f preserving his freedom single-handed, to combine with his
fellow-citizens for the purpose of defending it, it is clear that
tyranny would unavoidably increase together with equality.

Those associations only which are formed in civil life, without
reference to political objects, are here adverted to. The political
associations which exist in the United States are only a single feature
in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country.
Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly
form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing
companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other
kinds--religious, moral, serious, futile, extensive, or restricted,
enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give
entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns,
to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to
the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and
schools. If it be proposed to advance some truth, or to foster some
feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society.
Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government
in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be
sure to find an association. I met with several kinds of associations in
America, of which I confess I had no previous notion; and I have often
admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United
States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great
many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it. I have since
travelled over England, whence the Americans have taken some of their
laws and many of their customs; and it seemed to me that the principle
of association was by no means so constantly or so adroitly used in
that country. The English often perform great things singly; whereas the
Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings. It is evident
that the former people consider association as a powerful means of
action, but the latter seem to regard it as the only means they have of
acting.

Thus the most democratic country on the face of the earth is that in
which men have in our time carried to the highest perfection the art of
pursuing in common the object of their common desires, and have applied
this new science to the greatest number of purposes. Is this the result
of accident? or is there in real