ed to speak of the future, I cannot do better than collect within
a small compass the reasons which best explain the present. In this
retrospective chapter I shall be succinct, for I shall take care to
remind the reader very summarily of what he already knows; and I shall
only select the most prominent of those facts which I have not yet
pointed out.

All the causes which contribute to the maintenance of the democratic
republic in the United States are reducible to three heads:--

I. The peculiar and accidental situation in which Providence has placed
the Americans.

II. The laws.

III. The manners and customs of the people.

Accidental Or Providential Causes Which Contribute To The Maintenance
Of The Democratic Republic In The United States The Union has no
neighbors--No metropolis--The Americans have had the chances of birth in
their favor--America an empty country--How this circumstance contributes
powerfully to the maintenance of the democratic republic in America--How
the American wilds are peopled--Avidity of the Anglo-Americans in taking
possession of the solitudes of the New World--Influence of physical
prosperity upon the political opinions of the Americans.

A thousand circumstances, independent of the will of man, concur to
facilitate the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United
States. Some of these peculiarities are known, the others may easily be
pointed out; but I shall confine myself to the most prominent amongst
them.

The Americans have no neighbors, and consequently they have no great
wars, or financial crises, or inroads, or conquest to dread; they
require neither great taxes, nor great armies, nor great generals; and
they have nothing to fear from a scourge which is more formidable to
republics than all these evils combined, namely, military glory. It
is impossible to deny the inconceivable influence which military
glory exercises upon the spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the
Americans have twice elected to the head of their Government, is a man
of a violent temper and mediocre talents; no one circumstance in the
whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a
free people, and indeed the majority of the enlightened classes of
the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was raised to the
Presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty station, solely by
the recollection of a victory which he gained twenty years ago under
the walls of New Orle