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Democracy in America, Volume 1

Name: Democracy in America, Volume 1
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville

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Contents

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▸Introduction: The Democratic Revolution and Its Meaning9

Tocqueville opens by identifying equality of conditions as the singular foundational fact of American—and, by extension, modern—society. He traces a seven-hundred-year democratic revolution in Europe from feudalism through the clergy, the legal class, commerce, and the press, and argues that democracy has advanced as if by divine decree. France has botched its democratic transition by failing to educate and guide democracy; America planted the democratic principle in virgin soil and let it develop without the legacy of aristocratic habits. The chapter ends as a declaration of purpose: the author seeks in America not a panegyric but an image of democracy itself, so that Europe may learn to govern the revolution rather than be destroyed by it.

Equality of conditions is 'the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived' in American society
The democratic revolution is providential—universal, durable, and beyond any single generation's power to stop
France gained democracy without the habits, morals, and laws needed to make it work; America inherited it organically
A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world; leaders must educate and direct democracy rather than repress it
Tocqueville declares he studied America in order to find instruction for Europe, not to advocate any particular government

▸Chapter I: The Physical Geography of North America and Its Native Peoples23

Tocqueville surveys the physical geography of North America—the two great river systems, the Mississippi valley, the Atlantic coastal strip—and describes the indigenous peoples who inhabited this vast territory before European contact. He portrays the continent as a magnificently prepared stage for a civilization not yet born, and the Native Americans as noble and free yet doomed by their mode of existence once Europeans arrived.

The continent divides into two great regions: one sloping toward the Arctic, the other toward the tropics, united by the Mississippi valley
Native American tribes shared physical and linguistic traits and displayed equality, freedom, and a kind of natural dignity
An unknown prehistoric civilization preceded the tribes, leaving burial mounds along the Ohio; their history is entirely lost
The continent was 'inhabited without being possessed'—Indian hunter culture could not constitute legal title to the soil in European terms

▸Chapter II: The Puritan Origins of Anglo-American Civilization34

Tocqueville argues that a people's origin is the master key to its entire subsequent history, and that America is uniquely valuable because its founding moment is still within reach. He contrasts the Virginia colony—founded by adventurers seeking gold and early contaminated by slavery—with the Puritan settlements of New England, founded by educated middle-class dissenters who brought with them the spirit of religion and a republican instinct. From the Mayflower Compact and the Connecticut Code of 1650, he shows that New England simultaneously produced austere theocratic laws and the most advanced democratic political principles known in the seventeenth century.

A people's character is set in its cradle: Virginia was founded by rootless gold-seekers; slavery entered almost immediately and shaped the South's entire social character
New England Puritans emigrated voluntarily for an idea—not poverty or ambition—and arrived already possessing equality of fortune and education
Puritanism was simultaneously a religious doctrine and an absolute democratic and republican theory
The Connecticut Code of 1650 combined severe theocratic penal laws with political principles—representative government, popular sovereignty, trial by jury—well ahead of any European nation
Anglo-American civilization is the unique product of the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty working in concert rather than opposition

▸Chapter III: The Democratic Social Condition and the Law of Inheritance58

Tocqueville identifies the democratic social condition as the distinguishing mark of American society, then traces how the law of equal inheritance has been the silent engine driving aristocracy toward extinction. By dividing estates at every generation, partible inheritance dissolves not only large fortunes but the family feeling and pride of lineage that sustained aristocratic culture. The chapter concludes that from unprecedented social equality only two political outcomes are possible: sovereignty of all, or despotism of one.

The social condition of Anglo-Americans is 'eminently democratic'—not imposed by revolution but built in from the start
The law of inheritance is placed 'at the head of all political institutions' because it shapes generations yet unborn
Equal partition destroys both the material fact of large estates and the psychological attachment to family land
In the Western states democracy had reached its 'utmost extreme'—no old families, no tradition, no aristocracy even of knowledge
American education is uniformly middling: primary instruction universal, superior instruction almost inaccessible

▸Chapter IV: The Sovereignty of the People69

This short chapter establishes sovereignty of the people as the generative principle underlying every American political institution. Tocqueville traces how the principle lay dormant in colonial townships, burst into the open during the Revolution, and has since expanded—as electoral qualifications were lowered and then abolished—until it governs society without restraint or fiction.

