The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Foreword
• Preface to the Liberty Fund Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Part I: Tocqueville’s Second Voyage to America, 1832–1840
• Chapter 1: The Writing of the First Part of the Democracy
• Chapter 2: An Expanding Task Resumed
• Part II: How to Account For America? Tocqueville Looks At Some Particular Causes Physiques
• Chapter 3: An Hypothesis Weighed and Rejected
• Chapter 4: Further Considerations of Environment
• Chapter 5: Was Race a Sufficient Explanation of the American Character?
• Chapter 6: The Transformation of a Continent
• Part III: Tocqueville and the Union: the Nature and Future of American Federalism
• Chapter 7: The Bond Between the States and the Central Government
• Chapter 8: A Prophet In Error
• Chapter 9: How Large Might a Republic Be?
• Part IV: Democracy, Centralization, and Democratic Despotisms
• Chapter 10: Centralization and Local Liberties
• Chapter 11: Where Would Power Accumulate?
• Chapter 12: Administrative Centralization and Some Remedies
• Chapter 13: Tocqueville’s Changing Visions of Democratic Despotism
• Part V: Democracy, the Individual, and the Masses
• Chapter 14: The Tyranny of the Majority
• Chapter 15: The Tyranny of the Majority: Some Paradoxes
• Chapter 16: Would Démocratie Usher In a New Dark Ages?
• Chapter 17: Démocratie and Egoïsme
• Chapter 18: From Egoïsme to Individualisme
• Part VI: What Tocqueville Meant By Démocratie
• Chapter 19: Some Meanings of Démocratie
• Chapter 20: Tocqueville’s Return to America
• Epilogue How Many Democracies ?
• Selected Bibliography

PART III

Tocqueville and the Union: The Nature and Future of American Federalism

CHAPTER 7

The Bond between the States and the Central Government

During his first six months in the New World, Tocqueville had had little chance to understand the workings of American federalism.1 He had heard frequently about state and local government in the United States, but few of his hosts had spoken about the complex relationship between the federal government in Washington and the governments of the twenty-four states. An early impression that “in this lucky country, there truly is no government” had seemed particularly true of the republic’s central authority.2

Only twice had he learned anything specific about the nature of the federal bond in America. In a conversation of October 1831 Tocqueville had asserted to a Mr. Clay that “your country is composed of little almost entirely separate nations,” and Clay had reacted with hearty but misleading agreement. Two months later more profound remarks had come from Timothy Walker of Cincinnati, who had stressed the inherent rivalry between the state and federal governments by describing various “points of collision” between the states and the Union and noting that “in all the States there is a fund of jealousy of the central government.”3 In early December 1831, these two comments constituted Tocqueville’s meager stock of recorded ideas about the connection between the American federal and state governments. But somewhere along his route he had purchased a copy of the Federalist,4 and on 27 December he began to repair the gap in his knowledge.

Since previous scholars have consistently either overlooked or neglected to pursue various clues contained in his travel diaries, drafts, and original working manuscript, the edition of the Federalist which Tocqueville used has until now been unknown. Several English passages copied from the famous essays into Tocqueville’s papers indicate that he relied upon an American edition of “Publius’s” work.5 (Occasionally rough French translations accompany these excerpts, but these versions duplicate no French edition of the Federalist and are presumably Tocqueville’s own.)6

Other hints consist of the many references in drafts and working manuscript to specific pages of his copy. By securing samples of all American editions published before 18357 and comparing each to these citations, it has been possible to identify the matching edition and to conclude a search which has always promised to provide new insights about the Frenchman’s reliance on “Publius.”

Tocqueville’s Federalist was the one published as a single volume in the year 1831 by Thompson and Homans of Washington, D.C., and labeled as “A New Edition with a Table of Contents and a Copious Alphabetical Index. The Numbers Written by Mr. Madison Corrected by Himself.” The recent date, the full index, and the imprimatur of Madison had all probably appealed to the curious visitor.

From 27 to 29 December 1831, Tocqueville read and took notes on his acquisition, filling several pages of travel notebook E with observations and excerpts collected under the titles “Union: Central Government” and “Sovereignty of the People.” He specifically cited numbers 12, 15, 21, 23, and 18, referred to “others” (probably numbers 19 and 20, which continued the discussion of topics introduced in 18), and presumably had at least glanced at several additional papers as well.8 It is noteworthy that his initiation came largely from the pen of Alexander Hamilton, who had written or collaborated on all of the essays which Tocqueville read first and who most vehemently argued for a strong and energetic central government.9

In papers 15 through 22, in order to demonstrate the unique advantages of the proposed American Constitution, the authors of the Federalist surveyed the histories of previous confederations and recounted the misfortunes of the American republic under the Articles of Confederation.10 The Constitution, they observed, would remedy the chronic weakness which had plagued the nation during the period of the Articles by adopting a novel principle: the new national government would act directly upon individuals.

Tocqueville quickly grasped the significance of “Publius’s” point. “The old Union,” he wrote in his notebook, “governed the States, not the individuals.... The new federal government is in very truth the government of the Union in all things within its competence; it addresses, not the States, but individuals; its orders are addressed to each of the American citizens, whether he is born in Massachusetts or in Georgia, and not to Massachusetts or to Georgia.”11

At the same time, the Federalist also taught him that in theory each government in America had its own area of interest, but that in fact these spheres were not always clearly delimited. “If the circumstances of our country,” wrote Hamilton, “are such as to demand a compound instead of a simple, a confederate instead of a sole, government, the essential point which will remain to be adjusted will be to discriminate the objects, as far as it can be done, which shall appertain to the different provinces or departments of power.”12 So Tocqueville was quickly aware that the problem of separating the responsibilities of the state and national governments was a chronically troublesome characteristic of American federalism.

Readings from the Federalist and recollections of earlier lessons also led him to observe in a note dated 29 December 1831:

Several already familiar ideas hid just beneath the surface of these comments. Tocqueville here implied, first of all, that the political precepts involved in the workings of American federalism appeared on all political levels in the United States. Concerning, for example, the hard task of assigning state and federal responsibilities, he had noted only the day before that “it is an axiom of American public law that every power must be given full authority in its own sphere which must be defined in a way that prevents it stepping beyond it: that is a great principle and one worth thinking about.”14

Secondly, he once again acknowledged that such basic principles were deeply embedded in the national experience. As he would later declare in the 1835 Democracy: “The federal government was the last to take shape in the United States; the political principles on which it was based were spread throughout society before its time, existed independently of it, and only had to be modified to form the republic.... The great political principles which now rule American society were born and grew up in the state; there is no room for doubt about that.”15

Finally it seemed to him that the Americans, as a whole, were the most broadly educated and politically experienced of all peoples. This conviction, first announced in Boston three months earlier,16 would soon find an additional proponent in Joel Poinsett, who would remark to Tocqueville in January 1832: “The Mexicans have ended by adopting, bar some unimportant exceptions, the United States Constitution. But they are not yet advanced enough to use it as we do. It is a complicated and difficult instrument.”17

Later, in the 1835 Democracy, Tocqueville would combine his own observations based on the Federalist with the evidence supplied by Poinsett and others and describe at length the fragile intricacy of the American Constitution.

A second important printed source of information about American federalism which Tocqueville first used during December came from Chancellor James Kent, who had met the two French visitors in New York and had later thoughtfully forwarded the four thick volumes of his Commentaries on American Law.19 While assimilating parts of the Federalist, Tocqueville also perused the first two volumes of Kent’s massive work, which he would later describe as “highly respected; it presents a tableau of all the principles contained in the political and civil laws of the United States.”20

During the early months of his American voyage, he had learned from Albert Gallatin, John Canfield Spencer, and others that in the United States judges possessed the right to declare laws unconstitutional and were, therefore, a considerable force in the political affairs of the nation, serving as a barrier to democratic excesses and to legislative aggression against the other branches of government.21 So many Americans had concurred in these ideas that on 16 October Tocqueville had remarked in his notebook on “Civil and Criminal Law in America” that “the provisions concerning the powers of the judges are among the most interesting features of American constitutions.”22

But not until he read the Chancellor’s tomes in December did he realize that the American judiciary also played a necessary role in the relationship between the states and federal government. “I see clearly,” he concluded after reading Kent’s discussion of the problem of conflicting jurisdictions, “that the Court of the United States should have the effect of forcing each State to submit to the laws of the Union, but only when it is seized of a case. But when there is a violation of the laws of the Union and no one complains, what happens then?”23

So by New Year’s Day 1832, after dipping into the writings of both “Publius” and Kent, Tocqueville had not only learned to appreciate the astounding subtlety of American federalism and discerned the principle which distinguished the Union from all other confederations—the central government acted directly upon individuals—but he had also perceived the major weak point in the system: the definition and maintenance of proper bounds for the state and national governments. Discovery had also been made by then of the admittedly inadequate device, the power of judges to declare laws unconstitutional, which the Americans had invented to remedy this dangerous flaw. Already the essential points of a penetrating analysis of American federalism were firmly in Tocqueville’s mind.

