Of Democracy in America

Extract

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth.”

So concludes the first volume of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Such a statement appearing in 1945 would, except perhaps for the view that the two countries “tend towards the same end,” be truistic. Even the journalists would understand and accept it. It appeared in 1835. To most Europeans of that day, the United States was a crude and bumptious little nation on the western fringes of the world, just as Russia was the half-Oriental, half-feudal state which was not so much a power as a vast expanse of inhospitable steppes. At a time when English travelers were frequently aware only of the vulgarity of American manners, and when some European visitors to this country were most impressed with its picturesque qualities, Tocqueville was much more concerned with the basic nature and with the future of the complex combination of laws, customs, and mores which were embraced within his inclusive conception of democracy. He came here, not to give slightly condescending lectures and to bolster his own feeling of superiority, but rather to observe and report on the operation of a principle of political and social organization. Partly because he had an inquiring mind and was willing to work hard at his self-imposed task, but largely because he was gifted with rare insight and was not prevented from seeing the trend of events by the surface happenings of his own time, his book on the nature of American institutions remains, after more than a century, one of the few invaluable books on that subject.