In America the sovereignty of the people is 'not either barren or concealed': it is proclaimed by the laws and arrives at its most remote consequences without impediment
The Revolution gave the principle possession of the State; the law of descent simultaneously demolished local aristocratic influence
Once electoral qualifications begin to be lowered, the logic is inexorable: each concession strengthens the democracy that demands the next

▸Chapter V: The Township, Local Government, and the Political Effects of Decentralization74

Tocqueville explains why he must begin with the States and their townships before examining the Federal Government: federal government is the exception, state government is the rule, and the great political principles of American society originated in the township. He provides a detailed anatomy of the New England township and its town meetings, then argues that decentralized local administration, though untidy, produces civic energy and patriotism that no centralized bureaucracy can replicate. He distinguishes two kinds of centralization—governmental and administrative—and argues the latter is rightly absent from the United States.

The township is 'the only association which is so perfectly natural that wherever a number of men are collected it seems to constitute itself'
Town-meetings are 'to liberty what primary schools are to science': they bring liberty within the people's reach and teach them to use it
New England townships were not granted independence by the state; they originally held it and surrendered only a portion
Central administration 'enervates' nations by suppressing public spirit; Americans' civic patriotism stems from real local power
Provincial liberties are more necessary, not less, in a democracy, because without them every power gravitates toward the single popular representative body

▸Chapter VI–VII: Judicial Power, Judicial Review, and Political Jurisdiction116

Tocqueville identifies judicial review—the power of judges to refuse to apply laws they deem unconstitutional—as the defining novelty of the American judicial system and one of the most powerful barriers against legislative tyranny ever devised. He contrasts the American impeachment system with European models, showing that in America political condemnation amounts only to removal from office, which paradoxically makes it more readily and more frequently used.

The singular American innovation is allowing judges to base decisions on the Constitution rather than ordinary statute, refusing to apply unconstitutional laws
Because courts can only review a law in concrete litigation, laws are attacked 'collaterally' through individual interests rather than frontally
In America, political jurisdiction extends only to removal and disqualification—not criminal punishment—making it an administrative rather than punitive instrument
The true purpose of American political jurisdiction is preventive: to deprive a corrupt or incompetent officer of authority before greater harm is done

▸Chapter VIII: The Federal Constitution—Origins, Structure, and the Division of Sovereignty134

Tocqueville traces the origins of the federal constitution from the failures of the first Confederation and narrates the calm, deliberate process by which a second constitution was drafted and ratified—a novelty in human history. He anatomizes the division of sovereignty between the Union and the States, the bicameral Congress, the constrained executive, the federal judiciary's role, and identifies the structural superiority of the federal constitution over state constitutions in resisting the democratic tendency to concentrate all power in the legislature.

The peaceful, self-aware process of acknowledging the inadequacy of the first constitution and ratifying a second was an unprecedented achievement in political civilization
The Federal Constitution establishes the Union's government as the exception and the State governments as the rule; federal powers are enumerated, all residual authority belongs to the States
The Senate embodies state equality, the House popular proportionality—a compromise between two irreconcilable theories that works because the states are young, contiguous, and culturally similar
Presidential re-eligibility is identified as a major flaw: the desire for re-election makes the President an 'easy tool of the majority,' courting its caprices rather than checking them
The Supreme Court holds the entire constitutional balance: 'the peace, the prosperity, and the very existence of the Union are vested in the hands of the seven judges'

▸Advantages of the Federal System and the Conditions That Make It Work189

Tocqueville weighs the virtues of small nations against large ones and argues that the federal system ingeniously combines both by letting each State remain small and republican while the Union projects the power of a great empire. He assesses the conditions—cultural homogeneity, civic experience, and political education spread to all classes—that make the federal system functional in America but likely impracticable elsewhere.