After the return to France, he and his two American aides, Francis J. Lippitt and Theodore Sedgwick, began, in the early months of 1833, to digest an already formidable collection of materials on the legal and political structures of the United States. Tocqueville now added several other works to his list of major authorities, including two volumes of Thomas Jefferson’s papers, selected by L. P. Conseil and entitled Mélanges politiques et philosophiques extraits des mémoires et de la correspondance de Thomas Jefferson,24 and Joseph Story’s one-volume abridgement of his larger work, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.25 “The book of M. Conseil,” Tocqueville would later write, “is assuredly the most valuable document that has been published in France on the history and the legislation of the United States.”26

From his study of these and other sources, a more complete picture of America’s federal system began to emerge. As early as 3 December 1831, Timothy Walker had voiced deep concern over the internal rivalries which strained the federal bonds, and now, during a rereading of the Federalist, Tocqueville noticed that the authors manifested an anxiety not unlike Walker’s about the antagonism between the states and the Union. Normally, Hamilton observed, “Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival or enemy of that power, by which it is controlled or abridged.”27 Applied to the American federation, this principle exposed the states as “a complete counterpoise, and, not infrequently, dangerous rivals to the power of the Union.”28 Moreover, Hamilton assured his reader in Paper Number 17, the advantage in any clash between these natural competitors rested unquestionably with the states. “It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities.”29

Here was an idea far beyond Walker’s comment about conflict. According to Hamilton, one of the architects of the Union, the states rather than the national government dominated the American federation. As Tocqueville developed a late revision of his large chapter entitled “The Federal Constitution,”30 he recalled the statesman’s words: “It is even easy to go farther and it is necessary to say with the celebrated Hamilton in the Federalist that of the two sovereignties the strongest is certainly the sovereignty of the state. In fact the more one examines the constitutions of the United States the more one begins to think that if the power of the law-maker has gone as far as lessening the probability of a struggle between the two rival sovereignties, it has not been able to assure that, in case of struggle, the strength of the Union will be preponderant or even equal to that of the states.”31

In 1835 Tocqueville would offer a similar version of this passage, but with two significant changes. First, in the published Democracy Tocqueville would refrain from flatly declaring that “of the two sovereignties the strongest is certainly the sovereignty of the state.” Secondly and more interestingly, all mention of Hamilton or the Federalist would be deleted, and he would therefore neglect to indicate a major source of his ideas about the power and the aggressiveness of the states.32

In Number 17, Hamilton had also summarized the reasons for the alleged predominance of the state governments:

“It is a known fact in human nature,” the American explained, “that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object: Upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each state would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union.... This strong propensity of the human heart would find powerful auxiliaries in the objects of State regulation.

“The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under the superintendence of the local administrations ... will form so many rivulets of influence, running through every part of the society.... The operations of the national government, on the other hand, [fall] less immediately under the observation of the mass of the citizens.... Relating to more general interests, they will be less apt to come home to the feelings of the people.”33

Similar arguments appeared elsewhere in the Federalist. “Many considerations ... seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people will be to the government of their respective States,” James Madison remarked in Number 46. “By the superintending care of these, all the more domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for. With the affairs of these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the members of these will a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on the side of these, therefore, the popular bias may well be expected more strongly to incline.”34

Although nowhere in Tocqueville’s papers is there any hint that he noted these particular paragraphs by Hamilton and Madison, his explanation in the 1835 Democracy of why the states kept “the love and the prejudices of the people” would strongly echo their words. If the similarity between his arguments and those in the Federalist was not merely coincidental, then Tocqueville once again neglected to give credit to “Publius.”35

One author of the Federalist also attempted a general description of the American Union. “The government of the United States,” Tocqueville wrote in his manuscript, “is not truly speaking a federal government. It is a national government of which the powers are limited. Important. Blend of national and federal in the Constitution.” A citation followed: “See Federal. [Federalist] p. 166.”36

In Paper Number 39, Madison presented a detailed analysis of the nature of the Union and, on page 166, concluded: “The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both.”37

“Neither, nor, but a mixture” was hardly enough to satisfy Tocqueville, who proceeded to create a label of his own for the American federation. In the margin of the working manuscript, after cataloguing four general types of government, “temporary alliance—league; durable alliance—confederation; incomplete national government; complete national government,” he declared that “the Union is not a confederation,38 but an incomplete national government.”39

This original classification, based in part upon the thirty-ninth paper of the Federalist, would appear in the 1835 Democracy:

Justice Story’s Commentaries amply reinforced the impressions which Tocqueville had received from Chancellor Kent about the special role of the American judiciary,41 but it was primarily directly from the Federalist that he gathered additional information about how the courts operated to resolve conflicts between Washington and the states and how the federal judiciary also influenced the balance between the rival powers.

In a draft entitled “Federal Courts,” he wrote: “Utility and necessity for a federal court. Disadvantages resulting from the contrary. Fed. [Federalist] p. 93.”42

There Hamilton, special champion of a strong and independent judiciary, discussed

Tocqueville continued in his draft: “It is quite true that the sovereignty of the Union is circumscribed; but when it is in competition with the sovereignty of the States, it is a federal court which decides. p. 165.”44

“It is true,” Madison explained, again in Number 39, “that in controversies relating to the boundary between the two jurisdictions, the tribunal which is ultimately to decide is to be established under the general government.... Some such tribunal is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword and a dissolution of the compact; and it ought to be established under the general rather than under the local governments, or to speak more properly, that it could be safely established under the first alone, is a proposition not likely to be combated.”45

The lesson was obvious. Only the federal judiciary promised to check the aggressive power of the states without, at the same time, inflaming the dangerous rivalry which was built into the Union. The 1835 Democracy would read:

Here once again was a silent reflection of the views of Hamilton and Madison.

Tocqueville’s analysis of America’s federal machinery had its weak points. Despite an apparently sound understanding of the complexities involved in the state-federal connection,48 he would occasionally exhibit a lingering confusion in his published work, sometimes speaking of the Union as forming a single people, and at other times describing it as merely “an assemblage of confederated republics.”49

Perhaps this persistent contradiction arose from Clay’s overly enthusiastic acceptance of his earlier statement about twenty-four “little, almost entirely separate nations.” But a more likely reason was Tocqueville’s tendency to focus so intensely from time to time on one facet of a problem that he momentarily excluded other perspectives from his mind. The American federation was, after all, as the Democracy would repeatedly assert, both a single nation (or an incomplete nation) and a collection of small political societies (or a federation or a confederation).

Also, in at least one instance, the Democracy would push the arguments from the Federalist and other sources beyond what the authors had originally intended.

One of Madison’s attempts to separate the legitimate interests of the states from those of the Union impressed Tocqueville so much that he would quote it in his text: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”50

Possibly he also stumbled upon the concurring opinions of Joseph Story and Thomas Jefferson. “The powers of the general government,” the Justice announced in his Commentaries, “will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects.... In its internal operations it can touch but few objects.... The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, the liberties, and property of the people.”51

And in a letter appearing in Conseil’s volumes, Jefferson advanced a similar thesis: “To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.”52

In apparent agreement with these voices, Tocqueville would twice conclude in his work of 1835: “The federal government is something of an exception, whereas the government of each state is the normal authority (règle commune),”53 and would also declare, in what he probably assumed to be obvious harmony with unimpeachable authorities, “The federal government is hardly concerned with anything except foreign affairs; it is the state governments which really control American society.”54

Such conclusions, if not erroneous, were at least controversial and later drew criticism from some readers of the Democracy.55

By repeatedly mining the treasure contained in the Federalist, Tocqueville gathered so many arguments and ideas that he could not always separate “Publius’s” thinking from his own. In 1835 he would warmly praise and often acknowledge obligations to the American essays, but the uncovering of additional undeclared debts56 makes his reliance seem even more substantial than perhaps he himself realized.

What then of Justice Story’s severe accusation of 1840 that the Democracy contained information and theories largely pirated from the Federalist and his Commentaries? Certainly, more than once, Tocqueville would obscure links between his ideas and their origins by failing to include in the Democracy specific citations which appeared in drafts or the working manuscript. But repeated references to Story and the Federalist and several quotations from each would make it clear that there was no intention in his published volumes to hide his heavy use of the two works. Also, when Tocqueville and Beaumont visited the United States, the viewpoints espoused by “Publius” and the Justice were part of the knowledge common to practically every educated American whom the two visitors met, so the travelers could hardly avoid absorbing them.57

Moreover, Story evidently overlooked one significant departure made by the author of the Democracy from the Federalist or “orthodox” school of thought. The apparently acceptable opinion that the states held the balance of power within the Union led Tocqueville to conclude, more heretically, that the duration of the American republic depended upon the will of the states. On this matter he adopted an idea repugnant to the Justice and to most of the other authors whom he read.

His working manuscript observed that the Union, like other confederations, rested “on a contract obligatory for all parties.”58 But contracts broken by one party could be terminated by the other, and in 1835 Tocqueville would write that the Union rested on the freely given consent of the states. The states, he would boldly declare, were parties to the contract, and, if one or more decided to withdraw, the federal government could not constitutionally prevent them from doing so. “The confederation was formed by the free will of the states; these, by uniting, did not lose their nationality or become fused in one single nation. If today one of those same states wished to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be hard to prove that it could not do so. In resisting it the federal government would have no obvious source of support either in strength or in right.”59

Neither Story nor the Federalist granted the states the right to secede, so where might Tocqueville have encountered such doctrine?

