n the laws, because the courts can seldom deal
with such questions in a uniform and satisfactory way, under rules that
apply alike to all. Thus the voter, selected by law to represent himself
and four other non-voting citizens, is often a person who is unfit for
any public duty or trust. In a town government, having a small area of
jurisdiction, where the voice of the majority of qualified voters is
conclusive, the fitness of the person who is to exercise that high
representative privilege can be determined by his neighbors and
acquaintances, and, in the great majority of cases, it will be decided
honestly and for the good of the country. In such meetings, there is
always a spirit of loyalty to the State, because that is loyalty to
the people, and a reverence for God that gives weight to the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship.

M. De Tocqueville found in these minor local jurisdictions the
theoretical conservatism which, in the aggregate, is the safest reliance
of the State. So we have found them, in practice, the true protectors
of the purity of the ballot, without which all free government will
degenerate into absolutism.

In the future of the Republic, we must encounter many difficult and
dangerous situations, but the principles established in the Constitution
and the check upon hasty or inconsiderate legislation, and upon
executive action, and the supreme arbitrament of the courts, will be
found sufficient for the safety of personal rights, and for the safety
of the government, and the prophetic outlook of M. De Tocqueville will
be fully realized through the influence of Democracy in America. Each
succeeding generation of Americans will find in the pure and impartial
reflections of De Tocqueville a new source of pride in our institutions
of government, and sound reasons for patriotic effort to preserve
them and to inculcate their teachings. They have mastered the power of
monarchical rule in the American Hemisphere, freeing religion from all
shackles, and will spread, by a quiet but resistless influence,
through the islands of the seas to other lands, where the appeals of
De Tocqueville for human rights and liberties have already inspired the
souls of the people.

Hon. John T. Morgan

Special Introduction By Hon. John J. Ingalls

Nearly two-thirds of a century has elapsed since the appearance of
"Democracy in America," by Alexis Charles Henri Clerel de Tocqueville, a
French nobleman, born at Pari