ight have often been
reproached; no, for a principle of resistance has always revealed itself
in the darkest moments, an irrepressible something has always remained.
In vain the heavy roller has passed and repassed over the ground; it has
always encountered blocks of granite that would not be broken. This is
the point which I had at heart to signal out in closing this study,
knowing that it forms its most essential part, and that whoever has not
given it his attention cannot comprehend the United States. The
extraordinary fact, much more extraordinary than is supposed, that,
under the system of democracy ruled by slavery, men have been able to
pause and retrace their steps, is only explained by the peculiar form
which religious belief has put on in the United States. We have not
before our eyes a Latin nation, a nation clad in the vestments of Greece
or Rome, a nation having, according to the ancient mode, its religion
and its usages universally but indolently admitted. This republic of the
New World is by no means one of those slave republics of ancient times,
in which the citizens took delight in conversing on public affairs, but
in which no one had the bad taste to question his conscience with
respect to the public creeds. The pagan life, with its obligatory
worship, its common education, its suppression of the family and the
individual in behalf of the State, its existence transported to the
Forum; the pagan life, in which the citizen absorbs the individual, and
in which the calm and serene uniformity of indifferent centuries ends,
by giving to each one the national physiognomy, bears no resemblance to
the moral and social life of the United States.

Among them, not the smallest trace is found of that system which seeks
to make nations, and which forgets to make men. They were born, as we
may say, of a protestation of the human conscience. A noble origin,
which explains many things! It is, in fact, the revindication of
religious independence against religious uniformity, and the established
church which created it two hundred years ago. Of course, I have not to
examine here the intrinsic value of the Puritan doctrines. I content
myself with affirming that they landed in America in the name of
liberty, that they were destined to establish liberty there, that they
were destined to build there the true rampart against democratic
tyranny.

From the first day, the State was deprived of the direction of the
intellectual