Democracy in America Book Two — Alexis De Tocqueville

This illustrated book the Second Volume of the our Democracy In America series Some readers may perhaps be astonished that firmly persuaded as that the democratic revolution which we are witnessing is an irresistible fact against which it would be neither desirable nor wise to struggle We should often have had occasion in this book to address language of such severity to those democratic communities which this revolution has brought into being Our answer is simply that it is because I am not an adversary of democracy that I have sought to speak of democracy in all sincerity The philosophical method of the eighteenth century is then not only French but it is democratic and this explains why it was so readily admitted throughout Europe where it has contributed so powerfully to change the face of society It is not because the French have changed their former opinions and altered their former manners that they have convulsed the world but because they were the first to generalize and bring to light a philosophical method by the assistance of which it became easy to attack all that was old and to open a path to all that was new When in 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville came to study Democracy in America the trial of nearly a half century of the working of our system had been made and it had been proved by many crucial tests to be a government of liberty regulated by law with such results in the development of strength in population wealth and military and commercial power as no age had ever witnessed

This illustrated book the Second Volume of the our Democracy In America series Some readers may perhaps be astonished that firmly persuaded as that the democratic revolution which we are witnessing is an irresistible fact against which it would be neither desirable nor wise to struggle We should often have had occasion in this book to address language of such severity to those democratic communities which this revolution has brought into being Our answer is simply that it is because I am not an adversary of democracy that I have sought to speak of democracy in all sincerity img src https s3 eu west 1 amazonaws com dia kitadagitim ckeditor_assets pictures 53 content_1_original_original jpg alt height 15 width 15 font size 1 color white font img

This illustrated book the first volume of the our Democracy In America series In the eleven years that separated the Declaration of the Independence of the United States from the completion of that act in the ordination of our written Constitution the great minds of America were bent upon the study of the principles of government that were essential to the preservation of the liberties which had been won at great cost and with heroic labors and sacrifices Their studies were conducted in view of the imperfections that experience had developed in the government of the Confederation and they were therefore practical and thorough Those liberties had been wrung from reluctant monarchs in many contests in many countries and were grouped into creeds and established in ordinances sealed with blood in many great struggles of the people They were not new to the people They were consecrated theories but no government had been previously established for the great purpose of their preservation and enforcement That which was experimental in our plan of government was the question whether democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of repressing or destroying their enemy when he was found in the person of a single despot When in 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville came to study Democracy in America the trial of nearly a half century of the working of our system had been made and it had been proved by many crucial tests to be a government of liberty regulated by law with such results in the development of strength in population wealth and military and commercial power as no age had ever witnessed