marked that the manners of the people may be
considered as one of the general causes to which the maintenance of a
democratic republic in the United States is attributable. I here used
the word manners with the meaning which the ancients attached to the
word mores, for I apply it not only to manners in their proper sense of
what constitutes the character of social intercourse, but I extend it to
the various notions and opinions current among men, and to the mass
of those ideas which constitute their character of mind. I comprise,
therefore, under this term the whole moral and intellectual condition of
a people. My intention is not to draw a picture of American manners,
but simply to point out such features of them as are favorable to the
maintenance of political institutions.

Religion Considered As A Political Institution, Which Powerfully
Contributes To The Maintenance Of The Democratic Republic Amongst The
Americans

North America peopled by men who professed a democratic and republican
Christianity--Arrival of the Catholics--For what reason the Catholics
form the most democratic and the most republican class at the present
time.

Every religion is to be found in juxtaposition to a political opinion
which is connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left
to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual
institutions of society upon one uniform principle; and man will
endeavor, if I may use the expression, to harmonize the state in which
he lives upon earth with the state which he believes to await him in
heaven. The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who,
after having shaken off the authority of the Pope, acknowledged no other
religious supremacy; they brought with them into the New World a form
of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a
democratic and republican religion. This sect contributed powerfully to
the establishment of a democracy and a republic, and from the earliest
settlement of the emigrants politics and religion contracted an alliance
which has never been dissolved.

About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into
the United States; on the other hand, the Catholics of America made
proselytes, and at the present moment more than a million of Christians
professing the truths of the Church of Rome are to be met with in
the Union. *d The Catholics are faithful to the observances of their
religion; they are fer