By defining the conditions morals and intellectual democratic regime, where are combined the most contradictory virtues and most fundamental of the life in society - freedom and equality - he proposed a prophetic vision of the political ideal for the centuries to come, and in particular ours.

In 1828, it meets Mary Mottley, a Protestant English young person, whom it will marry in Paris in 1836. It lends oath to Louis-Philippe, but unwillingly, because he is legitimist. He decides to go to study the American, model system prison possible to replace the old French system: but, in fact, as its correspondence reveals it, he intends to examine the political system.  

He embarks with Beaumont in Le Havre in May 1831. They will remain in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, then in Washington and again in New York. They will make two excursions, one towards the North-West and Canada, the other towards the south by the Mississippi. The two friends are impressed by public freedoms and the overflowing activity of the men.  

Of return in France, Beaumont and Tocqueville publish in January 1833 their book Of the penitentiary system in the United States and his application in France. After the publication of the work, Beaumont is raised of his functions of substitute close the county court of the Seine; Tocqueville is solidarized with him and resigns of its post of temporary judge.  

Back from a voyage in England, it settles in his parents, in Paris, to write democracy in America. It overflows of enthusiasm for the American system. Held with respect to the parties, it notes that to the United States those do not call into question the system itself; rather reticent with regard to freedom of press, it is shown from now on hostile with the lawsuits of press brought in France; rather opposed to the right of association, it is struck by that which exists in the United States, whereas in France the secret societies multiply. Appeared in 1835, the book is an immense success.  

Beaumont and Tocqueville go to England and Ireland in 1835. In England, Tocqueville observes the progression of the centralism to the profit of the Parliament, and not of the executive. He undertakes the drafting of the second part of his book, but stops it to write a Report on pauperism. The only remedy for pauperism, a which had phenomenon, according to him, with industrialization, is the benevolence, while waiting for the day when “our workmen will acquerront lights” and where the government will be able to support industrial associations. Tocqueville begins a second test, the Social state and policy of France before and after 1789, but it treats only the situation of before the Revolution.  

Tocqueville consolidates from now on its thesis: the justice of God imposes the progress of the democracy. In the second volume, he seeks to define what must be the democracy and to describe the parapets that the United States established to protect it. The democracy carries in it a double risk, namely anarchy or the constraint: the fear of anarchy leads people of order to be thrown in the arms of the authority. The democratic society leaves the ordinary citizen stripped vis-a-vis the State, and the levelling spirit of the democratic society leads to the centralization of the State. From there the danger comes from despotism. Tocqueville is struck by the revolutionary tradition everywhere presents in Europe. Volumes 3 and 4 of the work Of the democracy in America, appeared in 1840, are a success less than the precedents.

It belongs to a commission on the abolition of slavery, but its conclusions will never be discussed. He undertakes a voyage in Algeria in 1841. He approves colonization while criticizing the French administrative policy. Also member of a parliamentary commission on Africa of 1842 to 1844 then, in 1847, rapporteur of an extraordinary commission on the appropriations intended for Algeria, it is concerned wellbeing of the natives there. In 1842, he is elected at the general advice of the department of the English Channel.  

In January 1848, after having refused to take part in the countryside of the banquets, which will make fall the mode, he pronounces most famous of his speeches to the Room, where he affirms: “I believe that we fall asleep on a volcano.” In April 1848, he is elected by the vote for all with the constituent Assembly. Although particularly being wary with regard to the parties, it lines up in the clan reformist, known as “left dynastic”, of Odilon Barrot. Invited to sit at the charged commission to write the new Constitution, it fights the socialism, which has for him three principles: the worship of the pleasure, the abolition of the private property and suppression of individual freedom. Partisan of the bicameral system, it is for the election of the president of the Republic by the people. On May 13th, 1849, he is elected with Legislative and enters the Barrot ministry to the Foreign affairs. But in October it is dislocated by the prince-president, who does not like the strong personalities.  

Patient, it must rest and begins his Memories. In April 1851, he is elected for the third time president of the general advice of the English Channel. Stopped at the time of the coup d'etat of December 2nd, it still chairs a general advice in March 1852; but, learning that oath should be lent, it gives its resignation. It is the end of its political life. It starts to write the Former regime and the Revolution, whose beginning will appear in 1856. It considers there the nobility French, which did not know to adapt like had made the British nobility: it did not reduce the taxes nor not removed the loads. Especially, she ignored the peasants while settling in the cities and at the court, leaving the people alone vis-a-vis arbitrary power.  

In 1857, he travels to England to prepare one following the Former regime and the Revolution, but has time only to gather notes. In October 1858, it leaves with his wife for Cannes; he dies on on April 16th, 1859, after a repetition of tuberculosis. Its mortal remains is brought back to Paris.  

Revolution and democracy

The ideas of Tocqueville are those of a large enthusiast liberal of justice and whose concern is at the same time to remain faithful to its family and her origins, and to seek constantly what after the Revolution would be the mode just. It was all its life marked by the horror of the revolutions and any form of tyranny.  

