Democracy in America — Volume 1 eBook

Although the vast country which we have been describing was inhabited by many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said at the time of its discovery by Europeans to have formed one great desert.  The Indians occupied without possessing it.  It is by agricultural labor that man appropriates the soil, and the early inhabitants of North America lived by the produce of the chase.  Their implacable prejudices, their uncontrolled passions, their vices, and still more perhaps their savage virtues, consigned them to inevitable destruction.  The ruin of these nations began from the day when Europeans landed on their shores; it has proceeded ever since, and we are now witnessing the completion of it.  They seem to have been placed by Providence amidst the riches of the New World to enjoy them for a season, and then surrender them.  Those coasts, so admirably adapted for commerce and industry; those wide and deep rivers; that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi; the whole continent, in short, seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation, yet unborn.

In that land the great experiment was to be made, by civilized man, of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis; and it was there, for the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by the history of the past.

Chapter II:  Origin Of The Anglo-Americans—­Part I

Chapter Summary

Utility of knowing the origin of nations in order to understand their social condition and their laws—­America the only country in which the starting-point of a great people has been clearly observable—­In what respects all who emigrated to British America were similar—­In what they differed—­Remark applicable to all Europeans who established themselves on the shores of the New World—­Colonization of Virginia—­Colonization of New England—­Original character of the first inhabitants of New England—­Their arrival—­Their first laws—­Their social contract—­Penal code borrowed from the Hebrew legislation—­Religious fervor—­Republican spirit—­Intimate union of the spirit of religion with the spirit of liberty.

Origin Of The Anglo-Americans, And Its Importance In Relation To Their Future Condition.

After the birth of a human being his early years are obscurely spent in the toils or pleasures of childhood.  As he grows up the world receives him, when his manhood begins, and he enters into contact with his fellows.  He is then studied for the first time, and it is imagined that the germ of the vices and the virtues of his maturer years is then formed.  This, if I am not mistaken, is a great error.  We must begin higher up; we must watch the infant in its mother’s arms; we must see the first images which the external world casts upon the dark mirror of his mind; the first occurrences which he witnesses; we must hear the first words which awaken the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by his earliest efforts, if we would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the passions which will rule his life.  The entire man is, so to speak, to be seen in the cradle of the child.