Tocqueville’s Voyages. Группа авторов

the situation, he believed that federal power was weakening rather than strengthening, and thus that talk of presidential despotism was unfounded. His position, then, was one of relative optimism.

      It was at the very end of these reflections that Tocqueville provided a glimpse of what he clearly perceived as the forces likely to transform America in the decades to come. He first turned his attention to the causes of America’s commercial greatness. And here he captured something of the all-conquering spirit of American capitalism. “I cannot better express my thoughts,” Tocqueville wrote, “than by saying that Americans put a kind of heroism in their way of doing commerce.”98 They constantly adapted their labors to satisfy their needs and were never hampered by old methods and old attitudes. They lived in “a land of wonders” where everything was in motion and where change was seen as a step forward. Newness was associated with improvement. Americans lived in a “sort of feverish agitation,” keeping them above “the common level of humanity.” “For an American,” Tocqueville wrote, “all of life happens like a game of chance, a time of revolution, a day of battle.”99

      In consequence, America was destined to become a major maritime power. It would, as a matter of course, gain dominance over South America. Inescapably, commercial greatness would soon generate military power. Moreover, America would drag the whole North American continent into its orbit. He saw that the United States would soon break its treaty obligations with Mexico. Its people would “penetrate these uninhabited areas,” intent on snatching ownership of the land from its rightful owners. Texas, although still under Mexican rule, was day by day being infiltrated by Americans, imposing their language and way of life. The same was happening wherever the “Anglo-Americans” came into contact with other peoples. “So it must not be believed,” Tocqueville concluded, “that it is possible to stop the expansion of the English race of the New World,” for such was its “destiny.”100

      Moreover, the mistake has been to imagine that Tocqueville, having completed the second volume of Democracy in America, turned his

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      back for good upon the country that had so contributed to his fame and renown. This fits in well with the opinion that derides the value and significance of his journey to America. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did Tocqueville keep in touch with many of those he had met on his travels across the North American continent, but, time upon time, he referred to America in his published writings and parliamentary speeches, always reminding his readers and listeners of what there was to learn from the American experience. More intriguing still, as time passed by, Tocqueville focused his attention ever more upon the issues he had raised in the final chapters of volume 1. As the institution of slavery was extended westward, he saw that it risked securing a new lease of life with fateful consequences for the Union. He saw a heroic commerce turning into a rapacious capitalism, led by a breed of men not before seen in the world and fueled by an unbridled materialism. He saw America needlessly and dangerously expanding its territory, constantly running the risk of war with its neighbors on land and sea. He saw a decline in law and order and in political morals. America, he wrote in 1856, was such as now to “distress all the friends of democratic liberty and delight all of its opponents.”101

      Nevertheless, the memories of Tocqueville’s visit to America never lost their power to move him. Writing to Gustave de Beaumont from Compiègne during the harsh winter of 1855, he reminisced as follows:

      [F]or the last week I have not stopped from going, once a day, for a walk of an hour or more in the forest. These enormous trees, seen through the snow, remind me of the woods of Tennessee that we travelled through, almost 25 years ago, in weather still more severe.102 What was most different in the picture was myself.… This little retrospective review put me back in good humour and, to finish the job of cheering me up again, I thought how I had kept to this day the same friend with whom I had hunted the parrots of Memphis and

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      that the passing of time had only strengthened the ties of trust and of friendship which then existed between us. This thought seemed to me more heartening to reflect upon than all the others.103

      To imagine that Tocqueville might just as well have stayed at home is simply mistaken.