and moral man. Despite that inevitable mixture of
inconsistencies and hesitation which marks our first efforts in all
things, the Puritan colonies, destined one day to become the United
States, set out on the road which led to liberty of belief, of thoughts,
of speech, of the press, of assemblage, of instruction. The most
considerable, most important rights were abstracted at the outset from
the domain of democratic deliberations; insuperable bounds were set to
the sovereignty of numbers; the right of minorities, that of the
individual, the right of remaining alone against all others, the right
of being of one's own opinion, was reserved. Furthermore, they did not
delay to break the bonds between the Church and the State entirely, in
such a manner as to deprive the official superintendence of belief of
its last pretext. Self-government was founded, that is, the most formal
negation of subjugation by the democracy. While the latter tends to the
maximum of government, the American Government tends to the minimum of
government, that form _par excellence_ of liberalism. And it does not
tend thither, as in the Middle Ages, by anarchy, by the absence of
national ties, and moreover by despoiling the individual of his rights
of conscience and thought, confiscated then more entirely for the
benefit of a sovereign church than they have been since for the benefit
of the State; no, American individualism proceeds differently: if it
restrains with salutary vigor the province of governments, it is to
enlarge that of the human soul.

This is a great conquest; the whole future of the modern world is
contained in it. Destined as we are to submit, in a measure at least, to
the action of democracy, the question whether we shall he slaves or free
men is resolved in this: shall we, after the example of America, have
our reserved tribunal, our closed domain in which the public power shall
be permitted to see nothing? Shall there be things among us (the most
important of all) which shall not be put to the vote? Shall our
democracy have its boundaries, and beyond these boundaries shall a vast
country be seen to extend--that of free belief, of free worship, of free
thought, of the free home?

It is because American democracy has boundaries that its worst excesses
have finally found chastisement. It is not installed alone in the United
States; opposite it, another power which knows no fear, is occupied with
resisting it. The entire history of