“ The happy and the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however, on several occasions, that persons of rank were driven to America by political and religious quarrels. ”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835). copy citation
Author | Alexis de Tocqueville |
---|---|
Source | Democracy in America |
Topic | equality poverty |
Date | 1835 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by Henry Reeve |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm |
Context
“All these European colonies contained the elements, if not the development, of a complete democracy. Two causes led to this result. It may safely be advanced, that on leaving the mother-country the emigrants had in general no notion of superiority over one another. The happy and the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however, on several occasions, that persons of rank were driven to America by political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a master and a farmer at the same time.”
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