Democracy in America

by Alexis de Tocqueville

The coarseness of men of the people in orderly countries comes not only from the fact that they are ignorant and poor, but from the fact that while being so, they find themselves in daily contact with enlightened and wealthy men. The sight of their misfortune and weakness, which contrasts every day with the happiness and power of some of those like them, excites anger and fear at the same time in their hearts; the sense of their inferiority and dependence irritates and humiliates them. That internal state of soul is reproduced in their mores as well as in their language; they are at once insolent and base. The truth of this is easily proved by observation. The people are coarser in aristocratic countries than everywhere else, in opulent cities than in the countryside. In places where one encounters men so strong and so wealthy, the weak and poor feel overwhelmed by their own baseness; not discovering any point by which they could regain equality, they wholly despair for themselves and allow themselves to fall below human dignity. This distressing effect of the contrast of conditions is not found in savage life: the Indians, at the same time that they are all ignorant and poor, are all equal and free.