Democracy in America, Volume I and II (Optimized for Kindle)

foresee that if the peaceable empire of the majority be not founded amongst us in time, we shall sooner or later arrive at the unlimited authority of a single despot.

Hence it often assents to the clamor of a mountebank who knows the secret of stimulating its tastes, while its truest friends frequently fail in their exertions.

A middle standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend.

the elective system were adopted in Europe, the condition of most of the monarchical States would be changed at every new election.

upon the negroes in almost all the States in which slavery has been abolished; but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites amongst their judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice repulses them from that office.

That which was experimental in our plan of government was the question whether democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of repressing or destroying their enemy, when he was found in the person

One of the principal vices of the elective system is that it always introduces a certain degree of instability into the internal and external policy of the State.

Thus the same law prevents the slaves of the South from coming to the Northern States, and drives those of the North to the South.

in the second place, to stimulate competition, and to discover those arguments which are most fitted to act upon the majority; for they always entertain hopes of drawing over their opponents to their own side, and of afterwards disposing of the supreme power in their name.