newspapers
abound.

The extraordinary subdivision of administrative power has much more
to do with the enormous number of American newspapers than the great
political freedom of the country and the absolute liberty of the press.
If all the inhabitants of the Union had the suffrage--but a suffrage
which should only extend to the choice of their legislators in
Congress--they would require but few newspapers, because they would only
have to act together on a few very important but very rare occasions.
But within the pale of the great association of the nation, lesser
associations have been established by law in every country, every city,
and indeed in every village, for the purposes of local administration.
The laws of the country thus compel every American to co-operate every
day of his life with some of his fellow-citizens for a common purpose,
and each one of them requires a newspaper to inform him what all the
others are doing.

I am of opinion that a democratic people, *a without any national
representative assemblies, but with a great number of small local
powers, would have in the end more newspapers than another people
governed by a centralized administration and an elective legislation.
What best explains to me the enormous circulation of the daily press
in the United States, is that amongst the Americans I find the utmost
national freedom combined with local freedom of every kind. There is
a prevailing opinion in France and England that the circulation of
newspapers would be indefinitely increased by removing the taxes which
have been laid upon the press. This is a very exaggerated estimate
of the effects of such a reform. Newspapers increase in numbers, not
according to their cheapness, but according to the more or less frequent
want which a great number of men may feel for intercommunication and
combination.

[Footnote a: I say a democratic people: the administration of an
aristocratic people may be the reverse of centralized, and yet the want
of newspapers be little felt, because local powers are then vested in
the hands of a very small number of men, who either act apart, or who
know each other and can easily meet and come to an understanding.]

In like manner I should attribute the increasing influence of the
daily press to causes more general than those by which it is commonly
explained. A newspaper can only subsist on the condition of publishing
sentiments or principles common to a large number of me