xcesses, and they lose the powerful interest
which is always excited by a struggle between oppressors and the
oppressed. The man who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with
servility, and who submits his activity and even his opinions to their
control, can have no claim to rank as a free citizen.

The Americans have also established certain forms of government which
are applied to their associations, but these are invariably borrowed
from the forms of the civil administration. The independence of each
individual is formally recognized; the tendency of the members of the
association points, as it does in the body of the community, towards
the same end, but they are not obliged to follow the same track. No
one abjures the exercise of his reason and his free will; but every
one exerts that reason and that will for the benefit of a common
undertaking.

Chapter XIII: Government Of The Democracy In America--Part I

I am well aware of the difficulties which attend this part of my
subject, but although every expression which I am about to make use of
may clash, upon some one point, with the feelings of the different
parties which divide my country, I shall speak my opinion with the most
perfect openness.

In Europe we are at a loss how to judge the true character and the more
permanent propensities of democracy, because in Europe two conflicting
principles exist, and we do not know what to attribute to the principles
themselves, and what to refer to the passions which they bring into
collision. Such, however, is not the case in America; there the people
reigns without any obstacle, and it has no perils to dread and no
injuries to avenge. In America, democracy is swayed by its own free
propensities; its course is natural and its activity is unrestrained;
the United States consequently afford the most favorable opportunity of
studying its real character. And to no people can this inquiry be more
vitally interesting than to the French nation, which is blindly driven
onwards by a daily and irresistible impulse towards a state of things
which may prove either despotic or republican, but which will assuredly
be democratic.

Universal Suffrage

I have already observed that universal suffrage has been adopted in
all the States of the Union; it consequently occurs amongst different
populations which occupy very different positions in the scale of
society. I have had opportunities of observing its effects in differe