hment of the
citizens to freedom.

[Footnote d: The same remark was made at Rome under the first Caesars.
Montesquieu somewhere alludes to the excessive despondency of certain
Roman citizens who, after the excitement of political life, were all at
once flung back into the stagnation of private life.]

This ceaseless agitation which democratic government has introduced into
the political world influences all social intercourse. I am not sure
that upon the whole this is not the greatest advantage of democracy. And
I am much less inclined to applaud it for what it does than for what
it causes to be done. It is incontestable that the people frequently
conducts public business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower
orders should take a part in public business without extending the
circle of their ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of
their mental acquirements. The humblest individual who is called upon
to co-operate in the government of society acquires a certain degree of
self-respect; and as he possesses authority, he can command the services
of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is canvassed by a
multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a thousand different
ways, but who instruct him by their deceit. He takes a part in political
undertakings which did not originate in his own conception, but which
give him a taste for undertakings of the kind. New ameliorations are
daily pointed out in the property which he holds in common with others,
and this gives him the desire of improving that property which is more
peculiarly his own. He is perhaps neither happier nor better than those
who came before him, but he is better informed and more active. I have
no doubt that the democratic institutions of the United States, joined
to the physical constitution of the country, are the cause (not
the direct, as is so often asserted, but the indirect cause) of the
prodigious commercial activity of the inhabitants. It is not engendered
by the laws, but the people learns how to promote it by the experience
derived from legislation.

When the opponents of democracy assert that a single individual performs
the duties which he undertakes much better than the government of
the community, it appears to me that they are perfectly right. The
government of an individual, supposing an equality of instruction on
either side, is more consistent, more persevering, and more accurate
than that of a multitude, and