The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Translator’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Key Terms
• Foreword
• The Manuscripts of Tocqueville
• Some Details Concerning the Present Edition
• Abbreviations and Symbols Used In This Edition
• Note On the Manuscripts
• Acknowledgments
• Illustrations
• Editor’s Introduction
• I: Legacies
• II: To Understand the Revolution
• Democracy In America a (1835), Volume I]: Part I
• Introduction a
• Chapter 1: Exterior Configuration of North America
• Chapter 2: Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance For the Future of the Anglo-americans a
• Reasons For Some Singularities That the Laws and Customs B of the Anglo-americans Present
• Chapter 3: Social State of the Anglo-americans
• That the Salient Point of the Social State of the Anglo-americans Is to Be Essentially Democratic
• Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-americans
• Chapter 4: Of the Principle of the Sovereignty of the People In America
• Chapter 5: Necessity of Studying What Happens In the Individual States Before Speaking About the Government of the Union a
• Of the Town System In America C
• Town District
• Town Powers In New England
• Of Town Life
• Of Town Spirit In New England
• Of the County In New England
• Of Administration In New England a
• General Ideas On Administration In the United States
• Of the State
• Legislative Power of the State
• Of the Executive Power of the State
• Of the Political Effects of Administrative Decentralization In the United States C
• Chapter 6 A: of the Judicial Power In the United States and Its Action On Political Society B
• Other Powers Granted to American Judges
• Chapter 7: Of Political Jurisdiction In the United States Tn 4
• Chapter 8: Of the Federal Constitution
• Historical Background of the Federal Constitution a
• Summary Picture of the Federal Constitution J
• Attributions of the Federal Government
• Federal Powers
• Legislative Powers: R [difference Between the Constitution of the Senate and That of the House of Representatives]
• Another Difference Between the Senate and the House of Representatives W
• Of Executive Power 16
• How the Position of the President of the United States Differs From That of a Constitutional King In France
• Accidental Causes That Can Increase the Influence of the Executive Power
• Why the President of the United States, to Lead Public Affairs, Does Not Need to Have a Majority In the Chambers
• Of the Election of the President
• Mode of Election
• Election Crisis
• Of the Re-election of the President
• Of the Federal Courts 24
• Way of Determining the Jurisdiction Tn 5 of the Federal Courts
• Different Cases of Jurisdiction
• The Federal Courts’ Way of Proceeding
• Elevated Rank That the Supreme Court Occupies Among the Great Powers of the State
• How the Federal Constitution Is Superior to the State Constitutions
• What Distinguishes the Federal Constitution of the United States of America From All Other Federal Constitutions
• Of the Advantages of the Federal System In General, and of Its Special Utility For America M
• What Keeps the Federal System From Being Within the Reach of All Peoples; and What Has Allowed the Anglo-americans to Adopt It

CHAPTER 2

Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance for the Future of the Anglo-Americansa

A man is newly born; his first years pass obscurely amid the pleasures or occupations of childhood. He grows up; manhood begins; finally the doors of the world open to receive him; he enters into contact with his fellow men. Then, for the first 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 reflected for the first time in the still dark mirror of his intellect; contemplate the first examples that catch his eye; listen to the first words that awaken his slumbering powers of thought; finally, witness the first 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 effects of their origin. The circumstances that accompanied their birth and were useful to their development influence all the rest of their course.

If it were possible for us to go back to the elements of societies and examine the first memorials of their history, I am certain that we would be able to discover there the first cause of the prejudices, habits, dominant passions, of all that ultimately composes what is called the national character. [{There, no doubt, we would find the key to more than one historical enigma}]. There we would happen to find 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 society like fragments of broken chains that are sometimes seen still hanging from the vaults of an old edifice and that no longer hold up anything. Thus would be explained the destiny of certain peoples who seem to be dragged by an unknown force toward an end unknown even to themselves. 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 contemplate 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 substances. Each of us can therefore consider himself as the summary of many other individuals of the same species who have lived before him. An analogous phenomenon occurs again in the history of the formation of 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 haphazardly over the earth, there is no one who could now recapture an original 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 labyrinth, provides only incomplete conclusions and vague hypotheses.]

