republic of the New World is by no means one of those slave republics of ancient times, in which the citizens took delight in conversing on public affairs, but in which no one had the bad taste to question his conscience with respect to the public creeds.  The pagan life, with its obligatory worship, its common education, its suppression of the family and the individual in behalf of the State, its existence transported to the Forum; the pagan life, in which the citizen absorbs the individual, and in which the calm and serene uniformity of indifferent centuries ends, by giving to each one the national physiognomy, bears no resemblance to the moral and social life of the United States.

Among them, not the smallest trace is found of that system which seeks to make nations, and which forgets to make men.  They were born, as we may say, of a protestation of the human conscience.  A noble origin, which explains many things!  It is, in fact, the revindication of religious independence against religious uniformity, and the established church which created it two hundred years ago.  Of course, I have not to examine here the intrinsic value of the Puritan doctrines.  I content myself with affirming that they landed in America in the name of liberty, that they were destined to establish liberty there, that they were destined to build there the true rampart against democratic tyranny.

From the first day, the State was deprived of the direction of the intellectual and moral man.  Despite that inevitable mixture of inconsistencies and hesitation which marks our first efforts in all things, the Puritan colonies, destined one day to become the United States, set out on the road which led to liberty of belief, of thoughts, of speech, of the press, of assemblage, of instruction.  The most considerable, most important rights were abstracted at the outset from the domain of democratic deliberations; insuperable bounds were set to the sovereignty of numbers; the right of minorities, that of the individual, the right of remaining alone against all others, the right of being of one’s own opinion, was reserved.  Furthermore, they did not delay to break the bonds between the Church and the State entirely, in such a manner as to deprive the official superintendence of belief of its last pretext.  Self-government was founded, that is, the most formal negation of subjugation by the democracy.  While the latter tends to the maximum of government, the American Government tends to the minimum of government, that form par excellence of liberalism.  And it does not tend thither, as in the Middle Ages, by anarchy, by the absence of national ties, and moreover by despoiling the individual of his rights of conscience and thought, confiscated then more entirely for the benefit of a sovereign church than they have been since for the benefit of the State; no, American individualism proceeds differently:  if it restrains with salutary vigor the province of governments, it is to enlarge that of the human soul.