma of sovereignty of the people. These nations give power a different
origin than the Americans; but they envisage power with the same features.
Among all nations, the notion of intermediary power is growing dim and
fading.
h
The idea of a right inherent in certain individuals is disappearing
rapidly from the minds of men; the idea of the all-powerful and so to speak
unique right of society is coming to take its place. These ideas take root and
grow as conditions become more equal and men more similar; equality gives
birth to them and they in their turn hasten the progress of equality.
j
Translators Note 8: In this paragraph and in the next one, and in note e for
p. 1196 and note a for p. 1206, the translator has repeated the pattern followed in the rst
volume. Where Tocqueville seems clearly to be referring tothe Americanstates, the trans-
lator has dropped the uppercase for state. Elsewhere, the uppercase is retained: State.
g. In the margin: <These opinions have not been borrowed by the Americans from
their fathers the English, for at the period of the establishment of the colonies, the En-
glish, no more than other Europeans, had not yet conceived of such opinions. Still today
they have adopted them only in part. They introduce them only in our times, but with
difculty and as conditions become less different and men more similar.>
h. In the margin: <The problem with all this is that it seems to me to anticipate
section IV, which I will be able to judge only when I amthere. If so, it wouldbe necessary
to stop at the end of page 2 and make this chapter the head of the following chapter
which would then be titled: How the ideas and the sentiments . . .> Page 2 of the manu-
script ends at the paragraph that begins thus: If you really want to examine . . .
j. On a loose sheet in the manuscript:
I listen to those among my fellow citizens who are most hostile to popular forms and
I see that, according to them, the public administration must get involved in almost
In France, where the revolution I am speaking about is more advanced
thaninany other people of Europe, these same opinions have entirelytaken
hold of the mind. When you listen attentively to the voices of our different
parties, you will see that there is not one of them that does not adopt them.
Most consider that the government acts badly; but all think that the gov-
ernment must act constantly and put its hand to everything. Even those
who wage war most harshly against each other do not fail to agree on this
point. The unity, ubiquity, omnipotence of the social power, the unifor-
mity of its rules, form the salient feature that characterizes all the political
systems born in our times. You nd them at the bottom of the most bizarre
utopias.
k
The human mind still pursues these images when it dreams.
If such ideas present themselves spontaneously to the mind of individ-
uals, they occur even more readily to the imagination of princes.
While the oldsocial state of Europe deteriorates anddissolves, sovereigns
develop new beliefs about their abilities and their duties; they understand
for the rst time that the central power that they represent can and must,
by itself and on a uniform plan, administer all matters and all men. This
opinion, which, I dare say, had never been conceived before our time by
the kings of Europe, penetrates the mind of these princes to the deepest
everything and that it must impose the same rules on all. To regulate, to direct, to
compel citizens constantly in principal affairs as well as in the least, such for them is
its role. I go from there to those who think that all authority must come immediately
fromthe people, and I hear the same discourse coming fromthem; andI returnnally
doubting if the most violent adversaries of the government are not more favorable
to the concentration of powers than the government itself [v: if the exclusive friends
of liberty are not more favorable to the centralization of power than its most violent
adversaries].
k. See note b of p. 727.
level; it remains rm there amid the agitation of all the other opinions.
m
[A few perceive it very clearly, everyone glimpses it.]
n
So the men of today are much less divided than you imagine; they argue
constantly in order to know into which hands sovereignty will be placed;
but they agree easily about the duties and about the rights of sovereignty.
All conceive the government in the image of a unique, simple, providential
and creative power.
All the secondary ideas in political matters are in motion; that one re-
mains xed, inalterable; it never changes.
o
Writers and statesmen adopt it;
the crowd seizes it avidly; the governed and those who govern agree about
pursuing it with the same ardor; it comes rst; it seems innate.
So it does not come from a caprice of the human mind, but it is a natural
condition of the present state of men.
m. Order of ideas already followed./
1. Idea of a uniform legislation.
2. Idea of a unique power.
3. Immense idea of social right, very thin idea of individual right.
4. Conrmation of what precedes by the ideas
1
of the Americans, of the English, of
the French . . . in the matter of government.
(1) Be very careful that it is not a matter of showing what is happening among these
peoples, but the ideas that they are forming in the matter of government (relative
to the idea of unity in general, Rubish, 2).
n. In the margin: This sentence excludes the preceding one. Either the one or the
other must be removed.
o. Note in the margin in a rst version: Perhaps here all the ultra-unitary extrava-
gances, Saint-Simonianism . . . (Rubish, 2).
1200
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 3
That the Sentiments of Democratic Peoples
Are in Agreement with Their Ideas for
Bringing Them to Concentrate Power
a
If, in centuries of equality, men easily perceive the idea of a great central
power, you cannot doubt, on the other hand, that their habits and their
sentiments dispose them to recognize such a power and to lend it sup-
a. The idea of all this chapter is simple.
Equality gives birth to two tendencies:
1. One which takes men to liberty.
2. The other which distances men from liberty and leads them to servitude.
Liberty and servitude coming from equality. There is the idea of the chapter.
Equality comes only as source of liberty and of servitude./
Now.
To know what makes men love equality more than liberty; it is a closely connected,
but very distinct idea; for men could prefer equality to liberty, without equality being
what pushed them toward servitude.
The comparison of the love of equality andthe love of liberty is worthbeingmade.
But here it hinders the natural movement of the mind./
Make it a separate chapter which I will introduce afterward where I can (Rub-
ish, 2).
It is possible that certain ideas on centralization set forth in this chapter and the fol-
lowing had their origin in the observations made by Tocqueville in England. In 1835,
particularly, Tocqueville believed he had found in England a tendency toward centrali-
zation that he thought likely for the ensemble of democracies. The Poor Law and con-
versations with Mill and Reeve seemto have in part conrmed his theory for him(Voyage
en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, pp. 22, 26, 49, and 53); also see Seymour Drescher, Tocqueville
and England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964).
On 8 July 1838, whenhe beganthis last part, Tocqueville askedBeaumont for examples
about centralization. Beaumonts answer is lost (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC,
VIII, 1, pp. 31112).
concentrati on on power 1201
port.
b
The demonstration of this can be done in a few words, since most
of the reasons have already been given elsewhere.
Men who inhabit democratic countries, having neither superiors, nor
inferiors, nor habitual and necessary associates, readily fall back on them-
selves and consider themselves in isolation. I have had the occasion to show
it at great length when the matter was individualism.
So these men never, except with effort, tear themselves away from
their particular affairs in order to occupy themselves withcommonaffairs;
their natural inclination is to abandon the care of these affairs to the sole
visible and permanent representative of collective interests, which is the
State.
Not only do they not naturally have the taste for occupying themselves
with public matters, but also they often lack time to do so. Private life is so
active in democratic times, so agitated, so full of desires, of work, that
hardly any energy or leisure is left to any man for political life.
It is not I who will deny that such inclinations are not invincible, since
my principal goal in writing this book has been to combat them. I main-
tain only that, today, a secret force develops themconstantly inthe human
heart, and that it is enough not to stop them for those inclinations to ll
it up.
I have equally had the occasion to show how the growing love of well-
being and the mobile nature of property made democratic peoples fear
material disorder. The love of public tranquillity is oftenthe only political
passion that these peoples retain, and it becomes more active and more
powerful among them, as all the others collapse and die; that naturally
disposes citizens to give new rights constantly to or to allow new rights to
be taken by the central power, which alone seems to them to have the
interest and the means to defend them from anarchy while defending
itself.
c
b. I see clearly how the fear of revolutions leads men to give great prerogatives to
power in general, but not how it leads them to centralize power. (Rubish, 2).
c. 7 March 1838. Unity, centralization.
However animated you are against unity and the governmental unity that is
called centralization, you cannot nonetheless deny that unity and centralizationare
[<For they do not see around them either individual or corps that is by
itself strong enough and lasting enough to defend itself and to defend
them.>]
Since, in centuries of equality, no one is obliged to lend his strength to
his fellow, and no one has the right to expect great support from his fellow,
each man is independent and weak at the very same time. These two states,
which must not be either envisaged separately or confused, give the citizen
of democracies very contradictory instincts. His independence lls him
with condence and pride among his equals, and his debility makes him,
from time to time, feel the need for outside help which he cannot expect
from any of his equals, since they are all powerless and cold. Inthis extreme
case, he turns his eyes naturally toward this immense being that alone rises
up amidst the universal decline. His needs and, above all, his desires lead
him constantly toward this being, and he ends by envisaging it as the sole
and necessary support for individual weakness.
1
the most powerful means to do quickly, energetically, and in a given place, very
great things.
That reveals one of the reasons why in democratic centuries centralization and
unity are loved so much. The character of these centuries is love of rapid and easy
enjoyments and indifference about the future. In the eyes of all the public men of
those times, centralization is the means of attaining quickly and without difculty
the results that they desire.
Thus equality gives birth to the idea of unity and the same equality suggests the
taste for it (Rubish, 2).
1. In democratic societies, only the central power has some stability in its position and some
permanence in its enterprises. All the citizens are stirring constantly and becoming trans-
formed. Now, it is in the nature of every government to want gradually to enlarge its sphere.
So it is very difcult that in the long run the latter does not manage to succeed, since it acts
with a xed thought and a continuous will on men whose position, ideas and desires vary
every day.
Often it happens that the citizens work for it without wanting to do so.
Democratic centuries are times of experiments, of innovation and of adventures. A mul-
titude of menis always engaged ina difcult or newenterprise that they are pursuingseparately
without being burdened by their fellows. The former very much accept, as a general principle,
that the public power must not intervene in private affairs, but, by exception, each one of
them desires that it helps him in the special matter that preoccupies him and seeks to draw
the action of the government in his direction, all the while wanting to restrain it in all others.
Since a multitude of men has this particular view at the same time on a host of different
This nally makes understandable what often occurs among demo-
cratic peoples, where you see men, who endure superiors with such dif-
culty, patiently suffer a master, and appear proud and servile at the very
same time.
The hatred that men bring to privilege increases as privileges become
rarer and smaller, so that you would say that democratic passions become
more inamed at the very time when they nd the least sustenance.
d
I have
already given the reason for this phenomenon. No inequality, however
great, offends the eye when all conditions are unequal; while the smallest
dissimilarity seems shocking amid general uniformity; the sight of it be-
comes more unbearable as uniformity is more complete. So it is natural that
love of equality grows constantly with equality itself; by satisfying it, you
develop it.
This immortal and more and more burning hatred, which animates
democratic peoples against the least privileges, singularly favors the gradual
concentration of all political rights in the hands of the sole representative
of the State. The sovereign, necessarily and without dispute above all cit-
matters, the sphere of the central power expands imperceptibly in all directions, even though
each one of them wishes to limit it. So a democratic government increases its attributions by
the sole fact that it lasts. Time works for it; it prots from all accidents; individual passions
help it even without their knowing, and you can say that a democratic government becomes
that much more centralized the older the democratic society is.
d. This proposition that hatred of inequality is that much greater as inequality is less is
well proved by what happened among aristocratic peoples themselves within the in-
terior of each class. The nobles were not jealous of the king, but of those among
them who rose above the others, and they called loudly for equality. As long as the
bourgeois were different from the nobles, they were not jealous of the nobles, but of
each other; and if we get down to the bottom of our heart, wont we all be appalled
to see that envy makes itself felt there above all in regard to our neighbors, our friends
and our near relations? You are not jealous of those people because they are neighbors,
friends and relations, but because they are our fellows and our equals.
The hatred of inequality in proportion as inequality is less is therefore a truth in
all times and applicable to all men (new ideas relative to democratic sen-
timents that favor centralization, Rubish, 2).
izens, does not excite the envy of any one of them, and each one believes
that all the prerogatives that he concedes to the sovereign are taken away
from his equals.
[<In centuries of equality, each man, living independent of all of his
fellows, becomes accustomed to directing his private affairs without con-
straint. When these same men are united in common, they naturally con-
ceive the idea of and the taste for administering themselves by themselves.
So equality leads men toward administrative decentralization, but creates
at the same time powerful instincts which turn them away from it.>]
e
The man of democratic centuries obeys only with an extreme repug-
nance his neighbor who is his equal; he refuses to acknowledge in him an
enlightenment superior to his own; he mistrusts his neighbors justice and
regards his power with jealousy; he fears and despises him; he loves to make
him feel at every instant the common dependence that they both have on
the same master.
Every central power that follows these natural instincts loves equality
and favors it; for equality [(of conditions)] singularly facilitates the action
of such a power, extends it and assures it.
You can say equally that every central government adores [legislative]
uniformity; uniformity
f
spares it from the examination of an innity of
details with which it would have to be concerned, if the rule hadtobe made
for men, rather than making all men indiscriminately come under the same
rule. Thus, the government loves what the citizens love, and it naturally
hates what they hate. This community of sentiments, which, among dem-
ocratic nations, continually unites in the same thought each individual and
the sovereign power, establishes betweenthema secret andpermanent sym-
e. In the margin: Perhaps keep this for the place where I will speak about liberal
instincts created by equality.
f. Pantheism.
Saint-Simonianism. (In the Rubish relative to the idea of unity in gen-
eral, Rubish, 2.)
Saint-Simonian theory and other democratic theories. Pantheism. Agreement of the
governmental and radical press on this point. (In the jacket that bears the title: unity,
centralization, administrative despotism./
Mixture of administrative and judicial power./
23 March 1838 Rubish, 2.)
pathy. You pardon the government its faults in favor of its tastes; public
condence abandons the government only with difculty amid its excesses
and its errors, and returns as soon as it is called back. Democratic peoples
often hate the agents of the central power; but they always love this power
itself. [<Because they consider it as the most powerful instrument that they
could use as needed to help them make everyone who escapes from the
common rule come back to it.>
I said that in times of equality the idea of intermediary powers set be-
tween simple individuals and the government did not naturally present it-
self to the human mind. I add that men who live in these centuries envisage
such powers only with distrust and submit to them only with difculty.]
Thus, I have come by two different roads to the same end. I have shown
that equality suggested to menthe thought of a unique, uniformandstrong
government. I have just shown that it gives them the taste for it; so today
nations are tending toward a government of this type. The natural incli-
nation of their mind and heart leads them to it, and it is enough for them
not to hold themselves back in order to reach it.
I think that, in the democratic centuries that are going to open up, in-
dividual independence and local liberties will always be a product of art.
Centralization will be the natural government.
1206
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 4
a
a. Appendix of section.Section IV./
Ideas of the chapter.
1. When liberty has existed before equality, it establishes habits that are opposed to
the excessive development of the central power.
2. When equality has developed rapidly with the aid of a revolution, the taste for
intermediary powers disappears more quickly. Centralization becomes necessary in a
way.
3. Revolution makes hatred and jealousy of the neighbor more intense and leads
either the upper or the lower classes to want to centralize.
4. Enlightenment and ignorance.
5. War.
6. Disorder.
7. Democratic nature of the central power.
[In the margin: New ideas.
1. Extraordinary talents.
2. Two ideas relative to revolutions and which have not been treated there.
3. When a people has been formed from several peoples, like the Americans.
4. When democratic society is ancient, the permanent ambition of the
g[overnment (ed.)] gives it the advantage in the long run, because of the shifting
desires of the citizens and of the multitude of (illegible word) into which they are
constantly throwing themselves.]
The entire vice of this chapter seems to me to reside in this:
1. Denitively, the greatest number and the principal ones of the particular reasons
that I give are connected with the particular accident of a revolution. So it would be
necessary to put them separately and to announce in advance that I am going to deal
with this order of particular causes. It is worth the trouble.
2. It would be necessary to put those causes in a better order so that the mindwould
pass better from one to the other.
It is on these two points that I must make a nal effort while reviewing one last
time.
6 November 1839 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 7476).
On a page of drafts:
Note applicable to all the sections, but principally to section III./
I do not believe that in all this chapter and particularly in this section I have made
parti cular and acci dental caus es 1207
Of Some Particular and Accidental Causes
That End up Leading a Democratic People
to Centralize Power or That Turn Them
Away from Doing So
b
sufcient use of America because of the preoccupation that I had that the principal
goal of the chapter was to speak about Europe and to Europe. But even with this
goal, perhaps it is necessary to show better what is happening in America. I showed
a glimpse of it in several places, but perhaps it would be worth more, instead of
spreading America around as I have done, to gather it together at one point andshow:
1. That we must distinguish between the Union and the states. The national ele-
ment nding itself only in the state.
2. To show or rather to recall in what way the state is more centralized than the
monarchies of Europe and in what way less centralized. The government more, the
administration less. There are pages of my rst work to reread and perhaps to cite.
.-.[what (ed.)].- makes administrative centralization less great in America than in Eu-
rope despite equality.
If I do not make the reader see America clearly, he will perhaps be invincibly op-
posed to my ideas, because seen in a haze and considered roughly, America seems in
fact to provide an opposite argument.
Reect on all that while reviewing (Rubish, 2).
b. In the drafts:
Other causes or particular causes that can favor centralization./
To introduce this in the preceding chapters or to put it in a supplementary
chapter./
[In the margin: Perhaps show how the Americans have escaped excessive cen-
tralization of powers with the help of favorable particular causes.
Separation of colonies.
No foreign wars.
Few internal troubles.
Habits of local government.
Principles of aristocratic liberty without mixture of aristocracy.
Idea of rights without hatreds that lead to violating rights./
1. Superior men who all believe they have an interest in centralization.
2. Passions of all political men which lead to centralization.
3. Supercial minds.
3. External danger.
4. Internal troubles.
a
5. Hatred of the remnants of an aristocracy. England.
If all democratic peoples are carried instinctively toward centralization of
powers, they are led there in an unequal manner. It depends on particular
circumstances that candevelopor limit the natural effects of the social state.
These circumstances are in very great number; I will only speak about a
few.
Among men who have lived free for a long time before becoming equal,
the instincts that liberty gave combat, up to a certain point, the tendencies
suggested by equality; and although among those men the central power
increases its privileges, the individuals there never entirely lose their
independence.
But when equality happens to develop among a people who have never
known or who, for a long time, have no longer known liberty, as is seen on
the continent of Europe, and when the old habits of the nation come to
combine suddenly and by a sort of natural attraction with the new habits
and doctrines that arise from the social state, all powers seem to rush by
themselves toward the center; they accumulate there with a surprising ra-
pidity, and the State all at once attains the extreme limits of its strength,
while the individuals allow themselves to fall in a moment to the lowest
degree of weakness.
The English who came, three centuries ago, to establish a democratic so-
ciety in the wilderness of the NewWorld were all accustomed in the mother
country to take part in public affairs; they knew the jury; they had freedom
of speech and freedom of the press, individual liberty, [added: independent
courts], the idea of right and the customof resorting to it. They carriedthese
[(a) All centralizing geniuses love war and all warrior minds love centralization.]
6. Democratic origin of the sovereign; people or prince.
7. Social state that becomes democratic without absolute monarchy andwithout
free habits, under the aegis and by the favor of the central power.
8. Hatred of the neighbor increased by the aristocratic notion of the neighbor.
9. Difculty of nding local governments when aristocracy chased away.
<10. Centralization increases by itself by enduring. Government becomes more
capable and individuals more incapable.>
11. Little enlightenment in the people, which delivers more and more to the
power] (Rubish, 2).
free institutions and these manly mores to America, and these institutions
and mores sustained them against the invasions of the State.
Among the Americans, it is therefore liberty that is old; equality is com-
paratively new. The opposite happens inEurope where equality, introduced
by absolute power and under the eyes of the kings, had already penetrated
the habits of the people long before liberty entered their ideas.
I have said that, among democratic peoples, government naturally pre-
sented itself to the human mind only under the form of a unique and
central power, and that the notion of intermediary powers was not familiar
to it. That is particularly applicable to democratic nations that have seen
the principle of equality triumph with the aid of a violent revolution. Since
the classes that directed local affairs [<served as intermediary between the
sovereign and the people>] disappear suddenly in this tempest, and the
confused mass that remains still has neither the organization nor the habits
that allow it to take in hand the administration of these same affairs, you
see nothing except the State itself which can take charge of all the details
of government. Centralization becomes in a way a necessary fact.
c
Napoleon [{the national Convention}]
d
must be neither praised nor
c. In our time a famous sect has appeared that claimed to centralize all the forces of
society in the same hands.
[Further along, on the same page] If someone had spoken to me about the doctrines
of the Saint-Simonians without letting me know the time or the country that saw them
arise, I dare to afrm that I would have said without fear that they had been born in a
democratic century [v: country] (notes of the chapter, Rubish, 2).
d. Financial centralization, and that one includes all the others, was established in
France by the Convention, 5 September 1794, on a report of Cambon who, applying
to nances the great principle of the unity andof the indivisibility of France, declared
that in the future there would be only one budget, as there was only one State.
The excess of this principle forced it to be abandoned in the year IV and forced
departmental budgets to be done.
But since then we have not ceased and still do not cease to remove sums fromthese
budgets in order to carry them over to the budget of the State, that is to say that little
by little we return more and more to the nancial system created abruptly by the
Convention. We see, adds the Journal des de bats, whichprovidedme withthese details
(6 March 1838) that the movement of administrative centralization continues, since
the budget of the State swells and the departmental budget decreases (YTC, CVk, 2,
p. 42).
blamed for having concentrated in his hands alone all administrative pow-
ers; for, after the abrupt disappearance of the nobility and of the upper
bourgeoisie, these powers came to him by themselves; it would have been
as difcult for him to reject them as to take them. [<He must be reproached
for the tyrannical use that he often made of his power, rather than for his
power.>]
e
Such a necessity has never been felt by the Americans, who, not
having had a revolution and being from the beginning governed by them-
selves, have never had to charge the State with temporarily serving themas
tutor.
f
Thus, among a democratic people, centralization develops not only ac-
cording to the progress of equality, but also according to the manner in
which this equality is established.
g
Tocqueville is referring here to discussions on the law on departmental attributions
that had taken place in the Chamber of Deputies in the month of March 1838. The
details cited belong to the session of 6 March, reproduced in the Journal des de bats the
next day.
e. In the margin: This sentence is too much because here it is only a matter of
administrative centralization.
f. .-.-.- In France, Napoleon was in the matter .-.-[of (ed.)].-.- centralization the
accident, but the real and permanent cause was this sudden destruction of the upper
{administrative} classes.
Those whose education, wealth, habits and memories naturally enabled them to
conduct provincial affairs disappear; and with the confused mass that remained, still
not having either enlightenment, or organization, or mores which could allow it to
direct these same affairs, to whom would this same concern necessarily revert, if not
to the central power? So centralization has been a necessary fact. That is true; the
error is to say that it must be an eternal fact.
[To the side] I put a child under my guardianship; is this to say that I must keep
him under my rule at manhood? (unity, centralization, administrative
despotism, Rubish, 2).
g. The two great disadvantages of centralization are these: 1. In the long run it pre-
vents more undertakings and improvements than it can produce. 2. It delivers all of
the social existence to a power that, becoming indolent or tyrannical, can end by
plunging the nation into impotence or servitude.
These two dangers are distant and .-.-.-.- disclose even .-.-.-.-
The good that centralization produces, the order, the regularity, the uniformity so
adored by democratic peoples, are, on the contrary, noticed and appreciated right
away by these same minds.
How would its cause not be popular? (thoughts to add on the influence
exercised by democratic ideas on the forms of government, Rubish, 2).
[When conditions have become equal among a nation only following a
long and difcult social effort, the sentiments that led to the democratic
revolution and those given birth by it subsist for a long time after the rev-
olution. The memory of privileges is joined with the privileges themselves.
The trace of former ranks is perpetuated. The people still see the destroyed
remnants with hatred and envy, and the nobles envisage the people with
terror. Yound former adversaries aroundyouonbothsides, andyououtdo
each other throwing yourselves into the arms of the government for fear
of falling under the oppression of your neighbors.
This is how the political tendencies that equality imparts are that much
stronger among a people as conditions have been more unequal and as
equality has had more difculty becoming established.
The Americans arrived equal on the soil that they occupy. They never
had privileges of birth or fortune to destroy. They naturally feel no hatred
of some against others. So they subject themselves readily to the admin-
istration of those close at hand, because they neither hate nor fear them.]
h
At the beginning of a great democratic revolution, and when the war
between the different classes has only begun, the people try hard to cen-
tralize public administration in the hands of the government, in order to
tear the direction of local affairs away from the aristocracy. Toward the end
of this same revolution, on the contrary, it is ordinarily the vanquished
aristocracy which attempts to deliver to the State the direction of all [{lo-
cal}] affairs, because it fears the petty tyranny of the people, who have be-
come its equal and often its master.
Thus, it is not always the same class of citizens that applies itself to
increasing the prerogatives of power; but as long as the democratic revo-
lution lasts, a class, powerful by numbers or by wealth, is always found in
the nation that is led to centralize the public administration by special pas-
sions and particular interests, apart from hatred of the government of the
neighbor, which is a general and permanent sentiment among democratic
peoples. You can see today that it is the lower classes of England that work
h. This fragment constitutes an independent sheet of the manuscript. Tocquevilles
indications allow us to think that it would have been placed here.
with all their strength to destroy local independence and to carry the ad-
ministration of all points from the circumference to the center, while the
upper classes try hard to keep this same administration within its ancient
limits. I dare to predict that a day will come when you will see an entirely
opposite spectacle.
j
What precedes makes it well understood why, among a democratic peo-
ple who has arrived at equality by a long and difcult social effort, the social
power must always be stronger and the individual weaker than in a dem-
ocratic society where, from the beginning, citizens have always been equal.
This is what the example of the Americans nally proves.
The men who inhabit the United States have never been separated by
any privilege; they have never known the reciprocal relation of inferior and
master, and since they do not fear and do not hate one another, they have
never known the need to call upon the sovereign to direct the details of
their affairs.
k
The destiny of the Americans is singular; they took from the
aristocracy of England the idea of individual rights and the taste for local
liberties; and they were able to preserve both, because they did not have to
combat aristocracy.
If in all times enlightenment is useful to men for defending their in-
j. When you examine all the laws that .-.-.- in England for the past fty years and
above all during recent years, you will see that all more or less have a tendency toward
centralization and uniformity. That is enough for me to conclude that the great demo-
cratic revolution that today shapes the world is proceeding constantly among the English
people, in spite of the obstacles that oppose it and despite the wealth and the men that
the aristocracy still possesses there (relative to the idea of unity in general,
Rubish, 2).
k. On this point the Americans, whatever their errors and their faults, deserve to be
praised. They have well earned humanitys gratitude. They have shownthat the dem-
ocratic social state and democratic laws did not have as a necessary result the degen-
eration of the human race.
I am very content to have found this idea because I believe it correct and because
it is the only way to make America appear a nal time in my last chapters, whichreally
relate only to France.
[To the side] In America the State is a great deal, but the individual is something.
Less than in England, but more than in France. He has rights, a strength of individ-
uality less respected than among the English, more than among us (unity, cen-
tralization, administrative despotism, Rubish, 2).
dependence, that is above all true in democratic centuries. It is easy, when
all men are similar, to establish a unique and omnipotent government; in-
stincts are sufcient. But men need a great deal of intelligence, science and
art, in order to organize and to maintain, in the same circumstances, sec-
ondary powers, and in order to create, amid the independence and indi-
vidual weakness of citizens, free associations able tostruggle against tyranny
without destroying order [{and in order to replace the individual power of
a few families with free associations of citizens}].
So concentration of powers and individual servitude will grow, among
democratic nations, not only in proportion to equality, but also by reason
of ignorance.
m
It is true that, in centuries less advanced in knowledge, the government
often lacks the enlightenment to perfect despotism, as the citizens lack the
enlightenment to escape it. But the effect is not equal on the two sides.
However uncivilized a democratic people may be, the central power that
directs it is never completely without enlightenment, because it easily at-
tracts what little enlightenment there is in the country, and because, as
needed, it goes outside to seek it. So among a nation that is ignorant as well
as democratic, a prodigious difference between the intellectual capacity of
the sovereign power and that of each one of its subjects cannot fail to man-
ifest itself. The former ends by easily concentrating all powers in its hands.
m. Centralization./
There are two types of decentralization.
One that is in a way instinctive, blind, full of prejudices, devoid of rules, that is
born from the desire of small localities to be independent.
There is another one that is reasoned, enlightened, that knows its limits.
These two decentralizations are at the two ends of civilization. In the middle is a
central power [that is] energetic, intelligent, that claims [doubtful reading (ed.)] to
be able to do everything by itself and that manages, after a fashion, to do so.
Baden, 14 August 1836 (unity, centralization, administrative despo-
tism, Rubish, 2).
The administrative power of the State expands constantly, because only the
State is skillful enough to administer.
n
Aristocratic nations, however little enlightened yousuppose them, never
present the same spectacle, because enlightenment there is distributed
equally between the prince and the principal citizens.
The Pasha who reigns today over Egypt found the population of the
country composed of very ignorant and very equal men, and to govern it
he appropriated the science and the intelligence of Europe. The particular
enlightenment of the sovereignthus coming tocombine withthe ignorance
n. On accidental causes./
After the place where I showthe government as the necessary heir to the oldpowers
when they are suddenly destroyed.
Every time that a great revolution agitates a people, it gives birth within it to a host
of newrelationships, interests and needs, and you feel onall sides the needfor a power
that comes to regulate these relationships, guarantee these interests, satisfy these
needs. That gives great opportunities to the government that this revolution has es-
tablished to expand the circle of its action well beyond the old limits and to create a
multitude of new attributions that none of the abolished powers had had. That is
that much easier for the government because, amid this renewal of all things, the
citizens are full of uncertainty, ignorance and fear, not seeing clearly enough.
So when equality is established with the help of and amid a great revolution it
happens that the government immediately (two illegible words) its prerogatives not
only because of equality of conditions, but also because of the revolution (which
makes conditions equal) (YTC, CVj, 2, p. 13).
Page 14 of this same notebook contains an identical fragment.
After this passage, you read:
This includes two ideas:
1. Current existence is more complicated than the life of the former aristocratic
societies. Consequently the social power must get involved in more things.
2. Equality is a new fact that puts the individual vis-a`-vis the government in a state
of uncertainty, ignorance and weakness, which delivers him naturally to the latter.
Transitory thing which at this moment plays an immense role (illegible word)./
Another idea of L[ouis (ed.)].
Men without belief give themselves easily to the direction of the power because
they are overwhelmed by the weight of their liberty. Man cannot bear independence
in all things and the extreme liberty of his mind leads him to curb his actions.
Very debatable truth.
Talk more about all that with L[ouis (ed.)] (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 1415).
and the democratic weakness of his subjects, the farthest limit of central-
ization has been attained without difculty, and the prince has been able
to make the country into his factory and the inhabitants into his workers.
o
I believe that the extreme centralization of political power ends by en-
ervating society and thus by weakening the government itself in the long
run. But I do not deny that a centralized social force is able to execute easily,
in a given time and at a determined point, great enterprises.
p
That is above
all true in war, when success depends much more on the ease that you nd
in bringing all your resources rapidly to a certain point, than even on the
extent of those resources. So it is principally in war that peoples feel the
desire and often the need to increase the prerogatives of the central power.
All warrior geniuses love centralization, which increases their forces, and
all centralizing geniuses love war, which obliges nations to draw all powers
into the hands of the State. Thus, the democratic tendency which leads
o. Unity. Centralization./
Supply myself with an article on Egypt published in the Revue des deux mondes of
1 March 1838 and in which someone admires greatly that the Pasha has made himself
the proprietor and the unique industrialist of his country, and in which it is impliedthat
something approaching this or analogous could perhaps be tried in France.
Symptoms of the time (unity, centralization, administrative despo-
tism, Rubish, 2).
.-.-.- centralization of the Pasha of Egypt which proves that when conditions are
once equal, the idea of a central and uniform government presents itself as well in a
period of incomplete civilization as in one of advanced civilization. I do not even know
if centralization is not rather an idea of medium civilization than of very advanced civ-
ilization (ideas to add on the influence exercised by democratic ideas
on the forms of government, Rubish, 2).
p. That among democratic nations, above all those that are not commercial, the State
must be involved in more enterprises than in others./
Nuance to observe in that. If the State itself takes charge of everything, it nishes
by throwing individuals into nothingness. If it takes charge of nothing, it is to be
feared that it will not be able to emerge from it. Nuances very delicate, difcult to
grasp. Position that is very easy to abuse. English system of not getting involved in
anything. Aristocratic system. Liberty gives the desire and the idea of doing great
things, and individuals powerful enough to do them easily by associating. American
system in which the State encourages and does not share in the activities of enter-
prises, loans money, grants land, does nothing by itself (with the drafts of chapter 5
of the second part, on association in civil life, Rubish, 1).
men constantly to multiply the privileges of the State and to limit the rights
of individuals is much more rapid andmore continuous amongdemocratic
peoples who are subject by their position to great and frequent wars, and
whose existence can often be put in danger, than among all others.
I have said how the fear of disorder and the love of well-being imper-
ceptibly led democratic peoples to augment the attributions of the central
government, the sole power that seems to them by itself strong enough,
intelligent enough, stable enough to protect them against anarchy. I hardly
need to add that all the particular circumstances that tend to make the state
of a democratic society disturbed and precarious increase this general in-
stinct and lead individuals, more and more, to sacrice their rights to their
tranquillity.
So a people is never so disposed to increase the attributions of the central
power than when emerging from a long and bloody revolution that, after
tearing property fromthe hands of its former owners, has shakenall beliefs,
lled the nation with furious hatreds, opposing interests and conicting
factions. The taste for public tranquillity thenbecomes a blindpassion, and
citizens are subject to becoming enamored with a very disordered love of
order.
I have just examined several accidents, all of which contribute to aiding
the centralization of power. I have not yet spoken about the principal one.
The rst of all the accidental causes which, among democratic peoples,
can draw the direction of all affairs into the hands of the sovereign is the
origin of the sovereign himself and his inclinations.
Men who live in centuries of equality love the central power natur-
ally
q
and willingly expand its privileges; but if it happens that this same
q. Superior men who all want to centralize. Accidental cause, the more democracies
encounter such men, the more centralized they will become.
All the extraordinary men.
All the extraordinary talents go in this direction. Extraordinary talents in other
times are often a cause of restlessness for the people among whom they are found.
They create wars, divisions, violence, tyranny. But beyond that, in democracies, they
power faithfully represents their interests and exactly reproduces their in-
stincts, the condence that they have in it has hardly any limits, and they
believe that they are granting to themselves all that they are giving away.
r
Drawing administrative powers toward the center will always be less
easy
s
and less rapid with kings who are still attached at some point to the
old aristocratic order than with new princes, self-made men, who seem to
be tied indissolubly to the cause of equality by birth, prejudices, instincts
and habits. I do not want to say that the princes of aristocratic origin who
live in the centuries of democracy do not seek to centralize. I believe that
they apply themselves to that as diligently as all the others. For them, the
only advantages of equality are in this direction; but their opportunities are
fewer, because the citizens, instead of naturally anticipating their desires,
often lend themselves to those desires only with difculty. In democratic
societies, centralization will always be that much greater as the sovereign is
less aristocratic: there is the rule.
always create centralization, because centralization is an admirable means of action
that is clearly conceived and easily obtained only at that time.
I will say as much about all the extraordinary men who come to be born fromtime
to time among these peoples.
All will love centralization and will seek to expand it, and it will be that much
greater as they appear in greater number (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 7677).
r. [In the margin: Ease of succeeding when the power does not give rise to fear about
equality./
January 1837.]
What must be done in order to take hold of despotic power among democratic
peoples and in the centuries of democratic transition. Ease of turning democratic
passions against their goal, to cause liberty to be sacricedto the blindlove of equality
and to the revolutionary passions that it brings about. To place somewhere toward
the end of the volume and perhaps at the end after war (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 56).
s. Variant in the manuscript: . . . will always be more easy, more rapid and greater
among democratic nations that live as a republic than among those that obey a monarch,
and under new dynasties than under the old, and it will never meet fewer obstacles than
under princes who have emerged from a low position, self-made men, who by their
origin, their prejudices, their interests and their habits seem intimately tied to the cause
of equality. You can say in a general way that in democratic societies centralization will
always be that much greater as the sovereign is less aristocratic.
[I do not believe in the hereditary and imprescriptible rights of princes,
and I know how difcult it is to maintain the old families of kings in the
midst of new ideas. Ancient dynasties have some particular advantages in
centuries of equality, however, that I want to acknowledge.]
t
t. That, before everything, in order for a power to be able to arrive at tyranny among
a democratic people, it must have come from the people and must at every occasion
atter the sentiment of equality.
Centralization. Individualism. Material enjoyment./
What precedes opens the way for me.
I want to nd out by what condition despotism could establish itself among a
democratic people and show how it could use the ideas and the sentiments that arise
from equality. To struggle at the same time against the spirit of equality and the spirit
of liberty would be folly, but they can be divided. Thus the great problem that the
despots of our time and those of the centuries to come will have to have daily inview
[interrupted text (ed.)].
From now on, those who will want to create absolute power by aristocracy or
aristocracy by absolute power will be great fools, you can afrm it from today.
So what is necessary rst for a power [v: government], so that it is possible for it
to aspire to tyranny in a longer or shorter time?
I am not afraid to say it, a popular [v: plebeian] origin. It must, by its prejudices,
its instincts, its memories, its interests, be intensely favorable to equality. Those are
the primary qualities, without which, skill and even genius would be of no use to it
to succeed, and with which, vices would be enough.
If it happened that this same man had a bold, brilliant, fertile mind, that he was
without restraint in his passions as without limits in his desires, and that he himself
naturally shared the democratic inclinations and vices, faults, opinions, which he
wanted to use, I do not doubt that he would soon make himself formidable toliberty,
and I do not know what the limits of his fortune would be if he added to all of these
advantages that of being a bastard [v: if he joined to all of these advantages that of
coming from the ranks of the people, his success would be even more probable].
[To the side: Debatable theorem.]
The rst concern and the principal affair (of a government or of a man who aims
for tyranny) must be to interest the dominant passion of the century in his favor. He
can be wasteful, arbitrary, even cruel; it is not sure that he (illegible word) as long as
he is not assumed to be aristocratic. But were he the opposite of all these things, he
will assuredly perish if it is half-suspected that he is aristocratic. It is possible that in
this, favorable circumstances serve him.
If by chance there exists within a democratic people a party, a class, or even a man
who in the eyes of the public represents the principle of the inequality of conditions,
that is a fortunate accident fromwhicha government that aims for omnipotencemust
hasten to prot. Let it rst exercise its emerging strength on the former; let it do
When an old race of kings directs an aristocracy, since the natural prej-
udices of the sovereign are in perfect accord with the natural prejudices of
the nobles, the vices inherent in aristocratic societies developfreely andnd
no remedy. The opposite happens when the offshoot of a feudal branch is
placed at the head of a democratic people. The prince is inclined each day
by his education, his habits and his memories, toward sentiments that in-
equality of conditions suggests; and the people tend constantly, by its social
state, toward the mores to which equality gives birth. So it often happens
that the citizens seek to contain the central power, much less as tyrannical
than as aristocratic; and that they rmly maintain their independence, not
only because they want to be free, but above all because they intend to
remain equal. [It is in this sense that you can say that old dynasties lead
aristocratic peoples to despotism and democratic nations to liberty.
<It is difcult for such a struggle to last for long without leading to a
revolution, but as long as it lasts, you cannot deny that it powerfully serves
the political education of the democracy.>]
A revolution that overturns an old family of kings, in order to place new
men at the head of a democratic people, cantemporarily weakenthe central
power; but however anarchic it seems at rst, you must not hesitate to pre-
dict that its nal and necessary result will be to expand and to assure the
prerogatives of this very power.
against them its apprenticeship for tyranny. It can attempt it without danger. Two
great results gained from the same blow. On the one hand, it proves in this way its
hatred for aristocracy; {on the other} it accustoms the people to illegality and famil-
iarizes them with arbitrariness and violence. How to suspect a power that emerges
from our ranks, that represents us to ourselves, that acts for us and in our name, in
the matter that is most in our hearts; that loves what we love, hates what we hate and
strikes what we cannot reach? Wont there be time to take precautions when it tries
nally to turn against us the weapon that has been entrusted to it? The nation closes
its eyes to that and falls asleep.
[With a bracket that includes the last two paragraphs: To delete.]
This reveals the type of utility that a democratic people can draw from ancient
dynasties. When an ancient family of kings directs an aristocracy . . . (YTC, CVd,
pp. 3236); you nd a draft of this fragment in YTC, CVd, pp. 3741).
The rst, and in a way the only necessary condition for arriving at cen-
tralization of the public power in a democratic society is to love equality
or make people believe that you do. Thus, the science of despotism, for-
merly so complicated, is simplied; it is reduced, so to speak, to a unique
principle.
u
u. The manuscript proposes two other conclusions:
As for me, when I consider the growing weakness of the men of today, their love [v:
passion] for equality which increases with their powerlessness, andthe type of natural
instinct that seems on all sides to carry them without their knowledge toward ser-
vitude, I do not dare ask God to inspire in citizens love of liberty, but I beg Him at
least to give to the sovereigns [v: princes] who govern them the taste for aristocracy.
This would be enough to save human independence.
In another place:
Last words of section IV./
Moreover, it must very much be believed, liberty, in order to become established
and to be maintained, has no less need than despotism to appear as friend of equality.
I beg the partisans of liberty to understand it well and to consider that to appear
always as a friend of equality, there [is (ed.)] only one sure means worthy of them;
it is to be so; it is to attach themselves to equality by the mind if not by the heart.
1221
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 5
That among the European Nations of Today the
Sovereign Power Increases Although Sovereigns
Are Less Stable
a
If you come to reect on what precedes, you will be surprised and fright-
ened to see how, in Europe, everything seems to contribute to increasing
indenitely the prerogatives of the central power and each day to make
individual existence weaker, more subordinate and more precarious.
The democratic nations of Europe have all the general and permanent
tendencies that lead the Americans toward centralization of powers, and
moreover they are subject to a multitude of secondary andaccidental causes
that the Americans do not know. You would say that each step that they
take toward equality brings them closer to despotism.
It is enough to look around us and at ourselves to be convinced of it.
During the aristocratic centuries that preceded ours, the sovereigns of
Europe had been deprived of or had let go of several of the rights inherent
in their power. Not yet one hundred years ago, among most European na-
tions, almost independent individuals or bodies were found that admin-
istered justice, called up and maintained soldiers, collected taxes, and often
even made or explained the law. Everywhere the State has, for itself alone,
taken back these natural attributions of sovereignpower; ineverythingthat
relates to government, it no longer puts up with an intermediary between
it and the citizens, and it directs the citizens by itself in general affairs. I
a. Title in the drafts: that centralization is the greatest danger for the
democratic nations of europe (Rubish, 2).
s overei gn power i ncreas es 1222
am very far
b
from censuring this concentration of power; I am limiting
myself to showing it.
In the same period, a great number of secondary powers existed in Eu-
rope that represented local interests and administered local affairs. Most of
these local authorities have already disappeared; all are tending rapidly to
disappear or to fall into the most complete dependency. From one end of
Europe to the other, the privileges of lords, the liberties of cities, the pro-
vincial administrations are destroyed or are going to be.
Europe has experienced, for a half-century, many revolutions and
counter-revolutions that have moved it inopposite directions.
c
But all these
movements are similar onone point: all have shakenor destroyedsecondary
powers. Local privileges that the French nation had not abolished in coun-
tries conquered by it have nally succumbedunder the efforts of the princes
who defeated France. These princes rejected all the novelties that the
[French] Revolution had created among them, except centralization. It is
the only thing that they have agreed to keep from it.
What I want to note is that all these diverse rights that in our time have
been successively taken away from classes, corporations, men, have not
served to raise new secondary powers on a more democratic foundation,
but have been concentrated on all sides in the hands of the sovereign. Ev-
erywhere the State arrives more and more at directing by itself the least
citizens and at alone leading each one of them in the least affairs.
1
b. The manuscript says: I am far from censuring . . .
c. The greatest originality of my chapter is inthis idea, still a bit confused, that shows
two revolutions operating almost in opposite directions. The one that tends to give to the
central power a new origin, new tastes, to detach it from aristocracy. . . .
And the other that constantly increases its prerogatives (Rubish, 2).
1. This gradual weakening of the individual in the face of society manifests itself in a
thousand ways. I will cite among others what relates to wills.
In aristocratic countries, a profound respect is usually professed for the last will of men.
That goes sometimes, among the ancient peoples of Europe, even as far as superstition; the
social power, far from hindering the caprices of the dying man, lent its strength to the least of
them; it assured him of a perpetual power.
d
Nearly all the charitable establishments of old Europe were in the hands
of individuals or of corporations; they have all more or less fallen into de-
pendence on the sovereign, and in several countries they are governed by
the sovereign. It is the State that has undertaken almost alone to give bread
to those who are hungry, relief and a refuge to the sick, work to those with-
out it; it has made itself the almost unique repairer of all miseries.
Education, as well as charity, has become a national affair among most
of the peoples of today. The State receives and often takes the child from
the arms of its mother in order to entrust it to its agents; it is the State that
takes charge of inspiring sentiments in each generation and providing each
generation with ideas. Uniformity reigns in studies as in all the rest; there
diversity, like liberty, disappears each day.
Nor am I afraid to advance that, among nearly all the Christian nations
of today, Catholic as well as Protestant, religion is threatened with falling
into the hands of the government.
e
It is not that sovereigns showthemselves
very eager to x dogma themselves;
f
but more and more they are taking
hold of the will of the one who explains dogma; they take away from the
cleric his property, assign him a salary, deect and use for their sole prot
the inuence that the priest possesses; they make him one of their ofcials
When all living men are weak, the will of the dead is less respected. A very narrow circle
is drawn around it, and if it happens to go outside of it, the sovereign annuls or controls it.
In the Middle Ages, the power to make out your will had, so to speak, no limits. Among the
French of today, you cannot distribute your patrimony among your children without the State
intervening. After having dictated the entire life, it still wants to regulate the nal act.
d. See piece of Beaumont on property in England and above all on the immense
place that the last will and testament occupies. 2nd volume of LIrlande.
Individual power of the man. Very important aristocratic character whichmanifests
itself very strongly in what is related to the will (with drafts of the chapter that follows,
Rubish, 2).
e. The manuscript says: all religions tend to become national.
f. Ultra-unitary movement of the clergy. Symptoms of the time. Reread Lacor-
daire./
Intellectual centralization. Idea of unity which pushed man as far as the last refuges
of individual originality (notes of the chapter, Rubish, 2).
and often one of their servants, and with him they penetrate to the deepest
recesses of the soul of each man.
2
But that is still only one side of the picture.
Not only has the power of the sovereign expanded, as we have just seen,
into the entire sphere of old powers; this is no longer enough to satisfy it;
it overows that sphere on all sides and spreads over the domain that until
now has been reserved to individual independence. A multitude of actions
which formerly escaped entirely from the control of society has been sub-
jected to it today, and their number increases constantly.
g
Among aristocratic peoples, the social power usually limited itself to
directing and to overseeing citizens in everything that had a direct and visi-
ble connection to the national interest; it willingly abandonedthemtotheir
free will in everything else. Among these peoples, the government seemed
often to forget that there is a point at which the failings and the miseries
2. As the attributions of the central power augment, the number of ofcials who represent
it increases. They form a nation within each nation and, since the government lends them its
stability, they more and more replace the aristocracy among each nation.
Nearly everywhere in Europe, the sovereign [power] dominates in two ways: it leads one
part of the citizens by the fear that they feel for its agents, and the other by the hope that they
conceive of becoming those agents.
g. Nothing can delight the imagination of an ambitious man more than the image
of a unique power that, with a word, can put an entire people on alert and move it
from one place to another. That seems admirable above all in times like ours when
we are so impatient to enjoy, and when we want to gain great enjoyments only by
means of small efforts.
[To the side: Perhaps move to accidental causes.]
You can predict that nearly all the ambitious and capable minds that a democratic
country contains will apply themselves without let-up to expanding the attributions
of the social power, because all hope to direct it one day. It is a waste of time to want
to demonstrate to those men [that (ed.)] extreme centralization <agglomeration> of
powers can harm the State, since they centralize for themselves.
In democratic countries, you nd only very honest or very mediocre men who
occupy themselves with setting some limits for the central power. The rst are rare
and the second can do nothing.
In democratic countries, the people are led not only by their tastes to concentrate
power, but also by the passions of all the citizens.
[To the side] Perhaps move to accidental causes (Rubish, 2). See p. 1293.
of individuals compromise universal well-being, and that sometimes pre-
venting the ruin of an individual must be a public matter.
Democratic nations of our time lean toward an opposite extreme.
It is clear that most of our princes do not want only to direct the whole
people; you would say that they consider themselves responsible for the
actions and for the individual destiny of their subjects,
h
that they have un-
h. When men all depend more or less on each other, it is enough for the government
to lead the principal ones among them in order for the rest to follow.
But when they are all equal and independent, society must in a way be occupied
separately with each citizen and guide him.
So it is natural and necessary that the attributions of the government be more
numerous and more detailed in a democratic country than in an aristocratic country
(ideas that i can hope to use, Rubish, 2).
You nd also in a copy of the drafts these two pieces on the same subject:
Centralization./
I have just pointed out in which conditions alone despotism could impose itself
on democratic peoples; it remains for me to show the means that it can use.
[To the side: Too didactic.]
I consider a democratic people abstractly from its antecedents, and I conceive that
it will always be more difcult to establish a local liberty there than among an aris-
tocratic nation. No one has a visible right to command. No one has leisure, general
ideas, enlightenment.
So a long education is always required to make democratic localities able to govern
themselves.
But if I consider a democratic people at a certain point of its existence, the dif-
culty is very much greater.
[To the side: When aristocracy has just been destroyed and when democracy is not
yet trained and elevated, to whom to give the local power?]
Among peoples, some reach democracy by liberal institutions, as the English will
do; others by absolute power, as we have done.
This changes the conditions of the problem.
In the rst case, when aristocracy loses its power, all its successors are ready to take
its place. And even in this case, centralizing tendency. Say a word about the English
and show that they are not centralizing with an interest in good administration, but
with a democratic interest.
In the second, the sole possible heir to aristocracy is royal power. The onlyquestion
is knowing if it will always preserve the inheritance (YTC, CVd, pp. 4142).
Centralization./
Centralization is that much more absurd as the government is more truly repre-
sentative. When the minister is occupied for six months withattackinganddefending
dertaken to lead and to enlighten each one of them in the different acts of
his life, and as needed, to make him happy despite himself.
j
On their side, individuals more and more envisage the social power in
the same way; they call it to their aid in all their needs, and at every moment
they set their sight on it as on a tutor or on a guide.
I assert that there is no country in Europe in which the public admin-
istration has not become not only more centralized, but also more inquis-
itorial and more detailed; everywhere it penetrates more than formerly into
private affairs; it regulates in its own way more actions and smaller actions,
and every day it establishes itself more and more beside, around and above
each individual in order to assist him, advise him and constrain him.
k
himself in the chambers, howcan he have the time to direct all the provincial interests
with which he is charged? The care [illegible word] the responsibility for it comes
necessarily to a clerk. Now, what superior guarantee is offered by the wisdom of a
clerk compared to that of local magistrates?
4 April 1837 (YTC, CVd, p. 31).
j. Tocqueville seems to refer to the well-known passage of chapter VII of the rst
book of Contrat social. Rousseau, uvres comple `tes (Paris: Pleiade, 1964), III, p. 364.
k. A centralized administration, but slow and fond of red tape and paperwork./
.-.-.- in the session of 2 .-.- March 1838 after praising the administration of m[ines
(ed.)] .-.- at the top of his voice, he complained however that its members do not
visit, as they ought to do, all the mines that are subject to their inspection and are
crushedunder all the redtape andpaperwork. As if a centralizedadministrationcould
ever completely meet its program, and as if it was not by its essence fond of red tape
and paperwork. This last thing above all follows very closely.
From the moment when everything comes from a center, the director of the ma-
chine, who can see nothing by himself, but who must knoweverything, needs to have
innumerable accounts sent to him, to sheck [check (ed.)] one employee by another.
In a great centralized administration a hierarchy is needed, that is to say a .-.-.-.- of
order and correspondence. Those are the needs. The passions are still much more
fond of red tape and paperwork. The permanent inclination of the minister is to
want to do everything and to know everything and to order everything, which ne-
cessitates still much more correspondence than need does.
And the ofces that rule the minister have aninterest indrawingeverythingtoward
him, which is to say toward them. They have the same passions as the minister does,
and they never have, as he does, the political and general point of view that can curb
these passions.
So a centralized administration is by its nature slow and fond of writing. It can
have great advantages, but this disadvantage is certain./
Formerly, the sovereign lived from the revenue of his lands or from tax
income. It is no longer the same today now that his needs have grown with
his power. In the same circumstances inwhichformerly a prince established
a new tax, today we resort to a loan. Little by little the State thus becomes
the debtor of most of the rich, and it centralizes in its hands the largest
capital.
m
It attracts the smallest capital in another way.
As men mingle and conditions become equal, the poor man has more
resources, enlightenment and desires. He conceives the idea of bettering
his lot, and he seeks to succeed in doing so by savings. So savings give birth
each day to an innite number of small accumulations of capital, slowand
successive fruits of work; they increase constantly. But the greatest number
would remain unproductive if they stayed scattered. That has given birth
to a new philanthropic institution which will soon become, if I am not
mistaken, one of our greatest political institutions. Charitable men con-
ceived the thought of gathering the savings of the poor and utilizing the
The obligation of dealing with all affairs without seeing each other necessitates
innite paperwork./
E
douard told me something correct: that fondness for red tape and paperworkwas
that much greater as the affair was smaller. A great affair is dealt with in Paris. People
see each other, come to an understanding, become interested. But in order to un-
derstand why a commune wants to sell six feet of land, innite paperwork is required,
for people cannot see each other and no one takes an interest (unity, centrali-
zation, administrative despotism, Rubish, 2).
Tocqueville is referring to the discussion on the administration of mines which had
taken place in the Chamber in March 1838 (see the Journal des de bats of 21 March 1838).
After the oods of the mines of Rive-de-Gier, the government had presented to the
Chamber a proposed law in which it required, under penalty of expropriation, the ex-
ecution of certain measures on the part of the owners of mines in case of danger. The
deputies opposed to the proposed law defended the liberty of the owner by relying on
article 7 of the lawof 21 April 1810, whichconsideredmines as a commonpropertywhose
conveying and expropriation fell into the domain of the ordinary principles of civil law.
See, further on, Tocquevilles note 5.
m. In 1837, Tocqueville had asked Beaumont to bring back to him from England all
types of brochures and information on the Scottish savings banks, destinedfor the draft-
ing of the second part of his Me moire sur le paupe risme. The information gathered by
Beaumont conrmed Tocqueville in his fear of a state centralization as regards savings
(Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1, pp. 185, 191, 193, and 196).
earnings. In some countries, these benevolent associations have remained
entirely distinct from the State; but in almost all they tend visibly to merge
with it, and there are even a fewinwhich the government has replacedthem
andundertakenthe immense taskof centralizing the dailysavings of several
million workers in a single place and of turning those savings to good ac-
count by its hands alone.
Thus, the State draws to itself the money of the rich by borrowing, and
by savings banks it disposes as it wills of the pennies of the poor. The wealth
of the country rushes constantly toward it and into its hand; wealth ac-
cumulates there all the more as equality of conditions becomes greater [{the
country is more democratic}]; for among a democratic nation, only the
State inspires condence with individuals, because only it alone seems to
them to have some strength and some duration.
3
Thus, the sovereign power does not limit itself to directing public for-
tune; it also gets into private fortunes;
n
it is the leader of each citizen and
often his master, and moreover, it becomes his steward and his cashier.
Not only does the central power alone ll the entire sphere of oldpowers,
expand and go beyond it, but it moves there with more agility, strengthand
independence than it ever did formerly.
All the governments of Europe have in our time prodigiously perfected
administrative science;
o
they do more things, and they do each thing with
3. On the one hand, the taste for well-being augments constantly, and the government
takes hold more and more of all the sources of well-being.
So men go by two diverse paths toward servitude. The taste for well-being turns themaway
from getting involved in the government, and the love of well-being makes them more and
more narrowly dependent on those who govern.
n. Opinion of Michel de Bourges (23 March 1838) to ponder: I seem here to want
to strengthen beyond measure the principle of property which according to my political
principles is always defended strongly enough. That leads to reection because it seems
that all the men of today, whatever their origin and point of departure, royalists and
republicans, democrats or ery enemies of democracy, unite in the principle of unity,
and from there run in common toward servitude (unity, centralization, ad-
ministrative despotism, Rubish, 2). It probably concerns anextract fromthe debate
on mines to which note 5 of p. 1234 refers.
o. This theory, so vaunted, so accepted today, and now self-sustaining [word frag-
ment], of the exact division of judicial and administrative powers must be examined
once and for all, head on and very closely. This theory is spoken about only with
more order, rapidity and with less expense; they seem to enrich themselves
constantly with all the enlightenment which they have taken fromindivid-
uals. Each day the princes of Europe hold their delegated agents in a more
narrow dependence, and they invent new methods to direct them more
closely and to oversee them with less difculty. It is not enough for them
to conduct all affairs by their agents; they undertake to direct the conduct
of their agents in all their affairs; so that the public administrationdepends
not only on the same power, it draws itself more and more into the same
place and becomes concentrated in fewer hands. The government central-
izes its actions at the same time that it increases its prerogatives: double
cause of strength.
Whenyouexamine the constitutionthat the judicial power formerlyhad
among most of the nations of Europe, two things are striking: the inde-
pendence of this power and the extent of its attributions.
Not only did the courts of justice decide nearly all the quarrels among
individuals; in a great number of cases, they served as arbiters betweeneach
individual and the State.
respect; it is the holy ark. Let us pierce this covering; let us dare to discuss what is
believed as a religion; let us see the naked truth and face to face.
That it is true in a general way that judicial and administrative powers must be
distinct is incontestable.
But is it important for the salvation of the State and for good administration that
the judicial system and the executive power are never combined in the same acts?
That is what I do not believe. You start from a good principle, but you push it to the
absurd. The intervention of the judicial power inthe acts of the administrativepower
seems to me often useful and sometimes so necessary that I do not imagine liberty
possible without that.
Perhaps this question must be gone into more deeply by me here, but beyondthat,
it merits a particular, detailed, practical examinationonmy part for France. This must
be for me one of the rst works after this book. For I believe that the principal hazard
for the future is there. It is incontestable that the administrative power is inevitably
called to play a more important and more multifarious role in the centuries which
begin than previously.
[In the margin: the Conseil dE
tat is something, but not enough, and it would be

