I have given you your
life, but it is an existence in comparably worse than death."

Monarchical institutions have thrown an odium upon despotism; let us
beware lest democratic republics should restore oppression, and should
render it less odious and less degrading in the eyes of the many, by
making it still more onerous to the few.

Works have been published in the proudest nations of the Old World
expressly intended to censure the vices and deride the follies of the
times; Labruyere inhabited the palace of Louis XIV when he composed his
chapter upon the Great, and Moliere criticised the courtiers in the very
pieces which were acted before the Court. But the ruling power in the
United States is not to be made game of; the smallest reproach irritates
its sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in
truth renders it indignant; from the style of its language to the more
solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the subject
of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this
tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. The majority lives in the
perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which
the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.

If great writers have not at present existed in America, the reason
is very simply given in these facts; there can be no literary genius
without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in
America. The Inquisition has never been able to prevent a vast number
of anti-religious books from circulating in Spain. The empire of the
majority succeeds much better in the United States, since it actually
removes the wish of publishing them. Unbelievers are to be met with in
America, but, to say the truth, there is no public organ of infidelity.
Attempts have been made by some governments to protect the morality of
nations by prohibiting licentious books. In the United States no one is
punished for this sort of works, but no one is induced to write them;
not because all the citizens are immaculate in their manners, but
because the majority of the community is decent and orderly.

In these cases the advantages derived from the exercise of this power
are unquestionable, and I am simply discussing the nature of the
power itself. This irresistible authority is a constant fact, and its
judicious exercise is an accidental occurrence.

Effects Of The Tyranny Of The Majority Upon The National