In 1825, William Rawle, a lesser-known commentator, had published a volume of analysis entitled A View of the Constitution of the United States,60 and although Tocqueville’s papers give no indication that he read Rawle’s exposition while drafting the Democracy, he was, nevertheless, exposed to Rawle’s somewhat eccentric explanation of the nature of the American Union. Conseil’s Mélanges contained a short treatise and annotations on the Constitution of the United States “taken, for the most part, from the work published on this Constitution by William Rawle, L.L.D.,”61 and in a footnote, Rawle, through Conseil, perhaps sowed the seeds of confusion: “It is necessary to note that the United States, in their present form, constitute a society composed not only of a people divided into other secondary societies, but also, in certain respects, of these secondary societies themselves. The State, as well as the people who inhabit it, is a member and integral part of the Union; however, it does not take part as a confederated power.”62

Presumably Rawle entered Tocqueville’s thinking even more substantially through the person of Francis J. Lippitt. Sixty years after his service to Tocqueville, Lippitt would recollect “certain particulars not wholly mal-à-propos.” “In my senior year in college we had Rawle on the Constitution for six months.” The young American possibly analyzed and summarized Rawle into many of Tocqueville’s materials, and if he and his employer ever discussed the states and the Union, Rawle almost certainly appeared repeatedly as a third participant in their conversations.63

The treatise which Conseil used and which Lippitt studied at Brown reproduced, for the most part, the standard account of the Constitution and of the nature of the Union as told by Story, Kent, Hamilton, or Madison, but it differed substantially on one vital issue. While professing the usual affection for the Union, Rawle insisted that “the states ... may wholly withdraw from the Union.”64

A minor scandal erupted among the followers of the Chancellor and the Justice when they discovered this strange opinion at the end of Rawle’s book,65 but evidently Tocqueville—at least at times—approved of the unusual doctrine; echoes of it would occasionally sound in the 1835 Democracy.

Tocqueville’s view of the relationship between the American federal and state governments, as presented in the Democracy, was a profound and largely accurate one, particularly when compared to the explanations of most other French travelers who committed their impressions to paper.66 Even the traces of confusion and possible error in Tocqueville’s work pale into insignificance with the realization that in 1835 the Americans themselves remained unsure of what their Union was or how it was supposed to function.67

His heavy reliance on the dominant nationalist interpretation as expounded by “Publius,” Kent, Story, and others exposed Tocqueville to some of the best of American constitutional thought and was, therefore, primarily advantageous to his understanding. But in 1835, his affaire américaine would reflect the Federalist probably more than he realized and certainly more than the Democracy would disclose.

In his use of those famous essays, Tocqueville also apparently failed to detect any noteworthy differences between Hamilton’s and Madison’s accounts of the Constitution or of the nature of the American Union. In Hamilton he found reinforcement for beliefs about the threat of the states, the necessity for a strong central government, and the desirability of a powerful and independent federal judiciary. From Madison he learned that the Union, though clearly not an historically familiar confederation, was also not quite a unified nation, but rather a new and unique political form. It was also Madison who helped to convince him that the central authority was, after all, a government of severely restricted jurisdiction and decidedly the exception rather than the rule. Tocqueville evidently did not notice that these two embodiments of “Publius” frequently offered views with significantly different points of emphasis.

Finally, even in 1835, he would entertain two unreconciled ideas about the states’ supposed right to secede. On the one hand, faithful to his eminent teachers, he would summarize, then denounce as essentially destructive, the theories of John C. Calhoun and the nullificateurs. Yet elsewhere he would grant the states the full constitutional right to withdraw from the Union whenever they might choose to do so. Either unaware of his self-contradiction, or unable finally to decide, he would strangely present both of these conflicting opinions in the pages of his grand ouvrage.

CHAPTER 8

A Prophet in Error

In March 1831, when Tocqueville and Beaumont climbed aboard the Havre and prepared to leave France, they carried with them an elementary history of the United States, perhaps Arnold Scheffer’s short Histoire des Etats-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale which had appeared in Paris in 1825.1 Scheffer, in fewer than three hundred pages, ambitiously surveyed events in America from the voyages of discovery to 1824 and even found room for occasional interpretive comments. Near the end of his work, after citing census statistics and noting the rapid admission and growing influence of new states, he speculated about the future of the American republic. “One day the immense extent of territory contained in the United States ... will have reached the full limit of its population; it is probable that North America will then number two or several republics.”2 Was his prediction correct? Would the American Union ultimately dissolve into several smaller nations?3

While still on shipboard, Tocqueville asked Peter Schermerhorn, wealthy New Yorker and fellow passenger, what he thought. “When I spoke to Mr. Schermerhorn of the possible division which might take place between the united provinces [states], he did not seem to believe that it was the least in the world to be feared in the near future.” But the merchant did think that “it would come someday, by and by.”4

Other Americans, including a man recently President of the United States, also supported Scheffer’s contention. “I then spoke to [John Quincy Adams] about the more immediate dangers to the Union and the causes which might lead to its dissolution. [He] did not answer at all, but it was easy to see that in this matter he felt no more confidence than I did in the future.”5

Another citizen more willingly gave words to his fears. According to Timothy Walker, controversies over the tariff, the public lands, and other matters; the rapidly shifting balance between the North and South; and state suspicion and resentment of the central government dangerously weakened the federal bonds.6

Joel Poinsett, in partial dissent, later denied that the “nullificators,” spawned by the tariff affair, threatened the Union, but he too worried aloud about the relative decline of the South and the increasing bitterness of sectional disputes. The South Carolinian readily agreed with Tocqueville’s observation that “It is impossible that this state of affairs should not create a state of jealousy and suspicion in the South. The weak do not generally believe in the fairness of the strong.”7

Yet curiously, the Americans often mixed a vigorous distrust of the central government with their uncertainty about the duration of the Union. Mr. Clay, for example, evinced a common fear by warning Tocqueville about one great flaw in the French democracy, the preponderance of Paris.8 “The Americans,” Tocqueville observed not long afterwards, “have ... a fear of centralization and of the power of capitals.”9

Later, while drafting his work and reflecting upon his experiences in America, he would recall: “More than once in the United States I had the occasion to notice ... a strange preoccupation:... the idea of the consolidation of sovereignty in the hands of the central government constantly torments the imagination of statesmen as well as that of the people.”10

Which future was the more likely, disunion or consolidation? His hosts appeared mired in indecision, but by the end of his visit to America, a prediction of disintegration began to take shape in Tocqueville’s mind. On 31 January 1832, under the heading “Future of the Union,” he observed:

Walker and Poinsett had left their marks on his thinking.

While leading his monk’s existence in Paris and at Baugy and working on the early chapters of the Democracy, Tocqueville can hardly have failed to notice a thesis in the Federalist which seemed almost designed to confirm his doubts about the durability of the United States. Turning away from statistical or political considerations, Hamilton had offered an argument based upon the very structure of the American Union. Federations, he had declared, verged naturally toward disintegration. “In every political association which is formed upon the principle of uniting in a common interest a number of lesser sovereignties, there will be found a kind of eccentric tendency in the subordinate or inferior orbs by the operation of which there will be a perpetual effort in each to fly off from the common center.”12

A later paper had elaborated the same point. “Several important considerations ...,” Madison had argued in Number 45, “discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale. We have seen, in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members to despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments.” He had even admitted that the Constitution did not grant the American republic total immunity to this historical disease. “Although, in most of these examples, the system has been so dissimilar from that under consideration as greatly to weaken any inference concerning the latter from the fate of the former, yet, as the States will retain under the proposed Constitution a very extensive portion of active sovereignty, the inference ought not to be wholly disregarded.”13

As the 1835 Democracy took form, Tocqueville made “Publius’s” premise his own, and, in a draft entitled “What must be understood by the word sovereignty and the words ‘rights of sovereignty,’” theorized that sovereign nations could be formed by the union either of individuals or of small independent societies. “When the sovereign is composed of individuals [there is] a tendency to gather the exercise of all principal acts into the same hands.... When [the sovereign is] composed of nations, [there is] a contrary tendency.14

“So the way in which the sovereign is formed,” he continued, “exercises a great influence over the division that it makes of its authority. That is a point de départ about which one hardly thinks....15

“... The natural tendency of a people ... is indefinitely to concentrate social forces until one reaches pure administrative despotism. The natural tendency of confederations is indefinitely to divide these forces until one reaches dismemberment.”16

So the very nature of the American federation apparently condemned it to a brief existence. Lacking the strength needed to check this natural centrifugal impulse, the Union would continue to exist only on the pleasure of the states,17 and, although material and certain nonmaterial interests urged the states to adhere to the federation,18 various other forces weakened their attachment to the national government.19

In remarks reminiscent of the anxiety expressed in the travel notes of December 1831 and January 1832, Tocqueville wrote in his working manuscript: “What most compromises the fate of the Union is its very prosperity, is the rapid increase of some of its parts.”20 The Americans, he declared, were “an entire people who travel.”21 They prided themselves on their headlong rush westward, but Tocqueville noted with misgivings that “there is something revolutionary in such progress.”22

Both faults of structure and uncontrolled growth thus made the conclusion inescapable, and, in a margin of the manuscript, Tocqueville summarized his argument. “So the existence of the Union, a risk. Its dismemberment, something always possible. Something certain in time.”23