America is the only country where we have been able to witness the natural and tranquil development of a society and where it has been possible to clarify the influence that the point of departure exercised on the future of States.d

At the time when European peoples descended upon the shores of the New World, the features of their national character were already well fixed; 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 fifteenth 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 first 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 lacked and has allowed us to discern the first 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 examine its political and social state, you feel deeply convinced of 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 find 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 themselves 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 saw more notions of rights, more principles of true liberty spread among them than among most of the peoples of Europe. At the time of the first migrations, town government, this fertile seed of free institutions, had already entered 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 intellectual 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 development, 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 can be said in general, 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, however, that on several occasions great lords went to America following political or religious quarrels. Laws were made in order to establish a 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 himself. 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 cultivated alone.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 that constitutes it; it is landed property handed down by inheritance. A nation may exhibit immense fortunes and great misery; but if these fortunes are not territorial, you see poor and rich in its bosom; truly speaking, there is no aristocracy.g

So all the English colonies, at the time of their birth, shared a great family resemblance. All, from their beginning, seemed destined to present the development 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 distinguished, one in the South, one in the North; until now, they have grown up without being completely merged.

Virginia received the first 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 destructive idea has done more to impoverish the European nations that embraced 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 turbulent spirit troubled the early years of the colony2 and made its progress 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 influence on the character, the laws and the entire future of the South.

Slavery, as we will explain later, dishonors work; into society, it introduces idleness, along with ignorance and pride, poverty and luxury. It enervates the forces of the mind and puts human activity to sleep. The influence 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 New England states,5 were combined the two or three principal ideas that today form the foundations of the social theory of the United States.

The principles of New England first spread into neighboring states; then, one by one, they reached the most distant states and finished, if I can express myself in this way, by penetrating the entire confederation. Now they exercise their influence beyond its limits, over the entire American world. The civilization of New England has been like those fires 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 new spectacle; everything there 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 first inhabitants either men without education 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 belonged to the comfortable classes of the mother country. Their gathering on American soil presented, from the beginning, the singular phenomenon of a society in which there were neither great lords,n nor lower classes, neither poor, nor rich, so to speak. [I have already said that, among the Europeans who went to America, conditions were in general largely equal, but it can be said that, in a way, these emigrants {the Puritans} carried democracy even within democracy.] In proportion, there was a greater amount of 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 them had 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, from all the others was the very aim of their enterprise. It was not necessity that forced them to abandon their 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 from the 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 austerity 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.

A few citations will show the spirit of these pious adventurers better than anything that we could add.

Nathaniel Morton, historian of the first years of New England, begins in this way:6

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 first emigrants in this way:7

The emigrants numbered about one hundred and fifty, 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 finally 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:

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. Puritanism, 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 first 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

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 Puritanism continued to be located in the middle classes;u most of the emigrants came from within the middle classes. The population of New England increased rapidly; 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 revolutions, the English government watched this heavy emigration without 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 English 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 independence than the 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 first discovered them.

In this way, nearly the entire littoral of North America became an English possession toward the end of the sixteenth century. The means used by the British government to populate these new domains 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 granted ownership of certain portions 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 system consisted of giving a certain number 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 practice only in New England.13

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 England until long after their existence had become an accomplished fact. Plymouth, Providence, New Haven, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island15 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 difficult, while surveying the first 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 performing 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 alone16 [≠later, when the colonies began to become powerful, the mother country raised the claim of defending and directing them≠].

