the world except by fear? When I am told that, since the laws
are weak and the populace is wild, since passions are excited and the
authority of virtue is paralyzed, no measures must be taken to increase
the rights of the democracy, I reply, that it is for these very reasons
that some measures of the kind must be taken; and I am persuaded that
governments are still more interested in taking them than society at
large, because governments are liable to be destroyed and society cannot
perish.

I am not, however, inclined to exaggerate the example which America
furnishes. In those States the people are invested with political rights
at a time when they could scarcely be abused, for the citizens were
few in number and simple in their manners. As they have increased, the
Americans have not augmented the power of the democracy, but they
have, if I may use the expression, extended its dominions. It cannot
be doubted that the moment at which political rights are granted to a
people that had before been without them is a very critical, though it
be a necessary one. A child may kill before he is aware of the value
of life; and he may deprive another person of his property before he is
aware that his own may be taken away from him. The lower orders, when
first they are invested with political rights, stand, in relation to
those rights, in the same position as the child does to the whole of
nature, and the celebrated adage may then be applied to them, Homo puer
robustus. This truth may even be perceived in America. The States in
which the citizens have enjoyed their rights longest are those in which
they make the best use of them.

It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in
prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous
than the apprenticeship of liberty. Such is not the case with despotic
institutions: despotism often promises to make amends for a thousand
previous ills; it supports the right, it protects the oppressed, and it
maintains public order. The nation is lulled by the temporary prosperity
which accrues to it, until it is roused to a sense of its own misery.
Liberty, on the contrary, is generally established in the midst of
agitation, it is perfected by civil discord, and its benefits cannot be
appreciated until it is already old.

Chapter XIV: Advantages American Society Derive From Democracy--Part II

Respect For The Law In The United States

Respect of the Ameri