nothing without liberty of the press.]
The entire question is to know if you can combine the guarantees of liberty with
the necessary action of administrative power.
You cannot stop the development of this power, but you can give it some counter-
balances/ (unity, centralization, administrative despotism, Rubish, 2).
I do not want to speak here about the administrative and political at-
tributions that the courts had usurped in some countries, but about the
judicial attributions that they possessed in all. Among all the peoples of
Europe, there were and there still are many individual rights, most related
to the general right of property, which were placed under the safeguard of
the judge and which the State could not violate without the permission of
the former.
It is this semi-political power which principally distinguished the courts
of Europe from all the others; for all peoples have had judges, but all have
not given judges the same privileges.
If we now examine what is happening among the democratic nations of
Europe which are called free, as well as among the others, we see that on
all sides, alongside these courts, other more dependent ones are being cre-
ated, whose particular purpose is to decide in exceptional instances the li-
tigious questions that can arise between the public administration and the
citizens. The old judicial power is left with its independence, but its juris-
diction is narrowed, and more and more the tendency is to make it only
an arbiter between particular interests.
p
p. Two tendencies to distinguish:
1. One that tends to concentrate all powers in the State.
2. The other that tends to concentrate the exercise of all powers in the executive./
Tendency to free the administrative power from all judicial control./
Among all peoples the judicial power appears as the support for individual inde-
pendence, and everywhere that its attributions decrease, the existence of the individ-
ual [v: of particulars] becomes precarious.
It is from there, I believe, that the question must be engaged. There is today a clear
tendency to rid the sovereign power of the judge (Rubish, 2).
In another jacket:
French centralizers use the word State in a peculiar way. Often this difference alone
separates us.
The State, they say, in the century in which we are and in those into which we are
entering, must get involved in many things. Agreed. But by State they almost always
mean the executive power alone, acting without the cooperation or the guarantee of
the legislative and judicial powers. It is here that we no longer agree.
The State must indeed have great prerogatives among democratic peoples, but the
executive power must not exercise themalone andwithout control, inorder for liberty
to be saved and for the individual not to disappear entirely before the social power.
The number of these special courts increases constantly, and their at-
tributions grow. So the government escapes more every day from the ob-
ligation to have its will and its rights sanctioned by another power. Not able
to do without judges, it wants, at least, to choose its judges itself and to
hold them always in its hand; that is to say, between it and individuals, it
places still more the image of justice rather than justice itself.
q
Thus, it is not enough for the State to draw all affairs to itself; it also
ends more and more by deciding all of these by itself without control and
without recourse.
4
There is among the modernnations of Europe one great cause that, apart
from all those that I have just pointed out, contributes constantly toexpand
the action of the sovereign power or to augment its prerogatives; we have
not taken enough notice of it. This cause is the development of industry,
which the progress of equality favors.
r
[To the side: You see without fear the government increase its civil privileges, as
if it were not on the latter that political inuence sooner or later rests. I wouldbelieve
the future of liberty more assured with a government that would have many political
rights and few civil rights than with a government that would have fewpolitical rights
and many civil rights.
Civil rights means nothing. The word escapes me, but the thought is there]
(unity, centralization, administrative despotism, Rubish, 2). See note
d of p. 1223.
q. The manuscript says: . . . but not justice itself.
4. On this subject in France there is a strange sophism. When a trial between the admin-
istration and an individual arises, we refuse to submit its examination to an ordinary judge,
in order it is said, not to mix administrative power and judicial power. As if it were not
mixing these two powers and mixing them in the most dangerous and most tyrannical fashion
to clothe the government with the right to judge and to administer at the same time.
r. 1. General reasons that cause the progress of industry to make the central power
progress:
1. Nature of the property and of the industrial class that most naturally occupies
the government.
2. Creation of new goods and persons.
2. Particular and European reasons:
1. Ancient prejudice against the property and the class.
Facts that support these arguments (Rubish, 2).
[<The goods created by industry are rightly regarded by all enlightened
nations as particularly appropriate to be taxed. Thus, as industry develops,
you see new taxes arise, and these taxes are in general more complicated,
more difcult and more exacting to collect than all the others.
s
It must be remarked on the other hand that . . .>]
t
Industry usually gathers a multitude of men in the same place; it estab-
lishes new and complicated relationships among them. It exposes them to
great andsuddenshifts betweenabundance andpoverty, duringwhichpub-
lic tranquillity is threatened. It can happen nally that these works com-
promise the health and even the lives of those who prot from them or of
those who devote themselves to them. Thus, the industrial class has more
need to be regulated, supervised and restrained than all the other classes,
and it is natural that the attributions of the government grow with it.
This truth is generally applicable; but here is what relates more particu-
larly to the nations of Europe.
Inthe centuries that have precededthose inwhichwe live, the aristocracy
possessed the land and was able to defend it. So landed property was sur-
rounded by guarantees, and its owners enjoyed a great independence. That
created laws and habits that have been perpetuated despite the division of
lands and the ruin of the nobles; and today the landowners and farmers
are still, of all citizens, those who escape most easily from the control of
the social power.
In these same aristocratic centuries, where all the sources of our history
are found, personal property had little importance and its owners were de-
spised and weak; the industrialists formedanexceptional class inthe middle
of the aristocratic world. Since they did not have assured patronage, they
were not protected, and often they were not able to protect themselves.
u
s. Perhaps be innitely more rapid in this piece. Tell the facts without explaining
them. They are present to the readers because they are French facts (Rubish, 2).
t. In the margin: <All this applies only to indirect taxes, and indirect taxes do not
strike only industrial products. The thought is therefore obscure and partly false.>
u. As industry develops you see growing with it a class of men who live only on the
So it became a habit to consider industrial property as a property of a
particular nature, which did not merit the same guarantees as property in
general, and to consider the industrialists as a small, separate class in the
social order, whose independence had little value, and as a class that it was
tting to abandon to the regulatory passion of princes. If, in fact, you open
the codes of the Middle Ages, you are astonished to see how, in these cen-
turies of individual independence, industry was constantly regulated by
kings, up to the smallest details; on this point, centralization is as active
and as detailed as it could be.
Since this time, a great revolution has takenplace inthe world; industrial
property, which was only in germ, has developed; it covers Europe; the
industrial
v
class has expanded; it has enriched itself from the remnants of
all the others; it has grown in number, in importance, in wealth; it grows
constantly; nearly all those who are not part of it are connected to it, at
least at some point; after having been the exceptional class, it threatens to
become the principal class and, so to speak, the sole class;
w
but the political
ideas and habits to which it formerly gave birth have remained. These ideas
and these habits have not changed, because they are old, and then because
they are in perfect harmony with the new ideas and general habits of the
men of our times.
x
salary of every day and who can only nd in the accumulation of salary the means to
conquer their independence and to change their lot little by little. This class has always
existed in the world, but its development is new. It is already numerous; it threatens to
become innumerable (Rubish, 2).
v. I believe that industrialist must be understood as every man who gains money by
the aid of a mechanical art, such as iron worker, carpenter, and nally manufacturer.
I do not believe that merchants, who only buy and sell, can be put in the number
of industrialists.
[To the side: What do I mean by industrial property?
You see clearly what an industrialist is, but what is an industrial property?]
Farmers are certainly not there and, with more reason, tenant farmers (Rubish, 2).
w. In the margin: <The democratic class par excellence.>
x. <To govern the men of our times, new vices and new virtues are needed> (Rub-
ish, 2).
So industrial property does not augment its rights with its importance.
The industrial class does not become less dependent by becoming more
numerous; but you would say, on the contrary, that it carries despotism
within it, and that despotism expands naturally as it develops.
5
And in another place: Ideas to keep, to treat, but I do not know where and how to
make them enter into my classications./
What astonishes me in man is not so much the weakness that he exhibits against a
multitude of natural enemies, as the manner in which he obeys a kind of invisible power
that hides in himself.
[In the margin:
To put perhaps in the place where I will be able to depict the incessant though some-
what thwarted march of the modern world.]
There are centuries when men are always led toward the same points, from what-
ever direction they are pushed and wherever they seem to want to go. You see them
one moment rush forward along an opposite path, and when they have broken all
the barriers that were set against them and that they can breach, they stop by them-
selves and retrace their steps.
Sometimes a government wants to compel them to adopt certain opinions and
certain customs. They shudder and resist. And when they have triumphed over their
masters, they do alone what someone wantedto prescribe for them; andtheysuccumb
to a hidden force within their own breast that acts without their knowing.
There are times when great virtues or great talents are necessary in order to act
upon a people and to dominate it; there are others when great vices sufce almost
alone.
In order to act upon an honest people and dominate it, great virtues or great talents
are necessary. In order to produce the same effect on a corrupt nation, great vices can
sufce (YTC, CVa, pp. 3334).
5. I will cite a few facts in support of this. It is in the mines that the natural sources of
industrial wealth are found. As industry developed in Europe, as the product of the mines
became a more general interest and their good exploitation more difcult because of the di-
vision of property that equality brought, most sovereigns claimed the right to own the resources
of the mines and to oversee the work; this had not been seen for properties of another type.
The mines, which were individual properties subject to the same obligations and provided
with the same guarantees as other landed property, thus fell into the public domain. It is the
State that exploits them or that grants concessions; owners are transformed into users; they
hold their rights from the State and, moreover, the State almost everywhere claims the power
to direct them; it draws up rules for them, imposes methods onthem, subjects themtoahabitual
surveillance, and if they resist, an administrative court dispossesses them; and the public ad-
ministration transfers their privileges to others; so that the government possesses not only the
mines, it holds all the miners in its hand.
As industry develops, however, the exploitation of old mines increases. New ones are
opened. The populationof the mines spreads andgrows larger. Every day, the sovereigns expand
their domain under our feet and populate it with their servants.
y
y. Unity, centralization, administrative despotism./
Discussion relative to the mines of Gier (2 .-.- March 1838) have just suggested to
me.[the (ed.)].following ideas:
The new world will see industrial property augment incessantly. That is indeedthe
new property par excellence, the democratic property.
Now, I see clearly the means by which the government takes hold of the direction
and of the management of this property and in this way augments its inuence in
proportion as this property develops. It does not lack pretexts and even reasons for
that.
[In the margin: Begin by showing how the government itself will become a great
industrialist, will do immense enterprises in industry, at the same time that it becomes
the master and the director of all the other industrialists. It attracts all the industrial
capital by great enterprises and by centralized savings banks.]
The rst reason is that this type of property, just coming into existence so to speak,
is [not (ed.)] defended like all the others by an old respect for customand allows itself
to be regulated much more.
But there are reasons of detail of which I am going to detail a few. Coal, iron and
minerals in general are the great sources of commercial wealth. These riches were
formerly patrimonial. The top carried ownership of the bottom. The government,
putting forward this plausible enough reason that such riches are more national than
individual, dispossesses the one who holds them, unless he exploits them, and grants
them to others (decree of 1810). Great abuses have taken place since in the practice
of concession. The government claims to oblige the new owners, who are nothing
more in its eyes than concessionaires, to exploit as it wants, to do the work that it
indicates, or it takes back the concession and gives it to another.
1
All this immense
population that owns or exploits the mines, a population constantly growing innum-
ber andabove all inimportance, becomes by a single deedcomposedof administrative
agents and nothing more. The government not owning the mines, but the miners.
1. [All that will be appropriate, and even just, if the judicial power were introduced
there. Its absence causes the whole evil. The principle of the absolute andcontinuous
division of the administrative and judicial power is irreconcilable with the liberty and
the prosperity of the State. If the administration does not get involved in this com-
mercial property, public prosperity is in danger; and liberty, if it alone is involved in
it. The problem to resolve is to unite them.]
Other example. The owners of land along the river do not agree on what to do to
guarantee the banks of the river. The government forces them to associate in order
to do the necessary work in common. Nothing better. But it directs the association
and forces it to save the land. So it has all the riverside residents in its hands. But that
gets away from commercial property which I want .-.-.-
[In the margin: Bonaparte said in 1810 concerning .-.-.- by dint of multiplying the
obstacles, you make France take big steps toward tyranny. That you saw a prefect
prevent the building of a house because the owner refused to .-.-.- his plan. It was
only a matter of the rules of the .-.-.- He added: the concessionaire must only be
despoiled of his property when he himself agrees to cede it. There is no difference
from this perspective between a mine and a farm. Napoleon does not deny that the
concessionaire be subjected to conditions, he only wants the non-compliance with
these conditions not to carry the loss of the concession. Courts will sentence, he says,
the concessionaire to executing them, as is practiced in regard to other contracts.]
.-.-.-.-.-.- there are immense commercial enterprises that in civilizedcountries can-
not be carried out without the authorization of the social power, administration or
legislature. Such particularly are the great works that necessitate the destruction of
particular properties and that must respond to a public need, such as toll road, canal,
bridge, port. . . . This gives an opening to the same argument as for the mines. The
State, having granted concessions, claims to have the right to direct and, if someone
does [not (ed.)] obey its directives, to dispossess. And among the social powers, it is
the administration alone that claims the right in order not to mix legislative and ad-
ministrative powers, and it wants to do it alone in order not to mix the administrative
and judicial powers.
In England it is Parliament that authorizes. See in the work of Simon the charter
of the railroad of Birmingham.
So that apart from the canals, roads, bridges that it owns, builds or directs by its
agents, it is master of those who own, make or direct all the others.
Third example.
Among democratic peoples all commercial enterprises of some value canbe carried
out only by associations, but association is a means of which you .- .- to abuse. A
collective owner is a new being that merits less consideration than individual owners
who have been known since the beginning of the world and that at the same time is
more frightening because it is more powerful. Under the pretext of gathering capital
for a useful enterprise, the credulity of the public is misled, and capital is amassed in
order to turn it to the prot of the inventor of the project. Society must be protected
against such a trap. The remedy is to charge the administration with examining in
advance the bases of the association and to grant or to refuse the right to associate,
which puts in the hands of the government the most active passions and the most
energetic needs of future generations. For, I repeat, commercial property is called to
become the rst and the most important of all.
I go further and I would be very .-.-.-.- not a step further, and if after having
obtained the right to authorize .-.-.- association, you soon asked me for the right to
direct them, if not in all cases, at least in a great number, with the threat of with-
drawing the authorization for associating in case of refusal. So that after having put
In proportion as the nation becomes more industrial, it feels a greater
need for roads, canals, ports andother works of a semi-public nature, which
facilitate the acquisition of wealth; and in proportion as the nation is more
democratic, individuals experience more difculty inexecutingsuchworks,
and the State more ease in doing them. I am not afraid to assert that the
manifest tendency of all the sovereigns of our time is to undertake alone
the executionof suchenterprises; inthat way, they enclose populations each
day within a more narrow dependence.
On the other hand, as the power of the State increases and as its needs
augment, the State itself consumes an always greater quantity of industrial
products, which it fabricates ordinarily in its arsenals and its factories. In
this way, in each kingdom, the sovereign power becomes the greatest in-
dustrialist;
z
it draws to and retains in its service a prodigious number of
engineers, architects, mechanics and artisans.
a
in its hands all those who have the desire to associate, you would also put there all those
who have associated, that is to say, nearly the entire society in democratic centuries.
You would leave free only non-commercial property, which every day loses its im-
portance, and individual commercial property, which cannot have any importance
among democratic nations.
Again, if you reached the owners of this latter by a thousand regulations .-.-.- of
public utility that the administration promulgates, interprets and applies alone with-
out recourse [variant: in the name of order, of the healthiness of morals, of tran-
quillity, of public prosperity or in the interest of even those you coerce] (unity,
centralization, administrative despotism, Rubish, 2).
During his journey to England in 1835, Tocqueville already remarked: The necessity
of introducing the judicial power into the administration is one of these central ideas
to which I am led by all my research about what has allowed and can allow men to have
political liberty (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, p. 68).
The idea is found again in LAncien regime et la Revolution. In chapter 4 of the second
book (OC, II, 1, p. 125), after having spoken about the number of special courts and of
the judicial rights of the intendant, he concluded: The intervention of the judicial sys-
tem in the administration harms only affairs, while the intervention of the administra-
tion in the judicial system depraves men and tends to make them at the very same time
revolutionary and servile.
z. Double movement:
The government draws closer to industry and takes hold of the smallest industri-
alists.
Private industry becomes bigger and enters into the sphere of power./
And the government descends into the sphere of private industry (Rubish, 2).
a. Equality is the great fact of our time.
It is not only the rst of industrialists; it tends more and more to make
itself the leader or rather the master of all the others.
b
Since citizens have become weak while becoming more equal,
c
they can
do nothing inindustry without associating; now, the public power naturally
wants to place these associations under its control.
It must be recognized that these kinds of collective beings, which are
called associations, are stronger and more formidable than a simple indi-
vidual can be, and that they have less responsibility than the latter for their
own actions; the result is that it seems reasonable to allow to each one of
them less independence from the social power than would be allowed for
an individual.
Sovereigns have that much more inclination to act in this way since it
suits their tastes. Among democratic peoples it is only by association that
Industrial development the second.
Both augment the power of the government, or rather both are only one (Rub-
ish, 2).
b. Yesterday (26 February 1836) I met M. Polonceau. I had a very interesting con-
versation with him.
He spent twenty years in the administration of bridges and roads, was chief en-
gineer there, and has more or less retired since that time. He is an active, innovative,
perhaps imprudent spirit, which the esprit de corps could not tame. He perhaps speaks
with animosity about the administration of which he was part, but he says very in-
teresting and, I believe, generally very true things, about the taste of this adminis-
tration for established things, principally established by it, about its efforts to impede
everything that does not come from it, about its determination not to adopt xed
rules that would limit it, about its interminable delays, its expensive habits, its pref-
erences, its little taste for publicity.
He told me that to know its organization and to appreciate its spirit I must study:
1. The decree of organization given in 1811.
2. The collection of annual reports on bridges and roads (YTC, CVa, pp. 5758).
c. In the manuscript:
. . . more equal, they are obligedto unite together constantly evenfor industrial works
of an entirely private nature. Industry cannot fail to develop in a democratic country
without giving birth to an innite number of associations. These associations are
so many new persons whose rights have not yet been well established and who enter
into the world at a period when the idea of the rights of individuals is weak and that
of the sovereign very extensive. You have a great facility and these associations fall
naturally under the control of the public power.
the resistance of citizens to the central power cancome about; consequently
the latter never sees associations that are not under its control except with
disfavor; and what is very worth noting is that, among democratic peoples,
citizens often envisage these same associations, which they need so much,
with a secret sentiment of fear and jealousy which prevents them from de-
fending them. The power and the duration of these small particular soci-
eties, amid the general weakness and instability, astonishes them and wor-
ries them, and citizens are not far from considering as dangerous privileges
the free use that each association makes of its natural powers.
All these associations that are arising today are, moreover, so many new
persons, for whom time has not consecrated rights and who enter into the
world at a period when the idea of particular rights is weak, and when the
social power is without limits; it is not surprising that associations lose their
liberty at birth.
Among all the peoples of Europe, there are certain associations that can
be formed only after the State has examined their statutes and authorized
their existence. Among several, efforts are being made to extend this rule
to all associations. You see easily where the success of such an undertaking
would lead.
If the sovereignpower had once the general right to authorize, oncertain
conditions, associations of all types, it would not take long to claim that
of overseeing them and of directing them, so that the associations would
not able to evade the rule that it had imposed on them. In this way, the
State, after making all those who desire to associate dependent on it, would
make all those who have associated dependent as well, that is to say, nearly
all the men who are alive today.
The sovereign powers thus appropriate more and more, and put to their
use the greatest part of this new force that industry creates today in the
world. Industry leads us, and they lead industry.
d
d. What happened at the end of the 1837 session for railroads, and the way in which
nearly everyone fell into agreement that the government must take charge of every-
thing, is characteristic and shows clearly the slope that carries us, friends andenemies
of liberty, toward the centralization of all powers in the hands of the government
and the introduction of its hand into all affairs.
Those men are very foolish to believe that while giving a government immense
civil attributions, they will easily put fetters on it in the eld of politics, and to think
that a man {charged} with handling by himself alone all the nancial resources of a
great people, with putting millions of workers into motion, with executing works of
all types upon which national prosperity and life are based, will not be master of all
the rest when he wants to be.
This 30 June 1837.
The language of the newspaper the Sie `cle has for a month been characteristic be-
cause this newspaper is conspicuously inthe hands of OdilonBarrot andof the liberal
and democratic opposition of the left.
If it is a matter of public works in general, it wants the government to take charge
of them alone, to dragoon masses of workers, to bring them sometimes from one
side, sometimes from another.
As for the railroads in particular, the government must above all take charge of
them, for such an undertaking would give too much power to individuals and would
grant them immense privileges. Moreover, it would be necessary to grant different
concessions, so that the great French unity and uniformity would not be altered.
There is nothing, including the mines, that, according to the Sie `cle (27 June 1837),
the government must not exploit. Why, it says, would the State not claim the exploi-
tation of the underground domain, instead of conceding it freely to the privileged?
Do you see how democratic passions adapt here marvelously well to the increases
of central power and howdemocratic instincts andprejudices gocomplacentlybefore
tyranny provided that unity and equality are sheltered?/
I cannot prevent myself from admiring the simplicity of those who believe that
you can without disadvantage increase the civil rights of the government provided
that you do not increase its political power, as if . . . [interruptedtext (ed.)] (Fragment
on writing paper, unity, centralization, administrative despotism, Rub-
ish, 2).
In the same jacket you also nd these explanations:
Ideas relative to centralization, to blend into the nal chapter./
M. Thiers saidto me today (27May 1837) regarding the commissionfor therailroad
from Lyon to Marseille that he had ended by convincing all the members of the
commission that great public works must always be done in France at State expense
and by its agents.
Do not forget that when I speak about the ultra-centralizing tendency of our
times (YTC, CVd, p. 30).
M. Thiers, in the session of .-.-.- January 1838, said (see Sie `cle of that day).
Without doubt Spain did not enter into the c.-.- of 92 and 93. Spain did not build
scaffolds as in France; the terror was what it could be in the peninsula, in a country
without centralization, without unity. So no scaffold, but the cutting of throats.
The comment is good, to keep (unity, centralization, administrative
despotism, Rubish, 2).
[As for those who still work alone in the industrial world, their number
and above all their importance is constantly decreasing; and for a long time,
moreover, the government has exercised the right to regulate them as it
pleases and has imposed on them each day new laws of which the govern-
ment itself alone is the administrator and the interpreter.
<Perhaps you will nd that I have expanded too much onthis last part.
Its importance will be my excuse.
The progress of equality and the development of industry are the two
greatest facts of our times.
I wanted to show how both contributed to enlarge the sphere of the
central power and to restrict individual independence each day within the
narrowest limits.>]
e
I attach so much importance to all that I have just said that I am tor-
mented with the fear of having detracted from my thought by wanting to
make it clearer.
So if the reader nds that the examples cited to support my words are
insufcient or badly chosen; if he thinks that in some place I have exag-
gerated the progress of the social power, and that on the contrary I have
limited beyond measure the sphere in which individual independence still
moves, I beg him to abandon the book for a moment and to consider in
his turn by himself the matters that I have undertaken to show him. Let
him examine attentively what is happening each day among us and beyond
us; let him question his neighbors; let him nally consider himself; I am
very much mistaken if he does not arrive, without a guide and by other
paths, at the point where I wanted to lead him.
[He will discover that the various rights that today have beensuccessively
wrested from classes, corporations, men, instead of serving to raise new
secondary powers on another more democratic foundation, have almost all
collected in the sole hands of the sovereign, that everywhere the public
administration has become more clever, more intelligent and stronger, that
the individual has become more isolated, more inexperienced, and weaker
relative to the public administration, and that nally the State, whatever
e. In the margin: <These two facts are closely related to each other, for it is enough
to enlighten equal men for them to tend all by themselves toward industry.>
its representative, has placed itself more every day next to and above each
citizen in order to instruct him, guide him, aid him and constrain him.]
f
He will notice that, during the half-century that has just gone by, cen-
tralization has grown everywhere in a thousand different fashions. Wars,
revolutions, conquests have served its development; all men have worked
to increase it.
g
During this same period, when men have with a prodigious
rapidity succeeded each other at the head of affairs, their ideas, their in-
terests, their passions have variedinnitely; but all have wantedtocentralize
insome ways. The instinct for centralizationhas beenlike the soleimmobile
point amid the singular mobility of their existence and their thoughts.
h
And when the reader, after examining this detail of human affairs, will
want to embrace the vast picture as a whole, he will remain astonished.
On the one hand, the rmest dynasties are shaken or destroyed; on all
sides peoples escape violently fromthe dominionof their laws; they destroy
f. To the side: <This said above. Is it better there?>
g. It concentrates in its hand great public functions that were wrongly separatedfrom
it, such as the preparation of all types of general laws,
customs,
the collection of taxes,
the central direction of the judicial system,
the army, the police,
the direction of great local affairs that by their greatness have a general interest,
the supervision of all [interrupted text (ed.)] (Rubish, 2).
h. To uphold the individual in the face of the social power whatever it is, to preserve
for him something of his independence, of his strength, of his originality, suchmust
be the continual effort of all the friends of humanity in democratic centuries. Just
as in democratic [aristocratic (ed.)] centuries, it was necessary to magnify society and
to reduce the individual.
Were I alone in saying that, I would not remain silent.
[To the side: This must go in the peroration of section V.
Question of dynasty, secondary question.]
Centralization must grow constantly because it results from instincts that do not
change. Men succeed each other in power; their passions, their interests, their ideas
vary; but all, either voluntarily or involuntarily, centralize, because by centralizing,
they obey, without knowing it, an instinct that is immobile. Amid the singular mo-
bility of their thoughts and of their existence, it is the only permanent and durable
thing that is in power today.
[In the margin] 27 February 1838 (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 4142).
or limit the authority of their lords or of their princes; all the nations that
are not in revolution seem at least restless and unsettled; the same spirit of
revolt animates them. And, on the other, in this same time of anarchy and
among these same peoples so unruly, the social power constantly increases
its prerogatives; it becomes more centralized, more enterprising, more ab-
solute, more extensive. The citizens fall under the control of the public
administration at every instant; they are carried imperceptibly and as if
without their knowledge to sacrice to the public administrationsome new
parts of their individual independence, and these same menwho fromtime
to time overturn a throne and trample kings underfoot, bow more and
more, without resistance, to the slightest will of a clerk.
So therefore, two revolutions seem to be taking place today in opposite
directions: one continually weakens power, and the other constantly re-
inforces it. In no other period of our history has it appeared either so weak
or so strong.
But when you nally come to consider the state of the world more
closely, you see that these two revolutions are intimately linked to each
other, that they come from the same source, and that, after having had a
different course, they nally lead men to the same place.
I will not be afraid again to repeat one last time what I have already said
or pointed out in several places of this book. We must be very careful about
confusing the very fact of equality with the revolution that nally intro-
duces it into the social state and into the laws; that is the reason for nearly
all the phenomena that astonish us.
All the ancient political powers of Europe, the greatest as well as the
least, were established in the centuries of aristocracy, and they more or less
represented or defended the principle of inequality and of privilege. To
make the new needs and interests suggested by growing equality prevail in
the government, it was therefore necessary for the men of our times to
overturn or restrain the ancient powers. That has led them to make revo-
lutions and has inspired in a great number of them this wild taste for dis-
order and for independence to which all revolutions, whatever their objec-
tive, always give birth.
I do not believe that there is a single country in Europe where the de-
velopment of equality has not been preceded or followed by some violent
changes inthe state of property andof persons, andalmost all these changes
have been accompanied by a great deal of anarchy and license, because they
were done by the least civilized portion of the nation against the portion
that was most civilized.
From that have come the two opposite tendencies that I previously
showed. As long as the democratic revolution was in its heat, the men oc-
cupied with destroying the ancient aristocratic powers that fought against
it appeared animated by a great spirit of independence; and as the victory
of equality became more complete, they abandoned themselves little by
little to the natural instincts that arose from this same equality, and they
reinforced and centralized the social power. They had wanted to be free in
order to be able to make themselves equal; and as equality became more
established with the help of liberty, it made liberty more difcult for them.
These two states have not always been successive. Our fathers have
shown how a people could organize an immense tyranny within itself at
the very moment when it escaped from the authority of the nobles and
braved the power of all the kings, teaching the world at the same time the
way to conquer its independence and to lose it.
The men of today notice that the old powers are collapsing on all sides;
they see all the old inuences dying, all the old barriers falling; that disturbs
the judgment of the most able; they pay attention only to the prodigious
revolution which is taking place before their eyes, and they believe that
humanity is going to fall forever into anarchy. If they considered the nal
consequences of this revolution, they would perhaps imagine other fears.
As for me, I do not trust, I confess, the spirit of liberty which seems to
animate my contemporaries; I see well that the nations of today are tur-
bulent; but I do not nd clearly that they are liberal, and I am afraid that
at the end of these agitations, which make all thrones totter, sovereigns will
nd themselves stronger than they were [I am afraid nally that in this
century of license, everything is being prepared for the enslavement of the
generations to come].
1245
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 6
What Type of Despotism
Democratic Nations Have to Fear
a
I had noticed during my stay in the United States that a democratic social
state similar to that of the Americans could offer singular opportunities for
the establishment of despotism,
b
and I had seen on my return to Europe
how most of our princes had already made use of the ideas, sentiments and
a. What the character of military despotism would be if it came to be established
among a democratic people.
Idea to treat either at military spirit or at administrative despotism. Probably at the
rst. To blend into a chapter rather than to treat separately.
I see two places for this.
1. The rst is after what I said about the turbulent spirit of the army, about its
habitual discontent, about the place that it occupies in society. I could show these
sentiments leading the army to seize the government. I would then say in what spirit
it would govern.
2. Here is the second place: after painting administrative despotism, I could ask
myself if it would not be changed for the worse by its combination with military
government (something possible). I would prove that things would hardly be worse.
I would then pass to the combination of this same despotism with sovereignty of the
people and I would prove that things would hardly be better.
3. Finally couldnt I place this idea separately (illegible word)? (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 9
10).
b. Despotism, tyrannical, arbitrary and absolute government of only one man (or of
only one power must be added).
The principle of despotic States is that only one man governs there entirely accord-
ing to his will, having absolutely no other laws than that of his caprices. Encyclopedie.
This was written before we had seen the despotism of an assembly under the Republic.
In another place in the rubish: This word despotism is unfortunate because its old
meaning does not exactly correspond to the new meaning that I want to give it (Rubish,
2).
type of des poti s m 1246
needs that arose from that social state, in order to expand the circle of their
power.
That led me to believe that Christian nations would end perhaps by
suffering some oppressionsimilar tothat whichweighedformerlyonseveral
of the peoples of antiquity.
c
A more detailed examination of the subject and ve years of new med-
itations have not lessened my fears, but they have changed their object.
We have never in past centuries seen a sovereign so absolute and so pow-
erful that he undertook to administer by himself, and without the help of
secondary powers, all the parts of a great empire; there is none who at-
tempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to the details of a uni-
form rule, or who descended to the side of each one of his subjects inorder
to rule over him and to lead him. The idea of such an undertaking had
never occurred to the human mind, and if a man ever happened to imagine
it, the insufciency of enlightenment, the imperfection of administrative
procedures, and above all the natural obstacles that inequality of conditions
created would have soonstoppedhiminthe executionof sucha vast design.
We see that in the time of the greatest power of the Caesars, the different
peoples who inhabited the Roman world had still kept diverse customs and
mores. Although subjected to the same monarch, most of the provinces
were administered separately; they were full of powerful and active mu-
nicipalities, and although all the government of the empire was concen-
trated in the hands of the emperor alone, andalthoughhe remainedalways,
as needed, the arbiter of all things, the details of social life andof individual
existence ordinarily escaped his control.
The emperors possessed, it is true, an immense power without counter-
balance, which allowed them to give themselves freely to their bizarre in-
clinations and to use the entire strength of the State to satisfy them; they
c. To the side: <Perhaps place this here:
Those, I said, who think to rediscover the monarchy of H[enri (ed.)]. IV or L[ouis
(ed.)]. XIV seem very blind to me. As for me, when I consider the state which several
European nations have already reached and toward which all the others are tending, I
feel myself led to believe that among them there will soon no longer be a place except
for democratic liberty or for the tyranny of the Caesars.> Tocqueville cites here p. 511
of the second volume.
often happened to abuse this power in order arbitrarily to take away a citi-
zens property or his life. Their tyranny weighed prodigiously on a few; but
it did not extend to a great number; it was tied to a few great principal
matters and neglected the rest; it was violent and limited.
d
d. 7 March 1838.
I said in the rst part of this book that the new societies could well nally arrive
at something similar to what we saw at the fall of the Roman empire. There is no
longer any middle ground, I said, between the government of all and the tyranny of
the Caesars.
Four years of new meditations made me consider the same matter from another
point of viewand convinced me that if men are enslaved, they will be so inanentirely
new fashion and will exhibit a spectacle for which the past has not prepared us.
There was something of the great, of the colossal in the Roman tyranny, of the
aristocratic, the magnicent, of the master of slaves, of the barbaric, of the pagan.
All things that cannot habitually be found in a civilized and democratic society.
New society, regular, peaceful, ruled with art and uniformity, mixture of college,
seminary, regiment, asleep rather than chained in the arms of clerks and soldiers,
bureaucratic tyranny, fond of red tape, very repressive of all impulse, destroying the
will for great things in germ, but mild and regular, equal for all. A sort of paternity
without the purpose of bringing the children to manhood.
That is the real and original picture. That of the rst volume was declamatory,
common, hackneyed and false (Rubish, 2).
To reect.
If, instead of the disordered despotism of the army rabble, idea already known, it
would not be better to introduce here the portrait of a regulated despotism in which
everything happens with as much order, meticulousness, and tyranny as ina barracks.
If instead of that I adopt the ancient idea of military despotism, there is at least
a new notion to show.
It is military despotism following revolution and democratic anarchy, becoming es-
tablished in a time when everything has been overturned and when nothing has yet
settled down in positions, habits, ideas, tastes, when everything is in question, when
the limits of the just and the unjust are abolished, when even the limits of practice
and custom no longer exist, when we are accustomed to everything, when we expect
anything in advance, when nothing is absolutely unforeseen and everything possible.
[To the side] Perhaps the image of the barracks could be placed after that as the
port, the denitive state (YTC, CVd, pp. 1516).
On the different types of despotismin the work of Tocqueville, see James T. Schleifer,
The Making of Tocquevilles Democracy in America, pp. 14756, 17985. Roger Boesche,
The Prison, Tocquevilles Model for Despotism, Western Political Quarterly 33, no. 4
(1980): 55063, established some points of similarity between the despotism of Tocque-
ville and his idea of the prison.
It seems that, if despotism came to be established among the demo-
cratic nations of today, it would have other characteristics; it would be
more extensive and milder, and it would degrade menwithout tormenting
them.
I do not doubt that, in centuries of enlightenment and equality such as
ours, sovereigns might have succeeded more easily in uniting all public
powers in their hands alone, and in penetrating more habitually and more
deeply into the circle of private interests, than any of those of antiquity
were ever able to do. But this same equality, which facilitates despotism,
tempers it; we have seen how, as men are more similar and more equal,
public mores become more humane and milder; when no citizenhas a great
power or great wealth, tyranny lacks, in a way, opportunity and theater.
Since all fortunes are mediocre, passions are naturally contained, imagi-
nation limited, pleasures simple. This universal moderation moderates the
sovereign himself and stops within certain limits the disordered impulse of
his desires.
Apart from these reasons drawn from the very nature of the social state,
I could add many others that would take me beyond my subject; but I want
to keep myself within the limits that I have set for myself.
Democratic governments will be able to become violent and even cruel
in certain moments of great agitation and great dangers; but these crises
will be rare and passing.
When I think about the petty passions of the men of our times, about
the softness of their mores, about the extent of their enlightenment, about
the purity of their religion, about the mildness of their morality, about their
painstaking and steady habits, about the restraint that they nearly all main-
tain in vice as in virtue, I am not afraid that they will nd in their leaders
tyrants, but rather tutors.
So I think that the type of oppression by which democratic peoples are
threatened will resemble nothing of what preceded it in the world; our
contemporaries cannot nd the image of it in their memories. I seek invain
myself for an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I am forming
of it and includes it; [<the thing that I want to speak about is new, and men
have not yet created the expression which must portray it.>] the old words
of despotism and of tyranny do not work. The thing is new, so I must try
to dene it, since I cannot name it.
e
I want to imagine under what newfeatures despotismcouldpresent itself
to the world; I see an innumerable crowd of similar and equal men who
spinaroundrestlessly, inorder togainsmall andvulgar pleasures withwhich
they ll their souls.
f
Each one of them, withdrawn apart, is like a stranger
to the destiny of all the others; his children and his particular friends form
e. The despotismthat I fear for the generations to come has no precedent inthe world
and lacks a name. I will call it administrative despotism
1
for lack of anything better.

[To the side: To be completely true, it is necessary to make it understood that
equality can, it is true, lead as far as a violent and cruel oppression because of the
weakness of individuals, but that is a rare and exceptional event. The ordinary course
is one that I am pointing out.]
If you attentively examine all the tyrannies known in history, you see that they
have all consisted of a more or less unlimited power entrusted to one or several men
and which they used violently against a few. It was by its violence rather than by its
generality that this tyranny made itself conspicuous.
[In the margin: It is in this portrait that all the originality and the depth of my
idea resides. What I have at the end of my rst work was hackneyed and supercial.]
(1) <Apply myself to nding a name for it. That is important> (Rubish, 2).
This difculty in nding new words recalls Montesquieu who, in the foreword of
LEsprit des lois (uvres comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1951, II, p. 227), writes: I had new
ideas; it was very necessary to nd new words, or to give new meanings to old ones.
On the origins of paternal despotism, see Rousseau, chapter IV, book I, of the Contrat
social and his Discours sur lorigine et les fondements de line galite parmi les hommes (uvres
comple `tes, Paris: Pleiade, 1964, III, p. 182).
f. Liberty in the very midst of these diversions is always serious. But there is nothing
so joyful as despotism. The sight of human miseries, the unhappy are its natural
enemies. It loves on the contrary to nd the image of joy everywhere in its path, and
it is pleased with games and spectacles. However timid it is by its nature, it does not
fear the excesses of a licentious gaity; and the foulest voluptuous pleasures do not
frighten it. No one desires more than it does that peoples enjoy themselves, provided
that they think only about enjoying themselves; andit willingly intoxicates themwith
pleasures so that they do more easily without happiness (YTC, CVd, p. 12).
In a similar fragment, on p. 13 of the same notebook, this sentence is found: Only
novice despots are enemies of joy. Free governments seek to give men happiness rather
than pleasure (YTC, CVd, p. 13). The rubish contains an identical passage.
for him the entire human species;
g
as for the remainder of his fellow citi-
zens, he is next to them, but he does not see them; he touches themwithout
feeling them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if he still
has a family, you can say that at least he no longer has a country.
h
Above those men arises an immense and tutelary power that alone takes
charge of assuring their enjoyment and of looking after their fate. It is ab-
solute, detailed, regular, far-sighted and mild. It would resemble paternal
power if, like it, it had as a goal to prepare men for manhood; but on the
contrary it seeks only to x them irrevocably in childhood; it likes the cit-
izens to enjoy themselves, provided that they think only about enjoying
themselves.
j
It works willingly for their happiness; but it wants to be the
g. In the margin: <Perhaps narrow this tableau. See the effect that it produces when
reading.>
h. In the margin: <See if this is not found word for word at individualism; that the
idea was there would not be important.
Very useful here, try to leave it.>
j. Note in the manuscript:
Idea that revolutions and anarchy could be combined with this sort of administrative
despotism. Days of anarchy in years of despotism. Revolutions always short and not
very profound, but perhaps frequent. Palace revolutions that I can easily distinguish
from great revolutions, the near impossibility of which I depicted above. These are
not revolutions truly speaking. Idea to introduce somewhere in this chapter. Because
our contemporaries fear disorder muchmore thanservitude, they must be struckfrom
that side.
A draft comments:
To ght despotism I am obliged to prove that it leads to anarchy. If it led only to
itself, it would perhaps be followed willingly.
[In the margin: Continuation of note (B. B.).
Perhaps at the type of despotism which threatens us./
If you could believe in a tranquil and stable despotism, that is to say, in the worst
of all, my cause would be lost./
A singular state, ours, in which we have had at the same time too little liberty and
license, too little authority and tyranny!/
For a people who has come to the state that I suppose, anarchy, license are possible
accidents, even probable ones, but despotism is the normal condition.]
Anarchy is not a lasting state, despotism is. Apathy where we nd ourselves leads
it is true to anarchy and to despotism. But I can say nonetheless that it leads to des-
potism because despotism is the nal state. Cant this be disputed? And is it not per-
missible to believe that, in a country in which you would have equality of conditions
unique agent for it and the sole arbiter; it attends to their security, provides
for their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs,
directs their industry, settles their estates, divides their inheritances;
k
how
can it not remove entirely from them the trouble to think and the difculty
of living?
This is how it makes the use of free will less useful and rarer every day;
how it encloses the action of the will within a smaller space and little by
little steals fromeachcitizeneventhe use of himself.
m
Equalityhas prepared
men for all these things; it has disposed men to bear them and often even
to regard them as a benet.
without rooted free institutions, you could go perpetually fromanarchy to despotism
and from despotism to anarchy without ever settling down? No, despotism would
nish by taking root, growing and nally covering the whole country withits harmful
shadow.
If that is true, it must be said. It would be an order of ideas that couldbe developed
with advantage and with coloring.
You could believe that equality gives too much taste for independence for des-
potism to be lasting, and too few habits of independence and means of defending it
for liberty to be lasting./
I believe, after all, that all the movement of my (illegible word), which is the ten-
dency of democratic societies toward despotism, is true and must remain, but it must
be amply inserted somewhere that this tendency does not exclude a great deal of
anarchy before and during this gradual but not continuous march toward despotism.
Equality, without rooted free institutions, leading to anarchy almost as energetically
as to despotism (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 4849).
k. Toward the end of the manuscript of the chapter: The aristocracy of England
is the only one that knows how to defend itself and that has offered liberty to men at
the cost of equality; it will fall, but it will fall slowly, and with glory.
m. There are men who have no will to distinguishthemselves fromtheir fellows; there
are others who have, on the contrary, a permanent and continual will to do so. There
are others nally who make only small efforts in order to raise themselves above the
earth and who immediately fall back. The latter are the unhappiest of all; for they
have the troubles of ambition without having the dubious pleasures of it.
All of man is in the will. His entire future is hidden there as in a germ that the
rst ray of good fortune comes to make fruitful. There are women who put qualities
of character before everything, because those qualities provide the tranquillity of
every day, and for those women the idea of happiness does not go beyond the tran-
quillity and peace of the household. Women of that kind recall to me those menwho
prefer the type of social paralysis given by despotism to the agitation and the great
emotions of liberty. Both hold the same place in my estimation (YTC, CVa, p. 56).
After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful
hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends
its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a net-
work of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most
original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go
beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them
and directs them; [<in certain moments of great passions and great dan-
gers, the sovereign power becomes suddenly violent and arbitrary. Habit-
ually it is moderate, benevolent, regular and humane>] it rarely forces
action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents
birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extin-
guishes, it stupies, andnally it reduces eachnationtobeingnothingmore
than a ock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is
the shepherd.
n
I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and
peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better
than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it
n. On a loose sheet of the manuscript:
Centralization./
Show well that the administrative despotism that I am speaking about is indepen-
dent of representative, liberal or revolutionary institutions, in a word, of political
power; that whether the political world is led by an absolute king, by one or several
assemblies, whether it is contested in the name of liberty or of order, whether it even
falls into anarchy, whether it becomes weak and is divided, the action of the admin-
istrative power will be neither less continuous nor less strong, nor less overwhelming.
[To the side: The man or class that puts the administrative machine in motioncan
change without the machine changing. You can argue in order to knowwho will hold
the instrument of tyranny, but the instrument remains the same.]
It is a true distinction and one very important to make in order to dispel the cloud
that exists in the mind of the reader every time that you threaten with tyranny the
men of today who live amid anarchy and who see political power vacillate or become
weak./
[To the side: A great political anarchy and an overwhelming administrative des-
potism./
4 May 1838.]
would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the
sovereignty of the people.
o
o. So you can say that for democratic peoples centralization is an innate idea. Not
only will this monstrous concentration of all the social [v: political] powers in the
same hands not shock the natural ideas of democratic peoples as regards government,
but it will favor several of the secret instincts and the most lively tastes that equality
[v: their social state] suggests.
Equality of conditions suggests naturally to men an intense and constant taste for
material well-being. I said so elsewhere. I have also shown in another place how, as
equality became greater, eachman, nding himself more independent andmoresepa-
rated from his fellows, felt more disposed to consider himself (this word implies a
contradiction with what precedes on the innate idea of centralization) separately and
to live in isolation.
Those are powerful instruments of tyranny for whoever knows how to use them.
Far from combating these natural tendencies of a democratic social state, a gov-
ernment which aims for absolute power will work with all its power to make them
irresistible, and it will iname the passions that liberty shouldmoderate or extinguish.
There exist in the south of Europe petty princes whose tyranny is so touchy and so
irksome that the life of the most inoffensive citizens [v: the most servile and the most
peaceful souls are] was saddened and made uncomfortable by it. Those princes are,
if I am not mistaken, clumsy despots. They bring to the execution of their designs
more zeal than light, and they do not knowthat in the centuries inwhichwe are living
men are more disposed to bear that you violate their rights than their comforts.
[To the side: Two consequences of the taste for material well-being for a despot to
look after: 1. Softening of souls which causes you no longer to have a taste for the
highest pleasures that liberty provides; 2. Effort of the whole human spirit toward
the acquisition of well-being, which causes you no longer to have the time to give
yourself to those pleasures.]
The clever man who seeks to establish absolute power among a democratic nation
will demand only one thing from the citizens: that they do not get involved in the
government and contract none of the habits that can in the long run lead men to get
involved in it. But he will also work hard to make civil life as independent, as pros-
perous, as easy as it can be without political liberty. He will facilitate material well-
being with all his power; he will honor it, he will glorify it each day in the eyes of the
crowd, and pushing with all his power the souls that are naturally inclined toward
solely the enjoyments of the senses, he will turn them away from the most beautiful
works and the most noble pleasures of man.
Among democratic peoples men have little leisure; they are all naturally very oc-
cupied with their private affairs and only impatiently do they bear being turnedaway
from them. The concern for common interests distracts and fatigues them; the sov-
ereign power appears and unburdens them. Do not believe that it intends to oppress
them in this way; it is relieving them. It carefully organizes the time of which they
[I suppose that a democratic nation, after destroying within it all the
secondary powers, establishes in its midst a very inquisitorial, very exten-
sive, very centralized, very powerful executive power, that it confers on this
power the right to conduct all the details of public affairs and to lead a part
of private affairs, that it put [sic ] individuals ina strict anddailydependence
on this power, but that it makes this executive power itself depend on an
elected legislature which, without governing, traces the principal rules of
the government.
<I go still further and I suppose that the administration, insteadof being
make such good use, and removes from them the troubles and the worries of gov-
ernment in order to deliver them entirely to concerns about their private fortunes.
So the State is full of solicitude for the happiness of the citizens, but it wants to
be the unique agent and the sole (illegible word) of it. It is the State that takes care
of providing their security, facilitating their pleasures, directing the principal affairs;
the State itself creates roads, digs canals, directs industries, divides inheritances. It
may even be able to plow the earth and nally take away from each man even the
difculty of living!
Equality of conditions has prepared men for all these things; it has disposed them
to bear them and often even to regard them as a good.
This is how, aiding itself sometimes with the vices of men, sometimes with their
weaknesses, oftenwiththeir inexperience, the central power little bylittle andwithout
effort takes hold of the entire life of a democratic people. It does not tear their rights
away from them; their rights are abandoned to it. It does not do violence to mores
[v: sentiments]; it does not overturn ideas, but it gently directs bothtowardservitude.
Here it is, acknowledged arbiter of everything. Society does nothing for itself, and
it does everything. Divided from his fellows, each citizen thinks only of himself. The
source of public virtues has dried up.
[What will the rst tyrant who is coming be called? I do not know, but he is ap-
proaching. What is still missing for this deceptive symbol of public order todisappear
and for a profound and incurable disorder to be revealed?
What more is needed for this sublime authority, for this visible providence that
we have established among us to be able to trample underfoot the most holy laws, do
violence as it pleases to our hearts and walk over our heads? War. Peace has prepared
despotism, war establishes it.
[In the margin: Not only as a consequence of victory, but war alone by the need
for power and for concentration that it creates.
Anewaristocracy of soldiers is the only one that seems tome still practical.]] (YTC,
CVd, pp. 34, 89, 910, 1012).
There are several variants of these passages in the same pages. In another place,
Tocqueville repeats: When I said that there was no more aristocracy possible, I was
mistaken; you can still have the aristocracy of men of war (YTC, CVd, p. 26).
alongside the legislative chambers, is in the very legislature, as was seen in
France at the time of the Convention, so that the same electedpower makes
the law and executes it even in its smallest details.>
All that means, if I am not mistaken, that after allowing the sovereign
power as a master to direct each citizen [v: particular wills] and to bend
him every day as it pleases, the sovereign itself is subjected from time to
time to the general will [volonte s gene rales: (Translator)] of the nation.]
Our contemporaries are incessantly tormented by two hostile passions:
they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy
either the one or the other of these opposite instincts, they work hard to
satisfy both at the same time. They imagine a unique, tutelary, omnipotent
power, but elected by the citizens. They combine centralization
p
and sov-
ereignty of the people. That gives them some relief. They console them-
selves about being in tutelage by thinking that they have chosentheir tutors
themselves. Each individual endures being bound, because he sees that it
is not a man or a class, but the people itself that holds the end of the chain.
In this system, the citizens emerge for a moment from dependency in
order to indicate their master, and return to it.
q
p. The French believe that centralization is French. They are wrong; it is democratic
and I dare to predict that all peoples whose social state will be the same and who
follow only the instincts that this social state suggests will arrive at the point where
we are./
Destroy classes, equalize ranks, make men similar, and you will see power become
centralized as if by itself, whatever the country, the genius of the people or the state
of enlightenment. Particular circumstances will be able to hasten the natural move-
ment or slow it down, but not stop it or create an opposite one.
[To the side: Contained within certain limits, centralization is a necessary fact, and
I add that it is a fact about which we must be glad./
A strong and intelligent central power is one of the rst political necessities in
centuries of equality. Acknowledge it boldly] (Rubish, 2).
Already in 1828, in an already quoted letter to Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville said
of Edward I: He reestablished order and made good civil laws which, as youknow, often
make people forget about goodpolitical laws (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII,
1, p. 55).
q. <This is seen above all today in the nations of Europe, still half lled with liberal
passions that arose from the struggle with aristocracy, working hard to nd a form of
There are many men today who accommodate themselves very easily to
this type of compromise betweenadministrative despotismandsovereignty
of the people, and who think they have guaranteed the liberty of individ-
uals when it is to the national power that they deliver that liberty. That is
not enough for me. The nature of the master is much less important to me
than the obedience.
I will not deny, however, that such a constitution is innitely preferable
to one that, after concentrating all powers, would put them in the hands
of an unaccountable man or body. Of all the different forms that demo-
cratic despotism could take, the latter would assuredly be the worst.
When the sovereign is elected or closely supervised by a legislature truly
elected and independent, the oppression that it can make individuals suffer
is sometimes greater; but the oppression is always less degrading because
each citizen, when he is being hindered and when he is reduced to pow-
erlessness, canstill imagine that by obeying he is only submittingtohimself,
and that it is to one of his desires that he is sacricing all the rest.
r
I understand equally that, when the sovereign represents the nation and
depends on it, the strength and the rights that are taken from each citizen
do not serve only the leader of the State, but prot the State itself, and that
individuals gain some advantage from the sacrice of their independence
that they have made to the public.
[I understand also that when public opinion draws certain limits and
can keep the sovereign power within them, tyranny properly speaking is
government that at the same time satises the love that they still have for independence
and the new instincts that make them tend toward servitude> (Note in the drafts that
could also refer to another part of the chapter, Rubish, 2).
r. In the margin: 
And a little further along: <All the end of the chapter starting from here seems to
me to come to an end too abruptly. All the more because that is the most vulnerable side
and the most interesting side of the entire book.>
little to be feared, or at least it can never become general. Thus it is not the
tyranny of the social power that is the most to fear, but its regular use.]
s
To create a national representation in a very centralized country, is there-
fore to diminish the evil that extreme centralization can produce, but not
to destroy it.
t
s. In the margin: <This is not relevant because I have already ruled out the idea of
tyranny above.>
t. Title on a jacket:
That the instinct of democratic peoples is to want one great assembly of its repre-
sentatives rather than secondary assemblies. That a government that aims at tyranny
among a democratic people can tolerate a great general representation {(it is often
obliged to do so)}, but must never allow secondary assemblies {(which is usually easy
for it)}.
[Within the jacket] Unique assembly./
If I were secretly a friend of absolute power and were, however, forced to grant
my country the forms of liberty, I would seek rst to untangle among free institutions
those that a democratic people imagines the best, that it requires with the most au-
thority, and that its leaders cannot refuse to it without danger; I would soon discover
that what it asks above all, still less by reasoning than by instinct, is one general as-
sembly of its representatives. All the rest seems doubtful or indifferent to it, but this
rst axiom of its politics seems principal and almost unique to it. So I would hasten
to yield to this irresistible desire of an emerging democracy.
I would allow the free will of all the citizens to be represented in one assembly,
but I would want it to express itself only there. I would grant independence for great
affairs; I would keep despotism for small ones, so that if I were forced to tolerate
liberty in the laws, I would at least prevent liberty from becoming established in
habits.
[In the margin: So I would limit myself to making a magnicent exception to the
general rule of servitude, following this principle of logic that the exception proves
the rule and conrms it.]
So I would allow the deputies of the whole country to deliberate on peace and
war, regulate the nances of the State, its prosperity, its industry, its life, but I would
prevent at all cost the inhabitants [v: representatives] of a canton from having the
liberty to settle things among themselves.
A great legislative body placed at the center of a democratic people manifests the
present independence of this people, but it cannot ever guarantee its future
independence.
Since it is at the very same time provided with a great material strength and an
immense moral power, since it alone has the right to speak in the general silence, since
it alone can act amid the universal weakness, it feels itself above all the laws; it is free
I see clearly that, in this way, individual intervention is kept in the most
important affairs; but it is no less suppressed in the small ones and the
particular ones.
u
We forget that it is dangerous, above all, to enslave men
from all the rules and sheltered from all points of resistance. So it bends wills as it
wishes, abolishes rights, alters or changes mores. And if it comes nally to be de-
stroyed or to destroy itself, the habits of servility that it created survive it.
[To the side: You bring to the national representation men who have received no
preliminary and in a way primary education in the representative system; they appear
ignorant, undisciplined, indecisive, confused; you then say that it is the representative
system which is worth nothing and you distance yourself from it.
All that I see and hear since my arrival in Paris (April 1837) shows me that in a
lively way.]
To concentrate all the political life of a people in one assembly is to give to liberty
only a single head and to expose it to perishing with one blow.
So as long as a free institution of this nature remains isolated, it always leaves fair
hopes to despotism; it is an evil that carries its remedy with it (YTC, CVd, pp. 45
48).
There are other versions of this paragraph in CVd, pp. 4852. Following the coup
detat of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Tocqueville will abandon all political activity. In
February 1852, he writes to a friend, with an entirely similar tone:
I have refused any type of candidacy for the next elections, not wanting to have the
appearance of taking seriously the parody of a free government that is going to be
played. You know that the new assembly is nothing because it has no publicity and
can only reject the budget without being able to amend it, and you have learned
undoubtedly that the candidates who would want to oppose those of the government
cannot either speak to the voters, or write to them, or form committees, or travel
across the country without risk of being arrested; that in a word the new power pur-
sues its plan to govern with the aid of the peasants and the soldiers, borrowing from
democracy only its worst principle, the brutal strength of numbers, the universal vote
amid the silence and the darkness that despotism creates. You understand that it is
better to write books than to get involved in such a mess (Letter of Tocqueville to
Milnes, 9 February 1852. With the kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Houghton papers, 25/209).
u. In the margin:
<Perhaps begin this page with this sentence:
I see citizens who gather together to constitute and regulate in common a sole and
unique power that represents them all and to which each one of them delivers the
care of his particular interests and which he charges with exercising all rights.
In this way, something of individual intervention is preserved in the most impor-
tant and most general affairs, but it is suppressed entirely in the small ones and the
particular ones. We forget . . .>
in the detail. I would, for my part, be led to believe liberty less necessary
in the great things than in the least, if I thought that the one could ever be
assured without possessing the other.
Subjection in small affairs manifests itself every day and makes itself felt
indiscriminately by all citizens. It does not drive them to despair; but it
thwarts them constantly and leads them to relinquish the use of their will
[and nally to give up on themselves]. It thus extinguishes their spirit little
by little, and enervates their souls; while the obedience that is due only in
a small number of very grave, but very rare circumstances, displays servi-
tude only now and then, and makes it weigh only on certain men. In vain
will you charge these same citizens, whom you have made so dependent on
the central power, with choosing from time to time the representatives of
this power; this use so important, but so short and so rare, of their free will,
will not prevent them from losing little by little the ability to think, to feel
and to act by themselves, and from thus falling gradually below the level
of humanity.
v
I add that they will soon become incapable of [properly] exercising the
great and sole privilege remaining to them. Democratic peoples who have
introduced liberty in the political sphere, at the same time that they in-
creased despotism in the administrative sphere, have been led to very
strange peculiarities.
w
If small affairs, in which simple good sense can suf-
v. The Americans have avoided these rst dangers of democratic infancy. Although
they have granted immense rights to society, they have not sacriced the individual
to it. They have left to the latter, outside of the political world, a great security and a
great independence. They have not given the government the same civil privileges, and
they have not put it beyond the reach and the control of the judicial power by re-
quiring in a stupid manner as we the necessity of the division of powers (unity,
w. Note at the end of the manuscript of the chapter:
Their pet hobby is to want to combine the greatest political independence with the
greatest administrative dependence.
I would do well, I believe, to hit this prejudice straight on, to say something anal-
ogous to the above sentence, to say that that comes from tugging in opposite direc-
tions. We tend toward liberty and toward servitude at the same time; we want to
combine them, although they cannot be combined. Not able to be free, we want at
least to be oppressed in the name of the people.
ce, must be managed, they consider that the citizens are incapable of it;
if it is a matter of the government of the whole State, they entrust these
citizens with immense prerogatives; they make them alternately the play-
things of the sovereign and its masters, more than kings and less than men.
After having exhausted all the different systems of election, without nding
one that suits them, they are surprised and still search; as if the evil that
they notice were not due to the constitution of the country much more
than to that of the electoral body.
It is, in fact, difcult to imagine how men who have entirely given up
the habit of directing themselves, could succeed inchoosing well those who
should lead them; and it cannot be believed that a liberal, energetic and
wise government can ever come out of the votes of a people of servants.
x
A constitution that would be republican at the head, and ultra-
monarchical in all the other parts has always seemed to me an ephemeral
monster. The vices of those who govern and the imbecility of the governed
x. Unity, centralization./
We believe we are making a clever and sufcient concessionby allowing these same
men, almost entirely deprived of their free will in every day actions, to unite now
and then to choose one of the three great powers. In other words, after refusing to
them the right to direct their own affairs, we concede to them the privilege of gov-
erning the State.
[To the side: The idea opposite is good. If I want to strike minds by the picture
of administrative despotism, I must move away as little as possible from what we see
before our eyes. A tyranny of the Caesars was a bogeyman that cannot make anyone
afraid, although at bottom that is not so unreasonable as we think. I must not aim
to say the most complete truth, but the most easily grasped and the most useful.]
This is a very insufcient and very dangerous remedy.
A national assembly named by such voters cannot fail to be revolutionary or servile.
It is a great foolishness to hope to make a strong, liberal, energetic and wise gov-
ernment emerge from a people of servants./
6 April 1838 (Rubish, 2).
On another page, Tocqueville adds: I cannot prevent myself from considering this
formof government as transitory. It leads necessarily toinstitutions truly [v: more] liberal
or to the non-accountable despotism of one man (Rubish, 2).
would not take long to lead them to ruin; and the people, tired of its rep-
resentatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or would soon
return to stretching out at the feet of a single master.
y
y. Those who believe they are able to stop for long at a government which is repub-
lican at its head and ultra-monarchical at its tail, chambers and a centralized administra-
tion, are great fools. But the thing can go for a while in this way. Portray it in the place
where I do the portrait of democratic despotism.
22 June (Rubish, 2).
1262
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 7
a
Continuation of the Preceding Chapters
I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic government
among a [democratic] people where conditions are equal than among an-
other, and I think that, if such a government were once established among
such a people, not only would it oppress men, but in the long run it would
rob from each of them some of the principal attributes of humanity.
b
So despotism seems to me particularly to be feared in democratic
ages.
a. The jacket that contains the manuscript of the chapter also contains Tocquevilles
working manuscript and a copy of the entire chapter written in his hand. You can read
on the jacket: Continuation of the preceding chapter./
[In pencil] I bet that M. de C[hateaubriand? (ed.)]. did not understand this chapter.
20 minutes.
In the plan for the fourth part included in Rubish, 1 (contained in a jacket that is
found with the drafts of the chapter on material enjoyments and that bears the title how
equality of ranks suggests to men the taste for liberty and for equal-
ity), the chapter on the type of despotism is followed by another with the title what
must be done to turn aside this danger. Tocqueville notes to the side of the
title: This title contains the idea, but not the expression that this idea must have. The
title drafted in this way would be too ambitious. It would promise more thanI cankeep.
The same idea is found on the jacket that contains the manuscript: This title means
nothing at all, but all those that I want to put in its place mean too much. The only real
title would be: What must be done to avoid the evils that I point out in the preceding
chapters. But such a title would announce much more than the chapter can hold; insuch
a case, it is better to be useless than ambitious.
b. The social state separates men, the political state must draw them closer./
The social state gives them the taste for well-being [v: inclines them toward the
earth], the political state must raise them up by giving them great ideas and great emo-
tions (Rubish, 2).
conti nuati on of the procedi ng chapters 1263
I would, I think, have loved liberty in all times; but I feel myself inclined
to adore it in the times in which we live.
I am persuaded, on the other hand, that in the centuries which we are
entering, all those who try to base liberty on privilege and on aristocracy
will fail. All those who want to attract and keep authority within a single
class will fail. There is today no sovereign power clever enough and strong
enough to establish despotism by reestablishing permanent distinctions
among its subjects;
c
nor is there any legislator so wise and so powerful who
c. From now on the atmosphere that surrounds us will be democratic, you will be
able to breathe only on condition of taking up your position there.
There show how the members of the aristocracy can without haste and without
delay, without pride and without servility, draw closer to the people and, abandoning
the memories of another time, take a place in the present time . . .
Then add.
As for those who will want to hold themselves aside, hoping to escape in this way
the common destruction and to preserve for other times the elements of an aristoc-
racy, they will soon discover that life is tiring and difcult for them. Surrounded by
hostile prejudices, the butt of suspicions, forced to breathe on all sides the air of
hatred, objects of pity and envy at the same time, more strangers inthe country where
they were born than the traveler who comes to nd shelter under their roof, they will
be like the Jews after the destruction of the temple; like [them (ed.)], they will con-
stantly await a Messiah who must not come. But they will differ from the Jews on
one point; they will not perpetuate themselves. An aristocracy in vainwants tooutlive
its grandeur and to preserve itself intact amid the ruin of the institutions that it
established; it cannot succeed. And if its enemies are powerless to accomplishits ruin,
it will soon take charge itself of accomplishing it. Careers that gain honors and glory
are closed to its members, and they refuse to embrace professions that give or preserve
wealth. So they are as if struck withimmobility amidthe universal movement; among
a people in which all work, they are reduced to an idleness so complete that you have
never seen any thing like it. Within the most aristocratic [democratic (ed.)] societies
this immense and useless leisure overwhelms them. Arestless boredomdevours them.
Since they cannot obtain the most noble pleasures of men, they seek the tumultuous
and coarse enjoyments that tear them violently away from themselves, and they con-
sole themselves with horses and dogs for not being able to govern the State. They
have neither the courtesy nor the energy of their ancestors; they have only preserved
their pride. And you are astonished by the unimaginable sterility of the races most
fruitful in great men./
At every moment the law of inheritances comes to surprise a few among them
amid these obscene and unworthy leisure activities and throws them into obscurity
and poverty. The solitude then becomes more profound around those who remain,
the isolation more frightening, the discouragement more complete every day; a name
is able to maintain free institutions if he does not take equality as rst prin-
ciple and as symbol. So all those among our contemporaries who want to
create or to assure the independence and dignity of their fellows must ap-
pear as friends of equality; andthe only means worthy of themof appearing
so is to be so: the success of their holy enterprise depends on it.
d
Thus, it is not a matter of reconstructing an aristocratic society, but of
making liberty emerge from within the democratic society in which God
makes us live.
is lost, a precious memory fades, the trace of several generations gone by disappears.
New families come out of the void into which the rst descend. Power, wealth and
glory have forever passed into other hands.
I am profoundly convinced that it is no less impossible to establish a new aristoc-
racy than to preserve the ruins of the former aristocracy. For my part, I cannot un-
derstand the fears that are inspired among the friends of democracy, openly or in
secret, by those who intend to re-create to a certain measure ranks, privileges, hered-
itary rights, permanent inuences. Such men are dangerous only to themselves. They
only compromise the cause that they embrace and the conservative doctrines that
they mix with it.
The current of the century is against them, and the day when nally they want
seriously to raise the dike that is to contain it, they will immediately be swept away
forever by it. So democracy has henceforth nothing to fear from its adversaries. It is
from within that its corrupters and its masters will come. I do not see how its reign
could be prevented from becoming established, but I easily discover what must be
done to make it detestable./
What is the danger?
To atter the feelings of democratic hate and envy and to gain power in this way.
To give equality lavishly, to take away liberty in return (YTC, CVc, pp. 5558).
F. D. often repeats that an aristocracy is a command staff. That is a gooddenition.
An aristocracy is not a body by itself all alone, but the head of a body. Reduced to
itself it can still do brilliant things, but not great and lasting things.
This comparison of an aristocracy to a command staff was found with a rigorous
exactitude in 1792. The ofcers being all gathered on the right of the Rhine, the
soldiers remained on the left bank. This was the nal demonstration of what I said
above, the most striking image of the state of French society (YTC, CVa, pp. 5253).
The same idea appears in YTC, CVc, p. 55.
d. In the margin of the copy of the chapter, in pencil: I strongly persist in asking
deletion.
These two rst truths seem to me simple, clear and fertile, and they lead
me naturally to consider what type of free government can be established
among a people in which conditions are equal.
It results from the very constitution of democratic nations and from
their needs that, among them, the power of the sovereign must be more
uniform, more centralized, more extensive, more penetrating, more pow-
erful than elsewhere.
e
Society there is naturally more active and stronger;
the individual, more subordinate and weaker. The one does more; the other
less; that is inevitable.
f
So in democratic countries you must not expect the circle of individual
independence ever to be as wide as in countries of aristocracy. But that is
not to be desired; for among aristocratic nations, society is often sacriced
to the individual, and the prosperity of the greatest number tothe grandeur
of a few.
It is at the very same time necessary and desirable that the central power
that directs a democratic people be active and powerful. It is not a matter
of making it weak or indolent, but only of preventing it from abusing its
agility and strength.
g
e. In democratic societies not only is the government stronger (illegible word) than
the citizens, but also it alone has duration, foresight, extended plans, profound calcu-
lations. It surpasses the citizens as much in quality as in strength. At the next-to-last
chapter. 1 September 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 23).
f. In the margin: Men who live in centuries of equality are naturally isolated and
powerless; it is only by the articial and temporary combination of their efforts that they
can attain great objectives.
g. Notes on a page at the end of the manuscript of the chapter:
Necessity of a strong government, because of the weakness or the destruction of all
the other social bonds that could allow a society to march all alone and to contain
disorder within certain limits./
Remove all political government from an aristocracy, annul entirely the national,
central power, a certain order will still be maintained there, because, exercising a cer-
tain inuence on each other, individuals hold together, have the habit of immobility
and keep in their place for a long time, without the political power getting involved.
[To the side] Another idea to recall here. Among democratic peoples only the gov-
ernment has stability, duration, extended plans, views of the future, can follow ex-
tended undertakings, all things necessary to the well-being of nations which have
such a long life. Everything is unstable and eeting among democratic peoples, out-
side of the government.
What contributed the most to assure the independence of individuals
inaristocratic centuries is that the sovereignpower didnot take chargealone
of governing and administering the citizens; it was obliged to leave a part
of this concern to the members of the aristocracy; so that the social power,
always divided, never weighed entirely and in the same way on every man.
h
Not only did the sovereign power not do everything by itself, but most
of the ofcers who acted in its place, since they drew their power from the
fact of their birth and not from it, were not constantly in its hand. It could
not at any moment create them or destroy them, depending on its caprices,
and bend them all uniformly to its least desires. That also guaranteed the
independence of individuals.
I also understand that today you cannot resort to the same means, but
I see democratic procedures that replace them.
j
The same idea is expressed in a rough draft:
I confess that the government among democratic peoples is easier and more conve-
nient than in democracies [aristocracies (ed.)], but is it better? That is the question.
Is the rst merit of a government to work easily? If that was so, what better than
despotism and what worse than liberty? What more stable than the one? Youestablish
it one day and it works for a thousand years. What more fragile than the other? What
efforts to establish it, what (illegible word) work to (illegible word) it. See however
the result of the one andthe other. So the ideal of perfectionmust be sought elsewhere
(YTC, CVk, 2, p. 54).
h. You are astonished at rst sight by the respect that is still witnessed today for do-
manial property and the little respect that is shown for industrial property.
1
That comes
from the fact that domanial property .- [is (ed.)] .- ancient property, the property of
aristocratic centuries and that the principles that protected it in these centuries (prin-
ciples deriving from the social state) have left profound traces in the mores. While
for industrial property, modern and democratic property, you give yourself to the
instincts natural to democracy, which are to substitute the State for the individual
and constantly to break the latter under the feet of the mass.
1. Those two terms are not in natural opposition, but I do not have the time to
clarify my thought (Rubish, 2).
j. Remedies to democracy indicated in the course of the book, to gather together
perhaps in the rst or nal chapter.
[In the margin: Try to arrive at the same conclusion by another path than in po-
litical society.]
Instead of giving to the sovereign alone all the administrative powers
that were taken from the corporation or from the nobles, you can entrust
a part of them to secondary bodies formed temporarily out of simple cit-
izens; in this way, the liberty of individuals will be surer, without their
equality being less.
The Americans, who are not as attached as we to words, have kept the
name of county for the largest of their administrative districts; but they
have in part replaced the county by a provincial assembly
k
[chosen freely
by the inhabitants themselves].
m
I will admit without difculty that in a period of equality like ours, it
would be unjust andunreasonable toinstitute hereditaryofcials; but noth-
ing prevents substituting for them, to a certain measure, elected ofcials.
Election is a democratic expedient that assures the independence of the
ofcial vis-a`-vis the central power, as much as and more than heredity can
do among aristocratic peoples.
Aristocratic countries are full of rich and inuential individuals who
know how to be self-sufcient and who are not easily or secretly op-
pressed; and the latter keep power within the general habits of moder-
ation and restraint [<while in democratic countries each citizen taken
in isolation cannot offer any resistance and does not ever succeed in
Necessity of not giving omnipotence to the majority inorder not to lose the liberty
to act which results naturally from a democratic social state.
Necessity of introducing liberty among a democratic people in order to give it the
necessary movement toward things of the mind.
Pour out enlightenment lavishly in democratic nations in order to elevate the ten-
dencies of the human mind. Democracy without enlightenment and liberty would
lead the human species back to barbarism.
Necessity of beliefs inorder to immaterialize the lives of democratic peoples. Dem-
ocratic peoples can be grasped only by them. Religion is an almost non-material in-
terest which gives celestial thoughts./
Do not adopt one social principle alone however good it seems.
Do not use one form of government alone. Stay away from acridity [unity? (ed.)]
(YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 5455).
k. Only provincial institutions can make the democratic instinct of liberty a habit
(YTC, CVd, p. 19).
m. This fragment is found in the copy of the chapter.
attracting the eyes of the public to the evils that tyranny makes him
suffer.>]
I know well that democratic countries do not naturally present similar
individuals; but there you can articially create something analogous.
I believe rmly that you cannot establish an aristocracy
n
again in the
world; but I think that simple citizens by associating together canconstitute
very wealthy, very inuential, very strong beings, in a word aristocratic
persons.
o
[<Thus, in whatever direction I look, I discover association as the most
powerful remedy for the evils with which equality threatens us.>]
n. As for me, all that I wish for my country is that those who aimfor despotismthere
aim at the same time for aristocracy (YTC, CVd, p. 25).
o. In a jacket with rough drafts of the chapter which bears the title idea of aris-
tocratic persons:
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Possibility of creating within a democratic people aristocratic persons, means of
uniting in part the advantages of the two systems.
What I mean by aristocratic persons are permanent and legal associations such as
cities, cantons, departments, or voluntary and temporary associations such as, I sup-
pose, in literature, the Norman association; in industry, the company of Messageries;
in politics, the society Aide-toi le ciel taidera. These associations are cited as ex-
amples and not as models.
This would have one part of the advantages of aristocracy properly speakingwith-
out its disadvantages.
That would not establish permanent inequality and .-.- the injustices that .-.-.- ;
it would not elevate .-.- certain men above .-.- all the rest . . .
It would create powerful individuals capable of great efforts, of vast projects, of
rm resistance; it would bind men together in another way, but as tightly as aristoc-
racy. It would make the species greater and would elevate thought. . . . (Rubish, 2).
On the question of associations for Tocqueville, see: Renato Cavallaro, Dallin-
dividualismo al controllo democratico: aspetti del pensiero di Alexis de Tocqueville
sullassociazionismo volontario, Critica Sociologica, 28, 19731974, pp. 99125; William
H. George, Montesquieu and De Tocqueville and Corporative Individualism, Amer-
ican Political Science Review 16, no. 1 (1922): 1021; Georges Gojat, Les corps inter-
mediaires et la decentralisation dans loeuvre de Tocqueville, in Libe ralisme, tradition-
alisme, de centralisation (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), pp. 143; and Jose Mar a Sauca
Cano, La ciencia de la asociacion de Tocqueville (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitu-
cionales, 1995).
In this manner several of the greatest political advantages of aristocracy
would be obtained, without its injustices or its dangers. A political, indus-
trial, commercial, or even scientic and literary association is an enlight-
ened and powerful citizen whom you cannot bend at will or oppress in the
shadow, and who, by defending its particular rights against the demands
of power, saves common liberties.
In times of aristocracy, each man is always bound in a very tight way to
several of his fellow citizens, so that you cannot attack the former without
the others running to his aid. In centuries of equality, each individual is
naturally isolated; he has no hereditary friends whose help he can require,
no class whose sympathies for him are assured; he is easily set apart, and he
is trampled underfoot with impunity.
p
Today, a citizen who is oppressed
has therefore only one means of defending himself; it is to address himself
to the whole nation, and if it is deaf to him, to humanity; he has only
one means to do it, it is the press. Thus liberty of the press is innitely
more precious among democratic nations than among all others; it alone
cures most of the evils that equality can produce. Equality isolates and
weakens men; but the press places beside each one of thema very powerful
weapon, which the weakest and most isolated can use. Equality takes away
from each individual the support of those close to him; but the press al-
lows him to call to his aid all his fellow citizens and all those similar to
him. Printing hastened the progress of equality, and it is one of its best
correctives.
I think that men who live in aristocracies can, if necessary, do without
liberty of the press; but those who inhabit democratic countries cannot do
so. [<For the latter, between independence and servitude, I see hardly any-
thing except the press.>] To guarantee the personal independence of the
latter, I do not trust great political assemblies, parliamentary prerogatives,
the proclamation of sovereignty of the people.
All these things, up to a certain point, t with individual servitude; but
p. In the margin: The entire style of this chapter is defective and to review, but the
thoughts are so difcult that at this moment I can only concern myself with them.
this servitude cannot be complete if the press is free. The press is, par ex-
cellence, the democratic instrument of liberty.
I will say something analogous about the judicial power.
q
It is the essence of the judicial power to occupy itself with particular
interests and to x its eyes on the small matters that are exposed to its view;
it is also the essence of this power not to come by itself to the help of those
who are oppressed, but to be constantly at the disposal of the most humble
man among them. The latter, however weak you suppose him to be, can
always force the judge to listen to his complaint and to respond to it: that
results from the very constitution of the judicial power.
So such a power is especially applicable to the needs of liberty, in a time
when the eye and the hand of the sovereign are introduced constantly into
the most minute details of human actions, and when individuals, too weak
to protect themselves, are too isolated to be able to count on the help of
those like them. The strength of the courts has been, in all times, the great-
est guarantee that can be offered to individual independence, but that is
true above all in democratic centuries; particular rights and interests are
always in danger there, if the judicial power does not grow and expand as
conditions become equal.
Equality suggests to men several tendencies very dangerous for liberty,
and the legislator must always keep his eyes open to them. I will only recall
the principal ones.
Men who live in democratic centuries do not easily understand the util-
ity of forms;
r
they feel an instinctive disdain for them. I spoke about the
reasons for this elsewhere. Forms excite their scorn and often their hatred.
Since they usually aspire only to easy and present enjoyments, they throw
themselves impetuously toward the object of each one of their desires; the
least delays lead them to despair. This temperament, which they bring to
political life, sets them against forms which slow or stop them each day in
some of their desires.
q. In the margin: The weaker individuals are, the stronger the courts must be.
r. With the rough drafts of this chapter, you nd a fragment onforms, poorly drafted,
and which seems to be in the hand of Louis de Kergorlay. See note u of p. 1273 and note
g of p. 750. A note in the rubish mentions: I had a good conversation with Louis about
this entire subject; look at it again (Rubish, 2).
This disadvantage that men of democracies nd in forms is, however,
what makes the latter so useful to liberty, their principal merit being toserve
as a barrier between the strong and the weak, those who govern and the
governed, to slow the rst and to give to the second the time for them to
gure things out. Forms are more necessary as the sovereign power is more
active and more powerful and as individuals become more indolent and
more feeble. Thus democratic peoples naturally need forms more than
other peoples, andnaturally they respect themless.
s
That merits veryserious
attention.
There is nothing more miserable than the superb disdain of most of our
contemporaries for questions of forms; for today the smallest questions of
forms have acquired animportance that they hadnot haduntil now. Several
of the greatest interests of humanity are connected with it.
I think that, if the statesmen who lived in aristocratic centuries could
sometimes scornforms withimpunity andoftenrise above them, thosewho
lead peoples today must consider the least form with respect and neglect it
only when an imperious necessity forces themto do so. Inaristocracies, you
had superstition for forms; we must have an enlightened and thoughtful
cult of them.
Another instinct very natural todemocratic peoples, andverydangerous,
is that which leads them to scorn individual rights and to take them into
little account.
Men are in general attached to a right and show it respect by reason of
its importance or of the long use that they have made of it. Individual rights
which are found among democratic peoples are ordinarily of little impor-
tance, very recent and very unstable; that means that they are often easily
sacriced and violated almost always without regrets.
Now it happens that, in this same time and among these same nations
in which men conceive a natural scorn for the rights of individuals, the
s. All peoples who have done great things for liberty have had the taste [v: the faith]
and I could almost say superstition for forms./
Forms are not liberty, but they are its body (Rubish, 2).
rights of the society expand naturally and become stronger; that is to say
that men become less attached to particular rights, at the moment when it
would be most necessary to keep them and to defend the few of them that
remain.
t
So it is above all in the democratic times in which we nd ourselves that
the true friends of liberty and of human grandeur must, constantly, stand
up and be ready to prevent the social power from sacricing lightly the
particular rights of some individuals to the general executionof its designs.
In those times no citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow
him to be oppressed, or individual rights of so little importance that you
can surrender to arbitrariness with impunity. The reason for it is simple.
When you violate the particular right of an individual in a time when the
human mind is penetrated by the importance and the holiness of the rights
of this type, you do harm only to the one you rob. But to violate such a
right today is to corrupt the national mores profoundly andtoput the entire
society at risk, because the very idea of these kinds of rights tends constantly
among us to deteriorate and become lost.
[<I nd as well and for entirely similar reasons that in democratic cen-
turies, above all, sovereigns must watch themselves with the greatest care
in order to repress the natural tendency which leads them to sacrice a
t. [The beginning is missing (ed.)] that the condence in the idea of the right of
reason that is spreading each day, do you not notice that each day the idea of fact and
of force replaces it, and what is the nal and legitimate representative of force, if not
the soldier?
[To the side: Do you not see that with equality without liberty we are marching
toward a singular servitude and toward an inevitable barbarism? And if you see all
these things, what are you doing?]
Do you not see that opinions are dividing more quickly than patrimonies, that
each man is enclosing himself narrowly within his own mind, like the farm laborer
in his eld?
[To the side: Do you not see that souls are falling lower and that the love of liberty,
this great and noble passion of man, is deserting him?]
That egoism is constantly taking on new strength without acquiring new light?
The idea of right which is being extinguished.
That sentiments become more individual eachday, andthat soonmenwill be more
separated by their beliefs than they have ever been by inequality of conditions? (YTC,
CVd, pp. 1920).
particular right, however small it is, to the general execution to their
designs.>]
There are certain habits, certain ideas, certain vices that belong to the
state of revolution, and that a long revolution cannot fail to engender and
to generalize, whatever its character, its objective and its theater are.
When whatever nation has several times in a short expanse of time
changed leaders, opinions and laws, the men who compose it end by con-
tracting the taste for movement and by becoming accustomed to all move-
ments taking place rapidly and with the aid of force. They then naturally
conceive a contempt for forms, whose impotence they see every day, and
only with impatience do they bear the dominion of rules, which have been
evaded so many times before their eyes.
Since the ordinary notions of equity and morality no longer sufce to
explain and justify all the novelties to which the revolution gives birth
each day, you latch onto the principle of social utility, you create the
dogma of political necessity; and you become readily accustomed to sac-
ricing particular interests without scruples and to trampling individual
rights underfoot, in order to attain more promptly the general goal that
you propose.
These habits and these ideas, which I will call revolutionary,
u
because all
revolutions produce them, manifest themselves within aristocracies as well
u. Denition of revolutionary spirit:
taste for rapid changes,
use of violence to bring them about,
tyrannical spirit,
contempt for forms,
contempt for acquired rights,
indifference about the means in view of the end, doctrine of the useful,
satisfaction given to brutal appetites./
The revolutionary spirit which everywhere is the greatest enemy of liberty and is
such above all among democratic peoples, because there is a natural and secret bond
between it and democracy. It takes its source in the natural faults of democracy and
scorns them.
A revolution can sometimes be just and necessary; it can establish liberty, but the
revolutionary spirit is always detestable and can never lead to anything except to tyr-
anny (Rubish, 2).
as among democratic peoples; but among the rst they are often less pow-
erful and always less durable, because there they encounter habits, ideas,
aws and failings that are contrary to them. Sothey fade away by themselves
as soon as the revolution is nished, and the nation returns to its former
political ways. It is not always so in democratic countries, where it is always
to be feared that revolutionary instincts, becoming milder andmore regular
without dying out, will gradually turn into governmental mores and ad-
ministrative habits.
v
So I do not know of a country in which revolutions are more dangerous
than democratic countries, because, apart from the accidental and passing
evils that revolutions can never fail to produce, they always risk creating
permanent and, so to speak, eternal ones.
I believe that there are honest acts of resistance and legitimate rebellions
[v. revolutions]. So I am not saying, in an absolute way, that men of dem-
ocratic times must never make revolutions; but I think that they are right
to hesitate more than all the others before undertaking them, and that it is
better for them to bear many of the inconveniences of the present state
than to resort to such a perilous remedy.
I will conclude with a general idea that includes within it not only all
the particular ideas that have been expressed in this present chapter, but
also most of those that this book has the purpose of putting forth.
[What was above all to be feared formerly is no longer to be feared and
new dangers have arisen that our fathers did not know.]
w
In the centuries of aristocracy that preceded ours, there were very pow-
erful individuals and a very feeble social authority. The very image of so-
ciety was obscure and was constantly lost amid all the different powers that
governed the citizens. The principal effort of the men of that time had to
be to proceed to make the social power greater and to fortify it, to increase
and to assure its prerogatives, and on the contrary, to restrict individual
independence within more narrow limits, and to subordinate particular
interest to the general interest.
v. In the margin of the copy: <Where the passing sentiments that revolutionsuggests
nd themselves in sympathy with the permanent sentiments that equality gives.>
w. In the margin of the copy: Perhaps delete that?
Other dangers and other concerns await the men of today.
Among most modern nations, the sovereign power, whatever its origin,
its constitution and its name, has become almost omnipotent, and individ-
uals fall more and more into the nal degree of weakness and dependency.
Everything was different in the old societies. Unity and uniformity were
found nowhere. In our societies, everything threatens to become so similar,
that the particular gure of each individual will soon be lost entirely in the
common physiognomy. Our fathers were always ready to abuse this idea
that particular rights are worthy of respect, and we are naturally led to ex-
aggerate this other, that the interest of one individual must always yield
before the interest of several.
The political worldis changing; fromnowonwe must seeknewremedies
for new evils.
To x for the social power extensive, but visible and immobile limits; to
give to individuals certain rights and to guarantee to them the uncontested
enjoyment of these rights; to preserve for the individual the little of in-
dependence, of strength and of originality that remain to him; to raise him
up beside society and sustain him in the face of it: such seems to me to be
the rst goal of the legislator in the age we are entering.
x
It could be said that the sovereigns of today only seek to create great
things with men. I would like them to think a bit more about creating
great men, to attach less value to the work and more to the worker,
y
and
x. I would very much like you to tell me what makes the grandeur of man if it is
not man himself./
Who the devil does it concern except each one of us? (Rubish, 2).
y. They limit themselves to wanting society to be great; I, man; they are interested
in an ideal being, without a body; I, in Gods creature, in my fellow man./
They attach more value to the work; I, to the worker./
To raise up and to make the individual greater, constant goal of great men indem-
ocratic centuries./
This 29 January 1838 (Rubish, 2).
Another rough draft expresses the same thought:
How will we be able to understand each other? I seek to live with dignity and honor,
and you only seek to live.
to remember constantly that a nation cannot long remain strong when
each man is individually weak, and that we have not yet foundeither social
forms or political combinations that can create an energetic people by
bringing together faint-hearted and soft citizens.
z
I see among our contemporaries two opposite but equally fatal ideas.
Some see in equality only the anarchical tendencies that it engenders.
They fear their free will; they are afraid of themselves.
The others, in smaller number, but better enlightened, have another
view. Alongside the road that, starting at equality, leads to anarchy, they
have nally found the path that seems to lead men invincibly toward ser-
vitude; they bend their soul in advance to this necessary servitude; and de-
spairing of remaining free, they already adore at the bottom of their heart
the master who must soon come.
The rst abandon liberty because they consider it dangerous; the second
because they judge it impossible.
If I had had this last belief, I would not have written the work that you
What you fear most from the democratic social state are the political troubles that
it brings forth, and me, that is what I fear least about it. You dread democratic liberty,
and I democratic despotism.
These men who, similar to domestic animals, worry little about having a master
provided that the master feeds them, and who seek in life only to live.
[In the margin: Many men consider democratic civil laws as anevil anddemocratic
political laws as another and the greatest evil; but I say that the one is the sole remedy
that you can apply to the other.
All the idea of my politics is in this remark] (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 5354).
z. The manuscript and the copy of the chapter nish here. In the margin of the
manuscript you nd this note:
I can and perhaps I must stop here. I see vaguely, however, that there would be some-
thing more, and more striking to add, for nally I amstill speaking inall that precedes
only about the interest of society and not about that of the individual himself. Now,
is not all the grandeur of man in the grandeur of the individual rather than in the
grandeur of society, which is an ideal being produced fromthe mind of man? Society
is made for the individual and not the individual for society. By what a strange reversal
of things would you arrive at sacricing the individual with the view of favoring
society, and what singular detachment from himself would lead this last to acquiesce
in such an attempt?
have just read; I would have limited myself to bemoaning in secret the
destiny of my fellow men.
I wanted to put forth in full light the risks that equality makes human
independence run, because I believe rmly that these risks are the most
formidable as well as the least foreseen of all those that the future holds.
a
But I do not believe them insurmountable.
The men who live in the democratic centuries that we are entering nat-
urally have the taste for independence.
b
Naturally they bear rules with im-
patience: the permanence of even the state they prefer wearies them. They
love power; but they are inclined to scorn and to hate the one who exercises
it, and they easily escape from between his hands because of their smallness
and their very mobility.
These instincts will always be found, because they emerge from the core
of the social state which will not change. For a long time they will prevent
any despotismfrombeing able to become established, andthey will provide
new weapons to each new generation that wants to ght in favor of the
liberty of men.
So let us have for the future this salutary fear that makes us vigilant and
combative, and not this sort of soft and idle terror that weakens and en-
ervates hearts.
c
a. The great men of paganism have often willingly sacriced to false gods [v: idols]
in which they did not believe, because they knew that peoples could imagine only
under this crude image the idea of the divinity, one and supreme, belief in which is
necessary to humanity.
In the same way statesmen, who know that legality is not order [v: is only the
external form of order and not order], must however honor it [v: bend their knees
before it] as the only permanent image of order that can be grasped by the organs of
the common people [vulgarius ] (Rubish, 2).
b. Idea of the [blank (ed.)] to show that the taste for independence is natural to men
in times of equality and why; but that it is a secondary taste almost always subordinate
to the taste for power; that this natural tendency toward liberty is however our anchor
of salvation; that it is by developing it and by making it practical and manly that you
can hope to obtain all the good of equality without its evils (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 49).
c. It is a matter above all of proving that it is with the help of liberty that you can
hope to prevent license. Everything is there. Fear must be put on the side of liberty if
you want to succeed (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 5253).
1278
s4s4s4s4s4
c ha p t e r 8
a
General View of the Subject
b
a. In the rst box of the Rubish (Rubish, 1), with the chapter on material enjoyments,
in a jacket bearing the title how equality of ranks suggests to men the taste
for liberty and for equality, you nd this note: Perhaps nish by a chapter
entitled general view of the subject, in which I recall the fatal march of equality.
Perhaps here I will show that it is only by democracy that you can attenuate the evils of
democracy, the impossibility and the danger of the government of the middle classes,
the necessity to aim rmly for the government of all by all. (Rubish, 1). In the second
box of the Rubish, the rough drafts and notes of this chapter are accompaniedby various
papers contained in a jacket that has as a title of the manner in which the amer-
ican governments act vis-a` -vis associations. Tocqueville noted to the side:
I propose to delete this chapter. The ideas of these pages are found in different places
in the last chapters.
b. [On a jacket: Last chapter. General view of the subject./
General appraisal of the effects of equality./
I can [only (ed.)] approach this summary frankly and grandly, otherwise it would
seem out of place and incomplete. I must show myself wanting to reduce the entire
picture that I have just painted to a narrow frame, setting aside details, or closing my
eyes to them, no longer occupying myself with America, which opened the path to
me; and after thus preparing the reader for something very general and with very few
details, to keep the piece: I look at my country . . .
To begin by recalling the march of the four volumes.]
Capital and principal idea./
Inuence of democracy on human morality.
Medium morality, perhaps in the view of God.
Interest which gains, men not virtuous, but steady.
Final chapter. I think. All of man is there./
Chapter too vast, too thorny. To refrain probably.
[On the following page] A nal chapter.
Less individual independence, more national strength.
Less independence, more security.
Less independence of the sovereign, more independence of the subjects.
[On the following page] I do not believe in the denitive organization of the gov-
ernment of the middle classes, and if I believed it possible, I would oppose myself
to it.
general vi ew of the s ubj ect 1279
Before leaving forever the course that I have just covered, I would like to
be able to encompass with a last look all the various features that mark the
face of the newworld, and nally to judge the general inuence that equal-
Idea to put in the place where I show again the fatal march of equality.
[Here we omit several paragraphs (ed.).]
[On the following page] Finish the book by a great chapter that tries to summarize
all the democratic subject and to draw from it oratorically the consequences for the
world and in particular for Europe and us. Maxims of conciliation, of resignation,
of union with the march of Providence, complete impartiality.
A simple and solemn movement, like the subject./
Capital idea.
That it is necessary to draw yourself out of particular points of view in order to
place yourself, if possible, in general points of view that do not depend on either
times or places. Penetrate as deeply as possible into the thought of God and judge
from there.
[On the following page] Use democracy to moderate democracy. That is the sole
path of salvation that is open to us. Discern the sentiments, the ideas, the laws that,
without being hostile to the principles of democracy, without being naturally incom-
patible with democracy, can however correct its unfortunate tendencies and, while
modifying it, become incorporated with it.
Beyond that everything is foolish and imprudent (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 5052).
In Tocquevilles papers you nd these other plans:
Presumed order of the last chapter.
1. Summary of the four volumes.
2. Why democracy, certain sides of which a (illegible word), can be the best state
in the eyes of God.
3. From now on democracy has nothing to fear except itself.
4. Bad and good democracy and if it must be assured.
It is from its ranks that its masters and its destroyers will come. It has nothing to
fear from its enemies, but from its children (YTC, CVc, pp. 5960).
Last chapter.
I said when beginning that the march of equality was irresistible. I believe it more
and more. Movement of the rest of Europe as democratic by kings, as ours by the
people. There is only one aristocracy that knows howtodefenditself, that of England.
All the others form command staffs without armies.
General fact owing from the development of equality . . .
More honesty, fewer virtues.
Each man smaller, more ignorant, weaker, humanity greater, stronger, more
knowledgeable.
Smaller individual efforts, a greater general result.
Less tranquillity, more power (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 4).
ity must exercise on the fate of men; but the difculty of such anenterprise
stops me; in the presence of such a great matter, I feel my sight fail and my
reason falter.
c
This new society, which I have sought to portray and which I want to
judge, has only just been born. Time has not yet set its form; the great
revolution that created it is still going on, and in what is happening today,
it is nearly impossible to discern what must pass away with the revolution
itself, and what must remain after it.
The world that is rising is still half caught in the ruins of the world that
is falling, and amid the immense confusion presented by human affairs, no
one can say which old institutions and ancient mores will remain standing
and which will nally disappear.
Although the revolution that is taking place in the social state, the laws,
the ideas, the sentiments of men, is still very far frombeingnished, already
you cannot compare its works with anything that has been seen previously
in the world. I go back century by century to the most distant antiquity; I
notice nothing that resembles what is before our eyes. Since the past no
longer claries the future, the mind moves in shadows.
But amid this picture so vast, so new, so confused, I already glimpse a
few principal features which are becoming apparent and I point them out.
I see that the good and the bad are distributed equally enough in the
world. Great wealth disappears; the number of small fortunes increases;
desires and enjoyments multiply; there is no more extraordinary prosperity
or irreversible poverty. Ambition is a universal sentiment; there are fewvast
ambitions. Each individual is isolated and weak; society is agile, far-sighted
and strong; individuals do small things and the State immense ones.
Souls are not energetic; but mores are mild and legislation humane. If
little great devotion, few very high, very brilliant, and very pure virtues are
c. In the margin: <I cast my eyes over my country and I see there a universal trans-
formation. I widen my view, I carry it by degrees to the extreme limits of the vast space
occupied on the globe by the European race; everywhere I am struck by an analogous
spectacle. Among all peoples, ancient institutions and ancient mores have disappeared
or are disappearing in order to give place to something different. Everything that exists
today [interrupted text (ed.)].>
found, habits are steady, violence is rare and cruelty almost unknown. The
lives of men become longer and their property more secure. Life is not very
ornate, but very comfortable and very peaceful. There are few very delicate
and very coarse pleasures, little courtesy in manners and little brutality in
tastes. You scarcely nd very learned men or very ignorant populations.
Genius becomes rarer and enlightenment more common. The human
mind is developed by the small combined efforts of all men, and not by
the powerful impulse of a few of them. There is less perfection, but more
fecundity in works. All the bonds of race, class, country are loosening; the
great bond of humanity is tightening.
d
If among all these various features, I seek the one that seems to me the
most general and the most striking, I come to see that what is noticeable
in fortunes reappears again in a thousand other forms. Nearly all the ex-
tremes become softer and are blunted; nearly all the salient points are worn
away to make way for something middling, which is at the very same time
less high and less low, less brilliant and less obscure than what was seen in
the world.
e
I run my eyes over this innumerable crowd composed of similar beings,
in which nothing either rises or falls. The spectacle of this universal uni-
formity [and of this mediocrity] saddens me and chills me, and I am
tempted to regret the society that is no more.
d. In the margin: <This picture seems good enough to me, but it is incomplete. It
perhaps contains some useless things, and there are some necessary ones to .-.-. To com-
plete it, it is necessary to have gone through the whole book.>
e. It is necessary to nd in some part of the work, in the foreword or the last chapter,
the idea of the middle that has been so dishonored in our times. Show that there is
a rm, clear, voluntary way to see and to grasp the truth between two extremes. To
conceive and to say that the truth is not in an absolute system.
[In the margin: I do not like the middle to be takenbetweengrandeur andbaseness,
between courage and fear, between vice and virtue. But I like the middle betweentwo
opposite excesses.]
Dare to say somewhere the idea of L[ouis (ed.)]. that a difference must be made
between absolute afrmation [v: certitude] and Pyrrhonism, that the systemof prob-
abilities is the only true one, the only human one, provided that probability causes
you to act as energetically as certitude.
All that is poorly said, but the germ is there (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 4142).
When the world was lled with very great and very small, very rich and
very poor, very learned and very ignorant, [very fortunate and very mis-
erable] men, I turned my eyes away from the second to x them only on
the rst, and the latter delighted my sight. But I understand that this plea-
sure arose from my weakness; it is because I cannot see all that surrounds
me at the same time that I amallowed to choose in this way and to separate,
among so many objects, those that it pleases me to consider. It is not the
same for the all-powerful and eternal Being, whose eyes necessarily take in
the whole of things, and who sees all of humanity and each man distinctly,
though at the same time.
It is natural to believe that what most satises the sight of this creator
and preserver of men, is not the singular prosperity of a few, but the greatest
well-being of all; so what seems to me decline, is in his eyes progress; what
hurts me, agrees with him. Equality is perhaps less elevated; but it is more
just, and its justice makes its grandeur and its beauty.
I try hard to enter into this point of view of God, and from there I seek
to consider and to judge human things.
f
No one, on the earth, can yet assert in an absolute and general way that
the new state of societies is superior to the old state; but it is already easy
to see that it is different.
There are certain vices and certain virtues that were attached to the con-
stitution of aristocratic nations and that are so contrary to the genius of
the new peoples that you cannot introduce those vices and virtues among
them. There are good tendencies and bad instincts that were foreign to the
rst that are natural to the second; ideas that occur by themselves to the
imagination of the rst and that the mind of the second rejects. They are
like two distinct humanities, each of which has its particular advantages
and disadvantages, its good and its evil which are its own.
g
So you must be very careful about judging the societies that are being
f. Who knows if, in the eyes of God, the beautiful is not the useful? (YTC, CVa,
p. 41).
g. You must not aim to make democratic peoples as similar as possible to aristocratic
nations, but to gain for them as much as possible the type of grandeur and prosperity
that is appropriate to them (Rubish, 2).
born by the ideas that you have drawn from those that are no longer. That
would be unjust, for these societies, differing prodigiously fromeachother,
are not comparable.
It would be scarcely more reasonable to ask of the men [v. democratic
peoples] of today the particular virtues that resulted from the social state
of their ancestors, since this social state itself has fallen, and since in its fall
it swept away in a confused way all the good and all the bad that it carried
with it.
But these things are still poorly understood today.
I notice a great number of my contemporaries who undertake to make
a choice among the institutions, the opinions, the ideas that arose fromthe
aristocratic constitution of the former society; they would willingly aban-
don some, but they would still like to retain others and carry them with
them into the new world.
I think that those men use up their time and their strength in an honest
and sterile work.
It is no longer a matter of retaining the particular advantages that in-
equality of conditions gains for men, but of assuring the new advantages
that equality can offer them.
h
We must not aim to make ourselves similar
to our fathers, but toworkhardtoattainthe type of grandeur andhappiness
that is appropriate to us.
As for me, having reached the nal end of my journey, I discern from
afar, but all at once, all the various matters that I had contemplated sepa-
h. Equality of conditions, the absence of classes . . . are evils you say. It belittles hu-
man nature, establishes the mediocre in everything. Perhaps you are right.
Do you know a means to cure the evil by the opposites, that is to say by the re-
establishment or even the maintaining of inequality, the permanent classication of
men? No. At the very bottom of your heart you do not believe in the possibility of
all these things.
But admitting that equality of conditions is an invincible fact, you contest its con-
sequences in the political world; and you attack liberty and call despotism to your
aid, and seek to assure present security at the expense of future races.
And it is here that you are clearly wrong. For there is only democracy (by this word
I mean self-government) that can diminish and make bearable the inevitable evils of
a democratic social state.
5 September 1837 (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 53).
rately while going along, and I feel full of fears and full of hopes.
j
I see great
dangers that it is possible to avert, great evils that can be avoided or limited;
and I become more and more conrmed in this belief that, to be honest
and prosperous, it is still enough for democratic nations to want to be so.
I am not unaware that several of my contemporaries have thought that
here below peoples are never masters of themselves, and that they obey
necessarily I do not knowwhat insurmountable andunintelligent forcethat
arises from previous events, from race, from soil, or from climate.
k
j. I see two distinct roads that open at the same time before the men of today. They
touch at rst, but as they get farther fromthe common point of departure, they move
away from each other and an immense space between them is found at the end. The
one leads to liberty and the other leads to servitude. And as you march along one or
along the other, liberty becomes greater and servitude heavier. Eachday that the space
separating them expands, it is more difcult to cross it to nd the good road again.
Peoples have not yet reached the place where they must choose between these two
paths. But all are getting closer to it. An irresistible force is pushing them there. I
already see the rst advancing. The others follow the rst at unequal distances.
Although I may be the last one in this holy league, if it is forming, I am content.
Some push them toward chaos, the others drag them, little by little and without
noticing, perhaps, toward the most stupefying of all servitudes. The nations hesitate,
become disturbed and falter . . .
Oh! Who will open the way, who will carry the newbanner, who will give his name
to this glorious dawning. One man, whoever he may be, cannot do it, but an asso-
ciation of men could do so. Association of disinterested, honest or enterprising men
(illegible word) sentiments . . . I will be distressed by them, but let me be allowed to
say that I am not afraid of them.
As for my opinions on all the others, I do not defend myself; the public is the
judge.
[On another page] I said at the beginning of this long work that peoples (vol. 1,
p. 90) could draw two great political consequences from the democratic social state,
that these consequences differed prodigiously from each other, but that they both
emerged from the same fact. Here I am at the end of my course, and I feel myself
more rm in this belief (YTC, CVd, pp. 2022). Tocqueville is referring to the last
paragraphs of chapter III of the rst part of the rst volume (p. 90).
k. Idea of necessity, of fatality. Explain how my system differs essentially fromthat
of Chiquet [Mignet (ed.)] and company. Do a satirical portrait of the latter without
naming individuals. Show that without claiming to be [a (ed.)] genius who em-
braces the necessities of the political order, there is a great weakness of mind and
a great distaste for work. Explain howmy systemis perfectly compatible withhuman
liberty.
Those are false and cowardly doctrines that can produce only weak men
and pusillanimous nations. Providence has created humanity neither en-
tirely independent nor completely slave. It traces around each man, it is
true, a fatal circle out of which he cannot go; but within its vast limits, man
is powerful and free; so are peoples.
m
The nations of today cannot make conditions among themnot be equal;
but it depends on them whether equality leads them to servitude or liberty,
to enlightenment or barbarism, to prosperity or misery.
n
Apply these general ideas to democracy.
That is a very beautiful piece to place at the head or the tail of the work.
[In the margin: You have not reproached me as I anticipated for seeming to fall
into the mania of the century. But I reproach myself for it because I do not want to
fall into it. You absolve me, and I accuse myself. I wake up every morning obeying a
general and eternal law that I did not know the night before.
Unfortunately, there are some of those laws] (YTC, CVa, pp. 5859).
And in the same line:
To be very careful in the preliminary or nal chapter to make it clearly understood
that I am not exclusive in my point of view. Many particular causes like climate, race,
religion inuence the ideas and the sentiments of men, independently of the social
state.
[To the side: The progress of enlightenment (illegible word), principal idea that I
have constantly found on my road and at which I have not wanted to stop.]
The particular purpose of this book is not to deny these inuences, but to put into
relief the particular inuence of the social state.
January 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 4748).
m. I am profoundly convinced that democracy can be regulated and organized; it is
not something easy, but it is something that can be done, and I add that it is the only
thing left to do (YTC, CVd, p. 19).
n. A man is never master of his destiny because death can come to seize him in the
execution of his wisest plans, but a people, which does not perish, remains always master
of itself (Rubish, 2).
1286
Notes
Page 975
There are, however, aristocracies that have engagedincommerce withardor
and cultivated industry with success. The history of the world provides
several striking examples. But in general it must be said that aristocracy is
not favorable to the development of industry and of commerce. Only ar-
istocracies of money are an exception to this rule.
Among the latter there is hardly any desire that does not need wealth to
be satised. The love of wealth becomes, so to speak, the great highway for
human passions. All the other passions lead to it or cross it.
The taste for money and the thirst for consideration and power then
blend so well in the same souls that it becomes difcult to discern if it is
out of ambition that men are greedy, or if it is out of greediness that they
are ambitious. This is what happens in England, where you want to be rich
in order to attain honors, and where you desire honors as the manifestation
of wealth. The human spirit is then gripped on all sides and swept toward
commerce and industry, which are the shortest roads that lead to opulence.
Moreover, this seems to me an exceptional and transitory fact. When
wealth has become the only sign of aristocracy, it is very difcult for the
rich to maintain themselves in power alone and to exclude all the others.
Aristocracy of birth and pure democracy are at the two extremes of the
social and political state of nations; in the middle is found the aristocracy
of money:
a
the latter is close to the aristocracy of birth in that it confers
a. The aristocracy of money does not seem lasting to me. This form of society has
something at the very same time of both aristocracy and democracy, and it leads from
the one to the other by a more or less slow but inevitable march (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 86).
notes 1287
great privileges on a small number of citizens; it is close to democracy in
that the privileges can be successively acquired by all; it often forms like a
natural transition between these two things, and you cannot say if it brings
the reign of aristocratic institutions to an end, or if it already opens the
new era of democracy.
Page 1050
I nd in the journal of my trip the following piece, which will completely
reveal the trials to which the women of America who agree to accompany
their husbands into the wilderness are subjected. There is nothingthat com-
mends this picture to the reader except its great truth.
b
. . . From time to time we came across new clearings. All these estab-
lishments were similar. I am going to describe the one where we stopped
this evening; it will leave me with a picture of all the others.
The small bell that the pioneers carefully hang around the necks of the
animals in order to nd them in the woods announced to us from afar the
approach to a clearing; soon we heard the sound of the ax that fells the trees
of the forest. As we approach, signs of destruction announce to us the pres-
ence of civilized man. Cut branches cover the road; trunks half-charred by
re or mutilated by the ax still stand upright along our passage. We con-
tinue our march and we come to a woods in which all the trees seem to
have been stricken by sudden death; in the middle of the summer, they
present nothing more than the image of winter; examining them more
closely we notice that in their bark a deep circle has been traced that, stop-
ping the circulation of the sap, did not take long to make them die; we
learn that this, in fact, is how the pioneer usually begins. Not able, during
the rst year, to cut all the trees that cover his new property, he sows corn
under their branches and, by killing them, he prevents them from shading
his crop. After this eld, an incomplete beginning, a rst stepof civilization
in the wilderness, we suddenly notice the cabin of the landowner; it is
placed in the center of a ground more carefully cultivated than the rest, but
b. See pp. 131416 of Appendix II.
notes 1288
where man still sustains an unequal struggle against the forest. There the
trees are cut, but not uprooted; their trunks still cover and clutter the
ground that they formerly shaded. Around these dried-up remains, wheat,
oak shoots, plants of all types, grasses of all kinds grow jumbled together
and increase together on an intractable and half-wild ground. At the center
of this vigorous and varied vegetation arises the house of the pioneer, or as
it is called in this country, the log house. Like the eld that surrounds it,
this rustic dwelling announces a new and hurried work; its length does not
seem to us to exceed thirty feet; its height, fteen; its walls as well as the
roof are formed from tree trunks not squared off, between which moss and
earth have been placed to prevent the cold and the rain from penetrating
the interior.
Since night was approaching, we determined to go to ask the owner of
the log house for shelter.
At the sound of our steps, the children who were rolling around amid
the debris of the forest get up precipitously and ee toward the house as
if frightened at the sight of a man, while two large half-wild dogs, ears
upright and muzzles elongated, emerge fromtheir cabin and come growl-
ing to cover the retreat of their young masters. The pioneer himself ap-
pears at the door of his dwelling; he casts a rapid and searching glance at
us, signals to his dogs to come back into the house; he serves as their ex-
ample himself without showing that our sight excites his curiosity or his
concern.
We enter the log house. The interior does not recall the cabins of the
peasants of Europe; you nd more of the superuous and less of the
necessary.
There is only a single window at which hangs a muslin curtain; on a
hearth of beaten earth crackles a great re that lights up the whole interior
of the building; above this hearth you notice a beautiful rie witha grooved
barrel, a deer skin, eagle feathers; to the right of the chimney a map of the
United States is spread which the wind aps and agitates by coming
through the chinks in the wall; near it, on a shelf made froma rough-hewn
plank, are placed a few volumes. I notice the Bible, the rst six cantos of
Milton and two plays of Shakespeare. Along the walls are placed trunks
instead of armoires; in the center is found a crudely worked table, whose
notes 1289
feet, made from wood still green and with the bark still on, seem to have
grown by themselves out of the earth on the spot occupied by the table; I
see on this table a teapot of English porcelain, some silver spoons, a few
chipped cups and some newspapers.
The master of this dwelling has the angular features and slender limbs
that distinguish the inhabitant of New England; it is clear that this man
was not borninthe wilderness where we meet him; his physical constitution
is enough to announce that his rst years were spent within an intellectual
society, and that he belongs to this restless, reasoning and adventurous race
that does coldly what only the ardor of the passions explains and which
subjects itself for a time to uncivilized life the better to conquer and to
civilize the wilderness.
When the pioneer sees that we are crossing the threshold of his dwelling,
he comes to meet us and extends his hand, as is the custom; but his phys-
iognomy remains rigid; he speaks rst to interrogate us about what is hap-
pening in the world, and when he has satised his curiosity, he becomes
silent; you would think him fatigued by troublesome individuals and by
chatter. We interrogate him in turn, and he gives us all the information we
need; then he occupies himself without eagerness but diligently with pro-
viding for our needs. Seeing him devote himself in this way to these kind
attentions, why, despite ourselves, do we feel our gratitude cool? It is be-
cause he, while exercising hospitality, seems to be submitting to a painful
necessity of his fate; he sees a duty that his position imposes on him, not
a pleasure.
At the other end of the room is seated a woman who is rocking a young
child on her knees. She nods to us without interrupting herself. Like the
pioneer, this woman is in the prime of life; her appearance seems superior
to her condition; her dress still announces even now a barely extinguished
taste for nery; but her delicate limbs seemweakened; her features are tired;
her eyes gentle and serious. You see spread over her whole physiognomy a
religious resignation, a profound peace of the passions, and I do not know
what natural and tranquil steadfastness that meets all the evils of life with-
out fearing them or defying them.
Her children crowd around her; they are full of health, excitement, and
energy; they are true sons of the wilderness. Their mother from time to
notes 1290
time gives them looks full of melancholy and joy. To see their strength and
her weakness, you would say that she has exhausted herself by giving them
life, and that she does not regret what they have cost her.
The house inhabited by the emigrants has no interior wall or attic.
Into the single room that it contains, the entire family comes to nd shel-
ter at night. This dwelling by itself alone forms like a small world; it is
the ark of civilization lost amid an ocean of leaves. One hundred steps
further the eternal forest spreads its shadow and the wilderness begins
again.
Page 1052
It is not equality of conditions that makes men immoral and irreligious.
But when men are immoral and irreligious at the same time as being equal,
the effects of immorality and irreligion occur in the open easily because
men have little inuence on each other and because no class exists that can
take charge of keeping order in society. Equality of conditions never creates
corruption of morals, but sometimes it allows it to happen.
Pages 108587
If you put aside all those who do not think and those who dare not say
what they think, you will still nd that the immense majority of Americans
seem satised with the political institutions that govern them; and in fact,
I believe that they are. I regard this cast of public opinion as an indication,
but not as a proof of the absolute goodness of American laws. National
pride, the satisfaction given by the laws to certain dominant passions, for-
tuitous events, unnoticed vices, and more than all of that the interest of a
majority that silences those who oppose it, can for a long time delude an
entire people as well as one man.
See England in the whole course of the XVIIIth century. Never did a
nation lavish more praise on itself; no people was ever more perfectly con-
tent with itself; everything then was good in its constitution, everything
notes 1291
there was irreproachable, even its most visible faults. Today a multitude of
Englishmen seems to be busy only with proving that this constitution was
defective in a thousand places. Who was right, the English people of the
last century, or the English people of today?
The same thing happened in France. It is certain that under Louis XIV
the great mass of the nation was passionate about the form of govern-
ment that then ruled society. They are very much mistaken who believe
that the French character of that time was debased. In that century in
France, there could be servitude in certain respects, but the spirit of
servitude was certainly not found. The writers of the time felt a sort of
real enthusiasm in raising the royal power above all others, and there
was no one, even including the obscure peasant in his cottage, who did
not take pride in the glory of the sovereign and who did not die with
joy while crying: Long live the King! These same forms have become
odious to us. Who was wrong, the French of Louis XIV, or the French of
today?
So it is not only on the predispositions of a people that you must rely
in order to judge its laws, since from one century to another they change,
but on more elevated grounds and a more general experience.
The love that a people shows for its laws proves only one thing: that you
must not hasten to change them.
Page 1169
In the chapter to which this note relates I have just shown one danger; I
want to point out another rarer one, but one that, if it ever appeared, would
be very much more to fear.
If the love of material enjoyments andthe taste for well-beingthat equal-
ity naturally suggests to men, while taking holdof the spirit of a democratic
people, came to ll them entirely, national mores would become so anti-
pathetic to the military spirit that armies themselves would perhaps end up
loving peace despite the particular interest that leads them to desire war.
Placed inthe middle of this universal softness, soldiers wouldcome tothink
that it was indeed better to rise gradually, but comfortably and without
efforts, in peace, than to buy a rapid advancement at the cost of the strains
notes 1292
and the miseries of camp life. In this spirit, the army would take up arms
without zeal and would use them without energy; it would allow itself to
be led to the enemy rather than marching there by itself.
You must not believe that this pacic inclination of the army would
distance it from revolutions, for revolutions, and above all military revo-
lutions, which are usually very quick, often carry great risks, but do not
require extended efforts; they satisfy ambition at less cost than war; in rev-
olutions you only risk your life, to which the men of democracies are less
attached than to their comforts.
There is nothing more dangerous for the liberty and the tranquillity of
a people than an army that is afraid of war, because, no longer seeking its
grandeur and its inuence on the elds of battle, it wants to nd them
elsewhere. So it could happen that the men who compose a democratic
army would lose the interests of the citizen without gaining the virtues of
the soldier, and that the army would cease to be warlike without ceasing to
be turbulent.
I will repeat here what I already said above. The remedy for suchdangers
is not in the army, but in the country. A democratic people that maintains
manly mores will always as needed nd warrior mores in its soldiers.
Page 1200
Men put the grandeur of the idea of unity in the means; God, in the end;
the result is that this idea of grandeur leads us to a thousand petty things.
To force all men to march with the same step, toward the same purpose,
that is a human idea. To introduce an innite variety in actions, but to
combine them so that all these actions lead by a thousand paths toward the
accomplishment of a great design, that is a divine idea.
The human idea of unity is almost always sterile; that of God, im-
mensely fruitful. Men think to attest to their grandeur by simplifying the
means. It is the purpose of God which is simple, His means vary innitely.
c
c. Every uniform rule is necessarily tyrannical because men are never alike (unity,
notes 1293
Page 1206
A democratic people is not only led by its tastes to centralize power; the
passions of all those who lead it push it there constantly.
You can easily predict that almost all of the ambitious and capable
citizens contained within a democratic country will work without let-up
to expand the attributions of the social power, because all hope to direct
it one day. It is a waste of time to want to prove to those men that ex-
treme centralization can harm the State, since they are centralizing for
themselves.
Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any men except
those who are very disinterested or very mediocre who want to decentralize
power. The rst are rare and the others powerless.
Page 1247
I have often asked myself what would happen if, amid the softness of dem-
ocratic mores and as a result of the restless spirit of the army, a military
government was ever established among some of the nations of today.
I think that the government itself would not be far from the portrait
that I drew in the chapter to which this note relates, and that it would not
reproduce the savage features of the military oligarchy.
I am persuaded that in this case there would be a kind of fusionbetween
the habits of the clerk and those of the soldier. The administration would
take on something of the military spirit, and the military some of the prac-
tices of the civil administration. The result of this would be a regular, clear,
plain, absolute command; the people made into the image of the army, and
society kept like a barracks.
Page 126061
You cannot say in an absolute and general way that the greatest danger of
today is license or tyranny, anarchy or despotism. Both are equally to be
notes 1294
feared and can emerge as easily from the same single cause, which is general
apathy, fruit of individualism; this apathy means that the day when the
executive power gathers some strength, it is able to oppress, and that the
day after, when a party can put thirty men in the eld, the latter is equally
able to oppress. Since neither the one nor the other is able to establish any-
thing lasting, what makes them succeed easily prevents them from suc-
ceeding for long. They arise because nothing resists them, and they fall
because nothing sustains them.
What is important to combat is therefore much less anarchy or des-
potism than apathy, which can create almost indifferently the one or the
other.
1295
s4s4s4s4s4
a p p e ndi x 1
Journey to Lake Oneida
a
On July 8, 1831, at sunrise, we left the small village called Fort Brewerton,
and we began to advance toward the northeast.
About one mile from the house of our host, a path opens in the forest;
we hastened to take it. The heat was beginning to become uncomfortable.
After a windy night had followed a morning without any cool breeze. Soon
we found ourselves sheltered from the rays of the sun and in the middle of
one of these deep forests of the NewWorld whose somber andwildmajesty
grips the imagination and lls the soul with a sort of religious terror.
How to paint such a spectacle? On a marshy terrain where a thousand
small streams, not yet imprisoned by the hand of man, run and are lost in
liberty, nature has scattered pell-mell and with an incredible profusion the
seeds of nearly all the plants that creep on the earth or rise above the soil.
Over our heads was spread as it were a vast dome of greenery. Under
this thick veil and amid the humid depths of the woods, the eye saw an
immense confusion; a sort of chaos. Trees of all ages, foliage of all colors,
herbs, fruits, owers of a thousand species, intermingled, intertwined in
the same places. Generations of trees have followed each other there with-
a. Journey to Lake Oneida and A Fortnight in the Wilderness were written by Tocque-
ville during his journey in America. If he had not wanted to publish them, it was because
he was concerned about not entering into competition on this point with Beaumont.
Journey to Lake Oneida was published for the rst time by Beaumont in uvres et cor-
respondance ine dites dAlexis de Tocqueville, OCB, V, pp. 16171. It has recently been in-
cluded in Voyages en Sicile et aux E
tats-Unis, OC, V, 1, pp. 33641. Tocqueville presented

