“ In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States ”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1840). copy citation
Author | Alexis de Tocqueville |
---|---|
Source | Democracy in America |
Topic | love property |
Date | 1840 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by Henry Reeve |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm |
Context
“It may be easily seen, from the promptitude with which they check and calm themselves when public excitement begins to grow alarming, and at the very moment when passions seem most roused, that they dread a revolution as the worst of misfortunes, and that every one of them is inwardly resolved to make great sacrifices to avoid such a catastrophe. In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States; nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws of property. I have often remarked that theories which are of a revolutionary nature, since they cannot be put in practice without a complete and sometimes a sudden change in the state of property and persons, are much less favorably viewed in the United States than in the great monarchical countries of Europe:”
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