More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
freedom is not the principal and continuous object of their desire; what they love with an eternal love is equality;
when citizens are all nearly equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.
Peoples can therefore draw two great political consequences from the same social state: these consequences differ prodigiously between themselves, but they both issue from the same fact.
The first
Anglo-Americans have been happy enough to escape absolute power. Circumstances, origin, enlightenment, and above all mores have permitted them to found a...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Chapter 4 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
National will is one of the terms that intriguers in all times and despots in all ages have most largely abused.
In America, the principle of the sovereignty of the people is not hidden or sterile as in certain nations; it is recognized by mores, proclaimed by the laws; it spreads with freedom and reaches its final consequences without obstacle.
from the origin, the principle of the sovereignty of the people was the generative principle of most of the English colonies of America.*1 It was nevertheless very far from dominating the government of society then as it does in our day.
Two obstacles,
It could not come to light outwardly within the laws since the colonies were still constrained to obey the mother country;
enlightenment in New England and wealth to the south of the Hudson long exerted a sort of aristocratic influence that tended to narrow into few hands the exercise of social powers. They were still very far from having all public officials elected and all citizens electors.
The American Revolution broke out. The dogma of the sovereignty of the people came out from the township and took hold of the government; all classes committed themselves to its cause; they did combat and they triumphed in its name; it became the law of laws.
The upper classes therefore submitted without a murmur and without combat to an evil henceforth inevitable.
One saw the democratic impulse more irresistible in states where aristocracy had the deepest roots.
The people reign over the American political world as does God over the universe. They are the cause and the end of all things; everything comes out of them and everything is absorbed into them.
Chapter 5 NECESSITY OF STUDYING WHAT TAKES PLACE IN THE PARTICULAR STATES BEFORE SPEAKING OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION
what, in America, is the form of government founded on the principle of the sovereignty of the people; what are its means of action, its encumbrances, its advantages, and its dangers.
two governments completely separated and almost independent: one, habitual and undefined, that responds to the daily needs of society, the other, exceptional and circumscribed, that applies only to certain general interests.
The form of the federal government of the United States appeared last;
Moreover, the federal government, as I have just said, is only an exception; the government of the states is the common rule.
The great political principles that govern American society today were born and developed in the state;
Political or administrative life is found concentrated around three sources of action
At the first stage is the township,*1 higher the county, finally the state.
ON THE TOWNSHIP SYSTEM IN AMERICA
if the township has existed since there have been men, the freedom of a township is a rare and fragile thing.
The difficulty of founding the independence of townships, instead of diminishing as nations become enlightened, increases with their enlightenment.
A very civilized society tolerates only with difficulty the trials of freedom in a township; it is revolted at the sight of its numerous lapses and despairs of success before having attained the final result of experience.
Left to themselves, the institutions of a township can scarcely struggle against an enterprising and strong government; in order to defend themselves successfully they must have completed all their developments and have been mixed with national ideas and habits. Thus as long as township freedom has not entered into mores, it is easy to destroy it, and it can enter into mores only after having subsisted for a long time in the laws.
It is nonetheless in the township that the force of free peoples resides.
The institutions of a township are to freedom what primary schools are to science; they put it within reach of the people; they make them taste its peaceful employ and habituate them to making use of it.
useful to take for a model one state in particular, to examine in detail
chosen one of the states of New England.
generally numbers two to three thousand inhabitants;
in the township,
the law of representation is not accepted. There is no municipal council; the body of electors, after having named its magistrates, directs them itself in everything that is not pure and simple execution of the laws of the state.
the greatest part of administrative powers is concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals elected each year whom they name selectmen.
The general laws of the state have imposed a certain number of obligations on the selectmen.
But in all things that are left to the direction of the township’s power, the selectmen are executors of popular will as among us the mayor is the executor of the deliberations of the municipal council.
should they desire to engage in a new undertaking, they must go back to the source of their power.
The selectmen alone have the right to convoke the town meeting, but one can induce them to do it.
The selectmen are elected every year in the month of April or May. At the same time the assembly of the township chooses a host of other municipal magistrates,5 assigned to certain important administrative details.
In all, the principal offices in the township number nineteen. Each inhabitant is constrained, under penalty of fine, to accept these different offices;
Generally each act of their ministry has a price, and they are paid only in proportion to what they have done.
In nations where the dogma of the sovereignty of the people reigns, each individual forms an equal portion of the sovereign and participates equally in the government of the state.
Why therefore does he obey society, and what are the natural limits of this obedience?
he obeys society because union with those like him appears useful to him and because he knows that this union cannot exist without a regulating power.
this maxim: that the individual is the best as well as the only judge of his particular interest, and that society has the right to direct his actions only when it feels itself injured by his deed or when it needs to demand his cooperation.
This doctrine is universally accepted in the United States.
speak at this moment of townships.