a rst version in a letter of 25 July 1831 to his sister-in-law, Alexandrine (reproducedwith
some modications in OCB, VII, pp. 3945). The family archives contain a copy of the
text in the hand of Mary Mottley and corrected by Tocqueville. The episode alsoappears
in Marie, II, pp. 4546 and 329.
j ourney to lake onei da 1296
out interruption for centuries, and the earth is covered with their remains.
Some seem struck down yesterday; others, already half settled into the
earth, present nothing more than a hollow and at surface; others nally
are reduced to dust and serve as fertilizer for their last shoots. In the midst
of them a thousand diverse plants hasten to emerge in their turn. They slip
between these immobile cadavers, creep along their surface, penetrate be-
neath their withered bark, lift up and scatter their powdery remains.
b
It is
like a struggle between death and life. Sometimes, we happened to en-
counter an immense tree that the wind had uprooted, but the rows are so
close together in the forest that, despite its weight, it was not able to make
it to the ground. It still balanced its dry branches in the air.
A solemn silence reigned amid this solitude; you saw only a few or no
animated creatures, man was missing and yet it was not a desert. Every-
thing, on the contrary, showed a productive force in nature unknown else-
where; everything was activity; the air seemed impregnated with an odor
of vegetation. It seemed as if you heard an internal noise that revealed the
work of creation and as if you saw sap and life circulating in always open
channels.
It was amid this imposing solitude and in the light of an uncertain day
that we walked for several hours, without hearing any noise other thanthat
made by our horses trampling underfoot the leaves piled up by several win-
ters or pushing with difculty through the dry branches that covered the
path. We kept silent ourselves, our souls were lled with the grandeur and
the novelty of the spectacle. Finally we heard the echo of the rst blows of
an ax which announced in the distance the presence of a European. Felled
trees, burned and blackened trunks, some plants useful to the life of man
sown amid a confused mixture of a hundred various remnants, led us to
the habitation of the pioneer. At the center of a rather narrowcircle drawn
b. Several of these sentences are found word for word in the Democracy. Cf. pp. 37
38 of the rst volume and 45961 of the second volume.
around it by iron and re arose the crude house of the forerunner of Eu-
ropean civilization. It was like the oasis in the middle of the desert.
After conversing a few moments with the inhabitant of this place, we
resumed our course and a half-hour later we arrived at a shermans cabin
built on the very shores of the lake that we were coming to visit.
Lake Oneida is situated in the middle of low hills and at the center of
still respectable forests. A belt of thick foliage surrounds it on all sides, and
its waters moisten the roots of trees that are reected in its transparent and
tranquil surface. The isolated cabin of a sherman rose alone on its shores.
Moreover, no sail appeared on its entire surface; you did not evensee smoke
rise above its woods, for the European, without having completely taken
possession of its banks, had already approached closely enough to exile the
numerous and warlike tribe that had once given the lake its name.
About one mile fromthe shore on which we stood were two islands, oval
in form and of equal length. These islands are covered by a wood so thick
that it entirely conceals the earththat supports it; youwouldsay twoclumps
of trees oating peacefully on the surface of the lake.
No road passes near this place; you do not see in these regions great
industrial establishments, or places famous for their picturesque beauty. Yet
it was not chance that had led us close to this solitary lake. It was on the
contrary the goal and the end of our journey.
Already many years ago, a book entitled Journey to Lake Oneida had
fallen into my hands.
c
The author told about a young Frenchman and his
c. Sophie von la Roche, Erscheinungen am See Oneida (Leipzig: H. Graff, 1798), 3
vols. Tocqueville, who tried to learn German on several occasions, probably had a ru-
dimentary knowledge of this language only when he was preparing the Old Regime. He
must have read the abridged version of the book of Sophie von la Roche, which was
published in French by Joachim Heinrich Campe with the title Voyage dun Allemand
au Lac One ida, as part of the collection Bibliothe `que ge ographique et instructive des jeunes
gens, ou recueil de voyages . . . (Paris: J. E. Gabriel Dufour, 1803), X, pp. 1170. See Victor
Lange, Visitors to Lake Oneida, An Account of the Background of Sophie von la
Roches novel Erscheinungen am See Oneida, Symposium 2, no. 1 (1948): 4878. It is
not the only time that the reading of a novel pushed Tocqueville to travel. The reading
wife, chased from their country by the storms of our rst Revolution, who
had come to seek a refuge on one of the islands that the lake surrounds
with its waters.
d
There, separated from the entire universe, far from the
tempests of Europe, and rejected by the society that gave them birth, these
two unfortunates lived for each other, consoled each other in their
misfortune.
The book had left a deep and lasting mark on my soul. Whether this
effect on me was due to the talent of the author, to the real charmof events,
or to the inuence of age, I could not say; but the remembrance of the two
French inhabitants of Lake Oneida had not faded from my memory. How
many times had I not envied the tranquil delights of their solitude. The
domestic happiness, the charms of the married state, love itself mingling
in my mind with the image of the solitary island where my imagination
had created a new Eden. This story, told to my traveling companion, had
deeply moved him in turn. We often happened to talk about it, and we
always ended up repeating either with laughter or with sadness: happiness
in the world exists only on the shores of Lake Oneida. When events that
were impossible for us to foresee posted us both to America, this memory
returned to us with more force. We promised ourselves to go to visit our
two French compatriots if they still existed, or at least to travel over to their
dwelling-place. Admire here the strange power of the imagination over the
mind of man; these wild places, this silent and immobile lake, these islands
covered with greenery did not strike us as new objects; on the contrary, we
seemed to see once again a place where we had passed part of our youth.
We hurried to enter the shermans cabin. The man was in the woods.
An old woman lived there alone. She came limping to greet us at the door-
way of her house. What do you call this green island that arises a mile
from here in the middle of the lake? we said to her. It is called French-
of Kenilworth by Walter Scott will be the origin of an evening excursion and of an
account very similar to this one. See note e of p. 118 of the rst volume.
Certain passages of this account recall the fth promenade of [Rousseaus] Re veries
du promeneur solitaire.
d. For a bit of powder and lead, they bought the island from the Indians. Letter
of Tocqueville to his sister-in-law, Alexandrine (Batavia, 25 July 1831), YTC, BIa2, and
OCB, VII, p. 40.
mans island, she answered. Do you know why it has been given that
name? I am told it was named this because of a Frenchman who, many
years ago, came there to live. Was he alone? No, he brought his young
wife with him. Do they still live in this place? Twenty-one years ago,
when I came to settle in this place, the French were no longer on the is-
land.
e
I recall that I had the curiosity to go to visit it. This island that
appears so wild to you from here was then a beautiful place; its interior was
carefully cultivated, the house of the French was placed in the middle of
an orchard, surrounded by fruits and owers. A large vinestock climbed up
its walls and then surrounded it on all sides, but without an inhabitant, the
house had already fallen into ruins. So what became of the two French?
The woman died, the man abandoned the island, and we dont knowwhat
became of him since. Could you entrust us with the boat that is tied by
your door in order to cross the part of the lake that separates us from the
island? Very willingly, but it is a long way to row and the work is hard
for men who are not used to it, and besides what could you see of interest
in a place that has become wild again?
Since we hastened, without answering her, to put the dingy in the water,
she said, I see what it is, you want to buy this island; the soil is good and
land is not yet expensive in our district. We answered her that we were
travelers. Then, she started again, you are undoubtedly relatives of the
Frenchman, and he charged you with visiting his property. Even less,
we replied, we do not even know his name.
f
The good woman shook
her head with incredulity and we, maneuvering the oars, begantoadvance
rapidly toward Frenchmans island.
During this short crossing, we kept a profound silence; our hearts were
full of sweet and painful emotions. As we approached, it made less sense
to us that this island could have been inhabited once, so wild were its sur-
e. In his letter to Alexandrine, Tocqueville writes instead: and they were still there
when we ourselves came, now twenty-two years ago, to live in this place. Ibidem, p. 41.
f. Devatines, Desvatins, De Wattines, Vatine, and others, depending on the different
versions of the story. Andre Jardin and George Pierson (Lettres dAme rique, p. 94, note
3) believe him to be a member of the family La Croix de Watines.
roundings. Little was needed for us to believe ourselves the victims of a false
report. Finally we reached its bank, and slipping under the immense
branches that the trees projected over the lake, we began to penetrate fur-
ther. We rst crossed a circle of century-old trees that seemed to defendthe
approach to the place. Beyond the rampart of foliage we suddenly discov-
ered another sight. A sparse undergrowth and a young cluster of trees lled
the whole interior of the island. In the forests that we had crossed in the
morning, we had often seen man struggling, hand to hand, against nature,
and succeeding, though with difculty, to remove its energetic and wild
character in order to bend it to his laws. Here, on the contrary, we saw the
forest reclaiming its dominion, marching once again toward the conquest
of the wilderness, defying man and making the eeting traces of his victory
disappear rapidly.
It was easy to recognize that a diligent hand had once cleared the place
now occupied in the center of the island by the young generation of trees
that I spoke about. You did not nd old trunks spread over the debris.
Everything there, on the contrary, smacked of youth. It was clear that the
surrounding trees had grown offshoots in the middle of the abandoned
elds, weeds had grown in the place that formerly supported the crop of
the exile, brambles and parasitic plants had come to retake possession of
their former domain. Scarcely here and there did you nd the trace of a
fence or the sign of a eld. For an hour we tried unsuccessfully to nd a
few vestiges of the abandoned house in the foliage of the woods and amid
the undergrowth that cluttered the ground. This rural luxury that the wife
of the sherman had just described to us, the lawn, the owerbed, the ow-
ers, the fruits, these products of civilization that an ingenious tenderness
had introduced into the middle of a wilderness, all had disappeared with
the beings who had lived there. We were going to give up our effort, when
we noticed an apple tree half dead of old age; this began to put us on the
track. Near there a plant that we at rst took for a creeper climbed along
the highest trees intertwining with their slender trunks or hanging like a
garland of foliage from their branches; examining it more closely, we rec-
ognized a vinestock. Then we were able to judge with certainty that we
were on the very emplacement chosen, forty years ago, by our two unfor-
tunate compatriots to make their last refuge. But barely by digging in the
thick bed of leaves that covered the soil, were we able to nda fewremnants
falling into rot that in a bit of time would have ceased to exist. As for the
very remains of the woman who was not afraid to exchange the delights of
civilized life for a tomb in a deserted island of the New World, it was im-
possible for us to nd a trace. Had the exile left this precious trust in the
wilderness? Had he, on the contrary, carried it to the place where he himself
ended his life? No one could tell us that.
Perhaps those who will read these lines will not imagine the sentiments
that they recount and will treat them as exaggeration and chimera? But I
will say nonetheless that, with our hearts full of emotion, agitated by fears
and hopes, and animated by a sort of religious sentiment, we devoted our-
selves to this minute research and pursued the traces of these two beings
whose name, family and, in part, whose story were unknown to us. They
attracted our attention only because they had felt in these very places the
sufferings and joys that have their source in all hearts and are therefore of
interest to all hearts.
g
Is there a misery greater than that of this man!
Here is an unfortunate man whom human society has offended; his fel-
lows have rejected, banished him and forced him to renounce their com-
pany and thento ee fromthemintothe wilderness. Asingle beingattached
herself to his steps, followed him into seclusion, came to dress the wounds
of his soul and to substitute for the joys of the world the most penetrating
emotions of the heart. There he is reconciled to his destiny. He has for-
gotten revolutions, parties, cities, his family, his rank, his fortune; he nally
breathes. His wife dies. Death comes to strike her and it spares him. Un-
fortunate man! What is to become of him? Is he going to remain alone in
the wilderness? Will he return to a society where he has been forgotten for
a long time? He is no longer made either for seclusion or for the world; he
would no longer know how to live either with men or without them; he is
neither a savage nor a civilized man; he is nothing but a remnant similar to
those trees of the American forest that the wind has had the strength to
uproot, but not to pull down; he is upright, but he is no longer living.
g. . . . despite its natural beauty, this island by itself was of only slight interest to
me; but a man had lived there, and this man was French, unfortunate and proscribed!
Beaumont, Marie, II, p. 329.
After traveling across the island in all directions, after visiting its slightest
remnants, and after listening to the icy silence that now reigns beneath its
shadows, we retook the road to the continent.
h
Not without regret, I saw the vast rampart of greenery fade into the
distance. It had for so many years known how to defend the two exiles
against the Europeans bullet and the savages arrow, but it was not able to
hide their cottage from the invisible blows of death.
j
h. On July 8, 1831, returning from his journey to Frenchmans Island, Tocqueville
wrote: What most intensely interested and moved me, not only since I have been in
America, but also since I have traveled, is this trip. Pocket notebook 1, YTC, BIIa, and
Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 162. The emotion seems to have been so profound that henceforth
solitude and melancholy would always be associated in the mind of Tocqueville withthe
American wilderness.
j. George W. Pierson, in Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (pp. 197205), shows
that the true history of the two French is far from the romantic version that Tocqueville
learned about. The accounts of various travelers who met them indicate that the two
French had arrived in America in 1786, and not at the time of the French Revolution,
and that they had moved to Oneida only after being ruined in various enterprises. For
some time, they inhabited the island with their three children and, far from enjoying
their condition, everything leads us to believe that, on the contrary, they hopedfor noth-
ing other than to return to France. Their little appreciation for the inhabitants of the
country seems to have put them on bad terms with their neighbors. They seem in the
end to have found the money necessary to go back to France.
Tocqueville and Beaumont were not able to stop themselves from preferring the ver-
sion of Sophie von la Roche. Like the French of this story, they left France after a rev-
olution; their future was equally uncertain. What event could occur during their absence
that would force themto become exiles inAmerica? Hownot to let yourself be captivated
by a drama that has as a setting an island and American nature, great and wild? Can we
blame Tocqueville for having embellished the story and for having dreamed so roman-
tically about the remains of the young French woman?
Does the man who no longer lives have some appreciable advantage over the man
who has never been? Tocqueville asked himself in Visit to Kenilworth. They both exist
only by the will of those who are occupied with them. If the ctional being is more
attractive than the real being, why would he occupy their thought less? (YTC, CXIb12,
and OCB, VII, p. 119).
1303
s4s4s4s4s4
a p p e ndi x 2
A Fortnight in the Wilderness
a
Written aboard the steamboat Superior.
Begun the rst of August 1831.
One of the things that most intensely piqued our curiosity when coming
to America was to travel across the farthest limits of European civilization
and, if time permitted, even to visit a few of those Indian tribes that have
preferred to ee into the most untamed wilderness than to yield to what
whites call the delights of the life of society. But it is more difcult than
you think to nd the wilderness today. From New York, as we advanced
toward the northwest, the goal of our journey seemed to ee before us. We
traveled through some places famous in the history of the Indians; we en-
counteredvalleys that they named; we crossedrivers that still carrythename
of their tribes, but everywhere the hut of the savage has given way to the
house of the civilized man. The woods had fallen; the uninhabited places
took on life.
We seemed, however, to follow in the footsteps of the natives. People
said to us, ten years ago they were here; there, ve years ago; there, twoyears
ago. In the place where you see the most beautiful church of the village, a
person told us, I cut down the rst tree of the forest. Here, another told
a. Beaumont published A Fortnight in the Wilderness in the December 1, 1860, issue
of the Revue des deux mondes, pp. 565606. He included it afterward in his edition of
the works of Tocqueville (OCB, V, pp. 173258). In the new edition of the works, the
text appears in the volume of the notes of the American journey (OC, V, 1, pp. 34287).
Also see Beaumont, Marie, II, pp. 5691.
We have used the copy that exists at Yale (YTC, BIIIa), which contains variants of
the version published by Beaumont.
a fortni ght i n the wi ldernes s 1304
us, the great council of the Iroquois confederation took place. And what
has become of the Indians, I said? The Indians, our host replied, they
are beyond the Great Lakes, I do not know where. It is a race that is be-
coming extinct; they are not made for civilization: it kills them.
Manbecomes accustomed to everything. Todeathonthe elds of battle,
to death in hospitals, to kill and to suffer. He gets used to all sights. An
ancient people, the rst and the legitimate master of the American conti-
nent, melts away daily like snowin the rays of the sunanddisappears before
your eyes from the surface of the earth. In the same areas and in its place,
another race increases with a still more surprising rapidity. By this race for-
ests fall, swamps are drained; lakes like seas, immense rivers vainly resist its
triumphant march. Uninhabited places become villages, villages become
cities. The daily witness to these marvels, the American sees nothing in all
of that to astonish him. This unbelievable destruction, this still more sur-
prising increase seems to him the usual course of the events of this world.
He becomes accustomed to it as if to the immutable order of nature.
Thus, always in search of savages and of the wilderness, we traveled
across the 360 miles that separate New York from Buffalo.
The rst object that struck our eyes was a large number of Indians who
had gathered that day in Buffalo to receive payment for the lands they had
surrendered to the United States.
I do not believe I have ever felt a more complete disappointment than
at the sight of these Indians. I was full of memories of M. de Chateau-
briand
b
and of Cooper, and I expected to see, in the natives of America,
b. It was at Oneida Castle that the travelers had seen Indians for the rst time. Some
among them had run after their coach asking for alms. We met the last among them
on our route writes Tocqueville to his mother about the Indians; they ask for alms and
are as inoffensive as their fathers were formidable. YTC, BIa2, and OCB, VII, p. 38. See
Beaumont, Lettres dAme rique, p. 94.
Tocqueville had elsewhere described Atala as follows:
Concerning this, do you know what Atala or someone like her is? I must give you the
description so that you can judge her resemblance to the one of M. de Chateaubriand.
Atala is an Indian woman of a very dark cafe au lait color, whose straight and shining
hair falls perfectly straight to the small of her back. She usually has a large, almost
savages on whose face nature had left the trace of some of those lofty virtues
that the spirit of liberty brings forth. I thought I would nd in them men
whose bodies had been developed by hunting and war and who would lose
nothing by being seen naked. You can judge my astonishment by compar-
ing this portrait with the one that is about to follow:
The Indians that I saw that night were small in stature; their limbs, as
much as you could judge them under their clothing, were spindly and a bit
wiry; their skin, instead of presenting a tint of reddish copper, as is com-
monly believed, was of a bronze so dark at rst glance it seemed to be very
close to that of mulattos. Their black and shining hair fell with a singular
straightness onto their necks and shoulders. Their mouths were in general
aquiline nose, a wide mouth equipped with gleaming teeth and two large black eyes
that in daylight are quite similar to those of a cat at night. Do not think that with
this natural beauty she neglects her appearance. Not at all. First of all, around her
eyes, she draws a black stripe; then underneath, a beautiful red stripe; then, a blue
one; then, a green one; until her face resembles a rainbow. Then she hangs fromeach
ear a kind of set of Chinese bells that weighs a half-pound. In addition, those who
are the most worldly put through their nostrils a large ring of tin that hangs over their
mouths and produces the most gracious effect. They also add a necklace composed
of large discs on which various wild animals are carved. Their garment consists of a
type of cloth tunic that falls a little below their knees. They are usually draped with
a blanket that at night serves as their bed. You are still not at the end of the portrait.
The style in the woods is to walk pigeon-toed. I do not know if it is more unnatural
than to walk with the feet pointed outward; but our European eyes get used to this
kind of beauty with difculty. Do you imagine that to achieve this effect the Indian
woman binds her feet from childhood, so that at twenty years of age, the two tips of
her feet face each other while walking. Then she elicits all compliments andis reputed
to be among the most fashionable. All that I know is that I would not want to take
the place of Chactas near her for all the gold in the world. The Indian men are,
moreover, better than their women. They are large, strapping young men, built like
stags and with their agility. They have a charming expression when they smile and
resemble devils incarnate when they are angry (letter to the vicomtesse Hippolyte de
Tocqueville, Albany, 7 September 1831, YTC, BIa2).
Beaumont was of the same opinion: I do not know up to now where M. de Cha-
teaubriand took the type for his Atala. I see a few Indian men who are fairly good intheir
person, but the women are frightful andrepulsive. Letter toErnest de Chabrol (2August
1831), Lettres dAme rique, p. 114.
inordinately large, the facial expression ignoble and nasty. Their physiog-
nomy proclaimed their profound depravity that only a long abuse of the
benets of civilization can give. You would have said men belonging to the
lowest population of our great European cities. And yet they were still sav-
ages. With the vices that they got from us, was mingled something of the
barbaric and uncivilized that made them a hundred times still more re-
pulsive. These Indians did not carry weapons. They were covered by Eu-
ropean clothes, but they did not use them in the same way we did.
c
You
saw that they were not used to them and still found themselves imprisoned
in their folds. With the ornaments of Europe, they joined products of a
barbaric luxury, feathers, enormous earrings andshell necklaces. Themove-
ments of these men were rapid and disorderly, their voices shrill and dis-
cordant, their looks restless and savage. At rst sight, you would have been
tempted to see in each one of them only a beast of the forest to which
education had been quite able to give the appearance of a man, but that
had nonetheless remained an animal. These weak and depraved creatures
belonged, however, to one of the most famous tribes of the former Amer-
ican world. We had before us, and it is pitiful to say so, the last remnants
of the celebrated Confederation of the Iroquois whose manly wisdom was
no less known than their courage and who for a long time held the balance
between the two greatest European nations.
You would be wrong, however, to want to judge the Indian race on the
basis of this ill-formed example, this lost offshoot of a wild tree that had
grown up in the mire of our cities. That would be to repeat the error that
we committed ourselves and that we had the occasion to recognize later.
That evening we left the city and a little distance from the last houses
we saw an Indian lying along the road. It was a young man. He was mo-
tionless and we thought he was dead. Afewstied groans that escapedpain-
fully from his chest let us know that he was still alive and was ghting one
of those dangerous bouts of drunkenness caused by brandy. The sun had
c. Some were covered with blankets; some women [with] pants and hats; some men
with womens clothing (alphabetic notebook A, 20 July 1831, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage,
OC, V, 1, p. 224).
already set; the ground was becoming more and more damp. Everything
announced that this unfortunate young man would give up his last breath
there, unless he were helped. It was the time when the Indians left Buffalo
to go back to their village; from time to time a group of them happened
to pass by near us. They approached, brutally turned over the body of their
compatriot inorder to see who he was andthenbegantowalkagainwithout
deigning to respond to our comments. Most of these men were drunk
themselves. Finally a young Indian woman came along who at rst seemed
to approach with a certain interest. I thought that it was the wife or the
sister of the dying man. She looked at him attentively, called his name out
loud, felt his heart and, being assured that he was alive, tried to draw him
out of his lethargy. But since her efforts were futile, we saw her become
furious with this inanimate body that lay before her. She struck his head,
twisted his face with her hands, trampled on him. While abandoning her-
self to these acts of ferocity, she let out inarticulate and wild cries that, at
this time, still seem to reverberate in my ears. Finally we believed that we
had to intervene, and we ordered her peremptorily to withdraw. She
obeyed, but we heard her let out a burst of barbaric laughter as she went
away.
Back in the city, we told several people about the young Indian. We
spoke about the imminent danger to which he was exposed; we even of-
fered to pay his expenses at an inn. All of that was futile. We couldnt get
anyone to get involved. Some said to us: These men are used to drinking
to excess and to sleeping onthe ground. They do not die of suchaccidents.
Others asserted that probably the Indian would die; but youreadthis half-
expressed thought on their lips: What is the life of an Indian? That, deep
down, was the general sentiment. Amidst this society so well-ordered, so
prudish, so full of morality and virtue, you nd a complete insensitivity;
a sort of cold and implacable egoism when it concerns the natives of
America. The inhabitants of the United States do not hunt the Indians
with hounds and horn as the Spanish of Mexico did. But it is the same
ruthless sentiment that animates the European race here as well as every-
where else.
How many times in the course of our travels did we not meet honest
city dwellers who said to us in the evening, calmly seated in a corner of
their home: Each day the number of Indians is decreasing. It isnt that we
often wage war on them, but the brandy that we sell to them at a low cost
removes more of them every year than we could do with our arms. This
world belongs to us, they added; God, by denying its rst inhabitants the
ability to become more civilized, destined themin advance to an inevitable
destruction. The true owners of the continent are those who knowhowto
make the most of its riches.
Satised with his reasoning the American goes to church where he hears
a minister of the Gospel repeat to him that men are brothers and that the
eternal being, who made them all on the same model, gave to all of them
the duty to help one another.
* * * * *
On July 19 at ten oclock in the morning we boarded the steamboat Ohio,
taking us toward Detroit. A very strong breeze blew from the northwest
and gave the waters of Lake Erie all the appearance of the agitationof ocean
waves. To the right spread a limitless horizon, to the left we kept close to
the southern coasts of the lake which we often approached close enough
to hear voices. These coasts were perfectly at and differed from those of
all the lakes that I had had the occasion to visit in Europe. Nor did they
resemble the shores of the sea. Immense forests shaded them and formed
a sort of thick and rarely broken belt around the lake.
d
From time to time,
however, the country suddenly changes appearance. Coming around a
woods, you notice the elegant spire of a church steeple, houses sparkling
with whiteness and cleanliness, shops. Two steps further, the primitive and
seemingly impenetrable forest regains its sway and again its foliage is re-
ected in the waters of the lake.
Those who have traveled throughout the United States will nd in this
picture a striking emblem of American society. Everything there is abrupt
d. I believe that in one of my letters, I complained that you found hardly any more
forest in America; I must make amends here. Not only do you nd forest and woods in
America; but the entire country is still only a vast forest, in the middle of which some
clearings have been made. Letter of Tocqueville to his mother (Auburn, 17 July 1831),
YTC, BIa1, and OCB, VII, pp. 3637.
and unexpected; everywhere extreme civilization and nature abandoned to
itself are found together and, in a way, face to face. It is not what you imag-
ine in France. As for me, in my travelers illusionsand what class of men
does not have its ownI imagined something entirely different. I had no-
ticed that in Europe, the more or less isolated state in which a province or
a city was found, its wealth or its poverty, its small or large size exercised
an immense inuence on the ideas, the mores, the whole civilization of its
inhabitants and often put the difference of several centuries between the
various parts of the same territory.
I thought it was so with more reason in the NewWorld, and that a coun-
try, populated in an incomplete and partial manner as America, hadtopres-
ent all the conditions of existence and offer the image of society across all
the ages. So America, according to me, was the only country in which you
could follow step by step all the transformations that the social state im-
posed on man and in which it was possible to see those transformations like
a vast chain that descended link by link from the opulent patrician of the
cities to the savage of the wilderness. There, in a word, I expected to nd
the entire history of humanity enclosed within a few degrees of longitude.
Nothing is true inthis picture. Of all the countries inthe world, America
is the least appropriate for providing the spectacle that I was coming to nd
there. In America, still more than in Europe, there is only a single society.
e
It can be rich or poor, humble or brilliant, commercial or agricultural, but
everywhere it is composed of the same elements. The leveling effect of an
equal civilization has passed over it. The manthat youhave left inthe streets
of New York, you will nd again in the middle of the nearly impenetrable
wilderness; the same clothing, same spirit, same language, same habits,
same pleasures. Nothing rustic, nothing naive, nothing that feels like the
wilderness, nothing that even resembles our villages. The reason for this
singular state of things is easy to understand. The portions of the territories
populated earliest and most completely have achieved a high level of civ-
ilization, instruction has been lavished there profusely, the spirit of equality
[{the republican spirit}] has given a singularly uniform color to the internal
habits of life. Now, note it well, these are precisely the same men who go
e. See p. 491 of the second volume.
each year to populate the wilderness. In Europe, each man lives and dies
on the soil where he was born. In America, nowhere do you nd repre-
sentatives of a race that has multiplied in the wilderness after living there
for a long time, unknown to the world and left to its own efforts. Those
who inhabit these isolated places arrived there yesterday. They came with
the mores, the ideas, the needs of civilization. They yield to savage life
only what the imperious nature of things requires of them. Fromthat the
most bizarre contrasts result. You pass without transition from the wil-
derness to the street of a city, from the most wild scenes to the most pleas-
ant pictures of civilized life. If night surprises you, do not force yourself
to take shelter at the foot of a tree; you have a great chance of arriving in
a village where you will nd everything, even including French fashions
and caricatures of boulevards. The merchant of Buffalo and of Detroit
is as well supplied as that of New York; the mills of Lyons work for the
one as for the other. You leave the main roads, you plunge along paths
hardly cleared. You nally see a cleared eld, a cabin made of logs half-
hewn where daylight enters only by a narrow window; you nally believe
you have reached the dwelling of the American peasant. Error. You pen-
etrate the cabin that seems to be the home of all miseries, but the owner
of this place wears the same clothes as you; he speaks the language of the
cities. On the crude table are books and newspapers; the owner himself
hastens to take you inside in order to know exactly what is happening in
old Europe and to ask you for an accounting about what has struck you
the most in his country. He will draw on paper a military campaign plan
for the Belgians, and will teach you gravely what remains to be done for
the prosperity of France. [He hastens to drawyou away fromthe dramas
of his country in order to talk to you about old Europe. He will say to
you that the Poles have won [lost? (ed.)] at Ostrolenka and will inform
you that a majority of one hundred votes has just destroyed the heredity
peerage in the hereditary monarchy of France.] You would think you
are seeing a rich landowner who has come to live temporarily for a few
nights at a hunting camp. And in fact, the log cabin is for the American
only a momentary shelter, a temporary concession made to the necessity
of circumstances. When the elds that surround it are entirely in pro-
duction and when the new owner has the leisure to occupy himself with
the pleasant things of life, a house more spacious and more appropriate
to his needs will replace the log house and will serve as a shelter for the
numerous children who one day will also go off to create a dwelling in
the wilderness.
But, to come back to our journey, we navigated with difculty all day
long in sight of the coasts of Pennsylvania and later those of Ohio. We
stopped for a moment at PresquIle, today Erie. That is where the canal
fromPittsburghwill end. By means of this work, whose completeexecution
is, they say, easy and now certain, the Mississippi will communicate with
the River of the North and the riches of Europe will circulate freely across
the ve hundred leagues of land that separate the Gulf of Mexico fromthe
Atlantic Ocean.
In the evening, the weather having become favorable, we headedrapidly
toward Detroit by crossing the middle of the lake. The following morning,
we were in sight of the small island called Middle Sister near where, in 1814,
Commodore Perry won a famous naval victory over the English.
A little later, the even coasts of Canada seemed to approach rapidly and
we saw the Detroit River opening before us and, appearing in the distance,
the walls of Fort Malden. This place, founded by the French, still bears
numerous traces of its origin. The houses have the formand the placement
of those of our peasants. In the center of the hamlet arises the Catholic
church tower surmounted by a cock. You would say a village around Caen
or Evreux. While we considered, not without emotion, this image of
France, our attention was diverted by the sight of a singular spectacle. To
our right, on the river bank, a Scottish soldier mounted guard in full uni-
form. He wore the uniform that the elds of Waterloo have made so fa-
mous. The feathered cap, the jacket, nothing was missing; the sun made
his uniform and his weapons glisten. To our left, and as if to provide a
parallel for us, two entirely naked Indians, their bodies gaudy with colors,
their noses pierced by rings, arrived at the same moment on the opposite
bank. They climbed into a small bark canoe in which a blanket formed the
sail. Abandoning this fragile, small boat to the work of the wind and cur-
rent, they darted like an arrow toward our vessel, which they went around
in an instant. Then they went calmly to sh near the English soldier who,
still glistening and immobile, seemed placed there like the representative
of the brilliant and armed civilization of Europe.
We arrived at Detroit at three oclock. Detroit is a small city of two or
three thousand souls that the Jesuits founded in the middle of the woods
in 1710 and that still contains a large number of French families.
We had crossed the entire State of New York and done one hundred
leagues on Lake Erie; this time we touched upon the limits of civilization,
but we did not know at all where we needed to head. To nd out was not
something as easy as youmay believe. Totravel throughnearlyimpenetrable
forests, to cross deep rivers, to face pestilential swamps, to sleep exposed to
the dampness of the woods, these are the efforts that the Americanimagines
without difculty if it is a matter of earning a dollar; for that is the point.
But that someone would do similar things out of curiosity, this does not
occur to his mind. Add that living in the wilderness, he prizes only the work
of man. He will gladly send you to visit a road, a bridge, a beautiful village.
But that you attach a value to great trees and to a beautiful solitude, that
is absolutely beyond him.
f
So nothing is more difcult than to nd someone able to understand
you. You want to see the forest, our hosts said smilingly to us; go straight
ahead of you, you will nd what you want. In the vicinity there are as a
matter of fact new roads and well-cleared paths. As for the Indians, you
will see too many of them in our public squares and in our streets; there is
no need to go farther for that. Those Indians at least are beginning to be-
come civilized and have a less savage appearance. We didnt take long to
realize that it was impossible to obtain the truth from them by frontal as-
sault and that we had to maneuver.
So we went to the ofcial charged by the United States with the sale of
the still unoccupied lands covering the district of Michigan; we presented
ourselves to him as men who, without having a well-xed intention of set-
tling inthe country, could nonetheless have a long-terminterest inknowing
the price of the lands and their situation. Major Biddle,
g
which was the
f. See chapter 17 of the rst part of volume III, especially pp. 83537.
g. John Biddle (17921859). Graduate of Princeton University, Captain during the
name of the ofcial, understood marvelously this time what we wanted to
do and immediately launched into a host of details that we listened to ea-
gerly. This part, he says to us, showing us on the map the St. Joseph river,
which after long twistings and turnings, discharges into Lake Michigan,
seems to be the most suitable for meeting your plans; the land is goodthere;
some beautiful villages have already been established, and the road that
leads there is so well maintained that every day public coaches travel it.
Good! we said to ourselves; we now know where we should not go unless
we want to visit the wilderness by postal coach. We thanked Mr. Biddle for
his advice and asked him, with an air of indifference and a kind of scorn,
what was the portion of the district where until now the current of emi-
grationmade itself least felt. Over here, he says tous, without givingmore
value to his words than we to our question, toward the northwest. Toward
Pontiac and in the area surrounding this village some quite beautiful set-
tlements have beenrecently founded. But youmust not thinkabout settling
farther away; the country is covered by an almost impenetrable forest that
extends endlessly toward the northwest, where you nd only wild beasts
and Indians. The United States plans to open a road there shortly; but as
yet it has only been started and stops at Pontiac. I repeat to you, it is a part
that you must not think about. We again thanked Mr. Biddle for his good
counsel and we left determined to do exactly the opposite.
h
We were beside
War of 1812, charged with the sale of lands at Detroit and later delegate of the territory
to Congress, from 1829 to 1831, president of the constitutional convention in 1835. See
Early History of Michigan with Biographies . . . (Lansing: Thorp & Godfrey, 1888); and
Michigan Biographies (Lansing: The Michigan Historical Commission, 1924), 2 vols.
h. I went to see in Detroit the public ofcer charged with the sale of lands, or of the
land-ofce, and he gave me the following details.
Since the ice melted, that is from the month of last May, the time when the Lake
became navigable, until the rst of July, about 5,000 new settlers (this is the English
word, we do not have the exact equivalent) arrivedinMichigan. The size of this gure
surprised me, as you can believe, all the more so since I believed, just like the general
opinion among us, that all the new settlers were Europeans.
The land agent informed me that out of these 5,000 persons, there were not 200
emigrants from Europe. And the proportion is larger than usual. But, I said to the
agent, what can bring this great number of Americans to leave the place of their
ourselves with joy at nally knowing a place that had not yet been reached
by the torrent of European civilization.
The next day, July 23,
j
we hastened to rent two horses. Since we expected
to keep them for ten days, we wanted to put a certain price in the hands
of the owner; but he refused to accept it, saying that we would pay when
we returned. He was not worried. Michigan is surrounded on all sides by
lakes and wilderness; he let us loose in a kind of riding school, whose door
he held. So after purchasing a compass as well as provisions, we got un-
derway, rie over the shoulder, with as much lack of concern about the
future and as lightheartedly as two schoolboys who would be leaving school
to go to spend their vacation at their fathers house.
If infact we had only wantedto see the forest, our hosts of Detroit would
have been right to tell us that it was not necessary to go very far, for one
mile from the city the road entered into the forest never to emerge again.
birthto come to inhabit a wilderness? Nothing is easier tounderstand,heanswered
me. Since the law divides the wealth of the father equally among the children, the
result is that each generation nds itself poorer than the preceding one. But as soon
as the small landowner of our populated states notices that he is beginning to have
difculty making a living, he sells his eld, comes with all his family to the frontier
line, buys a very large farm with the small capital that he has just created, and makes
a fortune in a few years.
At his death, if this fortune is not enough for his children, they will go like him
to create a newone in a newwilderness. We have, thank God, enoughroomtoexpand
to the Pacic Ocean.
Do you not nd, my dear friend, that an entire thick book is contained in this
single response? How can we imagine a revolution in a country where such a career
is open to the needs and to the passions of man, andhowcanwe compare the political
institutions of such a people to those of any other? (letter to Ernest de Chabrol,
Buffalo, 17 August 1831, YTC, BIa2).
j. Andre Jardin and George W. Pierson noted in their edition of the letters of Beau-
mont (Lettres dAme rique, p. 102, note) that there exist, from mid-July to August 1, 1831,
differences in dates between the correspondence of Tocqueville and that of Beaumont.
The two historians rely more on the dates of Tocqueville, who kept a travel notebook.
Nonetheless, if you compare Tocquevilles dates to those of Beaumonts sketches (YTC,
BIIb), the dates coincide for three sketches:
watercolor of a blue bird (Painted at Pontiac 29 July 1831),
sketch number 14 (25 July 1831. Forest of Saginaw (Indian guide)),
sketch number 15 (Loghouse. Saginaw. 26 July 1831).
The terrain on which the road is found is perfectly at and often swampy.
From time to time new clearings are found on the way. Since these settle-
ments perfectly resemble each other, whether they are founddeepinMichi-
gan or at the door of New York, I am going to try to describe them here
once and for all.
k
The small bells that the pioneer carefully hangs around the necks of
his animals in order to nd them in the thick woods announce from afar
the approach to a clearing. Soon you hear the sound of the ax that fells
the trees of the forest and, as you approach, signs of destructionannounce
still more clearly the presence of man. Cut branches cover the road, trunks
half-charred by re or mutilated by iron, still stand upright along your
passage. You continue your march and you come to a woods in which all
the trees seem to have been stricken by sudden death. In the middle of
summer their dry branches present nothing more than the image of win-
ter. Examining them more closely, you notice that in their bark a deep
circle has been traced that, stopping the circulation of sap, did not take
long to make them die. This in fact is how the planter usually begins. Not
able the rst year to cut all the trees that cover his new property, he sows
corn under their branches and, by killing them, he prevents them from
shading his crop. After this eld, an incomplete beginning, a rst step of
civilization in the wilderness, you suddenly see the cabin of the land-
owner. It is generally placed in the center of a ground more carefully cul-
tivated than the rest, but where man still sustains an unequal battle against
nature. There the trees have been cut, but not uprooted; their trunks still
cover and clutter the ground that they formerly shaded. Around these
dried-up remains, wheat, oak shoots, plants of all types, weeds of all kinds
grow jumbled together and increase together on an intractable and still
half-wild ground. At the center of this vigorous and varied vegetation
arises the house of the planter, or as it is called in this country, the log
house. Like the eld around it, this rustic dwelling announces a new and
k. See p. 1287.
hurried work. Its length rarely exceeds 30 feet. It is 20 feet wide, 15 feet
high. Its walls as well as the roof are formed from tree trunks not squared
off, between which moss and earth have been placed to prevent the cold
and the rain from penetrating the interior of the house. As the traveler
approaches, the scene becomes more animated. Warned by the sound of
his footsteps, the children who were rolling around in the surrounding
debris, get up precipitously and ee toward the parental refuge, as though
frightened at the sight of a man, while two large half-wild dogs, ears up-
right and muzzles elongated, emerge from the cabin and come growling
to cover the retreat of their young masters.
Then the pioneer himself appears at the door of his dwelling; he casts
a searching glance at the new arrival, signals to his dogs to come back into
the house and hastens to serve as their example himself without exhibiting
either curiosity or concern.
At the entry of the log house, the European cannot prevent himself from
casting an astonished eye over the spectacle that it presents.
There is generally in this cabin only a single window at which a muslin
curtain sometimes hangs; for in these places, where it is not rare to see ne-
cessities missing, superuities are frequently found. On the hearth of
beaten earth crackles a resinous re that, better than the day, lights up the
interior of the building. Above this rustic hearth, you see trophies of war
or hunting; a long rie with a grooved barrel, a deerskin, eagle feathers. To
the right of the chimney a map of the United States is often spread, which
the wind, coming through the chinks in the wall, aps and agitates con-
stantly. Near it, on a single shelf of rough hewn planks are placed a few
random volumes: a Bible whose cover and edges are already worn by the
piety of two generations, a book of prayers, and sometimes a canto of Mil-
ton or a Shakespeare tragedy [{a history of America, a fewpious stories and
some newspapers}]. Along the walls are placed a few crude seats, fruit of
the owners industry, trunks instead of armoires, agricultural implements
and some samples of the harvest. At the center of the room is a wobbly
table whose legs, still covered with foliage, seem to have grown by them-
selves out of the earth on the spot occupied by the table. That is where the
entire family gathers each day to take its meals. There you also see a teapot
of English porcelain, spoons usually of wood, a fewchippedcups andsome
newspapers.
The appearance of the master of this dwelling is no less remarkable than
the place that serves as his shelter.
Angular muscles, slender limbs make the inhabitant of New England
recognizable at rst glance. This man was not born in the wilderness where
he lives. His constitution alone declares it. His rst years were spent within
an intellectual and reasoning society. It is his will that has thrown him into
the wilderness undertakings for which he seems so little t. But if his physi-
cal strength seems not up to his enterprise, on his features furrowed by the
cares of life, there reigns an air of practical intelligence, of cold and per-
severing energy that is striking at rst sight. His gait is slow and formal, his
words measured and his appearance austere. Habit and, even more, pride
have given his face this stoic rigidity that his actions belie. The pioneer
scorns, it is true, what often agitates the heart of men most violently; his
goods and his life will never follow the chance of a throw of the dice or the
fortunes of a woman; but, to gain comfort, he has faced exile, solitude and
the innumerable miseries of uncivilized life; he has slept on the bare
ground; he has been exposed to forest fever and to the Indians tomahawk.
He made this effort one day, he has duplicated it for years; he will do it
perhaps for another twenty years, without discouragement and without
complaint. [{In the pursuit of what he regards as the goal of his entire life,
every competitor, every adversary will become an enemy to whom an im-
placable hatred will be attached as durable as the sentiment that gave birth
to it. Is that a man without passions [v: cold and unfeeling]?}] Is a manwho
is capable of such sacrices a cold and unfeeling being? Shouldnt we, on
the contrary, recognize in him one of those mental passions that are so
ardent, so tenacious, so implacable? Concentrated on this sole goal of mak-
ing a fortune, the emigrant has nished by creating an entirely individual
existence; the sentiments of family have themselves merged into a vast ego-
ism, and it is doubtful that in his wife and his children he sees anything
other than a detached portion of himself. Deprived of habitual relation-
ships with his fellows, he has learned to make solitude a pleasure. When
you present yourself at the threshold of his isolated dwelling, the pioneer
advances to meet you; he offers his hand as is the custom, but his physi-
ognomy expresses neither welcome nor joy. He speaks only to interrogate
you; it is a need of the head and not of the heart that he is satisfying, and
scarcely has he drawn from you the news that he desired to learn than he
falls back into silence. You would think you were seeing a man who with-
drewin the evening into his house fatigued by troublesome individuals and
the chatter of the world. Interrogate him in turn; he will intelligently give
you the information you lack; he will even provide for your needs; he will
look to your safety as long as you are under his roof. But so much restraint
and pride reign in all his conduct, you see in it such a profoundindifference
about even the result of his efforts, that you feel your gratitude cool. The
pioneer is hospitable in his way, but his hospitality in no way touches you
because he seems, while exercising it, to be submitting to a painful necessity
of the wilderness. He sees in hospitality a duty that his position imposes
onhim, not a pleasure. This unknownmanis the representative of arestless,
reasoning and adventurous race that does coldly what only the ardor of the
passions explains, who trafcs in everything without exception, even mo-
rality and religion.
A nation of conquerors who submit to leading savage life without ever
letting themselves be carried away by its sweet pleasures, who love civi-
lization and enlightenment only when they are useful for well-being, and
who shut themselves up in the wilderness of America with an ax andsome
newspapers; a people who, like all great peoples, has only one thought,
and who advances toward the acquisition of wealth, the only goal of its
efforts, with a perseverance and a scorn for life that you could call heroic,
if the word was suitable for something other than the efforts of virtue.
This wandering people, not stopped by rivers and lakes, before whom
forests fall and prairies are covered with shade, will, after touching the
Pacic Ocean, retrace its steps and destroy the societies that it will have
formed behind it.
While speaking about the pioneer, you cannot forget the companion of
his miseries and of his dangers. See at the other end of the room, this young
womanwho, while overseeing preparations for the meal, rocks her youngest
son on her knees. Like the emigrant, this woman is in the prime of life, like
himshe canrecall the comfort of her earliest years. Her dress still announces
even now a barely extinguished taste for nery. But time has weighed
heavily on her. On her features faded before their time, on her weakened
limbs, it is easy to see that existence has been a heavy burden for her. In fact
this frail creature has already been exposed to incredible miseries. Hardly
entered into life, she had to tear herself away from the tenderness of her
mother and these sweet fraternal bonds that the young woman never aban-
dons without shedding tears, even when she leaves them to go to share the
opulent house of a new husband. The wife of the pioneer, removed in a
moment and without hope of return from this innocent cradle of youth,
has exchanged the charms of society and the joys of the domestic home
for the solitude of the forests. Her nuptial bed was placed on the bare earth
of the wilderness. To devote herself to her austere duties, to submit to pri-
vations that were unknown to her, to embrace an existence for which she
was not made, such was the use of the best years of her life, such have been
for her the sweet pleasures of the conjugal union. Deprivation, sufferings
and boredom have altered her fragile structure, but not weakened her cour-
age. Amid the profound sadness painted on her delicate features, you easily
notice a religious resignation, a profound peace, and I do not know what
natural and tranquil steadfastness that meets all the miseries of life without
fearing or defying them.
Around this woman crowd half-dressed children, shining with health,
unconcerned about tomorrow, true sons of the wilderness. Their mother
from time to time gives them a look full of melancholy and joy; to see
their strength and her weakness, you would say that she has exhausted
herself by giving life to them, and that she does not regret what they have
cost her.
The house inhabited by the emigrants has no interior walls or attic. Into
the single room that it contains, the entire family comes at night to nd
shelter. This dwelling by itself alone forms like a small world. It is the ark
of civilization lost amid an ocean of leaves, a sort of oasis in the desert.
One hundred steps further the endless forest spreads its shadow and the
wilderness begins again.
* * * * *
We arrived at Pontiac only after the sun went down and it was evening.
Twenty very clean and exceedingly pretty buildings, forming as many well
supplied stores, a limpid stream, a clearing of a quarter league square, and
the endless forest around it: there is the faithful picture of the village of
Pontiac that in twenty years will perhaps be a city. The sight of this place
reminded me of what Mr. Gallatin had said to me a month before in New
York;
m
there are no villages in America, at least in the sense that we give to
the word. Here the houses of the farmers are all spreadout among the elds.
People do not gather in one place except to establish a kind of market for
the use of the surrounding population. You see in these so-called villages
only men of law, printers or merchants.
We were directed to the most beautiful inn in Pontiac
n
(for there are
two) and we were brought as is customary into what is called the bar room.
It is a room where you are given drinks and where the simplest worker as
well as the richest merchant of the place come to smoke, to drink, and to
talk politics together onthe most perfect outwardly equal footing. Themas-
ter of the place or the landlord was, I will not say a large peasant, there are
no peasants in America, but at least a very large man who wore on his face
that expression of candor and simplicity that distinguishes Norman horse
traders. He was a man who, for fear of intimidating you, never looked you
in the face while speaking, but waited to look at you when he felt com-
fortable, while you were occupied conversing elsewhere. Moreover, a pro-
found politician and, following American habits, an unrelenting ques-
tioner. This respected citizen, as well as the rest of the assembly, considered
us at rst with astonishment. Our travel clothes and our guns hardly an-
nounced business entrepreneurs, and to travel simply to see was something
absolutely unaccustomed. In order to cut explanations short, we declared
m. Conversation of 10 June 1831, non-alphabetic notebook 1, YTC, BIIa, andVoyage,
OC, V, 1, pp. 6061.
n. In the autumn of 1867, Charles Sumner began a series of lectures in Pontiac with
the title The Nation. He evoked the Tocqueville visit that the daughter of Judge Amasa
Bagley, host of the travelers, still recalled. He came during a severe storm, remaining
several days. There was a great mystery surrounding him and his servant (the most im-
portant of the two in appearance). They got their meals alone and claimed a good share
of my fathers attention, seeking from him information of the then new territory of
Michigan. Nancy G. Davis, History of Amasa Bagley, inPioneer Collections (Lansing,
Mich.: W. S. George & Co., 1881), III, p. 600. Also see George W. Pierson, Tocqueville
and Beaumont in America, pp. 25152.
right at the beginning that we came to buy land. Hardly were the words
said, than we noticed that by trying to avoid one evil we had thrown our-
selves into another very much more formidable one.
They ceased treating us, it is true, like extraordinary beings, but eachone
wanted to do business with us; to get rid of them and their farms, we said
to our host that before concluding anything, we would like to obtain from
him useful information about the price of land and about howto cultivate
it. He immediately brought us into another room, with a tting slowness
spread a map of Michigan on the oak table that was in the middle of the
room and, placing the candle between the three of us, waited in an im-
passive silence for what we had to say to him. The reader, without having
like us the intentionof settling inone of the uninhabitedplaces of America,
may nonetheless be curious to knowhowso many thousands of Europeans
and Americans who come each year to nd shelter there set about to do so.
So I amgoing to transcribe here the information provided by our host from
Pontiac. Often since, we have indeed been able to verify the perfect exact-
ness of his information.
o
Here it is not like in France, our host said to us after having calmly
heard all our questions and snuffed out the candle; in your country labor
is cheap and land is expensive; here buying land costs nothing and the labor
of men is beyond price. I am saying this in order to showyou that, to settle
in America as in Europe, capital is necessary, although it is used differently.
o. Tocqueville and Beaumont gathered abundant information about the expenses to
provide for in order to become established as a settler in America. I am persuaded that
in France there are thousands of people who would be interested in coming to America
to buy good land there at a good price, but most are unaware of the situation. Perhaps
to make the situation known would be a good service to our country. Ordinarily the
difculty for those who emigrate to a new country is in the difference of language; but
this obstacle would not exist in Michigan where a quarter of the population speaks
French. Gustave de Beaumont, Lettres dAme rique, p. 116. During their return from
Saginaw, Tocqueville andBeaumont remaineda day at Pontiac withthe ideaof obtaining
new details on how to settle in the wilderness, on crops, etc. A part of the observations
that Tocqueville puts in the mouth of Amasa Bagley had been made to himby Dr. Burns,
a Scottish doctor who lived near Pontiac, and with whom they had spoken on July 30.
See alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 23334.
For my part, I would not advise anyone, no matter who it may be, to come
to seek a fortune in our wilderness unless having at his disposition a sum
of 150 to 200 dollars (800 to 1,000 francs). An acre in Michigan
1
never costs
more than 10 shillings (about 6 Fr., 50 c.) when the land is still uncultivated.
So a worker can earn in one day what it takes to buy an acre. But the pur-
chase made, the difculty begins. Here is how you generally set about to
overcome it. The pioneer goes to the place that he has just bought with a
few animals, salted pork, two barrels of wheat and some tea. If he nds a
cabin near, he goes there and receives temporary hospitality. Inthe opposite
case he puts up a tent in the very middle of the woods that is to become
his eld. His rst care is to cut down the nearest trees, with which he hastily
builds the crude house whose structure you have already been able to ex-
amine. Among us, the maintenance of animals scarcely costs anything. The
emigrant releases them into the forest after attaching a small iron bell to
them. It is very rare for these animals, left to themselves in this way, to leave
the area around their home. The greatest expense is that of clearing the
land. If the pioneer arrives in the wilderness with a family able to aid him
in his rst efforts, his task is easy enough. But it is rarely so. In general the
emigrant is young and, if he already has children, they are young. Then he
must provide alone for all the rst needs of his family or hire the services
of his neighbors. It costs him from 4 to 5 dollars (from 20 to 25 francs) to
have an acre cleared. Once the land is prepared, the new owner puts one
acre in potatoes, the rest in wheat and corn. Corn is the providence of these
wilderness areas; it grows in the water of our swamps and sprouts beneath
the foliage of the forest better than under the rays of the sun.
p
It is corn
that saves the family of the emigrant from an inevitable destruction, when
poverty, illness or negligence have prevented him from sufciently clearing
the land during the rst year. There is nothing more difcult to get through
1. An acre is 330 English feet long by 132 feet wide.
p. In the margin: Misery.
Isolation.
Illness.
No Europeans.
Only the Americans can bear such miseries.
thanthe rst years that followthe clearing of the land. Later comes comfort,
and then wealth.
This is how our host spoke; as for us, we listened to these simple details
with almost as much interest as if we had wanted to prot fromthemour-
selves; and when he became silent, we said to him:
The land of all these uninhabited forests is generally swampy and
unhealthy; doesnt the emigrant who exposes himself to the miseries of
the wilderness at least fear for his life? All clearing of the land is a per-
ilous undertaking, replied the American, and it is almost without ex-
ample that the pioneer or his family escapes forest fever during the rst
year. Often when you travel in the autumn, you nd all the inhabitants
of the cabin suffering from the fever, from the emigrant to his youngest
son. And what becomes of these unfortunates when Providence strikes
them like that? They resign themselves while waiting for a better fu-
ture. But do they hope for some help from their fellows? Almost
none. Can they at least obtain help frommedicine? The closest doctor
often lives 60 miles from their house. They do as the Indians; they die or
are cured depending on Gods pleasure. We began again: Does the
voice of religion sometimes come to them? Very rarely; we have not yet
been able to provide for anything in our woods to assure the public ob-
servation of a religion. Nearly every summer, it is true, a few Methodist
preachers come to travel through the new settlements. Word of their
arrival spreads with an incredible rapidity from cabin to cabin; it is the
great news of the day. At the time appointed, the emigrant, his wife and
his children, head along the paths scarcely cleared through the forest to-
ward the indicated meeting place. People come there from 50 miles
around. The faithful do not gather in a church but in the open, under the
leaves of the forest. A pulpit made from rough-hewn trunks, large trees
turned over to serve as pews, these are the adornments of this rustic
church. The pioneers and their families camp in the woods that surround
it; there for three days and three nights the crowd practices religious ex-
ercises rarely interrupted. You have to see how ardently these men give
themselves to prayer, with what reverence they listen to the solemn voice
of the preacher. It is in the wilderness that they showthemselves famished
for religion. A nal question. It is generally believed among us that the
wilderness of America is populatedwiththe helpof Europeanemigration.
So how is it that since we have been traveling through your forests, we
havent happened to meet a single European? A smile of superiority and
satised pride was written on the features of our host upon hearing this
question:
It is only Americans, he answered emphatically, who can have the courage
to submit to such miseries and who know how to buy comfort at such a
price. The European emigrant stops in the large cities that are on the coast
or in the districts surrounding them. There, he becomes artisan, farm la-
borer, valet. He leads a more pleasant life than in Europe and appears
satised to leave the same inheritance to his children. The American on
the contrary takes possession of the land and, with it, he seeks to create a
great future for himself.
After uttering these nal words, our host stopped. He let an immense
columnof smoke escape fromhis mouthandseemedready tolistentowhat
we had to say to inform him about our plans.
We thanked him rst for his valuable advice and for his wise counsel
from which we assured him we would prot some day, and we added:
Before settling in your district, my dear host, we have the intention of
going to Saginaw and we want to consult you on this point. At the word
Saginaw a singular transformation took place in the physiognomy of the
American; it seemed that we had dragged him violently out of real life to
push himinto the domains of the imagination; his eyes dilated, his mouth
gaped and a look of the most profound astonishment was written on all
his features: You want to go to Saginaw, he cried, to Saginaw Bay! Two
reasonable men, two cultivated foreigners want to go to Saginaw Bay? It
is scarcely believable. And so why not? we replied. But do you know
clearly, our host began again, what you are proposing? Do you know
that Saginawis the last inhabited point until the Pacic Ocean? That from
here to Saginaw you nd nothing more than a wilderness and uncleared
empty spaces? Have you considered that the woods are full of Indians and
of mosquitoes? That you will have to bed down at least one night in the
dampness of the forest shade? Have you thought about the fever? Will you
know how to get out of difculty in the wilderness and not get lost in the
labyrinth of our forests? After this tirade he paused in order to judge better
the impression he had made. We resumed: All that is perhaps true. But
we will leave tomorrow morning for Saginaw Bay. Our host reected a
moment, nodded his head, and said in a slow and positive way: Only a
great interest could lead two foreigners to such an undertaking: you have
almost certainly gured, very wrongly, that it was advantageous to settle in
the places most remote from all competition? We did not respond. He
resumed: Perhaps you have been charged as well by the fur trading com-
pany of Canada with establishing a relationship with the Indian tribes of
the frontier? Same silence. Our host had run out of conjectures and he
was quiet, but he continued to reect deeply about the strangeness of our
plan.
Have you never been to Saginaw? we said. Me, he answered, I have
been there ve or six times, to my sorrow, but I had a reason to do so and
no reason can be found for you. But dont lose sight, my worthy host, of
the fact that we are not asking you if we must go to Saginaw, but only what
is needed to manage to do so easily. Thus led back to the question, our
American regained all his composure and all the clarity of his ideas; he
explained to us in a few words and with an admirable practical good sense
the way in which we had to proceed inorder to cross the wilderness, entered
into the smallest details, and foresaw the most unlikely circumstances. At
the end of his instructions he paused again in order to see if we would not
nally reveal the secret of our journey, and noticing that on both sides we
had nothing more to say, he took the candle, led us to a room and, very
democratically shaking our hands, went away to nish the evening in the
common room.
We got up with the day and prepared to leave. Our host was soon afoot
himself. Night had not revealed to himwhat made us stick to behavior that
was so extraordinary in his eyes. Since we appeared absolutely decided to
act contrary to his counsel, however, he dared not return to the charge, but
constantly circled around us. From time to time he repeated half-aloud: I
can imagine with difculty what can lead two foreigners to go to Saginaw.
He repeated this sentence several times, until nally I said to him putting
my foot in the stirrup: There are many reasons that lead us to do so, my
dear host. He stopped short upon hearing these words, and looking me
in the face for the rst time, he seemed to prepare himself to hear the rev-
elation of a great mystery. But, calmly mounting my horse, I gave him a
sign of friendship as a concluding gesture and moved away at a fast trot.
When I was fty steps away, I turned my head; I saw him still planted like
a haystack before his door. A little later he went back inside shaking his
head. I imagine that he still said: I have difculty understanding what two
foreigners are going to do in Saginaw.
* * * * *
We had been advised to address ourselves to a Mr. Williams
q
who, having
traded for a long time with the Chippewa Indians and having a son settled
at Saginaw, could provide us with useful information. After going several
miles in the woods and afraid that we had already missed the house of our
man, we encountered an old man busy working in a small garden. We ap-
proached him. It was Mr. Williams himself. He received us withgreat kind-
ness and gave us a letter for his son. We asked him if we had anything to
fear from the Indian bands whose territory we were going to cross. Mr.
Williams rejected this idea with a kind of indignation: No! No!, he said,
you can go without fear. For my part, I wouldsleepmore tranquillyamong
Indians than among whites. I note this as the rst favorable impression
that I had received about the Indians since my arrival in America. In very
inhabited regions they are only spoken about with a mixture of fear and
scorn, and I believe that there in fact they deserve these two feelings. You
could see above what I thought about them myself when I met the rst of
them at Buffalo. As you advance in this journal and as you followme amid
the European population of the frontier and amid the Indian tribes them-
selves, you will conceive a more honorable and, at the very same time, more
accurate idea of the rst inhabitants of America.
After leaving Mr. Williams we continued our route through the woods.
q. George W. Pierson (Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, p. 252) identies him:
Major Oliver Williams. The Reports of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan (Lan-
sing: Thorp & Godfrey, 18771891) include numerous references that validate this
identication.
From time to time a small lake (this district is full of them) appeared like
a sheet of silver beneath the forest foliage. It is difcult to imagine the
charm that surrounds these lovely places where man has not settled and
where a profound peace and an uninterrupted silence still reign. I have
traveled in the Alps through dreadful, isolated areas where nature rejects
the labor of man, but displays even in its very horrors a grandeur that
transports and grips the soul. Here the solitude is not less profound, but
it does not produce the same impressions. The only sentiments that you
feel while traveling through these owered wilderness areas where, as in
Miltons Paradise, everything is prepared to receive man, are a tranquil
admiration, a mild melancholy, a vague disgust with civilized life; a sort
of wild instinct that makes you think with pain that soon this delicious
solitude will have changed face. Already in fact the white race advances
across the surrounding woods and, in a few years, the European will have
cut the trees that are reected in the clear waters of the lake and forced
the animals that populate its shores to withdraw toward new wilderness
areas.
Always on the move, we came to a country with a newappearance. The
land there was not level, but cut by hills and valleys. Several of these hills
presented the most wild appearance. It was in one of these picturesque
passages that, turning ourselves around suddenly to contemplate the im-
posing spectacle that we were leaving behind us, we noticed to our great
surprise near the hindquarters of our horses an Indian who seemed to
follow us step by step. He was a man about thirty years old, large and
admirably proportioned as nearly all of them are. His black and shining
hair fell to his shoulders except for two braids that were tied up at the top
of his head. His face was daubed with black and red. He was covered with
a type of very short blue blouse. He wore red mittas; these are a type of
pants that go only to the top of the thigh, and his feet were covered with
moccasins. At his side hung a knife. In his right hand he held a long car-
bine and in his left two birds that he had just killed. The rst sight of this
Indian made a not very pleasant impression on us. The place was poorly
chosen for resisting an attack. To our right a pine forest rose toanimmense
height, to our left extended a deep ravine at the bottom of which among
the rocks owed a small stream hidden from our sight by the obscurity
of the foliage and toward which we descended blindly! Putting our hands
on our ries, turning and putting ourselves inthe pathopposite the Indian
took only a moment. He stopped as well. We remained in silence for a
half-minute. His face presented all the characteristic features that distin-
guish the Indian race from all others. In his perfectly black eyes gleamed
the savage re that still animates the look of the half-breed and is lost only
with the second or third generation of white blood. His nose was hooked
in the middle, slightly at at the end, his cheekbones very prominent, and
his strikingly wide mouth showed two rows of glistening white teeth that
proved well enough that the savage, cleaner than his neighbor the Amer-
ican, did not spend his day chewing tobacco leaves. I said that at the mo-
ment when we had turned ourselves around putting our hands on our
weapons, the Indian stopped. He underwent the rapid examination that
we made of his person with an absolute impassivity, a steady and un-
changing look. Since he saw that we had on our side no hostile senti-
ment, he began to smile; probably he saw that we were alarmed. It was
the rst time that I was able to observe to what extent the expression
of gaiety completely changes the physiognomy of these savage men. I
have since had the occasion a hundred times to make the same remark. A
serious Indian and a smiling Indian are two entirely different men. There
reigns in the immobility of the rst a savage majesty that imposes an in-
voluntary sentiment of terror. If this same man begins to smile, his entire
face takes on an expression of innocence and of kindness that gives him
a real charm.
When we saw our man brighten, we addressed some words to him in
English. He let us speak as much as we wanted, then gestured that he did
not understand. We offered hima bit of brandy, whichhe acceptedwithout
hesitation and without thanks. Speaking always by signs, we asked him for
the birds that he carried and he gave them to us in return for a small coin.
Having thus made his acquaintance, we saluted him and left at a fast trot.
At the end of a quarter hour of a rapid march, turning around again, I was
surprised to see the Indian still behind the hindquarters of my horse. He
ran with the agility of a wild animal, without saying a single word or ap-
pearing to lengthen his stride. We stopped; he stopped. We started again;
he started again. We raced at full speed. Our horses, raisedinthe wilderness,
easily overcame all obstacles. The Indian doubled his pace; I sawhimsome-
times to the right, sometimes to the left of my horse, leaping over bushes
and coming back down to earth noiselessly. You would have said one of
those wolves of Northern Europe that followriders with the hope that they
will fall from their horses and can be more easily devoured. The sight of
this constant gure that seemed to hover at our sides, sometimes becoming
lost in the obscurity of the forest, sometimes reappearing clearly, ended up
becoming disturbing to us. Not able to imagine what led this manto follow
us at such a hurried paceand perhaps he had been doing so for a very
long time when we discovered him for the rst timethe idea occurred to
us that he was leading us into an ambush. We were occupied with these
thoughts when we noticed in the woods before us the end of another car-
bine. Soon we were next to the man who carried it. We took him at rst
for an Indian; he was covered by a sort of frock coat, close-tted around
the small of his back, delineating a narrow and neat waist; his neck was
naked and his feet covered by moccasins. When we came near him and he
raised his head, we immediately recognized a European and we stopped.
r
He came up to us, shook our hands cordially and entered into conversation
with us: Do you live in the wilderness? Yes, here is my house; amid the
leaves he showed us a hut much more miserable than the usual log houses.
Alone? Alone. And so what do you do here? I wander through these
woods and, to the right and left, I kill the game that I meet along the way,
but it is not going well now. And this kind of life pleases you? More
than any other. But arent you afraid of the Indians? Afraid of the In-
dians! I prefer to live amid them than in the society of whites. No! No! I
am not afraid of the Indians. They are worth more than we are, at least as
long as we have not brutalized them with our liquors, the poor creatures!
We then showed our new acquaintance the man who followed us so ob-
stinately and who had then stopped a few steps away and remained as un-
moving as a statue. He is a Chippewa, he said, or as the French call them
r. In the margin: To delete, I think; has too much the appearance of being reminis-
cent of Cooper.
a Sauteur. I wager that he is returning from Canada where he received the
annual presents from the English. His family must not be far from here.
Having said this, the American gestured to the Indian to approach and
began to speak to him in his language with an extreme facility. It was a
remarkable thing to see the pleasure that these two men, so different by
birth and mores, found in exchanging their ideas. The conversation
turned evidently onthe respective merit of their weapons. The white, after
very attentively examining the rie of the savage: That is a beautiful car-
bine, he said, the English almost certainly gave it to him to use against
us and he wont fail to do so at the rst war. That is how the Indians draw
upon their heads all the misfortunes that burden them. But they wont
know it for long, the poor fellows. Do the Indians use these long and
heavy ries with skill? There are no marksmen like the Indians, our
new friend resumed energetically with a tone of the greatest admiration.
Examine the small birds he sold to you, Sir, they are pierced by a single
bullet, and I am very sure that he red only two shots to take them. Oh!
he added, there is nothing happier than an Indian in the regions where
we have not yet made the game ee. But the large animals sense us at more
than three hundred miles, and by withdrawing they create before us like
a desert where the poor Indians can no longer live if they do not cultivate
the earth.
As we retook our path: When you pass by again, our newfriend cried
to us, knock on my door. It is a pleasure to meet white faces in these
places.
I have related this conversation, which in itself contains nothing re-
markable, in order to show a kind of man that we met very frequently at
the limits of inhabited lands. They are Europeans who, despite the habits
of their youth, have ended up nding in the liberty of the wilderness an
inexpressible charm. Attached to the uninhabited places of America by
their taste and their passions, to Europe by their religion, their principles,
and their ideas, they mix the love of savage life with the pride of civilization
and prefer the Indians to their compatriots without, however, recognizing
them as their equals.
So we resumed our journey and, advancing always with the same rapid-
ity, at the end of a half-hour we reached the house of a pioneer. Before the
door of this cabin an Indian family has set up a temporary dwelling. An
old woman, two young girls, several children crouched around a re to
whose heat the remains of a whole deer were exposed. A few steps from
there on the grass, a completely nude Indian warmed himself in the rays
of the sun while a small child rolled around near him in the dust. There
our silent companion stopped; he left us without taking our leave and sat
down gravely amid his compatriots. What had been able to lead this man
to follow the path of our horses in this way for two leagues? That is what
we were never able to nd out. After eating in this place, we remounted
our horses and continued our march through a not very thick cluster of
high trees. The thicket had been burned previously as could be seen by the
charred remnants of a few trees that were lying on the grass. The ground
is covered today by ferns that are spread as far as you can see beneath the
forest covering.
A few leagues further my horse lost his shoe, which caused us intense
concern. Near there fortunately, we met a planter who managed to reshoe
it. Without this meeting I doubt that we wouldhave beenable togofurther,
for we were then approaching the extreme limit of cleared lands. This same
man who had enabled us to continue our journey, urged us to hurry up;
day was beginning to fade and two long leagues still separated us fromFlint
River where we wanted to go to sleep.
Soon, in fact, a profound darkness began to surround us. We had to
march. The night was calm but freezing. Such a profound silence and such
a complete calm reigned in the depths of these forests that you would have
said that all the forces of nature were as if paralyzed there. You heard only
the uncomfortable buzzing of mosquitoes and the noise of the steps of our
horses. From time to time you noticed in the distance an Indian re before
which an austere and immobile prole was outlined in the smoke. At the
end of an hour we arrived at a place where the road divided. Two paths
opened at this spot. Which one to take? The choice was delicate; one of
them led to a small stream whose depth we did not know, the other to a
clearing. The rising moon then showed before us a valley full of debris.
Further off we noticed two houses. It was so important not to get lost in
sucha place andat this hour that we resolvedtoget some informationbefore
going further. My companion remained to hold the horses, and throwing
my rie over my shoulder, I descended into the small valley. Soon I noticed
that I was going into a very recent clearing; immense trees not yet stripped
of their branches covered the ground. I managed by jumping from one to
another to reach the houses rapidly enough, but the same stream that we
had already encountered separated me from them. Fortunately [{the new
proprietor of the place, probably wanting to establish a mill, had thrown
trees into the stream to stop its ow}] its ow was hampered at this place
by large oaks that the pioneers ax had probably hurled there. I succeeded
in sliding along these trees and I nally reached the other side. I approached
these two houses with caution, fearing that they were Indianwigwams; they
were still not nished; I found the doors open and no voice responded to
mine. I returned to the banks of the stream where I could not help myself
from admiring for several minutes the sublime horror of this place. The
valley seemed to form an immense arena surrounded on all sides by the
foliage of the woods like a black curtain, and at the center the light of the
moon, breaking through, created a thousand fantastic images that played
in silence amid the debris of the forest. Moreover, no noise whatsoever, no
sound of life arose from this solitude. I nally thought of my companion
and I cried out loudly to let him know the result of my search, to get him
to cross the stream and to come to nd me. My voice echoed for a long
time amid the solitude that surrounded me. But I got no response. I cried
out againandlistenedagain. The same silence of deathreignedinthe forest.
Worry seized me, and I ran along the stream to nd the path that crossed
its course farther down. Reaching there, I heard in the distance the step of
horses and soon after I saw Beaumont himself. Astonished by my long ab-
sence, he had taken the gamble of advancing toward the stream; he was
already in the shallows when I had called him. My voice had not been able
to reach him. He told me that on his side he had made all efforts to make
himself heard and, like me, had been frightened not to receive a response.
Without the ford that served as our point of reunion, we would perhaps
have searched for each other a large part of the night. We retook our route
promising each other indeed not to separate again, and three quarters of
an hour from there we nally noticed a clearing, two or three cabins, and
what pleased us most, a light.
s
The river that extended like a purple thread
to the end of the valley conclusively proved to us that we had arrived at
Flint River. Soon in fact the barking of dogs made the woods echo, and we
found ourselves before a log house separated from us by a single fence. As
we prepared to cross it, the moon revealed to us on the other side a large
black bear standing upright on its paws and pulling on its chain, indicating
as clearly as it could its intention to give us a very fraternal embrace. What
the devil is this country, I said, where you have bears as watchdogs. We
must call, my companion replied to me. If we try to cross the fence, we
will have difculty explaining the reason to the gatekeeper. So we shouted
out so loudly and so well that a man nally appeared at the window. After
examining us in the moonlight: Come in, Sirs, he said to us; Trinc, go
lie down. To your kennel, I tell you. They are not robbers. The bear wad-
dled away and we entered. We were half-dead with fatigue. We asked our
s. I see a light; I get off my horse; I walk straight toward the light that struck my
eyes. After walking for ve minutes, I amnear enough to distinguish a house of wood
without a door and half-covered. Someone was walking around inside without ap-
pearing, and it seemed to me that someone was trying hard to hide the light that
illuminated the interior. Finally, using the mildest and most humble voice in order
to reassure the people of this habitation who could take me for a robber, I ask if they
can point out to me the house of Mr. Todds [Todd (ed.)]. (This is the name of the
personwe wantedto visit at Flint River.) Thena half-dressedwomanappears, carrying
a torch in her hand, and says to me in the most obliging way that the house of Mr.
Todds is in the neighborhood and not far away. (This unfortunate woman was alone
in this abandoned house open to all the wind.) I did not have the time to sympathize
more withher misfortune, andI returnedto rejoinTocqueville, not without difculty,
given that I was stuck in a swamp where I thought for an instant that I wouldremain.
Finally we found refuge with Mr. Todds, and at 11 oclock we were in bed, one in a
bed, the other on the oor.
Letter of Beaumont to Ernest de Chabrol, 2 August 1831, Lettres dAme rique, p. 113.
Uncle John Todd was the rst settler to come to Flint. In 1830, he had constructed
a small inn, Todds tavern, whichover the years became a celebratedplace inthe region.
George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 25859.
host if we could have some oats. Surely, he said; he immediately began to
reap the closest eld with all American calm and doing it as he would have
in full day. During this time we unsaddled our mounts and, not having a
stable, tied them to the fences that we had just crossed. Having thus con-
sidered our travel companions, we began to think about our shelter. There
was only one bed in the house. Since it went to Beaumont by lot, I wrapped
myself in my coat and, lying on the oor, slept as profoundly as is suitable
for a man who has just done fteen leagues on horseback.
* * * * *
The next day, July 25, our rst concern was to ask about a guide. A wil-
derness of fteen leagues separates Flint River from Saginaw, and the road
that leads there is a narrow path, scarcely recognizable by sight. Our host
approved our plan and soon after he brought in two Indians in whom, he
assured us, we could have complete condence. One was a child, thirteen
or fourteen years old. The other a young man of eighteen.
t
The body of
the latter, without yet having the vigorous forms of mature age, already
gave the idea of agility combined with strength. He was of average height,
his stature was straight and slim, his limbs exible and well-proportioned.
Long braids fell from his bare head. In addition he had carefully painted
on his face black and red lines in the most symmetrical manner. A ring
passed through the septum of his nose; a necklace and earrings completed
his outt. His war gear was no less remarkable. On one side a battle ax, the
famous tomahawk; on the other, a long sharp knife with which the savages
remove the scalp of the defeated. Around his neck was suspended a bulls
horn that served as his powder ask, and he held a carbine with a grooved
barrel in his right hand. As with most Indians, his look was erce and his
smile benevolent. Next to him, as if to complete the picture, walked a dog
with upright ears, elongated muzzle, much more like a fox than any other
t. We were provided with an Indian guide, a young man twenty years old. Sagan-
Kuisko, of the Chippewa nation (pocket notebook 2, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V,
1, p. 168).
type of animal, and whose erce appearance was in perfect harmony with
the countenance of the man leading it. After examining our new compan-
ion with an attention that he did not appear to notice for a single moment,
we asked him what he wanted from us as the price for the service that he
was going to give us. The Indian answered with a fewwords in his language
and the American, hastening to speak, informed us that what the savage
asked could be evaluated at two dollars. Since these poor Indians, our
host added charitably, do not know the value of money, you will give me
the dollars and I will gladly take charge of providing him the equivalent.
I was curious to see what the worthy man called the equivalent of two
dollars, and I followed him quietly into the place where the market was. I
sawhimdeliver to our guide a pair of moccasins anda pocket handkerchief,
objects whose total value certainly did not amount to half of the sum. The
Indian withdrew very satised and I ed silently, saying like La Fontaine:
Ah! if lions knew how to paint!
Moreover, it is not only Indians that the American pioneers take for
fools. We ourselves were victims every day of their extreme greed for prot.
It is very true that they do not steal. That have too much enlightenment
to commit something so imprudent, but nonetheless I have never seen an
innkeeper of a large city overcharge with more shamelessness than these
inhabitants of the wilderness among whom I imagined to nd primitive
honesty and the simplicity of patriarchal mores.
Everything was ready. We mounted our horses and, fording the stream
that forms the extreme limit between civilization and the wilderness, we
entered for good into the empty forest.
Our two guides walked or rather leapt like wild cats over the obstacles
in our path. If we happened to encounter a fallen tree, a stream, a swamp,
they pointed with their nger to the best path, went by and did not even
turn back to see us get by the difculty; used to counting only on himself,
the Indianconceives withdifculty that another manneeds help. He knows
how to serve you as needed, but no one has yet taught him the art of im-
proving the service by considerationandconcern. This way of actingwould
nonetheless have led to some comments on our part, but it was impossible
to make a single word understood by our companions. And then! we felt
completely in their power. There in fact the tables were turned; plunged
into a perfect darkness, reduced to his own resources, civilized man walked
blind, incapable, not only of nding his own way in the labyrinth that he
was going through, but even of nding the means to sustain his life. It is
amid these same difculties that the savage triumphed; for him the forest
had no veil, he found himself as if in his own country; he walked there
with his head high, guided by an instinct surer than the compass of the
navigator. At the top of the tallest trees, beneath the thickest foliage, his
eye found the prey that the European would have passed and repassed in
vain a hundred times.
From time to time our Indians stopped; they put their nger to their
lips to indicate to us to be quiet and gestured to us to dismount. Guided
by them, we came to a place where you could see game. It was a singular
sight to see the disdainful smile with which they led us by the hand like
children and brought us nally near the object that they had seen for a long
time.
u
But as we advanced, the last traces of manfaded. Sooneverythingceased
even to announce the presence of the savage, and we had before us the
spectacle that we had been chasing for such a long time, the interior of a
virgin forest.
In the middle of a not very dense thicket, through which objects at a
fairly great distance could be seen, a tall cluster of trees composed almost
totally of pines and oaks arose in a single burst. Forced to grow on a very
limited terrain almost entirely without the rays of the sun, each of these
trees goes up rapidly in order to nd air and light. As straight as the mast
of a ship, each tree does not take long to rise above everything that sur-
rounds it. Having reached an upper region, it then tranquilly spreads its
branches and surrounds itself with their shade. Others soon follow it into
this elevated sphere and, intertwining their branches, all form like an im-
u. Seeing that I tried to kill birds, he showed them to me when I did not see them;
in this way he made it possible for me to kill a very beautiful bird of prey. We hunted
in this way without getting off our horses, and when we red, our peaceful mounts did
not give the least sign of emotion. Letter of Beaumont to Ernest de Chabrol (2 August
1831), Lettres dAme rique, p. 114.
mense canopy above the earth that supports them. Beneath this humidand
unchanging vault, the appearance changes and the scene takes on a new
character. A majestic order reigns above our heads. Near the earth every-
thing presents on the contrary the image of confusion and of chaos. Some
trunks, incapable of bearing their branches any longer, have split halfway
from the top and no longer present anything to view except a sharp and
broken tip. Others, shaken for a long time by the wind, have been thrown
whole onto the ground; torn out of the earth, their roots formlike so many
natural ramparts behind which several men could easily take shelter. Im-
mense trees, held up by the branches that surround them, rest suspended
in air and fall into dust without touching the earth. Among us, there is no
country, no matter how unpopulated, in which a forest is left alone enough
for the trees, after tranquilly following their course, to fall nally due to
decrepitude.
v
It is man who strikes them in their prime and who rids the
v. Also it is against the woods that all the energy of civilizedmanseems to be directed.
With us, wood is cut for use; here, it is cut to destroy. Prodigious efforts are made to
obliterate it, and often these efforts are powerless. Vegetation is so rapid that it mocks
the endeavors of man. The Americans in the country spend half their life cutting
trees, and their children at a young age already learn how to use the hook and the ax
against the trees, their enemies. Also inAmerica, there is a general sentiment of hatred
against trees. The prettiest country houses sometimes lack shade for this reason. It is
believed that the absence of trees is the sign of civilization. Nothing seems uglier than
a forest; on the other hand, people nd a eld of wheat charming. Besides, these elds
of wheat present a strange appearance. All are full of tree trunks that have been
crudely cut at the height of a man and whose presence on the land still recalls, despite
destruction, the memory of these forests that they would like to forget. Letter of
Beaumont to his sister, Eugenie (Auburn, 17 July 1831), Lettres dAme rique, pp. 92
93.
In 1851, Tocqueville writes to Madame de Circourt:
M. de Chateaubriand himself portrayed the true wilderness, at least the one that I
know, with false colors. He seems to have crossed, without seeing it, this endless,
humid, cold, gloomy, somber and silent forest that follows you to the top of the
mountains, descends with you to the bottom of the valleys, and that more than the
ocean itself gives the idea of the immensity of nature and of the ridiculous smallness
of man (Correspondance avec Madame de Circourt, OC, XVIII, p. 52).
On the differences between Tocquevilles forest and that of Chateaubriand, see Eva
forest of their remains. [Our woods always present the image of youth
or of strength. In the forests of the New World, on the contrary, you see
trees of all ages, from the weakest shoot to the hundred-year-old oak.] In
the uninhabited areas of America, nature in its omnipotence is the sole
agent of ruin, as well as the sole power of reproduction. Just as in forests
subjected to the dominion of man, death strikes here constantly; but no
one takes responsibility for clearing the remains that death has caused.
Every day adds to the amount. They fall, they accumulate on each other;
time cannot reduce them to dust quickly enough to prepare new places.
There side by side several generations of deadtrees are foundlyingtogether.
Some at the last stage of decay no longer offer anything to view except a
long line of red dust drawn on the grass. But others, already half-consumed
by time, still preserve their forms. There are some nally that, just fallen,
still spread their long branches on the ground and halt the steps of the
traveler with an obstacle that he had not expected. Amid these divers re-
mains, the work of reproductiongoes onwithout ceasing. Shoots, climbing
plants, weeds of all types growup across all the obstacles. They creep along
the fallen trunks; they worm into their dust; they lift up and break the bark
that still covers them. [They slip between these immobile cadavers, creep
along their surface, penetrate beneaththeir witheredbark, lift upandscatter
their powdery remains.] Life and death here are as if face to face; they seem
to have wanted to mix and mingle their work.
w
We often happened to admire one of those calm and serene evenings at
sea, when the sails, apping peacefully along the masts, leave the sailors not
knowing from which direction the breeze will come. All of nature at rest
is no less imposing in the uninhabited areas of the NewWorld than on the
immensity of the sea. When at midday the rays of the sun beat down on
the forest, you often hear echoing in its depths something like a long moan,
Doran, Two Men and a Forest: Chateaubriand, Tocqueville and the American Wil-
derness, Essays in French Literature, 13, 1976, pp. 4461.
w. Tocqueville uses the same description in Voyage to Lake Oneida and in the rst
volume, p. 38.
a plaintive cry that lingers in the distance. It is the nal effort of the wind
that is expiring. Then everything around you falls into a silence so pro-
found, an immobility so complete that your soul feels penetrated by a sort
of religious terror. The traveler stops, he looks around. Pressed together,
intertwined in their branches, the trees of the forest seem to form only a
single whole, an immense and indestructible edice, under whose vaults
reigns an eternal darkness. In no matter which direction he looks, he sees
only a eld of violence and destruction. Broken trees, torn trunks, every-
thing announces that here the elements are perpetually at war. But thestrug-
gle is interrupted. You would say that at the order of a supernatural power,
movement is suddenly halted. Half-broken branches still seem to hold on
by a few hidden bonds to the trunk that no longer offers them support;
trees already uprooted have not had the time to come to earth and remain
suspended in the air. The traveler listens, he holds his breath with fear the
better to grasp the slightest reverberation of existence; no sound, no mur-
mur is heard.
More than once in Europe we happened to nd ourselves lost deep in
the woods, but always a few sounds of life came to our ears. It was the
distant ringing from the church tower of the nearest village, the step of a
traveler, the ax of the woodsman, the explosion of a rearm, the barking
of a dog, or only that confused murmur that arises froma civilizedcountry.
Here, not only man is missing, but even the sound of animals is not heard.
The smallest among them have left these places to move closer to human
habitation; the largest, to move still further away. The animals that remain
keep hiddenout of the sunlight. Thus everything is immobile inthe woods,
everything is silent beneath its leaves. You would say that the Creator has
for one moment turned His face away and that the forces of nature are
paralyzed.
Not only in this case, moreover, did we notice the singular analogy that
exists between the sight of the ocean and the appearance of a wild forest.
In both spectacles, the idea of immensity assails you. The continuity of the
same scenes, their monotony astonishes and hinders the imagination. We
perhaps found the sentiment of isolation and abandonment that had
seemed so heavy to us in the middle of the Atlantic stronger and more
poignant in the uninhabited areas of the New World. On the sea at least
the traveler contemplates a vast horizon toward which he directs his view
with hope. But in this ocean of leaves, who can point out the road? Toward
which objects to turn your eyes? In vain do you go up to the top of the
largest trees; others still higher surround you. It is useless to climb hills;
everywhere the forest seems to move with you, and this same forest extends
before you from the Arctic Pole to the Pacic Ocean. You can travel thou-
sands of leagues in its shadow, and youmove always, but without appearing
to change place.
* * * * *
But it is time to return to the road to Saginaw. We had already walked for
ve hours in the most complete ignorance of the places where we found
ourselves, when our Indians stopped and the oldest who was called Sagan-
Cuisco drew a line in the sand. He pointed to one end while crying: Miche-
Conte-Ouinque (the Indian name for Flint River) and the opposite end
while pronouncing the name of Saginaw, and making a dot in the middle
of the line, he indicated to us that we had reached the mid-point of the
road and that we had to rest for a few moments. The sun was already high
above the horizon and we would have accepted with pleasure the invitation
made to us, if we had noticed water within reach. But not seeing any in
the vicinity, we made a sign to the Indian that we wanted to eat and drink
at the same time. He immediately understood us and began to walk again
with the same rapidity as before. An hour later, he stopped again and
showed us a place thirty steps away in the woods where he gestured that
there was water. Without awaiting our response or without helping us un-
saddle our horses, he went there himself; we hastened to follow him. The
wind had recently overturned a large tree in this place. In the hole where
its roots had been was a bit of rainwater. It was the fountain to which our
guide led us without having the appearance of thinking that someonecould
hesitate to use such a drink. We opened our bag; another misfortune! The
heat had absolutely spoiled our provisions and we were completely reduced
to dining on a very small piece of bread, the only one we had been able to
nd at Flint River. Add to that a cloud of mosquitoes attracted by the pres-
ence of the water, that had to be battled with one hand while putting the
piece of bread in your mouth with the other, and you will have the idea of
a rustic dinner in a virgin forest. While we ate, our Indians remainedseated,
arms crossed, on the fallen trunk that I spoke about. When they saw that
we had nished, they gestured to us that they also were hungry. We showed
them our empty bag. They shook their heads without saying a word. The
Indian does not know what regular hours for meals are. He gorges himself
with food when he can and then goes without until he again nds some-
thing to satisfy the appetite. Wolves act the same in similar circumstances.
Soon we thought about remounting, but we noticed with great fright that
our mounts had disappeared. Bitten by mosquitoes and goaded by hunger
they had gone away from the path where we had left them, and it was only
with difculty that we were able to nd their trail. If we had remained
inattentive for a quarter-hour more, we would have awakened like Sancho
with a saddle betweenhis legs. We blessedwithall our hearts the mosquitoes
that had made us think so quickly about leaving, and we resumed our way.
The track that we followed did not take long to become more and more
difcult to recognize. At every instant, our horses had to force their way
through dense thickets or jump over immense tree trunks that barred our
way. At the end of two hours of an extremely difcult road, we nally
reached the bank of a river that was not very deep but steeply hemmed in.
We forded it and, having reached the top of the opposite bank, we saw a
eld of corn and two cabins quite similar to log houses. We realized as we
drew near that we were in a small Indian settlement. The log houses were
wigwams. Moreover, the most profound solitude reigned there as in the
surrounding forest. Coming before the rst of these abandoned dwellings,
Sagan-Cuisco stopped, he attentively examinedall the surroundingobjects,
then putting down his carbine and approaching us, he rst drew a line in
the sand, indicating to us in the same way as before that we had not yet
completed two-thirds of the road; then, getting up, he showed us the sun
and made a sign that it was rapidly descending toward sunset. He then
looked at the wigwam and closed his eyes. This language was very under-
standable; he wanted us to sleep in this place. I admit that the proposition
greatly surprised and scarcely pleased us. We had not eaten since morning
and we didnt care very much about sleeping without eating. The somber
and wild majesty of the scenes that we had witnessed since morning, the
total isolation in which we found ourselves, the erce countenance of our
guides with whom it was impossible to make a connection, nothing in all
of that was of a nature to give us condence. Moreover, there was some-
thing singular in the behavior of the Indians that did not reassure us. The
route that we had just followed for two hours seemed even less traveled
than the one that we had followed before. No one had ever told us that we
had to pass by an Indian village, and on the contrary everyone had assured
us that you could go from Flint River to Saginaw in a single day. So we
could not conceive why our guides wanted to keep us for the night in the
wilderness. We insisted on moving. The Indians gestured that we would be
surprised by darkness in the woods. To force our guides to continue on
their road would have been a dangerous endeavor. We decided to tempt
their greed. But the Indian is the most philosophical of all men. He has
few needs and hence few desires. Civilization has no hold on him; he is
unaware of or disdains its sweet pleasures. I had noticed, however, that
Sagan-Cuisco had paid particular attention to a small bottle in wicker that
hung at my side. A bottle that does not break is something whose utility
he had grasped and that had aroused a real admiration in him. My rie and
my bottle were the only parts of my European gear that had appeared to
arouse his envy. I gestured to him that I would give himmy bottle if he led
us immediately to Saginaw. The Indian then appeared violently torn. He
looked again at the sun, then the ground. Finally making his decision, he
grabbed his carbine; putting his hand to his mouth, he let out two cries of:
Oh! Oh! and rushed before us into the undergrowth. We followed him at
a fast trot, and forcing open a path before us, we had soon lost sight of the
Indian dwellings. Our guides ran in this way for two hours more rapidly
than they had done as yet; but night overtook us, and the last rays of the
sun had just disappeared in the trees of the forest when Sagan-Cuisco was
surprised by a violent nosebleed. However accustomed this young man as
well as his brother seemed to be to bodily exercise, it was evident that fatigue
and the lack of food began to exhaust his strength. We began to be afraid
that they would give up the undertaking and would want to sleep at the
foot of a tree. So we decided to have them alternately mount our horses.
The Indians accepted our offer without astonishment or humility. It was
something bizarre to see, these men half-naked seated solemnly on an En-
glish saddle and carrying our gamebags and our ries slung over their shoul-
ders, while we went with difculty on foot before them. Night nallycame,
a freezing dampness began to spread under the foliage. Darkness then gave
the forest a new and terrible appearance. The eye could no longer see any-
thing around except masses heaped up in confusion, without order or sym-
metry, bizarre and disproportionate forms, incoherent scenes, fantastic im-
ages that seemed borrowed fromthe sick imagination of someone feverish.
(The gigantesque and the ridiculous there were as close as in the literature
of our time.) Never had our steps brought forth as many echoes; never had
the silence of the forest seemed so fearsome to us. You would have said that
the buzzing of the mosquitoes was the sole breath of this sleeping world.
As we advanced, the shadows became deeper; only from time to time did
a rey crossing the woods trace a sort of luminous line in its depths. We
recognized too late the correctness of the advice of the Indian, but it was
no longer a matter of going back. So we continued to march as rapidly as
our strength and the night allowed us to do. At the end of an hour we came
out of the woods and found ourselves on a vast prairie. Our guides three
times yelled out a savage cry that reverberated like discordant notes of the
tom-tom. Someone answered in the distance. Five minutes later we were
on the bank of a river whose opposite side the darkness prevented us from
seeing. The Indians came to a halt at this place; they covered themselves
with their blankets to avoid the biting of the mosquitoes; sleeping on the
grass, they soon formed nothing more than a ball of wool hardly visible
and in which it would have been impossible to recognize the form of a
man. We ourselves stood on the ground and waited patiently for what
would follow. At the end of several minutes a slight noise was heard and
something approached the shore. It was anIndiancanoe about tenfeet long
and formed out of a single tree. The man who was crouching at the bottom
of this fragile small boat wore the costume and had all the appearance of
anIndian. He addresseda wordtoour guides whoat his commandhastened
to remove the saddles from our horses and to put them in the dugout. As
I prepared to climb in, the supposed Indian advanced toward me, put two
ngers on my shoulder and said to me with a Norman accent that made
me start: Dont go too fast, there are times here when people drown.
x
My
horse would have spoken to me, and I would not, I believe, have beenmore
surprised. I viewed the man who had spoken to me and whose face, struck
by the rst light of the moon, then shone like a copper sphere: So who
are you, I said to him; French seems to be your language and you have
the appearance of an Indian? He answered me that he was a bois-brule,
that is to say the son of a Canadian man and an Indian woman. I will often
have the occasionto speak about this singular race of half-breeds that covers
all the frontiers of Canada and a part of those of the United States. For
the moment I thought only about the pleasure of speaking my native lan-
guage. Following the advice of our compatriot, the savage, I sat down at
the bottom of the canoe and kept my balance as much as possible. The
horse got into the river and began to swim as soon as the Canadian pushed
the skiff with the paddle, all the while singing in a low voice an old French
tune, of whose verse I grasped only the rst two lines:
Between Paris and Saint-Denis
There was a girl
We thus arrived without accident on the other side. The canoe returned
immediately to get my companion. I will remember all my life the moment
when for the second time it approached the shore. The moon, which was
full, then rose precisely above the prairie that we had just crossed. Half of
the circle of the moon appeared alone on the horizon; you would have said
a mysterious door through which the light of another sphere escaped to-
ward us. The moonlight that emerged reected on the waters of the river
x. <I want to get into the boat while holding my horse by the bridle. The saddle
must be removed, the supposed Indian said to me, there are times here when people
drown. Norman accent, barely intelligible French. I remove my saddle, place it in the
canoe, place myself beside it. The large Indianputs himself at the end, holdingthebridle.
The Canadian rows; the horse swimming> (pocket notebook 2, YTC, BIIa, andVoyage,
OC, V, 1, p. 170).
and glistening reached me. On the very line on which this pale light shim-
mered, the Indian dugout advanced; you did not notice the oars, you did
not hear the noise of the paddles, it glided rapidly and without effort, long,
narrow and black, similar to an alligator of the Mississippi that stretched
toward the bank to seize its prey. Crouched at the front of the canoe, Sagan-
Cuisco, his head leaning against his knees, showed only the shining braids
of his hair. At the other end, the Canadian rowed in silence, while behind
him, the horse made the water of the Saginaw splash with the effort of his
powerful chest. There was in this whole spectacle a wild grandeur that then
made and has since left a profound impression on our souls. Disembarked
on the shore we hurried to go to a house that the moon had just revealed
to us one hundred steps from the river and where the Canadian assured us
that we would be able to nd shelter. We managed in fact to get settled
comfortably there, and we would probably have regained our strength by
a deep sleep if we had been able to rid ourselves of the myriad mosquitoes
that lled the house; but that we could never manage to do. The animal
that is called mosquito in English and maringouin in Canadian French is a
small insect similar in everything to the cousin of France from which it
differs only in size. It is generally larger and its proboscis is so strong and
so sharp that woolen fabric alone can protect against its bites. These small
gnats are the plague of the American wilderness. Their presence would be
enough to make a long stay unbearable. As for me, I declare that I have
never experienced a torment similar to what they made me suffer through-
out the entire course of this trip and particularly during our stay at Saginaw.
During the day they prevented us from drawing, writing, remaining still
for a single moment; at night, they circled by the thousands around us;
every part of the body that you left exposed served immediately as their
rendezvous. Awakened by the pain caused by the bite, we coveredour heads
with our sheets; their sting passed through; chased, pursued by theminthis
way, we got up and went to breathe the outside air until fatigue nally
brought us a difcult and interrupted sleep.
* * * * *
We went out very early and the rst sight that struck us as we left the house
was the view of our Indians who, rolled up in their blankets near the door,
slept next to their dogs.
We then saw for the rst time in daylight the village of Saginaw that we
had come so far to nd.
A small cultivated plain, bordered on the south by a beautiful and tran-
quil river, on the east and on the north by the forest, makes up for the
present the entire territory of the emerging city.
y
Near us arose a house whose structure announced the prosperity of the
owner. It was the one where we had just spent the night. A dwelling of the
same type was noticeable from the other end of the clearing. In between
and along the edge of the woods, two or three log houses were half lost in
the foliage. On the opposite bank of the river, a prairie extended like a
limitless ocean on a calm day. A column of smoke escaped then from the
prairie and climbed peacefully toward the sky. By following its direction
toward the earth, we discovered two or three wigwams whose conical form
and pointed tips blended into the grasses of the prairie.
An overturned plow, oxen returning to plowing, some half-wild horses
completed the picture.
In whatever direction you looked, your eye searched in vain for the spire
of a Gothic church tower, the wooden cross that marks the road, or the
moss-covered doorway of the presbytery. These venerable remnants of an-
cient Christian civilization have not been carried into the wilderness; noth-
ing there yet awakens the idea of the past or of the future. You do not even
nd places of rest consecrated to those who are no more. Death has not
had the time to reclaim its sphere or mark out its eld.
Here man still seems to come furtively into life. Several generations do
y. Variant: The village of Saginaw is made up of four or ve houses scattered over
a small cultivated plain surrounded on all sides by the forest {the cabins are placed a
hundred steps from the river}. The river that is called the Saginaw and that has given its
name to the clearing runs in {a deep bed until} Lake Huron. Grateful for Tocquevilles
description, the city of Saginaw has built a center for the federal administration as a
reproduction of the Tocqueville chateau (Richard Reeves, American Journey, NewYork:
Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 188.
not gather around his cradle to express hopes that are often false, and to
give themselves to premature joys that the future will belie. His name is not
inscribed in the records of the city. Religiondoes not come tomix its touch-
ing solemnities with the solicitudes of the family. The prayers of a woman,
a few drops of water poured on the head of the infant by the hand of the
father, quietly open the gates of heaven to him.
The village of Saginaw is the last point inhabited by Europeans to the
northwest of the vast Michigan peninsula. It can be considered like an
outpost, a sort of sentry point that whites have placed amid the Indian
nations.
The revolutions of Europe, the tumultuous clamor that is constantly
arising from the civilized world, reach here only now and then, and are
like the echo of a sound whose nature and origin the ears cannot make
out.
Sometimes it will be an Indian who, while passing, will recount withthe
poetry of the wilderness some of these sad realities of the life of society; a
forgotten newspaper in the knapsack of a hunter; or only that vague rumor
that is propagated by unknown voices and almost never fails to alert men
that something extraordinary is happening under the sun.
Once a year, a ship ascending the course of the Saginaw comes to re-
connect this link detached from the great European chain that already en-
velops the world with its coils. It brings to the new settlement the diverse
products of industry and in turn takes away the fruits of the land.
At the time of our passage, thirty persons alone, men, women, oldpeople
and children, composed this small society, an embryo scarcely formed, an
emerging seed entrusted to the wilderness, that the wilderness is to make
fruitful.
Chance, interest, or passions had gathered these thirty persons in this
narrowspace. Moreover, no common bond existed between themandthey
differed profoundly from each other. You noticed Canadians, Americans,
Indians and half-breeds there.
Philosophers have believed that human nature everywhere the same only
varied according to the institutions and the laws of different societies. That
is one of those opinions that every page of the history of the world seems
to belie. Nations, like individuals, all appear with a physiognomy that is
their own. The characteristic features of their countenance are reproduced
throughout all the transformations that they undergo. Laws, mores, reli-
gions change, empire and wealth are displaced; the external appearancevar-
ies, the dress differs, prejudices fade or are substituted for others. Among
these diverse changes you always recognize the same people. Something
inexible appears amid human exibility.
The men who inhabit this small, cultivated plain belong to two races
that for nearly a century have existed on the American soil and obeyed the
same laws. [{Before coming to America, their fathers had lived under the
same European sky; anarmof the sea more narrowthanthe Saint Lawrence
River separated their countries.}] But they have nothing in common be-
tween them. They are English and French, just as they appear on the banks
of the Seine and the Thames.
Enter this cabin of foliage, you will meet a man whose cordial welcome
and open countenance will announce to you from the beginning the taste
for social pleasures and lack of concern about life. At the rst moment you
will perhaps take himfor an Indian; subjected to savage life, he has willingly
adopted their habits, customs and almost their mores. He wears moccasins,
a hat of otter-skin, a woolen blanket. He is an indefatigable hunter, lying
in wait, living on wild honey and buffalo meat. This man has nonetheless
still remained no less a Frenchman, cheerful, enterprising, self-important,
proud of his origins, passionate lover of military glory, more vainthanself-
interested, a man of instinct, obeying his rst movement rather than his
reason, preferring making a stir to making money. In order to come to the
wilderness he seems to have broken all the bonds that attached him to life;
you see him with neither wife nor children. This condition is contrary to
his mores, but he submits to it easily as to everything. Left to himself, he
would naturally feel the stay-at-home mood; no one more than he has the
taste for the domestic hearth; no one loves more to delight his sight with
the appearance of the paternal church tower; but he has been torn despite
himself from his tranquil habits; his imagination has been struck by new
images; he has been transplanted beneath another sky; this same man feels
suddenly possessed by an insatiable need for violent emotions, vicissitudes
and dangers. The most civilized European has become the worshipper of
savage life. He will prefer the plains to the streets of the city, hunting to
agriculture. He will make light of existence and live without concern for
the future.
The whites of France, said the Indians of Canada, are as good hunters
as we. Like us, they scorn the comforts of life and face the terrors of death.
God had created them to inhabit the cabin of the savage and to live in the
wilderness.
z
A few steps from this man lives another European who, subject to the
same difculties, became steeled against them.
This man is cold, tenacious, mercilessly argumentative; he attaches him-
self to the land, and tears all that he can take from savage life. He struggles
constantly against it; he despoils it daily of some of its attributes. He trans-
ports into the wilderness, piece by piece, his laws, his habits, his customs
and, if he can, even the slightest renements of his advanced civilization.
The emigrant of the United States values from victory only its results; he
holds that glory is a vain noise and that man comes into the world only to
acquire comfort and the conveniences of life. Brave nonetheless, but brave
by calculation, brave because he has discovered that there were several
things more difcult to bear than death. Adventurer surrounded by his
family, yet who little values intellectual pleasures and the charms of social
life.
Placed on the other side of the river, amid the reeds of the Saginaw, the
Indian fromtime to time casts a stoic glance onthe habitations of his broth-
ers from Europe. Do not think that he admires their works, or envies their
lot. For the nearly three hundred years that the savage of America has strug-
gled against the civilization that pushes and surrounds him, he has not yet
learned to know and to esteem his enemy. The generations follow each
other in vain among the two races. Like two parallel rivers, they ow for
three hundred years toward a common abyss; a narrow space separates
them, but they do not blend their waves. Not, nonetheless, that the native
of the New World lacks natural aptitude, but his nature seems stubbornly
to reject our ideas and our arts. Seated on his blanket amid the smoke of
his hut, the Indian looks with scorn on the comfortable dwelling of the
z. Cf. Some ideas on the reasons that go against the French having good colonies,
E
crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, pp. 3637.

