I made amongst the
Anglo-Americans induce me to believe that democratic institutions of
this kind, prudently introduced into society, so as gradually to mix
with the habits and to be interfused with the opinions of the people,
might subsist in other countries besides America. If the laws of the
United States were the only imaginable democratic laws, or the most
perfect which it is possible to conceive, I should admit that the
success of those institutions affords no proof of the success of
democratic institutions in general, in a country less favored by natural
circumstances. But as the laws of America appear to me to be defective
in several respects, and as I can readily imagine others of the same
general nature, the peculiar advantages of that country do not prove
that democratic institutions cannot succeed in a nation less favored by
circumstances, if ruled by better laws.

If human nature were different in America from what it is elsewhere; or
if the social condition of the Americans engendered habits and opinions
amongst them different from those which originate in the same social
condition in the Old World, the American democracies would afford
no means of predicting what may occur in other democracies. If the
Americans displayed the same propensities as all other democratic
nations, and if their legislators had relied upon the nature of the
country and the favor of circumstances to restrain those propensities
within due limits, the prosperity of the United States would be
exclusively attributable to physical causes, and it would afford no
encouragement to a people inclined to imitate their example, without
sharing their natural advantages. But neither of these suppositions is
borne out by facts.

In America the same passions are to be met with as in Europe; some
originating in human nature, others in the democratic condition of
society. Thus in the United States I found that restlessness of heart
which is natural to men, when all ranks are nearly equal and the chances
of elevation are the same to all. I found the democratic feeling of envy
expressed under a thousand different forms. I remarked that the people
frequently displayed, in the conduct of affairs, a consummate mixture
of ignorance and presumption; and I inferred that in America, men
are liable to the same failings and the same absurdities as amongst
ourselves. But upon examining the state of society more attentively,
I speedily discovered that the Ame