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Importance of What Precedes in Relation to Europe t - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2 [1835]

Edition used:

Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, ed. Eduardo Nolla, translated from the French by James T. Schleifer. A Bilingual French-English editions, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). Vol. 2.

Part of: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, 4 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Importance of What Precedes in Relation to Europet

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 filling.

If it were true that laws and mores were insufficient 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 finally to rest far from its storms.w

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 democratic peoples of Europe, I do not doubt that it would take a new form and 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 individuals, 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.

Then the constitution of peoples was despotic and their mores, free. Princes had the right, but neither the faculty nor the desire to do everything.

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 lenient because they feel strong; and they treat the love of their subjects carefully, because the love of subjects is the support of the throne. Then, between 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 revolutions; 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 harshness 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 accustomed to obeying the same laws, it is no more difficult 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 maintained a 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, because monarchical honor has nearly lost its dominion without being replaced 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 him clients, hereditary friends, close relatives. And if this support were missing, he still felt sustained by 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 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 find 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 twentyb persons are gathered together by a common bond; when there 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 antiquityd 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 find a shelter. Then nothing protected citizens any longer, and citizens no longer protected 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 IV or 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 libertyf or for the tyranny of the Caesars.g

Doesn’t this merit reflection? 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 govern societies were reduced to the alternative of gradually raising the crowd up to their level or allowing all citizens to fall below the level of humanity, wouldn’t this be enough to overcome many doubts, reassure many consciences, and prepare each person to make great sacrifices easily?

Shouldn’t the gradual development of democratic institutions and mores then be considered, not as the best, but as the sole means that remains for us to be free; and without loving the government of democracy, wouldn’t 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 difficult to make the people participate in government; it is still more difficult 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, imperfect; 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, shouldn’t we tend toward the one rather than subject ourselves voluntarily to the other? And if it were necessary finally to arrive at a complete equality, wouldn’t 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, 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 example that American democracy has given and imitate the means that it used to attain the goal of its efforts;m for I am not unaware of the influence 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 finally to establish democratic institutions among us, and if we abandon giving all citizens the ideas and sentiments that first prepare them for 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, 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 unlimited power of one man.o

CHAPTER 10

Some Considerations on the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United Statesa

The principal task that I had set for myself has now been fulfilled; 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 could stop here, but the reader would perhaps find that I have not satisfied his expectation.

You encounter in America something more than an immense and complete democracy; the peoples who inhabit the New World can be seen from more than one point of view.

In the course of this work, my subject often led me to speak about Indians 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 confederation, and it was impossible for me to explain in detail 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 republican 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 democracy. So I had to put them aside at first; but I must return to them as I finish.b

The territory occupied today, or claimed by the American Union, extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific 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. Education, laws, origins and even the external form of their features, have raised 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 first who attracts attention, the first in enlightenment, in power, in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence;c below him appear the Negro and the Indian.

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.

Wouldn’t you say, seeing what is happening in the world, that the European 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

Oppression deprived the 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 repudiated by the other; finding 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 benefit of God or a final curse of His anger, this disposition 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 even more than he hates them, and finds 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 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 first 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 from Providence, and he peacefully enjoys all the privileges of his servility.

If he becomes free, independence often then seems to him to be 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 influence over the Indian races, but its effects are different.

[≠Europeans have introduced some new needs and some unknown vices 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 flight, 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 wilderness, condemned them to a wandering and restless life, full of inexpressible miseries.

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 interrupting the chain of memory, by changing all their habits, and by increasing 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. Nonetheless, 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 first 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 sacrifice 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 him away; 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 finds a mark of slavery and, if he could, he would joyfully consent to repudiate himself completely.

The Indian, in contrast, has an imagination entirely filled with the alleged nobility of his origin. He lives and dies amid these dreams of his pride.e Far 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 succumbs in this unequal struggle.g

The Negro would like to mingle with the European, and he cannot do so. The Indian could, to a certain point, succeed in doing 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 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 moments 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 five 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 barbaric 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 wasn’t 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 to sit down beside the spring, and the young savage, taking the child in her arms, lavished on her caresses that you could have believed were dictated by a mother’s 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 desires, the Negro woman seemed equally divided between an almost maternal attachment and a servile fear; while a free, proud, and almost fierce air distinguished even the savage woman’s 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 belonging 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 oppressors here, and nature, by trying hard to bring them together, made still more striking the immense space put between them by prejudice and laws.

[t. ] Hervé 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 arguments 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 descriptions 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. Isn’t 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 to maintain democratic 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?”

Édouard de Tocqueville (?): “You must be careful not to use these expressions unstintingly: 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. 29-30).

[w. ] In the margin:

≠Today.

Liberty with its storms.

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 moralize 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.≠

[x. ] Hervé 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 first 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? Although 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. 37-38).

[y. ] Hervé 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 secondary consideration, but it will be good to consider it (YTC, CIIIb, 1, pp. 38-39).

[z. ] Édouard de Tocqueville (?):

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 from that! And for how long a time still would a similar attempt be fatal! (YTC, CIIIb, 1, p. 30).

[a. ] Of virtue in republics./

The Americans are not a virtuous people and yet they are free. This does not absolutely 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 each individual 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. 66-67).

During his journey, however, Tocqueville had noted:

The principle of the ancient republics was the sacrifice 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 refined and intelligent egoism seems the pivot on which the whole machine turns. These people do not trouble themselves to find 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 reflection 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 (alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage, OC, V, 1, pp. 234-35).

[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. ] Édouard de Tocqueville (?): “I contest this idea. Antiquity is so far away, so different 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. 30-31).

[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 government, they would do well to settle there. But this point does not exist, and they must keep moving” (YTC, CVh, 4, pp. 53-54).

[g. ] Hervé de Tocqueville:

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 accused of having presented a 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 abused them 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. 39-40).

Cf. note e for p. 1249 of the fourth volume.

[h. ] “If the establishment of liberty [v: democracy] was the sole means available to preserve human independence, shouldn’t 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 from not doing so, intolerable despotism, without safeguard. . . . What is happening in America does not show that it can be done, although it does not prove that it must be done in the same way.

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 suffice, but I did not prove that their laws and their mores are sufficient 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 difficulty 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 [iw0]first and adopt the second, for I am not unaware of the influence 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.

[o. ] The question of knowing the name of the one who reigns, even the questions of royalty or republic, capital questions in ordinary times, have only a secondary interest, 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 century is 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 know if 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 much more about the very history of society . . .]

But that is what we scarcely consider. Placed in the middle of a rapid river, we obstinately fix 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 fields and from the very midst of our cities (YTC, CVh, 3, p. 31).

[a. ] Added at the last moment, this chapter could not be the object of the critical readings 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 Eugénie 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 confide 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 definitive 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 Tocqueville’s 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, appreciably less than that for other chapters, attests to a rapid composition.

[b. ] In a draft the paragraph continues in this way: “I am still going to talk about America, 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?}”

[d. ] To the side of a first version: “≠Why of these three races, is one born to perish, the other to rule and the last to serve?≠”

[[*]. ] 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 first volume of the transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1819. Say what [two illegible words] Cooper drew from him.

[e. ] In the margin: “≠He perishes by the exaggeration of the sentiments that the first one lacks.≠”

[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.≠”