Social evolution
Tocqueville leaves the idea according to which the world evolves spontaneously to the inequality of the conditions. This is why there are in the future, according to him, only two possible governments: or “a state of company in which everyone would take share with the business more or less”, i.e. a democratic State, or tyranny, the control of all with only one, as the Empire gave an example of it.  

To cure the deficiencies of its political life, France cannot take as a starting point the England, where a strong aristocracy remains then playing a considerable part as regards the administration of the business. It is thus advisable to find a way original, on the basis of the distinction between democracy and revolution. In that, the American model is worth the sorrow to be studied. Because, if a new revolution should at all costs be avoided, the contribution of that of 1789, in particular the work of the first two Assemblies - followed certainly of the horror of the massacres and tyranny - remains irreplaceable. American specificity lies in the fact that in the United States the democracy reigns in the civil society as in the political arena, whereas France knows democracy only in the civil society; the political arena rests there on the aristocracy.  

The American example
Tocqueville borrows from Montesquieu the concept of national nature: England is an old nation, whose mode rests on the aristocracy. The United States is a new nation; while passing on the new continent, the English lost this aristocratism to find what will constitute the bottom of the American national character: the calculator spirit, taste of the money, the pride of the success. The great value of the United States compared to England and France, it is that they represent a radical democratic revolution without violence.  

This new country, in which all the immigrants are treated equally, created a national ideal where each individual is competing with the different ones. Many are those which arrive there with the horror of the constraint almost everywhere presents in Europe. The main report/servant, if there exists like everywhere else, rests on an accepted contract, and not on the birth. It is what Tocqueville calls “equality of the conditions”. However this one, which is the base of the democracy, is not, in historical terms, “necessary”; it is necessary that there is a human will to arrive there, and especially a social will.  

The equality of the conditions is not an absolute goal besides, guaranteeing the survival of the other values, in particular that of freedom: Tocqueville is not unconditional American system - the democracy involves a permanent risk indeed, that of the tyranny of the majority. But if he explains the risks constantly that short the american company between freedom and the democracy, he proposes less one sociological analysis that a speech moralist, while insisting on the originally religious base, the major belief and the individual practice of the Christian religion (Protestant): he thus highlights the fragile character of the system whose dynamism, due to the respect of civic freedoms, is a source of unforeseeable transformations. Unlike the modern political economists who take care not to come to a conclusion about the various aspects of the companies that they try to describe in a completely objective way, Tocqueville takes party. It observes and judges, following for there the example of Aristote and, especially, Montesquieu.  

Praise of freedom
Tocqueville in the final analysis more made work of historian and political economist of politician. He seeks to understand why France has so many difficulties of becoming a free society and democratic, whereas it could, at its beginnings, to take a nonviolent form. He estimates that the negative aspect of the Revolution lies in the fact “of having considered the citizen in an abstracted way”, approaching in that the religion, which considers the overall man historical and social context. In fact, it is well of any revolution that Tocqueville shows the enemy, insofar as the revolution leads to tyranny and the war.  

The other enemy of the democracy, administrative centralization, is not the work of the only Jacobins and other imperial agents of the political power. The Revolution and the Empire are not alone in question. A deep change had emerged well before 1789: the centralization and administrative uniformity, started under Louis XIV. In France postrévolutionnaire, all took a more radical turn still. In addition, Tocqueville makes a sociological table of the company of the Former regime, and that which he knows, as counterpoint to the company of the time.  

In front of a centralized power, the company “is to some extent burst”. The orders which compose it are standardized, treated on a hierarchical basis by the privileges in the broad sense (social position, incomes), but they do not interpenetrate for a long time any more. Tocqueville charges without hesitating with the royalty itself this break between the social classes. It evokes with nostalgia the Constituent one. It would have wished that it perpetuates the monarchical system, which could have evolved to more freedom, and which it safeguards the continuity of the State, only able to guarantee legality - as many principles blamed by the revolution.  

The thought of Tocqueville evolved between the first part of the Democracy, published in 1835, and the Former regime and the Revolution, published in 1856. He had initially believed that the institutions were the product of manners and the ideas of time; then he affirms that they have an autonomous life.

Certain pages of its Memories show the pessimism of a man who saw February 1848 and on on December 2nd: “And here the French revolution which starts again, he writes, because it is always the same one.” For him, France threatens Europe. It summarizes its political thought by the opposition of two concepts: that of democracy, whose America gives an example, and that of revolution, a French tare.  

The politician who was Tocqueville is as alone as was to it the thinker: separated from the legitimists, whom it suspectait, and from the orleanists, whom it scorned, it entered in policy an incipient republic, which very quickly drove out under the threat of a tyrant who struck with his door. He remains an exemplary thinker by his autonomous spirit and the clearness with which he analyzed one time threatened by the despotism.