st, which he foresaw, will be equally prepared for the
responsibilities of the present and the future.

The last of the four volumes of M. de Tocqueville's work upon American
institutions appeared in 1840.

In 1838 he was chosen member of the Academy of Moral and Political
Sciences. In 1839 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He became
a member of the French Academy in 1841. In 1848 he was in the Assembly,
and from June 2nd to October 31st he was Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The coup d'etat of December 2, 1851 drove him from the public service.
In 1856 he published "The Old Regime and the Revolution." He died at
Cannes, April 15, 1859, at the age of fifty-four.

Hon. John J. Ingalls

Introductory Chapter

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay
in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general
equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence
which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by
giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to
the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar
habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this
fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the
country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over
the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the
ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce.
The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I
perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from
which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all
my observations constantly terminated.

I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that
I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World
presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily
progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached
in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American
communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. I hence
conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader.

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is
going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and
consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such
may still be c