Alexis de Tocqueville
THE RECOLLECTIONS OF
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
TOCQUEVILLE AND NOW
FIRST TRANSLATED INTO
ENGLISH BY ALEXANDER
TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
WITH A PORTRAIT
IN HELIOGRAVURE
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN CO.
1896
PREFACE
"C'est tousiours plaisir de veoir les
choses escriptes par ceulx qui ont essayé
comme il les faut conduire."
Montaigne.
Alexis de Tocqueville made his entrance in political life in 1839.[1] Atthe outbreak of the Revolution of February he was in the prime of hisage and in the maturity of his talent. He threw himself into thestruggle, resolving to devote himself to the interests of the countryand of society, and he was one of the first among those whole-hearted,single-minded men who endeavoured to keep the Republic within a wise andmoderate course by steering clear of the two-fold perils of Cæsarism onthe one hand and revolution on the other. A dangerous and thankless[vi]enterprise, of which the difficulties were never hidden from a mind soclear-sighted as his, and of which he soon foresaw the ephemeralduration.
After the fall of his short-lived ministry, which had been filled withso many cares and such violent agitation, thinking himself removed for atime (it was to be for ever) from the conduct of public affairs, he wentfirst to Normandy and then to Sorrento, on the Bay of Naples, in searchof the peace and repose of which he stood in need. The intellect,however, but rarely shows itself the docile slave of the will, and his,to which idleness was a cause of real suffering, immediately set aboutto seek an object worthy of its attention. This was soon found in thegreat drama of the French Revolution, which attracted him irresistibly,and which was destined to form the subject-matter of his most perfectwork.
It was at this time, while Alexis de Tocqueville was also preoccupied bythe daily increasing gravity of the political situation at home, that hewrote the Recollections now first published. These consisted of merenotes jotted down at intervals on odds and ends of paper; and it was notuntil the close of his life that, yielding to the persuasions of hisintimates, he gave a reluctant consent to their publication. He took acertain pleasure in thus retracing and, as it were, re-enacting theevents in which he had taken part, the character of which seemed themore transient, and the more important to establish definitely, inasmuch[vii]as other events came crowding on, precipitating the crisis and alteringthe aspect of affairs. Thus those travellers who, steering theiradventurous course through a series of dangerous reefs, alight upon awild and rugged island, where they disembark and live for some days, andwhen about to depart for ever from its shores, throw back upon it a