I listened, and marvelled at the feebleness of human reason. A proposition is true or false, but no art can prove it to be one or the other, in the midst of the uncertainties of science and the conflicting lessons of experience, until a new incident disperses the clouds of doubt; I was poor, I become rich; and I am not to expect that prosperity will act upon my conduct, and leave my judgment free: my opinions change with my fortune, and the happy circumstances which I turn to my advantage, furnish me with that decisive argument which was before wanting.
{The sentence beginning "I was poor, I become rich," &c, struck the editor, on perusal, as obscure, if not contradictory. The original seems more explicit, and justice to the author seems to require that it should be presented to the reader. "J'étais pauvre, me voici riche; du moins, si le bien-être, en agissant sur ma conduite, laissait mon jugement en liberté! Mais non, mes opinions sont en effet changées avec ma fortune, et, dans l'événement heureux dont je profite, j'ai réellement découvert la raison déterminante qui jusque-là m'avait manqué."—American Editor.}
The influence of prosperity acts still more freely upon the American than upon strangers. The American has always seen the connexion of public order and public prosperity, intimately united as they are, go on before his eyes; he does not conceive that one can subsist without the other; he has therefore nothing to forget: nor has he, like so many Europeans, to unlearn the lessons of his early education.
INFLUENCE OF THE LAWS UPON THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN THE UNITED STATES.
Three principal Causes of the Maintenance of the democratic Republic.—Federal Constitutions.—Municipal Institutions.—Judicial Power.
The principal aim of this book has been to make known the laws of the United States; if this purpose has been accomplished, the reader is already enabled to judge for himself which are the laws that really tend to maintain the democratic republic, and which endanger its existence. If I have not succeeded in explaining this in the whole course of my work, I cannot hope to do so within the limits of a single chapter. It is not my intention to retrace the path I have already pursued; and a very few lines will suffice to recapitulate what I have previously explained.
Three circumstances seem to me to contribute most powerfully to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States.
The first is that federal form of government which the Americans have adopted, and which enables the Union to combine the power of a great empire with the security of a small state;—
The second consists in those municipal institutions which limit the despotism of the majority, and at the same time impart a taste for freedom, and a knowledge of the art of being free, to the people;—