The Union manages to be 'as happy and as free as a small people, and as glorious and as strong as a great nation'
The republican habit of self-government was born in the townships; national patriotism is 'an abstract of the patriotic zeal of the provinces'
The federal system demands a high level of everyday civic discrimination from citizens—a capacity broadly distributed in America but rare elsewhere
The most dangerous structural flaw of any confederation is the relative weakness of the central government, which depends on the fiction of a united people while local loyalties remain far stronger

▸Chapters IX–XII: Popular Sovereignty, Parties, Press, and Association204

Four tightly linked chapters examine the mechanisms through which popular sovereignty operates in practice. Tocqueville distinguishes great parties from small ones, traces the decline of the Federalists and the end of principled party competition, argues that press freedom and popular sovereignty are logically inseparable, and describes the American habit of association—forming conventions and voluntary organizations for virtually every purpose—as the most potent democratic safety valve against majority tyranny.

Great parties cling to principles and elevate public morality even in defeat; small parties pursue personal interest and degrade it even in victory
There is no tenable middle ground between full press liberty and full tyranny; every incremental restriction eventually demands total suppression
American newspapers are violent in tone but weak in authority because they are vastly numerous and geographically dispersed, fragmenting rather than concentrating influence
Three degrees of association—shared doctrine, assembly, and elected conventions—constitute a government within the government
The unlimited liberty of political association is a dangerous but necessary counterweight to the omnipotence of the majority

▸Chapter XIII: The Government of Democracy—Universal Suffrage, Administration, and Foreign Policy238

Tocqueville examines the internal machinery and moral character of democratic government. He shows that universal suffrage does not reliably elevate talented men, that democratic administrations are unstable and expensive, and that democracy is structurally ill-suited to sustained foreign policy. He also finds that democratic laws, though imperfect in technique, serve the greatest number, and that the United States survives its own defects partly because its institutions align rulers' interests with the majority.

Universal suffrage tends to exclude the most distinguished citizens from power through democratic envy and the unattractiveness of political life to talented men
Indirect election, as in the Senate, refines popular choice by filtering it through an elected intermediary, producing visibly higher-quality representatives
Democracy tends toward high public expenditure because those who impose taxes are not those who pay them
Democracy is ill-suited to sustained foreign policy: it cannot maintain secrecy, persevere through obstacles, or resist the impulse of popular passion
Washington's foreign policy doctrine of avoiding permanent alliances exemplifies the rare case of democratic leadership successfully restraining popular passion

▸Chapter XIV: The Advantages Democracy Confers—Patriotism and the Idea of Rights282

Tocqueville turns from democracy's defects to its advantages, arguing that democratic laws serve the welfare of the greatest number because lawmakers share the interest of the majority. He distinguishes instinctive from reflective patriotism and argues that as instinctive patriotism fades, civic attachment must be sustained by giving citizens a direct stake in governance. He closes by grounding the idea of rights itself in the practical experience of exercising rights.

Democratic laws are more useful in purpose (serving the majority) even if inferior in craft to aristocratic legislation
Instinctive patriotism is powerful but fragile; reflective, interest-based patriotism is more durable and must replace it in modern societies
Participation in self-governance—local as well as national—is the mechanism that transforms private interest into civic spirit
The notion of rights is inseparable from the practice of rights: only those who exercise rights learn to respect the rights of others

▸Chapters XV–XVI: The Tyranny of the Majority and Its Mitigations301

These chapters confront the book's central paradox: popular sovereignty can be as tyrannical as any despot, and in America every institutional avenue of redress—courts, legislature, executive, press, jury—is controlled by the same majority. Tocqueville then identifies three mitigating forces: the absence of centralized administration (which prevents majority will from reaching into local details), the legal profession as an aristocratic counterweight, and trial by jury as a school of civic virtue and a direct expression of popular sovereignty.

