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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.

My dear Friend,

Your letter, which has this moment reached me, proves to me that my last packet must have been lost; how, I cannot tell. As I told you yesterday, the publication, fortunately, does not take place till the 20th. You will therefore have time to translate and print the remainder.

If I were an Englishman, I should not see without anxiety the expedition now in preparation against China. As a well-wishing but disinterested spectator, I cannot rejoice much at the thought of the invasion of the celestial empire by an European army. Here, then, is European restlessness pitted against Chinese unchangeableness. This is a great event, especially when one remembers that it is only the sequence, the last link in a long chain of events of the same kind, which gradually push the European race abroad, and subject all others successively to its power or to its influence. There is happening in our day, without our noticing it, a thing more vast and more extraordinary than the establishment of the Roman empire. I mean the subjection of four portions of the globe by the fifth. Let us not think too ill of our age and of ourselves. Men are small, but events are great.