Nothing is more singular and, at the very same time, more instructive 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 Connecticut18 first 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 saying, “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 flagrant insult by a son toward his parents. In this way, the legislation of a primitive and half-civilized people was transferred 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 preoccupied with upholding moral order and standards of good behavior; they constantly enter, therefore, into the realm of conscience. There is hardly any sin that 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 flirtation between unmarried people is severely suppressed. On the guilty, the judge has the right to inflict one of three punishments: a fine, a flogging or a wedding.20 And if the records of the old courts of New Haven are to be believed, proceedings of this nature were not rare; you find, dated May 1, 1660, a verdict with a fine 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 fine or a flogging cracks down on a simple lie when it might be harmful.23 In other places, the legislator, completely forgetting the great principles of religious liberty that he claimed in Europe, forces, by threat of fines, attendance at divine24 worship.w And he goes so far as to impose severe penalties,25 and often death, on Christians who want to worship God according to a creed different from his own.26 Finally, the fervor for regulations, which possesses him, sometimes 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 concerned; 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 infirmity of our nature, which, incapable of firmly grasping the true and the just, is most often reduced to choosing only between two excesses.

Alongside this penal legislation, so strongly stamped by narrow sectarian 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 recognized and laid down by the laws of New England. There, the intervention of the people in public affairs, the free vote of taxes, the responsibility 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 developments 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 difficulty.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 officers 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 New England, as early as 1650, the town is completely and definitively formed. Gathered around this town individuality and strongly attached to it are interests, passions, duties, and rights. Within the town, a real, active, totally democratic and republican political life reigns. The colonies still recognize 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 representation 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, you are struck by the legislator’s 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 assured;34 strict measures were taken for maintaining roads; and officers 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 officers were charged with the 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 intelligent and enlightened men who have never been completely preoccupied by the material concerns of life.≠]

The law gets into a thousand different details to provide for and to satisfy 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, finds in the 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 first 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 fines, to tax themselves to support them. Secondary schools are established in the same way in the most populated districts. Municipal magistrates must watch that parents send their children to school; they have the right to levy fines against those who refuse to do so. And if resistance continues, society then displaces 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 ordinances: in America, it is religion that leads to enlightenment; it is the observance 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 around this same era, you are filled 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 and feudal liberty of the Middle Ages. [<≠The top of the social edifice already received the lights of modern civilization, while the base still remained in the darkness 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 completely 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 nations, were proclaimed in the wilderness of the New World and became the future creed [{political catechism}] of a great people. The boldest theories 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, abandoned to its natural originality, improvised legislation without precedent. Within this obscure democracy that had still not brought forth either generals, or philosophers, or great writers, a man could stand up in the presence of a free people and give, to the acclamation of all, this beautiful definition of liberty:41

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, in a 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 sectarians 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 them to liberty.}]

From that, two diverse but not opposite tendencies resulted whose traces can easily be found everywhere, in the mores as in the laws.z

Some men sacrifice 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 born fall before them; old opinions that for centuries ruled the world vanish; an almost limitless course and a field without horizons open. The human mind rushes 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 classified, 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 experience and jealousy of all authority.

Far from harming each other, these two tendencies, apparently so opposed, 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 field offered by the Creator to the efforts of intelligence. Free and powerful in its sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion knows that its dominion is that much better established because 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.]

Reasons for Some Singularities That the Laws and Customsb of the Anglo-Americans Present

[≠From whatever side I envisage the laws and mores of the Anglo-Americans, I rediscover striking traces of their origin {of the point of departure}. 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 draw from what precedes consequences that are too general and absolute. The social condition, the religion and the mores of the first emigrants undoubtedly exercised an immense influence 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 customs 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 Puritan origin or of English origin must be carefully distinguished.

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.

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 first action in proceedings consists of obtaining bail from the defendant or, if he refuses, of having him incarcerated; 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 imprisonment 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 fines.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 am speaking 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 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 know them. The bulk of the nation knows them hardly at all; they see them in action only in individual cases, grasp their tendency only with difficulty, 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.

[a. ]Point of departure./

Influence of the point of departure on the future of society.

Homogeneous ideas, mores, needs, passions of the founders of American society.

