Democracy in America

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

By Alexis De Tocqueville


Translated by Henry Reeve




Book One


Introduction

Special Introduction By Hon. John T. Morgan

In the eleven years that separated the Declaration of the Independence
of the United States from the completion of that act in the ordination
of our written Constitution, the great minds of America were bent upon
the study of the principles of government that were essential to the
preservation of the liberties which had been won at great cost and with
heroic labors and sacrifices. Their studies were conducted in view of
the imperfections that experience had developed in the government of the
Confederation, and they were, therefore, practical and thorough.

When the Constitution was thus perfected and established, a new form of
government was created, but it was neither speculative nor experimental
as to the principles on which it was based. If they were true
principles, as they were, the government founded upon them was destined
to a life and an influence that would continue while the liberties it
was intended to preserve should be valued by the human family. Those
liberties had been wrung from reluctant monarchs in many contests,
in many countries, and were grouped into creeds and established in
ordinances sealed with blood, in many great struggles of the people.
They were not new to the people. They were consecrated theories, but
no government had been previously established for the great purpose of
their preservation and enforcement. That which was experimental in our
plan of government was the question whether democratic rule could be so
organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and
result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the
power so often found necessary of repressing or destroying their enemy,
when he was found in the person of a single despot.

When, in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville came to study Democracy in America,
the trial of nearly a half-century of the working of our system had been
made, and it had been proved, by many crucial tests, to be a government
of "liberty regulated by law," with such results in the development of
strength, in population, wealth, and military and commercial power, as
no age had ever witnessed.

[See Alexis De Tocqueville]

De Tocqueville had a special inquiry to prosecute, in his visit to
America, in which his generous and faithful soul and the powers of his
great intellect were engaged in the patriotic effort to secure to the
people of France the blessings that Democracy in America had ordained
and established throughout nearly the entire Western Hemisphere. He had
read the story of the French Revolution, much of which had been recently
written in the blood of men and women of great distinction who were
his progenitors; and had witnessed the agitations and terrors of the
Restoration and of the Second Republic, fruitful in crime and sacrifice,
and barren of any good to mankind.

He had just witnessed the spread of republican government through all
the vast continental possessions of Spain in America, and the loss of
her great colonies. He had seen that these revolutions were accomplished
almost without the shedding of blood, and he was filled with anxiety to
learn the causes that had placed republican government, in France, in
such contrast with Democracy in America.

De Tocqueville was scarcely thirty years old when he began his studies
of Democracy in America. It was a bold effort for one who had no special
training in government, or in the study of political economy, but he
had the example of Lafayette in establishing the military foundation of
these liberties, and of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton,
all of whom were young men, in building upon the Independence of the
United States that wisest and best plan of general government that was
ever devised for a free people.

He found that the American people, through their chosen representatives
who were instructed by their wisdom and experience and were supported
by their virtues--cultivated, purified and ennobled by self-reliance and
the love of God--had matured, in the excellent wisdom of their counsels,
a new plan of government, which embraced every security for their
liberties and equal rights and privileges to all in the pursuit of
happiness. He came as an honest and impartial student and his great
commentary, like those of Paul, was written for the benefit of all
nations and people and in vindication of truths that will stand for
their deliverance from monarchical rule, while time shall last.

A French aristocrat of the purest strain of blood and of the most
honorable lineage, whose family influence was coveted by crowned heads;
who had no quarrel with the rulers of the nation, and was secure
against want by his inherited estates; was moved by the agitations
that compelled France to attempt to grasp suddenly the liberties and
happiness we had gained in our revolution and, by his devout love
of France, to search out and subject to the test of reason the
basic principles of free government that had been embodied in our