European; as for him, he proudly takes pleasure in his misery, and his heart
swells and rises at the images of his barbaric independence. He smiles bit-
terly seeing us torment our lives in order to acquire useless riches. What we
call industry, he calls shameful subjection. He compares the farmer to the
ox that painfully traces his furrow. What we call the conveniences of life,
he calls the toys of children or the renements of women. He only envies
our weapons. When man can shelter his head for the night under a tent of
leaves, when he is able to light a re to chase away the mosquitoes in the
summer and to protect himself from cold in the winter, when his dogs are
good and the country full of game, what more can he ask from the eternal
Being?
On the other bank of the Saginaw, near the European clearings and so
to speak on the borders of the Old and the NewWorld, arises a rustic cabin
more comfortable than the wigwam of the savage, more crude than the
home of the civilized man. This is the dwelling of the half-breed. When
we presented ourselves for the rst time at the door of this half-civilized
hut, we were completely surprised to hear in the interior a soft voice that
chanted hymns of penitence to an Indian tune. We stopped a moment to
listen. The modulations of sound were slow and profoundly melancholy;
we easily recognized the plaintive harmony that characterizes all the songs
of the man of the wilderness. We entered. The master was absent. Seated
in the middle of the room, her legs crossed on a mat, a young woman
worked making moccasins; with her foot she rocked an infant whose cop-
pery color and features announced its double origin. This woman was
dressed like one of our peasant women, except that her feet were nakedand
her hair fell freely over her shoulders. Seeing us, she became quiet with a
kind of respectful fear. We asked her if she was French. No, she answered
smiling. English? Not that either, she said; she lowered her eyes and
added: I amonly a savage. Child of two races, raised using twolanguages,
nourished with diverse beliefs and reared with opposing prejudices, the
half-breed forms a combination as inexplicable to others as to himself. The
images of the world, when his crude brain happens to think about them,
appear to him only as an inextricable chaos which his mind cannot escape.
Proud of his European origin, he scorns the wilderness, and yet he loves
the wild liberty that reigns there. He admires civilization and cannot com-
pletely submit to its dominion. His tastes are in contradiction to his ideas,
his opinions to his mores. Not knowing howto be guided by the uncertain
light that illumines it, his soul struggles painfully, wrapped in a universal
doubt. He adopts opposing customs; he prays at two altars; he believes in
the Redeemer of the world and in the amulets of the medicine man; and
he reaches the end of his course not having beenable to sort out the obscure
problem of his existence.
So in this forgotten corner of the world the hand of God had already
sown the seeds of diverse nations; several different races, several distinct
peoples already nd themselves face to face.
Some exiled members of the great human family have met in the im-
mensity of the woods, their needs are common; they have to struggle to-
gether against the beasts of the forest, hunger, the harshness of the sea-
sons. They are hardly thirty in the middle of a wilderness in which
everything rejects their efforts, and they cast on each other only looks of
hatred and suspicion. Skin color, poverty or comfort, ignorance or en-
lightenment have already established indestructible classications among
them; national prejudices, the prejudices of education and birth divide
them and isolate them.
Where to nd in a more narrow frame a more complete picture of the
miseries of our nature? A feature is still missing however.
The deep lines that birth and opinion have drawn between the destinies
of these men, do not cease with life, but extend beyond the tomb. Six di-
verse religions or sects share the faith of this emerging society.
Catholicismwith its formidable immobility, its absolute dogmas, its ter-
rible anathemas and immense rewards, the religious anarchy of the Ref-
ormation, the ancient paganismnd their representatives here. The unique
and eternal Being who created all men in His image is worshipped here in
six different ways. Men ght fervently over the heaventhat eachmanclaims
exclusively as his heritage. Even more, amid the miseries of the wilderness
and the misfortunes of the present, the human imagination still exhausts
itself giving birth to a future of inexpressible pains. The Lutheran con-
demns the Calvinist to eternal re; the Calvinist, the Unitarian; and the
Catholic envelops them all in a common reprobation.
More tolerant in his crude faith, the Indian limits himself to exiling his
European brother from the happy hunting grounds that he reserves for
himself. As for him, faithful to the confused traditions that his fathers be-
queathed to him, he easily consoles himself for the evils of life and dies
peacefully dreaming of forests always green that will never be disturbed by
the ax of the pioneer, and where the deer and the beaver will come to offer
themselves to his shots during the days without number of eternity.
* * * * *
After breakfast we went to see the richest proprietor of the village, Mr.
Williams. We found him in his shop selling to the Indians a multitude of
objects of little value such as knives, glass necklaces, ear pendants. It was
pitiful to see how these unfortunate men were treated by their civilized
brothers fromEurope. Moreover, all those that we sawthere acknowledged
something striking about the savages. They were good, inoffensive, a thou-
sand times less inclined to theft than the white. It was too bad, however,
that they were beginning to become informed about the value of things.
And why, please? Because the prots of the trade that we conduct withthem
became less considerable every day. Do you see here the superiority of the
civilized man? The Indian would have said in his crude simplicity, that
everyday he found it more difcult to deceive his neighbor. But the white
nds in the perfection of language a fortunate nuance that expresses the
thing and spares the shame.
Returning from Mr. Williams we had the idea of going up the Saginaw
for a distance inorder to shoot the wildducks that populate its banks. While
we were busy with this hunt, a dugout came out of the reeds of the river
and some Indians came to meet us in order to look at my rie that they had
seen from afar. I always noticed that this weapon, which was, however,
nothing extraordinary, attracted an entirely special consideration fromthe
savages. A rie that can kill two men in one second and re in the fog was,
according to them, a marvel above all estimation, a masterpiece beyond
price. Those who came up to us displayed as usual a great admiration. They
asked where my rie came from. Our young guide answered that it had
been made on the other side of the Great Water, among the fathers of the
Canadians; this did not make it, as you can believe, less precious in their
eyes. They observed, however, that since the sight was not placed in the
middle of each barrel, you could not be as certain about the shot, a remark
to which I admit that I did not know what to answer.
When evening came we climbed back into the canoe and, relying on the
experience that we had gained during the morning, we went alone to go
up an arm of the Saginaw that we had only seen briey.
[{I do not believe that I have ever in my life more strongly felt this type
of pleasure, at once physical and intellectual, that beautiful nature and a
serene evening make you feel.}] The sky was cloudless, the atmosphere pure
and still. The river owed through an immense forest, but so slowly that
is was almost impossible to say in which direction the current went. We
always felt that, to have an accurate idea of the forests of the New World,
it would be necessary to follow a few of the rivers that circulate in their
shadow. The rivers are like great roads with which Providence has taken
care, since the beginning of the world, to pierce the wilderness to make it
accessible to man. When you clear a passage through the woods, the view
is most often very limited. Moreover, the very path that you walk along is
a human work. Rivers on the contrary are roads that respect no trails, and
their banks freely show all that a vigorous vegetation, left to itself, can offer
of great and interesting spectacles.
The wilderness was there suchas it probably presenteditself sixthousand
years ago to the view of our rst fathers; an uninhabited space, owering,
delicious, fragrant; a magnicent dwelling place, a living palace, built for
man, but where the master had not yet entered. The canoe glided effort-
lessly and noiselessly; around us reigned a universal serenity and quiet. We
ourselves did not take long to feel as though weakened at the sight of such
a spectacle. Our words began to become more and more rare; soon we ex-
pressed our thoughts only in a low voice. Finally we became silent, and
simultaneously withdrawing our paddles, we bothfell intoa tranquil reverie
full of inexpressible charms.
Why do human languages that nd so many words for all the pains
meet an invincible obstacle to making the sweetest and most natural emo-
tions of the heart understood? Who will ever portray with delity those
moments so rare in life when physical well-being prepares you for moral
tranquillity and when something like a perfect equilibriuminthe universe
is established before your eyes; when the soul, half asleep, balances be-
tween the present and the future, between the real and the possible; when,
surrounded by beautiful nature, breathing a tranquil and mild atmo-
sphere, at peace with himself, amid a universal peace, man lends an ear to
the steady beating of his arteries, each pulse of which marks the passage
of time that for him seems to ow drop by drop into eternity. Many men
perhaps have seen the years of a long life accumulate without once ex-
periencing anything similar to what we have just described. Those men
cannot understand us. But there are some, we are sure, who will nd in
their memories and at the bottom of their hearts something to color our
pictures with and, while reading us, will feel the recollection reawakened
of a few eeting hours that neither time nor the positive cares of life have
been able to erase.
We were drawn out of our reverie by a rie shot that suddenly echoed
in the woods. The noise seemed at rst to roll with a roar on the two banks
of the river; then rumbling, it moved further away, until it was entirely lost
in the depths of the surrounding forests. You would have said a long and
fearsome war cry that civilization shouted out in its advance.
One evening in Sicily, we happened to get lost in a vast swamp that now
occupies the place where formerly the city of Imera was built; the sight of
this famous city that had become a wild abandoned place made a great and
profound impression on us. Never in our path had we encountered a more
magnicent witness to the instability of things human and to the miseries
of our nature. Here, it was also an uninhabited place, but imagination,
instead of going backward and trying to return toward the past, on the
contrary rushed ahead and lost itself in an immense future. We wondered
by what singular permission of destiny, we who had been able to contem-
plate the ruins of empires that no longer exist and to walk in the deserts of
human making, we, children of an old people, were led to be present at
one of the scenes of the primitive world and to see the still empty cradle
of a great nation. These are not the more or less random predictions of
wisdom. They are facts as certain as if they were accomplished. In a few
years these impenetrable forests will have fallen. The noise of civilization
and industry will break the silence of the Saginaw. Its echo will become
silent. . . . Wharves will imprison its banks. Its waters that today ow ig-
nored and tranquil amid a nameless wilderness will be forced back in their
course by the prow of ships. Fifty leagues still separate this uninhabited
area from the large European settlements, and we are perhaps the last trav-
elers allowed to contemplate it in its primitive splendor, so great is the im-
pulse that carries the white race toward the complete conquest of the New
World.
a
It is this idea of destruction, this lurking thought of a near andinevitable
change that, according to us, gives to the wilderness of America so original
a character and so touching a beauty. You see it with a melancholy pleasure;
you hurry in a way to admire it. The idea of this natural and wild grandeur
that is going to end mingles with the magnicent images given birth by the
triumphant march of civilization. You feel proud to be a man, and at the
same time you feel I do not know what bitter regret about the power that
God granted us over nature.
b
The soul is agitated by contrasting ideas, sen-
timents, but all the impressions that it receives are great and leave a pro-
found trace.
* * * * *
We wanted to leave Saginaw the next day, July 27; but because one of our
horses has been hurt by its saddle, we decided to remain one more day.
Lacking another way to pass the time, we went hunting in the prairies that
border the Saginaw below the cleared areas. These prairies are not swampy,
as you might believe. They are more or less wide plains where there are no
trees although the land is excellent. The grass is hard and three to four feet
high. We found only a little game and returned early. The heat was suffo-
cating as at the approach of a storm, and the mosquitoes even more trou-
a. On a separate sheet: In America ideas serve as the banner, not as the goal of
parties./
The head of anoldmanonthe shoulders of a child; image of Americancivilization.
See the note entitledNational character of Americans, inalphabetic notebookA, YTC,
BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 20810.
b. On the effects of a century and a half of civilization on the region crossed by
Tocqueville and Beaumont, see WilliamSerrin, Monsieur de Tocqueville! Oh, get some
waterhes fainted! New York Times, 2 January 1976, p. 25, col. 2.
blesome than usual. We walked always surrounded by a dense cloud of
these insects against which we had to wage a perpetual war. Woe to the man
who was forced to stop. He delivered himself defenseless to a merciless
enemy. I recall having beenforcedtoloadmy rie while running, sodifcult
was it to stand still for an instant.
As we crossed the prairie on our return, we noticed that the Canadian
who served as our guide followed a small marked path and looked with the
greatest care at the ground before putting down his foot. So why are you
taking so many precautions, I said to him; are you afraid of getting wet?
No, he answered. But I have acquired the habit when I cross the prairies
always to look where I put my foot in order not to step on a rattlesnake.
What the devil, I began again, jumping onto the path, are there rattle-
snakes here? Oh yes indeed, replied my American Norman with an im-
perturbable sang-froid, the prairie is full of them. I then reproached him
for not warning us sooner. He claimed that since we wore good shoes and
since the rattlesnake never bit above the ankle, he had not believed that we
ran any great danger.
I asked himif the bite of the rattlesnake was fatal. He answered that you
always died from it in less than twenty-four hours, if you did not appeal
to the Indians. They know a remedy that, given in time, saved the patient,
he said.
Whatever the case, during all the rest of the way we imitated our guide
and, like him, looked at our feet.
The night that followed this scorching day was one of the most difcult
that I have ever passed in my life. The mosquitoes had become so trouble-
some that, although I was overcome by fatigue, it was impossible for me to
close my eyes. Toward midnight the storm that had threatened for a long
time nally broke. Not able to hope for sleep, I got up and opened the door
of our cabin in order at least to breathe the cool night air. It was not raining
yet, the air seemed calm; but the forest was already shaking and out of it
came deep moanings and long clamorings. From time to time a lightning
bolt happened to illuminate the sky. The tranquil ow of the Saginaw, the
small cleared area that bordered the river, the roofs of ve or six cabins, and
the belt of foliage that surrounded us, appeared then for an instant like an
evocation of the future. Afterward everything was lost in the deepest dark-
ness, and the formidable voice of the wilderness began again to make itself
heard.
I was witnessing this great spectacle with emotion, when I heard a sigh
at my side, and in the ash of a lightning bolt I noticed an Indian pressed
like me against the wall of our dwelling. The storm had probably inter-
rupted his sleep, for he cast a xed and troubled eye on the objects around
him.
Was this man afraid of thunder? Or did he see in the clash of elements
something other than a passing convulsionof nature? These eetingimages
of civilization that loomed up as if by themselves amid the tumult of the
wilderness, did they have a prophetic meaning for him? These moans from
the forest that seemed to struggle in an unequal contest, did they come to
his ear like a secret warning from God, a solemn revelation of the nal fate
reserved for the savage races? I cannot say. But his restless lips seemed to
murmur a fewprayers, and all his features were stampedwitha superstitious
terror.
* * * * *
At ve oclock in the morning, we thought about our departure. All the
Indians in the neighborhood of Saginaw had disappeared; they had left to
go to receive the presents that the English give to them each year, and the
Europeans were engaged in the work of the harvest. So we had to accept
going back through the forest without a guide. The undertaking was not
as difcult as you could believe. There is generally only one path in these
vast uninhabited places, and it is only a matter of not losing the trail in
order to reach the end of the journey.
So at ve oclock in the morning, we recrossed the Saginaw; we received
the good-byes and the nal advice of our hosts, and turning the heads of
our horses, we found ourselves alone in the middle of the forest. It was not,
I admit, without a grave feeling that we begantopenetrate its humiddepths.
This same forest that then surrounded us extended behind us to the Pole
and to the Pacic Ocean. A single inhabited point separated us from the
limitless wilderness, and we had just left it. These thoughts, moreover, only
led us to hasten the pace of our horses, and at the end of three hours we
reached an abandoned wigwam and the solitary banks of the Cass River.
A point of grass that went down to the river in the shade of large trees
served as our table, and we began to have lunch, having before us the view
of the river whose waters, as clear as crystal, meandered through the
woods.
Coming from the wigwam of the Cass River we encountered several
paths. Someone had indicated to us which one we should take; but it was
easy to forget a few points, or to be misunderstood in such explanations.
That is what we did not fail to experience that day. The person had spoken
to us about two roads, there were three; it is true that among these three
roads, two came together as one further on, as we learned after, but we did
not know it then and our difculty was great.
After looking carefully, discussing things well, we did as nearly all great
men do and acted more or less by chance. We forded the river as well as
we could and plunged rapidly toward the southwest. More than once the
path seemed ready to disappear amid the undergrowth; in other places the
road seemed so little used that we had trouble believing that it led any-
where other than to some abandoned wigwam. Our compass, it is true,
showed us that we were always going in the right direction. Nevertheless,
we were completely reassured only when we found the place where we had
eaten three days earlier. A gigantic pine whose trunk, broken by the wind,
we had admired, led us to recognize the spot. We did not, however, con-
tinue our course any less rapidly, for the sun was beginning to go down.
Soon we reached a clearing that usually precedes cleared lands, and as
night began to surprise us we saw the Flint River. A half-hour later, we
found ourselves at the door of our host. This time the bear welcomed us
as old friends and got up on its hind legs only to celebrate with joy our
happy return.
During this entire day we had encountered no human face. On their
side, the animals had disappeared; they had probably retreated beneath the
foliage to escape the heat of the day. Only now and then did we nd at the
bare top of some dead tree, a hawk that, immobile on a single leg and
sleeping tranquilly inthe rays of the sun, seemed sculptedinthe same wood
that it had used for support.
It was amid this profound solitude that we thought suddenly about the
Revolution of 1830 [whose clearest result until now to my knowledge is to
have sent Charles X to Edinburgh, {Louis-Philippe to St. Cloud and us to
Saginaw}] whose rst anniversary we had just reached. I cannot say with
what impetuosity the memories of July 29 took hold of our minds. The
cries and the smoke of combat, the noise of the cannon, the rumble of the
musketry, the still more horrible ringing of the tocsin, this entire day with
its ery atmosphere seemed to emerge suddenly from the past and to come
before me like a living tableau. It was only a sudden illumination, a passing
dream. When, raising my head, I looked around me, the apparition had
already vanished; but never had the silence of the forest seemed more chill-
ing, its shadows more somber, or its solitude more complete.
1360
s4s4s4s4s4
a p p e ndi x 3
Sects in America
a
Piece that could perhaps be introduced by modifying it, by making it
shorter and more striking, into the place where I will explain the type of
inuence that democracy exercises on the Christian religion, but [even?
(ed.)] when contrary to its habits democracy accepts the principle of reli-
gion [v: some sects in America] without discussion.
* * * * *
It was Sunday. The city was as deserted as if it had been threatened by an
attack that very morning and all of the people had gone to the defense of
the walls. The streets were stretched with chains and the shutters of the
houses were closed with so much care that you would have said that the in-
habitants feared that the sunwould commit some base act by comingwithin.
I wandered for a long time in this desert without nding anyone who
could point out my route. I nally met a man whose mild and venerable
appearance rst attracted me. Although he was of middle age, his dress
preserved a certain old-fashioned air that struck me. He wore a jacket in
the French style and a hat with a wide at brim, short trousers and at
shoes; he had neither a rufe on his shirt nor buckles on his shoes, but his
jacket was of very ne cloth, and you noticed over his whole person such
an extreme neatness that you would have almost taken it for elegance.
a. This account condenses events that Tocqueville witnessed at different moments of
his journey. This survey of American sects could have accompanied no matter which
chapter on religion and particularly chapter 12 of the second part of the third volume.
The account is on pages 9 to 15 of notebook CVa (it is a copy by Bonnel). It was published
for the rst time in English by James T. Schleifer in Alexis de Tocqueville Describes the
American Character: Two Previously Unpublished Portraits, South Atlantic Quarterly
74, no. 2 (1975): 24458.
s ects i n ameri ca 1361
Sir, I said to him, could you point out to me a place in this city where
I canpray to God? He consideredme withkindness andanswered, without
even putting his hand to his hat: Thou art right, my friend. Come with
me, but let us hurry, for the congregation must already be gathered.
So we quickened our pace, and soon we were opposite a large building
that I had already passed by without noticing that it was a church. My guide
made me enter and entered himself, walking on his tiptoes while sliding
along in silence, like a man who regrets not being a pure spirit in order to
make still less noise. Having reached his pew, he nally sat down, discreetly
removed his gloves and, having carefully rolled them up, seemed to fall
suddenly into a profound meditation. When we were seated, I noticed that
the church was full which I never would have suspected, so profound was
the silence [v: the tranquillity and the immobility] that reigned there. All
those around me wore the costume of my guide, even the smallest children
who sat gravely in their pews, dressed in the same jacket in the French style
and covered by a wide-brimmed hat.
I remained there one hour and forty minutes in the same silence and the
same immobility. I nally turned toward the man who brought me andsaid
to him: Sir, I wanted to attend a church service and it seems to me that
you have led me to a gathering of the deaf and dumb. My guide, without
seeming offended by my question, looked at me with the same kindness
and said: Dost thou not see that each of us is waiting for the Holy Spirit
to illumine him; learn to moderate thine impatience in a holy place. I kept
quiet, and soon in fact one of those attending got up and began to speak.
His accents were plaintive, and each of the words that he uttered was as if
isolatedbetweentwo long silences; andwitha very pitiful voice he saidsome
very consoling things, for he spoke about the inexhaustible goodness of
God and about the obligation that men have to help each other, whatever
their belief and the color of their skin.
When he was quiet, the gathering began to ow out peacefully. As I left,
still moved by the language that I had just heard, I found myself near the
man who had brought me and I said to him: It seems to me that I have
just heard spoken here the word of the Gospel. But my soul is troubled;
let me know, I beg of you, if grace can be produced in a man only if he
wears a cut-away jacket and uses thee and thou with his neighbor. My
new friend reected at length and answered: The majority of our brothers
think that is not absolutely necessary.
Content to see that no indispensable connection existed between my
soul and my jacket, I regained the street with a lighter step.
A little distance from there, I noticed another church. But far frompray-
ing to God so tranquilly there,
b
on the contrary, such a great tumult was
produced and such a strange clamor arose that I could not repress a curious
desire, and to satisfy it I entered. It was a Methodist church. I rst saw in
an elevated place, a young man whose thundering voice made the vaults of
the building reverberate. His hair was standing on end, his eyes seemed to
shoot ames, his lips were pale and trembling, his entire body seemed ag-
itated by a universal trembling [v: prey to an anguish]. I wanted to break
through the crowd in order to go to the aid of this unfortunate man, but
stopped upondiscovering that he was a preacher. He spoke of the perversity
of man and of the inexhaustible treasures of divine vengeance. He probed
one by one all the formidable mysteries of the other life. He portrayed the
Creator as constantly busy heaping up the generations in the pits of hell
and as indefatigable in creating sinners as in inventing punishments. I
stopped completely troubled; the congregation was even more so than I.
Terror showed itself in a thousand ways on all the faces, and repentance
took on at every instant the appearance of despair and fury.
c
Women lifted
their children in their arms and let out lamentable cries, others struck their
forehead against the earth, men convulsed in their pews while accusing
themselves of their sins in a loud voice, or rolled in the dust. As the move-
ments of the minister became more rapid and his portraits more vivid,
the passions of the assembly seemed to grow, and often it was difcult not
to believe yourself in one of those infernal dwellings that the preacher
depicted.
I ed full of disgust and penetrated by a profound terror. Author and
preserver of all things, I said to myself, is it possible that you recognize
b. In the margin: As in the house of the Quakers.
c. The margins contain various stylistic variants of these sentences.
yourself in the horrible portrait that your creations make of youhere? Must
man be degraded by fear in order to raise him up to you, and can he climb
to the ranks of your saints only by delivering himself to transports that
make him descend below beasts?
Full of these thoughts, I walked rapidly without looking aroundmyself,
so much so that when I came to consider the place where I was, I noticed
that I had left the city and walked into the middle of the woods that sur-
round it. Nothing prompted me to retrace my steps, and I resolved to con-
tinue my route to see if I would not arrive at an inhabited place. At the end
of two hours, I in fact reached a new clearing, and soon I noticed the rst
houses of a beautiful village.
d
Atraveler just passing informedme that these
(illegible word) were the property of a small religious sect called dansars
e
[sic ]. It was obvious in fact that the houses of the village had been built on
a commonplanandby a single association. They hadcost the same amount;
the same air of comfort reigned. At the center of the works arose a vast hall
that served as the church. I was told that the divine service was going to be
celebrated there, and curiosity led me to it.
At the end of the room already drawn up were about fty men of dif-
ferent ages, but all wore the same dress. It was that of European peasants
of the Middle Ages. Facing them was a more or less equal number of
women enveloped in white clothes like great shrouds, from head to toe.
Moreover, you saw neither pulpit, nor altar, nor anything that recalled a
place consecrated by Christians to the worship of the Divinity. These men
and women sang songs of a lugubrious and plaintive tone. From time to
time, they accompanied themselves by clapping their hands. Other times,
they began to move and made a thousand rotations without losing the beat,
d. On various occasions, Beaumont gave the account of a visit to the Quaker com-
munity of Nisquayuna, not far from Albany. See the letter to Samuel R. Wood of 24
November 1831, in the Quaker Collection of Haverford College, Pennsylvania; the letter
to his sister, Eugenie, of 14 July 1831 (Lettres dAme rique, pp. 8690); and Marie, II,
pp. 2059. Beaumont gives a general survey of American sects in Marie, I, pp. 25859,
and in the appendix Notes on Religious Movements in the United States (II, pp. 181
225).
e. Shakers.
sometimes marching in columns, sometimes gathering in a circle. Other
times, they advanced toward each other as if to ght and then withdrew
without touching. I was witnessing this spectacle with astonishment, when
suddenly at a given signal the whole congregation began to dance. Women
and men, old people and children began to jump to the point of breath-
lessness. They danced so long in this way that sweat ran down their faces.
They nally stopped; and one of the oldest men of the company, after
wiping his brow, beganwitha brokenvoice: My brothers, let us givethanks
to the Almighty who, amid all the various superstitions that disgure hu-
manity, has deigned nally to show us the way of salvation, and let us pray
that he opens the eyes of this crowd of unfortunates who are still plunged
into the darkness of error, and saves them from the eternal torments which
perhaps await them.
1365
s4s4s4s4s4
a p p e ndi x 4
Political Activity in America
a
The rst evening of my arrival in the United States,
b
I saw a large crowd
assembled in one of the rooms of the inn. I learned that it was a political
banquet. After the meal, I drew one of the guests aside and I said to him:
Excuse, I beg you, the curiosity of a foreigner who still only imperfectly
understands your language and does not know about your customs.
Is there something that surprises you? he said to me wiping his mouth.
There is a great deal. I am afraid, I answered, that some unfortunate
events have happened since I left Europe.
What do you mean? he replied to me, all frightened.
Yes, I began again, while disembarking this morning at the port I saw
on all sides large posters that invited people to assemble in certain places
that were indicated, and during the time that it took me to come here I
heard two speeches which were concerned with public affairs, and I wit-
nessed an election. Again, just a moment ago, while I was in a corner of
the room where you held the banquet, it seemed to me that most of the
guests were speaking about the dangers to the State and were seeking the
means to avert them [v: I listened to the speeches of several of your orators
a. This short fragment, which is found in notebook CVa, pages 37 to 41, bears no
title. We reuse that which James T. Schleifer gave it in English in Alexis de Tocqueville
Describes the American Character: Two Previously Unpublished Portraits, South At-
lantic Quarterly 74, no. 2 (1975): 24458. This conversation recalls ideas from chapter
XVII of the third part of this volume (pp. 108992).
b. Tocqueville and Beaumont passed the rst night on the Havre, which brought
them fromFrance; and the second on the steamboat President on the way fromNewport
to New York. George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 5357.
poli ti cal acti vi ty i n ameri ca 1366
proposing a great number of projects, a few of which were to save the State
and all of which could not fail to prevent some great misfortunes].
Is that all? the American said to me. In truth you frightened me with
your unfortunate events. What surprises you repeats itself here every day.
As he moved away while saying (illegible word), I grabbed him by his
jacket and begged him to stop a moment. Wait a bit, I said again, I still
do not see clearly (illegible word).
What is more clear? he said to me. Dont you know that we are a free
people and that we take care of our affairs ourselves?
c
But I imagined, I began again, that liberty was such a great good that
those who possessed it were happier and consequently more tranquil than
other men. I see on the contrary that you must be prey to great difculties
to torment yourselves so much to nd remedies for them.
There is no people more enlightened, more free, more virtuous than
ours, <he said to me.
He was going to add a great deal more if I had not> Interrupting him
at this point, I see, I cried. With the aid of its enlightenment the people
of the United States sees its difculties more clearly than another, and with
its liberty and its virtue it works hard to remedy them.
<Among us, the American began again, we have the habit of never
interrupting anyone.> The Americanbeganagain: If youhadnot jumped
right into the middle of my comments, I was going to add that we were
the happiest people in the world. This time I dont follow, I said. <If
public affairs are in a tranquil and prosperous state, why can you not speak
about something other than politics? If you have good magistrates, why
work constantly to give them (words crossed out)? If your rights are guar-
anteed, thenwhat leads youtooccupy yourself every day withthe guarantee
of your rights? If you enjoy a general comfort, what good is there inseeking
c. To the side: It would try to forget that it wants to be happy in order to try to be
so.
poli ti cal acti vi ty i n ameri ca 1367
constantly to bring about comfort? And if you have easy communications
among the various parts of your territory, why are you heard to talk only
about roads, ports and canals?> If you have in fact what is sufcient for the
strength of the soul and the well-being of the body, what more do you
ask?
We work constantly to improve and to increase those things, he said
to me.

