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Subject Area: Political Theory

TO M. GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT (IN LONDON). - 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 M. GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT (IN LONDON).

My dear Friend,

I comply with your request of giving you all the information that I think will be of use to you. The Government tells you the facts. My task is to let you know as much as I can of the condition of the public mind, which one can estimate correctly only when one is not in office. . . .

It seems to me to be of special importance to make known to you the disposition of a large majority in the Assembly with regard to Italian affairs. . . .

If the resistance of Venice should not immediately produce a war, it will, I think, render negotiations much more easy, for Austria will be able to answer, “All is over.” I do not know what are the bases of your negotiations, nor even if they are as yet settled. I only remember to have read somewhere in Napoleon’s writings, perhaps with regard to the treaty of Campo Formio, this remark: that, in the hands of Austria, the line of the Adige is a defence for Germany, but that the line of the Mincio is a threat to Italy; the one closes Austria, and the other opens the Peninsula. I will finish the subject of foreign politics with this Napoleonic maxim . . .