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Subject Area: Political Theory

TO THE SAME. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 [1861]

Edition used:

Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the translator of Napoleon’s Correspondence with King Joseph. With large Additions. In Two Volumes (London: Macamillan, 1861). 2 vols.

Part of: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols.

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TO THE SAME.

Your letter reached me, my dear Reeve, just as I was leaving Paris for the second time, to spend part of the summer at a place belonging to one of my brothers, near Compiègne. I write from thence. They have put me at the top of the house, in a little turret, with windows on all sides, from which I overlook the whole country. To this spot, raised above all earthly cares, I retire to work; but I do not mean to say that oracles issue forth from it. To turn to less sublime subjects, I confess that the greatest advantage in being perched up here is that I escape the proximity of four charming little nephews and nieces, who would drive me to despair, a hundred times a day, if I were close to them. Man is a fearful animal; before he speaks, he cries; when he begins to speak, he talks nonsense. But neither you nor I can change him: we must take him as he is, without troubling ourselves about him.

I intended, on the day that I quitted Paris, to send you a copy of the Second Edition of our “Système Pénitentiaire.” I did not find time for this; but in the course of the next ten days I expect to spend a few hours in the Rue de Bourgogne, and I will not forget to send it to you then.

What you say of the tendency in our cabinet to separate from yours, seems to me to be only too true; but I cannot share your satisfaction thereon. I believe the union of the two nations to be essential to the maintenance of free institutions in Europe; and in my opinion this consideration surpasses every other. As to the desire of your aristocratic party to embark England in a war, in order to give the people something to do, I see a reason for that, which is the desperate state to which the party is reduced. . . .

However, you are not yet at war; it is not so easy in our time; and this is enough of politics. Of what did our fathers talk fifty years ago? I wonder. Take politics from our conversations, and you have only monosyllables and mute signs. Still they talked as well, and sometimes better than we do. They found a hundred things to say where we cannot think of one. They had the art of setting gaily about serious matters; very different from ourselves, who set to work so gravely to commit follies.

P.S. Pray present my respects to Lord and Lady Lansdowne. When I left Paris your review had not arrived.