t is
true that the American courtiers do not say "Sire," or "Your Majesty"--a
distinction without a difference. They are forever talking of the
natural intelligence of the populace they serve; they do not debate the
question as to which of the virtues of their master is pre-eminently
worthy of admiration, for they assure him that he possesses all the
virtues under heaven without having acquired them, or without caring to
acquire them; they do not give him their daughters and their wives to
be raised at his pleasure to the rank of his concubines, but, by
sacrificing their opinions, they prostitute themselves. Moralists and
philosophers in America are not obliged to conceal their opinions under
the veil of allegory; but, before they venture upon a harsh truth,
they say, "We are aware that the people which we are addressing is too
superior to all the weaknesses of human nature to lose the command of
its temper for an instant; and we should not hold this language if
we were not speaking to men whom their virtues and their intelligence
render more worthy of freedom than all the rest of the world." It would
have been impossible for the sycophants of Louis XIV to flatter more
dexterously. For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments,
whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and
adulation will cling to power. The only means of preventing men from
degrading themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority
which is the surest method of debasing them.

The Greatest Dangers Of The American Republics Proceed From The
Unlimited Power Of The Majority

Democratic republics liable to perish from a misuse of their power, and
not by impotence--The Governments of the American republics are
more centralized and more energetic than those of the monarchies of
Europe--Dangers resulting from this--Opinions of Hamilton and Jefferson
upon this point.

Governments usually fall a sacrifice to impotence or to tyranny. In
the former case their power escapes from them; it is wrested from their
grasp in the latter. Many observers, who have witnessed the anarchy of
democratic States, have imagined that the government of those States was
naturally weak and impotent. The truth is, that when once hostilities
are begun between parties, the government loses its control over
society. But I do not think that a democratic power is naturally without
force or without resources: say, rather, that it is almost always by
th