In 1835, various passages would hint at the misfortune ahead, but nowhere in the published text would the author quite so boldly proclaim the inevitable dissolution of the American nation.24

A prediction of disunion did not end the inquiry, however, for Tocqueville realized that the Union’s demise could result from a gradual decrease in national vigor as well as from the sudden withdrawal of jealous and unruly states. “Among the causes which can hasten the dismemberment of the Union is found, in the first rank, the condition of weakness and inertia into which the federal government might fall. If, in this way, the central power arrived at such a degree of feebleness that it could no longer serve as arbiter among the different provincial interests and could not effectively defend the confederation against foreigners, its usefulness would become doubtful and the Union would no longer exist except on paper.”25

“Publius” had theorized that the states would constantly sap the strength of the Union, but, to discover whether the national government was, in fact, becoming impotent, Tocqueville turned once again to Kent, Story, and Conseil, to a variety of official and unofficial papers, and to three additional volumes: Joseph Blunt’s A Historical Sketch of the Formation of the Confederacy,26 William Alexander Duer’s Outlines of the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States,27 and Thomas Sergeant’s Constitutional Law: Being a View of Practice and Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States and of the Constitutional Points Decided.28

Sergeant’s work, which Tocqueville described as “an excellent commentary on the Constitution of the United States,”29 was the first to use court decisions30 to advance the thesis that many of the federal government’s legitimate and once-acknowledged prerogatives had been lost through timidity. Citing cases on every page, Sergeant asserted that under the powers to establish post offices and post roads, to regulate commerce, and to provide for the general welfare the national government had clear authority to undertake internal improvements, and that until Monroe’s veto of 1817, it had freely done so.31 He declared, in addition, that the “necessary and proper” clause granted the federal government the right to establish a national bank.32 Only executive vetoes and national inaction had allowed the states to question these long-established federal responsibilities.

Joseph Blunt’s volume preached a similar message, but directed it toward two other problems; the full title read: A Historical Sketch of the Formation of the Confederacy Particularly with Reference to the Provincial Limits and the Jurisdiction of the General Government over the Indian Tribes and the Public Territory. Like many of his fellow citizens in 1825, Blunt was alarmed by the frequent charges of usurpation made against the national government because of its Indian and land policies, and, in the hope of answering these accusations, he undertook a detailed study of both issues. “In this imperfect volume,” his introductory dedication stated, “I venture to present to the public the result of my examination.... If it be correct, it not only vindicates the federal government from all charges of undue attention, but shows that in its desire to conciliate the good will of the state authorities, it has conceded more than they could have reasonably demanded.”33

Tocqueville received a copy of the Outlines from the author34 and discovered that Duer also presented a strongly nationalist viewpoint, based, according to his preface, upon the Federalist; the writings of Kent, Story, and Rawle35 ; the speeches of Daniel Webster; and the opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall.36

These three volumes addressed themselves to most of the principal issues of the Jacksonian period, but for the details of the tariff and nullification controversy, Tocqueville was forced to undertake his own research; a list of some of the papers which he consulted appeared in a draft:

• 1. Legislative documents. 22nd Congress. 2nd session. no. 30.
• 2. Report made to the convention of South Carolina....
• 3. Ordinance of Nullification of November 24, 1832.
• 4. Proclamation of Governor Hamilton [sic] of November 27, 1832.
• 5. December 13, 1832. Proclamation of Gov. Ham. [sic].
• 6. ...37 Laws of December 20, 1832.38

From these and other sources, he concluded that in several of the key areas of conflict between the states and the Union—“Nullification, Indians, Internal Improvements, Lands, Bank”39 —the federal government had ignominiously retreated. It seemed, moreover, that the government in Washington actually possessed fewer recognized prerogatives in the 1830s than it had in 1789. Still somewhat incredulous about such a loss of authority, Tocqueville advised himself to see “in Story all the matters which have concerned the federal government and those which still concern it in order to know if its power[?]40 increases or decreases.”41

Evidently the Justice stilled any doubts, for, in another draft, Tocqueville summarized his findings: “Weakness of the Union proved by the progress of events.... All the amendments to the Constitution have been made to restrict the federal power. The federal government has abandoned in practice certain of its prerogatives and has not acquired a single new one. Every time that a State has resolutely stood up to the Union, [the State] has more or less obtained what it desired.”42

“The real force,” he concluded briefly, “has remained with the States. This proved by events.... For forty years the central bond has constantly loosened. The Union loses constantly and does not recover.”43 In 1835, the Democracy would contend that “a careful study of the history of the United States over the last forty-five years readily convinces one that federal power is decreasing.”44

Certain that the Union would break apart in one way or another, Tocqueville dealt harshly in his drafts with Americans haunted by what he termed the “absurd” specter of consolidation.45 Perhaps Story’s Commentaries, written largely in reaction to John C. Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification,46 reinforced his skepticism. In the firm belief that the power of the states was the real threat to the Union, the Justice scoffed at those who worried about federal ambitions. “Hitherto our experience has demonstrated the entire safety of the states, under the benign operation of the constitution. No man will venture to affirm, that their power, relative to that of the Union, has been diminished.”47 “As for me,” Tocqueville avowed in agreement, “... I search in vain for what is real and perceptible in such a terror.” The 1835 Democracy would offer a somewhat more diplomatic version of the same sentiment.48

Only one of Tocqueville’s major authorities, Thomas Jefferson, clearly disagreed with this view. In several letters contained in Conseil’s two volumes the Virginian claimed that the central government gained rather than lost power, and that the independence of the states diminished steadily.49 In 1825, for example, he had lamented to William B. Giles:

Jefferson had proceeded to explain in some detail how the national government used the power to regulate commerce, the general welfare clause, and other tools to subjugate the states. Unfortunately for Tocqueville’s reputation as a prophet, he failed to heed the great democrat’s dissent.

The 1835 Democracy would only vaguely date the beginning of the Union’s decline as when “America again took her due place among the nations, peace returned to her frontiers, and confidence in public credit was restored; a settled state of affairs followed the confusion, and each man’s industry could find its natural outlet and develop in freedom.”51

The drafts and manuscript, however, indicated a much more precise time for the onset of the nation’s infirmity, and even assigned responsibility to one particular American statesman. “Reveal how the various Presidents since Jefferson have successively despoiled the federal government of its attributes,” Tocqueville resolved in one early outline.52

In a margin of the working manuscript, he ventured a more straightforward opinion: “I believe, but it is to be verified, that the entry of the Republicans to federal power was the first step, a step indirect but real, on this path.”53

“The federal government,” he explained, “was from then on in a very critical situation; its enemies had popular favor, and it was by promising to weaken the federal government that they obtained the right to direct it. Since that period, it is easy to trace, in events, the successive symptoms of this weakening of the central power. The reaction against the central power began around 1800. It continues today.”54

But before he sent his manuscript to the printer, the author cautiously deleted both the marginal comment and the specific reference to 1800; the published text of the Democracy would blame no man for the Union’s advancing weakness.55

So once again during the writing process, Tocqueville decided to moderate one of his views concerning the fate of the Union. The text of 1835 would refrain from any assertion of inevitable dissolution, any scornful rejection of American fears of consolidation, or any condemnation of Jefferson. Several possible explanations for this retreat come to mind. The author of the Democracy undoubtedly labored to avoid unnecessarily offending the Americans, and so probably thought better of his transparent contempt for a common American torment and of his attack on the Republican hero. He was also extremely suspicious of men who claimed to see into the future, and, after the excitement of composition had passed, probably decided to back away from some of his bolder projections. Writing of events which might stop, slow, or hasten the Union’s weakness, he ultimately concluded: “That is hidden in the future, and I cannot pretend to be able to lift the veil.”56

That he might have been persuaded toward moderation by one or more of his American friends is another possible explanation. Perhaps prodding by Sedgwick, Lippitt, Edward Livingston, or others caused him to reassess his estimation of Jefferson’s role. As early as the summer of 1833, for example, long before the first part of the Democracy appeared, Tocqueville had received strong indications from America that his ideas about “l’affaiblissement de l’Union” were mistaken.

On 30 August 1833, Jared Sparks had devoted part of a letter to a description of recent events.

Less than a month later a similar letter from H. D. Gilpin had indicated that Sparks’s view was not merely idiosyncratic. “The difficulties in the South are we trust at an end, and if so it is a matter of no small congratulation that what threatened us so seriously should have passed off with results calculated rather to strengthen than to weaken the union.”58

Although in 1835 Tocqueville would not give much credit to these optimistic assessments of the Union’s durability, we have already noted that in 1838 he would finally recognize and decide to admit his error about the decline of the American federation. “It will be necessary to show how recent events justify the greater part of the things that I said,” he would write at that time; but he would cryptically add: “The weakening of the federal bond ... admit my error.”59 A belated recognition was better than none at all, but in 1833, by ignoring these letters from America, Tocqueville had missed a second opportunity to enhance his standing as a seer.

