DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. BY ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, AND OF THE CHAMBER TRANSLATED BY HENRY REEVE, ESQ. . WITH AN ORIGINAL PREFACE AND NOTES BY JOHN C. SPENCER, COUNSELLOR AT LAW FOURTH EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED FROM THE EIGHTH PARIS EDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW YORK: J. & H. G. LANGLEY, 57 CHATHAM STREET. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, By J. & H. G. LANGLEY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED BY J. S. REDFIELD...... 13 CHAMBERS ST., NEW YORK. ADVERTISEMENT. In issuing this, the first complete and uniform edition of M. DE TOCQUEVILLE's Democracy in America, the Pub lishers avail themselves of the opportunity to state the advantages which the present possesses over previous editions of the work. Beside incorporating the additional notes and emendations contained in the recent Paris edition, it includes an original and copious analytical Index, and an explanatory Map combining the new Census of 1840, now for the first time published in this country. The sale of four large impressions of the first portion of the work in this country, and a much larger circulation of it in England and France, sufficiently attest the high estimation with which it has been regarded. The entire work is now stereotyped, having been carefully collated, and passed under a thorough revision, with a view of rendering it as perfect as possible, and more befitting its character as the standard philosophical work on the genius of democracy, and for, what it is believed it will speedily become, a text-book of the schools, and a classic of the age. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. THE following work of M. DE TOCQUEVILLE has attracted great attention throughout Europe, where it is universally regarded as a sound, philosophical, impartial, and remarkably clear and distinct view of our political institutions, and of our manners, opinions, and habits, as influencing or influenced by those institutions. Writers, reviewers, and statesmen of all parties, have united in the highest commendations of its ability and integrity. The people, described by a work of such a character, should not be the only one in Christendom unacquainted with its contents. At least, so thought many of our most distinguished men, who have urged the publishers of this edition to reprint the work, and present it to the American public. They have done so in the hope of promoting among their countrymen a more thorough knowledge of their frames of government, and a more just appreciation of the great principles on which they are founded. But it seemed to them that a reprint in America of the views of an author so well entitled to regard and confidence, without any correction of the few errors or mistakes that might be found, would be in effect to give authenticity to the whole work, and that foreign readers, especially, would consider silence, under such circumstances, as strong evidence of the accuracy of its statements. The preface to the English edition, too, was not adapted to this country, having been written, as it would seem, in reference to the political questions which agitate Great Brita The publishers, therefore, applied to the writer of this, to furnish |