For more than two years he performed the duties of this place with marked fidelity and ability. But at the same time he pursued studies less narrow and technical than the law, investigating with ardor the general questions of politics, and laying the foundation of those principles and opinions which he afterward developed in his writings and his public life. He witnessed the Revolution of 1830 with regret, not because he was personally attached to the elder branch of the Bourbons, but because he dreaded the effect of a sudden and violent change of dynasty upon the stability of those constitutional institutions which were of too recent establishment to be firmly rooted in France, but to which he looked as the safeguard of liberty. He gave his adhesion to the new government without hesitation, but without enthusiasm; and having little hope of advancement in his career as magistrate, he applied to the Ministry of the Interior early in 1831 for an official mission to America to examine the system of our prisons, which at that time was exciting attention in France. But the real motive which led him to desire to visit America was his wish to study the democratic institutions of the United States with reference to their bearing upon the political and social questions which underlay the violent changes and revolutions of government in France, and of which a correct appreciation was of continually increasing importance. It was plain that the dominating principle in the modern development of society was that of democratic equality; and this being the case, the question of prime importance presenting itself for solution was, How is liberty to be reconciled with equality and saved from the inevitable dangers to which it is exposed? or in other words, Can equality, which, by dividing men and reducing the mass to a common level, smooths the way for the establishment of a despotism, either of an individual or of the mob, be made to promote and secure liberty? For the study of this question, and of others naturally connected with it, the United States afforded opportunities nowhere else to be found.
Accompanied by M. de Beaumont, Tocqueville passed a year in this country, and the chief results of his visit appeared in the first two volumes of his "Democracy in America," which were published in January, 1835. The success of the book was instant and extraordinary. His publisher, who had undertaken it with reluctance, had ventured on a first edition of but five hundred copies; and in one of his letters, shortly after its publication, Tocqueville tells pleasantly of the bookseller's ingenuous surprise at the interest which the work had excited. "I went yesterday morning to Gosselin's [the publisher]; he received me with the most beaming face in the world, saying to me, 'Well, now, so it seems you have made a chef-d'oeuvre.' Does not that expression paint the complete man of business? I sat down, and we talked of our second edition."
From this time Tocqueville was famous. In the autumn of the same year, 1835, he married an English lady, Miss Mottley, who had long resided in France, and the happiness of his private life was secured at the very moment when he was entering upon the cares and anxieties of a public career. In 1836 the French Academy decreed for his book an extraordinary prize; in 1838 he was elected a member of the Institute; and in 1841, a year after the publication of the last volumes of his work, he was chosen member of the Academy. From 1839 to 1848, Tocqueville, elected and reëlected from Valognes, sat without interruption in the Chamber of Deputies, where he constantly voted with the constitutional opposition. His nature was too sensitive and his health too delicate to enable him to hold a foremost place as orator in the debates of this period. His habits of mind were, moreover, those of a writer rather than of a public speaker. But the firmness and moderation of his principles and the clearness and justice of his opinions secured for him a general respect, and gave weight and influence to his counsels. "In 1839, having been named reporter on the proposition relative to the abolition of slavery in the colonies, he succeeded," says his biographer, "not only in tracing with an able and sure hand the great principles of justice and of humanity which should lead on the triumph of this holy cause, but also, by words full of respect for existing interests and acquired rights, in preparing the government and the public mind for a concession, and the colonists for a compromise." He was frequently intrusted with the duty of reporting on other projects of the first importance; but special labors of this sort did not prevent him from taking broad and large views of the political and moral tendencies of the time, and of forecasting with clear insight the results of the measures of the government and of the influences at work upon the people. On the 27th of January, 1848, he announced the Revolution, which he saw to be at hand. A passage from his speech on this occasion is given by M. de Beaumont. It is striking, when read by the light of subsequent events, for the truth of its inferences, the force of its statements, and its prophetic warnings. After speaking of the opinions and ideas prevalent among the working classes, he said, "When such opinions take root, when they spread themselves so widely, when they strike down deeply into the masses, they must bring about, sooner or later, I do not know when, I do not know how, but they must bring about, sooner or later, the most formidable revolutions…. I believe that at this moment we are asleep upon a volcano. (Dissent.) I am profoundly convinced of it."