I answered. As for me, I would prefer to suffer tranquilly a few disparities
in my lot [v: happiness] than to tire myself constantly in this way to make
it better, and I still cannot comprehendthat menare happy whentheymake
so many efforts to become happier.
You make it very clear, the American said to me, that you are still not
very worthy to be free.
At this moment one of his friends approached us saying: This is the
time when the assembly is gathered for the Poles (illegible word) lets leave.
Do you want to accompany us? the American said to me.
Willingly, I replied; but what is this assembly? What is it?
It is, he answered, a meeting that has the purpose of expressing the
sympathy of the American people in favor of the unfortunate Poles.
And what, I said, would you go to war with Russia?
Not at all, he replied, Russia is one of our most faithful allies. We do
not want to go to war with Russia, but only to express the indignationthat
its current conduct causes us.
I understand, I said, that you are going to make speeches about
Poland.
More or less, he replied, you have it. Consequently it is more of a
diversion than a serious matter.
Good God, I began again, I thought you were fatigued after all the
difcult efforts that you made today to increase the sumof your happiness.
A European would think only of going to rest and would abandon other
peoples to their fate.
1368
s4s4s4s4s4
a p p e ndi x 5
Letter of Alexis de Tocqueville to Charles Stoffels
Versailles, 21 April 1830
I have greatly delayed replying to you, my dear friend, not as muchhowever
as would be indicated by the date of your letter, which bears the date 11
April, although it arrived only on the 15th, but you know what a rush of
things I am caught up in. Even today, I hardly have the time to say to you
all that I would like; I cannot wait any longer, however, without risking not
nding you at Metz. So pardon me if I only touch very lightly on the ques-
tion that you treated in depth and remarkably well (I say it to you not as a
compliment).
And rst, my dear friend, I will say to you that you make me out to be
much more of a killjoy than I am naturally; you give me a convictionwhere
I have only expressed doubts, and an absolute opinion when I have sur-
rounded myself with qualications. If you have done it for the purpose of
the case, as a lawyer wouldsay, nothing better; but if youactedinvoluntarily,
I must point out the error and reestablishthe point of departure. Ingeneral,
my dear Charles, you must not imagine that, when I am discussing some-
thing with you, I have always taken care to develop fully the ideas that I
put forward. You would in truth do me an honor that I do not deserve. I
do not believe that you should talk with your friends as you speak inpublic.
To stir the mind, to give the desire to reect, to raise in passing questions
that reection comes to elaborate, such is the goal of conversation in my
opinion; and I never have another with you. So, I beg of you, never take
to the letter and, above all, as denitive the opinions that I donot reexamine
and that I often throw out, more as a topic than as the result of reection.
To come back to the great question that we are debating at this moment,
I can put my point of view into two sentences.
letter to charles s toffels 1369
1. I doubt that the advanced state of civilization is as superior to the
middling state as is proclaimed, even when the march of civilization has
been well conducted;
2. I believe that almost always the intellectual education of a people is
poorly done and that consequently enlightenment is often a fatal gift.
Among all half-civilized peoples, you recognize almost the same base of
sentiments, ideas, passions, vices and virtues, more or less hidden it is true,
but always easy to recognize. Different characters are to peoples what phys-
iognomy is to the man: they differentiate peoples externally rather than
demonstrating a profound and radical difference between them.
In the same way, you always nd the mixture of the same elements
among nations that have reached a very high degree of civilization; here,
the bad elements are more numerous than the good ones; elsewhere, the
opposite happens, but all are united solely by this social state. Thus, putting
aside all special application, you can form theoretically the idea of a half-
civilized people and that of a completely enlightened people; no particular
circumstance, good or bad, has come to inuence the development of these
two principles, and I compare these two peoples with each other.
Among the rst of the two, among the one still half-savage, the social
state is imperfect, public force is badly organized, and the struggle between
it and individual force is often unequal; there is little security for the in-
dividual, little tranquillity for the mass, mores brutal, ideas simple, religion
there is almost always poorly understood. That is the bad side. Here is the
good: forced back on itself in this way, the soul there nds an admirable
spring of action, and individual force nds unexpected development; love
of country is not rational, but instinctive, and this blind instinct brings
forth miracles; sentiments are clear-cut, convictions profound; conse-
quently devotion is not rare there, enthusiasm is common and scorn for
death is deep in the heart and not on the lips.
Nowlet us compare to this half-civilized people the one that has attained
a high degree of civilization.
Among the latter, the social body has foreseen everything; the individual
gives himself the pain of being born; as for the rest, society takes hold of
him in the arms of his wet-nurse, it oversees his education, opens before
him the roads to fortune; it supports him in his march, deects dangers
from his head; he advances in peace under the eyes of this second provi-
dence; this tutelary power that has protectedhimduringhis life still oversees
the repose of his ashes. There is the fate of civilized man. The sentiment
and the spectacle of happiness soonsoftenthe wildroughness of his nature;
he becomes mild, sociable; his passions become calm; his heart seems to
have expanded the ability that he had been given to feel; he nds sources
of emotions and of pleasure where his fathers would never have imagined
that they could exist or would have scorned looking for them. Crimes be-
come rare, unfortunately virtues also. The soul, asleep in this long repose,
no longer knows how to wake up on occasion; individual energy is almost
extinguished; each man leans on the others when it is necessary to act; in
all other circumstances, on the contrary, each mancloses upwithinhimself;
it is the reign of egoism, convictions are shaken at the same time, for it must
be clearly admitted, my dear friend, that not one single intellectual truth
is established and the centuries of enlightenment are centuries of doubts
and of discussion. There is no fanaticism, but there are few beliefs, con-
sequently few of those actions, sublime in the case of another life, absurd
in the opposite hypothesis. Enthusiasm there is an attack of high fever; it
does not have its source inthe habitual state of the soul; the taste for positive
reality grows as doubts increase; the whole worldends upbeing aninsoluble
problem for the man who clings to the most tangible objects and who ends
up lying down on his stomach against the earth out of fear that he, in turn,
may come to miss the ground.
You cannot deny, however, that many sentiments there become purer.
Thus love of country becomes more reasoned, more thoughtful, religion
better understood by those who still believe in it, love of justice more en-
lightened, the general interest better understood, but all these sentiments
lose in strength what they gain in perfection, they satisfy the mind more
and act less on life.
I could undoubtedly push this portrait very much further, but I would
write a volume. What I said is sufcient to make youfeel that inmy opinion
you cannot say in an absolute manner: man improves by becoming civi-
lized, but rather that man by becoming civilized gains at the very same time
virtues and vices that he did not have; he becomes something other, that is
what is most clear.
Now, I am going further and I admit that, everything balanced and
weighed, I prefer the second state to the rst. Security, individual happiness
seemto me all in all the principal end of societies. This end is incontestably
attained by civilization and if it cantake place without leading totoostrong
an attack on human morality, it is certain that it is desirable.
But it frequently happens that the intellectual education of a people is
poorly done; then, it is not precisely the enlightenment that must be
blamed, but the way in which it is given. For example, one nation in the
world presents a singular spectacle. For reasons easy to nd but very long
to enumerate, the progressive spirit or civilization, instead of marching in
agreement with religious beliefs or at least not clashing with them in its
march, has entered into battle with them, so that an enlightened manthere
has not only become the synonym of a doubting man, not even the equiv-
alent of an unbelieving man, but in most cases a true enemy of religion,
of country. This is not all. Political passions become mixed in with them;
a man has become irreligious by pride, by opinion. This nation, I do not
need to tell you, is ours. Among us, not only has enlightenment produced
its usual effect; this effect is tripled by the way in which this enlightenment
has been spread; if the movement was continuous, and nothing declares
that it is to stop soon, we would present the example of a great social body
without beliefs, a unique example in the history of men, and about which
consequently it is impossible to reason.
Do not believe, however, my dear friend, that I conclude from this that
enlightenment must be fought and that we must struggle against the irre-
sistible inclination of our century. No, in truth, I believe on the contrary
that the only task that remains for the government is to seek to put itself
at the head of the movement in order to direct it, to lavish instructionitself
in order to be sure that instruction will not become a murderous weapon
in other hands. I think, above all, that its efforts must tend toward discon-
necting religion from politics, for what particularly harms the rst is the
proximity of the second. Thus in summary, you see, we will both act more
or less in the same way, you by enthusiasm and training, me by reasoning
and calculations. You must notice, my dear Charles, that I have been going
post-haste for a page and a half. In fact, I do not have time and must say
farewell to you. I reproach myself for having philosophized in this way for
an hour instead of chatting, which would have been much more valuable,
but an honest man has only [interrupted text (ed.)]. (YTC, AVII)
1373
s4s4s4s4s4
a p p e ndi x 6
Foreword to the Twelfth Edition
However great and sudden the events that have just been accomplished in
a moment before our eyes may be, the author of the present work has the
right tosay that he was not surprisedby them. This bookwas written, fteen
years ago, with the constant preoccupation of a single thought: the im-
pending, irresistible, universal advent of democracy in the world. May it
be reread. You will nd on each page a solemn warning that reminds men
that society is changing form; humanity, changing condition; and that new
destinies are approaching.
At the beginning these words were written:
The gradual development of equality of conditions is a providential fact; it
has the principal characteristics of one: it is universal, it is lasting, it escapes
every day from human power; all events, like all men, serve its development.
Would it be wise to believe that a social movement that comes from so far could
be suspended by the efforts of a generation? Do you think that after having
destroyed feudalism and vanquished kings, democracy will retreat before the
bourgeois and the rich? Will it stop now that it has become so strong and its
adversaries so weak?
The man who, in the presence of a monarchy strengthened rather than
weakened by the July Revolution, wrote these lines made prophetic by
events, can again today call the attention of the public to his work without
fear.
You must allow him as well to add that current circumstances give his
book a timely interest and a practical utility that it did not have when it
appeared for the rst time.
Royalty existed then. Today it is destroyed. The institutions of America,
which were only a subject of curiosity for monarchical France, must be a
foreword to the twelfth edi ti on 1374
subject of study for republican France. It is not force alone that establishes
a new government; it is good laws. After the combatant, the legislator. The
one has destroyed, the other establishes. Each has his work. If it is nolonger
a matter of knowing if we will have royalty or the Republic in France, it
remains for us to learn if we will have an agitated or a tranquil Republic,
a regular or an irregular Republic, a liberal or an oppressive Republic, a
Republic that threatens the sacred rights of property and of family or a
Republic that acknowledges and consecrates them. A terrible problem,
whose solution is important not only to France, but to the whole civilized
world. If we save ourselves, we save at the same time all the peoples who
are around us. If we are lost, all of them are lost with us, Depending on
whether we will have democratic liberty or democratic tyranny, the destiny
of the world will be different, and you can say that today it depends on us
whether the Republic ends up being established everywhere or abolished
everywhere.
Now, this problem that we have only just posed, America resolved more
than sixty years ago. For sixty years, the principle of sovereignty of the
people that we enthroned yesterday among us, has reignedthere undivided.
It is put into practice there in the most direct, the most unlimited, the most
absolute manner. For sixty years the people who have made it the common
source of all their laws, have grown constantly in population, in territory,
in wealth, and note it well, they have found themselves tohave been, during
this period, not only the most prosperous, but the most stable of all the
peoples of the earth. While all the nations of Europe were ravaged by war
or torn apart by civil discords, the American people alone in the civilized
world remained at peace. Nearly all of Europe was turned upside down by
revolutions; America did not even have riots; the Republic there was not
disruptive, but conservative of all rights; individual property had more
guarantees there than in any country in the world; anarchy remained as
unknown as despotism.
Where else could we nd greater hopes and greater lessons? Let us not
turnour attentiontowardAmerica inorder tocopy slavishlytheinstitutions
that it has given itself, but in order to understand better those that are suit-
able for us, less to drawexamples fromAmerica than instruction, toborrow
foreword to the twelfth edi ti on 1375
the principles rather than the details of its laws. The laws of the French
Republic can and must, in many cases, be different from those that govern
the United States, but the principles on which the American constitutions
rest, these principles of order, of balance of powers, of true liberty, of sin-
cere and profound respect for law are indispensable to all Republics; they
must be common to all, and you can say in advance that wherever they are
not found, the Republic will soon cease to exist. 1848.
1376
Ouvrages utilise s par Tocqueville
Cet appendice contient les ouvrages cites par Tocqueville dans son livre et
ceux qui apparaissent dans ses notes et brouillons (nous les avons fait pre-
ceder de *). Dans les papiers de Tocqueville, on trouve deux bibliographies
(YTC, CIIa et CIIb
a
qui, en plus de certaines references, permettent
didentier les editions quil a utilisees. Nous avons egalement repris les
editions du catalogue de la bibliothe`que du chateau de Tocqueville (YTC,
AIe) quand cela a ete possible. Dans les autres cas, nous citons la premie`re
edition des ouvrages.
Linclusion dun ouvrage dans la liste nindique pas necessairement quil
a servi au travail de redaction. Tocqueville sest parfois interesse a` des textes
quil na pas pu obtenir a` la Bibliothe`que Royale ou il a pris note dun livre
quon lui recommandait et ne la jamais lu. Certains livres ont beaucoup
marque la De mocratie, tels le traite deconomie politique de Villeneuve-
Bargemont ou le Discours sur lorigine de line galite de Rousseau. Sils ne se
trouvent pas mentionnes dans cette liste, cest evidemment que Tocqueville
ne les cite pas.
La bibliothe`que du chateau conserve aussi un certain nombre de bro-
chures, de discours et dimprimes que lauteur a recus pendant son voyage
enAmerique. Ces textes nondecoupes nont jamais ete lus par Tocqueville.
b
La plus grande partie de ces ouvrages ne gurent pas dans cette liste. Nous
citons neanmoins ceux qui ont assez interesse Tocqueville pour que leur
couverture porte des remarques et des annotations de sa main.
a. Les copies des bibliographies de Tocqueville contiennent de nombreuses erreurs.
Nous avons omis de notre liste certains titres et auteurs inexistants. Ainsi on attribue a`
Castmare une histoire de New York alors quil sagit de F. S. Eastman. Le Fashionable
Tour devient le Fashionable Tom, louvrage du juge Story est attribuee a` Hury, etc.
b. Certains Americains ont manifestement prote de la visite de Tocqueville et de
Beaumont pour se debarrasser de livres qui ne les interessaient pas (George W. Pierson,
1377
Works Used by Tocqueville
This appendix contains the works cited by Tocqueville in his book and
those that appear in his notes and drafts (I have preceded them with *). In
Tocquevilles papers are found two bibliographies (YTC, CIIa and CIIb
a
)
which, in addition to certain references, allow us to identify the editions
that he used. I have as well gone back when possible to the editions of the
catalogue of the library of the Tocqueville chateau (YTC, AIe). In other
cases, I cite the rst edition of the works.
The inclusion of a work in the list does not necessarily indicate that it
was used in the work of writing. Tocqueville was sometimes interested in
texts that he was not able to obtain from the Royal Library, or he took note
of a book recommended to him and never read it. Certain books greatly
inuenced the Democracy, such as the treatise on political economy of
Villeneuve-Bargement or Rousseaus Discours sur lorigine de line galite . If
they are not mentioned in this list, it is clearly because Tocqueville does not
cite them.
The library of the chateau also preserves a certain number of brochures,
speeches, and printed materials that the author received during his journey
in America. These uncut texts were never read by Tocqueville.
b
Most of
these works do not appear in this list. I nonetheless cite those that interested
Tocqueville enough so that their covers bear marks and annotations in his
hand.
a. The copies of the bibliographies of Tocqueville contain numerous errors. I have
omitted from the list certain nonexistent titles and authors. Thus a history of NewYork
is attributedto Castmare whenit concerns F. S. Eastman. The Fashionable Tour becomes
the Fashionable Tom; the work of Judge Story is attributed to Hury, etc.
b. Certain Americans clearly proted from the visit of Tocqueville and Beaumont in
order to get rid of books that did not interest them (George W. Pierson, Tocqueville and
1378 ouvrages uti li s e s par tocquevi lle
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, p. 537). Tocqueville a notamment recu aux E
tats-
Unis: On the Penetrativeness of Fluids, by J. K. Mitchell (Philadelphia, 1830); On the
Storms at the American Coasts, by W. C. Redeld; et An Introductory Lecture on the Ad-
vantages and Pleasures of the Study of Chemistry in the Transylvania University, by L. P.
Yandell (Lexington, 1831), etc. Tocqueville ne semble pas avoir lu ces ouvrages et leur
relation avec la De mocratie en Ame rique para t assez vague pour justier leur absence dans
cette bibliographie.
* [A. C. T., Mouvement de la presse francaise en 1836, Revue des deux mondes,
4
e
serie, X, 1837, pp. 45398.]
Abridged History of the United States. [Peut-etre/Maybe: Hosea Hildreth, An
Abridged History of the United States of America. Boston: Carter, Hendee and
Babcock, 1831.]
An Account of the Church of Christ in Plymouth. [Dans/In: Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society for the Year 1795. Boston: Printed by Samuel
Hall, 1795. IV, pp. 10741.]
Adair, History of the American Indians. [James Adair, The History of the American
Indians . . . London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1775.]
* John Quincy Adams, President Quincys Centennial Address. Boston, 1830.
* Address of the Convention to the People of the United States.
* Allen Biographical Dictionary. [William Allen, An American Biographical and
Historical Dictionary . . . Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1809; Boston: William
Hyde, 1832.]
* Almanach royal, 1833. [Almanach royal et national pour lan 1833 . . . Paris:
Guyot et Scribe, 1833.]
American Almanac. [The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge.
Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1829[61]. Tocqueville cite les volumes de/Tocque-
ville cites the volumes of 1831, 1832, 1833 et/and 1834.]
* American Annual Register, 18271835. [[Joseph Blunt,] The American Annual
Register. New York: G. and C. Carvill, 1827. New York: E. and G. W. Blunt,
18281830.]
American Constitution. [Ledition du Fede raliste employee par Tocqueville re-
produit le texte de la Constitutionamericaine, mais Tocqueville cite une autre
source/The edition of the Federalist used by Tocqueville reproduces the text of
the American constitution, but Tocqueville quotes another source.]
* American Medical and Philosophical Register. [American Medical and Philo-
sophical Register, or Annals of Medicine, Natural History, Agriculture and the
Arts, conducted by a society of Gentlemen [David Hosack and Benjamin
works us ed by tocquevi lle 1379
Beaumont in America, p. 537). Tocqueville received, among others, in the United States:
On the Penetrativeness of Fluids, by J. K. Mitchell (Philadelphia, 1830); On the Storms at
the American Coasts, by W. C. Redeld; and An Introductory Lecture on the Advantages
and Pleasures of the Study of Chemistry in the Transylvania University, by L. P. Yandell
(Lexington, 1831), etc. Tocqueville seems not to have read these works and their con-
nection with the Democracy in America seems sufciently vague to justify their absence
from this bibliography.
Rush entre autres/among others]. New York: C. S. Van Winkle, 181114. 4
vols.]
* American Monthly Review. [Peut-etre celle publiee entre 1832 et 1834 par/maybe
the one published between 1832 and 1834 by Hillard, Gray and Co., Boston. 4
vols.]
* American Quarterly Review, septembre 1831. [Tocqueville semble avoir ete in-
teresse par le compte-rendu de/Tocqueville seems to have been interested in the
review of: Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829, by the Rev. R. Walsh, London,
1830. 2 vols.]
* The Anniversary Report of the Pennsylvania Society for Discouraging the Use of
Ardent Spirits, 1831. [Peut-etre/Maybe: The Anniversary Report of the Managers
of the Pennsylvania Society for Discouraging the Use of Ardent Spirits, Read on
the 27th May 1831. Philadelphia: Henry H. Porter, 1831.]
* Annual Law Register. Voir/See Grifth.
* Annual Report of the Apprentices Library Company of Philadelphia [Probable-
ment/Probably: Annual Report and the Treasurers Account of the Apprentices
Library Company of Philadelphia. March, 1831. Mode`le dassociations char-
itables, note Tocqueville/Model of charitable associations, notes Tocque-
ville.].
* Annuaire Militaire de 1834.
* Marquis dArgenson. [Conside rations sur le Gouvernement de la France. Ams-
terdam [Paris]: Chez Marc-Michel Rey, 1765.]
* Francis Bacon, Nouvel organe.
* Edward Baines. [History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. London:
H. Fisher, R. Fisher & P. Jackson, 1835.]
* [Odilon Barrot, [Discours], Journal des de bats, 1 mars 1834.]
* Heliza Bates, The Doctrine of Friends. [Elisha Bates, The Doctrines of Friends,
or Principles of the Christian Religion as Held by the Society of Friends, Com-
monly Called Quakers. Mountpleasant (Ohio): printed by the author, 1825.]
* Beccaria [Traite des de lits et des peines . . . Philadelphia [Paris], 1766.].
Jeremy Belknap, History of NewHampshire, Boston, Philadelphia: 178492. 3vols.
Jeremy Belknap, [Queries Respecting the Slavery and Emancipation of the
Negroes in Massachusetts, Proposed by the Hon. Judge Tucker of Virginia,
and Answered by the Rev. Dr. Belknap, dans/in: Massachusetts Historical
Collection, IV, p. 191211].
Bell, Rapport sur les affaires indiennes, 24 fe vrier 1830. [John Bell, Removal of
Indians. February 24, 1830, [Documents of the House of Representatives, 21st
Congress].]
Beverley, History of Virginia fromthe Earliest Period. Traduit enfrancais en1707/
Translated into French in 1707. [Robert Beverley, Histoire de la Virginie. Paris:
Pierre Ribou, 1707.]
Blackstone. [Commentaries on the Laws of England. Tocqueville le juge un ecri-
vain mediocre, incapable dun jugement profond/Tocqueville considers him a
mediocre writer, incapable of a profound judgment.]
Blosseville, Memoires de Tanner. [Memoires de John Tanner. Traduit par Ernest
de Blosseville/Translated by Ernest de Blosseville. Paris: A. Bertrand, 1835. 2
vols.]
* Joseph Blunt, A Historical Sketch of the Formation of the Confederacy. [A His-
torical Sketch of the Formation of the Confederacy, Particularly with Reference
to the Provincial Limits and the Jurisdiction of the General Government over
Indian Tribes and the Public Territory. New York: Geo. &Chas. Carvill, 1825.
Curieux pour conna tre les principes du gouvernement federal de lUnion/
Interesting for knowing the principles of the federal government of the Union.]
* Blunt, Joseph. Voir/See: American Annual Register.
* Boissy dAnglas, Francois Antoine comte de, Essai sur la vie, les e crits et les opi-
nions de M. de Malesherbes. Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, 181921. 2 vols.
* Bossuet, Discours sur lhistoire universelle, depuis le commencement du monde
jusqua` lempire de Charlemagne, avec la suite jusqua` lanne e 1700, 1756. [Nous
navons pas trouve ledition de 1756 mentionnee dans le catalogue de la bi-
bliothe`que du chateau de Tocqueville. Il sagit peut-etre de ledition de Babuty
ls, Paris, 1765. 2 vols./I have not found the edition of 1756 mentioned in the
catalogue of the library of the Tocqueville chateau. Perhaps it is the edition of
Babuty ls, Paris, 1765. 2 vols.]
* Bossuet, Histoire des variations des e glises protestantes. Paris: G. Desprez et J.
Dessesartz, 1730. 4 vols.
[Boston] Nineteenth Annual Report of the Receipts and Expenses of the City of
Boston and County of Suffolk. 1 May 1831.
Brevards Digest of the Public Statute Law of South Carolina. [Joseph Brevard,
An Alphabetical Digest of the Public Statute Lawof SouthCarolina. Charleston
(South Carolina): John Hoff, 1814.]
* Buffon, Histoire naturelle ge ne rale et particulie `re. Paris: Imprimerie Royale,
17691781. 13 vols.
* Buffon, Histoire naturelle des oiseaux. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 177083. 9
vols.
* Burke (mot illisible) Register. [The Annual Register of World Events; A Review
of the Year. London, New York: Longmans, Green, 17581963. Edite par E.
Burke jusqua` 1791/Edited by E. Burke until 1791.]
Lord Byron, Childe Harold.
* Lord Byron, [Correspondance de lord Byron avec un ami . . . Paris: A. and W.
Calignani, 1825. 2 vols].
* Candolle. [Tocqueville mentionne un ouvrage de Candolle sur lor et largent.
Il sagit peut-etre de/Tocqueville mentions a work by Candolle on gold and
money. Perhaps it is Alphonse de Candolle, Les caisses de pargne de la Suisse
conside re es en elles-me mes et compare es avec celles dautres pays . . . Gene`ve: A.
Cherbuliez et Cie., 1838.]
Carey, Letters on the Colonization Society. Philadelphia, 1833. [Mathew Carey,
Letters on the Colonization Society . . . 7
e
edition. Philadelphia: Sterotypedby
L. Johnson, 1833.]
Caroline du Sud. Rapport fait a` la convocation de la Caroline du Sud. Ordonnance
de nullication du 24 novembre 1832. [Il y a plusieurs editions de ce document.
Tocqueville aurait pu consulter/There are several editions of this document.
Tocqueville could have consulted: The Report, Ordinance, and Addresses of the
Convention of the People of South Carolina. Adopted, November 24th, 1832.
Columbia (South Carolina): A. S. Johnston, 1832.]
Cass. Voir/see Clark.
Chalmer. [Probablement/probably, Lionel Chalmers, An Account of the Weather
and Diseases of South Carolina. London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1776. 2
vols.]
* [Chambre des deputes, discussion sur la loi de competences departamentales/
Chamber of Deputies, discussion of the lawondepartmental jurisdiction],Jour-
nal des de bats, 7 mars 1838.
* William Ellery Channing, Discourses, Reviews and Miscellaneous. 1 vol. [Wil-
liam Ellery Channing, Discourses, Reviews and Miscellanies. Boston: Carter,
Hender and Co., 1830. 2 vols.]
Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France. [Pierre-Francois Charlevoix, Histoire
et description ge ne rale de la Nouvelle France . . . Paris: Chez Nyon Fils, 1744.]
Chateaubriand, Rene .
* Chateaubriand, [Essai sur la litte rature anglaise. Paris: Charles Gosselin et
Furne, 1836. 2 vols].
Clark et Cass. Rapports du 4 fevrier 1829, 29 novembre 1823 et 19 novembre
1829/Reports of 4 February 1829, 29 November 1823 and 19 November 1829.
* De Witt Clinton, Memoirs of De Witt Clinton [New York: J. Seymour, 1829].
Voir/See David Hossak.
Code of 1650. Hartford, 1830. [The Code of 1650 . . . Hartford (Connecticut): S.
Andrus, 1830.]
* [Auguste Colin, Lettres sur lEgypteAdministration territoriale duPacha,
Revue des deux mondes, XIII, 1838, pp. 65571.]
Companion to the Almanac for 1830. [Companion to the Almanac; or Year-Book of
General Information. London: Stationers Co., 1830.]
Compte ge ne ral de lAdministration des Finances, [Paris, 1808 . Le titre change
a` loccasion/The title changes on occasion].
Connecticut. Constitution de 1638. [Les citations de Tocqueville appartiennent
au Code of 1650, qui reproduit la Constitutionde 1638 aux pages 1119/Tocque-
villes quotations are from the Code of 1650, which reproduces the constitution
of 1638 on pages 1119.]
John Cook. [Voir/See Look]
* [James Fenimore Cooper, Excursion in Switzerland. Paris: A. andW. Calignani
and Co., 1836; et/and Baudry, 1836.]
* [James Fenimore Cooper, Letter of J. Fenimore Cooper to Gen. Lafayette, on the
Expenditure of the United States of America. Paris: Baudry, 1831.]
* [James Fenimore Cooper, Notions of the Americans; Picked up by a Travelling
Bachelor. London: Henry Colburn, 1828. 2 vols. Dans ses notes, Tocqueville
cite ledition anglaise, mais il a achete avant son depart la version francaise
publiee sous le titre/In his notes, Tocqueville cites the English edition, but before
his departure he bought the French version published with the title: Lettres sur les
murs et les institutions des E
tats-Unis de lAme rique du Nord. Paris: A. J. Kil-

ian, 1828. 4 vols en 2.]
Darbys View of the United States. [William Darby, View of the United States,
Historical, Geographical, and Statistical . . . Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1828.
Cet ouvrage est estime mais deja` ancien, il date de 1828./This work is re-
spected but already old; it dates from 1828. ]
* A Practical Treatise of the Peace in Criminal Jurisdiction, by Davis. [Daniel
Davis, A Practical Treatise upon the Authority and Duty of Justices of the Peace
in Criminal Prosecutions. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1824. Tocqueville ju-
geait curieux pour la procedure civile ce texte estime/Tocqueville considered
this respected text interesting for civil procedure.]
Delolme [voir/see de Lolme].
Descouritz. [Michel Etienne Descourtilz, Voyages dun naturaliste et ses obser-
vations . . . Paris: Dufart Pe`re, 1809. 3 vols.]
Documents le gislatifs. [Voir U.S. Congress. Legislative documents.]
* Douglas, Histoire ge ne rale des colonies. Douglas Summary, 1775. [William
Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political of the First Planting, Progressive
Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America.
London: R. Baldwin, 1755. 2 vols. Nous navons pas pu trouver ledition de
1775/I have not been able to nd the edition of 1775.]
* William Alexander Duer, Outlines of the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the
United States. [New York: Collins and Hanny, 1833.]
* Dufresne de St. Leon, E
tude du cre dit public. [Dufresne de Saint-Leon, Louis-

Cesar-Alexandre, E
tude du cre dit public et des dettes publiques. Paris: Bos-

sangue Pe`re, 1824.]
Duponceau, Correspondance avec le Rvd. Heckewelder. [Voir/See Heckewelder]
* Durand, de Dauphine, Voyages dun Franc ois, exile pour la religion, avec une
description de la Virginie & Marilan dans lAme rique. [La Haye, [imprime par
lauteur], 1696.]
* F. S. Eastman, History of the State of New-York. [New York: E. Bliss, 1828.]
* Elliots Pocket Almanac of the Federal Government. 1832. [Elliots Washington
Pocket Almanac. Washington: S. A. Eliot [sic ]. Assez curieux comme pre-
sentant le tableau des rouages administratifs du gouvernement central./
Quite interesting for presenting the picture of the administrative machinery of
the central government. ]
Emersons Medical Statistics. [Gouverneur Emerson, Medical Statistics, Consisting
of Estimates Relating to the Population of Philadelphia, with its Changes as
Inuenced by the Deaths and Births, During Ten Years, viz. from 1821 to 1830,
Inclusive. Philadelphia: Joseph R. A. Kenett, 1831. 32 pp.]
Encyclopedia americana. [Recue de Francis Lieber/Received from Francis Lieber.]
* Encyclope die
Les E
vangiles.
Everett. [Edward Everett, Speech of Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, on the Bill for
Removing the Indians from the East to the West Side of the Mississippi, Delivered
. . . 19th of May, 1830: Boston, 1830.]
* Extracts from the Ancient Roads [Records] of New Haven. [Fait partie du Code
of 1650/Part of the Code of 1650.]
* Extrait du bulletin de la Socie te de ge ographie. Tableau de la population des E
tats-
Unis dapre `s les diffe rents recensements exe cute s par ordre du gouvernement.
* The Fashionable Tour. [[Gideon Miner Davidson,] The Fashionable Tour. A
Guide to Travellers Visiting the Middle and Northern States and the Province
of Canada. 4
e
edition. Saratoga Springs and NewYork, 1830.]
Le Fe de raliste. [The Federalist. Washington: Thomson&Homans, 1831. (E
dition
identiee par James T. Schleifer/Edition identied by James T. Schleifer ). Au
debut de 1835, Tocqueville a egalement employee ledition francaise de Buis-
son . . . , Paris, 1792. 2 vols./(Edition identied by James T. Schleifer.) At the
beginning of 1835, Tocqueville also used the French edition of Buisson . . . , Paris,
1792. 2 vols.]
* Fisher, Pauperism and Crime. 1831 [W. L. Fisher, Pauperism and Crime. Phila-
delphia: The Author, 1831].
Fischer, Conjectures sur lorigine des Ame ricains. [Jean-Eberhard Fischer, De
lorigine des Ame ricains. Saint-Petersburg, 1771.]
Peter Force, The National Calendar, and Annals of the United States, for 1833.
Washington: Printed and Published by Peter Force, [1833].
* Franklin, An Historical Reviewof the Constitutions of Pennsylvania. 1759. [Ben-
jamin Franklin, An Historical Review of the Constitutions of Pennsylvania . . .
London: R. Grifths, 1759.]
* Gallatin, Considerations of the Currency and Banking System of the United
States. [Albert Gallatin, Considerations on the Currency and Banking System
of the United States. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1831.]
* Gallatin. Voir/See: *Memorial of the Committee of the Free Trade Convention
Held in Philadelphia, October 1831.
Geisberg. Voir/See: Zeisberger.
Isaac Godwin, The Town Ofcer. [Isaac Goodwin, Town Ofcer; or Laws of Mas-
sachusetts Relative to the Duties of Municipal Ofcer . . . Worcester (Massa-
chusetts): Dorr and Howland, 1829.]
* Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England. 1792.
[Dans/In Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. For the Year 1792.
Boston, 1792. I, pp. 141226.]
* Miss Grant, The American Lady. [[Anne Grant,] Memoirs of an American
Lady. London: Longman, 1808, et nombreuses reeditions/and many re-
prints.]
* William Grifth, Annual Law Register of the United States. [Burlington (New
Jersey): David Allinson, 1822.]
* [Friedrich M. Grimm, Nouveaux me moires secrets et ine dits historiques, poli-
tiques, anecdotiques et litte raires . . . Paris: Lerouge-Wolf, 1834. 2 vols.]
* [Francois Guizot, De la religion dans les societes modernes, LUniversite
catholique, 5 (27), mars 1838, pp. 23140.]
* [Francois Guizot, Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe.]
Ebenezer Hazard, Historical Collection of State Papers and Other Authentic Doc-
uments Intended as Materials for an History of the United States of America.
Philadelphia, 1792. [Philadelphia: Printedby T. Dobsonfor the author, 1792
94.]
* John Heckewelder, Historical Account of the Indian Nature. 1 vol. [An Ac-
count of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations, Trans-
actions of the American Philosophical Society . . . Philadelphia: A. Small, 1819
43. I, pp. 3347.]
JohnHeckewelder, Transactions of the AmericanPhilosophical Review. [American
Philosophical Society, Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee
of the American Philosophical Society . . . Philadelphia: A. Small, 181943. 3
vols. Le volume I, pages 351448, contient/Volume I, pages 351448, includes:
Correspondence between Mr. Heckewelder and Mr. Duponceau, on the
Languages of the American Indians. Tre`s curieux sur les langues indiennes,
les murs et lhistoire des Indiens./Very interesting on the Indian languages,
the mores and the history of the Indians. ]
* Pe`re Hennepin, Nouveau voyage dans la Mer du Sud et du Nord. Utrecht, 1698.
[Il semble que Tocqueville nait pas lu cet ouvrage/It seems that Tocqueville
did not read this work.]
* Hinton, History US. [John Howard Hinton ed., The History and Topog-
raphy of the United States. Jennings & Chaplin & J. T. Hinton, 183033. 2
vols.]
* David Hosack, Essays on various Subjects of Medical Science. 3 vols. [NewYork:
J. Seymour, 182430. 3 vols.]
* David Hosack, Memoirs of De Witt Clinton [New York: J. Seymour, 1829.]
* David Hosack. Voir/See American Medical and Philosophical Register.
* John Howard, Memoirs of John Howard. [Probablement/probably Thomas
Taylor, Memoirs of John Howard. London: John Hatchard and Son, 1836.]
Hutchinson, Histoire. [Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and
Province of Massachusetts-Bay . . . 2
e
edition/second edition. London: Mr.
Richardson, 1765.]
Jefferson, Correspondance de Jefferson par Conseil. [Louis Conseil, Me langes poli-
tiques et philosophiques extraits des me moires et de la correspondance de Thomas
Jefferson . . . Paris: Paulin, 1833.]
Jefferson, Lettres a` Madison. [Dans ledition de Conseil/In Conseils edition.]
Jefferson, Memoires. [Fragments de leditionde Conseil/Fragments fromConseils
edition.]
Jefferson, Notes sur la Virginie. [Thomas Jefferson, Observations sur la Virginie.
Traduites par labbe Morellet/Translated by the Abbe Morellet. Paris: Barrois,
la ne, 1786.]
* Johnson, Wonder-working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England. Lon-
don. [Wonder-working Providence of Sions Saviour. Being a Relation of
the First Planting in New England, in the Yeere, 1628, dans/in: Collections
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, II, pp. 5195; III, pp. 12361; IV, pp. 1
51; VII, pp. 158; VIII, pp. 139.]
* Journal des de bats, 1 mars 1834. Voir/See Odilon Barrot.
* Journal des de bats, 22 janvier 1836. [Sur la Pennsylvanie et ses communication,
specialement les chemins de fer/On Pennsylvania and its communication net-
works, especially the railroads.]
* Journal des de bats, 27 janvier 1836. [Sur la banque americaine et sa reaction
apre`s lincendie de New York/On the American bank and its reaction after the
New York conagration.]
* Journal des de bats, 7 mars 1838. Voir/See Chambre des deputes.
* Kempis, Imitation de Je sus-Christ.
Kents Commentaries. [James Kent, Commentaries on American Law. New York:
O. Halsted, 1826. 4 vols.]
* La Bruye`re. [Les caracte `res de The ophraste et de La Bruye `re avec des notes par Mr.
Coste. Paris: L. Prault, 1769. 2 vols.]
Lafayette, Me moires. [Marquis de Lafayette, Me moires, correspondance et man-
uscrits du ge ne ral Lafayette. Paris: H. Fournier a ne, 183738. 6 vols. Nous
avons fait remarquer que la citation des memoires pourrait provenir de
larticle de Sainte-Beuve/I have noted that the quotation fromthe memoirs could
have come from the article by Sainte-Beuve, Memoires de Lafayette, Revue
des deux mondes, 4
e
serie, 15, 1838, pp. 35581.]
* Lafayette. [Le gene ral Lafayette a` ses colle`gues de la Chambre des deputes. Paris:
Paulin, 1832.]
* La Hontan. [Voyages du Baron de La Hontan dans lAme rique septentrionale.
Amsterdam: F. lHonore, 1705.]
* La Hontan. [Nouveaux voyages de Mr. le baron de la Hontan en Ame rique sep-
tentrionale. La Haye: F. lHonore, 1703.]
* La Luzerne, Cesar-Henri comte de, Correspondence of C. A. de La Luzerne,
dans/in Jared Sparks, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolu-
tion. Boston 1830. Vols. X et XI. Identie par/Identied by George W. Pierson.
Lamartine, Jocelyn.
* La Rochefoucault Liancourt, Voyage dans les E
tats-Unis. [Voyage dans les E
tats-
Unis dAme rique, fait en 1795, 1796 et 1797. Paris: Du Pont, Buisson, Charles
Pougens, [1799]. 8 vols.]
John Lawson, The History of Carolina. [John Lawson, The History of Carolina
. . . London: T. Warner, 1718.]
Lepage-Dupratz, Histoire de la Louisiane. [Antoine Simon Le Page Du Pratz,
Histoire de la Louisiane . . . Paris: De Bure, 1758. 3 vols.]
* Letter to the Mechanics of Boston. [[Joseph Tuckerman,] Letter to the Mechanics
of Boston, Respecting the Formation of a City Temperance Society . . . Boston:
Publishedby the Massachusetts Society for the Suppressionof Intemperance,
1831. Contenant des details curieux sur les diverses societes de temperance.
Auteur identie par George W. Pierson. Louvrage est cite aussi dans le Sys-
te `me pe nitentiaire./Containing interesting details on the various temperance
societies. Author identied by George W. Pierson. Cited also in the Penitentiary
System.]
* Lettres e diantes. [Lettres ediantes et curieuses ecrites des missions e trange`res par
quelques missionaires de la compagnie de Je sus.]
* Christophe Level Voyage into New England, 16231624. [Christopher Levett, A
Voyage into New England, Began in 1623 and Ended in 1624 . . . London: Wil-
liam Jones, 1628.]
De Lolme. [Jean Louis de Lolme, The Constitution of England.]
Longs Expedition. [Stephen H. Long, Narrative of an Expedition to the Source
of St. Peters River . . . Philadelphia: H. C. Carey & I. Lea, 1824. 2 vols.]
* StephenH. Long, Account of and ExpeditionfromPittsburghto the RockyMoun-
tains Performed in the Years 1819 and 1820. [Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and I.
Lea, 182223.]
* Looks Russia. London, 1800. [Probablement/Probably, John Cook. Voyages
and Travels Through the Russian Empire, Tartary, and Part of the Kingdom of
Persia. Edinburgh: [imprime pour lauteur], 1770.]
* Louisiane. Code de proce dure. [Edward Livingston, A System of Penal Law, for
. . . Louisiana; . . . A Code of Procedure . . . Nouvelle Orleans, 1824.]
Digeste des lois de la Louisiane. [L. Moreau Lislet, A General Digest of the Acts of
the Legislature of Louisiana . . . from 1804 to 1827 . . . Nouvelle Orleans,
1830.]
Mahomet, Coran.
[Malesherbes] Me moires pour servir a` lhistoire du droit public de la France en
matie `re dimpots. Bruxelles [Paris], 1779.
Malte-Brun. [Conrad Malte-Brun, Annales des voyages . . . Paris: F. Buison,
180914. 24 vols.]
Machiavel, Le Prince. [Les editeurs des uvres comple`tes de Tocqueville (OC,
XI, p. 19) ont identie deux editions qui se trouvaient dans la bibliothe`que
de Tocqueville: uvres comple`tes traduites par J.-V. Perie`s. Paris: Michaux,
182326, 12 vols; et une edition en italien, publiee a` La Haye, et non date/
The editors of the complete works of Tocqueville (OC, XI, p. 19) have identied
two editions that were found in the Tocqueville library: uvres comple`tes tra-
duites par J.-V. Pe rie `s. Paris: Michaux, 182326. 12 vols; and an edition in
Italian, published in The Hague, and undated.]
Marshall, Vie de Washington. [JohnMarshall, Vie de George Washington. . . Paris:
Dentu, 1808. 5 vols.]
Massachusetts. Laws of Massachusetts. Boston, 1823. 3 vols. [The General Laws
of Massachusetts from the Adoption of the Constitution to February, 1822 . . .
Boston: Wells & Lilly & Cummings & Hilliard, 1823, 1827. 3 vols.]
Massachusetts. Historical Collection of State Papers.
Massachusetts Historical Collection. Boston, 1792. Reedite en 1806. [Collections
of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Reprinted by Monroe & Francis, Bos-
ton. Voir/See: Gookin, Belknap, Rogers.]
* Massillon, Sermons, edition de 1740 en 5 vols. [Nous navons pas reussi a` re-
trouver cette edition/I have not succeeded in nding this edition.]
Mathers Magnalia Christi Americana. Hartford, 1820. 2 vols. [Cotton Mather,
Magnalia Christi Americana: or, the Ecclesiastical History of NewEngland. . . ,
Hartford (Connecticut): S. Andrus, 1820. 2 vols.]
* J. H. McCulloh, Researches, Philosophical and Antiquarian Concerning the Ab-
original History of America [Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, 1829.]
* Memorial of the Committee of the Free Trade Convention Held in Philadelphia,
October 1831. [[Albert Gallatin,] Memorial of the Committee Appointed by the
Free Trade Convention, Held at Philadelphia, in September and October, 1831,
to Prepare and Present a Memorial to Congress, Remonstrating Against the Ex-
isting Tariff of Duties; with an Appendix. New York: W. A. Mercein, Printer
1832.]
* Andre Michaux, Histoire des arbres forestiers de lAme rique septentrionale. [Paris:
L. Haussmann et dHautel, 181013. 3 vols.]
Milton, Paradis perdu.
* Minutes of the Proceedings of the United States Temperance Convention.
* LUtopie de Thomas Morus, chancelier dAngleterre, . . . traduite en franc ais par
Gueudeville, 1717. [Seule ledition publiee a` Leiden: P. Vander AA, 1715, a pu
etre consultee/I was only able to consult the edition published in Leiden.]
Mississippi Papers.
* Mary Russel Mitford, Stories of American Life. London: Colburn and Bentley,
1831. 3 vols.
Montaigne [Les essais de Michel, seigneur de Montaigne. Paris: A. LAngelier,
1600. 3 vols.]
* Montesquieu, Lesprit des lois. 1750. 3 vols. [Gene`ve: Barrillot et ls, 1750.]
* Montesquieu, Lettres persannes.
* MorrisonMental Diseases. [Sir Alexander Morison, Outlines of Lectures onMen-
tal Diseases. Edinburgh, 1825.]
Nathaniel Morton, NewEnglands Memorial. Boston, 1826. [Nathaniel Morton,
New Englands Memorial . . . 5
e
edition. Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1826.
Bruce James Smith, dans Politics and Remembrance (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985, p. 175), note que Morton a recopie dans son livre de
longs fragments de louvrage de William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation,
sans en faire mention. Le manuscrit de cet ouvrage a ete perdu jusqua` 1858/
Bruce James Smith, in Politics and Remembrance, notes that in his book Mor-
ton recopied long fragments from the work by William Bradford, Of Plymouth
Plantation, without mentioning it. The manuscript of this work was lost until
1858.]
National Calendar. [Voir/See Force, Peter.]
* National Intelligencer, 19 fevrier 1833, 10 decembre 1833 [Voir/See President],
14 janvier 1834, 6 fevrier 1834, 5 mars 1834.
* Neal, History of NewEngland. [Daniel Neal, History of NewEngland. London:
J. Clark, 1720; et London: A. Ward, 1747. 2 vols.]
New Haven Antiquities. [New Haven Antiquities or Blue Laws. Fait partie du
Code of 1650, pp. 10319/Part of the Code of 1650, pp. 10319.]
New York. Annual Report of the Comptroller with the Accounts of the Corporation
of the City of New York for the Year 1830.
New York. Proceedings of the Indian Board in the City of New York. [Peut-etre/
Maybe: Proceedings of the Indian Board in the City of New York: with Colonel
MKenneys Address. New York: Vanderpool and Cole, Printers, 1829.]
New York. The Revised Statutes. [The Revised Statutes of New York . . . Albany
(New York): Packard & Van Benthuysen, 1829. 3 vols.]
* New York. Rules and Orders. 1832.
The New York Annual Register [New York: J. Leavitt, 183045. Compile par Ed-
win Williams/Compiled by Edwin Williams ].
New York Spectator. 23 aout 1831.
* Reports of the Temperance Societies of the States of New-York and Pennsylvania,
1831. Cite dans le Syste `me penitentiaire/Cited in the Penitentiary System.
* Second Annual Report of the New York Temperance Society, 1831.
* Niles Weekly Register jusqua` 1832/until 1832. [Hezekiah Niles, The Weekly Reg-
ister. Baltimore: H. Niles editeur/editor.]
Ohio. Acts of a General Nature of the State of Ohio. [Acts of a General Nature
. . . Columbus, Ohio: P. H. Olmsted, 1820, 1831. Tocqueville a peut-etre pris
connaissance de cet ouvrage par le compte-rendu de lAmerican Quarterly
Review, XX, 1831, pp. 2947, le volume est cite dans ses notes/Perhaps Tocque-
ville learned about this work fromthe reviewinthe AmericanQuarterlyReview,
XX, 1831, pp. 2947; the volume is cited in his notes.]
* Statutes of Ohio. [S. P. Chase. Statutes of Ohio . . . from1758 to 1833. Cincinnati,
183335. 3 vols.]
* Ohio. Journal of the House of Representatif [sic ] for 1830. [Ohio. Journal of
the House of Representatives, Chillicothe; et ensuite/and later, Columbus
(Ohio), 1800 . Cest un recit de tous les actes de cette assemblee pendant
1830. Il peut etre fort utile comme spe cimen./This is an account of all the acts
of this assembly during 1830. It can be very useful as example.]
Pascal. [Pense es.]
* William Penn, uvres choisies de Penn. London, 1782. [William Penn,
The Selected Works of William Penn. 3
e
edition. London: Phillips, 1782. 5
vols.]
* Pennsylvanie. Rapport du comite des voies et moyens de (mot illisible/illegible
word). Le gislature de Pennsylvanie. Le 19 janvier 1831.
Pennsylvanie. Digest of the Laws of Pensylvania. [John Pourdon, A Digest of the
Laws of Pennsylvania, from 1700 to 1824. Philadelphia, 1824.]
Pitkins. [Timothy Pitkins, A Political and Civil History of the United States of
America . . . New Haven, Connecticut: H. Howe and Durrie & Peck, 1828.
2 vols. Tocqueville a pu prendre connaissance de cet ouvrage par le compte-
rendu de la North American Review, 30 (66), 1830, pp. 125/Tocqueville was
able to learn about this work from the review in the North American Review,
30 (66), 1830, pp. 125.]
* Timothy Pitkins, Statistical View of the Commerce of the U.S. [deuxie`me edi-
tion, avec ajouts et corrections/second edition with additions and corrections,
Hartford: Hamlen & Newton, 1817.]
Platon, La re publique.
Plutarque. [Vie de Marcellus. Traduction dAuguste. La bibliothe`que de Tocque-
ville (OC, XI, p. 61) contient les editions suivantes/The Tocqueville library
(OC, XI, p. 61) contains the following editions: Vie des hommes illustres, Grecs
et Romains. Traductionde Mayot/Translationby Mayot, Paris, 1568; Les uvres
mesle es de Plutarque, 1574. 7 vols; La vie des hommes illustres, Paris, 1825. 10
vols.]
* The Presidency. [Pamphlet contre Jackson/Pamphlet against Jackson.]
President. Message du pre sident du 8 de cembre 1833. [Tocqueville a pu le lire dans
le National Calendar/Tocqueville was able to read it in the National Calendar,
1833; et le/and in the National Intelligencer de 10 decembre 1833/of December
10, 1833.]
Report of the Postmaster General. [Publie dans le National Intelligencer du 12
decembre 1833 et dans le National Calendar, 1833.]
* [Project of an Anti-Tariff Convention. Curieux pour voir comment ces assem-
blees se forment./Interesting for seeing how these assemblies form. ]
Robert Proud, The History of Pensylvania, Filadela, 1797. 2vols. [Robert Proud,
The History of Pennsylvania . . . Philadelphia: Zacharian Poulson, 179798.]
Racine, Britannicus. [La bibliothe`que de Tocqueville contenait les uvres de
Jean Racine, 1755. 3 vols./The Tocqueville library contains the uvres of Jean
Racine, 1755. 3 vols.]
* Report Made to Congress Relative to the Bank of the United States, 1830.
* Report of the Commissioners of the Canal Fund. New York, 1831.
Report of the Secretary of the Treasury. 5 dec 1833. [Peut-etre dans le National
Intelligencer du/Perhaps in the National Intelligencer of 4 decembre 1833.]
* Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury depuis 1823 jusqua` 1832.
* Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury Respecting the Commerce of the
United States.
* Report of the Secretary of the State sur linstruction et les pauvres pour 1832.
* Report of the Selected Committee of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts
Relating to Legalising the Study of Anatomy, 1831.
[Revue des deux mondes, mai 1837, revue litteraire de lannee/literary review of
that year.]
[Revue des deux mondes, loi electorale de 19 avril 1831/electoral law of 19 April
1831.]
[Revue des deux mondes, article sur la nullication/article on nullication.]
[Revue des deux mondes. Voir/See A. C. T.]
* J. B. Say [Cours complet de conomie politique. Paris: Rapill, 182829. 7 vols.]
* Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor.
* ArnoldScheffer, Histoire des E
tats-Unis de lAme rique septentrionale. Paris, 1825.

Selon George W. Pierson, Tocqueville aurait lu ce texte/According to George
W. Pierson, Tocqueville would have read this text.
* Schoolcraft, Travels in the Central Portion of the Mississippi Valley [New York:
Collins and Hannay, 1825].
Senate Documents. 18, 19 et 20 Congre`s. Voir/See Legislative Documents.
Thomas Sergeant, Constitutional Law. [Thomas Sergeant, Constitutional Law.
Philadelphia: P. H. Nicklin and T. Johnson, 1830.]
Mme de Sevigne. [Correspondence.]
William Shakespeare, Henri V.
* Sie `cle. [Article sur les mines au/article on mines in: Sie`cle du 27 juin 1837.]
* Sie `cle. [Sur Thiers au/on Thiers in: Sie `cle de janvier 1838.]
* Claude Gabriel Simon, Observations recueillies en Angleterre en 1835. Paris: J.
Pesrou, 1836.
John Smith, The General History of Virginia . . . London, 1627. [Captain John
Smith, The General History . . . London: Michael Sparkes, 1627.]
William Smith, History of New York. London, 1767. [William Smith, The His-
tory of the Province of New-York . . . London: T. Wilcox, 1757. Tocqueville
cite aussi une edition francaise, publiee a` Londres en 1767./Tocqueville also
cites a French edition, published in London in 1767: Histoire de la Nouvelle-York,
depuis la de couverte de cette province jusqua` notre sie `cle. Traduite de langlois
par M. E***. Londres, 1767.]
Socie te de colonisation des noirs. 15
e
rapport annuel.
* Recueil de la socie te de ge ographie.
* Extrait du bulletin de la socie te de ge ographie. Tableau de la population des E
tats-
Unis, dapre `s les diffe rents recensements exe cute s par ordre du gouvernement.
William Stith, History of Virginia. [William Stith, The History of the First Dis-
covery and Settlement of Virginia . . . Williamsburg, Virginie: W. Parks, 1747.]
Story, Commentaires sur la Constitution des E
tats-Unis. [Joseph Story, Commen-

taries on the Constitution of the United States . . . Abridged by the Author, for
the Use of Colleges and High Schools . . . Boston: Hilliard, GrayandCompany;
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Shattuck and Co., Cambridge, 1833. Identie par
James T. Schleifer/Identied by James T. Schleifer.]
Story, Laws of the United States. [The Public and General Statutes Passed by the
Congress of the United States of America. From 1789 to 1827 Inclusive. Published
Under the Inspection of Joseph Story. Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1828. 2 vols.]
* William Strachey, The History of Travayle into Virginia Britannica [Boston:
Richardson, Lord & Holbrook, 1830.]
* Sullivan Journal. [George W. Pierson sugge`re William Sullivan, Political Class
Book . . . Boston: Lord and Holbrook, 1830, et plusieurs reeditions/George W.
Pierson suggests William Sullivan, Political Class Book . . . Boston: Lord and
Holbrook, 1830, and several reissues.]
* Tabular Statistic Views of the Population, Revenue . . . 1829. [Probablement/
Probably: George Watterston, Tabular Statistical Views of the Population,
Commerce, Navigation, Public Lands, Post Ofce Establishments, Revenue,
Mint, Military & Naval Establishments, Expenditures, and Public Debt of the
United States. Washington: J. Elliot, 1828.]
* Tableau ge ne ral du commerce de la France pendant lanne e 1832. [Administration
des douanes, Tableau ge ne ral du commerce de la France avec ses colonies et les
puissances e trange `res . . . Paris: Impr. Royale, 182558.]
Tanner, Me moires de Tanner. [Henry S. Tanner, Memoir on the Recent Surveys,
Observations, and Internal Improvements . . . Philadelphia, [imprime par
lauteur], 1829.] Voir/See Blosseville.
* John Tappen, County and Town Ofcer or a Concise View of the Duties and
Ofces of County and Town Ofces in the State of New York. [John Tappen,
The County and Town Ofcer . . . Kingston, New York: [imprime par
lauteur], 1816.]
The Statutes of the State of Tennessee. [Voir/See The Statute Law of the State of
Tennessee.]
The Statute Law of the State of Tennessee. [The Statute Laws of the State of Ten-
nessee of a Public and General Nature. By John Haywood and Robert L.
Cobbs. Knoxville, Tennessee: F. S. Heiskell, 1831. 2 vols. Lappendice du
deuxie`me volume, qui comprend le texte de plusieurs traites avec les Indiens,
semble avoir particulie`rement interesse Tocqueville/The appendix of the sec-
ond volume, which includes the text of several treaties with the Indians, seems to
have particularly interested Tocqueville.]
Traite sur les re `gles des actions civiles. Nouvelle Orleans: chez Buisson, 1830. [Peut-
etre/Maybe Code of Practice in Civil Cases. Nouvelle Orleans, 1830.]
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Voir/See Zeisberger, Dupon-
ceau, Heckewelder.
* Statistique du De partement de lAude par le Baron Trouve [Baron Trouve, Des-
cription ge ne rale et statistique du de partement de lAude. Paris: F. Didot, 1818].
Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut. New Haven, 1818. 2
vols. [Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut . . . New Ha-
ven, Connecticut: Maltby, Goldsmith and Co., and Samuel Wodsworth,
1818.]
Benjamin Trumbull, La Constitution de 1639. [Il sagit dun chapitre tire de A
Complete History of Connecticut/It concerns a chapter drawn from AComplete
History of Connecticut.]
Benjamin Trumbull, Lois pe nales du Connecticut. [Dans son/In his: A Complete
History of Connecticut, chapitre VIII.]
U.S. Congress. Legislative Documents.
* Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet [Philadelphia: James P.
Parke, 1817].
Volney, Tableau des E
tats-Unis. [Constantin F. Volney, Tableau du climat et du

sol des E
tats-Unis dAme rique . . . Paris: Boussangue Fre`res, 1822. Tocqueville

lavait achete avant son voyage, mais il ne la probablement pas lu avant son
retour en France/Tocqueville had purchased it before his journey, but he probably
did not read it before his return to France.]
* Voyage dun Franc ais, avec une description de la Virginie et du Maryland publie e
en 1696 a` La Haye. Voir/See Durand.
* Rev. R. Walsh. Voir/See American Quarterly Review.
Warden, Description des E
tats-Unis. [D. B. Warden, Description statistique, his-

