Those charged with directing the affairs of the public in the United States are often inferior in capacity and morality to the men that aristocracy would bring to power but their interest intermingles and is identified with that of the majority of their fellow citizens (223).Įven as Tocqueville admits that democratic governments are more attentive to the interest of citizens, he is deeply concerned that majority opinion will squash individual initiative and acquire tyrannical force. American government is not run by skilled or brilliant men on a consistent basis, but it is a system of accountability. He notes that the president has fairly limited powers compared to Congress.
Tocqueville’s great theme in this section is the power and extent of popular sovereignty. Tocqueville argues that Americans “corrected their laws and saved the country” by adopting a federal system with clearly defined responsibilities for both state and national government (149). This results in very strong legislatures, which “swallow up the dregs” of governmental power (84). While he admits that township government is particularly advanced there, he makes the broader case that local government is particularly strong in the United States. Tocqueville also describes township government in New England and how all citizens engage in politics through these gatherings. He argues that this allowed equality to exist as a foundation of English settlement in North America and influence the country’s entire development. He devotes a great deal of time to describing the Puritans and their relatively enlightened political culture and social homogeneity.
In the first part Tocqueville describes America’s geography: its large continent, Native populations, and vast opportunities for productive agriculture and European settlement. He states plainly, “Therefore it is not only to satisfy a curiosity, otherwise legitimate, that I have examined America I wanted to find lessons there from which we could profit” (12). He is painfully aware that the age of aristocracy has passed, but in Europe it has not been fully replaced with a viable alternative. In his introduction Tocqueville emphasizes that his main preoccupation is America’s example as a functioning democracy. The first volume is based on Tocqueville’s nearly yearlong sojourn in the United States, ostensibly to study its prisons and prison reform.
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