ust
undergo very serious changes. In the United States, even the religion of
most of the citizens is republican, since it submits the truths of the
other world to private judgment: as in politics the care of its temporal
interests is abandoned to the good sense of the people. Thus every man
is allowed freely to take that road which he thinks will lead him to
heaven; just as the law permits every citizen to have the right of
choosing his government.

It is evident that nothing but a long series of events, all having the
same tendency, can substitute for this combination of laws, opinions,
and manners, a mass of opposite opinions, manners, and laws.

If republican principles are to perish in America, they can only yield
after a laborious social process, often interrupted, and as often
resumed; they will have many apparent revivals, and will not become
totally extinct until an entirely new people shall have succeeded to
that which now exists. Now, it must be admitted that there is no symptom
or presage of the approach of such a revolution. There is nothing more
striking to a person newly arrived in the United States, than the kind
of tumultuous agitation in which he finds political society. The laws
are incessantly changing, and at first sight it seems impossible that a
people so variable in its desires should avoid adopting, within a short
space of time, a completely new form of government. Such apprehensions
are, however, premature; the instability which affects political
institutions is of two kinds, which ought not to be confounded: the
first, which modifies secondary laws, is not incompatible with a very
settled state of society; the other shakes the very foundations of the
Constitution, and attacks the fundamental principles of legislation;
this species of instability is always followed by troubles and
revolutions, and the nation which suffers under it is in a state of
violent transition.

Experience shows that these two kinds of legislative instability have
no necessary connection; for they have been found united or separate,
according to times and circumstances. The first is common in the United
States, but not the second: the Americans often change their laws, but
the foundation of the Constitution is respected.

In our days the republican principle rules in America, as the
monarchical principle did in France under Louis XIV. The French of
that period were not only friends of the monarchy, but they thought it