torique et politique des E
tats-Unis . . . Paris: Rey et Gravier, 1820. Warden a

prete ce texte a` Tocqueville ainsi que dautres publications/Wardenloanedthis
text to Tocqueville, as well as other publications.]
* Isaac Weld, Voyage dans le Haut Canada. [Travel Through the States of North
America, and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada . . . London: John
Stockdale, 1799. 2 vols. Reedite en/reprinted in: 1799, 1800 et 1807.]
Roger Williams, Key into the Language of the Indians of New England, London,
1643. Dans la Collection de la Socie te Historique du Massachusetts, III, p. 203.
[Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America: or an Help to the Lan-
guage of the Natives in that Part of America, Called New-England. . . London:
Gregory Dexter, 1643. Dans Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
III, pp. 20338.]
Williams Annual Register. Voir/See New York Annual Register.
* Samuel Williams, Histoire de Vermont. [The Natural and Civil History of Ver-
mont. New Hampshire: Isaiah Thomas and David Carlisle, Walpole, 1794.]
David Zeisberger, AGrammar of the Language of the Lenni Lenape, traduite
par P. S. Duponceau dans/translated by P. S. Duponceau in Transactions of
the American Philosophical Society, III, 1827, pp. 65250.
1396
Bibliographie
Nous citons ici divers ouvrages qui contiennent des documents interessants
pour la comprehension de la De mocratie en Ame rique et qui reproduisent
des textes de Tocqueville qui parfois nont pas ete publies dans les uvres
comple `tes.
Adams, Herbert Baxter, ed. Jared Sparks and Alexis de Tocqueville. Johns Hop-
kins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 16th ser. (112).
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1898.
Craiutu, Aurelian, and Jeremy Jennings, eds. Tocqueville on America after 1840.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Drescher, Seymour. Tocqueville and England. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1964.
, ed. Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform. New York: Harper &
Row, 1968.
Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, ed. New Tocqueville Materials from the Johns Hop-
kins University Collections. In Four Studies in French Romantic Historical
Writing, 12142. Johns Hopkins University Studies inHistorical andPolitical
Science 71, no. 2 (1955).
Grandmaison, Charles A. G. de. Sejour dAlexis de Tocqueville en Touraine,
preparationdulivre sur lAncienRegime, juin1853avril 1854.Correspondant
114 (1879): 92649.
Hawkins, Richmond L., ed. Unpublished Letters of Alexis de Tocqueville.
Romanic Review 19 (1928): 195217; 20 (1929): 35156.
LHommede, Edmond. Un departement franc ais sous la Monarchie de Juillet: le
conseil ge ne ral de la Manche et Alexis de Tocqueville. Preface by A. Coville.
Paris: Bovin, 1933.
Jardin, Andre. Alexis de Tocqueville. Paris: Hachette, 1984.
Alexis de Tocqueville als Abgeordneter. Briefe anseinemWahlagentenPaul Clamor-
gan 18371851 aus dem Besitz der Staats und UniversitatsbibliothekHamburg.
Herausgegeben von JoachimKuhn. Hamburg: Ernest Hauswedell &Co., 1972.
1397
Bibliography
I list here some works that reproduce Tocqueville documents that are
interesting for the understanding of Democracy in America and that
sometimes reproduce texts of Tocqueville not available in the uvres
comple `tes.
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Lingelbach, William E. American Democracy and European Interpreters.
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1898.
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1398 bi bli ographi e
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1499
Index
abbreviations, xxxixxli
Abelard, 718nm
abolition, cixn192, 548nc, 552, 553
54no, 55556, 56162nt, 564,
565n40; in Connecticut, 55354no;
in Delaware, 55354no; in Illinois,
55354no; in Indiana, 55354no; in
Massachusetts, 55354no; mortality,
565n41; in New York, 55354no,
564; in the North, 56465, 56871,
574; in Ohio, 55354no, 55861; in
Pennsylvania, 55354no; in the
South, 56972. See also emancipa-
tion; slavery
absolute good, 109596ne
absolute monarchy, 228, 514, 632,
894nq, 108182, 1128; arbitrariness
of magistrates under, 32730;
democracy and, 94850nc; indepen-
dence of thought in, 417; political
jurisdiction and, 17980; public
expenditures of, 333. See also despo-
tism; monarchy; tyranny
absolute power, democracy and, 511nf
absolute truth, cxxicxxiv, cxxiin240,
3na, 716nh
acacia, 659n(B)
Academie des sciences morales et poli-
tiques, xxxvixxxviin20, lxxviii, xcii,
ciin171
Academie francaise, ciin171
action, cxxv, cxxvi, 739nc; philosophy
of, cxxcxxxii
Acts of the State of Ohio, 131n38, 685
96n(C), 686
Adams, H. B., 99100nc
Adams, John Quincy, 53nm, 21415nk,
21517nm, 563nu, 62122nv
Addison, 848nc
administration, lxxxi, xcvii; French,
99100nc; general ideas on, 12935;
judicial penalties as a means of, 122;
in New England, 11529; in the
United States, 98114, 12935. See
also administrative centralization;
public administration
administrative centralization,
cxxvn249, 14348, 144ne, 144nf,
122627nk; absence of, 42729,
42829nd; in Canada, 650nd;
democracies and, 16364ne; despo-
tism and, 147, 14849; in England,
146; in France, 144ng, 148, 148n[*],
165, 650nd; lack of in England, 146;
lack of in New England, 120; in
Massachusetts, 135n32; in New York,
13435; in the United States, 13435,
14950. See also administrative
decentralization; centralization
administrative crimes, 12728, 128n[*],
129, 133
administrative decentralization: effects
of in the United States, 15256;
judicial power and, 175nj; political
effects of, 14266. See also adminis-
trative centralization; decentralization
1500 i ndex
administrative dependence, 1259
60nw, 125961
administrative despotism, 1204nf,
123440, 123537ny, 124561,
1245na, 1249ne, 1252nn, 1260nx; in
Europe, 125556nq; lack of in the
United States, 1259nv; sovereignty
of the people and, 125556, 1255
56nq. See also despotism
administrative hierarchy, 127, 13334
administrative instability, 33132, 4079
administrative ofcials. See public
ofcials
administrative power, 120ng, 1204nf,
1214, 122829no, 123031np, 1235
37ny; decentralization of, 118; divi-
sion of, 137ny; in Europe, 122830;
in France, 122829no, 1231n4; lib-
erty and, 122829no; in Massachu-
setts, 11819; in the United States,
11829
administrative science, 33132, 332nd,
122829no. See also political science
Aesop, 550n31, 550ne
Africa: armies in, 115657nd; return of
Blacks to, 57677, 576nd, 576n48,
576n49, 577n50
the afterlife, 96566, 965na. See also
the soul, immortality of
agitation, xxvi, 108992, 1089na. See
also restlessness
agrarian law, theory of, 1136ne
agriculture, 972, 973, 977; cereal crops,
567; cotton plantations, 56667, 595;
in the South, 977; sugar cane planta-
tions, 559n38, 56667, 595; tobacco
plantations, 562n39, 56667, 566
68nw, 595, 611n78; in the West, 977
Alabama, 521, 533n14, 541n21, 62024,
677n(H), 682n(N)
alcohol, 365, 9012, 13068
Alexander, 733nh, 851, 1182ne
Algeria, 102ne, 14546ng, 536nu,
747ne
Allegheny Mountains, 34, 3637, 594
95, 594n56, 595n58, 597, 606, 608
Allison, John M. S., xxxi
ambition, 93031nb, 111618nnaf,
111628, 1131ne, 118789na; aristoc-
racy and, 112324, 1123nn; in China,
1123; democracy and, 111618nnaf,
111628, 1121nj, 1123nn, 1126nr,
1129na, 1131ne; democratic revolu-
tion and, 1119; depraved, 111920nh;
equality and, 111617nb, 1118nf,
1120; France and, 111617nb; indus-
trial, 112932, 1131ne; monarchy and,
111617nb; revolution and, 1116na,
1118, 1118nf, 111920. See also
positions
America: conquest of, 536nu; discovery
of, 7nh; English colonies in, 37; for-
est in, 1308nd; history of, 666
74n(F). See also the New World; the
United States
American Almanac, 608nd, 638ng
American Indians. See Indians
American Institutions and Mores,
lxxxviii
American literature, 800812, 800na,
8023nd, 803ne, 804nh
Americanness, 68990na
the American Revolution, 84, 117, 188
89, 190, 275n41, 282, 283, 36061,
360n15, 421, 533n16, 652; democracy
and, 8586ne; enthusiasm for, 360
61; the South and, 78; sovereignty of
the people and, 9293
Americans: ability to learn from experi-
ence, 36466; acquisition of wealth
and, 76668, 76768nf; anxiety of,
108588, 1085na; the arts and, 763
64nb, 76374, 76566nd, 784nn,
78895; Cartesian method and, 697
i ndex 1501
98na; character of, lxxxiii, 29, 420
23; commercial interests of, 784nn;
compared with the French, 73741;
creation of new words by, 822;
domestic happiness of, 47374,
474nj, 81921nd; the English and,
646; enlightenment of, 48894;
equality and, 455, 75962; in
Europe, 10001004, 1000na; fear of,
612; focus on material enjoyments,
76566ne; general ideas and, 698
99a, 72632nnag, 72641, 739nc;
gravity of, 108081nnab, 108084,
1081nd; habit of inattention among,
108384; habits of, 48894, 10056,
1005na, 108384; habitual relations
of, 99599, 995nnab, 99899ne;
Indians and, 53940n19, 54247;
inuence of democracy on senti-
ments of, 871985, 871na; intelli-
gence of, 64243, 64243nm;
knowledge of, 49091, 490nz; lib-
erty and, 94853, 948na; literature
and, 76364nb, 76374, 76566nd,
784nn, 800812, 800na, 8023nd,
803ne, 804nh, 805; marriages of,
47374, 474nj; material enjoyments
and, 767, 943nncd, 94853, 948na;
material interests of, 784nn; materi-
alism of, 943nncd; melancholy
among, 1082, 1082ne; monuments
and, 79699, 79699nnce, 796na;
mores of, 10056, 1005na; natural
environment and, 83537; nature
and, 83537; originality and, 1091
92nd; origin of, 455; patriotism of,
1100nj; perfectibility of man and,
75962; philosophical method and,
69798na, 697710, 69899a, 776,
101415nm; philosophy and, 697
710, 739nc, 784nn; political theory
and, 73741, 737na; politics and,
73741; practical experience of, 488
94; pride of, 600601, 600nd,
10001004, 1000na, 1002nc; public
affairs and, 94853, 948na; Puritan-
ism of, 1081nd; quarrelsomeness of,
108588, 1085na; relationships of,
99599, 995nnab; religion and,
69798na, 769, 95462, 954nnab;
restlessness of, 613, 64344, 94247,
942na, 1083; revolution and, 1140
41, 1140nj; satisfaction with political
institutions, 129091; science and,
76364nb, 76374, 76566nd, 775
77nnac, 77587, 784nn; sociability
of, 99599, 995nb, 99899ne; social
state of, 69091, 69091nc, 697
98na; spiritualism of, 93941,
939nnac, 939nnab, 941nf, 941nh,
95462, 954na; susceptibility of,
10001004, 1000na, 10056,
1005na; temperament of, 108084,
108588, 1085na, 108992, 1089na;
thoughtlessness of, 108384; vanity
of, 108588, 1085na, 1086nd; wealth
and, 1090nc, 1091; wilderness and,
65556, 83537 (see also the frontier;
pioneers; settlers). See also Anglo-
Americans
Ampe`re, Jean Jacques, xciii, ci, ciii,
cviin185, cxvin217, 699nd, 715ng,
757nb, 893nn, 893np, 101213nk,
1062nb, 1066nj, 1133nc
Amphictyons, 253n36
Anabaptists, 63n25
anarchy, cxxxii, cxliii, 116, 117, 122, 424,
425, 87788ne, 119192nb, 1276,
129394n; democracy and, 119192,
119192nb, 1247nd; despotism and,
125051nj; intellectual, 1144; revolu-
tions and, 125051nj
ancestry, 881na, 882na, 883, 884. See
also families
1502 i ndex
Anglican Church, 81921nd
Anglo-Americans, 632; advance of,
65051; arrival in the New World,
76667; Blacks and, 54882, 57273;
bonds unifying, 65455; Christianity
and, 707, 70910nu; democracy
and, 7588; English inuence on, 71;
enlightenment of, 490; expansion
throughout North America, 64957;
faith and, 7057nr; future of, 4573,
64957; habits of, 692, 7057; Indi-
ans and, 52247, 53940n19,
540n20; instinct of, 692; laws of,
6265, 67, 69, 7173, 690; maritime
genius of, 63841, 640nh, 644,
644n95; moral authority and, 600,
600n60; mores of, 690; in the
North, 51; opinions of, 691, 692;
oppression of Indians by, 54147,
542nx; origin of, 4573, 455, 692;
philosophy and, 7057nr, 7078ns;
preponderance of in the New
World, 64957; pride of, 600601,
600nd; Puritan inuence on, 71;
religion and, 692, 7057, 7057nr;
sentiments of, 691, 692, 7057;
social state of, 7490, 75nd; in the
South, 51; universal reason and, 600,
600n60. See also Americans; English
colonies
Antilles, 3738, 495, 55354no, 572n47,
57475, 574nc, 659n(B)
anti-positivism, cxxi
antiquity, 510; aristocracy in, 733nh,
816; Classics, 81516nnab, 81517;
democracy in, 795nk, 1082, 1143np;
equality in, 73233, 733nh; principle
of representation in, 337np; slavery
in, 73233, 733nh. See also specic
civilizations
anti-rationality, cxxiv
Antoine, Agne`s, 743n2
Antwerp, Belgium, 115657nnd
apathy, cxxvi, cxxxiii, cxl, cxli, 115051,
1150nx, 125051nj, 129394n
Appenzell, Switzerland, 59091t
aqueducts, 798
Arabs, 536nu, 839nt
arbitrariness, distinguished from tyr-
anny, 41516, 41516nx
Archimedes, 78283
Arctic pole, 33
Argenson, Rene-Louis, Conside rations
sur le gouvernement ancien et pre sent
de la France, 116162nj
aristocracy, cvi, cxx, cxxn228, cxxviii
cxxix, cxxxii, cxxxixn258, cxliiin308,
cxliv, cxlivn311, cxlvn312, cxlvn315,
cxlvin317, cxlvii, 8, 1920, 21, 23nf,
162, 16364ne, 300, 300np, 322
23no, 322no, 406, 508, 62829nz,
63031nb, 691, 69495nm, 709
10nu, 883, 883ne, 888nd, 907,
1060nj, 1136nf, 118789na, 1195,
1211, 1215np, 1223nd, 1244, 1263,
1268nn, 1282, 1282ng; ambition and,
112324, 1123nn; in America, lxxxi,
7778, 8788, 735nm; in antiquity,
733nh, 816; armies and, 115456,
115556nc, 1166, 117375, 1173nd; art
and, 788na, 78992, 794, 810nq;
association and, 895na, 89899,
89899nh, 898ng, 9034; based on
wealth, 975nf; of birth, 975nf,
128687n; Catholicism and, 470;
centralization and, 1203nd, 1219;
civil associations and, 89899nh;
class and, 106870, 1068na,
1068nnab, 106970, 1069nc; class
interests and, 38084, 381; commerce
and, 973nc, 973n1, 97476, 974nd,
975nf, 128687n; compared to Jews,
126364nc; connection to others
and, 883, 883ne, 884, 888ne, 890,
i ndex 1503
890ng; contested, 885nb; corruption
in, 35659; decline of, 2223;
democracy and, lxxxiv, 810nq,
1268no, 128687n; doctrine of
interest well understood and, 920,
920ng; English, xciv, xcvixcviin157,
xcvii, 82nv, 165, 38283, 434, 445,
735nm, 78687np, 97879nj, 1212,
1212nj, 1251nk, 1286n; enlighten-
ment and, 72728nb, 1214; in
Europe, 122122, 122223n1, 1232
33; the family and, 1031na, 1032,
103335ne, 103540, 1037nj; feudal-
ism and, 1101nk; focus on maintain-
ing rather than improving society,
33738, 338nr; foreign affairs and,
37071, 372; founded solely on
money, 973nc; freedom of the press
in, 1269; French, xcvii, 710, 10
12nq, 106061; general ideas and,
726na, 736; government and, 1265
66ng, 126511266ng, 126667;
granting of nobility, 8; habitual rela-
tions and, 99599, 995nab, 998
99ne; historiography and, 853,
853na, 854, 855, 855nf, 856, 857;
honor and, 1093na, 10961102,
109798nh, 110610, 111013nv,
117071nb, 117475; ideas and, cxx,
900901; industry and, 973nc,
973n1, 97476, 974nd, 975nf, 978
79nj, 98081nnab, 98085, 1026,
102829ng, 1028nf, 128687n; as
inevitable moment of history, cxix;
inheritance laws and, 7885; of Ire-
land, 82nv; jurists and, 43337, 439,
439nr; lack of gravity in, 1080;
landed property and, 7879no; lan-
guage and, 822, 82526, 828nm;
laws of, 37879ne; leases and,
1020na, 1021nb, 1023nd; legislatures
and, 861na, 86264; liberty and,
307nh, 885nb, 1212, 126364, 1263
64nc; literature and, 800na, 8056,
807, 807n1, 809no, 810, 810np,
810nq, 813, 814ne, 815; love in,
1058ng; magistrates in, 38182; man-
ners and, 10001001, 1000na, 1074
75nf, 107679, 1079nm;
manufacturing, lxix, 81ns; marriage
and, 1055, 105657; material enjoy-
ments and, 935na, 936, 936nc;
material well-being and, 93031nb,
930na, 931, 93233nd, 934ng, 935
36nnab, 93637, 937nd; military,
125354no; of money, 975nf, 978
79nj, 128687n, 1286na; mores and,
98992, 1053nb, 1054, 1054nc, 1059
61; in the New World, 495; original-
ity and, 109192nd; parliamentary
eloquence and, 86264, 86869,
868ne, 868nf; perfectibility of man
and, 759nb, 760, 762; poetry and,
83235, 833ng, 838; property and,
1266nh; public expenses and, 337
38; public institutions and, 796
97nb; rejection of in the New
World, 5051; revolution and,
1136nf, 114142nm, 114243nm,
1148; salaries and, 102829ng; sci-
ence and, 78283, 78687np, 810nq;
sentiments and, 900901; servant/
master relationships in, 10078nna
b, 100713, 1009n1, 1011nh, 1012nk,
101415nm, 1016, 1018, 1019no;
social power and, 1274; in the
South, 7778, 56364, 563nu, 602
3; sovereigns and, 122122; sover-
eignty and, 126667; sympathy and,
98990nf, 99192; temperament and,
1089; theater and, 84647, 848; in
the United States, 63537; unsalaried
public ofcials and, 32526; useful
arts and, 78990nd; vanity and,
1504 i ndex
aristocracy (continued )
108688, 1086ne; vices in, 35659;
violence in, 41819; virtue and, 919,
922nk; war and, 117880n1, 118283,
1182ne, 118789na; wealth and,
973nc, 973n1, 97476, 974nd,
975nf, 1090; work and, 970. See also
nobility
aristocratic party, remnants of the,
28788
Aristotle, 70910nu, 733nh, 795nk;
Politics, 7879no
Arius, 82223nf
Arkansas, 542n23, 54344, 613n79
Armagnac faction, 7nh
armies, lxxxi, cii, 151n[*], 453, 1164nn,
118789na, 129192n; in Africa, 1156
57nnd; aristocratic, 115456, 1155
56nc, 1166, 117375, 1173nd; class
differences within, 116569, 1165na;
compulsory enlistment, 116566;
democratic, 115364, 1153na, 1156
57nnd, 1163nm, 116569, 1165nnab,
1167n1, 117071nnac, 117075, 1176
77; discipline in, 117677; English,
115556nc; European, 115556nc;
French, 115556nc; permanent, 7nh,
591n54; strengths and weaknesses of,
117071nnac, 117075; in the
United States, 15051, 591n54. See also
militias; the military
armor, 78990nd
Arouet, Francois-Marie. See Voltaire
arrondissements, 114, 68596n(C), 686
the Articles of Confederation, 188n2
arts, 7, 79394; Americans and, 763
64nb, 76374, 76566nd, 784nn,
78895, 788nb, 795nk; aristocracy
and, 788na, 78992, 794, 810nq;
civilization and, 792nf; democracy
and, 76364nb, 76374, 76970ng,
78895, 788na, 791ne, 793ng,
810nq; equality and, 76364nb,
76465; imitative, 79495; in India,
792nf; industrialization of, lxix; in
Mexico, 792nf; in the Middle Ages,
78990nd; painting, 795, 795nk;
religion and, 6nh
assemblies, 411no, 125657nt, 1269
assessors, 106, 118n14
assimilation, 65455, 117980n1,
1180nb
association, lxxxiii, cxlvi, cxlvin316,
cxlvii, 288, 307nh, 71112nb, 713
14ne, 896nd, 903nt, 94850nc, 950,
109495, 1103, 1105, 118789na; aris-
tocracy and, 895na, 89899, 898
99nh, 898ng, 9034; categories of,
897ne; civil, 897ne, 89899nh, 911
17, 911nnab, 1215np; civilization
and, 896nc; commercial, 900nm;
democracy and, 895904, 895na,
898ng, 9056nnab, 90510, 1068
70, 1068nnab; in England, 897;
equality and, 895na, 89798; in
Europe, 1239; freedom of, 30212,
3034, 307, 3089, 308nj, 30912,
31011, 899, 914, 914n1, 915, 915nd,
91617; government and, 896, 898
901, 902ns, 9034, 914, 914n1,
1278na; industrial, 895na, 897ne,
902, 123537ny; industry and,
897ne, 902, 123537ny, 123839,
1238nc; intellectual, 895na, 897ne,
902; laws of, 911nb, 915nd; legal,
897ne; moral, 897ne, 902; newspa-
pers and, 9056nnab, 90510,
908ne; Norman, 911nb; political,
30212, 895na, 896, 897ne, 898
99nh, 902, 91117, 911nnab; rela-
tions between civil associations and
political associations, 91117,
911nnab; religious, 897ne; as the
remedy for evils of equality, 1268
i ndex 1505
69; science of, 902; spirit of, 897
98nf; in the United States, 895904,
895na, 106870, 1068nnab,
1278na; voluntary, 897ne. See also
conventions; freedom of association
Atala, 13045nb
atheism. See unbelief
Atheneum, xcin141
Athens, Greece, 815, 816nb, 847, 1143nn
Atlantic Ocean, 34, 594, 606
Atlantic seaboard, 606, 607, 617
Attakapas, Louisiana, 567
Auburn penal system, lxi
Augustus, 78283nk
Australia, 53
authority, 11516, 116nb, 153, 71112nb,
71314ne, 71617, 717nk, 1143no,
119798nj, 119799; intellectual,
724; liberty and, 72425, 724ns;
marital, 1062na, 106465; moral,
600, 600n60, 71920, 72021np;
religion and, 72021np, 745, 754,
756; religious, 754; in the United
States, 16061. See also power; sec-
ondary power
authors, 814ne, 819, 84344, 843na
autocracy, 1135nc, 1143no
Bacon, Francis, cx, cxxv, 702, 705nq,
735nm; Novum Organum, 7023nn
Bacon, Roger, 735nm
Bagley, Amasa, 1320nn, 1321no
bail, 72, 72nd
Baines, Edward, History of the Cotton
Manufacture in Great Britain, 792nf
balance of power, cxlvicxlvii, 122
Baltimore, Maryland, 414n4
bank notes, 61819
Bank of the United States, 61820,
618nr, 619n84, 620ns; the President
and, 619
bankruptcy, lxxxiii, 364, 1104
banks, lxxxii, 619. See also Bank of the
United States
barbarians, cxxxvn283, cxxxvi, cxxxvii,
514no, 532, 53435, 636, 785, 786,
1162nk. See also barbarism; savages
barbarism, cxviii, cxixcxx, 53435,
896nc, 126667nj; equality and,
87880nf; in South America, 644.
See also barbarians
Barker, 8023nd. See Mary Russell
Mitford
bar rooms, 1320
Barrot, Odilon, 121nh, 123940nd
Battista, Anna Maria, 74nb
Baudry, 99899ne
Beaumont, Elie de, 167na, 1062nb
Beaumont, Eugenie (Beaumonts sis-
ter), 133738nv
Beaumont family, livlv
Beaumont, Gustave de, xxviii, xxx,
xxxivn15, liv, livn41, lvlvi, lvn46,
lvin47, lviilviiin50, lviii, lviiin51,
lix, lx, lxn56, lxiiilxiv, lxv, lxxii,
lxxiin88, lxxiin89, lxxiiilxxiv,
lxxvn95, lxxvii, lxxx, lxxxvlxxxvi,
lxxxvii, xciii, xcix, ci, cii, ciin171,
ciii, cixn195, cxliicxliii, 36nd, 88ng,
122nk, 28283nb, 291ne, 428nc,
515na, 530nq, 614nk, 64243nm,
65657nh, 69697na, 76970ng,
77677nc, 788nb, 84546nb,
851nh, 903nt, 1062nb, 107273nc,
111013nv, 1118ng, 1178na, 1223nd,
1227nm, 1255np, 1302nj; on admin-
istrative centralization, 147nk;
arrival in the United States, 1365nb;
on art, 795nk; Blacks and, xcvii,
548n30; on centralization, 143
44nd, 1200na; Chabrol and, 1304
5nb, 1333ns, 1335nu; commentaries
of, 47nd, 202ny, 21517nm, 220,
234n5, 285ng, 290nd, 290nb,
1506 i ndex
Beaumont, Gustave de (continued )
297nm, 300np, 335nk, 338nr; Con-
stitution of 1848 and, 13739nz,
225nr; contributions to Democracy,
lxxii, 257np, 259nq, 290nc; correc-
tions by, 218nn; correspondence of,
xxxiixxxiii, xxxiiin10; on the cour
de cassation, 234n5; criticisms of,
5ne; on duelling, 1109ns; on the
education of young girls, 1041na; on
emancipation, 570nx; in England,
xciv, xcivn152, xcviin158, xcviii; on
equality, cxxxiicxxxiiin273; Eugenie
de Beaumont (sister) and, 1337
38nv; on executive power, 202ny;
Indians and, lxxii, lxxiin89, xcvii,
cxvn212, 529np, 53738nv; in Ire-
land, xcivn152; the Irish and, xcvii
xcviii, xcix; journey to America,
lxivlxv; letters of, 1314nj; library of,
550ne; on literature, 8012nc; on
manufacturing aristocracy, 81ns;
manuscripts of, xxxi; marriage to
Clementine de Lafayette, ci; meets
Andrew Jackson, 454nh; meets Rob-
ert Walsh, 754na; mission from the
French government, 2na; notes of,
lxx, lxxn80, 13739nz; notes on the
constitutional committee of 1848,
450; on parties, 284nd; on patriot-
ism among American writers, 388ns;
plan for a review with Tocqueville
and others, lxxviilxxviii; plans to
visit Englands penal institutions,
lxxviiilxxxiv; preparation of rst
edition of Democracy, xxxxxxi; on
the President, 202ny; publication of
A Fortnight in the Wilderness,
1303na; publication of Journey to
Lake Oneida, 1295na; on public insti-
tutions, 79697nb; on racial preju-
dice, 55354no; return to France,
lxxiv; slavery and, 550ne, 56162nt,
578nf; on sociability, 995nb; Sparks
and, 99100nc; Tocqueville and,
lxxii, xcviii, xcviiin162; on unifor-
mity, 614nj; writings in the Quaker
Collection, 548nc. See also Beau-
mont, Gustave de, works of
Beaumont, Gustave de, works of: Insti-
tutions et murs ame ricaines, lxxiv;
LIrlande, sociale, politique et reli-
gieuse, xxxiii, xciii, xcivn152, xcviii
xcix, xcviiin161, xcix, 82nv, 1223nd;
reception of, xcviiixcix; Lettres
dAme rique, 82nv, 13045nb, 1314nj,
1321no; Note on the religious
movement in the United States,
478np. See also Marie, ou lesclavage
aux E
tats-Unis
Beaumont, Jules de (Gustave de Beau-
monts father), liv
beauty, 1282nf
Beccaria, 71314ne
Bedfort, Marguerite, 63n20
Bedlam, 79697nb
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University, xliv, 5ne.
See also Yale University
Belam, Mrs., xcix
beliefs, 630, 71112nb, 71125, 711na,
71213nc, 713nd, 747, 751nh, 752,
755, 888nd; authority and, 71112nb,
71314ne, 71617, 717nk; democracy
and, 126667nj; dogmatic, 71125,
711na, 71213nc, 713nd, 716nj,
717nk, 72021np, 72425, 724ns,
742na, 743, 746, 962; revolution
and, 71112nb, 71213nc; in the
United States, 71112nb. See also
religion
Belknap, Jeremy, 556n33; History of
New Hampshire, 66674n(F), 673
74
i ndex 1507
Bell, John, 52829n8, 542n23, 547
48n29
Belvedere Apollo, 795nk
Beno t, Jean-Louis, 986na
Bensserade, 807nm
Bentham, Jeremy, 735nm
Benton, Thomas H., Thirty Years
View; or, a History of the Working of
the American Government for Thirty
Years, from 18201850, 625nw
Bergeron, Gerard, 650nd
Bernard, General, 34950nj
Berry, Duchesse de, lxxv
Beverley, Robert, 66674n(F), 66768;
General History of Virginia, 42n16;
History of Virginia from the Earliest
Period, 5253n2, 556n33
Beyle, Marie-Henri. See Stendhal
Bibliothe`que de Versailles, xlii
Biddle, John, 28283nb, 131213, 1312
13ng
Biot, Jean-Baptiste, 86970nh
Blacks, lxxxiii, cixn192, 454n1, 51516,
515na, 517, 521, 54882, 548nc,
580nj, 1095nd; Anglo-Americans
and, 54882, 548n30, 57273, 580
81; electoral rights of, 55455; eman-
cipated, 518, 550nf, 551, 577n51;
emancipation of, 572n46; equality
of, 57172; Europeans and, 581; in
the Gulf states, 575; Indians and,
529np; inequality and, 550nf, 55155,
551n32, 551ng; the jury system and,
55354no, 554; in Maine, 569; in
Maryland, 569, 569n45; in Massa-
chusetts, 569; mortality of, 565n41;
in New England, 550nf; in New
York, 569; in North Carolina,
569n45; oppression of, 51718; in
Pennsylvania, 569; population
growth of, 565, 566; public opinion
and, 548nc; religion and, 555; return
to Africa, 57677, 576nd, 576n48,
576n49, 577n50; revolutions and,
1141; servitude and, 51819, 520ng;
in the South, 597, 597n1, 1097
98nh; in South Carolina, 569,
569n45; threat posed by slavery to
the United States, 54882; in Vir-
ginia, 569, 569n45; voting by, 414n4;
in the West, 566; whites and, 548
82, 548n30
Blackstone, 180n1, 180nb, 430nf,
681n(M), 68485n(B), 68687n(D),
687
Blosseville, Ernest de, lix, lxv, lxxvii,
xciii, 99100nc, 14546ng, 536
37n18
Bodin, lxviii
the body, the soul and, 96364,
963nnab
Boesche, Roger, 1247nd
bois-brule , 1344. See also half-breeds
Boissy dAnglas, Francois Antoine,
291ne, 679ng
Bonaparte. See Napoleon
Bonaparte, Louis-Napolean, coup detat
of, 125657nt
Bonetto, Gerald M., 56162nt
Bonnel, M., xxxi, xxxiin7, xxxiin8,
5ne, 80nq, 84na, 763na
Bonnetto, Gerald M., 28283nb
Bonnin de La Bonninie`re, liv
Bossuet: Discours sur lhistoire univer-
selle, 838nr; Histoire des variations,
82223nf
Bossuet, cxviii, 81012nr
Bouchitte, Louis, 478np
Boulainvilliers, 532nr
Bourbons, lix, lixn55, lxxv, lxxvi, lxxvii,
446
Bourdaloue, 81012nr
the bourgeois: uprising of (Jacquerie),
7nh
1508 i ndex
Bourges, Michel de, 1228nn
Bovenizer, David, xxiv
Bowring, Mr., 260ns
Brazil, 495
Brevard, Joseph, Digest of the Public
Statute Law of South Carolina, 685
96n(C), 686
bridges, 1238nb
Bristed, John, 65657nh
Brittany, 27172
Brogan, Hugh, 625nw
Brosse, Pierre de, 6nh
Brown, 563nu
Brunius, Teddy, 76566ne
buffalo, 52425
Buffalo, New York, 1304
Buffon, George-Louis Leclerc, 810
12nr; Histoire naturelle des oiseaux,
76566nd; Histoire naturelle ge ne rale
et particulie `re, 76566nd
Buisson, 37274nf, 443n2
bureaucracy, 747nd, 1247nd
bureaucratic tyranny, 1247nd. See also
administrative despotism
Burgundian faction, 7nh
Burgundy, France, 596
Burke, Edmund, cxvi
Burns, Dr., 1321no
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 834nh,
836nm, 932nc, 96061nj; Childe
Harold, 838nq, 841
Cabanis, 477
Caesar, Julius, 1160
Caesars, 511, 511ne, 511ng, 124647,
1246nc, 1247nd, 1260nx
Calderon, Felipe, 850ne
Caleb, Balderstone, 101213nk
Calhoun, Mr., 621
Calvinism, 135051
Cambon, 120910nd
Campe, Joachim Heinrich, Voyage
dun Allemand au Lac One ida, 1297
98nc
Canada, 33, 276, 453nf, 496, 53041,
53940n19, 632, 65051, 650nd,
826nh, 1311
Canadians, 65051, 652, 1344, 1347,
1356. See also Canada; French
Canadians
canals, lxxxii, lxxxiii, 1237
Candolle, 1022nc
Canoll, John W. Henry, 18687na
cantons, 103
capital, 122728, 1227nm, 132122
the Capitol, 797
Carey, Mathew, 595nw; Letters on the
Colonization Society and on Its Prob-
able Results, 569n45, 576n48
Carlo Alberto, lxxv
the Carolinas, 60n12, 548nc, 563nu,
607n70, 610, 610n76, 610n77, 666
74n(F), 668
Carroll, Charles, 85nc, 96nj, 542n[*]
the Cartesian method, cxxxi, 697
98na, 699700ne. See also Des-
cartes, Rene
Cass, Lewis, cxvn212, 523nj, 524,
524n3, 52728n7, 529n9, 532n[*],
54446n26; Reports to Congress,
524, 524n3, 525n6, 534ns
Cass River, 135758
Catholicism, lxxxiii, cxxxi, 46772,
471, 480, 480nt, 750n1, 753, 755nc,
85960, 85960nm; aristocracy and,
470; democracy and, 755ne; equality
and, 469, 470; on the frontier, 1351;
lower classes and, 754nb; mingling
of races in, 55354no; monarchy
and, 470, 470ne; politics and, 755;
in the United States, 75456;
women and, 104142nc, 1042. See
also Christianity
Catilina, 62829nz
i ndex 1509
Cavallaro, Renato, 1268no
censorship, 291, 292, 298301, 852. See
also freedom of the press
centralization, lxxxii, xcvii, cii, ciii,
cxxvn249, cxxxv, cxlvii, 99100nc,
12021, 121nh, 14344nd, 151nt,
16364ne, 62627, 1196nf, 1197
98nj, 12012ncnb, 12023, 1209nc,
1213nm, 121819nt, 123031np, 1235
37ny, 1242ng, 1252nn, 1260nx; aris-
tocracy and, 1203nd, 1219; of
capital, 122728, 1227nm; causes of,
12068nnab, 120620; denition
of, 14344; democracy and, 1187
89na, 119499, 1194nnab, 1201
2ncnb, 12023n1, 12068nnab,
120661, 1217ns, 121819nt, 1224
25nh, 125354no, 1265, 1293n; dem-
ocratic revolution and, 121112;
democratic sentiments and, 1200
1202nnac, 12001205, 12023n1,
1203nd; despotism and, 1220, 1245
61; disadvantages of, 1210ng; in
Egypt, 121415, 1215no; in England,
1200na, 121213nnjk; equality and,
12001220; in Europe, 273, 119799,
12067na, 122144, 1221na; of fed-
eral government, lxxxii; feudalism
and, 147; nancial, 120910nd; in
France, 14344nd, 14546ng, 148,
152n156, 16364ne, 213nj, 678
79n(K), 679ng, 120910, 1210nf,
123031np, 123940nd, 1255, 1255np;
the French Revolution and, 678
79n(K); governmental, 14347,
144nf; individual independence and,
1242nh; industrialists and, 123440;
industry and, 123141, 1231nr, 1235
37ny, 123940nd; intellectual,
1223nf; lack of, lxxxii; liberty and,
1241; in the Middle Ages, 147; mon-
archy and, 1219; monuments and,
79899ne; public administration
and, 124142; public ofcials and,
1224n2; savings and, 122728,
1227nm; the State and, 14344nd; of
states, lxxxii; theory of, 118789na;
in the United States, 14956, 150nq,
631, 12068nnab; war and, 1160
62, 116162nj, 121516. See also
administrative centralization;
administrative decentralization;
decentralization; secondary powers
centralized administration. See admin-
istrative centralization
cereal crops, 567
certitude, 760nc
Cervantes, Miguel de, 81012nr
cession, 617, 617n82
Chabrol, Ernest de, lvi, lxv, lxvn68,
lxviilxviiin70, lxviilxviiin71,
lxviiin74, lxxin86, lxxiin89,
lxxiiin90, lxxiv, lxxvii, 18na, 99
100nc, 14546ng, 150nq, 167na,
478np, 631nc, 84041nv, 84546nb,
13045nb, 1333ns, 1335nu
Chalmer, Lionel, 52n4
Chamber of Deputies, ciin171, 2067,
37274nf, 120910nd, 122627nk
Champlain, 66162n(D)
change, cviicxi. See also revolutions
Channing, William Ellery, 8023nd;
The Importance and Means of a
National Literature, 8023nd;
Remarks on National Literature,
8023nd
character, lxxxiii, 29; American, lxxxiii,
29, 42023; effect of tyranny of the
majority on, 42023; laws and, 987
88nb
charitable establishments, 1223, 1227
28
Charles I, 59, 61
Charles II, 61
1510 i ndex
Charles X, 1359
Charles XII, 1124no
Charlevoix, Pierre-Francois, 661
62n(D); Histoire de la Nouvelle
France, 42n16, 530n11
Charter of 1814, 405nf
Charter of 1830, 405nf
charters, 6061n13, 405nf
Chasles, Philare`te, 763na; De la litter-
ature dans lAmerique du Nord,
8023nd
chastity. See morals
Chateaubriand, Jean-Baptiste de, xlix,
xlixn25, liv, lxin58, lxviin69, lxxxvi
lxxxviin122, lxxxix, 1012nq, 810
12nr, 82223nf, 1262na, 13045nb,
133738nv; Essais sur la litte rature
anglaise, 82223nf; Rene , 838nq,
841
Chelsea, 79697nb
Cherbourg sea wall, 79899ne
Cherbuliez, xxxvixxxviin20
Cherokees, 522nh, 533, 533n14, 533n16,
534, 535nt, 540, 540n20, 54142,
542nx, 542n24, 544n25, 545, 546
Chevalier, Michel, lxxxv, 65657nh;
Des chemins de fer compares aux
lignes navigables, 89798nf; Lettres
sur lAme rique du Nord, 903nt
Chickasaws, 533n14, 541n21, 542n23
China, 535, 786, 786no, 1123
Chippewas, 1326, 132829, 1334nt
Chiquet, 128485nk. See Mignet
Choctaws (Chactas), 52627, 533n14,
53738nv, 541n21, 542n23
cholera epidemic of 1831, lxxxiv
Christendom, 1015, 1516nw, 504,
122324. See also Christianity;
Europe
Christian equality, 10, 14, 15, 24
Christianity, 24, 46772, 482nu, 486
87, 48788nw, 599na, 733, 733nh,
74647, 747ne, 74849nf, 755ne,
758nc, 85960, 85960nm, 923
25nn, 96061nj, 962, 1115ny, 1360
64, 1360na; in America, 75253;
Anglo-Americans and, 7057nr,
7078ns, 70910nu, 75253; con-
demnation of slavery by, 556; despo-
tism and, 468; doctrine of interest
well understood and, 92325nn,
92728; equality and, 74748; in
Europe, 48788nx, 488; liberty and,
468; missionaries, 47677; philoso-
phy and, 7034no; preaching, 859
60, 85960nm; the Roman Empire
and, 74849; servitude and, 54849;
slavery and, 561; in the United
States, 46778; women and, 1044
45, 1044nf. See also Catholicism
Christians. See Christendom;
Christianity
the Church, 67, 961
church and State, separation of, 480,
481n5, 752nk, 81921nd
churches, gothic, 78990nd
Cicero, 994
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 733nh
Circourt, Madame de, 65657nh,
133738nv
cities, 1045n2, 45455, 454n1, 454nj.
See also towns
citizen justice, 36465
citizens, 108, 15354. See also citizenship
citizenship, 163, 163nc
civil associations, 897ne, 91117,
911nnab, 1215np
civility, 1071nb
civilization: art and, 792nf; association
and, 896nc; barbarism and, 53435,
896nc; Indians and, 53041, 535nt,
53637n18, 53738nv; intellectual
education and, 136972; political
science and, 1617nx
i ndex 1511
civilized man, cxviii
civil laws, lxxxiii, 127576ny
civil liberties, 473
civil privileges, 123031np
civil registry, 106
civil rights, 473, 123031np
civil society, lxxxi, cx, 4, 633, 689
90na, 69091nc, 98788nb
civil state, lxxxiii
civil wars, 1178na, 118586, 1186n3
Clarel, Guillaume, xlviii
Clark, William, cxvn212, 524, 524n3,
52728n7, 532n[*], 728nc; Reports
to Congress, 524, 524n3, 525n6,
534ns
Clarkson, Thomas: An Essay on the
Slavery and Commerce of the Human
Species, 550ne; Essai sur les de savan-
tages de la traite, 550ne
class, 700; absence of, 1283nh; aristoc-
racy and, 106870, 1068nnab,
1069nc; emancipation and, 57172;
in England, 38283, 38283nj, 819
21nd; government of different
classes, 380; inuence on handling
of State nances, 33440; language
and, 82527; slavery and, 57172; in
the United States, 31617. See also
specic classes
the Classics, democracy and, 815
16nnab, 81517
Clay, Henry, 623n90, 8023nd
Clerel de Tocqueville family, xlviii
clergy, 480, 481, 481n5, 485, 753, 755nc,
96162; Catholic, 753; political
power of, 67, 6nh; preaching,
85960, 85960nm; spread of
enlightenment by, 10; ultra-unitary
movement of the, 1223nf. See also
the Church
climate, 453nf, 654, 1052, 1052na, 1054,
128485nk
coal, 123537ny
Coeur, Jacques, 7nh
Coffee, 542n[*]
Coke, Edward, 681n(M)
Collection of Massachusetts, 556n33
Collection of the Historical Society of
Massachusetts, 68384n(A). See also
newspapers
collective individualism, 88182nb
collectors, 118n14
colonies. See specic colonies
Colonization Society of Blacks, 576
77, 576n48
commerce, lxxxii, lxxxiii, 46364, 613,
614, 639n94, 640, 640nh, 640nj,
68990na, 784nn, 977, 1129na;
American genius for, 63842; aris-
tocracy and, 973nc, 973n1, 97476,
974nd, 975nf, 128687n; democracy
and, 8586ne, 973nc, 973n1, 974
76, 974nd, 975nf, 97778nh,
1138nh, 123537ny; despotism and,
94850nc; between England and the
United States, 646; equality of con-
ditions and, 972nnab; between
Europe and the United States, 638
40, 638n91; growth of, 613, 613n80;
interstate, 614; liberty and, 948
50nc; maritime, lxxxii, 238, 244,
63840; in the Mediterranean,
644n96; military power and, 647; in
the North, 607, 607n70; between
North America and South America,
645; peace and, 1178na; revolution
and, 1136nf; slavery and, 607n70; in
the South, 607, 607n70; in the
United States, 63748, 638n91,
11035, 1129na; between the United
States and Europe, 63840,
638n91
commercial laws, lxxxiii
commercial professions, 97279,
1512 i ndex
commercial professions (continued )
972nnab, 973n1, 974nd, 977
79nj, 977ng, 989nd
commercial property, 123537ny
Committee of Indian Affairs, 547
48n29
common affairs, administration of,
89193, 891nk
common law, lxxxii
common opinion, cxxxcxxxin267,
cxxxn264, cxxxin270, cxxxiv, 719
20, 72021np, 752. See also opinion;
public opinion
communes, 99100nc, 99n3, 103
communication, cxlcxli
compe tence, 234n5
concentration of power, 119499,
1194nnab, 12001202nnac, 1200
1220, 12023n1, 1203nd. See also
centralization
Conde, Prince de, lxiv, lxxviii
Condorcet, Marquis de, Re exions sur
lesclavage des Noirs, 550ne
confederation, 194nq, 58394, 587nr,
59091nt, 616; dangers to, 582627;
division of sovereignty in, 58889;
growth of the, 614; natural weakness
of judicial system in, 24142; war
and, 1186n3. See also the Articles of
Confederation; federation; the rst
confederation
Congress, 196200, 459, 590, 617, 618,
618nr, 797, 861na; division of, 248
49; foreign affairs and, 37274nf;
House of Representatives, 221, 249;
Indians and, 52829n8, 529n9,
542n23, 54546; nullication affair
and, 62024, 623n88, 623n90; par-
liamentary eloquence and, 86170,
861nnab (see also legislatures);
powers of, 62627; the President
and, 2067, 21011, 21517nm; right
to call state militias, 274; Senate,
221, 249; tariff laws and, 62021;
war and, 274. See also House of
Representatives; legislative powers;
Senate
conjugal happiness, 81921nd
Connecticut, 52n5, 58n10, 261, 490;
abolition in, 55354no; act of ces-
sion by, 617n82; blue laws in, 6264,
62nv; charter of, 58n10, 61; charter
of New Haven, 61; Code of 1650,
6264, 63n20, 65, 66, 67, 67nx;
colonial penal laws in, 6264; con-
stitution of, 65; electoral conditions
in, 677n(H); histories of, 666
74n(F), 673; laws of, 6264, 62nv,
65; political jurisdiction in,
682n(N); population growth in,
459; population of, 459; representa-
tion in Congress, 459; War of 1812
and, 274
conscience, 109596ne
conscription, 36162, 362nv, 362nu
Conseil dE
tat, 139nz, 175nh, 177, 1228

29no
Conseil, Louis P., 257no
conseils communaux, 99100nc
conseils municipaux, 99100nc
conservatives, cxvi
constables, 106
Constant, Benjamin, cxix
Constantinople, fall of, 822
constitutional conventions, 18990,
190n4, 190n5, 190ng, 190nh
constitutional instability, cxl
constitutionality, 82223nf
constitutional monarchy, 2048, 217.
See also monarchy
Constitution of 1848 (France), 221
22np, 225nr
constitutions, 1260, 1375; of demo-
cratic nations, 1265; in England, 171,
i ndex 1513
67980n(L), 680, 681n(M); in
France, 170, 171, 67980n(L); laws
and, 17071; state constitutions,
24650 (see also specic states); U.S.
Constitution compared to other fed-
eral constitutions, 25155. See also
Constitution of 1848 (France); U.S.
Constitution
consubstantiality, 82223nf
continental war, 68283n(O)
contract law, 240, 240n31
conventions, 306, 308, 408, 62122nv,
120910, 120910nd, 1255. See also
association
Cooper, James Fenimore, lxiv, 349
50nj, 8023nd, 804nh, 1304, 1329nr;
Excursions in Switzerland, 99899ne;
Notions of the Americans; Picked up
by a Travelling Bachelor, 8023nd
Corcelle, Francisque de, xcii, xciii, ci,
cii, ciii, cixn192, cxlvn314, 221
22np, 480nt, 65657nh, 69697na,
755ne, 816nb, 856ng, 1060nk,
1133nc; Financial Administration of
the United States, 34950nj
Coriolanus, Gaius Martius, 1102
corn, 595
Corneille, Pierre, 814nc
corruption, 35659, 359ns
Cortes, Hernan, 792nf
cotton plantations, 56667, 595
Council of Nicea, 82223nf
counter-revolution, cvii, cxi
counties, 99; budgets of, 125n26, 352,
352n11; county administrators, 119,
119n19; county assemblies, 131;
county budgets, 132ns; county mag-
istrates, 120; county roads, 125n26,
125n27; courts of sessions and, 125,
125n26; as judicial centers, 114; lack
of political existence of, 115; in New
England, 11415; states and, 13233;
towns and, 119, 119n18, 125; in the
United States, 132
country, xxvii
courage, 11045
Courier Franc ais, lxxxix
Courrier, P. L., 81012nr
cours de cassation, 233n2627, 234na
courtesans, 105758nf. See also
prostitutes
courtesy, 1071nb
the courtier spirit, 42023
Court of Common Pleas, 32223no
courts, xxvii, 114, 12627, 131. See also
judicial powers; judicial system;
Supreme Court; specic kinds of
courts
courts of sessions, 123, 124, 125, 125n27,
126, 12728, 127n31, 127n32, 322
23no; counties and, 125, 125n26
Cousin, Victor, cxxxii, 718nm
covetousness, 118789na, 1194na
Craiutu, Aurelian, 1819na
Creeks, 522nh, 533, 533n14, 540, 541
42, 542n23, 542n24, 544n25
creepers, 659n(B)
Creoles, 55354no
crime: administrative, 12728, 128n[*],
129, 133; alcohol and, 365; political,
184, 200, 682n(N)
criminal courts, 445
criminal laws, lxxxiii, 6264, 240
Crockett, David, 320nj
crowds, 1083
the Crusades, 6nh, 9
Cruse, Mr., 41415nv
customs, cviiin190, 4, 107273nc. See
also manners
Cuvier, 107273nc
Damais, 1138nh
Dana, Edmund, 65657nh
Dandin, Perrin, cvi
1514 i ndex
dansars, 1363
Danton, Georges-Jacques, 631nc
Darby, 594
Darius, 1182ne
Dartmouth College, founding of,
240n32
dAunay, Felix Le Peletier, lxxiii, 493nd
David, Jacques-Louis, 795
Davis, Nancy G., 1320nn
decentralization, 149, 16364ne, 624
25, 116162nj; in England, 16364ne;
in the English colonies, 632; two
types of, 1213nm; in the United
States, 62930. See also administra-
tive centralization; administrative
decentralization
the Declaration of Independence,
542nx
Delaware, 198, 55354no, 608n73,
677n(H), 682n(N)
Delaware language, 65961n(C)
Delecluze, E. J., Notice sur la vie et les
ouvrages de Le opold Robert, 763na
Delolme (de Lolme), Jean Louis,
681n(M), 68485n(B)
democracy, lxv, lxxxi, c, cvi, cxii,
cxiin202, cxiin204, cxiii, cxix,
cxxn228, cxxvn249, cxxvii, cxxxii,
cxxxixn258, cxlii, cxliiin308, cxliv
cxlv, cxlivn311, cxlvn312, cxlvn315,
cxlvin317, cxlvii, 1213nr, 21, 23nf,
9495, 96nj, 300, 300np, 307nh,
502np, 504ns, 693, 693ng, 694
95nm, 700ng, 708, 708nt, 709
10nu, 732ng, 888nd, 123537ny,
127879nb, 127885, 1282ng, 1283nh,
128485nk, 1285nm, 1286na; absolute
monarchy and, 94850nc; absolute
power and, 511nf; administrative cen-
tralization and, 16364ne; adminis-
trative instability in, 4079;
advantages for society, 375401;
advantages gained from, 375401;
ambition and, 111618nnaf, 1116
28, 1121nj, 1123nn, 1126nr, 1129na,
1131ne; the American Revolution
and, 8586ne; anarchy and, 119192,
119192nb; ancestry and, 882na, 883,
884; in antiquity, 795nk, 1082,
1143np; as anti-revolutionary,
cxxxviiicxl; aristocracy and, lxxxiv,
810nq, 1268no, 128687n; art and,
76364nb, 76374, 76970ng, 788
95, 788na, 791ne, 793ng, 810nq;
association and, 895904, 895na,
898ng, 9056nnab, 90510, 1068
70, 1068nnab; beliefs and, 711
12nb, 71125, 126667nj; capabilities
of, 36063; Cartesianism and, 699
700ne; Catholicism and, 755ne;
centralization and, 118789na, 1194
99, 1194nnab, 12012ncnb, 1202
3n1, 12068nnab, 120661, 1217ns,
121819nt, 122425nh, 125354no,
1293n; Christians and, 504; civil
society and, 29; class and, 700; Clas-
sics and, 81516nnab, 81517; class
interests and, 38084; commerce
and, 8586ne, 973nc, 973n1, 974
76, 974nd, 975nf, 97778nh,
1138nh; commerce in, 972, 1235
37ny; commercial professions and,
972; common interest and, 923nm;
connection to others and, 883,
883ne, 884, 888ne, 890, 89192,
891nk; consequences of, 10056;
constitutions of, 1265; corruption in,
35659; courtier spirit and, 42026;
customs and, 68990na; dangers of
omnipotence of the majority in,
42426; dangers to, 42426, 424ne;
denition of, 76nf; democratic revo-
lutions, 1719; despotism and,
cxxxiiicxxxiv, cxliv, 76, 117nd, 162,
i ndex 1515
307, 360, 41819, 752, 94850nc,
950, 1217nr, 124561, 1245na, 1253
54no, 125657nt, 126277, 1262na,
127576ny; development of, 1719;
dissimilarities among, 690nb; dis-
tinguished from democratic revolu-
tion, 1116na; doctrine of interest
well understood and, 919nf, 920,
920ng, 92325nn; education and,
86970nh; egoism and, 933ne,
962nn; in England, xcvn155; English
language and, 81829, 818na, 819
21nd; enlightenment and, 9, 769
70ng, 77073, 126667nj; equality
and, cxxxiicxxxiii, 736, 872
74nnac, 87280; in Europe, 28no,
363, 500, 501no, 1230, 127879nb;
505-514, 505nu, 505-506nw, 512nh,
512nj, 512-513nk. See also specic
countries; in the European colonies,
5051; failure to economize in, 339
40; faith and, 72021np; the family
and, 882na, 883, 884, 103133nnac,
103140, 103335nne, 1033n1,
1036nh; foreign affairs and, 36970,
371; forms and, 127071, 1270nr; in
France, lxvlxvi, 732ng; freedom of
the press in, 126970; future of,
830na; general ideas and, 732nf,
73839; as Gods will, 14; govern-
ment and, 31374, 126566, 1265
66ng, 1265ne; gravity in, 1080
81nnab, 108084; habits and, 29;
habitual relations and, 99599,
995nnab, 10056, 1005na; histori-
ography and, 85360, 853nnab,
855nf; honor and, 10931115, 1093na,
109798nh, 110610; ideas and, 29,
68990na, 900901; individualism
and, 69798na, 88182nnab, 881
84, 883ne; industrial professions
and, 97279, 972nnab, 973n1,
974nd, 97779nj, 977ng; industry
and, 973nc, 973n1, 97476, 974nd,
975nf, 97778nh, 97879nj, 1028
29ng; inevitability of, cxvicxvii,
1016, 1213nr, 1516nw; inuence
of, 68990na, 871985, 871na, 1187
89nnab, 11871294; inuence on
the intellectual movement in the
United States, 696870; intellectual
anarchy and, 1144; interest and, 918
25, 923nm; isolation and, 883ne,
884; jurists and, 43042; knowledge
and, cxxxv; language and, 82225,
826nh, 83940; laws and, 494504,
51213, 512nm, 512nn; laws of, 378
79ne; leases and, 102024, 1020na,
1021nb, 1023nd; legislative instabil-
ity and, 32223no, 4079; legisla-
tures and, 86170, 861na, 86465nd,
864nc, 866n[*]; liberty and, 76,
117nd, 16364ne, 87274nnac,
87280, 126364, 126667nj,
1267nk; literature and, 76364nb,
76374, 76566nd, 76970ng, 800
804nnah, 800812, 8012nc, 809
12nor, 810nq, 81314, 813na; love
in, 1058ng; magistrates in, 38082;
the majority and, 72123nr; man-
ners and, 10001004, 1000na, 1071
74nnad, 107179, 107273nc,
107475nf, 1074nd, 1077nj, 1078
79nnkm; marriage and, 105455n1,
105457; material enjoyments and,
93536nnab, 93538, 937ne,
965nb; materialism and, 95659,
962nn; material well-being and,
93031nb, 93034, 930na, 931, 932
33nd, 934ng, 954, 954na; mediocrity
in leadership and, 31821; in the
Middle Ages, 1143np; the military
and, 115377, 1153na, 115657nnd,
1163nm, 1165nnab, 1167n1, 1170
1516 i ndex
democracy (continued )
71nnac, 129192n; monarchical,
72123nr; mores and, 29, 494504,
51213, 512nm, 512nn, 871na, 986
1186, 986na; Napoleon and, cxin199;
as a necessity, 693nf; neologisms
and, 823; newspapers and, 905
6nnab, 90510, 907nd, 909n1;
omnipotence of the majority in,
40226; opinions and, 1149; panthe-
ism and, 75758; parliamentary elo-
quence and, 861nnab, 868nf;
parsimoniousness toward public
ofcials, 34043, 347nf; peace and,
115364, 1153na, 1178na; the perfect-
ibility of man and, 75962; philoso-
phy and, civ, cxxvcxxvi, 71125,
71314ne, 77980ng; physical con-
ditions and, lxviilxviii, lxix, cxii;
poetry and, 83031nnab, 83042,
835nj, 837nnop, 842nx, 84344m
843na; political society and, 1187
89nnab, 11871294; power that
American democracy exercises over
itself, 36474; preaching and, 859
60, 85960nm; the press and,
cxxxvin287, 910nf; professions and,
96971, 969na; providential charac-
ter of, 1012nq; public expenditures
of, 33340; public institutions and,
79697nb; public ofcials under the
dominion of, 32427; reason and,
cxxxiiicxl; relationships and, 995
99, 995nnab, 10056, 1005na; reli-
gion and, 482nu, 74243nb, 74253,
74849nf, 752nj, 752nk, 95462,
954nnab, 96061nj, 962nm, 1266
67nj; remedies to, 126667nj;
republican government in, 376; rest-
lessness and, 94247, 947nk, 1083
84; revolution and, cxxxixn294,
1116na, 113334nb, 113352, 1136nf,
114243nm, 127374, 1273nu; revo-
lutions and, 114445nq, 1145nr,
114647n1, 1151ny, 1152; salaried
public ofcials and, 32526, 340
42nn79, 34043; salaries and,
102526nab, 102530, 1027nd; sci-
ence and, 76364nb, 76387, 769
70ng, 77577nnac, 78687np,
810nq; self-regarding nature of, 835,
835nj; sentiments and, 68990na,
871985, 871na, 900901; servant/
master relationships and, 1007
8nnab, 100719, 101415nm,
1019no; sociability and, 99599,
995nb; as social state of Anglo-
Americans, 7588; solitude of,
cxxvii, cxxviin253; sovereignty and,
1265, 1265ne; spirit of amelioration
in, 33839; stasis and, cxxxviii
cxxxix; sympathy and, 10056,
1005na; tastes and, 871na; tempera-
ment and, 108384, 108992; theater
and, 84546nnab, 84552; tyranny
of, 411no; unity and, 758nd; useful
arts and, 78890, 78990nd, 791ne,
798nc; vanity and, 1087; vices of,
35659, 377, 4079; violence in,
41819; vs. representative govern-
ments, 31718, 317ng; war and, 1153
64, 1153na, 1160ng, 116162nj,
1162nk, 117880nn12, 117886,
1178na, 1180nb, 1182ne, 1184nh,
1186n3; warrior mores in, 129192n,
1292; weaknesses of, 377; wealth
and, 8586ne, 973nc, 973n1, 974
76, 974nd, 975nf, 109091, 1138nh;
work and, 96971, 969na. See also
democratic social state; equality;
sovereignty of the people
Democracy in America, xxxivn13;
appendices to, xxxvixxxvii, xxxvi
xxxviin20; Beaumonts role in writ-
i ndex 1517
ing and revising, lxxii; as a
collaborative effort, lxxii; commen-
taries of rst readers, xxxivn15, 5ne
(see also specic readers); commentar-
ies on, xxxivn15, xxxvi, 5ne, 10
12nq; compared with LAncien
Re gime et la Re volution, cviin188;
completion of, ciii; conception of,
lxilxxiv, lxin58, 5; copies of, xxxiv
xxxv, xxxivn13; drafts of, xxxvi; edi-
tions of, xxii, xxxiiixxxvii, xxxvn17,
xlvii, lxxxivlxxxix, lxxxvn119;
England and, xciiixcix; errors in,
xxxivxxxv, xxxvn16, xxxvn17,
xxxvn18; rst edition of, lxxxiv
lxxxix, lxxxvn119; fragments pre-
sented with, xxxvi, xxxvin19; French
Revolution and, cvicxvi, cxiin201;
Gallimard edition, xxxvn17; goal of,
3132, 31nt; key terms in, xxvixxvii;
main idea of, xxvi; manuscripts of,
xxxxxxiii, xxxn2, xxxiin6, xliixliii,
lxviii; marginalia in, xxxvi; Nolla
edition, xxii; point of departure, 45
73; present edition of, xxxiiixxxvii;
reception of, xlviii, lxxxixxciii,
xcn135, xcn138, xcin141, xcin142,
ciiiciv; sources for, 3031; time and,
cxvin217; title of, lxxxviiilxxxvix,
lxxxviiin128, ciii, 29np; translation
of, xxixxiv; truth and the writing
of, cxxiiicxxiv; wins the Montyon
prize, xcii; writing of, xxix, lxxx
lxxxiv, lxxxiiilxxxivn116, lxxxiv
lxxxv, xciiicv, ciin170, cxxiiicxxiv,
3031, 68990na, 69091nc, 690nb,
69192, 69394, 693nj, 69495nm,
69697na, 69798na, 76970ng,
777nd, 118789nnab, 118790
democratic anarchy, 1247nd
democratic despotism, cxxxiiclx,
cxxxvcxxxvi, cxxxvin287, cxxxvii
cxxxix, cxxxviin289, cxliv, 360, 1161
63, 1163nm, 123061, 1261ny. See also
despotism, democracy and
democratic ideas, 118789nnab, 1187
1294, 1195
democratic instincts, 74253, 742na
democratic liberty, 68990na
democratic monster, cxlii
the Democratic party, 287, 287nh, 617
democratic republics, 363, 451514
democratic revolution, 1819na, 693,
694nk, 708, 708nt, 780, 1217nr,
124344; ambition and, 1119; beliefs
and, 71213nc; centralization and,
121112; distinguished from democ-
racy, 1116na; in England, 1212nj;
individualism and, 88586, 886nc
democratic sentiments: centralization
and, 12001202nnac, 12001205,
12023n1, 1203nd; political society
and, 118789nnab, 11871294
democratic social state, 68994, 693nf,
72123nr, 72728nb, 732ng, 1278
85, 1283nh, 1284nj; art and, 79495;
despotism and, 127576ny; ne arts
and, 79394; perfectibility of man
and, 759na; revolutions and, 1145nr.
See also democracy
Dens, Judge, 459np
deputies, 131, 131n38
Descartes, Rene, cx, cxxv, cxxxi, 697
98na, 699700, 699700ne, 702
3nn, 704, 704np, 705nq, 71213nc.
See also Cartesian method
Descourtiz, M. E., Voyages dun natur-
aliste et ses observations., 659n(B)
de sert, 36nd
Des Moines River, 35
despotism, cxvii, cxviii, cxix,
cxxxiiin276, cxxxivn278, cxliii,
cxlvii, cxlviii, 1213nr, 1516nw, 88,
15859ny, 159, 16364ne, 165, 386
1518 i ndex
despotism (continued )
87nr, 41213ns, 507, 587nr, 631, 635,
752, 77879nf, 87788ne, 88789,
887na, 888ne, 889nf, 890, 108183,
118789na, 119192nb, 1194na, 1244,
1246nc, 1247nd, 1249nf, 1251nm,
1268nn, 1283nh, 129394n; adminis-
trative, 1204nf, 123440, 123537ny,
124561, 1245na, 1249ne, 1252nn,
125556nq, 1260nx; anarchy and,
125051nj; arbitrariness of magis-
trates under, 32730; centralization
and, 147, 14849, 1220, 124561;
Christianity and, 468; commerce
and, 94850nc; denition of,
1245nb; democracy and, cxxxiiclx,
cxxxiiicxxxiv, cxxxvcxxxvi,
cxxxvin287, cxxxviicxxxix,
cxxxviin289, cxliv, 162, 307, 360,
41819, 752, 94850nc, 950, 116163,
1163nm, 123061, 1245na, 1253
54no, 125657nt, 1261ny, 126277,
1262na, 127576ny; equality and,
888ne, 889, 1262; Europe and, 1245
46, 1246nc; the industrial class and,
123435nn5; industrialists and, 1234
35n5, 123440, 123537nnyz; liberty
and, 887na, 888ne, 889nf, 116162,
116162nj; the majority and, 721
23nr, 72425 (see also tyranny of the
majority); military, 1247nd; nation-
alism and, 15859ny; oriental, 231
32nz; paternal, 1249ne, 125051;
public affairs and, 94850nc; in
towns, 1023; types of, 1247nd; the
United States and, 41819, 419
20nb, 1245; varieties of, cxix. See also
absolute monarchy; tyranny
Desvatins, 1299nf. See La Croix de
Watines family
determinism, cxvi, cxvii, cxviii
Detroit, Michigan, 1308, 1311, 1312,
131314nh
Detroit River, 1311
Devatines, 1299nf. See La Croix de
Watines family
devotion, 91825, 918na, 919nd, 921
22, 921nj, 92325nn, 927, 928ne
De Wattines, 1299nf. See La Croix de
Watines family
D az, Jose-Luis, 800801nb
D ez de Corral, Luis, 1819na, 317ng,
480nt, 679ng, 71213nc
Digeste ge ne ral des acts de la le gislature
de la Louisiane, 68596n(C), 686
Digest of the Laws of Louisiana, 443n2
Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania,
131n38
district attorneys, 135n32
district courts, 233n2627
divinity, 83738, 839ns. See also God
division of labor, 64243, 64243nm
division of powers, sovereignty and,
239
division of property, 459, 460
divorce, 1064nf
doctrinaires, 885nb
doctrine of interest well understood,
91825, 918na; Christianity and,
92325nn, 92728; democracy and,
919nf, 92325nn; enlightenment
and, 921nj, 923; in Europe, 920; reli-
gion and, 92325nn, 92629, 926na;
in the United States, 91829, 918na,
92325nn, 926na; virtue and, 921
22, 922nk
domanial property, 1266nh
dominion, xxvii
Doran, Eva, 133738nv
doubt, cxxii, cxxiin242, cxxv, 3na,
96568, 965nnab
Doysie, Abel, xxxin3
Drago, Roland, 332nd
Dreer, Ferdinand, 37274nf
Drescher, Seymour, livn41, 102ne,
570nx, 981nc, 1200na
i ndex 1519
drunkenness, lxxxiii
duelling, lxxxiii, 1109, 1109ns, 1110
13nv
Duponceau, 72nd, 518n[*]; Memoirs of
the American Philosophical Society,
65961n(C)
Duquesne, 650
Du syste `me pe nitentiaire . . . See Syste `me
pe nitentaire in French index
Dutch colonies, 495
Dutch Republic, 251, 253n36, 592n55
Dyer, Mary, 6364n25
the Eastern Empire, end of, 7nh
eclecticism, cxxxii
economy, cxxn229; of the North, 560;
slavery and, 56162nt; of the South,
560
Edinburgh, Scotland, 1359
education, xxvii, lxxxi, 6nh, 106, 1369
72; in America, 8687; civilization
and, 136972; Classics, 81516nna
b, 81517; democracy and, 869
70nh; equality and, 86970nh; in
Europe, 493, 1223; of girls, 1041
42nnac, 104147, 1044nf; govern-
ment and, 1223; in the Gulf states,
491; intellectual, 136972; in New
England, 49091, 490na; in the
Northeast, 498; public, lxxxi, 106,
13435n41, 134n40, 343n10; in the
South, 491; in the United States,
49091, 490na, 493, 494; in the
West, 491; of women, 1065nngh.
See also schools
Edward I, 1255np
egalitarian society, cxxxiicxxxiiin273
egoism, cxxxv, cxxxvn282, 83, 88182,
88182nb, 882nd, 89899nh, 921nj,
92325nn, 933ne, 993, 995nb,
1086nc, 122223n1, 1272nt; democ-
racy and, 962nn
Egypt, 121415, 1215no; centralization
in, 121415, 1215no
elected ofces, 12122, 121nj, 122
election crisis, 22224
elections, 890, 890nj, 893, 893no; indi-
rect, 321, 321nk; mode of, 21822,
220n20 220n21; parties and, 322; of
the President, 21124; re-election of
the President, 22526nu. See also
elective system
elective power, 122
elective system, 21112, 21114, 21718,
22224. See also elections
electoral college, 22021, 220n20
220n21
electoral conditions, 677n(H)
electoral laws, inuence exercised by
democracy on, 32223
electoral lists, 104
electoral reform, 38687nr
electoral rights, 9596, 95nh, 31011,
31314, 321, 33637, 55354no, 554
55, 561, 68485n(B)
electoral voice, tyranny of the, cxxxvii
electors, 22021, 220n20, 220n21
eloquence, 85960, 85960nm, 86170
emancipation, 572n46, 577n51, 1016
17; in the Antilles, 572n47; class
and, 57172; difculties of, 56482,
580n52; in France, 570nx; in the
North, 574; in the South, 56272,
571ny, 57275, 57882; in the United
States, 564674. See also abolition;
freedmen
emigration, 49ne; Catholic, 468; from
Europe, 45759, 464, 566, 132324;
forced emigration of Indians, 525
29, 54247; from Ireland, 468; from
New England, 459; of the North
toward the South, 614; to the
United States, 27, 4950, 49ne, 53
54, 45759, 464, 468, 566, 132324
1520 i ndex
Encyclopedia Americana, 65961n(C)
Encyclope die, 111013nv, 1245nb
England, xcivn152, 65657nh, 896,
903, 1212nk, 123537ny; acquisition
of wealth in, 973nc; America and,
76768nf; aristocracy in, lxxxiv,
xcvixcviin157, xcvii, 165, 38283,
78687np, 973nc, 97879nj, 1212,
1212nj, 1251nk, 1286n; armies in,
115556nc; association in, 897; as
center of commerce in Europe, 645;
centralization in, xcivxcv, 146,
1200na, 121112, 121213nnjk; class
in, 38283, 38283nj, 81921nd; con-
stitution of, 171, 67980n(L), 680,
681n(M); corruption in, 357; decen-
tralization in, 146, 16364ne;
democracy in, xcvn155; Democracy
in America and, xciiixcix; demo-
cratic revolution in, 1212nj; electoral
rights in, 68485n(B); equality of
the sexes in, 1062nb; the family in,
103335ne; France and, 647; House
of Commons, 180; House of Lords,
180, 180n1; industry in, 123537ny;
judicial power in, 17273; jury sys-
tem in, 68485n(B), 68687n(D);
literature and, 76364nb; maritime
dominance of, 647; middle classes
in, 96061nj; as a mixed govern-
ment, 411no; monarchy in, 163
64ne; morals in, 1053, 1053nb;
national pride in, 129091; New
England and, 5960; newspapers in,
909; Parliament in, 171; penal insti-
tutions in, lxxviiilxxxiv; political
jurisdiction in, 180, 180n1, 181, 183;
the poor in, 38283, 38283nj; poor
laws in, xcivxvc; poor tax in, 337;
population growth in, 459; as possi-
ble reference point, lxxxiv; property
in, 1223nd; public administration in,
121112; public institution in, 796
97nb; religion and, 50, 96061nj;
science and, 76364nb; servant/
master relationships in, 10078nb,
101415nm; sovereignty of the peo-
ple in, 1197ng; taxes in, 346; the
United States and, 646; war and,
361; women in, 1048nb, 1053,
1053nb, 1064ne, 1066nj; in the
XVIIIth century, 129091n. See also
the English
the English, 644, 94850nc; Americans
and, 646; commerce and, 94850nc,
950; enlightenment of, 735nm; gen-
eral ideas and, 726, 726na, 72932,
73435, 735nm; gravity of, 1081,
1081nd, 1082; habitual relations of,
99598, 995nab; Indians and,
534n17; industry and, 94850nc,
950; national pride of, 129091; in
the New World, 651, 12089; origi-
nality and, 109192nd; physiog-
nomy of, 50; reserve of, 997, 997nd,
99899ne; sociability of, 99598,
997nd, 99899ne; temperament of,
108586, 1085na; unions with Indi-
ans, 534n17; vanity of, 108586,
1085na, 1086ne. See also England;
English colonies
English colonies, 37, 188, 632, 650n1,
651; decentralization in, 632; family
resemblances among, 51; historical
memorials of, 66667, 66674n(F);
Indians and, 529n10, 547na; indus-
triousness of, 560; liberty of the, 60;
mores in, 632; Puritanism of, 662
65n(E); slavery in the, 52; sover-
eignty of the people in the, 92;
Virginia, 5152. See also Anglo-
Americans
English language, 81921nd; American
vs. British, 819, 821, 822; borrowing
i ndex 1521
of foreign terms, 822; creation of
new words by Americans, 822; mod-
ication of by American democracy,
81829, 818na, 81921nd; neolo-
gisms in, 82223nf
English literature, 800na, 8034
English merchant marines, 644,
644n95
Englishness, 68990na
English wars, 9
enlightened self-interest, xxvi, 365
enlightenment, xxvii, 7, 10, 295, 463,
48894, 700nj, 726na, 746, 769
70ng, 770; of Anglo-Americans,
490; aristocracy and, 72728nb,
1214; democracy and, 76970ng,
77073, 126667nj; doctrine of
interest well understood and, 921nj,
923; equality of conditions and,
71718, 772nj; experience and, 493
94; gradual, 365; independence and,
121213; Indians and, 530, 535; inher-
itance laws and, 77071, 772; lack
displayed in American government,
31418; religion and, 67, 479
the Enlightenment, cx
entail, 67576n(G)
envy, 946, 946nh, 1194na, 12034
Epicurean philosophy, 941
equal division, law of, 82nv, 83, 8485
equality, lxxxiii, ciii, cvi, cix, cxvii
cxxix, cxviii, cxxxivn278, cxxxv,
cxlii, cxliin303, cxliii, cxliv,
cxlivn310, cxlvin317, cxlviii, 2na, 4,
79, 29, 76, 455, 561, 69091nc,
69192, 692ne, 69495nm, 700ng,
7057nr, 708, 719, 72021np, 733
34, 736, 746, 750, 76364nb, 828,
97879nj, 107273nc, 1074nd, 1132,
118789na, 1193nc, 1196, 1200na,
1201, 1202, 12067na, 1220nu,
1237na, 1238nc, 125051nj, 1256nr,
1265nf, 1272nt, 1273, 127879nb,
127885, 1283nh, 1290n, 129192n,
1373; ambition and, 111617nb,
1118nf, 1120; among the Indians, 40;
in antiquity, 73233, 733nh; arts and,
76364nb, 76465; association and,
895na, 89798; autocracy and,
1143no; barbarism and, 87880nf; in
Beaumonts Marie, cxxxii
cxxxiiin273; of Blacks, 57172;
Catholicism and, 469, 470; centrali-
zation and, 12001220; in China,
1123; Christianity and, 10, 14, 15, 24,
74748; civil society and, 29; com-
merce and, 972nnab, 989nd; com-
mercial professions and, 989nd;
consequences of, 72021np, 10056;
dangers of, 745; democracy and,
cxxxiicxxxiii, 736, 87274nnac,
87280; desire for, 316; despotism
and, 888ne, 889, 1262; development
of, 1011; enlightenment and, 717
18, 772nj; envy and, 946, 946nh; in
Europe, 127879nb; in France, 873;
France and, 894; free institutions
and, 119192nb, 119193; general
ideas and, 71718, 718nm, 720
21np, 734, 737, 739nc; habits and,
29; history and, cxviii; honor and,
111315; ideas and, 29; independence
and, 127677, 1277nb; individual-
ism and, 883; industrial professions
and, 989nd; industry and, 980
81nnab, 1231, 1241, 1241ne; inevita-
bility of, 1012nq, 1213nr;
inuence on education, 86970nh;
intellectual, 8788, 455, 490,
702nm; isolation and, 888ne; lan-
guage and, 825, 826nh, 827nj; level-
ing of civilization by, 130911; liberal
instincts and, 1204ne; liberty and,
cxix, 875nd, 87788ne, 89394,
1522 i ndex
equality (continued )
1262na, 1278na; literature and, 763
64nb, 76465, 800801nb; love of,
455, 87274nnac, 87280; material
enjoyments and, 938; material well-
being and, 94445, 125354no; mor-
als and, 105254nnac, 105261,
1055nd, 1059nh; mores and, 29, 986,
986na, 98788nnab, 98794,
989nd; newspapers and, 90910; in
the New World, 495; perfectibility
of man and, 75962, 759nb; philos-
ophy and, 71718, 718nm, 739nc;
poetry and, 832, 834, 835, 842; politi-
cal consequences of, 8990; posi-
tions and, 1130; property and,
1136nf; Protestantism and, 46970;
religion and, 74546, 747, 752, 754;
revolution and, 113334nb, 113352,
1135nc, 114142nm, 114445nq,
1145nr, 1214nn, 124344, 1274nv;
science and, 76364nb, 76465,
77576nb, 776; of the sexes, 1062
64nnae, 106267, 1064nh,
1067nm; sympathy and, 98990nf;
in the United States, cxxxii
cxxxiiin273, 8687, 88, 495, 69192,
735nm, 75962, 12089, 1212, 1309
11; war and, 117880nn12, 117886,
1178na, 1180nb, 1182ne, 1184nh,
1186n3; wealth and, 1228. See also
democracy
equality of conditions, 2na, 4, 29, 76,
455, 708, 97879nj, 118789na, 1196,
1283nh, 1290n, 1373; ambition and,
111617nb, 1120; among the Indians,
40; autocracy and, 1143no; in China,
1123; civil society and, 29; commerce
and, 972nnab; commercial profes-
sions and, 989nd; consequences of,
72021np, 10056; despotism and,
1262; development of, 1011;
enlightenment and, 71718, 772nj;
France and, 894; general ideas and,
71718, 718nm, 72021np, 734, 737,
739nc; habits and, 29; ideas and, 29;
industrial professions and, 989nd;
inevitability of, 1012nq, 1213nr;
isolation and, 888ne; liberty and,
875nd; material well-being and,
125354no; morals and, 1052
54nnac, 105261, 1055nd, 1059nh;
mores and, 29, 986, 986na, 987
88nnab, 98794, 989nd; newspa-
pers and, 90910; in the New
World, 495; philosophy and, 71718,
718nm, 739nc; property and, 1136nf;
revolution and, 113334nb, 113352,
1135nc, 1141, 114445nq, 114446,
1145nr, 115152; in the United States,
495; wealth and, 1228. See also
equality
Erie, Pennsylvania, 1311
Europe, 153, 276, 644, 125556nq,
1280nc; absolute monarchy in, 68;
administrative despotism in, 1255
56nq; administrative instability in,
409; administrative powers in, 1228
30; administrative science in, 1228
29; America and, 6768, 768, 805nj;
Americans in, 10001004, 1000na,
1002nc; aristocracy in, 122122,
122223n1, 123233; armies in, 1155
56nc; associations in, 1239; centrali-
zation in, 273, 119799, 12067na,
122144, 1221na; charitable establish-
ments in, 1223; Christianity in, 487
88nx, 488; compared with America,
6768; concentration of power in,
122144; constitutional monarchies
in, 217; current state in, 28no;
democracy in, 28no, 500, 501no,
1230, 127879nb; despotism and,
124546, 1246nc; doctrine of inter-
i ndex 1523
est well understood in, 920; educa-
tion in, 493, 1223; emigration from,
464, 566; equality in, 2na, 45, 1063,
127879nb; equality of the sexes in,
1063; federal constitutions in, 251
55; girls in, 104243; honor in, 1104
(see also feudal honor); indepen-
dence of thought in, 41617; insta-
bility of sovereigns in, 122144;
judicial powers in, 122830; judicial
system in, 244, 245; lack of homoge-
neity in, 270, 27172; legislative
instability in, 409; liberty in, 68,
877, 12089; literature and, 763
64nb; manners in, 107273nc; mid-
dle class of, 512nj; monarchies in,
21011; morals in, 1059; mores in,
1052na; need for democratic institu-
tions in, 51314, 514no; pantheism
in, 757; philosophy in, 7023nn,
7025, 702nm, 7034no; political
development in, 65, 6768; political
jurisdiction in, 181, 18384 (see also
specic countries); population of, 654,
655n4; positions in, 1129, 1129nb;
possibility of democracy in: 505-514,
505nu, 505-506nw, 512nh, 512nj,
512-513nk; relevance of Democracy
to, 5056nw, 50514, 505nu, 512
13nk, 512nh, 512nj; religion in, 479,
479nq, 48788nx, 488; revolution
and, 1374; revolution in, 1141; revo-
lutions in, 1222, 1222nc; science and,
76364nb; sovereign power in,
122144; sovereignty of the people
in, 1197, 1197ng; susceptibility of
Americans in, 10001004, 1000na;
taste for material well-being in, 931,
93233nd; territory of, 65354,
654n2; unbelief in, 488; uniform
rule in, 119799; the United States
and, 638, 68283n(O); upper classes
of, 512nj; war and, 273, 117880nnb,
118081, 118081nc; women in,
1062na, 1062nb, 1063, 1063nc, 1065.
See also specic countries
European colonies, 5051, 495. See also
European settlements; specic colonies
Europeans, 5051, 517, 521; Blacks and,
581; China and, 786; descendents of,
65455; emigration to the United
States, 45759; evils committed in
the New World, 550nd; habits of,
494; Indians and, 53637n18, 537
38nv, 53940, 53940n19; interest in
the American wilderness, 836; in the
New World, 3738, 44, 48, 5051; in
North America, 45759; opinions of,
692; oppression of other races by,
51718; physiognomy of, 48, 748
49nf; sentiments of, 692. See also
European colonies; European settle-
ments; settlers
Everett, Alexander Hill, 65657nh,
8023nd
Everett, Edward, xlii, lxxiv, cxin200,
430nf, 52829n8, 530n[*], 530nq,
544ny, 65657nh
evil, 1094, 109596ne, 1114. See also vice
Evrard de Belisle, E
milie, lin31
exclusion, spirit of, 88182nb
executive powers, cxlvii, 2013, 202ny,
2056na, 62627, 1194na, 1230
31np; accidental causes that can
increase the inuence of, 20910;
advantages of strong, 201; depen-
dency on legislative powers, 411no;
elective system and, 21112; French
and American compared, 2048;
jurists and, 435, 435nn; legislative
power and, 2067, 21011, 21516,
21517nm; the majority and, 404,
404nd; in the states, 24950. See also
the Presidency
1524 i ndex
experience, enlightenment and, 493
94
fact, 1114nx
faith, cxxx, cxxxn266, cxxxi, 482, 485,
7057nr, 71416, 72021np, 745,
965, 965na, 968. See also beliefs;
religion
the family: aristocracy and, 1031na,
1032, 103335ne, 103540, 1037nj;
democracy and, 882na, 883, 884,
103133nnac, 103140, 103335nne,
1033n1, 1036nh; in England, 1033
35ne; family spirit, 8085, 509; feu-
dalism and, 1040; in France, 1031nb,
1033n1, 1036; law of inheritance
and, 8085; in Rome, 1032; in the
United States, 103140, 1031nb,
1032nc, 103335ne, 1033n1. See also
ancestry
fatalism. See fatality
fatality, cxvicxvii, cxxvn249, 85759,
858nj, 858nk, 128485nk
Faucher, Leon, lxxxix
F. D. (unidentied source), 126364nc
federal Constitution. See the U.S.
Constitution
federal courts, 22950, 240nb; cases
involving federal laws, 238; cases
involving foreign ambassadors, 237;
circulation of money and, 238; con-
tracts and, 240, 240n31m, 240n32;
district courts, 233n2627; jurisdic-
tion of, 23441, 23536n27, 237, 238;
litigation between states and, 237
38, 237n28, 244, 245; maritime com-
merce and, 238; piracy and, 238n29;
procedures of (way of proceeding),
24144; sovereignty and, 236, 238
39; state courts and, 23233, 23536,
23536n27; states and, 23233, 235
36, 23536n27, 24144; Supreme
Court (see Supreme Court); tariff
law and, 238; unconstitutional state
laws and, 240
federal governments, lxxxii. See also
centralization; government; the U.S.
federal government
federalism, cxlvi
The Federalist, 18687na, 188n2, 192
93nn8, 192n6, 193nn, 2045nz,
207n17, 247n35, 24849n35, 268,
274, 323, 37274nf, 411no, 413nt,
42526
Federalists, 28283nb, 28384
federal laws, 231, 231n5, 23940, 267
70, 26869n40, 497
federal legislatures, 24849
federal militias, 27475
federal powers, 195250, 6078, 612
27, 613nh, 614
federal system: advantages of, 25563,
276; applicability of the, 26376;
complication of divided sovereign-
ties, 26466; complication of means
in the, 26466; homogeneity and,
27072; lack of centralization in
the, 27374; special utility for Amer-
ica, 25563; unication of advan-
tages resulting from large and small
sizes of nations, 260; vices in the,
26466; war and the, 27273, 272nc
federal taxes, lxxxii
federation, lxxxi, lxxxii, 194nq, 46566.
See also confederation
felonies, 1100
Ferdinand, King, 287nh
Feuche`res, Baroness de, lxiiilxiv,
lxxviii
feudal honor, 1093na, 10961102, 1106
10
feudalism, 14, 1920, 68, 532nr, 1101nk;
aristocracy and, 1101nk; centraliza-
tion and, 147; decline of, 2223; the
i ndex 1525
family and, 1040; mores and, 989
92. See also feudal honor; feudal
power
feudal power, 79, 710, 7nh. See also
feudalism
Feuillet, Mr., 163nd, 111013nv
ghting, 1109ns. See also duelling
gurative language, 825
nances, lxxxi
nancial centralization, 120910nd
nanciers, 6nh, 7
ne arts. See arts
nes, 133
rearms, 7nh, 9
res, 67778n(I)
the rst confederation, 25152, 252ng,
255, 283
xed ideas, 742na
Flanders, 596
Flint, Michigan, 133334, 1333ns
Flint River, 133334, 1333ns, 1340, 1342
oral games, 7n(I), 7nh
Florence, 1143nn, 1143np
Florentines, 94850nc, 950
Florida, 49293n7, 567
Fontanelle, 81012nr
force, 23132nz, 1272nt
foreign affairs, 36674, 367n16, 617
foreign policy, 36674, 367n16
foreseeability, cxxvi
forms, 750, 750ng, 127071, 1270nr,
1271ns, 1273
fornication, lxxxiii
Fort Brewerton, 1295
Fort Malden, 1311
A Fortnight in the Wilderness, xxxvii,
130359, 1303na
Fourierism, 900nj
France, cxx, 8, 27172, 408, 41516nx,
462, 477, 59091t, 596, 634, 637,
650nd, 822, 896, 1212nk, 137374;
absolute monarchy in, 16364ne;
acts of sovereignty in, 586n[*];
administration in, 99100nc, 121nh,
127, 144ng, 148, 148n[*], 165, 1228
29no, 1231n4; administrative cen-
tralization in, 121nh, 144ng, 148,
148n[*], 165; administrative hierar-
chy in, 127; administrative powers
in, 122829no, 1231n4; administra-
tive science in, 122829no; ambition
and, 111617nb; aristocracy in, xcvii,
106061; armies in, 115556nc;
arrondissements, 114; central govern-
ment of, 586n[*]; centralization in,
14344nd, 14546ng, 148, 152n15,
16364ne, 213nj, 67879n(K),
679ng, 120910, 1210nf, 123031np,
123940nd, 1255, 1255np; Chamber
of Deputies, 37274nf; as champion
of freedom of the seas, 647; charter
of 1814, 14546ng; circulation of
thought in, 49293n7; compared to
the United States, 596; Conseil
dE
tat, 175nh, 177; Constituent

