ans, a victory which was, however, a very ordinary
achievement, and which could only be remembered in a country where
battles are rare. Now the people which is thus carried away by the
illusions of glory is unquestionably the most cold and calculating, the
most unmilitary (if I may use the expression), and the most prosaic of
all the peoples of the earth.

America has no great capital *a city, whose influence is directly or
indirectly felt over the whole extent of the country, which I hold to be
one of the first causes of the maintenance of republican institutions
in the United States. In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting
together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts
sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large
assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace
exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently
executes its own wishes without their intervention.

[Footnote a: The United States have no metropolis, but they already
contain several very large cities. Philadelphia reckoned 161,000
inhabitants and New York 202,000 in the year 1830. The lower orders
which inhabit these cities constitute a rabble even more formidable
than the populace of European towns. They consist of freed blacks in the
first place, who are condemned by the laws and by public opinion to
a hereditary state of misery and degradation. They also contain a
multitude of Europeans who have been driven to the shores of the New
World by their misfortunes or their misconduct; and these men inoculate
the United States with all our vices, without bringing with them any of
those interests which counteract their baneful influence. As inhabitants
of a country where they have no civil rights, they are ready to turn all
the passions which agitate the community to their own advantage; thus,
within the last few months serious riots have broken out in Philadelphia
and in New York. Disturbances of this kind are unknown in the rest of
the country, which is nowise alarmed by them, because the population of
the cities has hitherto exercised neither power nor influence over the
rural districts. Nevertheless, I look upon the size of certain American
cities, and especially on the nature of their population, as a real
danger which threatens the future security of the democratic republics
of the New World; and I venture to predict that they will perish from
this circumstance unl