Sublime

No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even

The time may be already anticipated at which the American Republics will be obliged to introduce the plan of election by an elected body more frequently into their system of representation, or they will incur no small risk of perishing miserably amongst the shoals of democracy.

When a State is threatened by serious dangers, the people frequently succeeds in selecting the citizens who are the most able to save

Pour Tocqueville, l’histoire est faite par des mouvements de fond – à son époque, la montée de la société démocratique –, mais aussi par les dirigeants. Ainsi s’expliquent à la fois le pluralisme des institutions et le destin différent de pays aussi proches que la France et le Royaume-Uni. Aussi n’est-il pas moins important de comprendre les hommes

publicly visible.

It follows, then, that in countries where equality of inheritance is established by law, property, and especially landed property, must have a tendency to perpetual diminution.