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• Democracy In America (1835), Volume II: Part Ii
• Chapter 1: How It Can Be Strictly Said That In the United States It Is the People Who Govern
• Chapter 2: Of Parties In the United States
• Of the Remnants of the Aristocratic Party In the United States
• Chapter 3: Of Freedom of the Press In the United States
• 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
• Chapter 4: Of Political Association In the United States
• 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
• Chapter 5: Of the Government of Democracy In America
• Of Universal Suffrage
• Of the Choices of the People and of the Instincts of American Democracy In Its Choices
• Of the Causes That Can Partially Correct These Democratic Instincts
• Influence That American Democracy Has Exercised On Electoral Laws M
• Of Public Officials Under the Dominion of American Democracy
• Of the Arbitrariness of Magistrates 2 Under the Dominion of American Democracy X
• Administrative Instability In the United States
• Of Public Expenses Under the Dominion of American Democracy
• Of the Instincts of American Democracy In Determining the Salaries of Officials
• Difficulty of Discerning the Causes That Lead the American Government to Economy X
• [influence of the Government of Democracy On the Tax Base {and On the Use of the Tax Revenues}] a
• [influence of Democratic Government On the Use of Tax Revenues]
• Can the Public Expenditures of the United States Be Compared With Those of France J
• 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
• Of What Efforts Democracy Is Capable
• Of the Power That American Democracy Generally Exercises Over Itself
• Of the Manner In Which American Democracy Conducts the Foreign Affairs of the State
• Chapter 6 A: What Are the Real Advantages That American Society Gains From the Government of Democracy?
• Of the General Tendency of Laws Under the Dominion of American Democracy, and of the Instinct of Those Who Apply Them
• Of Public Spirit In the United States O
• Of the Idea of Rights In the United States
• Of the Respect For the Law In the United States X
• Activity That Reigns In All Parts of the Political Body In the United States; Influence That It Exercises On Society
• Chapter 7: Of the Omnipotence of the Majority In the United States and Its Effects a
• How the Omnipotence of the Majority In America Increases the Legislative and Administrative Instability That Is Natural to Democracies
• Tyranny of the Majority M
• Effects of the Omnipotence of the Majority On the Arbitrariness of American Public Officials
• Of the Power Exercised By the Majority In America Over Thought
• Effect of Tyranny of the Majority On the National Character of the Americans; of the Courtier Spirit In the United States
• That the Greatest Danger to the American Republics Comes From the Omnipotence of the Majority
• Chapter 8: Of What Tempers Tyranny of the Majority In the United States
• Absence of Administrative Centralization
• Of the Spirit of the Jurist In the United States, and How It Serves As Counterweight to Democracy F
• Of the Jury In the United States Considered As a Political Institution W
• Chapter 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic In the United States a
• Of the Accidental Or Providential Causes That Contribute to Maintaining the Democratic Republic In the United States E
• Of the Influence of Laws On Maintaining the Democratic Republic In the United States
• Of the Influence of Mores On Maintaining the Democratic Republic In the United States
• Of Religion Considered As a Political Institution, How It Serves Powerfully to Maintain the Democratic Republic Among the Americans [*]
• Indirect Influence Exercised By Religious Beliefs On Political Society In the United States
• Of the Principal Causes That Make Religion Powerful In America P
• How the Enlightenment, Habits, and Practical Experience of the Americans Contribute to the Success of Democratic Institutions
• That Laws Serve More to Maintain the Democratic Republic In the United States Than Physical Causes, and Mores More Than Laws
• Would Laws and Mores Be Sufficient to Maintain Democratic Institutions Elsewhere Than In America?
• Importance of What Precedes In Relation to Europe T
• Chapter 10: Some Considerations On the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States a
• Present State and Probable Future of the Indian Tribes That Inhabit the Territory Possessed By the Union H
• Position That the Black Race Occupies In the United States; 30 Dangers to Which Its Presence Exposes the Whites C
• What Are the Chances For the American Union to Last? What Dangers Threaten It? M
• Of Republican Institutions In the United States, What Are Their Chances of Lasting?
• Some Considerations On the Causes of the Commercial Greatness of the United States
• Conclusion a
• Notes
• First Part
• (a) Page 36
• (b) Page 38
• (c) Page 40 On the American Languages
• (d) Page 42
• (e) Page 64
• (f) Page 70
• (g) Page 84
• (h) Page 97 Summary of Electoral Conditions In the United States
• (i) Page 161
• (k) Page 165
• (l) Page 170
• (m) Page 171
• (n) Page 185
• (o) Page 276
• Second Part

Of Religion Considered as a Political Institution, How It Serves Powerfully to Maintain the Democratic Republic among the Americans[*]

Alongside each religion is found a political opinion that is joined to it by affinity.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. From the onset, politics and religion found themselves in accord, and they have not ceased to be so since.

About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into the United States. For its part, American Catholicism made converts.y Today in the Union you find more than a million Christians who profess the truths of the Roman Church.

These Catholics show a great fidelity 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 first glance, but reflection 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 religion has so disdained the 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 infidel people, the Christian nation would seem free to us.

I will say something analogous concerning equality.

Of all religious doctrines, Christianity, whatever interpretation you give 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 accomplishment 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 Christian doctrines, Catholicism seems 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 observances on the rich as on the poor, inflicts the same austerities on the powerful 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 men much less toward equality than toward independence.d

Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy. Remove the prince, and conditions 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 then used his religious influence to assure the lasting existence 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 disposed 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 political doctrines that they would perhaps adopt with less ardor if they were rich and predominant.

The Catholic clergy in the United States have not tried to struggle against 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 citizens [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 republican institutions. All the clergy there use the same language; [≠and while American publicists make all the miseries of society flow 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 with laws, and only 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 ecclesiastical 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:

The entire assembly repeated Amen with reverence.

[[*]. ] ≠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 influence of religion on mores and the influence 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 first version: “≠Despotism can do without religion, but not liberty.

“Unanimity of statesmen on the utility of religion.≠”

[y. ] In the manuscript: “American Catholicism spread for its part by numerous conversions.”

[z. ] In a first 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. ] Hervé de Tocqueville:

[b. ] In the margin: “≠Catholicism favors the spirit of equality in the manner of absolute power. It places one man beyond all rank and leaves all the others mingled together in the crowd.≠”

[c. ] “Protestantism is the government of the middle classes applied to the religious world” (YTC, CVh, 2, p. 85).

[d. ] Hervé 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. 51-52).

[f. ] Hervé de Tocqueville: