a variety of physical means of oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind, as that will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of an individual despot, the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it, and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The sovereign can no longer say, "You shall think as I do on pain of death;" but he says, "You are free to think differently from me, and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but if such be your determination, you are henceforth an alien among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow-citizens, if you solicit their suffrages; and they will affect to scorn you, if you solicit their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow-creatures will shun you like an impure being; and those who are most persuaded of your innocence will abandon you too, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence incomparably worse than death."

Absolute monarchies have thrown an odium upon despotism; let us beware lest democratic republics shonld restore oppression, and should render it less odious and less degrading in the eyes of the many, by making it still more onerous to the few.

Works have been published in the proudest nations of the Old World, expressly intended to censure the vices and deride the fol lies of the time; Labruyère inhabited the palace of Louis XIV. when he composed his chapter upon the Great, and Molière criticised the courtiers in the very pieces which were acted before the court. But the ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of; the smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in truth renders it indignant; from the style of its language to the more solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. The majority lives in the perpetual exercise of self-applause; and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.

If great writers have not at present existed in America, the reason is very simply given in these facts; there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America. The inquisition has never been able to prevent a vast number of anti-religious books from circulating in Spain. The empire of the majority succeeds much better in the United States, since it actually removes the wish of publishing them. Unbelievers are to be met with in America, but, to say the truth, there is no public organ of infidelity. Attempts have been made by some governments to protect the morality of nations by prohibiting licentious books. In the United States no one is punished for this sort of works, but no one is induced to write them; not because all the citizens are immaculate in their manners, but because the majority of the community is decent and orderly.

In these cases the advantages derived from the exercise of this power are unquestionable; and I am simply discussing the nature of the power itself. This irresistible authority is a constant fact, and its beneficent exercise is an accidental occurrence.

EFFECTS OF THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY UPON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE AMERICANS.

Effects of the Tyranny of the Majority more sensibly felt hitherto in the Manners than in the Conduct of Society.-They check the development of leading Charac. ters.-Democratic Republics, organized like the United States, bring the Practice of courting favour within the reach of the many.-Proofs of this Spirit in the United States. Why there is more Patriotism in the People than in those who govern in its name.

THE tendencies which I have just alluded to are as yet very slightly perceptible in political society; but they already begin to exercise an unfavourable influence upon the national character of the Americans. I am inclined to attribute the singular paucity of distinguished political characters to the ever-increasing activity of the despotism of the majority in the United States.

When the American revolution broke out, they arose in great numbers; for public opinion then served, not to tyrannize over, but

to direct the exertions of individuals.

Those celebrated men took a full part in the general agitation of mind common at that period, and they attained a high degree of personal fame, which was reflected back upon the nation, but which was by no means borrowed from it.

In absolute governments, the great nobles who are nearest to the throne flatter the passions of the sovereign, and voluntarily truckle to his caprices. But the mass of the nation does not degrade itself by servitude; it often submits from weakness, from habit, or from ignorance, and sometimes from loyalty. Some nations have been known to sacrifice their own desires to those of the sovereign with pleasure and with pride; thus exhibiting a sort of independence in the very act of submission. These peoples are miserable, but they are not degraded. There is a great difference between doing what one does not approve, and feigning to approve what one does; the one is the necessary case of a weak person, the other befits the temper of a lacquey.

In free countries, where every one is more or less called upon to give his opinion in the affairs of state; in democratic republics, where public life is incessantly commingled with domestic affairs, where the sovereign authority is accessible on every side, and where its attention can almost always be attracted by vociferation, more persons are to be met with who speculate upon its foibles, and live at the cost of its passions, than in absolute monarchies. Not because men are naturally worse in these states than elsewhere, but the temptation is stronger, and of easier access at the same time. The result is a far more extensive debasement of the characters of citizens.

Democratic republics extend the practice of currying favour with the many, and they introduce it into a great number of classes at once this is one of the most serious reproaches that can be addressed to them. In democratic states organized on the principles of the American republics, this is more especially the case, where the authority of the majority is so absolute and so irresistible, that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and almost abjure his quality as a human being, if he intends to stray from the track which it lays down.

In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United States, I found very few men who displayed any of

that manly candour, and that masculine independence of opinion, which frequently distinguished the Americans in former times, and which constitute the leading feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be found. It seems, at first sight, as if all the minds of the Americans were formed upon one model, so accurately do they correspond in their manner of judging. A stranger does, indeed, sometimes meet with Americans who dissent from these rigorous formularies; with men who deplore the defects of the laws, the mutability and the ignorance of democracy; who even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies which impair the national character, and to point out such remedies as it might be possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things beside yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are confided, are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very ready to communicate truths which are useless to you, but they continue to hold a different language in public.

If ever these lines are read in America, I am well assured of two things in the first place, that all who peruse them will raise their voices to condemn me; and in the second place, that very many of them will acquit me at the bottom of their conscience.

[The author's views upon what he terms the tyranny of the majority, the despotism of public opinion in the United States, have already excited some remarks in this country, and will probably give occasion to more. As stated in the preface to this edition, the editor does not conceive himself called upon to discuss the speculative opinions of the author, and supposes he will best discharge his duty by confining his observations to what he deems errors of fact or law. But in reference to this particular subject, it seems due to the author to remark, that he visited the United States at a particular time, when a successful political chieftain had succeeded in establishing his party in power, as it seemed, firmly and permanently; when the preponderance of that party was immense, and when there seemed little prospect of any change. He may have met with men, who sank under the astonishing popularity of General Jackson, who despaired of the republic, and who therefore shrank from the expression of their opinions. It must be confessed, however, that the author is obnoxious to the charge which has been made, of the want of perspicuity and distinctness in this part of his work. He does not mean that the press was silent, for he has himself not only noticed, but furnished proof of the great freedom, not to say licentiousness, with which it assailed the character of the president, and the measures of his administration.

He does not mean to represent the opponents of the dominant party as having thrown down their weapons of warfare, for his book shows throughou his knowledge of the existence of an active and able party, constantly op posing and harassing the administration.

But, after a careful perusal of the chapters on this subject, the editor is inclined to the opinion, that M. De Tocqueville intends to speak of the ty ranny of the party in excluding from public employment all those who do not adopt the Shibboleth of the majority. The language at pp. 286, 287, which he puts in the mouth of a majority, and his observations immediately preceding this note, seem to furnish the key to his meaning; although it must be admitted that there are other passages to which a wider construction may be given. Perhaps they may be reconciled by the idea that the author considers the acts and opinions of the dominant party as the just and true expression of public opinion. And hence, when he speaks of the intolerance of public opinion, he means the exclusiveness of the party, which, for the time being, may be predominant. He had seen men of acknowledged competency removed from office, or excluded from it, wholly on the ground of their entertaining opinions hostile to those of the dominant party, or majority And he had seen this system extended to the very lowest officers of the government, and applied by the electors in their choice of all officers of all descriptions; and this he deemed persecution-tyranny-despotism. But he surely is mistaken in representing the effect of this system of terror as stifling all complaint, silencing all opposition, and inducing "enemies and friends to yoke themselves alike to the triumphant car of the majority." He mistook a temporary state of parties for a permanent and ordinary result, and he was carried away by the immense majority that then supported the administration, to the belief of a universal acquiescence. Without intending here to speak of the merits or demerits of those who represented that majority, it is proper to remark, that the great change which, has taken place since the period when the author wrote, in the political condition of the very persons who he supposed then wielded the terrors of disfranchisement against their opponents, in itself furnishes a full and complete demonstration of the error of his opinions respecting the "true independence of mind and freedom of discussion" in America. For without such discussion to enlighten the minds of the people, and without a stern independence of the rewards and threats of those in power, the change alluded to could not have occurred.

There is reason to complain not only of the ambiguity, but of the style of exaggeration which pervades all the remarks of the author on this subject— so different for the well considered and nicely adjusted language employed by him on all other topics. Thus, p. 282, he implies that there is no means of redress afforded even by the judiciary, for a wrong committed by the majority. His error is, first, in supposing the jury to constitute the judicial power; second, overlooking what he has himself elsewhere so well described, the independence of the judiciary and its means of controlling the action of a majority in a state or in the federal government; and thirdly, in omiting the proper consideration of the frequent changes of popular sentiment by which the majority of yesterday becomes the minority of to-day, and its acts of injustice are reversed.

Certain it is that the instances which he cites at this page, do not establish his position respecting the disposition of the majority. The riot at Baltimore was,like other riots in England and in France, the result of popular phrensy