1805-1909
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Born in Paris in 1805, died in 1859; studied law, taking his degree in 1826; traveled in Italy and Sicily; in 1831 visited the United States under a commission to study the penitentiary system; returning published a book on the subject which was crowned by the French Academy; from private notes taken in America then wrote his masterpiece, "Democracy in America," which secured his election to the Academy in 1841; spent some years in public life and then retired in order to travel and write.
THE TYRANNY OF THE AMERICAN MAJORITY[1]
I hold it to be an impious and execrable maxim that, politically speaking, the people has a right to do whatever it pleases; and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the majority. Am I then in contradiction with myself?
A general law, which bears the name of justice, has been made and sanctioned not only by a majority of this or that people, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people are consequently confined within the limits of what is just. A nation may be considered in the light of a jury which is empowered to represent society at large and to apply the great and general law of justice. Ought such a jury, which represents society, to have more power than the society in which the law it applies originates?