Democracy in America

by Alexis de Tocqueville

The laws that we have just cited are very recent; but who could understand them without going back to the very origin of the colonies? I do not doubt that in our day the penal part of this legislation is only very rarely applied; laws preserve their inflexibility when mores have already bent with the movement of time. Nevertheless, observation of Sunday in America is still what strikes the foreigner most vividly. There is, notably, a great American town in which, from Saturday evening on, social movement is almost suspended. You go through it at the hour that seems to invite the mature to business and youth to pleasures, and you find yourself in profound solitude. Not only does no one work, but no one appears to live. One hears neither the movement of industry nor the accents of joy, not even the confused murmur that constantly rises from within a great city. Chains are put up in the vicinity of churches; only with regret do the half-closed shutters of houses allow a ray of sun to penetrate the dwellings of citizens. Now and then you barely perceive an isolated man who glides noiselessly across deserted intersections and along abandoned streets. At daybreak of the next day, the rumble of vehicles, the noise of hammers, the cries of the population again begin to make themselves heard; the city awakens; a restive crowd hurries toward the hearths of commerce and industry; everything moves, everything is agitated, everything presses around you.