Tocqueville thus superseded his readings and conversations to invent an original name for the new creation which he understood the American Union to be: un gouvernement national incomplet. His view of this strange government, perceptive and largely accurate, was also, however, profoundly pessimistic in many significant ways, for he saw it as powerful only within a severely limited sphere of authority, as totally dependent on the consent of aggressive and preponderant states, as suffering from a progressive and shameful senility, and as certainly doomed to ultimate dissolution. “So the existence of the Union, a risk. Its dismemberment, something always possible. Something certain in time.”

Paradoxically, this bleak aspect of his description of the nature and destiny of the American Union,60 except for his anomalous contention about secession, largely reflected the writings of “Publius,” Story, and other ardent nationalists. Tocqueville never fully considered the implications of the fact that these men wrote with a dread of anarchy and a desire to calm the anxieties of fellow citizens always fearful of a strong central government. Consequently, he never awoke to the strong possibility that his experts, in order to meet a pervasive distrust of central authority, might have underplayed the vigor, the powers, and the activities of the federal government and exaggerated the strength, the rights, and the ambitions of the states. Here, if anywhere, was the basic error of Tocqueville’s exposition of the nature and future of the American federation.

CHAPTER 9

How Large Might a Republic Be?

Despite “Publius’s” assurances that America was unique among federal republics, Tocqueville concluded that growth in numbers (of both citizens and states) and the centrifugal forces natural to federations endangered the Union’s future. Equally disturbing to him was the threat posed by the immense area of the republic. Timothy Walker’s boasts, in December 1831, about the Union’s rapid increase in both territory and population first drew Tocqueville’s anxiety into the open. “Have you no fear,” he asked the Ohioan, “that it may be impossible to hold together this huge body?” Walker’s frank admission of uneasiness probably only increased Tocqueville’s own concern.1 A month later, Mr. Etienne Mazureau of New Orleans also addressed himself to this matter and voiced a time-honored opinion: “A small State ... is always able to govern itself. Hardly any of the troublesome consequences of the sovereignty of the people are to be feared in small societies.”2 Was a republic as large as the United States inherently unstable?

Later, while drafting a short essay on the problem of size,3 Tocqueville would write in the margin: “Perhaps this chapter should be transferred to the place where I will speak of the future of the Union.”4 Evidently he had decided that the Union’s future depended in part on the answer to an old query: could a vast republic long endure?

Several of Tocqueville’s American acquaintances shared his and Walker’s doubts about the durability of large republics, but they also insisted that the Union’s federal structure would surely overcome any risks involved in size.5 “What I find most favourable with us to the establishment and maintenance of republican institutions,” Mr. MacLean declared, “is our division into States. I do not think that with our democracy we could govern the whole Union for long, if it formed but one single people.... I hold too that the federal system is peculiarly favourable to the happiness of peoples.... By our federal organization we have the happiness of a small people and the strength of a great nation.”6

After reading the Federalist in December, Tocqueville reflected that “the federal constitution of the United States seems to me the best, perhaps the only arrangement that could allow the establishment of a vast republic,”7 and in January he found that Joel Poinsett agreed. “I do not believe,” Poinsett affirmed, “that a great republic can endure, at least unless it is a federation.”8

The idea that a federated republic could be extensive was not new. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, had reached the same conclusion nearly a century before his compatriot’s journey to America. “It is in the nature of a republic,” Montesquieu had written in his De l’esprit des lois, “that it have only a small territory; without that it can scarcely continue to exist.” He had added, however, that one constitutional form existed which combined the internal advantages of a republic with the strength of a monarchy. “I am speaking of the federated republic.... This kind of republic ... can sustain its greatness without becoming corrupt on the inside: the form of this society avoids all the disadvantages.”9

Having fiercely debated the optimum size of a republic during the struggle over ratification of the Federal Constitution, the American republicans were well aware of Montesquieu’s ideas. Opponents of the Constitution had often cited his writings to support their belief that the proposed Union would be too large, asserting that such an immense republic would either divide or become a consolidated monarchy. In vain had Alexander Hamilton revealed that his antagonists sadly misunderstood the famous Frenchman. “The opponents of the Plan proposed,” Hamilton had written, “have, with great assiduity, cited and circulated the observations of Montesquieu on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government. But they seem not to have been apprised of the sentiments of that great man expressed in another part of his work.” Quoting at length from De l’esprit des lois, he had noted triumphantly that Montesquieu “explicitly treats of a Confederate Republic as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism.”10

James Madison had also grappled with the problem of size in his contributions to the Federalist, but unlike Hamilton he had done more than merely quote Montesquieu’s opinion. Turning the Frenchman’s assumptions on end, the American had contended that size benefited rather than threatened a republic.11

In a republic dedicated to the rule of the majority, the despotism of an unjust minority could be effectively circumvented. But what if the majority itself attempted oppression?12 Sheer size, Madison had theorized, was the best safeguard against that calamity. In a vast republic, no particular or local interest could bend the entire nation to its purposes; rival interests would check each other and only permit the formation of a majority clearly dedicated to justice and the common good. The difficulty of forming a despotic majority would increase in direct proportion to the size and the diversity of the nation. Thus, any republic huge enough to enclose a great variety of interests would be relatively secure, and if, by unhappy chance, a despotic majority did coalesce in an extensive republic, the very size of the nation would continue to hinder the execution of any oppressive schemes.

A federal republic, Madison had noted in addition, possessed an extra safeguard. Since each subordinate government would jealously guard its own prerogatives, the division into states automatically multiplied the number of interests enclosed within the nation. So a large republic was inherently superior to a small one, but a great federation was the best possible republican form.

During Tocqueville’s travels in the New World, no American had explained Madison’s argument to him, nor is there any evidence that in December he had read the particular Federalist papers which contained the statesman’s ideas.13 Apparently his first encounter with the perceptive thesis took place only after his return to France.

Nonetheless, while writing his book, he cited Madison’s Number 51 four times in his drafts and even copied a passage from the essay into one of them.14 In another, he reminded himself to see page 225 of his edition of the Federalist where a concise statement of Madison’s theory could be found.15 Declared Madison: “In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of the country and number of people comprehended under the same government.” The paper concluded: “The larger the society, provided it lie within a practicable sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the republican cause, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent by a judicious modification and mixture of the federal principle.”16

Tocqueville recognized the same argument in one of Thomas Jefferson’s letters and copied an excerpt into still another of his drafts.17 The letter read: “I suspect that the doctrine, that small States alone are fitted to be republics, will be exploded by experience, with some other brilliant fallacies accredited by Montesquieu and other political writers. Perhaps it will be found, that to obtain a just republic ... it must be so extensive that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice. The smaller the societies, the more violent and more convulsive their schisms.”18

In both the working manuscript and the text of the 1835 Democracy, Tocqueville would assert that federalism made large republics feasible, thus adopting a thesis developed by Montesquieu, advocated by Hamilton, and repeated by MacLean and Poinsett.19 Occasionally, his discussion of the superiority of federalism would even echo the words of Madison and Jefferson. An elaboration of the idea that the federal system helped to preserve the American republic would note that the states acted as barriers to unhealthy partisan emotions. “The confederation of all the American states presents none of the ordinary inconveniences resulting from large associations of men ... and political passions, instead of spreading over the land like a fire on the prairies, spends its strength against the interests and the individual passions of every state.”20 And the towns and counties had a similar function. “Municipal bodies and county administrations are like so many hidden reefs retarding or dividing the flood of the popular will.”21

So Tocqueville would admit that federalism theoretically saved large republics from some of their most obvious perils. But even here there was a limit beyond which he would not go; he would credit federalism only up to a certain size. “I think that before that time has run out [the next hundred years], the land now occupied or claimed by the United States will have a population of over one hundred million and be divided into forty states.... but I do say that the very fact of their being one hundred millions divided into forty distinct and not equally powerful nations would make the maintenance of the federal government no more than a happy accident.... I shall refuse to believe in the duration of a government which is called upon to hold together forty different nations covering an area half that of Europe.”22

A large republic, if federal, was possible; but an excessively large republic, federal or not, was inconceivable. Perhaps Tocqueville simply could not imagine a self-governing nation of one hundred million people spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles.

Yet despite his qualified praise for federal republics, the author of the Democracy would either overlook or decline to accept Madison’s novel thesis about size and would continue to lament “the ordinary inconveniences resulting from large associations of men” and to warn against largeness. “What can be said with certainty is that the existence of a great republic will always be more exposed than that of a small one. All passions fatal to a republic grow with the increase of its territory, but the virtues which should support it do not grow at the same rate.”23

The perils which threatened a large republic—including personal ambition, partisan emotions, a disturbing contrast between the wealth of the few and the poverty of the many, large metropolitan areas, the decline of morality, and the “complication of interests”—could only be counteracted by the firm support of the majority. Unfortunately, however, “the more numerous a people is and the more varied its attitudes and interests, the harder it becomes to form a compact majority.”24

Tocqueville would thus persist in condemning the very feature which Madison had acclaimed. He had either missed or rejected the American’s brilliant observation that size itself was beneficial.

Madison’s argument had implications not only about the success of large republics, but also about a second problem of special interest to Tocqueville: the tyranny of the majority. Madison had indicated that in extended republics—with their greater varieties of interests and viewpoints—opposition to the majority’s opinions was more likely to be effective. So his exposition of the advantages of size was equally a demonstration of a very significant safeguard against despotic majorities. As we shall see, Tocqueville, normally so alert to possible checks on the power of the majority, curiously failed to respond to Madison’s idea. He saw how the states, counties, and towns, sanctioned by American federalism and decentralization, served to check potentially dangerous tides of opinion,25 but he overlooked the powerful additional barrier to majoritarian tyranny which Madison had suggested: size (and variety) itself.

Tocqueville’s final evaluation of American federalism was curiously ambivalent. The American federation was a brilliant new form in the gallery of political theory (un gouvernement national incomplet); it overcame some of the weaknesses of previous federations, made a moderately large republic possible, and even served as a possible barrier to majoritarian despotism. But the Union also suffered from inherent faults of structure and practical problems of growth and size which made its future dark.

The major culprits in the story were the states which, in their jealousy and ambition, effectively drained the central government of its power and authority. Yet, even here, Tocqueville’s attitude was somewhat contradictory, for if, on the one hand, the states threatened the durability of the Union, on the other, they actually benefited the maintenance of a just republic by helping to check “political passions” and “the popular will.”

On the topic of federalism, Tocqueville undertook a truly impressive and eminently successful effort to cure his initial lack of knowledge. His list of sources, especially his readings, was extensive and of the highest quality. In this endeavor was one of the best demonstrations of Tocqueville’s scholarship. Yet we have also seen that he depended heavily, and probably more than he realized, on a limited number of favorite authors and acquaintances. In the course of his research, the names of Sparks, Walker, and Poinsett and the volumes by “Publius” and Story recurred constantly. For much of what eventually became his completed analysis, the starting points were the words and works of these few men.

Finally, for a variety of reasons which we will examine later,26 it is significant that Tocqueville could not bring himself to embrace James Madison’s fascinating and original idea and thus to abandon the teachings of Montesquieu and the traditional European distrust of size. Here was one conviction that even “Publius” could not shake.

[1. ]In this and the following chapter, I have attempted to indicate some specific origins for certain of Tocqueville’s ideas about American federalism. In some cases, his travel notebooks, drafts, or working manuscript of the Democracy offer precise references not contained in the published text of 1835, thus making new links between sources and ideas clear and incontrovertible. At other times, I have quoted materials not specifically cited by Tocqueville, but contained, nevertheless, in works which he consulted. In the latter cases, any connection between sources and ideas is, admittedly, only probable. Too often those searching for the origins of ideas forget that an author’s citation of one work does not exclude the possibility of his reliance on others. I have tried to avoid this error and, by drawing attention to certain of Tocqueville’s sources, have not intended to imply that he did not use others as well.

[2. ]Tocqueville to Ernest de Chabrol, New York, 20 June 1831, Toc. letters, Yale, BIa2. Also see another letter to Chabrol, New York, 9 June 1831, ibid.

[3. ]Other Americans often described to Tocqueville and Beaumont the advantages and dangers of federalism, but rarely detailed the mechanics of the interrelation of state and nation. For the conversation with Mr. Clay, see 2 October 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, pp. 65–66. For Mr. Walker, consult second conversation, which Tocqueville labeled important, 3 December 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, p. 96. According to Elizabeth Kelley Bauer, Walker had been a student of Justice Joseph Story and actively disseminated Story’s gospel to the West; see Bauer’s Commentaries on the Constitution, 1790–1860, pp. 162–67; hereafter cited as Bauer, Commentaries.

[4. ]See Tocqueville’s compliment to the authors of the Federalist; Democracy (Mayer), p. 115 note.

[5. ]See for example, quotations in the travel diaries, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, pp. 247, 249, 249–50; also in the various stages of the Democracy, Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, pp. 48, 49; and pertinent chapters in the Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1. (“Publius” is the pseudonym of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, each of whom wrote parts of the Federalist.)

[6. ]Samples may be found in the pertinent chapters of Tocqueville’s Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1; these translations might also have been made by Francis Lippitt.

[7. ]For information about these editions, consult Paul Leicester Ford, A List of Editions of the Federalist.

[8. ]“Union: Central Government” and “Sovereignty of the People,” 27–29 December 1831, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, pp. 245–50. Some of Tocqueville’s comments (pp. 246–47) strongly hint that he also read numbers 16 and 17, even though he did not mention them. There is also an undated reference to Number 83 in his diaries; see Notebook F, ibid., p. 289 note.

[9. ]For two excellent discussions of the authorship of the Federalist and the differences in emphasis between the papers by Hamilton and those by Madison, see Alpheus Thomas Mason, “The Federalist—A Split Personality,” pp. 625–43; and Douglass Adair, “The Authorship of the Disputed Federalist Papers,” pp. 97–122, 235–64.

[10. ]Federalist, Papers 15–22. For convenience, I have drawn all of my citations to the Federalist from the widely available Mentor edition, which contains an introduction, elaborate table of contents, and index of ideas by Clinton Rossiter; hereafter cited as Federalist (Mentor).

[11. ]See “Union: Central Government,” 28 December 1831, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, p. 245. This idea was presented most forcefully in Number 15, which Tocqueville cited in his travel notebooks. In 1835, he would declare: “This Constitution ... rests on an entirely new theory, a theory that should be hailed as one of the great discoveries of political science in our age”; Democracy (Mayer), p. 156.

[12. ]Number 23, Federalist (Mentor), p. 155. This passage was quoted somewhat inaccurately by Tocqueville in his travel diaries: “Union: Central Government,” 28 December 1831, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, p. 247.

[13. ]“Union: Central Government,” 29 December 1831, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, p. 248. Tocqueville’s emphasis. These remarks are particularly reminiscent of conversations and lessons in Boston. See especially “General Comments,” Boston, 18 September 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebook 1, Mayer, Journey, p. 48; and conversations with Mr. Quincy, 20 September 1831, and Mr. Sparks, [29 September 1831], Non-Alph. Notebooks 2 and 3, ibid., pp. 50–52, 58–59.

[14. ]“Union: Central Government,” 28 December 1831, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, p. 247.

[15. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 61; also p. 162. In the basic organization of the 1835 Democracy, we have already encountered an earlier echo of these ideas which resulted from the many lessons about America’s local and state government that the visitors had learned during the first months of their American journey. It was also a message carried in Jared Sparks’s essay “On the Government of Towns in Massachusetts,” which the historian wrote for Tocqueville and Beaumont. See as well Sparks’s remarks about the “spirit of locality,” 29 September 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, pp. 58–59. Also consult Pierson’s discussion of Sparks’s influence, Toc. and Bt., pp. 397–416.

[16. ]See Tocqueville’s remarks of 18 September 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebook 1, and his undated “Reflection,” Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, pp. 48 and 56–57, respectively. Also consult George Pierson’s account of the Boston experience, Toc. and Bt., pp. 355–425.

[17. ]Conservations with Mr. Poinsett, 12–17 January 1832, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, p. 118.

[18. ]Democracy (Mayer), pp. 164–65.

[19. ]Pierson, Toc. and Bt., p. 136.

[20. ]“Sources. Nature des livres où je puis puiser—Livres de droit,” Reading Lists, Yale, CIIa. Tocqueville devoted a separate travel diary to his notes and observations on Kent’s Commentaries: “Notes on Kent,” undated, Mayer, Journey, pp. 228–33. Also see his comments on Kent’s work under various headings in Notebook E, 27 and 29 December 1831, ibid., pp. 245, 249–57; and in Notebook F, 31 December 1831, ibid., pp. 297–302.

[21. ]Conversation with Gallatin, 10 June 1831, and with Spencer, Canandaigua, 17–18 July 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebook 1, Mayer, Journey, pp. 21, 28–29. Also consult conversations with Mr. Gray, Boston, 21 September 1831; with Jared Sparks, 29 September 1831; and with Mr. Chase, 2 December 1831; Non-Alph. Notebooks 2 and 3, ibid., pp. 53, 59, 93, respectively. Cf. Tocqueville’s own comments of 30 September 1831, Pocket Notebook 3, ibid., p. 149.

[22. ]16 October 1831, Notebook F, Mayer, Journey, p. 313.

[23. ]“Reflection,” undated, Notes on Kent, Mayer, Journey, pp. 229–30. Compare this to “Judicial Power in the United States and Its Effect on Political Society,” Democracy (Mayer), pp. 102–3.

[24. ]Hereafter cited as Conseil, Mélanges.

[25. ]Hereafter cited as Story, Commentaries. The complete edition (3 vols.) also appeared in 1833. Pierson, Toc. and Bt., p. 729, mistakenly cited the larger edition as the one which Tocqueville used, but the Frenchman’s own page references are drawn from the abridgement. Tocqueville also used Story’s The Public and General Statutes Passed by the Congress of the United States of America from 1789–1827; hereafter cited as Story, Laws. (Two additional volumes of this work appeared in 1837 and 1847.)

[26. ]In 1848, in the twelfth edition of the Democracy, Tocqueville would add translations of the Federal and New York state constitutions drawn from Conseil’s work and would also at that time include the praises quoted above; see Démocratie, 12th ed., 1:307.

[27. ]Number 15, Federalist (Mentor), p. 111.

[28. ]Number 17, ibid., p. 120.

[29. ]Ibid., p. 119; cf. Number 45, pp. 295–300.

[30. ]Democracy (Mayer), pp. 112–70.

[31. ]The chapter on the federal constitution, Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1.