Democratic tyranny enslaves the soul while leaving the body free: dissidents are not imprisoned but shunned, professionally ruined, and isolated by social ostracism
The tyranny of the majority over opinion suppresses literary and intellectual independence more effectively than the Inquisition suppressed books
Were a centralized administration grafted onto American democratic sovereignty, the result would be a despotism worse than any existing European monarchy
The legal profession is 'the only aristocratic element which can be amalgamated without violence with the natural elements of democracy': lawyers' habits of precedent and distrust of innovation quietly temper democratic excess
The civil jury is a 'gratuitous public school ever open' that trains citizens in rights, equity, responsibility, and the mechanics of law through practical experience

▸Chapter XVII: Causes Maintaining the Democratic Republic—Geography, Laws, and Manners342

Tocqueville organizes the causes sustaining American democracy under three heads—physical circumstances, laws, and manners—and argues that manners outweigh the other two. Geographic advantages (no threatening neighbors, boundless land, no dominant metropolis) reduce social pressure; three legal pillars (federalism, municipal institutions, the judiciary) provide institutional structure; but religion and the moral habits of the people are the ultimate foundation. The chapter closes with Tocqueville's clearest statement of his hierarchy: manners are more powerful than laws, and laws more powerful than physical circumstances.

The absence of threatening neighbors means no standing armies, no war taxes, and no military glory to distort political judgment
Religion in America takes no direct part in government but is regarded as indispensable to republican institutions; its strength paradoxically derives from the separation of Church and State
When religion allies itself with political power it becomes a party and loses its universal moral authority; the American clergy's voluntary withdrawal from politics preserved their credibility
The contrast between Mexico (adopting the American Constitution but lacking the supporting manners) and the United States proves that laws without manners are insufficient
'I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country; whilst the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage'

▸Chapter XVIII: The Three Races—Indians, Black Americans, and the Future of the Union390

The book's longest chapter turns from democratic institutions to the three races sharing American territory. Tocqueville argues that indigenous peoples face inevitable extinction, that modern racial slavery is uniquely intractable because it fuses legal servitude with permanent racial difference, and that the slave population concentrates southward as Northern emancipation proceeds, heading toward violent conflict. He then examines the structural weakness of the federal government, the South Carolina nullification crisis, and Andrew Jackson's paradoxical strengthening of his personal power while weakening federal institutions, concluding that the Union is fragile but republican institutions are durable.

Enslavement has stripped the Black American of culture, memory, and self-regard; Indian pride leads toward extinction rather than submission; both are trapped in catastrophic positions from which assimilation is practically impossible
Unlike ancient slavery, modern American slavery fuses legal servitude with permanent racial difference, making it uniquely resistant to legal remedy; racial prejudice is paradoxically most intense in Northern states where slavery has been abolished
The Ohio River natural experiment—Kentucky with slavery versus Ohio without it—demonstrates empirically that slave labor produces slower population growth and less wealth than free labor
The federal government is growing weaker, not stronger: the nullification crisis forced Congress to abandon protective duties, and Jackson strengthens himself personally while enfeebling the institution of the presidency
The Union's survival depends on material interests and cultural uniformity, not institutional ties; no state could be forcibly prevented from seceding, and the South's declining congressional representation breeds dangerous resentment

▸Conclusion: The Anglo-American Future and the America–Russia Bipolarity505

Tocqueville steps back to survey America's future destiny, predicting that the Anglo-American race will eventually cover the continent and that some 150 million people sharing one race, language, religion, and social condition will inhabit North America—a fact new to the world. The book closes with the celebrated juxtaposition of the United States and Russia as the two nations destined to sway the destinies of half the globe each, one through individual freedom and industry, the other through centralized servitude and conquest.

The Anglo-American race is not confined to the Union's current borders and will continue to expand regardless of political disruptions, driven by geography and inherited habits of enterprise
No political event—war, dissolution of the Union, or tyranny—can arrest the growth and westward spread of the Anglo-American population
Tocqueville forecasts 150 million people sharing identical language, religion, customs, and opinions—a continental homogeneity unprecedented in history
America relies upon personal interest and individual freedom; Russia centres all authority in a single arm and relies on servitude—together they are 'marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe'

Overview

Published in 1835, Democracy in America, Volume 1 is the product of Alexis de Tocqueville's nine-month journey through the United States in 1831–32, undertaken ostensibly to study the American prison system but in reality to observe the world's most advanced democratic society in operation. Tocqueville was a young French aristocrat writing in the aftermath of the July Revolution of 1830, acutely aware that Europe was undergoing an irreversible democratic transformation. His guiding conviction, stated in the very first pages, is that the equality of conditions is not a passing phase but a providential fact—universal, durable, and as inexorable as a divine decree—and that the only urgent question for statesmen is how to govern democracy intelligently rather than resist it futilely. America, where democratic principles had been planted in virgin soil without the weight of feudal habits, offered the fullest and most legible image of what democracy actually looks like in practice.

