DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA BY ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE TRANSLATION BY HENRY REEVE, AS RE- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by JOHN BARTLETT. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 321 342.7 T56+ V. I cop. 2 PUBLISHERS' NOTE In the eventful years since De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" was given to the public, its value as a treatise on government in democracies has remained practically unimpaired, while interest in the subject has greatly grown. The translation here given is that by Henry Reeve, the author's friend, as revised and annotated by Professor Francis Bowen. Dr. Bowen's work was minute and careful, and the few foot-notes that he thought essential to a clear understanding of the treatise are of such historical and comparative worth that it is thought wise to reissue them, together with the translation as they left his hand in 1862. These notes are marked "AM. ED." Further foot-notes, save those otherwise indicated, are those added by De Tocqueville himself. De Tocqueville's speech foretelling the Revolution of 1848, his essay on "Democracy in Switzerland," and Dr. Bowen's sketch of the publicist's life are also retained. President Gilman's Introduction to the "Democracy" will be appreciated by political students for its judg ments historically, and in the light of existing American conditions. A portrait of De Tocqueville -the only one that is indorsed by his family,-a Bibliographical Note, and an Index give completeness to the present publication. 82279 X 838 I have frequently remarked that the best accounts of complex states of things, whether political or otherwise, have generally been given, at least at first, by intelligent foreigners: as, Sir William Temple's account of the Netherlands; Basnage's account of the same republic; De Lolme's of the British Constitution; De Tocqueville's of American Democracy; Arthur Young's of Agriculture and of the Administration of Old France. This remark finds its application even in history. Niebuhr saw many relations of early Rome clearer and truer than Livy or even Cicero.-DR. FRANCIS LIEBER. The importance of M. de Tocqueville's speculations is not to be estimated by the opinions which he has adopted, be these true or false. The value of his work is less in the conclusions than in the mode of arriving at them. He has applied, to the greatest question in the art and science of government, those principles, and the methods of philosophizing, to which mankind åre indebted for all the advances made by modern times in the other branches of the study of nature. It is not risking too.ch to affirm of these volumes, that they contain the first analytical inquiry into the influence of Democracy. For the first time, that phenomenon is treated of as something which, being a reality in-ature, and no mere mathematical or metaphysical abstraction, manifests itself by innumerable properties, not by some one only; and must be looked at in many aspects before it can be made the subject even of that modest and conjectural judgment which is along attainable respecting a. fact at once so great and so new. Its consequences are by no means to be comprehended in one single description, nor in one summary verdict of approval or condemnation. So complicated anti-endless are their ramifications that he who sees furthest into them will longest hesitate before finally pronouncing whether the good or the evil of its influence, on the whole, preponderates.-JOHN STUART MILL. Next to Aristotle's. Politics; I. account this the most valuable political book in myʻlibrary.-JOHN STUART BLACKIE. |