Assembly, 738; constitution of the
year VIII, 175nh; Constitution of
1848, 13739nz, 22122n9, 225nr;
constitutions of, 13739nz, 170, 171,
175nh, 22122n9, 225nr; conven-
tions in, 148, 408, 738, 120910,
120910nd, 1255; corruption in, 357;
cours de cassation, 233n2627, 234na;
courts in, 233n2627, 234na; current
state of, 2226, 23nf; democracy in,
24; England and, 647; equality in,
5ne, 873, 894; the family in, 1031nb,
1033n1, 1036; nancial centralization
in, 120910nd; girls in, 1043; immu-
tability of the constitution in, 679
80n(L); industry in, 123537ny;
inheritance laws in, 8384, 84na;
judges in, 173; judicial powers in,
16364ne, 17071, 17172nf, 173,
1526 i ndex
France (continued )
173ng, 122829no, 1231n4; jury sys-
tem in, 68596n(C), 686; law of
association in, 510nb; law of equal
division in, 8384; laws of succes-
sion in, 67980n(L); liberty and,
894; as a maritime power, 647;
material well-being in, 93233nd;
mayors in, 119; Middle Ages in,
798nd; monarchy in, 634, 679
80n(L), 137374; monuments in,
798nd; mores in, 1052na, 105961,
1076ng; National Assembly of, 408,
41516nx; national pride in, 1100n2,
1100nj, 129091n, 1291; newspapers
in, 909; oligarchy of 1793, 360,
360nt; pantheism in, 757; parlements
in, 16364ne, 17778, 67980n(L),
680 (see also Parlement de Paris);
parliamentary eloquence in, 869;
patriotism in, 1100n2, 1100nj, 1290
91n, 1291; pays dE
tats, 195; philoso-

phy in, 7034no; political history
of, 610, 6nh; political jurisdiction
in, 18081, 182nc, 183; population of,
45859, 605n65, 610n77; positions
in, 1129na; possession in North
America, 65051; prisons in, 409;
privileges in, 1222; public expendi-
tures in, 34956, 35354nn1213;
public works in, 123940nd; re-
election in, 225nr; republican (see
also the French Republic); salaries
in, 1027; servant/master relation-
ships in, 10078nb, 1010, 1010nf;
sovereign courts in, 195; suicide in,
946; taxes in, 110; territory of, 595,
595nv; towns in, 119nf; transition
from monarchical to republican,
137374; the United States and, 372
74nf; war and, 361; wars with
England, 7nh, 9; women in, 1066.
See also the French; French colonies;
the French Republic; the French
Revolution; July Revolution; the
Restoration
Franklin, Benjamin, 137, 66674n(F),
674, 68384n(A), 684
Franklin, James, 68384n(A), 684. See
also Franklin, Benjamin
fraternity, cxlii
Frederick II, 1160nf
freedmen, 518, 550nf, 551, 55354no,
557n35, 565. See also emancipation
freedom of assembly, 304. See also free-
dom of association
freedom of association, 3034, 3089,
308nj, 899, 914, 914n1, 915, 915nd,
91617; in England, 310; in Europe,
30912; as a guarantee against tyr-
anny of the majority, 307; in the
United States, 30212; universal suf-
frage and, 31011. See also freedom
of assembly
freedom of mind. See freedom of
thought
freedom of the press, xxxli, xxvi, 3035,
3045, 306, 68384n(A), 684, 1149,
126970. See also Franklin,
Benjamin
freedom of the seas, 647
freedom of thought, xxvi, 298, 41620,
709, 72123nr, 724
freedom to write, xxvi. See also free-
dom of the press
free institutions, 88794, 887na, 1128,
1145nr, 119192nb, 119193, 1256
57nt. See also political institutions
freemasons, 285nf
free trade, lxxxii, 306
free will, 125152, 1259. See also will
the French, 50, 1344; absolute monar-
chy and, 632; Cartesian method and,
69798na; compared with Ameri-
i ndex 1527
cans, 73741; French society, lxv;
general ideas and, 726na, 734, 737
41, 739nc; Indians and, 534n17,
534ns, 53940n19, 650, 661
62n(D); Iroquois and, 66162n(D);
in the New World, 65051; philoso-
phy and, 739nc; political theory
and, 73741, 737na; unions with
Indians, 534n17. See also France;
French Canadians
French Canadians, 46263, 496, 632,
65051
French colonies, 495, 1349, 1349nz. See
also French settlements
French indemnities, 37274nf
French language, 81921nd
French literature, 800na, 81012nr
Frenchmans Island, 1302nh. See also
Journey to Lake Oneida
the French Republic, 175nh, 177, 1373
75. See also France
the French Revolution, xlviiixlix, lvi,
cvicxvi, cxxvin252, cxlii, 28no, 163,
165, 189, 275, 620, 640, 69091nc,
798nd, 82223nf, 106061, 1100nj,
111920nh, 1222; centralization and,
67879n(K); as a European event,
cx, cxn197, cxi, cxii; intellectuals in,
cxxvin251; as a religious revolution,
cxxvin252; role of jurists in, 433,
433nh; understanding, cvicxvi; the
United States and, 371
French settlements, 632. See also
French colonies
French Society for the Abolition of
Slavery, 56162nt
the frontier, cxiicxiii, cxiiin205,
cxivn211, cxvn216, 49192, 492n6,
65556, 658n(A). See also pioneers;
the West; the wilderness
Frossard, Benjamin S., La cause des
esclaves ne `gres et des habitants de la
Guine e, porte e au tribunal de la jus-
tice, de la religion, de la politique,
550ne, 56162nt
Fulton, Julia, 489n[*], 1086nd
Furet, Francois, 1012nq
fur traders, 1325
the future, 747nd, 96568, 965na,
965nb, 967, 968
Gallatin, L., 430nf, 1320
gambling, lxxxiii
game, 52425, 52526
Gargan, Edward, 86970nh
Garret, Stephen A., 369nb
General Collection of the Laws of Mas-
sachusetts, 329n34, 66265n(E),
68596n(C), 686
general ideas, ciii, cxxiii, cxxiiin244,
cxxv, cxxx, cxxxv, 3na, 31, 31nt, 74r,
69899a, 72632nnag, 757na;
Americans and, 489, 72632nnag,
72641, 73741, 739nc; aristocracy
and, 726na, 736; democracy and,
732nf, 73839; the English and, 726,
72932, 732na, 73435, 735nm;
equality of conditions and, 71718,
718nm, 72021np, 734, 737, 739nc;
the French and, 726na, 734, 73741,
739nc; Germany and, 739nc; the
human mind and, 739nc; in political
matters, 73741; in pre-Revolutionary
France, 739nc; religion and, 748
49nf. See also philosophy
general interest, 91825, 918na
generative ideas, xxvi
Genet, Edmond-Charles, 454
gentleman farmers, lxxxi
George, William H., 1268no
Georgia, 27172, 533n16, 596; act of
cession by, 617n82; Blacks in,
569n45; commerce in, 607n70;
electoral conditions in, 677n(H);
1528 i ndex
Georgia (continued )
Indians in, 533n14, 540n20,
541n222; law of entail in, 675
76n(G); political jurisdiction in,
682n(N); population of, 610n77;
refusal to obey Supreme Court,
59091nt; slavery in, 548nc, 567;
tariff laws and, 62024
Georgin, Rene, 828nm
German Confederation, 592n55
German Empire, 147, 251, 253n36,
592n55. See also Germans; Germany
Germans, 253n36, 72728nb, 739nc,
77879nf. See also German Empire;
Germany
Germany: general ideas and, 739nc;
pantheism in, 757; women in, 1066nj.
See also German Empire; Germans
Gersham, Sally, 56162nt
Gibbon, Edward, 96061nj
Gilman, Daniel C., 84na
Gilpin, H. D., 62122nv
girls, 104142nnac, 104151, 1044nf,
1048na. See also women
Giroud, Vincent, xliv
glory, 78182nj
Gobineau, Arthur de, 96061nj
God, 72627, 72728nb, 74041nd,
743, 744, 74647, 747nd, 74849nf,
749, 758, 83839, 838nr, 839ns, 923
25nn, 927, 928ne
Gojat, Georges, 1268no
gold seekers, 5152
Goldstein, Doris S., 163, 163nc
good, 1094, 109596ne, 1114; public,
24849n35. See also virtue
Goodwin, Isaac, Town Ofcer, 107nm,
107n6
Gookin, Daniel: Historical Collections
of the Indians in New England,
42n15; on Indians, 66674n(F), 669
Gorla, Gino, 430nf
the Gospel, 746
Gosselin, Charles, xxxn2, lxxxviii,
xcn135, 29np, 515na
governance, wealth and, 97476,
974nd
government, cxviiicxvix, 6nh, 1197
98nj, 119799, 1199nm, 1204nf,
121415, 1214nn; aristocracy and,
126566ng; association and, 896,
898901, 902ns, 9034, 914, 914n1,
1278na; centralization and (see
administrative centralization; cen-
tralization); charitable establish-
ments and, 1223; corruption in, 356
59; democracy and, 126566, 1265
66ng, 1265ne; education and, 1223;
equality in, 6nh; industry and,
1237nz; material well-being and,
93233nd; military, 1293n; mixed,
41112; religion in, 122324; revolu-
tion and, 1214nn; varying the means
of, 74041nd; vices in, 35659. See
also public administration; specic
branches of government
governmental centralization. See
administrative centralization
Governors, 123, 123n21, 123nn, 137ny,
13941, 14042nb, 140nn4748
grand juries, 128, 128n33
Grandmaison, Charles de, 81012nr
gravity, 108081nnab, 108084
Gray, Francis, 442nw
the Great Century, 1133nc
Great Lakes, 33, 34
Greece, 73233, 733nh, 815, 816nb,
847, 1065nh, 1143nn. See also Greeks
Greek, 81516nnab, 81517, 82223nf,
824, 868ne
Greek drama, 847
Greek literature, 8067nk, 81516nna
b, 81517, 847
the Greeks, 253n36, 490, 509na, 786
i ndex 1529
87np, 795nk, 81516nnab, 81517,
828nm. See also Greece
the Greeks, ancient, 940ne
Green-Bay, Wisconsin, 520n1
Greenwich, Connecticut, 79697nb
Greg, William R., 22122np, 281
82na, 65657nh
grenadilla, 659n(B)
Grignan, Madame de, 992n1
Grimm, Friedrich M., Nouveaux
me moires secrets et ine dits historiques,
politiques, anecdotiques et litte raires
. . . , 850nf
Grund, Francis, 640nk
Guellec, Laurence, 828nm
Guermarquer, Madame (housekeeper),
111013nv
Guerry, lxxxviilxxxviiin125
Guinea, 576
Guizot, Francois, lvi, lxxxix, cxvi,
cxviii, cxviiin221, cxix, cxixn226,
cxxiv, cxxxvn283, cxlviin319, 18na,
896nc; democracy vs. representative
government, 317ng; on democratic
revolution, 1819na; on the federal
system, 265nz; Histoire ge ne rale de
la civilisation en Europe, 265nz,
532nr; Journal des cours publics de
jurisprudence . . . , 9394ne; Of
Religion in Modern Societies,
112425np; representative system of,
41213ns; in Tocquevilles work, 18
19na
Gulf of Mexico, 597
Gulf states, 491, 575
Guyana, 495
habits, 50, 494, 692, 7057, 10056,
1005na, 109192nd
habitual relations, 99598, 99599,
995nab, 995nnab, 99899ne,
10056, 1005na
half-breeds, 522nh, 53334, 533n16,
534n17, 572, 1344, 1347, 135051. See
also bois-brule ; mulattos
Hall, Basil, xlii, lxiv, lxxxvn118, 382
83nj, 474nj, 8023nd, 81921nd,
1053nb, 1076nh
Hamburger, Joseph, 402na
Hamilton, Alexander, 190n4, 192
93nn8, 24748n35; on legislative
instability, 323; on waning enthusi-
asm for American Revolution, 361;
writings in The Federalist, 268, 274,
323, 361
Hamilton, Thomas, Men and Manners
in America, 56162nt
happiness: of Americans, 81921nd;
conjugal happiness, 81921nd
Harrison, Katherine, 800801nb
Hauranne, Duvergier de, lxxxivlxxxv
Haverford College, xlii, 548nc
Haxtahausen, Baron de, 65657nh
Hazard, Ebenezer, Historical Collec-
tion of State Papers and Other
Authentic Documents, 6061n13,
66674n(F)
Hebrew, 82223nf
Heckewelder, R., 518n[*], 659
61n(C); Letters of R. Hecwelder,
42n16
Heine, Heinrich, lv, lvn46
Heliogabalus, cxxxii, 96061nj
help, 904, 904nu
Helvetic confederation, 118081nc
Henderson, Christine, xxiv
Hennis, Wilhelm, 1012nq, 71213nc
Henri IV, 1246nc
Henrion, lx
Henry IV, 511
Henry VI, 68485n(B)
Henry VIII, 681n(M)
hereditary rights, 77071. See also
inheritance laws
1530 i ndex
heresies, 7nh
highways, 118n14
Hindu culture, 102ng
historical change, cviicxi, cxivcxv,
cxvii, cxviii
Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
xlii
historiography, 854nd, 856ng; ancient,
857; aristocracy and, 853, 853na, 854,
855, 855nf, 856, 857; democracy and,
85360, 853nnab, 855nf. See also
history
history, cxvicxx, cxviii, cxlviiicxlvix;
in America, cxiv, cxivn209,
cxivn211, cxvn214; cycle of, cxviii
cxvix; equality and, cxviii; historical
change, cviicxi, cxivcxv, cxvii,
cxviii; inevitability of, cxvi; as strug-
gle between the abstract and con-
crete, cxliii; teleology of, cxviii,
cxxxiv; theory of, cxvicxx. See also
historiography
Hobbes, Thomas, cxxxiiin275, 392,
392nw; De Cive, 392, 392nw; Dis-
cours sur lorigine de le galite , 392nw
Holland, 253n36, 592n55
Homer, 832ne
homicide, 1095
honor, lxix, 1093nn12, 1094nb,
1095nd, 1096nf, 1108nr, 111013nv,
1195nc; aristocracy and, 1093na,
10961102, 109798nh, 110610,
111013nv, 117071nb, 117071nnb
c, 117475; democracy and, 1093
1115, 1093na, 109798nh, 110610;
equality and, 111315; in Europe,
1104; feudal, 1093na, 10961102,
110610; inequality of conditions
and, 111314nw, 111315; laws of,
1096nf, 1108; in the Middle Ages
(see feudal honor); military, 1170
71nb, 117475; in the United States,
10931115, 1093na; women and,
111013nv
Horwitz, Morton, 410nm
hospitals, 79697nb
Hotel de Rambouillet, 807nm
the House of Commons, political
jurisdiction of, 180
the House of Lords, political jurisdic-
tion of, 180, 180n1
the House of Representatives, 181,
196200, 198n14, 199, 320nj, 459,
52829n8; direct election of, 321;
foreign affairs and, 37274nf; legis-
lation by, 200; political crimes and,
200; powers of, 200; qualications
to serve in, 249; role in election in
case of no majority, 222; role in elec-
tion in case of tie, 221; vulgarness of,
32021. See also Congress; legislative
power
houses of representatives (state), 136
38, 682n(N)
Hudson River, 52n5, 594
human actions, goals of, 96568
human affairs, 83738, 839ns, 840
42
human condition, 839ns
human destiny, 839ns, 841
human intelligence, 72728nb, 728.
See also the mind
the human race, 410, 747, 748, 83738,
838nr
Hume, David, 96061nj, 111013nv
humility, 1126, 1126nr
hunting, 135254
Hunts Merchant Magazine, ciiiciv
Huron, 66162n(D)
Huss, Jan, 7nh
Hutchison, Thomas, 61n16
Hutchison, Thomas, The History of the
Colony of Massachusetts, 666
74n(F), 673
i ndex 1531
ideal types, 31nt
ideas, cxxiii, cxxxvi, 69798na, 895na,
900901, 128485nk; in America,
cxiiicxiv, cxivn211; aristocracy and,
cxx; as basis for unity, 59899, 598
99nz, 598ny; circulation of, 887nc;
communication of, cxlcxli; democ-
racy and, 900901, 118789nnab,
11871294; dialectic of, cxlcxlix;
exchange of, cxlcxli; xed, 742na,
743; generative, xxvi; historical
change and, cviicxi; revolutionary,
127374; social state and, 74849nf;
society and, cviicxi, cviiin189,
cviiin191, cixcx; in the United
States, cxxviii, cxxviiin256. See also
democratic ideas; general ideas
identity, cxxxv
Illinois, 55354no, 677n(H), 682n(N)
Illinois River, 35
imagination, 832, 835nj, 837
Imera, 1354
immigrants. See emigration
immobility, cxxxviiicxxxix
immorality, 1290n
impressment, 36162, 362nv, 362nu
indemnities affair, xlii, lxxxix, 30ns
independence, 88182nb, 1193nc, 1205,
125051nj, 125861, 125960nw,
1259nv, 1269; enlightenment and,
1212nk; equality and, 127677,
1277nb; individual, 88182nb, 1224,
122526nh, 1242nh; political, 1259
60nw; spirit of, 88182nb
independence of thought, 422, 709,
72123nr, 72425, 735nm. See also
freedom of thought
independent method, 69899a
India, 102ng, 792nf
Indiana, 55354no, 677n(H), 682n(N)
Indians, lxxii, lxxxii, cxvn212, 35, 39
40, 366, 456, 51516, 515na, 517,
520n1, 521, 52247, 522nh, 523n2,
524n3, 535nt, 617, 130359, 1304
5nb, 1347; alcohol and, 13068;
Americans and, 52247, 53940n19;
Anglo-Americans and, 52247, 539
40n19; attachment to their land,
525n6; Blacks and, 529np; Canadi-
ans and, 1344; character of the, 41
42, 42n15, 43; civilization and, 530
41, 53140, 531n12, 535nt, 53637n18,
53738nv; compared to Europeans
of the Middle Ages, 532, 532nr;
compared to Teutons, 532, 532nr;
compared with nomadic tribes of
Asia, 3940n14; Congress and, 528
29n8, 529n9, 54546; culture of,
53132n13, 531n12, 53233, 535nt,
53940; decreasing numbers of,
1308; dependence on Europeans,
52324, 524n3; destruction of, 43
44, 53738nv, 53940n19, 540,
540n20, 541, 550nd; disappearance
of, 52330, 525ni5, 541; disappear-
ance of resources, 52326; disposses-
sion of, 52429; the English and,
534n17; English colonies and,
529n10; Enlightenment and, 535;
equality of conditions among the,
40; Europeans and, 52328, 527
28n7, 53637n18, 53738nv, 53940,
53940n19; famine and, 52426;
forced emigration of, 52529, 542
47; the French and, 534n17, 534ns,
53940n19, 650, 66162n(D);
French-speaking, 1344; game and,
52426; history of, 43, 66674n(F),
669; independence of, 51920,
520ng; Indian women, 13045nb;
land of, 618; languages of, 40, 659
61n(C); money and, 1335; in New
England, 529n10; oppression of,
51819, 540n20, 54147, 542nx;
1532 i ndex
Indians (continued )
origin of the, 42n15, 43; physical
description of, 13045nb, 13046;
sense of time, 52728n7, 530; social
state of, 40; in the South, 541; Span-
ish and, 54647, 546n28; states and,
54147, 54445n26, 544n25, 544ny;
trade with, 1352; U.S. federal gov-
ernment and, 54147, 542n24, 544
45n26, 544n25, 618; in Virginia,
529n10. See also half-breeds; savages;
specic tribes
individual egoism, 88182nb, 1222
23n1
individual independence, 88182nb,
1224, 122526nh, 1242nh
individual interest, 128, 129
individualism, lxix, ci, cxxivcxxv,
cxxxv, cxxxvn282, cxxxvii, cxli,
654nf, 708nt, 70910nu, 88182nb,
882nd, 10056, 118789na, 1194na,
121819nt, 1250nh, 129394n; col-
lective, 88182nb; democracy and,
69798na, 88182nnab, 88184,
883ne; despotism of, cxxxiiicxxxix;
doctrine of interest well understood
and, 91825, 918na; equality and,
883; free institutions and, 88794,
887na; greater at the end of a demo-
cratic revolution, 88586, 886nc;
rational, cxxivcxxv, cxlii; in the
United States, 88794, 887na, 918
25, 918na. See also individuals
individualistic rationalism, cxxxiv,
cxxxivn279
individual power, 1223nd
individual rights, 127173, 127576,
127576nnxy
individuals, 1258, 1259nv; judgment of
oneself, 108; obedience of, 108;
rights of, 127173; society and, 1271
76, 1276nz. See also individualism
individual strength, 88182nb
industrialists, 123233nv, 123435n5,
123440, 123537nnyz
industrialization, lxix, xcviin158, 981nc
industrial products, 1232, 1232nt
industrial professions, 97279,
972nnab, 973n1, 974nd, 977
79nj, 977ng, 989nd
industrial property, 123334, 1233nv,
123537ny, 1266nh
industry, lxxxiii, 81ns, 614, 642, 784
85, 102530, 1027nd, 11035, 1129
32, 1129na; aristocracy and, 973nc,
973n1, 97476, 974nd, 975nf, 978
79nj, 98081nnab, 98085, 1026,
102829ng, 1028nd, 128687n; asso-
ciations and, 123839, 1238nc;
careers in, 112932, 1131ne; centrali-
zation and, 123141, 1231nr, 1235
37ny, 123940nd; democracy and,
973nc, 973n1, 97476, 974nd,
975nf, 97778nh, 97879nj, 1028
29ng; development of, 123141,
1231nr, 123233nu, 123738na; in
England, 123537ny; equality and,
98081nnab, 1231, 1241, 1241ne; in
France, 123537ny; government and,
1237nz; liberty and, 94850nc; in
the Middle Ages, 1233; in the North,
560, 607; property and, 1232, 1232nt;
revolution and, 1138; in the United
States, 11035, 1129na
inequality, cxlvin317, 561, 731, 1202;
Blacks and, 550nf, 55155, 551n32,
551ng; hatred of, 1203nd; honor and,
111314nw, 111315. See also equality
inequality of conditions. See inequality
infrastructure. See public works
Ingersoll, Charles J., 304ne
inheritance laws, 7879no, 7885, 79
80n1, 81ns, 94, 67576n(G), 1263
64nc; effects in the United States,
i ndex 1533
8085, 82nv; enlightenment and,
77071, 772; in France, 8384, 84na;
slavery and, 56364; in the South,
56364
inheritances, lxxxiii, 6, 51, 78. See also
inheritance laws
the Inquisition, 419
inspectors, 107
instability, cxlcxli
instincts, 692
Institut Francais, xxxiin5
Institutions et murs ame ricaines, lxxiv
instruction. See education;
enlightenment
intellectual centralization, 1223nf
intellectual education, 136972
intellectual equality, 455, 490, 702nm
intellectual liberty, 709, 72123nr, 724.
See also freedom of thought
intelligence, 72728nb, 76566ne;
division of labor and, 64243, 642
43nm; gender and, 72728nb; as a
social force, 7
interest, lxvii, lxix, cxxxv, cxxxvi,
cxxxviii, cxlv, 365, 7089, 921nj;
common, 923nm; democracy and,
91825, 923nm; diverse, lxxxii; indi-
vidual, 128, 129; merging of general
with particular, 21; national, 923nm;
preoccupation with, cxxxviiicxxxix.
See also interest well understood,
doctrine of; well-being
interest on money, lxxxiii
interest well understood, doctrine of,
xxvi, 91825; aristocracy and, 920,
920ng; democracy and, 919nf, 920,
920ng; individualism and, 91825,
918na; in the United States, 91825,
918na, 92629, 926na. See also
interest; well-being
intermediary powers, 1197, 1205. See
also secondary power
interracial marriage, 55354no, 555
interstate commerce, 614
Ireland, xcivn152, xcix, 82nv, 468
the Irish, xcix
iron, 123537ny
Iroquois, 42n15, 66162n(D), 1304, 1306
Iroquois Confederation, 1304, 1306
irreligion, 1290n. See also unbelief
Irving, Washington, 388ns, 8023nd,
8034n, 804nh, 805, 810np
Isabella, Queen, 287nh
Islam, 158, 158ny, 746, 747ne. See also
Moslems
isolation, 883ne, 884, 88788, 887na,
888ne
Italy, 822, 1143nn
Jackson, Andrew, 214, 21517nm, 292,
37274nf, 45354, 454n[*], 62426,
625nw
Jacobites, lxxviin101
the Jacquerie, 7nh
Janara, Lara, 1031nb
Jardin, Andre, xxxiiin10, lxxlxxin85,
1012nq, 27071nb, 1299nf, 1314nj
jargon, 807, 807nm, 822
Jay, John, 19293nn8
jealousy, 118789na, 12034, 1203nd
Jean, King, 24ng
Jefferson, Thomas, lxxxii, 42n16, 213,
222, 257no, 540nw, 609n75, 675
76n(G); election of, 221n23; on
emancipation, 570nx; on foreign
policy, 367, 368, 368[*]; on legislative
instability, 323; letter to Madison,
67879n(K), 679; Me moires de Jef-
ferson, 556n33, 572n46, 675
76n(G); Notes sur la Virginie, 42n15,
42n16; presidency of, 28384; on
tyranny of the majority, 426,
426nh; on War of 1812, 591n53
Jemmings, Nicholas, 63n20
1534 i ndex
Jerome, Saint, cxxxii, 96061nj
Jesuits, 530
Jesus Christ, 7078ns, 733, 733nh
Jews, 6nh, 9, 1060nj, 126364nc
Jocelyn, 834nh, 841
Jourdain, M., 81012nr
Journal des de bats, xc, xciixciii, 121nh,
763na, 120910nd, 122627nk
journalism, 805
Journey of Long, 543n[*]
Journey to Lake Oneida, 12951302,
1295na
judges, 170, 444n4, 445, 44750,
449ny; of district courts, 233n26
27; federal, 24546; in France, 170
71, 17172nf, 173; of the Supreme
Court, 23334, 233n2627; in the
United States, 17172nf, 173, 17478.
See also judicial power
judgment, 9394ne, 697710, 716nh,
719
judicial powers, 120ng, 122, 16364ne,
167na, 167nb, 168nc, 22950, 441,
466, 682n(N), 1204nf, 122829no,
123031np, 123537ny; administra-
tive decentralization and, 175nj; as
democratic instrument of liberty,
1270; dependency on legislative
powers, 411no; elective power and,
122; in England, 17273; in Europe,
122830; force and, 23132nz; in
France, 16364ne, 17071, 17172nf,
173, 173ng, 122829no, 1231n4;
inuence on the power of the
majority, 43042, 430nf, 433ng,
434nm, 435nn, 435nr; the majority
and, 404, 404ne; opinion and, 231;
political society and, 16778; the
press and, 126970; as the second
guarantee of liberty, 436no; in the
states, 250; in the United States,
16778, 17172nf, 175nj; in the U.S.
constitution, 441nv. See also courts;
judicial system; political jurisdiction;
Supreme Court
judicial system, xxvii, 244, 245. See also
courts; judges; judicial powers; jury
system
jugement politique (political judgment),
179n4. See also political jurisdiction
July Monarchy, lxxvlxxvi
July Revolution, liin35, liii, lvilxiv,
lviiin51, lxxvlxxvii, lxxviin101, 679
80n(L), 115657nnd, 135859, 1373
juries, lxxxiii, 233n2627, 329,
682n(N); grand juries, 128, 128n33
jurisdiction, lxxxii, 682n(N)
jurists, 6nh, 7; American, 43042; aris-
tocracy and, 43437, 439, 439nr;
aristocratic character of, 43337, 439,
439nr; as a counterweight to democ-
racy, 43042, 430nf, 433ng, 434nm,
435nn, 435nr; English, 432, 43738;
in Europe, 43132; executive powers
and, 435, 435nn; French, 432, 437
38; kings and, 435, 435nn, 436; revo-
lution and, 433; role in the French
Revolution, 433, 433nh
jury systems: Blacks and, 55354no,
554; in England, 68485n(B), 686
87n(D); English, 443, 443n2, 445; in
Europe, 446; in France, 443n2, 446,
68596n(C), 686; inuence on
national character, 44748; in Loui-
siana, 443n2; in New York, 685
96n(C); in Ohio, 68596n(C); as a
political institution, 44250, 442nw,
44345nn25; in the United States,
44250, 68596n(C); U.S. Consti-
tution and, 68596n(C)
juste milieu, cxxxii
justice, xxvii, 410, 109596ne
justices of the peace, 119n17, 12224,
123n23, 124n25, 132ns, 133
i ndex 1535
Kempis, Thomas, Imitation of Christ,
1115ny
Kennerly, 542n23
Kent, James, 84na; Commentaries on
American Law, 207n17, 23536n27,
275n41, 31718, 37274nf, 460, 553
54no, 556n33, 67576n(G)
Kentucky, 557, 558n36, 558nr; Consti-
tution of, 481n5; electoral conditions
in, 677n(H); growth of, 558; law of
entail in, 67576n(G); political
jurisdiction in, 682n(N); population
of, 558, 558n27, 652; slavery in, 55861
Kergorlay, Louis de, xxx, xxxivn15, lii
liii, lix, lxixlxx, lxxin86, lxxv,
lxxxvii, xciii, xcix, ci, cii, ciin170,
ciin172, cxli, cxlin, 3nb, 40nk,
76nf, 7879no, 88ng, 14546ng,
15859ny, 317ng, 345na, 515na, 697
98na, 699700ne, 777nd, 786
87np, 786no, 872na, 88182nb,
903nt, 941ng, 963nb, 972nb,
1019no, 1082ne, 111013nv, 1116
17nb, 1214nn, 1270nr, 1281ne; com-
mentaries of, 1415nu, 500nn,
502nq, 502nr, 115657nnd; criti-
cisms of, 5ne
kings, 6nh, 7, 8, 1920, 435, 435nn,
436. See also monarchy
knowledge, xxvii, cxxxv, 7, 49091,
490nz, 49194, 700nj
the Koran, 746, 81012nr
Kummings, Donald D., 800801nb
labor, 639n94, 64243, 64243nm,
132122. See also professions; work;
workers; working classes
La Bruye`re, Jean, 15859ny, 419,
996nc; Les Caracte `res, 107273nc;
Lettres persanes, 107273nc
Lacordaire, Abbe, 1223nf
La Croix de Watines family, 1299nf
Lafayette, Clementine de, ci, 34950nj,
591n53; Me moires, correspondance et
manuscrits du ge ne ral Lafayette, 856,
856nh
Lafayette family, lv
La Harpe, 81012nr, 82728nk
Laine, M., 402na
Lake Erie, 1308, 1312
Lake Huron, 1346ny
Lake Michgan, 131314nh
Lake Oneida, 12951302
Lamard, Major, 520n1, 520nf
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 747ne
Lamberti, Jean-Claude, 88182nb,
915nd
land, lxxxii, 6, 7879no, 7885, 83n3,
61718, 618n6, 132122
landed property. See land; property
Lange, Victor, 129798nc
language, 81921nd, 826nh; abstract,
82728nk, 82729; American pro-
pensity for neologisms, 81921nd;
aristocracy and, 822, 82526,
828nm; class and, 82527; dead vs.
living languages, 824; democracy
and, 82225, 826nh, 83940;
equality and, 825, 826nh, 827nj;
gurative, 81921nd, 825; foreign
words, 81921nd; general, 827
28nk, 82729; Indian languages,
40, 65961n(C); languages of
North America, 65961n(C); the
majority and, 82324; parliamen-
tary eloquence, 86170; patois,
826, 826nh; political institutions
and, 829; of the pulpit, 85960,
85960nm; social state and, 818
29, 819nc, 826; spoken vs. written,
819. See also jargon; specic
languages
La Nouvelle Orleans, 650. See also
New Orleans
1536 i ndex
la Roche, Sophie von, Erscheinungen
am See Oneida, 129798, 129798nc,
1302nj
Laski, Harold, 76nf
Latin, 81516nnab, 81517, 82223nf,
824, 868ne
Latin drama, 847
Latin literature, 81516nnab, 81517,
847
Latrobe, John, 82nu, 430nf, 563nu,
614nk
Lausanne, library of the canton and
university of, xlii
Lawler, Peter, xxiv
law-makers, xxvii
laws, cxlivn310, 46nb, 18788, 451
52nd, 506, 690, 107273nc; agrar-
ian, 1136ne; Anglo-American, 6265,
67, 69, 7173; of association, 510nb;
benecial tendency of, 37784; char-
acter and, 98788nb; civil, lxxxiii, 7,
7273, 127576ny; commercial,
lxxxiii; common, lxxxii; constitu-
tionality of, 17075, 17172nf, 175;
contract, 240; contract law, 240n31;
criminal, lxxxiii, 6264, 240; defec-
tiveness of, 37879ne; democracy
and, 37784, 494504, 51213,
512nm, 512nn; electoral, 32223;
English, 67576n(G); of entail, 84,
8586ne, 67576n(G); of equal
division, 8085, 82nv, 83; equality of
conditions and, 4; of exclusive privi-
leges, 6nh; federal, 231, 231n25, 497;
French, 67980n(L); general, 1094,
1094nc; of honor, 1096nf, 1108;
inuence on maintaining the demo-
cratic republic in the United States,
46566; of inheritance, 7879no,
7885, 7980n1, 81ns, 82nv, 84na,
8586ne, 94, 459, 67576n(G),
77071, 772, 126364nc; interpreta-
tion of, 244; jurists as a counter-
weight to tyranny of the majority,
43042; maintenance of the demo-
cratic republic and, 494500; the
majority and, 72123nr; of Mexico,
497, 497nh; mobile character of,
lxxxi; mores and, cixn195; of
nations, 244, 1183; of New England,
6364n25, 6365, 64n26; in the
Northeast, 49798; obedience to,
lxxxi; organic law of 1789, 235
36n27; against particular sects, 63
64, 6364n25, 64n26; patriotism
and, 160; penal, lxxxiii, 6264, 240;
political, 721; Poor Law, 1200na;
primogeniture, 8182, 8586ne, 459;
on property division, 459; against
rape, 1066; respect for, 39395; of
science, 77576nc, 77778ne; tariff
laws, 62024; that counter democ-
racys tendency toward mediocre
leadership, 32021; in the United
States, 11718, 500504; unjust, 410;
weakness of, 377, 377nd. See also
federal laws; legislative instability;
state laws; specic countries and
states
Laws of Massachusetts, 32223no, 553
54no
Laws of the United States, 23536n27
Lawson, John, The History of the
Carolinas, 42n16, 66674n(F),
668
lawyers, lxxxiii
learning, xxvii. See also education
leases, 102024, 1020na, 1021nab,
1023nd
Leclercq, Jean-Michel, 650nd
legislation, uniform, 1195, 119799,
1199nm
Legislative Documents, 20th Congress,
533n14, 540n20, 613n80
i ndex 1537
Legislative Documents, 21st Congress,
54445n26
Legislative Documents, 22nd Congress,
620n85
legislative instability, cxl, 139nz, 322
23, 32223no, 332nc, 4079, 408n2,
634
legislative powers, cxlvii, 196200,
411no, 62627; concentration of,
137ny, 24950; danger of subservi-
ence to will of electoral body, 248
49; difference between Senate and
House of Representatives, 196200;
division of, 13638; executive power
and, 2067, 21011, 21516, 215
17nm; the majority and, 4034,
403n1, 403nb; in the states, 24749.
See also Congress; the House of
Representatives; the Senate
legislative tyranny, 185
legislators, xxvii, 248
legislatures, 125657nt; aristocracy and,
86170, 861na, 86264; democracy
and, 86170, 861na, 86465nd,
864nc, 866n[*]; federal legislature,
24849; the majority and, 4034;
parliamentary eloquence, 86170,
861nnab; state legislatures, 24849.
See also legislative powers; specic
legislative bodies
Le Havre, 639, 1365nb
Lenape language, 65961n(C)
Lenapes (Delawares), 52223
Lepage-Dupratz, Antoine Simon, His-
toire de la Louisiane, 42n16
Lescallier, Daniel, Re exions sur le sort
des noirs dans nos colonies, 550ne
Lesueur, Abbe, lli, liliin34, lin32, lii
Lettres e diants, 530n11
leveling, 79. See also equality
Liancourt, lxxiii
liberalism, cvi, cxlvi
liberals, cxvi
Liberia, 576nd, 577
Liberia Herald, 576nd
liberty, lxxvlxxvi, cvi, cviii, cviiin190,
cix, cxvicxix, cxixn227, cxxvi,
cxxxvin287, cxln299, cxliicxliv,
cxliin303, cxliiin305, cxliiin306,
cxlivn310, cxlvn315, cxlviii, 1516nw,
25, 117, 162, 163, 506, 512nh, 519,
550, 715, 716, 76970ng, 770, 772nj,
890, 89596, 950, 118789na, 1191
92nb, 1200na, 1205, 12067na,
12078nb, 1215np, 1220nu, 1230
31np, 1244, 1249nf, 1256nr, 1259
60nw, 1263, 1271, 1271ns, 1272nt,
127677, 1277nc, 1277nb, 1283nh,
1284nj, 1285; administrative power
and, 122829no; in America, 89,
94853, 948na; in antiquity, 73233;
aristocracy and, 307nh, 885nb, 1212,
126364, 126364nc; authority and,
72425, 724ns; barbaric (anti-
social), cxixn226; centralization and,
1241; Christianity and, 468; com-
merce and, 94850nc; denition of,
6869; democracy and, 16364ne,
87274nnac, 87280, 126364,
126667nj, 1267nk; democratic,
68990na; despotism and, 887na,
888ne, 889nf, 116162, 116162nj; in
the English colonies, 60; equality
and, cxix, 875nd, 87788ne, 89394,
1262na, 1278na; in Europe, 68, 877,
12089; as the rst good, 3na;
France and, 894; as independence of
the individual, cxixn226; industry
and, 94850nc; intellectual, 709;
love of, 455, 87274nnac, 87280,
94853, 948na; material enjoyments
and, 94853, 948na; material well-
being and, 94850nc, 948na; moral,
cxixn226; natural, cxixn226; in New
1538 i ndex
liberty (continued )
England, 60; in the New World, 51;
as a passion, cxliii; political, 775
76nb, 77879nf; the press and,
126970; privilege and, 126364,
126364nc; provincial institutions
and, 162, 162nb, 165; religion and,
cxxx, 26, 6970, 47579, 479nq,
71213nc, 745; republican, 628
29nz; by right, cxixn226; servitude
and, 125960nw, 125961; in small
nations, 25556; town institutions
and, 162nb; town liberty, 1013,
101nd, 109; in the United States,
12089; varieties of, cxix, cxixn225,
cxixn226; virtue and, 509, 509na. See
also emancipation; specic freedoms
Liberty Fund, xxiv
license, 1277nc, 129394n. See also vice
licenses, 125n26
Lieber, Francis, 18687na
Lieberson, Harry, 522nh
Lingard, John, lvi
Lingard, John, History of England,
1178na
Lippitt, Francis, lxxxvii, 84na
literature, cii, 67nh, 7, 9, 81012nr;
in America, 489, 76364nb, 76374,
76566nd, 784nn, 800812, 800na,
8023nd, 803ne, 804nh, 81314,
814nd; ancient vs. modern, 806
7nk; aristocracy and, 800na, 8056,
807, 807n1, 809no, 810, 810np,
810nq, 813, 814ne, 815; classics, 815
16nnab, 81517; democracy and,
76364nb, 76374, 76566nd, 769
70ng, 800804nnah, 800812,
8012nc, 8089, 80912nnor,
810nq, 81314, 813na; England and,
76364nb; English, 800na; equality
and, 76364nb, 76465, 800
801nb; Europe and, 76364nb;
French, 800na, 81012nr; Latin,
81516nnab, 81517, 847; literary
industry, 81314, 813na, 814nd; liter-
ary market, 81314, 813na; literary
physiognomy, 800812, 84546nb;
literary revolution, 84546nnab,
846; modern literature compared to
ancient, 8067nk; political constitu-
tion and, 812; revolutions and, 846;
social state and, 812; style and, 810
12nr. See also poetry; specic
literatures
Liverpool, England, 639
Livingston, Edward, 30n2, 30ns, 72nc,
82nt, 84na, 167na, 198nu, 342nv,
37274nf, 8023nd
Livingston family, 85nb
Logan, James [sometimes also John],
540nw
log houses, 128788n, 1288, 1311, 1316
17, 1329, 1333, 1341, 1346
London and Paris Courier, xci
London and Westminster Review, cin168
Long, Major, Longs Expedition,
542n[*], 658n(A)
Lope de Vega y Carpio, Felix, 850,
850ng
Louisiana, 45354, 453nf, 53940n19,
567, 650; Constitution of, 481n5;
cultivation of sugar cane in, 559n38;
jury system in, 443n2, 68596n(C);
political jurisdiction in, 682n(N);
slavery in, 559n38
Louis-Napoleon, coup de tat of, 225nr
Louis-Philippe, lix, lxiv, 435nn
Louis XI, 7nh, 8
Louis XIV, 8, 14445, 275, 41516nx,
419, 511, 534n17, 634, 635, 678
79n(K), 679, 81012nr, 828, 830na,
849, 849nd, 1058ng, 111013nv,
1160nf, 1246nc, 129091n, 1291
i ndex 1539
Louis XV, 8, 72123nr, 81012nr
Louis XVI, 8nn, 67879n(K)
Louis XVIII, 67980n(L)
love, 105455, 105455n1, 1058ng
lower classes, 33340, 363, 754nb. See
also the poor
Lutheranism, 1351
Luther, Martin, 704, 705nq, 82223nf,
1146
Lyceums, lxxxiii
Macarel, 99100nc
Machiavelli, Niccolo`, 81012nr; His-
tory of Florence, 82223nf, 948
50nc; The Prince, 82223nf, 1182,
1182ne
MacLean, Mr., 263ny, 404ne
Madison, James, cxxxviin288, 190n4,
19293nn8, 609n75; The Federalist,
323, 42829nd; on legislative insta-
bility, 323, 332nc; on tyranny of the
majority, 425, 42829nd; writings in
The Federalist, 42526
magistrates. See public ofcials
Maine, 52n5, 27172, 569, 652,
677n(H), 682n(N)
the majority, cxxxn264, cxxxiv, 104,
3045, 336, 403nb, 406ng, 621, 719
20, 752; despotism of, 249, 721
23nr, 72425; dominion of,
cxxxin270, 4047, 406ng, 720
21np, 753, 901no; equality of condi-
tions and, 72021np; inuence of
juridical powers on, 43042, 430nf,
433ng, 434nm, 435nn, 435nr; lan-
guage and, 82324; laws and the,
378; legislatures and, 4034; moral
power of, 72021np, 1185; omnipo-
tence of, 40226, 4079, 126667nj;
opinions of, 71920, 114243 (see
also public opinion); political associ-
ation and, 308, 310, 31112; power of,
4034, 403nb, 41620, 72025, 721
23nr, 1185; public ofcials and, 415
16, 41516nx; religion and, cxxx,
72123nr, 752nj; rule of, 278, 628
29nz, 63031, 71112nb; sovereignty
of, 721; stubbornness of, lxxxii; tyr-
anny of, lxxxi, cxxxvi, cxxxvii
cxxxviii, cxxxviin288, cxlvii, 307,
31112, 402na, 406ng, 41015, 411n3,
41213ns, 413nt, 414n4, 415nw, 416
20, 41650, 427na, 42829nd, 466.
See also public opinion
Malesherbes, Chretien Guillaume
Lamoignon de (maternal grandfa-
ther of Tocqueville), xlix, xlixn25, l,
ln28, lv, cxlviii, 291ne, 417, 679ng;
Me moires pour servir a` lhistoire du
droit public de la France en matie `re
dimpots, 67879n(K)
Malesherbes, Marguerite de Lamoig-
non de (maternal grandmother of
Tocqueville), xlix
Malte-Brun, Conrad, 595nv, 605n65
man: equality and, 759nb; history and,
cxvi, cxviii; miseries of, 84041nv;
nature and, cxv, cxvn216 (see also
frontier); perfectibility of, 7057nr,
75962, 759na, 759nb, 760; society
and, cxvi. See also the human race;
individuals
Mandar, Theophile, Discours sur le
commerce et lesclavage des ne `gres,
550ne
mandates, xxxli, 1197
Manent, Pierre, xxiv
manners, ciin172, 107179, 107273nc;
American, 10056, 1005na, 107179,
107273nc; aristocratic, 10001001,
1000na, 1071na, 107475nf, 1076
79, 1079nm; democratic, 1000
1004, 1000na, 107174nnad, 1071
79, 107273nc, 107475nf, 1074nd,
1540 i ndex
manners (continued )
1077nj, 107879nnkm; European,
107273nc, 1079nm; French,
1079nm; of the rich, 1078nk
manufacturing aristocracy, 81ns, 85nd
Marechal de France, 115556nc
Marie, ou lesclavage aux E
tats-Unis,
xxxiii, xxxvii, lxiii, lxxxvlxxxvi,
lxxxvlxxxvin120, lxxxvi
lxxxviin122, lxxxvin121, lxxxviiin127,
xciixciii, xciin144, xcix, cxxxii
cxxxiiin273, 29n1, 29nr, 81ns,
402na, 428nc, 515na, 53738nv,
76970ng, 77677nc, 8012nc,
1295na; American literature in, 802
3nd; as a collaborative effort, lxxxv
lxxxvi, lxxxvlxxxvin120; duelling
in, 1109ns; editions of, xciin144;
education of young girls and,
1041na; emancipation in, 570nx;
equality in, cxxxiicxxxiiin273; Indi-
ans in, 522nh; reception of, xcii
xciii, xcix; similarities to Atala,
lxxxvin121; similarities to Chateau-
briand, lxxxvilxxxviin122; slavery
in, 56162nt; writing of, lxxxv
maringouin, 1345
marital authority, 1062na, 106465
maritime commerce, lxxxii, 596; Amer-
ican genius for, 63841, 63842, 644;
federal jurisdiction over, 238;
Supreme Court and, 244; between
the United States and Europe, 638
40, 638n91, 639n92, 639n93
maritime war, 68283n(O)
Marrast, 13738nz
marriage, 47374, 81921nd, 1062na,
106465, 1066, 1104, 111013nv; aris-
tocracy and, 1055, 105657; democ-
racy and, 105455n1, 105457; in
Europe, 474; interracial, 55354no,
555; marital authority, 1062na, 1064
104851, 1048na; women and, 1048
51, 1048na, 105455n1, 105457
Marshall, John, Life of Washington (Vie
de Washington), 371n17
Marshals of France, 111013nv
Marx, Karl, cxviii
Maryland, 60n12, 95, 95n1, 414n4;
Blacks in, 569, 569n45; electoral
conditions in, 677n(H); slavery in,
562, 562n39; universal suffrage in,
95
Mass, 85960nm
Massachusetts, 52n5, 118n14, 129n36,
306, 490, 596; abolition in, 553
54no; administrative centralization
in, 135n32; administrative power in,
11819; armed forces in, 151n[*];
Blacks in, 569; commerce in,
607n70; Constitution of, 139n[*];
counties in, 11415, 119n19; court of
common pleas in, 124n24; court of
sessions in, 12425; electoral condi-
tions in, 677n(H); histories of, 666
74n(F), 673; interracial marriage
prohibited in, 55354no; justices of
the peace in, 123; laws of, 61n16, 63
64n25, 64n26, 55354no, 662
65n(E), 68384n(A); legislative
instability in, 32223no, 408n2;
newspapers in, 68384n(A); penal
laws in, 6364n25, 64n26; political
jurisdiction in, 184, 184nd,
682n(N); population of, 459; public
administration in, 131; senate in,
136n45; social charter in, 61;
supreme judicial court in, 124n24;
towns in, 103n1, 104n3; War of 1812
and, 274
Massachusetts Historical Society, xlii
Massillon, 72123nr
masters: servants and, 10078nnab,
i ndex 1541
100719; workers and, 102526nab,
102530
material enjoyments, lxix, 69798na,
76364nb, 76566ne, 767, 781nh,
93031nnab, 93034, 97273,
972na, 973n1, 118789na, 1194na,
121819nt, 129192n; Americans
and, 943nncd, 94853, 948na; aris-
tocracy and, 935na, 936, 936nc;
democracy and, 93536nnab, 935
38, 937ne, 965nb; equality and, 938;
liberty and, 94853, 948na; public
affairs and, 94853, 948na; restless-
ness and, 94247, 94248, 942na,
947nk. See also material well-being
materialism, cxlvcxlvin315, 76364nb,
94247, 943nncd, 95659, 956nd,
957ne, 96061nj; democracy and,
962nn. See also material enjoy-
ments; material well-being; wealth
material well-being, 46365, 78182nj,
973n1, 118789na, 129192n; aris-
tocracy and, 93233nd, 93536nna
b, 93637, 937nd; dangers of
excessive love of, 96364; democracy
and, 93034, 93233nd, 934ng, 954,
954na; equality and, 94445, 1253
54no; in Europe, 931, 93233nd; in
France, 93233nd; liberty and, 948
50nc, 948na; religion and, 95462,
954na; restlessness and, 94248,
942na; science and, 78687np; ser-
vitude and, 1228n3; taste for, 930
31nnab, 93034, 96364; in the
United States, 93233nd. See also
material enjoyments; well-being
Mather, Cotton, Magnalia Christi
Americana, or the ecclesiastical history
of New England, 68n41, 666
74n(F), 66973
Matteucci, Nicola, 28283nb
Maupeou, 67980n(L), 680
mayors (French), 119
McCoy, 542n23
McInnis, Edgar, 650nd
McLemore, Richard A., 30ns
Meaux, bishop of, cxviii
Medicis, 94850nc
meditation, 77576nb, 77981
melancholy, 1082ne
Melonio, Francoise, 800801nb
Memoirs of Tanner, 53637n18
Memphis, Tennessee, 52627
men, cxlivn310; equality with women,
106264nnae, 106267, 1064nh,
1067nm; extraordinary, 121617nq;
of letters, 6nh, 7; will of, 1251,
1251nm; women and, 1053, 1054
merchant marines, 640, 640nh, 644,
644n95
merchants, lxviilxviiin71
Metacom (King Philip), 529n10
metaphysics, 809nn
Methodists, lxxxiii, 1323, 1362
Mexico, 266, 276, 495, 53940n19, 543,
651; art in, 792nf; laws of, 497,
497nh; monuments in, 79699,
796na, 798, 798nd; the United
States and, 651
Miche-Conte-Ouinique, 1340. See also
Flint River
Michigan, 49293n7, 608n73, 613n79,
131259, 131314nh, 131419, 1321no,
1326nq
the Middle Ages, cxx, 6nh, 644, 654;
art in, 78990nd; centralization in,
147; democracy in, 1143np; feudal
honor, 1093na, 10961102; in
France, 798nd; industry in, 1233;
philosophy in, 70910nu. See also
feudal honor
middle classes, cxxivcxxv, cxxxii,
317ng, 33340, 335nm, 469nc, 512nj,
76768nf, 96061nj
1542 i ndex
Middle Sister island, 1311
Mignet, 853nb, 128485nk
Milbank, Francois, 79697nb
the military, 747nd; commerce and,
647; conscription, 36162, 362nv,
362nu; democracy and, 129192n;
military aristocracy, 125354no; mili-
tary despotism, 1247nd; military
glory, 45354; military government,
1293n; military monarchy, 1161
62nj; military oligarchy, 1293n; mili-
tary spirit, 1245na, 129192n;
political jurisdiction and, 18283. See
also armies
militias, lxxxi, 129n36, 27475; federal,
27475; state, 27475
Mill, John Stuart, xxviii, xcin142, xciv,
xcvixcviin157, xcviiixcix, cin168,
civ, cxliii, 317ng, 8012nc, 1200na;
On Liberty, 402na; review of
Democracy, 317ng
Milnes, Richard M., xlii, 747ne,
798nd, 125657nt
Milton, John, 82223nf, 82324,
836nm, 989nf; Paradise, 1327
the mind, xxvii, 7, 744, 746; desire for
unity, 758; external forms of religion
and, 750; general ideas and, 739nc;
limitations and, 76162nd; religion
and, 750; weakness of, 74041nd.
See also human intelligence
minerals, 123537ny
mines, administration of, 122627nk.
See also Rive-de-Gier, mines of
mining, 123537ny. See also Rive-de-
Gier, mines of
minorities, lxxxii, 15051, 3045, 336,
4056, 621, 1141, 114243nm
Minto, Lord, xciv
Mirabeau, Honore-Gabriel de
Riquetti, 454nj, 1010nf, 111920nh;
Discours de M. de Mirabeau laine sur
le galite des partages dans les succes-
sions en ligne directe, 7879no
misery, 84041nv. See also under
settlers
missionaries, 47677
Mississippi, 533n14, 541n21, 677n(H),
682n(N), 1311
Mississippi River, 3436, 526, 557, 606,
613n80
Mississippi River basin, 594, 607,
607n72, 608
Mississippi Valley, 3536, 86, 606,
658n(A)
Missouri, 67576n(G), 677n(H)
mistakes, 365
Mitchell, Harvey, 56162nt
Mitchell, Joshua, 96061nj
Mitford, Mary Russell, Stories of Amer-
ican Life, 8023nd
mittas, 1327
mixed government, 41112
Mohammed, 746, 747ne
Mohicans, 52223
Molie`re (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 419
monarchical democracy, 72123nr
monarchy, cvi, cxlvi, 1920, 23nf, 68,
165, 228, 506, 507, 511, 614, 633, 637,
894nq, 1128, 1129na, 1132, 121819,
137374; advantages of, 213; ambi-
tion and, 111617nb; centralization
and, 1219; decline of, 2223; English,
16364ne, 2045nz, 205; European,
19495, 21011; French, 16364ne,
20410, 405, 405nf, 634, 679
80n(L); military, 116162nj; posi-
tions in, 1129na, 1130; unsalaried
public ofcials and, 32526. See also
absolute monarchy; constitutional
monarchy; kings
money, lxxxiii, cxxxv, 7, 238, 93034,
93233nd. See also material well-
being; wealth
i ndex 1543
Moniteur du commerce, xci
monks, 6nh
Monnard, Charles, xlii
Monnier, Luc, 94850nc
monotony, lxix, 108992, 1089na,
109192nd
Monroe, James, 609n75
Monrovia, 576nd
Montaigne, Michel de, Essais, 920,
920nh
Montalembert, lxxvii
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secon-
dat, lxviii, lxxiii, xc, cviiin189,
cviiin190, cxxxiii, cxlvi, cxlvii, 3na,
28nn, 31nt, 94nf, 95nh, 15859ny,
159, 18687na, 23132nz, 380ng,
398n2, 412np, 451na, 454nj, 532nr,
864nc; on absolute monarchy, 635,
635nf; concept of general spirit of
the nation, 74nb; Conside rations sur
les causes de la grandeur des Romains
et de leur de cadence, 151nt, 320nz,
635, 635nf; on despotism, 15859ny;
De lesprit des lois, 74nb, 7879no,
15859ny, 260nr, 314nc, 111013nv,
1249ne; on general spirit, 466nv; on
honor, 111013nv; on mores, 466nv;
praise for federal system, 260nr; on
virtue, 509na
Montmorency, 650
monuments, 79699, 79699nnce,
796na
Moors, 542nx, 552nn, 575
morality, 39091, 1273; moral force,
23132nz; moral laws, 1094, 1094nc;
moral relativism, 109596ne, 1102;
Romans and, 1102. See also mores
moral science, cxlvn315
mores, xxvii, lxxxiii, ciin172, cviiin190,
cxlivn310, 49ne, 473, 630, 690,
994nh, 1066, 107273nc, 1073,
1074, 1104; aristocracy and, 98992,
1053nb, 1054, 1054nc, 105961; cli-
mate and, 1052, 1052na, 1054; deni-
tion of, 466, 466nv; democracy and,
494504, 51213, 512nm, 512nn,
9861186, 986na; education of
young girls and, 104142nnac,
104147, 1044nf; in England, 1053,
1053nb; equality and, 4, 986, 986na,
98788nnab, 98794, 989nd,
105254nnac, 105261, 1055nd,
1059nh; in Europe, 1052na, 1059;
feudalism and, 98992; in France,
1052na, 105961, 106061, 1076ng;
inuence of democracy on, 871na;
laws and, cixn195; race and, 1052,
1052na, 1054; religion and, 467nw,
47374, 1052, 1052na, 1054; superi-
ority over laws, 494500, 499nm; in
the United States, 46677, 494504,
98788nb, 98794, 10056, 1005na,
105254nnac, 105261, 1055nd,
1059nh, 1076ng; women and, 473
74, 104142nc, 104147, 1052
54nnab, 105261, 105758nf,
1059nh, 1066. See also morality;
race
More, Thomas, cxxin235; Utopia, 727
28nb
Morgan (freemason), 285nf
Morris, Gouverneur, 190n4
Morris, Robert, 190n4
Morton, F. L., 1031nb
Morton, Nathaniel, 66674n(F), 669;
New Englands Memorial, 5458, 55
56np, 58nq
Moslems, 858nk. See also Islam
mosquitos, 1345
Mottley, Mary (Marie) (wife), xxx,
xxxi, lxxviin101, lxxx, xcix, 798
99ne, 84546nb, 111013nv, 1295na
mulattos, 550nf, 55354no, 57273. See
also half-breeds
1544 i ndex
municipalities: municipal administra-
tion, lxxxi, 118, 119; municipal lib-
erty (see town liberties); municipal
magistrates, 118; municipal regimes,
650n1. See also towns
Murat, Achille, Esquisse morale et poli-
tique des E
tats-Unis, 56162nt
music, 788nb
Napoleon, cxin199, 148, 446, 489n[*],
635, 640nj, 855nf, 112425np,
1124no, 1160, 1160nh, 1183, 120910,
1210nf, 123537ny
Narragansetts, 52223
National Calendar, 208n19, 608nd,
608n73, 618np
National Intelligencer, 523nj, 576nd,
595nw, 618nr, 62122nv
national interest, 923nm
nationalism. See national pride
nationality, 584nn
national matters, 58485
national pride, 15758, 15859ny, 1290
91, 129091n. See also patriotism
national will, 91. See also sovereignty of
the people
nations: law of, 244, 1183; size of, 255
58, 257no
Native Americans. See Indians
native land, xxvii
nature, 496, 83537. See also wilderness
navy, 362
Neal, John, 8023nd
necessity, 128485nk
neologisms, 81921nd, 82223nf, 823
Netherlands. See Dutch Republic
New England, 5253, 496, 530, 614nj,
101617; accountability of public
ofcials in, 127; administration in,
11529; Blacks in, 550nf; counties in,
11415; division of property in, 459,
459n2; education in, 49091,
490na; emigration from, 459; immi-
gration to, 5354, 76; England and,
5960; establishment of schools in,
67; founders of, 69; histories of,
66674n(F), 66974; Indians in,
52223, 529n10; jury system in, 685
96n(C), 686; laws of, 6364n25, 63
65, 64n26, 69; legislative power in,
12021; liberty in, 60; mores in, 69;
penal laws in, 6264, 63n25; politi-
cal development in, 6567; religious
persecution in, 6364, 6364n25,
64n26; selection of jurors in, 329;
self-government in, 6061; slavery
in, 556; sovereignty of the people in,
109; states of, 52n5; towns in, 103
14, 130 (see New England towns);
value of intellectual superiority in,
319. See also New England towns;
specic states
New England Courant, 68384n(A)
New Englanders, 131617
New England towns, 6566, 10314,
130. See also towns
New Hampshire, 52n5, 66674n(F),
67374, 677n(H), 682n(N)
New Jersey, 60n12, 677n(H)
New Orleans, Louisiana, 45354,
453nf, 650
newspapers, cxv, cxvn214, 288, 293,
29596, 297n1, 331, 490, 613n79,
68384n(A), 906nc; associations
and, 9056nnab, 90510, 908ne;
banks and, 619; democracy and,
9056nnab, 90510, 907nd,
909n1; in England, 909; equality of
conditions and, 90910; in France,
909. See also the press
Newton, Isaac, cxxiin241, 715nf,
735nm, 78182nj
the New World, cxiv, 4; aristocracy in,
495; conquest of, 1355, 1355na; equal-
i ndex 1545
ity of conditions in, 495; rejection of
territorial aristocracy in, 5051. See
also America
New York, 60n11, 261nw, 451n1, 461,
595, 596, 1303, 1304, 1312; abolition
in, 55354no, 564; act of cession by,
617n82; administrative centraliza-
tion in, 13435; aristocracy in, 85;
Blacks in, 569; budget devoted to
the poor and to public education,
343n10; centralization of public
education in, 13435n41, 134n40;
congressional representation in, 198,
6089; Constitution of, 481n5; elec-
tion of deputies in, 131, 131n38; elec-
toral conditions in, 677n(H);
histories of, 66674n(F), 674;
inheritance laws in, 67576n(G);
jury system in, 68596n(C); penal
system in, lxi; political jurisdiction
in, 682n(N); population growth in,
6089; settlements in, 131419; slav-
ery in, 556n33, 564; towns in, 104
5n2, 130; voting rights in, 55354no
New York, New York, 454n1
Niles, Nathaniel, 62nv, 84na, 99
100nc
Nimitz, August H., Jr., 56162nt
nobility, 6nh, 78, 10, 1920, 508; ruin
of, 7nh. See also aristocracy
Nolla, Eduardo, xxiv
nominalism, 718nm
non-material enjoyments, 95462,
954nnab
Norman association, 911nb
Normandy, France, 27172, 596
the North, 51, 49798, 49899nk,
603n[*], 614nk, 1109ns; abolition
in, 56465, 56871, 574; agriculture
in, 595; cereal crops in, 595; character
of the, 5253; commerce in, 607,
607n70, 646, 646n[*]; compared
with other regions, 60111; congres-
sional representation of, 60910;
dependence on other regions, 597;
economy of, 560; emancipation in,
574; emigration from, 614; English
character in, 5253; in favor of tar-
iffs, 28485; growth in, 60611;
increasing power of, 610; industri-
ousness of, 560; industry in, 560,
59596, 607; interracial marriage in,
555; manufacturing and, 285; popu-
lation growth in, 610; racial preju-
dice in, 555; slavery and, 556, 556n33,
562, 562n39, 56871, 57879, 1016
17; tariffs and, 306. See also New
England; specic states
North America: as English possession,
60; exterior conguration of, 3344;
ora and fauna of, 3839; French
possessions in, 65051; Indians in,
456; languages of, 65961n(C);
providence and, 45657; South
America and, 645; wilderness of,
45758. See also America; specic
countries and colonies
North Carolina, 481n5, 569n45,
617n82, 62024, 67576n(G),
677n(H), 682n(N)
the Northeast. See the North
the Northwest, 13031, 6078. See also
the West; specic states
nullication affair, 618nr, 62122nv,
62124, 621nu, 62223n87, 624, 625
nullication doctrine, 62124
oaths, lxxxi
obedience, 108, 904, 904nu
occupations, 87
OConnell, Daniel, 580nh
Oconostata, 530n[*]
ofcers, xxvii, 116569, 1165na, 1170
71nnac, 117075
1546 i ndex
ofcials. See public ofcals
Of the Dominion of Democracy in
America, 2na. See also Democracy in
America
Ohio, 557, 558n36, 558nr, 596, 1311;
abolition in, 55861; congressional
representation in, 609; election of
deputies in, 131; electoral conditions
in, 677n(H); freedmen in, 553
54no, 557n35; Governors salary in,
341n8; growth of, 558; jury system
in, 68596n(C); political jurisdic-
tion in, 682n(N); population of,
460, 558, 558n27, 608n73, 609;
racial prejudice in, 55354no; slavery
in, 557n35; town life in, 131; voting
rights in, 55354no
Ohio River, 557
Old Regime, cx, cxix
oligarchy, military, 1293n
Ollivier, Alexandrine. See Tocqueville,
Alexandrine de (sister-in-law)
Oneida Castle, 13045nb
opinion, 407, 691, 692, 71920, 720
21np, 109596ne, 1096nf, 1097
98nh, 111013nv, 1114nx, 1145ns,
114647; as basis for unity, 59899,
59899nz, 598ny; Cartesian
method, 69798na; democracy and,
1149; equality of conditions and, 4;
freedom of the press and, 298301;
of the majority, 71920; power of,
231. See also common opinion; pub-
lic opinion
opposition, cxlvcxlvi, cxlvn315, cxlvii,
cxlviii
oratory: American, 84344, 843na; par-
liamentary eloquence, 86170,
861nnab, 86465nncd, 866
67n[*]; preachers, 85960, 859
60nm
originality, 109192, 109192nd, 1223nf
Ortega y Gasset, Jose, cvi
Osages, 52829n8, 528n[*]
Pacheco, Emilio, xxiv
Pacic Ocean, 34
paganism, 1277na
Pagnerre, Laurent-Antoine, xxxvii
xxxviiin20
painting, 795, 795nk
Palenque, Mexico, 798nd
pantheism, 75758, 1204nf
paper wealth, 6nh, 9
paperwork, 122627nk
Pappe, H. O., 402na
Paris, bibliothe`que historique de la
ville de, xlii
parish commissioners, 107, 107nm
Parlement de Paris, 168, 170, 70910nu
parlements, 16364ne, 17778, 679
80n(L), 680. See also Parlement de
Paris
Parliament (England), 171, 17273,
681n(M), 861na, 86263, 868, 868ne
parliamentary eloquence, 86170,
861nnab, 86465nncd, 866
67n[*]; aristocracy and, 86264,
86869, 868ne, 868nf; democracy
and, 861nnab, 868nf; in France, 869
parliamentary prerogatives, 1269
parties, 27988, 28182na, 284nc; asso-
ciations as weapons of, 288; deni-
tion of, 279; elections and, 322;
Federalists, 28283nb, 28384; for-
mation of, lxxxi; great, 28081, 281
82na, 28485; newspapers as
weapons of, 288; peace and, 287nh;
Republicans, 28283nb, 28384;
small, 28081, 285; working of, lxxxi
Pascal, Blaise, cxxi, cxxiin240,
cxxvn249, cxliii, 31nt, 15859ny,
41213ns, 78182, 78182nj, 810
12nr, 84041nv, 1067nk; Pense es,
i ndex 1547
71213nc, 76566nd, 928, 928nd,
1122
Pasha of Egypt, 1214, 1215no
passions, cxlivcxlv, cxlvn314,
cxlviiin323, 1053, 1054, 118789na
the past. See history
patents, lxxxii
paternal despotism, 1249ne, 125051
paternal power, lxxxiii
patois, 826, 826nh
patriotism, lxix, 15354, 15859ny, 159
60, 290, 290nb, 375401, 588, 589,
59798, 59899nz, 613, 1086nc,
11001101, 1100nj; American, 385
89, 388ns; ancient, 1100nj; in
France, 1100, 1100n2; laws and, 160.
See also nationalism; national pride
Paulding, James Kirke, 8023nd
pauperism, ciin171
pays dE
tats, 195
peace, 129192n; commerce and,
1178na; democracy and, 115364,
1153na, 1178na; property and, 1158
59
peasants, 491
Peletier dAunay family, xlix
penal laws, lxxxiii, 6264, 63n20, 240
penal systems, xliv, lxxivlxxviii, 2na;
American, lxi, lxv, lxxviii; English,
lxxviiilxxix; French, lxxivlxxv; in
Pennsylvania, lxxviii. See also penal
systems; prisons
penitentiary systems. See penal systems
Pennsylvania, 60n12, 306, 414n4,
454n1, 595, 1311; abolition in, 553
54no; armed forces in, 151n[*];
Blacks in, 569; county budgets in,
352n11; election of deputies in, 131;
histories of, 66674n(F), 674; legis-
lative assemblies in, 137; penal insti-
tutions in, lxi, lxxviii; population of,
604n63, 652; slavery in, 562,
562n39; temperance societies in,
397n1; town life in, 130; Whiskey
Tax rebellion, 59091nt
Pennsylvania Historical Society, 372
74nf
Penn, William, 523, 66674n(F), 674
Pequots, 52223
perfectibility of man, 7057nr, 759
62, 759na, 759nb
Perry, Commodore, 1311
personal estates, 6nh
personal property, 35051
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 306,
352n11, 454n1
Philip (Metacom), 529n10
Philip of Macedon, 253n36
Philippe le Bel (the Fair), 67879n(K)
Phillimore, Madame, 65657nh
philosophes, cxxiv, cxxivn248, cxxv
philosophical method, ciii, cxxiv, 697
98na, 697710, 69899a, 7023nn,
7034no, 7078ns, 776, 101415nm
philosophy, cxxcxxxii, cxxin235, cxxv,
7024, 7034no, 7078ns, 708nt,
70910nu, 1092nf; of action, cxx
cxxxii; Americans and, 697710,
739nc, 784nn; Christianity and,
7034no; democracy and, cxxv
cxxvi, 71125, 71314ne, 77980ng;
equality of conditions and, 71718,
718nm, 739nc; in Europe, 7023nn,
7025, 702nm, 7034no; French,
7034no, 704, 705, 739nc; Germans
and, 739nc; as liberty, cxxix; in the
Middle Ages, 70910nu; middle
class and, cxxxii; pantheism, 75758;
political, cxlviii (see also political
theory); religion and, 7034no,
7057nr, 7078ns, 70910nu, 713
14ne. See also general ideas; philo-
sophical method
1548 i ndex
physical force, 23132nz
Pierson, George W., xxxn2, xxxi,
xxxiiin10, livn41, lxxii, 99100nc,
14546ng, 454nh, 53738nv, 548nc,
754na, 8023nd, 1299nf, 1302nj,
1314nj, 1326nq, 1333ns, 1365nb
pilgrims, 5458, 5889, 58n10, 59nr,
76, 76667
pioneers, cxiii, cxiiin205, cxivcxv,
cxivn211, 49192, 492n6, 128788n,
131619; children, 1319; solitude of,
131718; women, 128788n, 131819.
See also settlers
piracy, 238n29
Pitkins, Timothy, History, 58n10,
60n12
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1311
pity. See sympathy
Plaideurs, cvi
Plato, cxxin237, 733nh, 82223nf,
940ne, 959, 1082
Platte River, 658n(A)
Plutarch, 78283, 81012nr, 816nb,
1102; Life of Alexander, 849nd; Vie
de Marcellus, 78283nk; Vies des
hommes, 816nb
Plymouth, Massachusetts, 57, 57n8, 61,
6364n25
Plymouth Rock, 57, 57n8
poetry, 794, 832nnce, 834nh; in
America, 83537; Arabs and, 839nt;
aristocracy and, 83235, 833ng, 838;
democracy and, 83031nnab, 830
44, 835nj, 837nnop, 842nx, 843na;
divinity and, 83738, 839ns; equality
and, 832, 834, 835, 842; in human
affairs, 83738, 839ns, 840; humani-
tarian, 839ns; sensual, 839nt. See also
literature
Poland, 111nt, 212, 219, 260nr, 471, 1367
political activity, 395401, 398n2, 1365
67
political associations, 30212, 308,
308nj, 895na, 896, 91117, 911nnab
political constitution, literature and,
812
political crimes, 184, 200, 682n(N). See
also political jurisdiction
political independence, 125960nw
political institutions, 829, 1135nc,
1145nr, 129091. See also free
institutions
political jurisdiction, 17980na; in
England, 180, 180n1, 181, 183; in
Europe, 180n1, 181, 182nc, 18384; in
France, 180, 181, 182nc, 183; in Mas-
sachusetts, 184, 184nd; the military
and, 18283; separation of powers
and, 179, 182nc; in the United
States, 17985, 182nc, 682n(N); in
Virginia, 184
political laws, 721
political liberty, 77576nb, 77879nf
political philosophy, cxicxii, cxin193,
cxxi, cxlcxli, cxlviii
political power, cxlvi
political regimes, cxviicxviii. See also
specic kinds of regimes
political rights, 38687nr, 387, 1230
31np. See also specic rights
political science, cxvi, cxliii, 1617nx.
See also administrative science
political society, lxxxi, cx, 465, 633,
68990na, 81921nd, 98788nb;
democratic ideas and, 118789nna
b, 11871294; inuence of demo-
cratic ideas and sentiments on, 1187
89nnab, 11871294; judicial power
and, 16778; in the United States,
63334
political state, cixcx, cixn193, cxii,
cxvii, cxx, cxlv, cxlvn313
political theory, cxicxii, cxin193, cxxi,
cxxv, cxxvicxxv, cxlcxli, cxlviii;
i ndex 1549
Americans and, 73741, 737na;
compared to religion, cxxvicxxv;
the French and, 73741, 737na;
practice and, cxxviiicxxix; in the
United States, 171
politics, 47888, 73741, 755. See also
specic aspects of politics
Polonceau, M., 1238nb
Pontiac, Michigan, 131926
the poor, 33340, 33536nn, 343n10,
363, 102829ng, 122829; bail and,
72, 72nd; in England, 81921nd; law
and, 39495; overseers of, 106;
prison and, 72, 72nd; in the United
States, 892. See also lower classes
Poor Law, 1200na
poor tax, 337
Pope, Alexander, 835nj
popular power, 282
population growth, 45859, 60511,
610n77, 610ne
Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste. See Molie`re
(Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)
Port Libre (Port-Royal), xlix
ports, 1237
the Portuguese, 644
Portuguese colonies, 495, 644, 645
positions, 112932, 1129na, 1129nb,
1129nnab, 1130, 1130nd, 1131ne
positivism, cxxicxxii, cxxin239
postal service, 613n79
post roads, 613n79
Potomac River, 594, 606
power, 610, 1920, 116nb, 119192nb,
1277nb; concentration of, 1194
1205, 1194nnab, 12001202nnac,
12023n1, 1203nd (see also centrali-
zation); in democracies, 42526,
425n5; democratization of, 1920;
feudal, 1920; of one man, xxvii;
popular power, 282; scattering of via
American town, 11112; through
landed property, 6; wealth and, 974
76, 974nd, 975nf. See also authority;
separation of powers; specic powers
practice, cxxi, cxxv, cxxvi, cxxx; theory
and, cxxviiicxxix
Pradt, Abbe de, 65657nh
Praetorians, 149
preaching, 85960, 85960nm
Preau de la Baraudie`re, Rose, livn42
prejudice, racial, 54882, 550nf, 551,
552nn, 554np, 565
the Presidency, lxxxi, 202ny, 2056na,
24950, 62425, 625nw; compared
to English kingship, 2045nz; com-
pared to French kingship, 2048;
dependence of the, 201, 202; lame
duck, 213; powers of (see executive
powers); transitions between Presi-
dents, 21314, 21415nk. See also the
President
the President, lxxxii, 201, 201nx, 617,
617np, 618n83, 625; Bank of the
United States and, 619; as Com-
mander in Chief of the militia,
27475; Congress and, 201, 202,
2067, 21011, 21517nm; election
of, 2012, 21124, 22122np; foreign
affairs and, 36667, 367n16, 369[*],
371, 37274nf; nullication affair
and, 624; powers of, 62527; prerog-
atives that go unused, 20910; re-
election of, 22526nu, 22529;
reports to Congress, 861nb; salary
of, 203, 97071; the Senate and, 201,
202, 207n17; sovereignty and, 208;
treaties and, 200; veto power of,
203. See also the Presidency
PresquIle, Pennsylvania, 1311
the press, 68384n(A), 90510; democ-
racy and, cxxxvin287, 910nf, 1269
70; as democratic instrument of
liberty, 126970; in Europe, 291,
1550 i ndex
the press (continued )
293, 296; in France, 293, 297; free-
dom of, 289301, 1149, 126970;
opinion and, 298301; public opin-
ion and, 29293, 298; radical,
1204nf; in the United States, 292
93, 29598. See also freedom of the
press; newspapers
pride, 10001004, 1000na, 1002nc,
1126; national (see national pride)
primogeniture, 8182, 8586ne, 459
Princeton University, xlii
printing, discovery of, 7nh, 9
prisons, 72, 72nd, 114, 79697nb,
1247nd; in France, lxxivlxxv, 409;
Toulon prison, lxxivlxxv; in the
United States, 409. See also penal
systems
privilege, 1211, 123031np, 1263; in
France, 1222; hatred of, 12023,
1203nd; liberty and, 126364, 1263
64nc
Proceedings of the Indian Board in the
City of New York, 533n14
professions, 96971, 969na; commer-
cial, 97279, 972nnab, 973n1,
974nd, 97779nj, 977ng, 989nd;
industrial, 97279, 972nnab,
973n1, 974nd, 97779nj, 977ng
Properce, 1053nb
property, 1136nf, 1228nn; ancient,
1266nh; aristocracy and, 1266nh;
commercial, 123537ny; division of,
459, 460, 1136nf; domanial, 1266nh;
in England, 1223nd; equality of con-
ditions and, 1136nf; industrial, 1232
33nv, 123334, 1233nv, 123537ny,
1266nh; industry and, 1231nr;
landed, 6, 7879no, 7885, 83n3;
peace and, 115859; revolution and,
113640, 1136ne; war and, 118384.
See also inheritance laws; land
prosperity as greatest threat to the
United States, 611
prostitutes, 105758nf
Protestantism, lxviiilxvix, cxxxi,
cxxxin269, 9, 46970, 469nc,
702nk, 755, 755nc; afnity to repub-
lican government, 470ne; democ-
racy and, 699700ne; equality and,
46970; middle class and, 469nc;
mingling of races in, 55354no;
women and, 104142nc, 1042
Proud, Robert, The History of Pennsyl-
vania, 66674n(F), 674
Provence, France, 596
Providence, Rhode Island, 58n10, 61
providentialism, cxvi, cxvii, cxviii
provincial banks, 619
provincial government, 162, 162nb,
16566, 26163, 264. See also states
provincial liberties, 165, 630
provincial matters, 58485
Prussia, 253n36
public administration, 33132, 332nd,
119798nj, 124243; centralization
and, 120644 (see also administra-
tive centralization); in England,
121112; justices of the peace and,
12324; in Massachusetts, 131; in
New York, 131; in Ohio, 131; in
Pennsylvania, 131
public affairs, xxvii; administration of
by citizens, 89193, 891nk; despo-
tism and, 94850nc; lack of out-
standing leadership in, 31418;
material enjoyments and, 94853,
948na; religion and, 962
public education, lxxxi, 106, 134
35n41, 134n40, 343n10. See also
education
public expenditures, 33340, 34648;
in aristocracies, 33738; comparison
of American and French, 34950nj,
i ndex 1551
34956, 35354nn1213; inuence of
class on, 33340; taxes and, 34548,
350; universal suffrage and, 33637
public good, 24849n35
public institutions, 79697nb, 1142.
See also specic institutions
publicity, 1083
public lands, 61718, 618n6
public ofces, lxxxi, 105, 32427,
326nw, 112932, 1129nnab, 1131ne,
1224n2. See also public ofcials
public ofcials, xxxli, xxvii, 685
96n(C), 686; accountability of, 127
28, 127n31; administrative faults of,
127, 127n31; American, 208, 208n19;
appointment of, lxxxii; arbitrariness
of, 32730, 41516, 41516nx; cor-
ruption of, 38081; crimes commit-
ted by, 127; under the dominion of
American democracy, 32427; elec-
tion of, 13334; French, 119, 208,
208nn1819, 34142n9; mediocrity
of, 31418, 327; municipal magis-
trates, 118; mutability of, 332nc; in
New England, 119; omnipotence of
the majority and, 41516, 41516nx;
salaries and, 32526, 34043, 341
42n9, 347nf; weaknesses of, 381. See
also magistrates; public ofces
public opinion, lxxxi, cx, cxn196, cxvii,
cxxvii, cxxxiii, cxxxvi, 285, 414, 421,
510, 71920, 72021np, 753, 1101nk,
1104, 1108, 1110nu, 114243, 114647;
Blacks and, 548nc; dominance of in
the United States, 2078; oppression
by, cxxxviicxxxviii; the press and,
29293, 298; science and, 781; slav-
ery and, 556n33; in the United
States, 114243. See also common
opinion; the majority; opinion
public prosecutors, lxxxiii
public spirit, 38489, 387
public works, 123440, 1237, 1238nb,
123940nd
Puritanism, 5354, 5458, 59, 455, 662
65n(E), 68990na, 7057nr, 752,
752nk, 76364nb, 851, 104849,
1081nd
Puritans, 5358, 530
Pyrrhonism, 1281ne
Quaker Collection, Haverford College,
548nc
Quakers, lxxxiii, 6364n25, 666
74n(F), 674, 1362, 1362nb, 1363,
1363nd
Quapaws, 52829n8
Quarterly Review, xcii
Quebec, Canada, 632
Quincy Adams, John, 222
Rabelais, Francois, 81012nr
race, 515648k, 69495nm, 128485nk;
in America, 735nm; inuence on
conduct, 997, 997nd; intermingling
of races, 521, 55253, 552nh, 552nn,
55354no, 57275, 574nb, 58081;
interracial unions, 534n17, 553
54no; morals and, 1052, 1052na,
1054; mortality and, 565n41; race
war, 548nc; racial prejudice, 54882,
550nf, 551, 552nn, 55354no, 554np,
555, 565 (see also segregation); racial
problems on the East coast in 1834,
515na; segregation, 548nc; slavery
and, 550; in the South, 555, 57275,
574nb. See also specic races
Racine, Jean, 814nc; Britannicus, 847
48
railroads, 123940nd
Raphael, 795, 832ne
rational individualism, cxxivcxxv, cxlii
rationalism, cxxivcxxv, cxxvi, cxlii,
700nj. See also reason
1552 i ndex
rationality, cxxvi
Raudot, Rodat Claude, 80nq, 81ns
raw materials, 639n94
readers, aristocracy and, 813
real estate, 35051
realism, 718nm
reason, cxxiv, cxxv, cxxvi, cxxxi, 697
710, 700nj, 709; collective, 719no
(see also public opinion); democracy
and, cxxxiiicxl; reign of total,
cxxxiicxl. See also rationalism
Recamier, Madame, 699nd
recurrence, cxxvi
Redier, Antoine, xxxin3
Red Jacket, 530n[*], 530nq
Red River, 35, 658n(A)
red tape, 122627nk
re-election, 22529
Reeve, Henry, lvilvii, xciv, 718nm,
103335ne, 1200na
reection, cxxi
the Reformation, cx, 702, 702nk, 704,
1351
regimes, typology of, cxlvin317, 23nf
regulations, 118
relationships: democracy and, 99599,
995nnab, 10056, 1005na; between
masters and workers, 102526nab,
102530; between servants and mas-
ters, 10078nnab, 100719. See also
habitual relations
religion, lxviiilxvix, cxxx
cxxxinn267270, cxxxn264, cxxxi,
cxlvn315, 50, 467n[*], 467nx,
468ny, 468nz, 506, 507, 599, 599na,
692, 69798na, 702nk, 750n1,
751nh, 958ng, 1223ne, 128485nk; in
America, cxxviii, cxxxviii, cxxxix,
7057, 7057nr, 769, 95462,
954nnab; art and, 6nh; authority
and, 72021np, 745, 754, 756; Blacks
and, 555; democracy and, 482nu,
74243nb, 74253, 742na, 748
49nf, 752nj, 752nk, 95462,
954nnab, 96061nj, 962nm, 965
68, 965na, 126667nj; doctrine of
interest well understood and, 923
25nn, 92629, 926na; in England,
96061nj; enlightenment and, 67,
479; equality and, 74546, 747, 752,
754; in Europe, 479, 479nq, 487
88nx, 488; external forms of, 750; as
rst among political institutions,
482nu; freedom of, lxxxiii; general
ideas and, 74849nf; government
and, 122324; habits and, 7057;
inuence on maintaining the demo-
cratic republic of the United States,
46772; liberty and, cxxx, 26, 69
70, 47579, 479nq, 71213nc, 745;
the majority and, cxxx, 72123nr,
752nj; material well-being and, 954
62, 954na; the mind and, 750;
mores and, 467nw, 47374, 1052,
1052na, 1054; nomenclature of reli-
gious sects, lxxxiii; non-material
enjoyments and, 95462, 954nnab;
in the Northeast, 498; pantheism,
75758, 758nc; penal laws against
particular sects, 6364, 6364n25,
64n26; philosophy and, 7034no,
7057nr, 7078ns, 70910nu, 713
14ne; of pilgrims, 76667; among
pioneers, 132324; as a political insti-
tution, 46772; political theory as,
cxxvi; politics and, lxxxiii, 47888;
power of, 47888; preaching, 859
60, 85960nm; as the primary
political institution in the United
States, 475; public affairs and, 962;
religious authority, 754; religious
eloquence, 85960, 85960nm; reli-
gious sects in the United States,
93941, 939nnac, 941nf, 136064,
i ndex 1553
1360na (see also specic religious sects);
religious society, lxxxi, lxxxiii; senti-
ments and, 7057; separation of
church and State, 480, 481n5; servi-
tude and, cxxixcxxx, cxxxn266;
slavery and, 556; society and, lxxxiii,
47278; in the United States, 467
78, 472ng, 47888, 478np, 479nq,
480nt, 481nn45, 482nu, 48788nx,
487nw, 74253, 742na, 93941,
939nnac, 941nf, 95462, 954na;
women and, 104142nc, 104445,
1044nf, 104849. See also beliefs;
faith; spiritualism; specic religions
the Renaissance, 795
rents. See leases
The Report of the Postmaster General,
613n79
Reports of the Pioneer Society of the
State of Michigan, 1326nq
representative governments vs. democ-
racies, 31718, 317ng
representation, principle of, 337np
republican democracy, 72123nr
republican institutions, 23nf, 62737,
62829nz
republican liberty, 62829nz
Republicans, 28283nb, 28384,
630
republics, cvi, cxviii, 1516nw, 88,
152nx, 376, 62728, 62829nz,
629na, 63031; ancient, 509na;
economy of, 349nj; fragility of, 258;
representative governments vs.
democracies, 31718, 317ng; republi-
can democracy, 72123nr; as tran-
quil rule of the majority, 630;
viability in large nations, 25558; via-
bility in small nations, 25658,
257no; virtue and, 509, 509na. See
also republican institutions
Resh, Richard, 56162nt
restlessness, xxvi, 930na, 94247,
942na, 947nk
the Restoration, liii, lxxvi, 5ne, 446
The Revised Statutes of the State of New
York, 13031, 131n38, 68596n(C),
686
revolution, cvicxvi, cviin186,
cxin200, cxvii, cxxvi, cxxxii,
cxxxviii, cxxxix, cxxxixn294, cxl,
cxlii, 1213nr, 71112nb, 719nn, 780,
1017, 1018, 1019, 1078nk, 1151n[*],
115556nc, 115657nnd, 116569,
1165nnab, 1167n1, 118789na,
12067na, 1209, 1211, 124243,
1247nd, 1260nx, 127374; ambition
and, 1116na, 1118, 1118nf, 111920;
anarchy and, 125051nj; aristocracy
and, 1136nf, 114142nm, 1142
43nm, 1148; beliefs and, 71213nc;
Blacks and, 1141; in China, 786;
commerce and, 1136nf; denition of,
1150nw; democracy and, 6, 1719,
88586, 886nc, 1116na, 113334nb,
113352, 1136nf, 114243nm, 1144
45nq, 1145nr, 114647n1, 1151ny,
1152; equality and, 113334nb, 1133
52, 1135nc, 114142nm, 114445nq,
114446, 1145nr, 1214nn, 124344,
1274nv; Europe and, 1141, 1222,
1222nc, 1374 (see also the French
Revolution); fear of, 114041, 1158
59, 1201nb; government and,
1214nn; individualism and, 88586,
886nc; industry and, 1138; intellec-
tual, 114243nm, 114647n1; jurists
and, 433; literature and, 84546nna
b, 845na, 846; military, 115859;
minorities and, 1141; property and,
113640, 1136ne, 1136nf; public insti-
tutions and, 1142; revolutionary
ideas, 127374; revolutionary spirit,
127374, 1273nu; theater and,
1554 i ndex
revolution (continued )
845na; theory of, 113335nnac,
113352; the United States and, cxiii
cxiv, 114041, 1140nj, 1374 (see also
the American Revolution); waning
of, 113335nnac, 113352. See also
specic revolutions
Revolution of 1830. See July
Revolution
Revue des deux mondes, xcii, 56162nt,
621nu, 65657nh, 718nm, 8023nd,
813nb, 854nd, 856ng, 89798nf,
1215no, 1303na
Rhode Island, 52n5, 58n10, 61, 65n30,
677n(H)
rice plantations, 566n42, 595
the rich, 33340, 363, 973nc, 973n1,
97476, 974nd, 102829ng, 1228; in
England, 81921nd; governance and,
97476, 974nd; the law and, 394
95; manners of, 1078nk; in the
United States, 892
Richards, Mr. (mayor of Philadelphia),
352n11
Richter, Melvin, xxiv, 15859ny, 451na,
466nv, 570nx, 1133nc
right of complaint, 128
right of inspection, 128
right of property, 39091
right of reason, 1272nt
rights, cxlvi, 68, 630, 1271; extension
of, 38687nr, 392, 392nw; of gov-
ernments, 39091, 39091nu; idea
of, 38993, 1272nt; of the individ-
ual, 127576; respect for, 38990nt;
rights of individuals vs. rights of
society, 127173; in the United
States, 38993; universal, 38687nr,
392, 392nv. See also specic rights and
freedoms
Rive-de-Gier, mines of, 122627nk,
123537ny
River of the North, 1311
rivers, 1353. See also specic rivers
roads, lxxxii, lxxxiii, 106, 125n27, 1237,
1238nb; county roads, 125n26; road
surveyors, 106, 118n14, 118n14; towns
and, 12526n29
Robinson, Mr., cii, 10078nb
Robson, John M., 402na
Rocky Mountains, 34, 597, 658n(A)
Rodat. See Raudot, Rodat Claude
Roederer, P. L., Me moire pour servir a`
lhistoire de la socie te polie en France,
807nm
Roger, Jean-Francois, 493nd
Rohan family, lxxviii
Roland-Marcel, Pierre, 38687nr
Roman Catholicism. See Catholicism
Romans, 490, 509na, 510, 636, 815
16nnab, 81517, 994, 994nh, 1109,
1109ns; excess of, 1053nb; morality
and, 1102; patriotism of, 1100nj; tyr-
anny of, 511, 511ne. See also Rome,
ancient
Rome, ancient, 1516nw, 214, 458,
511ng, 514no, 62829nz, 73233,
74849, 74849nf, 816, 816nb, 847,
941, 941ng; aqueducts in, 798; bar-
barians and, 535, 785, 1162nk,
1247nd; Christianity and, 74849;
despotism in, 124647; fall of,
1247nd; the family in, 1032; monu-
ments in, 79699, 796na, 79899;
Roman literature, 8067nk; science
and, 78687np; tyranny in, 51011,
511ng; virtue in, 1102. See also
Romans
Rosanbo, Louise Le Peletier de
(mother of Tocqueville), xlix, li
liin34, liii, lxxi
Rosanbo, Louis Le Peletier de (mater-
nal grandfather of Tocqueville), xlix,
xlixn25
i ndex 1555
Rosanbo, Madame de. See Malesherbes,
Marguerite Lamoignon de (maternal
grandmother of Tocqueville)
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, cxxxiiicxxxiv,
cxxxiiin277, cxxxivn278, cxlivn310,
1012nq, 4748nd, 58, 104nh, 186
87na, 303nb, 71213nc, 1133nc;
amour propre, 88182nb; anti-
metropolitanism of, 454nj; Conside r-
ations sur le gouvernement de Pologne,
260nr; Contrat social, 260nr, 384nn,
430nf, 453ng, 454nj, 466nv, 1226nj,
1249ne; on democracy as least costly
form of government, 333nf; Discours
sur lorigine et les fondements de
line galite parmi les hommes, 534ns,
1249ne; Jugement sur le projet de paix
perpe tuelle, 260nr; on mores, 466nv;
praise for federal system, 260nr; rec-
ommendation to the Poles, 260nr;
Re veries du promeneur solitaire,
129798nc
royalists, lxxvilxxvii, lxxviin101
Royal Library, 66674n(F), 674
Royer-Collard, lxxxix, xciii, civcv,
cxlviii, 816nb
Russia, 15859ny, 610n77, 65556,
655n5, 65657nh, 1367
Russian settlements, 651
the Sabbath, 95455, 954na
sacrice, 92122, 921nj
Sagan-Cuisco, 1334nt, 134042, 1341, 1345
Sagan-Kuisko. See Sagan-Cuisco
Saginaw Bay, 132425
Saginaw, Michigan, 1321no, 132426,
1340, 1342, 134659, 1346ny
Saginaw River, 1350, 135253, 135455,
135657
sailors, 362, 640nh, 644
Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustine, xlii,
xc, cxliicxliii, 81012nr, 856ng
Saint-Evremond, 81012nr
Saint Francis River, 35
Saint-Louis, 650
Saint Louis River, 3435. See also Mis-
sissippi River
Saint Peter (Minnesota) River, 35
saints, 6nh
Saint-Simon, Henri de, 532nr
Saint-Simonianism, 772nh, 960
61nj, 1062nb, 1199no, 1204nf,
1209nc
salaries, 102526nab, 102530, 1027,
1027nd, 102829ng
Salvandy, Narcise-Achille, xc
Santo Domingo, 53
Sarce, Eugenie de, 515na
Sauca Cano, Jose Mar a, 308nj,
1268no
Saulnier, Sebastian L.: New Observa-
tions on the Finances of the United
States, 156nw, 34950nj; Parallels
Between the Public Expenditures of
France and Those of the United
States, 34950nj
Sauteurs, 132930. See also Chippewa
Indians
savages, xxvii, cxviiicxvix, cxixcxx,
3940. See also barbarians
savings, 122728, 1227nm. See also
banks
Say, Jean-Baptiste, lxiv, xcviin158;
Cours de conomie politique, 642
43nm; Traite de conomie politique,
64243nm
Schermerhorn, Mr., 28283nb, 627nx,
640nh
Schleifer, Alison Pedicord, xxiv
Schleifer, James T., xxixxiv, 76nf,
193nn, 453nf, 613nh, 62122nv, 881
82nb, 103335ne, 1247nd, 136064,
1360na, 1365na
school commissioners, 106
1556 i ndex
schools, 67, 118n14. See also education
science, cxlvn315, 77576nb; Ameri-
cans and, 76364nb, 76374, 765
66nd, 77577nnac, 77587,
784nn; application of, 77587,
781nh, 78687np; aristocracy and,
78283, 78687np, 810nq; democ-
racy and, 76364nb, 76387, 769
70ng, 77577nnac, 78687np,
810nq; England and, 76364nb;
equality and, 76364nb, 76465,
77576nb, 776; Europe and, 763
64nb; glory and, 78182nj, 782; of
laws, 77576nc, 77778ne; material
interests and, 78182nj; material
well-being and, 78687np; motives
that push men toward, 78182nj;
passion for, 78182nj, 782; political
liberty and, 77879nf; public opin-
ion and, 781; theory of, 77587,
78687np; three parts of, 77576nb,
77778
scientic method, 7023nn
Scotland, 1227nm, 1359
Scott, Walter: The Bride of Lammer-
moor, 101213nk; Kenilworth, 798
99ne, 129798nc
Scudery, 807nm
the seas, freedom of
Seaton, Paul, xxiv
secession, 59394
secondary powers, 1195, 1197, 1222,
1254, 125657nt
Sedgwick, Catherine Marie, 8023nd
Sedgwick, Theodore, xxxiii, xlii,
lxxxvii, lxxxviin124, 8485na, 656
57nh
segregation, 548nc, 554. See also preju-
dice, racial
selectmen, 1045, 106, 11819n16,
118n14, 118n15, 119n18, 126, 126np,
329, 68596n(C)
self-interest, xxvi. See also interest
self-sufciency, 7089
the Senate, 180, 18182, 196200,
197ns, 199; direct election of, 321nk;
elite nature of, 32021; foreign
affairs and, 36667, 369n[*], 372
74nf; indirect election of, 321,
321nk; nullication doctrine and,
621; political crimes and, 200; politi-
cal jurisdiction of the, 18081; pow-
ers of, 200; the President and, 201,
202, 207n17; qualications to serve
in, 249; role in elections in case of
tie, 221; treaties and, 200. See also
Congress; legislative powers
senate (state), 13638, 137ny, 682n(N)
Senior, Nassau William, xcivxcv, 350
51nk, 38283nj, 81012nr
Senonville, M. de, 534n17
sentiments, 691, 692, 69798na,
888nd, 894nq, 895na, 900901,
1272nt, 128485nk; aristocracy
and, 900901; democratic, 1187
89nnab, 11871294; equality of
conditions and, 4; inuence of
democracy on, 871985, 871na; reli-
gion and, 7057
separation of powers, cxlvi, cxlvii, 179,
182nc
serfs, 1920
Sergeant, Thomas, Constitutional Law,
68596n(C)
Serrin, William, 1355nb
servants, masters and, 10078nnab,
100719
servitude, cxix, cxxxviii, 122, 519,
1200na, 1202, 1213, 1220nu, 1228nn,
1244, 125253, 125556, 125556nq,
125657nt, 125861, 125960nw,
1260nx, 126970, 1284nj, 1285;
Christianity and, 54849; liberty
and, 125960nw, 125961; material
i ndex 1557
well-being and, 1228n3. See also
slavery
settlers, 132124, 1332no; English, 1348;
European, 52425, 134652, 135455,
1355nb; French, 1348, 1349; isolation
of, 1322np; misery of, 1322np, 1323
24; religion and, 132324; Russian,
651; in Saginaw, 134652. See also
pioneers
Sevigne, Madame de, 99192
the sexes, 1053, 1054, 105758, 1057
58nf; aristocracy of, 72728nb; divi-
sion of labor, 106364, 1064nf;
equality of, 106264nnae, 1062
67, 1062nb, 1064nh, 1067nm. See
also men; women
Shakers, 1363, 1363ne
Shakespeare, William, 848nc, 850,
850ng, 868ne; Henry V, 8034n
sheriffs, 114, 125, 68485n(B), 685
96n(C)
Sicily, 1354
Sie `cle, 123940nd
Simon, Claude Gabriel, 123537ny
simplicity of means, cxxvn249
skepticism, 708nt, 96568
slavery, lxxxiii, c, cviiin190,
cxxxvin287, 77, 51719, 520ng, 548
82, 550nd, 550nf, 552nm, 552nn,
561, 578nf, 6013, 101617, 1102nm,
1102n3; in antiquity, 55051, 550n31,
550ne, 550nf, 551, 73233, 733nh;
beginnings of, 556, 556n33; Chris-
tianity and, 561; class and, 57172;
commerce and, 607n70; conse-
quences of, 550, 550nf; danger to the
future of the United States, 54882;
detriment to the economy, 55661,
56162nt; economic vs. philosophi-
cal/religious arguments against, 561
62nt; economy of, 56162nt;
education of slaves, 548nc; effects
of, 52; emancipation from, 564674,
570nx; establishment of, 52, 52n4;
in Florida, 567; in Georgia, 567;
inuence on the production of
wealth, 55661, 56162nt; inheri-
tance law and, 56364; introduction
of, 556n33; in Kentucky, 55861; in
Louisiana, 559n38; in Maryland,
562, 562n39; mortality and, 565n41;
in New England, 556; in New York,
556n33, 564; in the North, 556,
556n33, 562, 562n39, 56871, 578
79; in Ohio, 557n35; in Pennsylva-
nia, 562, 562n39; public opinion
and, 556n33; race and, 550; racial
prejudice and, 55255, 552nn; reli-
gion and, 556; in the South, 52, 555,
556, 556n33, 562, 562n39, 56364,
56671, 57882, 597, 597n1, 6012,
6067, 607n70; states and, 553
54no; tobacco plantations and,
562n39; types of crops and, 566
68nw; in Virginia, 556, 556n33,
556n33, 562, 562n39; work and, 558
61, 56364. See also abolition;
servitude
Smith, George Washington, 41415nv
Smith, John: The General History of
Virginia and New-England, 42n16,
66674n(F), 667; History of Vir-
ginia from the First Settlements to the
Year 1624, 5253n2
Smith, William: History of New York,
42n16, 66674n(F), 674; History of
Virginia, 66674n(F), 668
smuggling, 67778n(I)
sociability, 99599, 995nb, 997,
997nd, 99899ne
social charters, 5859, 58n10, 61
social conventions, 70910nu
social equality, 1012nq. See also
equality
1558 i ndex
social power, cxlvi, 1274, 1275
social sciences, cixn193
social state, xxvi, cviiicx, cxii, cxvii,
cxxn229, cxlv, cxlvn313, 74nb, 690
91nc, 70910nu, 1262nb, 1284
85nk; of Anglo-Americans, 7490;
ideas and, 74849nf; language and,
81829, 819nc, 826; literature and,
812. See also democratic social state
social utility, 1273
society, lxv, lxviilxix, cxlvi; advantages
of democracies for, 375401; agita-
tion of, 108992, 1089na; appear-
ance of, 108992, 1089na; bonds of,
59899nz, 598ny; classes of, 334;
customs and, cviiin190; general laws
of, 1094, 1094nc; ideas and, cviicxi,
cviiin189, cviiin191; imaginary, 727
28nb; the individual and, 127176,
1276nz; monotony of, 108992,
1089na; mores and, cviiin190; new,
1247nd; origins of, 4647; political,
118789nnab, 11871294; real, 727
28nb; rights of, 127173; in the
United States, 13089
Socrates, 959
soldiers, 116569, 1165na, 117071nnb
c, 117075, 1272nt, 129192n
solitude, xxvii
the soul, 96061nj; the body and, 963
64, 963nnab; immortality of, 958
59, 959nh, 962, 1126nr (see also the
afterlife)
the South, cxxxvin287, 51, 49899nk,
597, 597n1, 603n[*], 614nk; aboli-
tion in, 57275; agriculture and, 285,
595, 977; aristocracy in, 7778,
563nu, 6023; Blacks in, 597, 597n1,
109798nh; character of the, 52;
commerce in, 607, 607n70; com-
pared with other regions, 60111;
congressional representation of,
60910; declining power of the,
60910; dependence on the North,
596; duelling in, 1109ns; economy
of, 560, 646; education in, 491;
emancipation in, 56272, 571ny,
57275, 57882; English character in,
52; in favor of free trade, 285; Indi-
ans in, 541, 543; inheritance laws in,
56364; intermingling of races in,
57275, 574nb; interracial marriage
in, 555; lack of commerce in, 646,
646n[*]; magistrates in the, 133n39;
mediocrity in leadership in, 319; the
nullication doctrine and, 62124;
origins of Tocquevilles views on,
563nu; problem of abolition in,
56972; racial prejudice in, 555; slav-
ery in, 55556, 556n33, 562, 562n39,
56364, 56671, 57882, 597, 597n1,
6012, 6067, 607n70, 101617; tar-
iff laws and, 62024; tariffs and,
306, 610, 610n76; tobacco and,
611n78; Tocquevilles visit to, 620nt;
the Union and, 62024
South America, 3738, 366, 456, 495,
496, 644, 645, 659n(B)
South Carolina, 26768, 306, 481n5,
569, 569n45, 610, 610n76, 617n82,
62024, 622n86, 677n(H),
682n(N)
the Southwest, 319, 36465
sovereigns, 122144, 1275. See also spe-
cic types of sovereigns
sovereignty, 586np, 119799; acts of,
58390, 58485no, 586np; aristoc-
racy and, 126667; democracy and,
126566, 1265ne; divided, 23843,
26070, 273, 276, 58390, 58485no,
587nq, 587nr; division of powers
and, 239; federal courts and, 236,
23839; in France, 2056, 208; of
the human race, 410; of the states,
i ndex 1559
243; of the Union, 19192nm, 191nj;
in the United States, 2056; U.S.
Presidency and, 208. See also sover-
eignty of the people
sovereignty of the people, lxxxi, cix,
cxn196, cxviicxviii, cxxxiicxxxiii,
50, 61, 76, 9394ne, 1089, 109np,
207nb, 277, 278, 292, 410, 41213ns,
430nf, 561, 62122nv, 633, 633ne,
1191na, 119798nj, 1253, 1269; the
American Revolution and, 9293; as
a civil principle, 633; in the English
colonies, 92; in Europe, cix, 1197,
1197ng; in France, cix; in New
England, 109, 11314; as public opin-
ion, cx; in the United States, cix,
cixn194, 9197, 1197, 1197ng. See
also secondary power
Spain, 195, 287nh, 419, 552nn, 575; the
Moors and, 542nx, 552nn, 575; in
the New World, 50, 54647,
546n28, 567, 644, 651, 798 (see also
Spanish colonies); positions in,
1129nb, 1130nd; public works in,
123940nd
Spanish colonies, 495, 496, 547na, 644,
645, 651
Sparks, Jared, lxxxixn132, xcin141, 99
100nc, 107nm, 14546ng, 402na,
62122nv, 8023nd
Sparta, 1065nh
Spencer, John C., 136nx, 18687na,
291ne, 404ne, 430nf, 530nq
Spinoza, Baruch, 477, 477nn
spirit of exclusion, 88182nb
spiritualism, cxlvcxlvin315, 93941,
939nnac, 939nnab, 941nf, 941nh,
95462, 954na, 956nd, 958ng, 960
61nj. See also religion
Spitz, David, 410nm
Spoelberch de Lovenjoul collection,
xlii
stability, cxxxviiicxxxix
Stael, Madame de, cxix, 65657nh,
81012nr, 1062nb; De la litte rature,
82728nk
the State, xxvii, cxxxv, 2021, 143
44nd, 1197n8
state of nature, return to, cxxxiii,
cxxxiv, cxxxivn278, cxxxviin288
the states, xxvii, cxlvi, 99, 13941, 165,
261, 58485, 619, 630, 1197n8; bud-
gets of, 352, 352n11; commerce
among, 195, 614; contract law and,
240, 240n31; counties and, 13233;
disproportionate growth among,
60511; executive power in, 24950;
federal courts and, 24144; govern-
ment of the, 98166; independence
of, 19699, 614; interdependence of,
59597, 597n1; judicial power in,
250; legislative bodies of, 13638,
24849; litigation between, 23738,
237n28, 244, 245; nationality of,
584nn; oppression of Indians by,
54147, 54445n26, 544ny; racial
prejudice in, 55354no; regional dif-
ferences among, 60111, 603n[*],
614nk; religion in, lxix, cxxviii,
cxxxviii, cxxxix, 46778, 472ng,
47888, 478np, 479nq, 480nt,
481nn45, 482nu, 48788nx,
487nw, 74253, 93941, 939nnac,
941nf, 95462, 954na; religious sects
in, 93941, 939nnac, 941nf, 1360
64, 1360na; republican institutions
in, 62737, 62829nz; respect for
law in, 39395, 393ny; revolution
and, 1374; the rich in, 892; role in
elections in case of no majority,
221n22; Russia and, 65556, 656
57nh; separation of Church and
State, 480; servant/master relation-
ship in, 101317, 101415nm, 1007
1560 i ndex
the states (continued )
8nb; slavery and, 55354no; social
obligations in, 117; society in, 1308
9; Southwestern states, 7677, 86;
southwest of the Hudson, 77; sover-
eignty of, 24041; sovereignty of the
people in, 9197, 1197, 1197ng; state
constitutions, 24650; state courts,
23233, 23536, 23536n27, 240;
state government, lxxxii, 162, 162nb,
16566, 264, 58890; state laws, 239
40, 26770, 26869n40; state mili-
tias, 27475; suicide in, 947; taste
for material well-being in, 930
31nnab, 93034, 93233nd; terri-
tory of, 59192, 59495, 605n66,
606n69, 61718, 631, 649, 65354,
654n2; theater in, 85152, 851nh;
towns and, 4950, 99114, 110, 132
33; tyranny of the majority in, 417
50, 427na, 42829nd; uniformity of,
614nj; uniform rule in, 119799; the
Union and, 19192nm, 191nj, 194
99, 205, 23940, 25255, 26063,
26770, 54147, 58394, 58485no,
584nn, 59091nt, 598, 61327 (see
also sovereignty); unsettled land
and, 61718; vice in, 11034; virtue
in, 920, 11034; visibility of develop-
ment of, 4748nd; war and, 27375,
453; Western states, 86; wilderness
in, 49192, 638; women in, 819
21nd, 104851, 106264nnae,
106267, 1062na, 1064nh, 1067nm,
128788n; work in, 106364,
1064nf. See also provincial liberties;
the United States; specic states
The Statutes of the State of Tennessee,
133n39, 68596n(C), 686
Stendhal, 65657nh
Stith, William, History of Virginia,
51n2, 5253n2
Stoffels, Charles, xxxviii, liin35, lxi,
lxin58, cii, cxxiicxxiii, cxxiin242,
cxlivn311, 81012nr, 839ns, 845
46nb, 136872
Stoffels, Euge`ne, lxxlxxin85
Stone, 8023nd
Storer, Mr., 404ne
Story, Joseph, 18687na, 23536,
240n31, 240n32, 444n3; Commen-
taries on the Constitution of the
United States, 6061n13, 188n2, 235
36n27, 237n28, 37274nf, 685
96n(C); Laws of the United States,
198n14, 54445n26
streetwalkers, 105758nf
Stuart, Mr., 419nb
style, 809, 809no, 81012nr
subjects versus citizens, 15354
suffrage, 9596, 95nh, 31011, 31314,
321, 33637, 55354no, 561
sugar cane plantations, 559n38, 566
67, 595
suicide, 946, 947
Sumner, 1320nn
the Supreme Court, 233, 23536n27,
237n28; elevated rank of, 24446;
Georgias refusal to obey, 59091nt;
justices of, 24546; litigation among
states and, 244, 245
susceptibility, 10001004, 1000na,
10056, 1005na
Susquehanna River, 594
Sutter, Jean-Francois, 76nf
Swart, Koenrad W., 88182nb
Swetchine, Madame, 480nt
Switzerland, 251, 253n37, 27071nb,
59091t, 605n65, 99899ne, 1180
81nc, 1181
Sylla, 1160
symbols, xxxixxli
sympathy, 98990nf, 99194, 10056,
1005na
i ndex 1561
Tacitus, 441nv
talents, 123334nx
Tanner, Henry S., 53637n18, 537
38nv
tariffs, lxxxii, 238, 26768, 306, 610,
610n76, 618nr, 62024. See also nul-
lication affair
taste, 871na, 1074ne
taste for material well-being. See mate-
rial well-being
taxes, lxxxii, 125, 125n26, 131, 132ns,
194, 195, 253, 274, 33340, 453; in
England, 346; in France, 110; in
New England, 110; poor tax, 337;
public expenditures and, 34548,
350; tax base, 34546; tax revenues,
34648; towns and, 110
teleology, cxviii, cxxxiv, 6nh
temperament, 108992
temperance laws, 365
temperance movement, 397n1, 9012
Tennessee, 132n[*], 481n5, 533n14,
67576n(G), 677n(H), 682n(N)
Terence, 550n31, 550ne
Teutons, 532, 532nr
Texas, 53940n19, 651
theater, 84546nnab, 84552, 845na,
849nd, 850ng, 851nh
Thebaid, 941, 941ng
theory. See political theory
Thiers, Louis-Adolphe, cii, 1126nq,
116162nj, 123940nd
thought, 41620, 422, 49293n7, 709,
72123nr, 724, 1092ne. See also
independence of thought
Tinnin, Alvis Lee, 550ne
tobacco plantations, 562n39, 56667,
56668nw, 595, 611n78
Tocqueville, Alexandrine de (sister-in-
law), lin31, lixn55, 1295na
Tocqueville, Alexis de, liin35, lixn55,
xciii, 53nn, 111617nb, 1302nj;
Adams and, 21415nk; in Alabama,
lxix; in Albany, New York, lxix;
Alexandrine de Tocqueville and,
1295na, 1298nd, 1299ne; Ampe`re
and, 699nd, 1133nc; arrival in the
United States, 1365nb; attends Gui-
zots class at the Sorbonne, 18na; in
Baltimore, Maryland, lxix; at Baugy,
ci, cin169, ciiciii; Beaumont and,
18na, 69697na, 816nb, 111013nv,
1178na, 1255np; birth of, lin31; the
Bourbons and, lix, lxxv, lxxvi; in
Buffalo, New York, lxix; in Canada,
lxix; Catholicism of, 480nt; Chabrol
and, 18na, 150nq, 167na, 478np,
631nc, 84041nv, 131314nh; in the
Chamber of Deputies, 38687nr; at
chateau de Gallarande, 515na; in
Cincinnati, Ohio, lxix; collaboration
with Beaumont, lxxivlxxviii, lxxxv
lxxxvi, lxxxvlxxxvin120, xcviii,
xcviiin162 (see also under Beaumont,
Gustave de); Constitution of 1848
and, 13739nz, 22122n9, 22122np,
225nr; Corcelle and, 22122np,
480nt, 69697na, 755ne, 816nb,
856ng; correspondence of, xxxii
xxxiii, xxxiixxxiiin9, xxxvii
xxxviiin20, xxxviii, xliixliii,
lxiiin60, lxxlxxin84, lxxi, lxxiii,
317ng (see also specic correspon-
dents ); defends division of legislative
power into two branches, 13739nz;
democratic ideal of, cxxiv; on despo-
tism, 1247nd; in Detroit, Michigan,
lxix; E
douard de Tocqueville and,