[32. ]See Democracy (Mayer), p. 166.

[33. ]Number 17, Federalist (Mentor), pp. 119–20.

[34. ]Number 46, ibid., pp. 294–95; cf. Number 45, pp. 290–93.

[35. ]See Democracy (Mayer), p. 167; also pp. 365–67.

[36. ]The chapter on the federal constitution, Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1.

[37. ]Number 39, Federalist (Mentor), p. 246.

[38. ]Alternative written above “confederation”: “federal government.” Neither is effaced.

[39. ]The chapter on the federal constitution, Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1. Contrast this and other statements about the nature of the Union to a criticism that Tocqueville, in his description of the structure of the American government, failed to distinguish between “la forme fédérale” and “la forme confédérale,” Paul Bastid, “Tocqueville et la doctrine constitutionnelle,” Toc.: centenaire, p. 46.

[40. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 157. Here is an additional instance of Tocqueville’s inclination to give names to new phenomena.

[41. ]On the subjects of the importance of the federal courts and of the necessity for a strong and independent judiciary, the Commentaries of the two jurists are strikingly similar. The drafts of the Democracy indicate that, between 1832 and 1835, Tocqueville relied more heavily on Story than on Kent.

[42. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, pp. 39–40.

[43. ]Number 22, Federalist (Mentor), pp. 150–51.

[44. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, pp. 39–40. Tocqueville’s own emphasis.

[45. ]Number 39, Federalist (Mentor), pp. 245–46. Compare Tocqueville’s paragraph from the 1835 text, Democracy (Mayer), p. 115.

[46. ]“The Federal Courts,” Democracy (Mayer), p. 140.

[47. ]“Means of Determining the Competence of the Federal Courts,” ibid., pp. 142–43. Nowhere in his sections on the American judiciary would Tocqueville cite either Number 22 or Number 39 of the Federalist.

[48. ]See various descriptions of those complexities in the 1835 volumes. Democracy (Mayer), pp. 61, 114–15, 155–58, 164–65.

[49. ]Compare passages containing the phrases “one single people” or “one and the same people” (Democracy [Mayer], pp. 140, 145) with others that mention “twenty-four little sovereign nations” or “an assemblage of confederated republics” or “the association of several peoples” or “a society of nations,” ibid., pp. 61, 117, 364, 376.

[50. ]Number 45, Federalist (Mentor), pp. 292–93; this passage would be included in the 1835 Democracy as a footnote, Democracy (Mayer), p. 115 note.

[51. ]Story, Commentaries, p. 192.

[52. ]Jefferson to Major John Cartwright, Monticello, 5 June 1824, Conseil, Mélanges, 2:404–12. For the English version, see A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 16:47; hereafter cited as Jefferson, Memorial Ed.

[53. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 61; the second instance occurs on page 115.

[54. ]Ibid., p. 246 note.

[55. ]In a challenging essay entitled “Tocqueville on American Federalism,” Robert C. Hartnett, S.J., described the author of the Democracy as hopelessly confused about the nature of the Union. The piece is found in William J. Schlaerth, S.J., ed., A Symposium on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, pp. 22–30.

[56. ]The obligations demonstrated above concern the relationship between the states and the Union, but Tocqueville’s drafts and working manuscript reveal several additional borrowings in other areas treated in the Democracy, such as the threat of legislative tyranny, the necessity of an independent judiciary, the powers of the President, and the dangers of frequent elections.

[57. ]See Pierson’s discussion, Toc. and Bt., pp. 730–35.

[58. ]The chapter on the federal constitution, Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1. Nowhere in his published chapter on the federal Constitution did Tocqueville use the term contract to describe the Union; consult Democracy (Mayer), pp. 112–70. The word contract appears elsewhere in the 1835 text, however; see ibid., p. 369.

[59. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 369 (my emphasis); cf. pp. 367–68, 369–70, 383–84. Elsewhere in the Democracy, however, by implication at least, Tocqueville would contradict this position. Compare the statement quoted immediately above to his repudiation of John C. Calhoun’s nullification doctrine, ibid., pp. 390–91.

[60. ]Hereafter cited as Rawle, View. According to Bauer, Commentaries, pp. 27, 63, Rawle’s work was the first textbook on the Constitution designed for use on the college and law school levels and was highly popular.

[61. ]Conseil, Mélanges, 1:127–28 note.

[62. ]Ibid., 1:129–30 note; cf. Rawle, View, pp. 25–26.

[63. ]For a complete account of Lippitt’s memories, see Daniel C. Gilman, “Alexis de Tocqueville and His Book on America—Sixty Years After.” Also consult Pierson’s description in his Toc. and Bt., pp. 732–34 and notes.

[64. ]Rawle, View, p. 290; cf. pp. 288–90, 295–301. Pierson indicated that Tocqueville had been exposed to Rawle through Lippitt, but stated incorrectly that Rawle was merely a further translation of Story, Kent, and the Federalist, Pierson, Toc. and Bt., pp. 733–34 and notes.

[65. ]For a description of Rawle’s work and its reception, see Bauer, Commentaries, pp. 58–65.

[66. ]Rémond, Etats-Unis, 1:382; Rémond’s work contains a particularly perceptive discussion of Tocqueville’s originality, ibid., 1:377–90.

[67. ]For elaboration on this idea, consult Paul C. Nagel, One Nation Indivisible: The Union in American Thought, 1776–1861.

[1. ]Hereafter cited as Scheffer, Histoire. This history is the only one published in Paris during the few years previous to Tocqueville’s journey to America and also cited by him in his lists of sources. See Pierson, Toc. and Bt., p. 46.

[2. ]Scheffer, Histoire, p. 284; my translation. In the Commentaries, p. 718, Story expressed a similar opinion. Compare Tocqueville’s own text, Democracy (Mayer), p. 364.

[3. ]In the 1835 Democracy Tocqueville would carefully distinguish between the future of the Union as a nation and its future as a republic; Democracy (Mayer), pp. 395–400. This chapter considers only the first of these two questions. (For an identical distinction between federal and republican destinies, see Conseil’s introductory essay to the Mélanges, 1:112–14. Did Tocqueville borrow this concept from Conseil’s volume?)

[4. ]“Division de l’empire américaine,” April 1831, Shipboard Conversations, Yale, BIIb. Translated by Pierson and quoted from his Toc. and Bt., pp. 49–50. (Consult Pierson’s account of the conversation.) Neither the original French nor the English translation of the O.C. (Mayer) edition of Tocqueville’s travel diaries contains any of his shipboard notes.

[5. ]Conversation with John Quincy Adams, Boston, 1 October 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, pp. 60–63.

[6. ]Second conversation with Mr. Walker, 3 December 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, ibid., p. 96.

[7. ]Conversation with Mr. Poinsett, 12–17 January 1832, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, ibid., pp. 113–15. Compare Democracy (Mayer), p. 381.

[8. ]Conversation with Mr. Clay, 2 October 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, pp. 65–66.

[9. ]“Centralization,” 25 October 1831, Alphabetic Notebook 2, ibid., p. 216.

[10. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 2, pp. 48–49. Compare Democracy (Mayer), p. 384.

[11. ]31 January 1832, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, pp. 235–36.

[12. ]Number 15, Federalist (Mentor), p. 111.

[13. ]Number 45, ibid., pp. 289–90.

[14. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, p. 76.

[15. ]In this exposition, Tocqueville once again displayed his eagerness to discover and employ a point de départ, one of his favorite mental tools.

[16. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, p. 78. Cf. Democracy (Mayer), pp. 364–66.

[17. ]See Democracy (Mayer), pp. 368–70, 383–84.

[18. ]Democracy (Mayer), pp. 370–74, 384–86. Tocqueville would cite as material interests: various geographic circumstances, the presence of the slaves in the South, and the bonds of commerce, transportation, and communication. As nonmaterial factors, he would include: common opinions, beliefs, and sentiments, and a growing sense of nationhood.

[19. ]Ibid., pp. 374–83. According to the 1835 text, the most important of these contrary forces would be the one we have already noted, the shifting balance of wealth and influence among the states and sections as the Union expanded. But Tocqueville would also mention the incompatible passions and character traits created by slavery.

[20. ]The following brief excerpts are from the section entitled “What Are the Chances that the American Union Will Last,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2. Initially the sentence ended: “of all of its parts.” But Tocqueville deleted “all” and substituted the word “some.”

[21. ]Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2.

[22. ]Ibid. Compare these phrases with the Democracy (Mayer), p. 383.

[23. ]Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2; my emphasis.

[24. ]Consult the section of the 1835 Democracy entitled “What Are the Chances that the American Union Will Last? What Dangers Threaten It?” Democracy (Mayer), pp. 363–95. (Also consult pp. 166–70.) Only once, significantly while discussing the results of the Union’s growth, would Tocqueville approach so direct a statement; see ibid., p. 378.

[25. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, pp. 80–81. Compare Democracy (Mayer), pp. 383–84.

[26. ]Hereafter cited as Blunt, Historical Sketch.

[27. ]Hereafter cited as Duer, Outlines.

[28. ]Second revised edition; hereafter cited as Sergeant, Constitutional Law.

[29. ]“Sources. Nature des livres où je puis puiser—Livres de droit.” Reading Lists, Yale, CIIa.

