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the government of democracy is the only one in which he who votes the tax can escape the obligation to pay
so far, in all the nations of the world, the greatest number has always been composed of those who did not have property, or of those whose property was too restricted for them to be able to live in ease without working. Therefore universal suffrage really gives the government of society to the poor.
The profuse spending of democracy is, furthermore, less to be feared as the people become property owners,
When aristocracy governs, the men who conduct affairs of state escape all needs by their very position;
Aristocracy considers maintaining more than perfecting.
When, on the contrary, public power is in the hands of the people, the sovereign seeks everywhere for what is better because it feels bad itself.
ON THE INSTINCTS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IN FIXING THE SALARIES OF OFFICIALS
In America, officials of secondary rank are paid more than elsewhere, but high officials much less.
Democracy generally gives little to those who govern and much to the governed. The contrary is seen in aristocracies, where the money of the state profits above all the class at the head of affairs.
CAUSES THAT INCLINE THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT TO ECONOMY
If Americans have never spent the people’s money on public festivals, it is not only because the people vote taxes there, it is because the people do not like to enjoy themselves.
Habits of private life are continued into public life; and one must distinguish well between economies that depend on institutions and those that flow from habits and mores.
CAN THE PUBLIC EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES BE COMPARED TO THOSE OF FRANCE?
faithful to its popular origin, it makes prodigious efforts to satisfy the needs of the lower classes of society, to open paths to power for them, and to spread well-being and enlightenment among them.
the democratic government of the Americans is not, as people sometimes claim, a cheap government;
ON THE CORRUPTION AND VICES OF THOSE WHO GOVERN IN DEMOCRACY;
Democracy appears to me to be much more appropriate to directing a peaceful society, or to making a sudden and vigorous effort as needed, than to braving great storms in the political life of a people for a long time.
although passions alone generally bring one to make the first efforts, it is with a view to the result that one continues them.
it is this clear perception of the future, founded on enlightenment and experience, that democracy will often lack.
The people not only see less clearly than the upper classes what they can hope or fear from the future, but they also suffer quite differently from the evils of the present.
The relative weakness of democratic republics in times of crisis is perhaps the greatest obstacle posed to the founding of such a republic in Europe.
I believe that the government of democracy will in the long term augment the real strength of society; but it cannot gather at once, on one point, and at a given time as much strength as an aristocratic government or an absolute monarchy.
ON THE POWER THAT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY GENERALLY EXERCISES OVER ITSELF
The difficulty that democracy finds in defeating the passions and silencing the needs of the moment in view of the future is noticed in the United States in the least things.
if democracy has more chance of being mistaken than a king or a body of nobles, it also has more chance of coming back to the truth, once enlightenment comes to it, because generally there are within it no interests contrary to that of the greatest number, and which struggle against reason.
But democracy can only obtain truth from experience, and many peoples cannot await the results of their errors without perishing.
in order to put the experience of the past to profit easily, it is necessary that democracy already have achieved a certain degree of civilization and enlightenment.
THE MANNER IN WHICH AMERICAN DEMOCRACY CONDUCTS EXTERNAL AFFAIRS OF STATE
federal constitution puts the permanent direction of the external interests of the nation in the hands of the president and the Senate,
one cannot say in an absolute manner that the democracy in America conducts the external affairs of state.
“The nation that delivers itself to habitual sentiments of love or of hatred toward another becomes a sort of slave to them. It is a slave to its hatred or to its love.”
Washington
established as a point of doctrine that the self-interest well understood of Americans was never to take part in the internal quarrels of Europe.
Jefferson went still further,
Americans ought never to demand privileges from foreign nations in order not to be obliged ...
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it is in the direction of the external interests of society that democratic governments appear to me decidedly inferior to others.
External policy requires the use of almost none of the qualities that are proper to democracy, and demands, on the contrary, the development of almost all those it lacks.
only with difficulty can democracy coordinate the details of a great undertaking, fix on a design, and afterwards follow it with determination through obstacles.
it is precisely those qualities that in the long term make a people, like an individual, in the end dominate.
The capital vice for which aristocracy is reproached is that of working only for itself, and not for the mass.
In external policy, it is very rare that aristocracy has an interest distinct from that of the people.
The inclination that brings democracy to obey sentiment rather than reasoning in politics, and to abandon a long matured design to satisfy a momentary passion, was very well brought ou...
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That which is most fixed in the world in its views is an aristocracy.
an aristocratic body is too numerous to be captured, too small in number to yield readily to the intoxication of unreflective passions. An aristocratic body is a firm and enlightened man who does not die.
Chapter 6 WHAT ARE THE REAL ADVANTAGES THAT AMERICAN SOCIETY DERIVES FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF DEMOCRACY
The laws of democracy generally tend to the good of the greatest number,
Those of aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to monopolize wealth and power in the hands of the few
Aristocracy is infinitely more skillful in the science of the legislator than democracy can be.
The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy: often it works against itself, without wanting to; but its goal is more useful.
It is easy to see that American democracy is often mistaken in the choice of the men in whom it entrusts power; but it is not so easy to say why the state prospers in their hands.
