ke individuals, it has passions, and,
like them, it is prone to do what is wrong, whilst it discerns what is
right.

But the demagogues of Europe have made strange discoveries. A republic
is not, according to them, the rule of the majority, as has hitherto
been thought, but the rule of those who are strenuous partisans of
the majority. It is not the people who preponderates in this kind of
government, but those who are best versed in the good qualities of the
people. A happy distinction, which allows men to act in the name of
nations without consulting them, and to claim their gratitude whilst
their rights are spurned. A republican government, moreover, is the only
one which claims the right of doing whatever it chooses, and despising
what men have hitherto respected, from the highest moral obligations to
the vulgar rules of common-sense. It had been supposed, until our time,
that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared. But it is
a discovery of modern days that there are such things as legitimate
tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name of
the people.

The ideas which the Americans have adopted respecting the republican
form of government, render it easy for them to live under it, and insure
its duration. If, in their country, this form be often practically bad,
at least it is theoretically good; and, in the end, the people always
acts in conformity to it.

It was impossible at the foundation of the States, and it would still
be difficult, to establish a central administration in America. The
inhabitants are dispersed over too great a space, and separated by too
many natural obstacles, for one man to undertake to direct the details
of their existence. America is therefore pre-eminently the country of
provincial and municipal government. To this cause, which was plainly
felt by all the Europeans of the New World, the Anglo-Americans added
several others peculiar to themselves.

At the time of the settlement of the North American colonies, municipal
liberty had already penetrated into the laws as well as the manners
of the English; and the emigrants adopted it, not only as a necessary
thing, but as a benefit which they knew how to appreciate. We have
already seen the manner in which the colonies were founded: every
province, and almost every district, was peopled separately by men who
were strangers to each other, or who associated with very different
purposes. The English se