Sunday, August 21, 2016

Publius Tocqueville

...Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners* and customs...This country and this people seem to have been made for each other...-Federalist No.2 (John Jay).

Everything is extraordinary in America, the social condition of the inhabitants, as well as the laws...[and] the soil...North America was discovered, as if it had been kept in reserve by the Deity...
-Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville. 338.

The laws and manners* of the Anglo-Americans are therefore that efficient cause of their greatness...Almost all the inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a common stock; they speak the same language, they worship God in the same manner...Tocqueville, 373)

*By "manners" Tocqueville explains he means "the moral and intellectual characteristics of social man taken collectively." (371)  Jay uses the term in the same sense. Did Tocqueville then read the Federalist Papers as well? Oui, oui , monsieur. Mais bien sรปr!: "Mr. Hamilton expresses the same opinion in the 'Federalist,' No.51..." (313)