Influence of the extent of the territory, of the nature of the country, of its geographic 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).

[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 Officer [Isaac Goodwin, Town Officer: or Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Duties of Municipal Officers, second edition, Worcester: Dorr and Howland, 1829. (ed.)].≠”

[c. ] In the margin:

[d. ] Tocqueville seems not to have been satisfied 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 suggested by Beaumont (the original version said discern the influence and spoke only of tranquil development). In relation to the same subject, Tocqueville notes in a rough draft:

In America Tocqueville found the history of the establishment of a people that Rousseau lacked:

[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 influence 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 first centuries of the world, but to man already educated by an experience of 6,000 years (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 20-21).

[f. ] In the margin: “Put the details of this idea further along at democracy.”

[g. ] To the side, with a bracket that includes the last three sentences of the paragraph: “{Hasn’t 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-fifth of the production of gold and silver mines to the crown. See Life of Washington, by Marshall, vol. I, pp. 18-66.

[2. ] A great portion of the new settlers, says Stith (History of Virginia) [pp. 167-68 (ed.)], were dissolute young men of good families, shipped off by their relatives to save them from an 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 and excesses. See, relative to the history of Virginia, the following works:

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 first drafts of the manuscript, Tocqueville’s thinking tends to be oriented toward a North-South division of the United States. This understanding is modified 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.

[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. ] Hervé 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).

[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 first fragment from Morton says:

The second text from Morton reads:

[7. ]New England’s Memorial, p. 23 [-24 (ed.)].

[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. Doesn’t 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 England’s Memorial, p. 35 [-36 (ed.)].

[q. ] The original text says:

[*]New England’s 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 first inhabitants of Connecticut in 1639, and the founders of Providence in 1640, also began by drawing up a social contract that was submitted for approval to all those affected, Pitkin’s History, [vol I, (ed.)] pp. 42 [43 (ed.)] and 47.

[r. ] The quoted fragment reads:

[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.

[11. ] This was the case for the state of New York.

[12. ] Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey were in this case. See Pitkin’s History, vol. I, pp. 13-31.

[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 documents valuable in their contents and authenticity, relating to the early years of the colonies, among others, the different charters that were granted by the English crown, as well as the first 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 Pitkin’s 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. 42-47 [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: in 1650 the name of the King still did not appear at the head of judicial orders. See Hutchinson, vol. I, p. 452.

[v. ] “Ask Niles about the authenticity of the blue laws” (YTC, CVb, p. 33).

The laws of the first 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. 435-56, the analysis of the penal code adopted in 1648 by the colony of Massachusetts; this code is drafted on principles analogous to that of Connecticut.

[19. ] Adultery was likewise punished by death under the law of Massachusetts, and Hutchinson, 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 finally 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.

[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. 536-37, and Tocqueville’s 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 fine on captains of vessels that bring Quakers into the country. The Quakers who succeed in entering will be flogged and put into prison to work. Those who defend their opinions will first be fined, 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 identified, condemned to death. See same collection, vol. II, p. 456, the sentencing to death of 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 confiscated.”

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 England’s Memorial, p. 316.

[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. Pitkin’s History, p. 47 [46 (ed.)].

[31. ]Constitution of 1638, p. 12.

[32. ]Code of 1650, p. 70.

[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.

[40. ]Code of 1650, p. 38.

[41. ]Mather’s 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:

[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.≠”

[a. ] In the margin: “≠There will be many things to say about that. The American political 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.≠”

[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).

[c. ] “Ask Mr. Livingston about prisons and bail” (YTC, CVb, p. 33). Probably Edward Livingston. See note 2 of Tocqueville’s 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. 4-5). The conversation with Mr. Duponceau is found in portable notebook 3 (YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 182); see the conversation with [Alexander] Everett (ibid., p. 95).

[42. ] There are certainly crimes for which there is no bail, but they are very few in number.

[e. ] Cf. Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 197, 367-70.

[43. ] See Blackstone and Delolme, book I, chap. X.