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"I do not know," says de Tocqueville, "all in all, and notwithstanding the vices of some of its members, if there ever was in the world a more remarkable clergy than the Catholic clergy of France when the Revolution took them by surprise, more enlightened, more national, less entrenched behind their private virtues, better endowed with public virtues, and, at the same time, more strong in the faith. ... I began the study of the old social system full of prejudices against them; I finish it full of respect for them."
Unless the law of moral progress were changed, or the Governor of the Universe were dethroned, it would be impossible to prevent a great uprising of the human conscience against a system, the legislation relating to which, in the words of so calm an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu of our laws, presents "such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of humanity have been totally perverted."
He was the overseas apostle of Bourbon paternalism, and as his commission authorized him to 'order all things as he may think just and proper, the intendant never found much opportunity for idleness. Tocqueville, shrewdest among historians of pre-revolutionary France, has somewhere pointed out that under the old regime the administration took the place of Providence.
He has not been a literal translator, and this has been the cause of the very few errors which have been discovered: but he has been more and better: he has caught the spirit of M. DE TOCQUEVILLE, has understood the sentiment he meant to express, and has clothed it in the language which M. DE TOCQUEVILLE would have himself used, had he possessed equal facility in writing the English language.
De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that the Union was to be endangered by slavery, not through its interests, but through the change of character it was bringing about in the people of the two sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than half a century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of the system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself in the sight of his descendants, that "by an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities."
In his great book on 'Democracy in America, De Tocqueville pointed out, more than fifty years ago, the dangers into which the religious middle classes fall by the spread of wealth and comfort. That danger has increased, till for the rich on whom Christ called woe, we might well substitute the comfortable.
When De Tocqueville visited our country, he journeyed westward until he stood upon the very frontier of civilization. Before him lay the forests and prairies, stretching for thousands of miles toward the setting sun.
Monsieur Tocqueville, who is always lauded to the skies for his philosophic and truly extraordinary view of American policy and institutions, has perhaps been as impartial as most republican writers since the days of the enthusiast Volney, on the merits or demerits of the monarchical and democratic systems; yet his opinions are to be listened to very cautiously, for the leaven was well mixed in his own cake before it was matured for consumption by the public.
A whole generation has learned the luxury of thinking heroic thoughts and being conversant with heroic deeds, and I have faith to believe that all this is not to go out in a mere crush of fashionable luxury and folly and frivolous emptiness, but that our girls are going to merit the high praise given us by De Tocqueville, when he placed first among the causes of our prosperity the noble character of American women.
He is remembered as the translator of Tocqueville, as the editor of the "Greville Memoirs," as the author of a not quite forgotten book on Royal and Republican France, showing much knowledge of French literature and politics; as the holder during fifty years of the respectable, but not very prominent, post of Registrar of the Privy Council.
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