; he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in
the political world. You will find that he is well acquainted with the
rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism
of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his
practical science and his positive notions from books; the instruction
he has acquired may have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but
it did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by
participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the
forms of government from governing. The great work of society is ever
going on beneath his eyes, and, as it were, under his hands.

In the United States politics are the end and aim of education;
in Europe its principal object is to fit men for private life. The
interference of the citizens in public affairs is too rare an occurrence
for it to be anticipated beforehand. Upon casting a glance over society
in the two hemispheres, these differences are indicated even by its
external aspect.

In Europe we frequently introduce the ideas and the habits of private
life into public affairs; and as we pass at once from the domestic
circle to the government of the State, we may frequently be heard to
discuss the great interests of society in the same manner in which we
converse with our friends. The Americans, on the other hand, transfuse
the habits of public life into their manners in private; and in their
country the jury is introduced into the games of schoolboys, and
parliamentary forms are observed in the order of a feast.

Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining The Democratic Republic--Part IV

The Laws Contribute More To The Maintenance Of The Democratic Republic
In The United States Than The Physical Circumstances Of The Country, And
The Manners More Than The Laws

All the nations of America have a democratic state of society--Yet
democratic institutions only subsist amongst the Anglo-Americans--The
Spaniards of South America, equally favored by physical causes as the
Anglo-Americans, unable to maintain a democratic republic--Mexico,
which has adopted the Constitution of the United States, in the same
predicament--The Anglo-Americans of the West less able to maintain it
than those of the East--Reason of these different results.

I have remarked that the maintenance of democratic institutions in the
United States is attributable to the circumstances, the laws, and the
manne