The book proceeds in two broad movements. The first is institutional and analytical: Tocqueville dissects the origins of Anglo-American society in the Puritan settlements of New England, traces the mechanisms of sovereignty from the township meeting upward through county, state, and federal government, examines judicial review, the separation of powers, the federal constitution, and the party system, and assesses the respective strengths and weaknesses of democratic governance in legislation, administration, and foreign policy. Throughout, he is measuring America against a mental model of what a stable, free democratic republic requires: educated civic habits formed in local self-government, an independent judiciary as a brake on legislative tyranny, a free press as the logical corollary of popular sovereignty, and a vigorous tradition of voluntary association as a counterweight to majority power.

The second movement turns from institutions to sociology and prognosis. Tocqueville identifies the tyranny of the majority—not over the body through law, but over the mind through social ostracism and professional ruin—as the characteristic danger of democratic societies. He shows that America's mitigation of this danger rests less on its formal constitutional arrangements than on its manners: the habits, opinions, and moral dispositions of the people, formed by Puritan religion, local self-government, and the daily exercise of rights. The book's closing chapters are the most prophetic, analyzing the condition of the three races, the fragility of the federal Union, the economic and character consequences of slavery, and, in a celebrated concluding passage, the emergence of the United States and Russia as the two rival powers destined to divide the destiny of the globe between them.

What makes the book a classic rather than a period piece is the combination of analytical precision and moral seriousness with which Tocqueville pursues his central purpose: not to praise America but to use it as a mirror in which Europeans could see democracy's tendencies, dangers, and requirements with the clarity that distance and novelty provide. He is throughout a comparativist, a sociologist, and a liberal warning both conservatives and radicals that there is only one viable path forward—democratic liberty guided by law, religion, and civic habit—and that the alternative is not the restoration of aristocracy but the advent of a new and subtler despotism over the mind.

The enduring power of Democracy in America, Volume 1 is that it identifies the central tension of democratic life with a precision that no subsequent theorist has surpassed: a society founded on equality contains within itself the seeds of a new tyranny, not the tyranny of kings but the tyranny of the majority over opinion, which enslaves the soul while leaving the body free. Tocqueville's single biggest takeaway is that free institutions cannot be sustained by constitutions alone; they require manners—the habits, convictions, and civic dispositions of the people—which are formed only through the patient practice of local self-government, religious restraint on the imagination, voluntary association, and the daily exercise of rights. The book endures because every generation rediscovers that this diagnosis fits its own moment: the mechanisms of conformity, the fragility of minority rights, the corruption of politics by short-termism, and the structural weakness of democratic states in long-term strategy are not American peculiarities but the permanent predicament of any society organized around equality.

Key Concepts

Equality of conditions p.9

The foundational social fact of American life—a state in which differences of birth, rank, and inherited property have been levelled so that citizens meet as rough equals in fortune, education, and legal standing. Tocqueville treats it as both a social description and a historical force that has been advancing for seven centuries and cannot be reversed.

Tyranny of the majority p.308

The power of a numerical majority to oppress minorities not only through unjust laws but through the moral weight of social opinion, professional exclusion, and collective ostracism—a form of despotism that enslaves the mind without touching the body, more insidious than any previous form of tyranny because it operates through the very institutions of liberty.

Manners (mores) p.355

Used in Tocqueville's extended sense, drawn from the Latin 'mores': the whole moral and intellectual condition of a people—their habits, opinions, convictions, and customary ways of social intercourse—as opposed to formal laws or physical geography. He argues manners are the primary cause sustaining or destroying free institutions, superior to both laws and physical circumstances.

Judicial review p.120

The American practice by which judges may refuse to apply a law they deem unconstitutional when that law is raised in concrete litigation. Tocqueville identifies this as the singular innovation of the American judicial system and 'one of the most powerful barriers which has ever been devised against the tyranny of political assemblies.'

