No book has been published of more importance than this in its exhibition of the condition of thought and of society in France during recent years.  None has given more convincing evidence of the suppression of intellectual liberty under the new Imperial rule.  The reserves and the omissions to which M. de Beaumont has been forced in the performance of his work as editor display the oppressive nature of the censorship to which the writings of the most honest and superior men are liable, and the burdensome restraints by which such men are controlled and disheartened.  M. de Beaumont’s notice of the life of Tocqueville, and Tocqueville’s own later correspondence, appear to a thoughtful reader as accusations against Imperial despotism, as protests against the wrongs from which freedom is now suffering in France.  There is in them a pervading tone of sadness, and, here and there, an expression of bitterness of feeling, all the more effective for being conveyed in restrained and unimpassioned words.  There is no place for such men as these in a system like that by which Louis Napoleon governs France.  The men of strong character, of incorruptible integrity, of thoughtful moderation, and of fixed principles are more dangerous to the permanence of despotic rule than the Victor Hugos, the Ledru Rollins, or the Orsinis.  It is the men with whom the love of liberty is founded upon intellectual and moral convictions, not those with whom it is a hot and reckless passion, that are the most to be feared by a ruler whose power is based on the ignorance, the fears, the selfish ambitions, and the material interests of the people whom he flatters and corrupts.

Tocqueville was born a thinker.  His physical organization was delicate, but he had an energy of spirit which led him often to overtask his bodily forces in long-continued mental exertions.  Without brilliancy of imagination and with little liveliness of fancy, he possessed the faculty of acute and discriminating observation, and early acquired the rare power of deep and continuous reflection.  His mind was large and calm.  The candor of his intellect was never stained by passion.  He had not the faculties of an original discoverer in the domain of abstract truth, but, as an investigator of the causes of political and social conditions, of the relation between particular facts and general theories, of the influence of systems and institutions upon the life of communities, he has rarely been surpassed.  His book on “Democracy in America,” and still more his later work on “The Old Regime and the Revolution,” display in a remarkable degree the union of philosophic insight and practical good sense, of clearness of thought and condensation of statement.