Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO THE SAME. - Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2

Return to Title Page for Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

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.

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.


TO THE SAME.

Your letter reached me only two days ago, my dear friend, because you directed it to Baugy, instead of to my own house. You were not, indeed, sure that I should be in Normandy this year. I have been in poor old Tocqueville for the last two months. I do not know if I told you that this place, which by our family arrangements has become mine, is a sort of large farmhouse, which has been uninhabited for the last half century. I am obliged, therefore, to make all sorts of alterations and repairs, which will never make it beautiful; but which, if I am permitted to live, will make the house habitable, and in a few years even comfortable. I am in the midst of workmen of every description—a detestable race, animals given to destruction and noise, whose vicinity does not suit a philosopher. I have, happily, no pretensions to direct the works myself. I have neither genius nor wish to attempt it. I leave it all to Madame de Tocqueville, who understands the matter better than I do; and I shut myself up from morning till night in a little room which she has been so good as to leave me. You see that I am a model husband.

You ask what effect the enthusiastic loyalty of which you in your country have been so lavish, has produced on me. Very little, I confess. In 1825 I saw Charles X. enter Paris amid the acclamations of the people, and heard him cry, “No more hallebards;” and on the 31st of July, 1830, I saw this very Prince leave St. Cloud, after scratching the royal arms off his carriage. I own that this gave me a lasting distaste for popular demonstrations. I do not mean that a similar fate awaits your young Queen. I am far from wishing, and far too from expecting it; but her stability rests, I believe, on another foundation than the cheers of the mob.