offices under government, to the total exclusion of the aristocratic
party, whose doom was then sealed. Within these last ten years the
advance of the people has been like a torrent, sweeping and levelling
all before it, and the will of the majority has become not only absolute
with the government, but it defies the government itself, which is too
weak to oppose it.

Is it not strange, and even ridiculous, that under a government
established little more than fifty years, a government which was to be a
_lesson_ to the whole world, we should find political writers making use
of language such as this: "We are for _reform, sound, progressive
reform_, not subversion and destruction." Yet such is an extract from
one of the best written American periodicals of the day. This is the
language that may be expected to be used in a country like England,
which still legislates under a government of eight hundred years old;
but what a failure must that government be, which in fifty years calls
forth even from its advocates such an admission!!

M. Tocqueville says, "Custom, however, has done even more than laws. A
proceeding which will in the end set all the guarantees of
representative government at nought, is becoming more and more general
in the United States: it frequently happens that the electors who choose
a delegate, point out a certain line of conduct to him, and impose upon
him a certain number of positive obligations, which he is pledged to
fulfil. With the exception of the tumult, this comes to the same thing
as if the majority of the populace held its deliberations in the
market-place."

Speaking of the majority as the popular will, he says, "no obstacles
exist which can impede, or so much as retard its progress, or which can
induce it to heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path.
This state of things is fatal in itself, and dangerous for the future."

My object in this chapter is to inquire what effect has been produced
upon the morals of the American people by this acknowledged dominion of
the majority?

1st. As to the mass of the people themselves. It is clear, if the
people not only legislate, but, when in a state of irritation or
excitement, they defy even legislation, that they are not to be compared
to _restricted_ sovereigns, but to despots, whose will and caprice are
law. The vices of the court of a despot are, therefore, practised upon
the people; for the people become as it were th