Tocqueville, thus anticipating the Revolution, was more afflicted and disappointed than surprised, when it overthrew the monarchy in February. He had comprehended beforehand that its character was to be rather social than simply political. He had determined to accept it as a necessary evil. He measured from the first the risk to which the principles to the maintenance of which he was devoted were exposed, the peril which, threatened liberty itself. Believing that the Republic now afforded the only and perhaps the last chance of liberty in France, and that its downfall would result in throwing power into the hands of an individual ruler, he determined to give all his support to the new government, and to endeavor to work out the good of his country by means which gave little encouragement or hope of success. He took part in the Constituent Assembly, was one of the committee to form the Constitution, and in the autumn of 1848 represented France as plenipotentiary at the Conference held at Brussels, which had for its object the mediation of France and England between Austria and Sardinia. The next year, having just been elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, he was invited by the President of the Republic to take the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in the ministry of M. Barrot. He did not hold office long. The ministry was too honest and too firm to suit the designs of the President, and on the 31st of October Louis Napoleon announced, in a message which took the Assembly by surprise, that it had been dismissed, and a new set of ministers appointed. The President endeavored to retain Tocqueville, and to win him over to his party; but Tocqueville already presaged the fall of the Republic, and witnessed with anxiety and discouragement the approach of the Empire. He remained a member of the Assembly to the last. He was one of the deputies arrested on the 2d of December, 1851, and was confined for a time at Vincennes. "Here ended his political life. It ended with liberty in France."
The remaining years of Tocqueville's life were spent in a retirement which might have been happy, had he not felt too deeply for happiness the despotism which weighed upon France. He engaged in the studies that resulted in his masterly work on "The Old Régime and the Revolution"; but these studies, instead of diverting him from the contemplation of what France had lost, gave poignancy to the sorrow excited by her present condition. All his hopes for the prevalence of the principles which he had sought during life to confirm and establish, all his personal ambitions as a public man, were completely broken down. But, though thus defeated in hope and in desire, he was not overcome in spirit. And the record of the closing years of his life shows, more than that of any other portion of it, the firmness, the strength, and the sweetness of his character.
His health, which had never been vigorous, became from year to year more and more uncertain, and the labor which he gave to the historical work to which he now devoted himself was frequently followed by exhaustion. He passed some time in England, where be had many warm friends, in examining the collections in the British Museum concerning the French Revolution; and in 1855 he made a visit of considerable length to Germany for the purpose of studying the social institutions of the country, so far as they might illustrate the condition of France under the old regime. At the beginning of 1856 the first part of his great work was published. The impression produced by it was extraordinary. It was, as it were, a key that opened to men the secrets of a history with the events of which they were so familiar that it had seemed to them nothing more was to be learned concerning it. The book is one which, though unfinished, is, so far as it advances, complete. It will retain its place as an historical essay of the highest value; for it is a study of the past, undertaken not merely with the intention of elucidating the facts of a particular period of history, but also with the design of investigating and establishing the general principles in politics and government of which facts and events are but the external indications. Tocqueville was too honest to write according to any predetermined theory; but he also penetrated too deeply into the causes of things not to arrive, at length, at definite conclusions as to the meaning and teachings of history.
Tocqueville had now reached the summit of fame as an author. He enjoyed the harvest of success, and his ambition was urged by it to new exertion. But in the summer of 1858 he had an alarming attack of bleeding at the lungs, accompanied with a general prostration of strength. In the autumn, his physicians ordered him to the South, and early in November he arrived at Cannes, where he was to spend the winter. But neither change of climate nor tender nursing was sufficient to prevent his disease from progressing. He suffered much, but he still hoped. He became worse as the spring came on, and on the 16th of April, 1859, he died. He was fifty-four years old, but he had lived a long life, if life be measured by thought and moral progress.
In his domestic life Tocqueville had been most happy, and it was in his own home that his character appeared in its most delightful aspect. In society he was a converser of extraordinary brilliancy. Few men were his rivals in this art, so well practised in Paris. His flow of ideas was not more remarkable than the choiceness and vigor of his expression. But he was not a tyrant in talk, and he was as ready to listen as to seek for listeners. His social powers were at the service of his friends. He was not of a gay temper, but he had a peculiar thoughtfulness for others which gave a charm to his manners far superior to that of careless vivacity. M. de Beaumont speaks of him in his relations to his friends in words full of feeling:—
"I have said that he had many friends; but he experienced a still greater happiness, that of never losing one of them. He had also another happiness: it was the knowing how to love them all so well, that none ever complained of the share he received, even while seeing that of the others. He was as ingenious as he was sincere in his attachments; and never, perhaps, did example prove better than his how many charms good-wit adds to good-will (combien l'esprit ajoute de charmes à la bonté).
"Good as he was," continues M. de Beaumont, "he aspired without ceasing to become better; and it is certain that each day he drew nearer to that moral perfection which seemed to him the only end worthy of man…. Each day he brought into all his sentiments and all his actions something of deeper piety, and stronger gratitude to God…. He was more patient, more laborious, more watchful to lose nothing of that life which he loved so well, and which he had the right to find beautiful, he who made of it so noble a use! Finally, it may be said to his honor, that at an epoch in which each man tends to concentrate his regard upon himself, he had no other aim than that of seeking for truths useful to his fellows, no other passion than that of increasing their well-being and their dignity."—Vol. I. p. 124.