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Subject Area: Political Theory

TO LORD RADNOR. - 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 LORD RADNOR.

I cannot find words, my Lord, to express to you my emotion on receiving your letter: I have always valued every token of your remembrance. But at this solemn juncture of my life, when I am called upon, without having demanded or desired it, to take so heavy a responsibility on my shoulders, this proof of your regard is doubly valuable. I feel how much too heavy the burden is for my strength, but I hope that I shall have courage to bear it. I am supported in this serious undertaking by remembering, that my most earnest wish is to influence the foreign policy of my country on the side of peace. As far as depends on me, you may be sure that the peace of the world will be maintained. I will stake my conscience and my honour upon it.

Adieu, my Lord. May God bestow upon you the long life and all the happiness that you so well deserve.

TO THE COMTESSE DE CIRCOURT.

I have heard, Madame, of the sad death of my colleague in the academy, M. de Villeneuve. This death creates a vacancy in the Institute, and I have already received many applications. Before answering them, I want to ascertain the wishes of M——, for whom I know that you are interested.

Our journey was prosperous. . . . This place continues to please me, and I should be very sorry if we were obliged to leave it; there is nothing really remarkable about it, but its associations give to it a beauty and an interest in my eyes which it would not have in any others. We live here in such absolute solitude that the rumour of politics scarcely reaches us, and I am astonished to find how little I care for any news that by chance penetrates so far. I treat the newspapers with the little respect that they deserve, and I own that I scarcely ever read them.

Can it be, Madame, that I am becoming a bad citizen? I sometimes fear it, but I comfort myself by thinking that I am only dispirited. I humbly confess (it is indeed humiliating for a man who has had some pretensions to prophecy) that I cannot see an inch in the darkness which surrounds us. I do not know how this can last, nor how it can end. I feel as if I were tossed on a shoreless sea, with neither compass, nor sails, nor oars, and tired of vain efforts, I lie down in the stern of my boat and wait.

Pray remember me particularly to M. de Circourt.