Township (municipal) independence p.75

The pre-political, near-natural unit of local self-government that forms the living seedbed of American liberty. New England townships were not granted independence by a superior power but originally possessed it; town meetings are 'to liberty what primary schools are to science,' bringing it within the people's reach and teaching them to use and enjoy it.

Lawyers as democratic aristocracy p.325

The legal profession constitutes the only aristocratic body naturally compatible with democracy: their reverence for precedent, taste for order, and distrust of the multitude act as a conservative brake on popular passion. In America they form the highest political class—Tocqueville places 'the American aristocracy on the judicial bench and at the bar.'

Separation of Church and State as the source of religious strength p.364

Tocqueville's counter-intuitive finding that religion is stronger in America precisely because the clergy withdrew from political power: by renouncing the support of the State, religion preserved its independence and credibility, whereas European churches that allied with governments were dragged down with those governments when they fell.

The triple prejudice of modern slavery p.420

Unlike ancient slavery, which was curable by manumission because slave and master shared a race, modern American slavery combines three distinct and mutually reinforcing prejudices: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of race, and the prejudice of color—each harder to defeat than the legal fact of servitude itself, which is why racial prejudice intensifies rather than dissolves after legal emancipation.

Governmental versus administrative centralization p.104

Tocqueville's distinction between centralization of general governmental authority—laws, foreign relations, national enforcement, which he regards as indispensable—and centralization of local administrative details in a single authority, which enervates civic spirit, suppresses public energy, and should be avoided. The absence of administrative centralization in America is what prevents majority sovereignty from becoming total despotism.

The America–Russia bipolarity p.511

Tocqueville's closing insight that while all other nations seem to have reached their natural limits, the United States and Russia alone are still growing without apparent ceiling, each destined to dominate half the globe—America through freedom, individual enterprise, and the ploughshare; Russia through centralized authority, military conquest, and servitude.

Themes

Equality of conditions as the master fact of modern societyThe providential and irreversible democratic revolutionLocal self-government as the school of libertyTyranny of the majority over opinion and social lifeManners over laws as the ultimate foundation of free institutionsReligion as the indispensable moral infrastructure of democracyJudicial review and the legal profession as aristocratic counterweightsThe racial question as the Union's gravest long-term threatAmerica and Russia as the two emerging world powersThe structural weakness of democracy in foreign affairs and sustained strategy

Notable Passages

The gradual development of the equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine decree: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.

p.12 Tocqueville's master thesis stated in its most unguarded form: democracy is not a political choice but a historical destiny with the force of divine will, which frames the entire analytical project of the book and its argument that the only rational response is to guide rather than resist the democratic revolution.

Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.

p.76 One of the most quoted propositions in the book: local self-government is not an ornament of liberty but its school and its foundation—a point that has shaped political theory about federalism and civic participation ever since, and the core of Tocqueville's argument that constitutions without habits are hollow.

I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.

p.313 A deliberately provocative claim that inverts the popular image of America as the land of liberty; it grounds Tocqueville's analysis of how majority opinion suppresses dissent more effectively than authoritarian censorship, because the pressure comes not from government but from society itself—from one's neighbors, employers, and fellow citizens.

I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country; whilst the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage.

p.381 The thesis statement of Tocqueville's entire comparative argument: manners—the moral and intellectual habits of a people—are the ultimate determinant of political outcomes, surpassing both geography and legislation. This is why Mexico could adopt the American Constitution and still fail to sustain democratic government.

How to Read This

Approach this book in two passes. On the first, read the Introduction and Chapters II, III, V, XV, XVI, and XVII for the spine of Tocqueville's argument—the origin of American democracy, its mechanisms, its central danger (majority tyranny), and the manners that sustain it. On the second pass, read Chapter VIII on the federal constitution, Chapter XIII on democratic government in practice, and the long Chapter XVIII on the three races and the future of the Union, which contains some of the most searching and prophetic passages. The sections on local administration and the judiciary are dense but reward careful reading: Tocqueville's arguments there about civic habit and judicial review are the technical foundation for everything else. Non-American readers will find the comparative passages—France versus America, Kentucky versus Ohio, the South versus the North—especially illuminating, because they are where Tocqueville's analytical method is most visible.