[30. ]Bauer, Commentaries, pp. 27, 39, and notes.

[31. ]Sergeant, Constitutional Law, pp. 324–28 and notes. Compare Tocqueville’s discussion of the issue, Democracy (Mayer), pp. 386–87.

[32. ]Sergeant, Constitutional Law, pp. 353–54. Concerning the debate on the bank, Tocqueville also cited in his drafts two issues of the National Intelligencer, “6 February 1834” and “5 [sic: 4] March 1834.” The first contained a speech by Daniel Webster; the second, one by Henry Clay. See Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 5, pp. 10–12. Also consult the Democracy (Mayer), pp. 388–89.

[33. ]Blunt, Historical Sketch, pp. 5–6. Compare Tocqueville’s analysis of the controversy over the Indians, Democracy (Mayer), pp. 387–88, and over the public lands, p. 388.

[34. ]Bauer, Commentaries, p. 101; also Pierson, Toc. and Bt., p. 729 note.

[35. ]Duer specifically disagreed, however, with what he called Rawle’s “restricted views” on “the perpetual obligation of the Federal Constitution.”

[36. ]Duer, Outlines, preface, pp. v–xviii. According to Bauer, Commentaries, p. 28, Duer wrote his book as a reply to nullification doctrines.

[37. ]According to the copyist, Bonnel, the first word in this phrase was illegible.

[38. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 2, pp. 61–64. The governor during the crisis was Robert Y. Hayne. Perhaps Tocqueville was thinking of James Hamilton, Jr., a prominent nullifier. Consult the footnotes in the Democracy (Mayer), pp. 389–92, where other documents are cited, especially the compromise tariff of 1833. Note that nowhere did Tocqueville indicate that he had read President Jackson’s Proclamation of December 1832.

[39. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 2, p. 52.

[40. ]Bonnel indicated that the word following “its” was illegible, but similar passages in the draft make possible the educated guess: “power.”

[41. ]Drafts, Yale, Paquet 3, cahier 2, p. 66.

[42. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 2, pp. 80–81.

[43. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 2, pp. 52–53.

[44. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 386; see also pp. 384–85, 394–95. Note Tocqueville’s recognition of several circumstances which could reverse the decline of the federal government: “a change of opinion, an internal crisis, or a war could all at once restore the vigor it needs” (p. 394).

[45. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, p. 76.

[46. ]Bauer, Commentaries, pp. 21, 28.

[47. ]Story, Commentaries, p. 193; not specifically cited by Tocqueville. Compare Democracy (Mayer), pp. 394–95.

[48. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 2, pp. 48–49. For the softened version, see Democracy (Mayer), p. 384.

[49. ]Conseil, Mélanges, 1:84–85, 232–34; 2:310–16, 420–21. Tocqueville’s papers give no indication that he noticed any of these letters.

[50. ]Conseil, Mélanges, 2:420–21. For the original English version, see Jefferson to William B. Giles, Monticello, 26 December 1825, Jefferson, Memorial Ed., 16:146–47.

[51. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 386.

[52. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, p. 25.

[53. ]This and the following excerpt are from the section “What Are the Chances that the American Union Will Last,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2; this sentence is crossed out.

[54. ]Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2; the final three sentences in this paragraph are crossed out in the manuscript. Compare this timetable to Arnold Scheffer’s, Histoire, p. 246; see also pp. 251, 252.

[55. ]Cf. Democracy (Mayer), p. 387.

[56. ]Ibid., p. 395.

[57. ]Letter from Sparks to Tocqueville, Boston, 30 August 1833, Relations with Americans, 1832–40, Yale, CId; Bonnel copy.

[58. ]Letter from H. D. Gilpin to Tocqueville, Philadelphia, 24 September 1833, Relations with Americans, 1832–40, Yale, CId; original from Madame de Larminat.

[59. ]For elaboration, see chapter 2 above.

[60. ]It should be emphasized that his description also obviously had its optimistic elements: the nation’s dominance of North America, its future commercial greatness, its apparently boundless wealth, and others.

[1. ]Second conversation with Mr. Walker, 3 December 1831, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, pp. 95–96.

[2. ]Conversation with Mr. Mazureau, New Orleans, 1 January 1832, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, ibid., pp. 101–2. Mazureau’s remark was clearly an echo of Montesquieu (see below).

[3. ]See the section entitled: “Advantages of the Federal System in General and Its Special Usefulness in America,” Democracy (Mayer), pp. 158–63.

[4. ]From the section “Advantages of the Federal System ...,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1.

[5. ]Justice Story argued from a more empirical point of view. See his Commentaries, pp. 169–70.

[6. ]Conversation with Mr. MacLean, 2 December, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, p. 93. See Tocqueville’s remarks of 14 January 1832, Notebook E, ibid., pp. 234–35. In 1835, Tocqueville would reproduce the essence of MacLean’s comment; see Democracy (Mayer), p. 163.

[7. ]“Union: Central Government,” 29 December 1831, Notebook E, Mayer, Journey, p. 248.

[8. ]Conversations with Mr. Poinsett, 12–17 January 1832, Non-Alphabetic Notebooks 2 and 3, Mayer, Journey, p. 118. Poinsett prefaced this remark by citing the example of South America; and in 1835, Tocqueville would repeat his illustration, Democracy (Mayer), p. 162.

[9. ]De l’esprit des lois, edited by Gonzague Truc. The selections quoted are from “Propriétés distinctives de la république,” 1:131–32 and “Comment les républiques pourvoient à leur sureté,” 1:137–38; my translations.

[10. ]Number 9, Federalist (Mentor), pp. 71–76.

[11. ]Madison’s brilliant thesis is developed primarily in papers 10 and 51 (also see Number 14) and still stands as one of America’s most creative contributions to political theory. For analysis, consult two articles by Neal Riemer, “The Republicanism of James Madison” and “James Madison’s Theory of the Self-Destructive Features of Republican Government”; also two articles by Douglass Adair, “The Tenth Federalist Revisited” and “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” in which Adair discloses Madison’s debt to David Hume. Two more recent examinations are Paul F. Bourke, “The Pluralist Reading of James Madison’s Tenth Federalist,” and Robert Morgan, “Madison’s Theory of Representation in the Tenth Federalist.” Also pertinent is the study by Robert A. Dahl and Edward R. Tufte, Size and Democracy, especially pp. 34–40. Concerning Madison’s creativity, see Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution Considered as an Intellectual Movement.”

[12. ]Concerning the possible application of Madison’s theory to Tocqueville’s fears about the danger of tyranny of the majority, see chapter 15 below.

[13. ]Perhaps Tocqueville skimmed Number 10 during December 1831, but if he did so, he left no indication in his travel notebooks.

[14. ]Drafts, Yale, CVb, Paquet 13, pp. 25 (where two citations occur), 26; CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 1, p. 48. Tocqueville referred only to pages of the Federalist, not to papers, but a glance at his edition reveals that the essay which he repeatedly mentioned was Number 51; nowhere in the drafts or manuscript of the Democracy did he cite Number 10. (In 1835 he would quote a passage from Number 51; without any indication, however, he would delete from the excerpt the essence of Madison’s argument about size; Democracy [Mayer], p. 260.)

[15. ]Drafts, Yale, CVb, Paquet 13, p. 26.

[16. ]Number 51, Federalist (Mentor), pp. 324–25.

[17. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 5, p. 2. He cited an epistle from “Jefferson à Devernois [sic] 6 février 1795,” but did not indicate that the letter appeared in Conseil, Mélanges, 1:407–8. For the original English version, see letter to M. D’Ivernois, 6 February 1795, Jefferson, Memorial Ed., 9:299–300.

[18. ]Tocqueville’s draft contained all except the last sentence of this passage. Note that Jefferson had evidently not learned anything from Hamilton about Montesquieu’s complete opinions concerning large republics.

[19. ]See “Influence of the Laws upon the Maintenance of a Democratic Republic,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 1; and Democracy (Mayer), p. 287 (also pp. 161–62). Pierson, Toc. and Bt., pp. 768–69, wrote that the resemblance between Tocqueville and Montesquieu was primarily outward. This is true in many ways, but on the question of the size of a republic the similarity is far more than superficial; the ideas of the two men are strikingly parallel. Compare Tocqueville’s comments in the Democracy (Mayer), pp. 158–63, with Montesquieu’s remarks in the sections from De l’esprit des lois cited above. For further discussion of similarities between Tocqueville and Montesquieu, see Melvin Richter’s stimulating essay, “The Uses of Theory: Tocqueville’s Adaptation of Montesquieu.”

[20. ]Democracy (Bradley), 1:170. Note the contrast between this idea and Tocqueville’s usual low opinion of the states and their selfish striving for power.

[21. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 263; also see p. 287.

[22. ]Ibid., pp. 377–78. See also pp. 376–77 and compare p. 381, where Tocqueville would state that a large federation could exist if none of the component parts had contradictory interests.

[23. ]Ibid., p. 159.

[24. ]Ibid., p. 160. Tocqueville seemed to define la majorité as underlying support within a society for the form and operation of its government, that is, as something essential to the continued orderly existence of a nation.

[25. ]See, for example, Democracy (Mayer), pp. 262–63.

[26. ]See chapter 15 below on Tocqueville’s concept of the majority.