mselves with
complacency, and in all ways, upon the public. The evil does not appear
to me to be susceptible of entire cure, because it not only originates
in the tactics of that assembly, but in its constitution and in that
of the country. The inhabitants of the United States seem themselves to
consider the matter in this light; and they show their long experience
of parliamentary life not by abstaining from making bad speeches, but by
courageously submitting to hear them made. They are resigned to it, as
to an evil which they know to be inevitable.

We have shown the petty side of political debates in democratic
assemblies--let us now exhibit the more imposing one. The proceedings
within the Parliament of England for the last one hundred and fifty
years have never occasioned any great sensation out of that country; the
opinions and feelings expressed by the speakers have never awakened much
sympathy, even amongst the nations placed nearest to the great arena of
British liberty; whereas Europe was excited by the very first debates
which took place in the small colonial assemblies of America at the
time of the Revolution. This was attributable not only to particular
and fortuitous circumstances, but to general and lasting causes. I can
conceive nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great orator
debating on great questions of state in a democratic assembly. As no
particular class is ever represented there by men commissioned to defend
its own interests, it is always to the whole nation, and in the name of
the whole nation, that the orator speaks. This expands his thoughts,
and heightens his power of language. As precedents have there but
little weight-as there are no longer any privileges attached to certain
property, nor any rights inherent in certain bodies or in certain
individuals, the mind must have recourse to general truths derived from
human nature to resolve the particular question under discussion. Hence
the political debates of a democratic people, however small it may be,
have a degree of breadth which frequently renders them attractive to
mankind. All men are interested by them, because they treat of man, who
is everywhere the same. Amongst the greatest aristocratic nations, on
the contrary, the most general questions are almost always argued on
some special grounds derived from the practice of a particular time, or
the rights of a particular class; which interest that class alone, or at
most the pe