Let democracy come to establish its empire in the heart of such a nation, and you will see with what rapidity every thing will disappear that bears the slightest resemblance to individual independence.  The more effectual the levelling, the greater will seem the community; and the smaller the individual, the more, too, in face of the privileges of the whole, will the very idea of personal rights become effaced.  The majority is held infallible, and the minority appears criminal if it takes the liberty of refusing to subject its thoughts (yes, its very thoughts) to that of the majority.  In this innumerable host of like beings, no one is authorized to possess any thing in private; of all aristocracies, that of the conscience appears then least endurable.  Men believe in the majority, in the mass, in the nation.  We have no idea of the intellectual despotism of a democracy which fails to encounter on its road the obstacle of personal convictions; it disposes of the human soul, it creates an unlimited confidence in the judgment of public opinion, it heads a school of popular courtiers, and teaches each one the art of setting his watch by the clock of the market-place.

Intelligence, conscience, convictions—­all bend, and what does not bend is broken.  This happens, above all, we repeat without wearying, when a detestable cause like that of slavery perverts the working of democratic institutions.  Then, the tyranny of the majorities has no bounds; the majorities themselves are formed by means of ignoble contracts and monstrous alliances.  In the midst of lower passions let loose, through banded parties, imperative mandates, and factitious organizations, which no longer leave the smallest outlet for the flight of the least independent wish, the perversities of corrupt and misled democracy have full scope.

In writing these pages, have I described American democracy?  Yes and no.  Yes, for such are really the temptations to which America has been exposed, such are really the vices with which it might have often been reproached; no, for a principle of resistance has always revealed itself in the darkest moments, an irrepressible something has always remained.  In vain the heavy roller has passed and repassed over the ground; it has always encountered blocks of granite that would not be broken.  This is the point which I had at heart to signal out in closing this study, knowing that it forms its most essential part, and that whoever has not given it his attention cannot comprehend the United States.  The extraordinary fact, much more extraordinary than is supposed, that, under the system of democracy ruled by slavery, men have been able to pause and retrace their steps, is only explained by the peculiar form which religious belief has put on in the United States.  We have not before our eyes a Latin nation, a nation clad in the vestments of Greece or Rome, a nation having, according to the ancient mode, its religion and its usages universally but indolently admitted.  This