93233nd, 1189nb (see also under
Tocqueville, E
douard de); education

of, lli; elected deputy, civ; in
England, xciv, xcivn152, xcviin158,
81ns, 88182nb, 1200na, 123537ny;
entry into the Academie des sciences
1562 i ndex
Tocqueville, Alexis de (continued )
morales et politiques, ciin171; faith
of, cxxicxxii, cxliicxliii, 480nt;
family history of, xlviiiliv; fatalism
of, cxvicxvii, 1012nq; the French
Revolution and, cvicxvi; at the
Great Lakes, lxix; Greg and, 281
82na; Hall and, 81921nd; hand-
writing of, xxxiii, xxxiiin11; heads
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 369nb;
Herve de Tocqueville and, 62122nv
(see also under Tocqueville, Herve de
(father)); hires Francis Lippitt, 84
85na; hires Theodore Sedgwick, 84
85na; history and, cxvicxx;
ignorance about industrialization,
981nc; imprisonment of, ln28; the
indemnities affair and, 37274nf;
inuence of Pascal on, 71213nc;
interest in Russia, 65657nh; inter-
views by, lxx; itinerary of, lxix; J. B.
Say and, 64243nm; journey to
America, lxilxxiv, lxin58, lxivlxv;
as juge auditeur at Versailles, liv; as
juge supple ant, lxilxiv; in Kentucky,
lxix; Kergorlay and, 21nd, 32nx,
76nf, 7879no, 317ng, 599na, 699
700ne, 71213nc, 76566nd, 1116
17nb, 115657nnd; knowledge of
German, 129798nc; legal career of,
livlvi, lxilxiv, lxxviii; literary taste
of, 81012nr; Louise Le Peletier de
Rosanbo and, 547na; in Louisiana,
lxix; in Louisville, Kentucky, lxix;
Madame de Circourt and, 1337
38nv; Madame Swetchine and,
480nt; marriage to Mary Mottley,
xcix; in Maryland, lxix; meets
Andrew Jackson, 454nh; meets Rob-
ert Walsh, 754na; in Memphis, Ten-
nessee, lxix; in Michigan, lxix;
Mignet, 76970ng; Mill and, 317ng;
Milnes and, 747ne, 798nd, 1256
57nt; mission from the French gov-
ernment, 2na; in Montgomery,
Alabama, lxix; in Nashville, Tennes-
see, lxix; on need for a new political
science, 1617nx; in New England,
lxix; in New Orleans, Louisiana,
lxix; in Newport, Rhode Island, lxv;
in New York, lxix, 461nq; in Nor-
folk, Virginia, lxix; notes of, xxxii
xxxiii, xxxiiin12, xxxvi, lxixlxx, lxx
lxxin84, lxxn81; objective of journey
to the United States, 2na; in Penn-
sylvania, lxix; in Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania, lxix; philosophical ideal of,
cxxiv; plan for establishing a review
with Beaumont and others, lxxvii
lxxviii; plans to visit Englands penal
institutions, lxxviiilxxxiv; Plato
and, cxxin237; political science and,
cxicxii, cxvi; politics and, lix,
lixn54, lxlxi, lxiii, cvicxvi, 1256
57nt; in Pontiac, Michigan, lxix; the
press and, lxv; on prisons, 1247nd;
purpose of journey to America, lxv;
receives chateau de Tocqueville and
title, c; Reeve and, 718nm; religion
and, cxxicxxii, cxliicxliii, 480nt;
remembered in Saginaw, 1346ny;
return to France, lxxivlxxv; as rhet-
orician, 1012nq; in Rhode Island,
lxv; Royer-Collard and, 816nb; in
Saginaw, Michigan, lxix, 1346ny;
science of administration and,
332nd; the South and, lxixn78,
563nu, 620nt; speech at the Acade -
mie des sciences morales et politiques,
1617nx; Stoffels and, 81012nr,
136872; in Switzerland, 27071nb;
in Tennessee, lxix; in Virginia, lxix;
i ndex 1563
in Washington, D.C., lxix. See also
specic works
Tocqueville, Alexis de, works of,
1215np, 123334nx; LAncien Re gime
et la Re volution, civcv, cvii,
cviin188, cx, cxiin201, cxlii, 104nh,
650nd, 739nc, 88182nb, 123537ny,
129798nc; De la classe moyenne
et du peuple, xxxviixxxviiin20; De
la de mocratie en France, 1819na;
E
crits et discours politiques, 650nd; A

Fortnight in the Wilderness, xxxvii,
1295na, 130359, 1303na; Journey to
Lake Oneida, xxxvixxxvii, cxv,
cxvn216, 12951302, 1295na, 1338nw;
Me moire sur le paupe risme, xcivxcv,
xcivn151, ciin171, 1012nq, 78
79no, 1227nm; morals, 1059nh; par-
liamentary report on slavery, 570nx;
on pauperism, 980na; Of the Peni-
tentiary System in the US and Its
Application to France, lxxivlxxviii,
2na, 650nd, 901n[*]; Rapport fait a`
lAcademie des sciences morales
. . ., 27071nb; Rapport fait au nom
de la commission charge e dexaminer
la proposition de M. Tracy relative
aux esclaves des colonies, 570nx;
Report on the proposed law con-
cerning the extraordinary credits
asked for Algeria, 102ne, 14546ng,
536nu; Rubish, xxxii, xxxiin6,
xxxiin7, xxxiin8; Social and Political
State of France, xcvii; Souvenirs,
cxxi, 13738nz, 225nr; Visit to Kenil-
worth, 79899ne, 1302nj; Voyages en
Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Alge rie,
81ns, 88182nb, 123537ny; Voyages
en Sicile et aux E
tats-Unis, 1295na;
writings in the Quaker Collection,
548nc
Tocqueville, chateau, xlviiin24, xlix,
lin33
Tocqueville, Christian de, xxxi
Tocqueville, E
douard de (brother),
xlviin22, xlixn26, linn3132, lii, liv,
lxvlxvii, lxixn78, lxxlxxin84,
lxxvn98, lxxxviii, xcix, cin169,
122nk, 14243nc, 339nt, 620nt,
895nb, 93233nd, 1090nc, 1110
13nv, 1189nb, 122627nk; on cen-
tralization and decentralization, 142
43nc; commentaries of, 5ne, 6ng,
8nm, 8nk, 15nv, 17ny, 19nb, 25nh,
26nk, 27nm, 29nq, 31nu, 40nj,
74na, 7778nk, 83nx, 94nf, 97nm,
117nc, 123nm, 123nn, 124n25,
140na, 14243nc, 159nz, 2056na,
21517nm, 22829nx, 254nj, 261nx,
261nu, 261nw, 269na, 285ne, 333
34nf, 334nh, 338nr, 346nc, 348
49nh, 357np, 365ny, 375na, 426nj,
434nm, 487nw, 500nn, 502nq,
502nr, 505nv, 508nz, 510nd, 905
6nnab, 919ne, 937ne, 1019no,
1062nb, 1093na, 1095nd, 1097
98nh, 114243nm; criticisms of, 5ne
Tocqueville, Herve de (father), xlii,
xlix, lli, ln27, ln29, ln30, liii
livn39, liiin38, lix, lixn55, lxv, 231
32nz, 111013nv; commentaries by,
5ne, 6ng, 8nm, 8nk, 13ns, 15nv,
17ny, 19nc, 24ng, 25nh, 26nk,
27nm, 29nq, 31nu, 37ne, 40nj,
53nn, 74na, 75ne, 7778nk, 77nj,
78nm, 80nq, 83nx, 84nz, 8586nf,
90nm, 90nh, 94nf, 95ng, 97nm,
102ne, 104nj, 116nb, 122nk, 124n25,
126np, 132nt, 133nu, 188nc, 189nd,
189nf, 199nv, 21213ng, 212nf, 215
17nm, 223nq, 227nv, 228nx, 252nh,
254nj, 261nx, 261nu, 261nw, 269na,
1564 i ndex
Tocqueville, Herve de (continued )
290nc, 304nd, 324nr, 325nt, 327
28ny, 33536nn, 335nm, 335nj,
338nr, 339nt, 342nw, 343nx, 345na,
34849nh, 356no, 357np, 357nq,
36263, 370nc, 379nf, 380ng,
383nm, 385np, 402na, 403nc,
405nf, 421nc, 429ne, 433nngj,
434nk, 462nr, 468na, 469nd,
470nf, 479nr, 484nv, 487nw,
491nb, 492nc, 501no, 505nt, 507nx,
508ny, 511ng, 676nf; Coup doeil sur
ladministration franc aise, 99100nc,
14546ng; criticisms of, 5ne; De la
charte provinciale, 99100nc; on
French administration, 14546ng;
on inheritance laws, 7879no
Tocqueville, Hippolyte de (brother),
lin31, lix, lxxv, lxxviin99, 5ne
Tocqueville, Hubert de (nephew), lin31
Tocqueville, Louise de. See Rosanbo,
Louise Le Peletier de (mother of
Tocqueville)
Tocqueville, Rene de (nephew), lin31
Tocqueville, village of, xlviii, xlviiin24
Tocqueville family, xxxivn15, livlv. See
also specic family members
Todds, John, 1333ns
toleration, lxxxiii, 602, 602nc
topicality, xlviixlviii
Toulon prison, lxxivlxxv
towns, 99114, 99n3, 1034, 261, 630;
budgets of, 352, 352n11; counties
and, 119, 119n18, 125; crude elements
of, 101, 101nd; French, 119, 119nf;
granting of freedom of the, 6nh;
independence of, 10910; in India,
102ng; individuality of, 1089, 110;
institution of, 9; lack of representa-
tion in, 104nh; liberty and, 1013,
101nd, 109, 121nh; maintenance of
roads by, 12526n29; in Massachu-
setts, 103n1; obedience of state laws,
12526, 12526n29; obligation of,
110; public ofces in, 105; rights and
duties in, 113nw; roads and, 125
26n29; social duties and, 110; sover-
eignty of the people in, 11314;
states and, 110, 125, 13233; taxes
and, 110; town districts, 1034; town
duties, 113; town government, 49
50, 6566, 1023; town institutions,
1023, 162nb, 466; town liberties,
1013, 101nd, 109, 121nh, 307, 630,
632; town life, 10810, 13031; town
magistrates, 1067, 107n6, 118, 120;
town meetings, lxxxi, 105; town of-
cials, 1067, 107n6, 118, 118n14, 120,
129n36; town powers, 1045n2,
1047; town spirit, 106nk, 11014;
town treasurers, 106; in the United
States, 132. See also cities; municipal-
ities; New England towns
trade, 7, 306. See also commerce
transubstantiation, 82223nf
treaties, 200, 244
Treatise on the Rules of Civil Actions,
443n2
Trinity College, Cambridge, xlii
Trumbull, Benjamin, A Complete
History of Connecticut, civil and
ecclesiastical, 1630-1764, 66674n(F),
673
trustees, 68596n(C)
truth, cxxiin240, cxxiiin244, 71415,
715nf, 716nh, 732; absolute, cxxi
cxxiv, cxxiin240, 3na, 716nh;
abstract, 750; demonstrated, cxxiii;
impossibility of knowing the, cxxi
cxxiv, cxxiin240, cxxiiin245; passion
for, 78182nj, 782
Tudors, 446
Turkey, 15859ny, 23132nz, 828nm
tyranny, 162, 185, 89596, 94850nc,
i ndex 1565
118789na, 1245nb, 129394n; dem-
ocratic, 360; distinguished from
arbitrariness, 41516, 41516nx; as
the greatest evil, 3na; legislative, 185;
legitimate, 631; of the majority (see
the majority, tyranny of); revolu-
tionary spirit and, 1273nu; in small
nations, 25556; in the United
States, 41819, 41920nb. See also
absolute monarchy; despotism
Tyrians, 94850nc, 950
ultras, lxxvlxxvi, cvi
unbelief, 47576, 476n3, 482, 488, 755,
96568, 965na
uncertainty, cxxv
uniformity, 614nj, 118789na, 1194na,
1195, 12001205, 1223, 1275, 128182
uniform legislation, 119799, 1199nm
uniform power, 119799, 1199nm
uniform rule, 1195, 119799, 1292nc
the Union, 9899; as an accident, 627
28; attributions of, 19395; chances
of lasting, 582627; dangers to, 582
627, 59697nx; dismemberment of,
613nh, 627, 647, 653; displacement
of forces as greatest danger to, 605
11; disproportionate growth among
states and regions, 60511; division
of sovereignty in, 58390, 58485no;
enemies of, 614; future of, lxxxii;
interdependence of regions in, 595
97, 597n1; nationality of, 584nn;
probable fate of, 582627; the South
and, 62024; sovereignty of, 191
92nm, 191nj, 23840; the states and,
19192nm, 191nj, 195, 19699, 205,
23940, 25255, 26063, 26770,
54147, 58394, 58485no, 584nn,
59091nt, 598, 61327, 61518,
62425; strengths of, 626; weakness
of, 267, 59091t, 620, 626. See also
the United States; U.S. federal
government
Union Party, 622n86
Unitarianism, lxxxiii, 754nb, 1351
the United States, 1212nk, 1215np;
accidental or providential factors in
the survival of, 45365; ambition in,
111618nnaf, 111628; as an exam-
ple of democracy, 50412, 513nm,
513nn; the appearance of society in,
108992, 1089na; the aristocratic
party in, 287; Capitol of, 797; as
center of commerce in the Ameri-
cas, 64546; circulation of thought
in, 49293n7; cities in, 45455,
454n1, 454nj; civil society in, 2na,
63334; climate of, 453nf, 654; coast-
line of, 637; compared to France,
596; Constitution of (see the U.S.
Constitution); corruption in, 358;
courtier spirit in, 42023, 420nd;
distinguished from democracies in
general, 500504; division into par-
ticular societies, 106870, 1068nna
b; immigration to, 27, 4950, 49ne,
5354; England and, lxxxiv, 646,
76768nf; as entirely middle class,
cxxviiin257, cxxviiicxxix; Europe
and, 638, 68283n(O), 768, 805nj;
European emigration to, 132324;
expansion of, 86, 654; federal form
of government in, 46566; foreign
policy of, 37274nf; four types of
budgets in, 352, 352n11; France and,
lxvi, 371, 37274nf; free space in,
49ne; the French Revolution and,
371; the future of, 64957; general
benecial tendency of laws in, 377
84; homogeneity of facilitating fed-
eral system, 27072; idea of rights
in, 38993; inability to enforce con-
scription, 36162, 362nv, 362nu;
1566 i ndex
the United States (continued )
inability to register sailors, 362;
intellectual inuence of England on,
cxxviii; intellectual movement in,
696870; isolation of, 49ne, 209,
27576, 453, 495; lack of intellectual
work in, 8788; lack of a large capi-
tal, 45455, 454n1; lack of outstand-
ing leadership in public affairs, 314
18; lack of theater in, 851nh;
language as unifying bond, 4950;
leveling of civilization in, 130911;
maritime power of, 63947; Mexico
and, 651; middling level of human
knowledge in, 8788; as a mirror
of France, cvii, cviin185; as model of
social revolution, 2630; national
character of, 42023; naval forces of,
647; as a new country, 49ne; as the
non-intellectual part of Europe,
cxxviiicxxix; North-South division
of, 52nj; as part of the middle
classes of England, 76768nf; physi-
cal conditions of, lxvii, lxviii, lxix,
cxii, cxxviii, 453, 453nf, 45658,
494500, 654; power that American
democracy exercises over itself, 364
66; principal causes that maintain
the democratic republic of, 451514;
prosperity of, 61516. See also Amer-
ica; the states; the Union; the U.S.
federal government; specic cities;
specic parts of government; specic
regions; specic states
unity, cxxxv, cxxxviicxxxviii, cxliv,
cxlivn309, 758, 758nd, 118789na,
12012ncnb, 1202, 1204nf, 121415,
1215no, 1223nf, 1228nn, 123537ny,
1260nx, 1275, 1292n
universal rights, 38687nr, 392, 392nv
universal suffrage, 9596, 95nh, 31011,
31314, 321, 33637, 561
LUniversite catholique, 112425np
University of Paris, 6nh
upper classes, 363, 512nj, 754na. See
also aristocracy
the U.S. Constitution, 17071, 186
276, 18788na, 188n2, 188nb, 190n5,
190nh, 19192nm, 191nk, 191nk,
19293nn68, 192n6, 252, 403n1,
583, 615, 621, 62425, 1375; amend-
ments to, 59091nt; basis in laws of
New England, 6465; compared to
other federal constitutions, 25155;
on Congress, 196200; executive
powers in, 2013, 24950; Federalists
and, 282, 284; federal powers, 195
250; on foreign affairs, 37274nf;
foreign affairs and, 36667, 367n16,
369n[*], 371; historical background
of, 18690; on the House of Repre-
sentatives, 196200, 198n14; inter-
pretation of in favor of the states,
616; judicial powers in, 22950,
441nv; jury system and, 685
96n(C); legislative powers, 196200,
24749; militias and, 27475; on
political jurisdiction, 682n(N);
population growth and, 652; power
of the majority in, 4034, 403nb; on
the Presidency, 24950; respect for,
634; on the Senate, 196200, 197ns;
seventeenth amendment, 321nk;
sovereignty of the federal govern-
ment in, 25255; summary picture
of, 19192; superiority to state con-
stitutions, 24650; war and, 27374
the useful, 78889, 788na, 789nc, 923
25nn, 97879nj, 1282nf
useful arts, 78890, 78990nd, 791ne,
798nc
the U.S. federal government, 31374,
403n1, 58894, 626; attributions of,
19395; budget of, 352, 352n11; con-
i ndex 1567
solidation of power by, 615; decline
of, 616, 617; economy of, 34344;
Indians and, 54147, 542n24, 544
45n26, 544n25, 618; infrastructure
and, 61671; lack of merit in those
governing, 31418; movement
toward centralization, 62627; as
proprietor of unsettled land, 61718;
retreat of, 61617; seen as a nuisance,
616; sovereignty of, 615; strengths
and weaknesses of, 58889, 589ns,
59091t; unsettled land and, 61718;
weakening of, 61227, 613nh. See
also the Union
utility. See the useful
Valois dynasty, 24ng
vanity, 108688, 1086ne
Van Rensselaer family, 85nb
Varro (Marcus Terentius or Gaius Ter-
entius), 1100nj
vassals, 6nh
Vatine, 1299nf. See also La Croix de
Watines family
Vattemare, Alexander, 18687na
Vaud, Switzerland, 59091t
Vaux, Robert, 81ns
vengeance, 1109ns
Vermont, 52n5, 652, 67576n(G),
677n(H), 682n(N)
Verplanck, Gulian Crommelin, 802
3nd
vice, 35659, 1094, 109596ne, 11034,
123334nx, 1282
Villeneuve-Bargemont, Alban de,
E
conomie politique chre tienne, ou

recherches sur la nature et les causes de
paupe risme, xcviin158, 64243nm,
980na
Vincennes (city), 53940n19, 650
violence, 41819
Virginia, 5153, 132n[*], 595; act of ces-
sion by, 617n82; Blacks in, 569,
569n45; commerce in, 607n70;
Constitution of, 481n5; electoral
conditions in, 677n(H); English set-
tlers in, 5253n2; histories of, 666
74n(F), 66768; House of
Delegates, 184; Indians in, 529n10;
law of entail in, 67576n(G); nulli-
cation affair and, 623n88; political
jurisdiction in, 184, 682n(N); popu-
lation growth in, 6089, 6089n74,
608n73; population of, 610n77,
610ne; representation in Congress,
6089; settlers in, 5152, 5152n2;
slavery in, 556, 556n33, 556n33, 562,
562n39; supreme court of, 235
36n27; tariff laws and, 62024
Virtanen, Reino, 800801nb, 802
3nd, 813nb
virtue, 92122, 92325nn, 1094,
1094nc, 109596ne, 1095nd,
1096nf, 111013nv, 123334nx, 1282;
aristocracy and, 919, 922nk; doc-
trine of interest well understood
and, 92122, 922nk; liberty and,
509, 509na; in republics, 509,
509na; in Rome, 1102; in the United
States, 920, 11034. See also morals
Voiture, 807nm, 814nc
Volney, lxiv, lxxiii; Tableau des E
tats-
Unis, 524n4, 531n12, 594; Tableau du
climat et du sol des Etats-Unis, 539
40n19
Voltaire, 15859ny, 704
Voorhees, P. F., 576nd
voting rights. See electoral rights
Walsh, Robert, 754na, 8023nd
Wampanoags, 529n10
war, 27273, 272nc, 453, 994nh, 1153
64, 1165nnab, 1167n1, 129192n;
aristocracy and, 117880n1, 118283,
1568 i ndex
war (continued )
1182ne, 118789na; centralization
and, 116062, 116162nj, 121516;
civil wars, 1178na, 118586, 1186n3;
confederations and, 1186n3; conti-
nental, 68283n(O); democracy
and, 115364, 1153na, 1160ng, 1161
62nj, 1162nk, 117880nn12, 1178
86, 1178na, 1180nb, 1182ne, 1184nh,
1186n3; equality and, 117880nn12,
117886, 1178na, 1180nb, 1182ne,
1184nh, 1186n3; Europe and, 273,
117880nnb, 118081, 118081nc;
maritime, 68283n(O); property
and, 118384; the United States and,
27375, 36162, 362nv, 362nu; the
U.S. Constitution and, 27374. See
also specic wars
Warden, D. B., 66674n(F), 674
War of 1812, 274, 275, 414n4, 520n1,
591n53, 620
War of Independence. See American
Revolution
warrior mores, 129192n, 1292
wars: civil wars, 1178na, 118586, 1186n3
Warville, Brissot de, Examen critique
des Voyages dans lAme rique septen-
trionale de M. le marquis de Chastel-
lux, 550ne
Warwick castle, 79899ne
Wash Hood, 542n23
Washington, D.C., lxxxiii, 606, 608
Washington, George, 190, 190n4,
190nh, 36768, 368[*], 371, 371n17,
37274nf, 541, 609n75
wealth, 1228, 123537ny, 128687n;
acquisition of, lxvilxviii, lxxxiii, 85,
76668, 76768nf, 772nh, 93034,
93233nd, 973nc, 973n1, 97476,
974nd; aristocracy and, 1090; com-
ponents of, 35051, 35051nk;
democracy and, 8586ne, 973nc,
973n1, 97476, 974nd, 975nf,
1138nh; equality of conditions and,
1228; governance and, 97476,
974nd; inuence of slavery on, 556
61; love of, 1090, 1090nc, 1091, 1104;
power and, 97476, 974nd, 975nf;
rise of personal, 79; slavery and,
56162nt. See also money; the rich
Weber, Max, 31nt
Webster, Daniel, 62122nv, 8023nd
well-being, cxxxiii, cxxxvin284, cxli,
cxlv, 751, 781nh, 91825, 129192n.
See also interests; interest well
understood, doctrine of; material
well-being
the West, cxiicxiv, 49899nk, 597,
658n(A); agriculture in, 595, 977;
congressional representation of,
60910; dependence on the North,
596; education in, 491; growth in,
607; increasing power of, 610; inu-
ence of letters in the, 7nh; lack of
Blacks in, 566; migration toward,
45859, 460, 47677, 65253; popu-
lation growth in, 610
West, Paul, 800801nb
wheat, 595
Whiskey Tax rebellion, 59091nt
White, Paul Lambert, xxxi, xxxin3
whites: Blacks and, 54882, 548n30,
58081; mortality of, 565n41; popu-
lation growth of, 566. See also
Anglo-Americans
Wilberforce, Canada, 576nd
the wilderness, xxvii, cxivcxv,
cxvn216, 36, 36nd, 4344, 496,
498nj, 505, 61718, 83537; as Amer-
icans primary obstacle, 65556; cir-
culation of thought in, 492;
expansion into, 653; in North Amer-
ica, 45758, 459, 460, 46162, 491
92, 638, 65556; in South America,
i ndex 1569
638. See also the frontier
will, 91, 125152, 1251nm, 1259
Williams, Oliver, 132627, 1326nq
Williams, Roger, Key into the Language
of the Indians of New England,
42n15, 1352
Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 8023nd
Winthrop, Delba, 6869, 68n41
women, cxlivn310, 1251nm; American,
81921nd, 104851, 106264nnae,
106267, 1062na, 1064nh, 1067nm,
128788n; Catholicism and, 1041
42nc, 1042; Christianity and, 1044
45, 1044nf; education of, 104147,
1065nngh; English, 81921nd,
1048nb, 1053, 1053nb, 1064ne,
1066nj; equality with men, 1062
64nnae, 106267, 1064nh,
1067nm; in Europe, 1062na,
1062nb, 1063, 1063nc, 106566; in
France, 1066; in Germany, 1066nj;
honor and, 111013nv; inuence on
politics, 81921nd; marriage and,
104851, 1048na, 105455n1, 1054
57, 111013nv; men and, 1053, 1054;
mores and, 47374, 104142nc,
104147, 105254nnab, 105261,
105758nf, 1059nh, 1066; pioneers,
128788n, 131819; prostitutes, 1057
58nf; Protestantism and, 104142nc,
1042; religion and, 104142nc, 1042,
104445, 1044nf, 104849; sex and,
1053, 105758nf; subjugation of,
72728nb; as wives, 104851,
1048na. See also girls
woods, 133640, 133738nv
work, 96971, 969na; division of
labor between the sexes, 106364,
1064nf; slavery and, 55861, 56364;
in the United States, 106364,
1064nf
workers, 102526nab, 102530,
1027nd. See also labor; working
classes
working classes, 64243, 64243nm.
See also labor
writers. See authors
Wynne, Marjorie G., xliv
Yale University, xxxi, xxxin2, xxxin4,
xliv, 5ne, 37274nf, 69798na
Zeitlin, Irving M., 570nx, 1133nc
Zetterbaum, Marvin, 1012nq
Zuckert, Catherine, xxiv
This project would not have been possible without the
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Alexis de Tocqueville

tattranslated as State (upper case) when referring to the nation, the

tats-Unis, and for that of his essay on Ireland.

crits et discours politiques.

crits sur le syste `me pe nitentiaire en France et a` le tranger.

tudes e conomiques, politiques et litte raires.

douard de Tocqueville, Washington, 20 January 1832. This letter be-

douard de Tocqueville published

milie Evrard de Belisle, he would spend most

douard, 13 September 1822, we read regarding secret

douard, wrote the Abbe in 1822, you

douard de Tocqueville, 25 August 1822, YTC, AIV).

douard de Tocqueville, 14 September 1822,

vreux: Charles Herissey, 1898), p. 107.

tats-Unis (Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1835), I, pp. 3940).

douard. Andre Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, pp. 8384.

douard de Tocqueville, 18 October 1831, YTC, BIa2.

douard dated 28 May:

lie de Beaumont. He also asked that the lectures of Guizot

douard, 20 June 1831, YTC, BIa2.

douard: I amleaving America after using my

douard, on 20 June 1831, Tocqueville exhorted his brother tohave

tats-Unis et de son application en France appeared in January 1833.

tats-Unis. Withthe kindpermissionof the Massachusetts Historical

douard, on 15 June, wrote to his brother to share his observations

tats-Unis, tableau des murs americaines. Paris: Charles

tats-Unis, Revue des deux mondes,

douard de Tocqueville wouldformthe prin-

douard de Tocqueville. That is where Alexis began to work on the second

douardde Tocqueville. By elimination, someremaining

douard de Tocqueville: That is right (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 9).

douard de Tocqueville: Perhaps humble would be better (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 10).

douard de Tocqueville: Current society is certainly entirely new by comparison

douard de Tocqueville (?): Very right (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 1920).

douard de Tocqueville: This thought is excellent. I do not know what must be

douard de Tocqueville: I do not share this opinion (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 92).

douard de Tocqueville: Apt observation. This rst paragraph must be reworked a

douard de Tocqueville: I nd the word egoism good (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 95).

douardde Tocqueville: Doesnt inequality come fromthe lackof inheritancelaws?

douard de Tocqueville: I understand the preceding objection when it involved ex-

crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1,

crits et discours politiques, OC, III, 1, p. 450).

douard de Tocqueville: It is very concise. I do not nd it obscure (YTC, CIIIb,

douard de Tocqueville (?):

douard de Tocqueville: This sentence is absolutely unintelligible. Why? What do

douard de Tocqueville to his brother, Alexis:

crits et discours politiques,

tude litteraire sur Alexis de Tocqueville,

lie de Beaumont, judge at Versailles, for

tat, in France, was a high

tat was not

tat, to prevent someone from having the rst punished; when

tats that could refuse their support, after the sovereign

douard de Tocqueville: Economists will nd that this term only in producing is

douard de Tocqueville: This observation seems just to me (YTC, CIIIb, 2, pp. 13

douard de Tocqueville: Nor do I (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 14).

douard de Tocqueville: That is very true (YTC, CIII b, 2, p. 14).

tats-Unis (Revue Britannique, n.s., VI,

douard de Tocqueville (?):