station of its parents, but with an indefinite claim to all the prizes that can be won by thought and labour. It is in conformity with the theory of equality to check the causes which disturb it, and to give as near as possible to every youth an equal start in life. Every American is a self-made man, and they are unwilling that any should be deprived in childhood of the means of competition. Therefore in several States a system of instruction was introduced which enabled a pupil to advance from the first rudiments of knowledge to the end of a university course, and to prepare himself for the learned professions, without payment of a single shilling. Taxation was scarcely felt; there was no standing army; a navy that weighed lightly in the Budget, an inconsiderable public debt. No neighbouring Power threatened the safety of the country. No internal disaffection disturbed the peaceful reign of law. And this material progress, though checked by serious drawbacks, was not obtained at the expense of the higher elements of civilisation.
In literature at least I entirely dissent from the opinion which denies to Americans an honourable place beside European nations. It may be said that they have had no first-rate poet or painter,[1] and that they have done little for scholarship and antiquities. But it appears to me impossible with justice to deny that they are our equals in political eloquence and philosophy, or that they surpass us as writers on the history of the continent and on the art of government. In practical politics they had solved with astonishing and unexampled success two problems which had hitherto baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations: they had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased the national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities; and they had founded it on the principle of equality, without surrendering the securities for property and freedom. I call their success unexampled, not because it is a forcible term, but because it exactly indicates the peculiar character of the history of the American Constitution, and its special significance for ourselves.
- ↑ See Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume 2, chapters 24 and 25. (Wikisource contributor note)
