Your search returned 44 results in 9 document sections:

Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America., III: a word more about America. (search)
s than I possess, would seem to me an impertinence. It is now a long while since I read M. de Tocqueville's famous work on Democracy in America. I have the highest respect for M. de Tocqueville; M. de Tocqueville; but my remembrance of his book is that it deals too much in abstractions for my taste, and that it is written, moreover, in a style which many French writers adopt, but which I find trying — a style g an air of rigorous scientific deduction without the reality. Very likely, however, I do M. de Tocqueville injustice. My debility in high speculation is well known, and I mean to attempt his book to write a worthy book about the United States, when I am not entirely satisfied with even M. de Tocqueville's. But before I went to America, and when I had no expectation of ever going there, I phave yet again visited America, have seen the great West, and have had a second reading of M. de Tocqueville's classical work on Democracy, my mind may be enlarged and my present impressions still fu
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 2. (ed. Frank Moore), chapter 10 (search)
rothers, but there has been far more real fellowship of feeling between Frenchmen and Englishmen during the last forty years than between the citizens of South Carolina and Massachusetts. As for the causes of the present strife, they are infinitely more respectable than the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, which took us to the Crimea, and cost the lives of tens of thousands of Englishmen. Finally, it is not true that democracy in America is unlimited, as the writer will find by turning to M. de Tocqueville. One great object of the framers of the American Constitution was to limit the power of the people. Both in the mode of its election and its appointment of its representative power, the Senate is essentially an aristocratic and conservative body, while the clause in the Constitution which ordered that three-fifths of the slave population in the South should be added to the white population, as a basis for calculating the number of representatives to be returned to Congress, runs full
Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career., Chapter 6: (search)
this subject; and in connection with Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the Rev. Francis Wayland, and other gentlemen, became deeply interested in the course of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, and in the improvement of the condition of the prisons of our own country. Of the various systems in vogue, Mr. Sumner deprecated that of the promiscuous commingling of prisoners in one company, and also that of absolute solitude, endangering the health and preventing reformation. With the distinguished M. de Tocqueville, he favored the Pennsylvania system which embraced these element,--separation, labor in the cell, exercise in the pen air, visits, and books, together with moral and religious instruction. In a speech of much power before the Boston Prison Discipline Society, at the Tremont Temple, June 18, 1847, he criticised the partial and inefficient course of that body, and presented his enlightened views upon the subject, which gave fresh impulse to the efforts made for the amelioration of the s
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3, chapter 1 (search)
on Park Street, his home was for more than a generation the resort of all that was most distinguished in the culture of the period; and he was assisted in this refined hospitality by one who was his peer in accomplishments, and who graced the society of Boston and Cambridge from youth to age. There came foreigners of high rank or repute, who from time to time visited the city,— among them, in 1824, Lafayette, and four young Englishmen, Wortley, Stanley, Labouchere, and Denison; and later, Tocqueville, Morpeth, Dickens, Lyell, and Thackeray. There as a daily visitor was Hillard, almost the peer of the brilliant conversers of Holland and Lansdowne houses in their palmiest days, or of those who gathered round Samuel Rogers in St. James's Place. But with all this, and not overlooking his review of Spanish literature, it is doing no injustice to Ticknor's rank in letters to say, that, unlike his contemporaries in Boston,—Bancroft, Prescott, Longfellow, and Holmes,—he has as an author left<
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3, Chapter 30: addresses before colleges and lyceums.—active interest in reforms.—friendships.—personal life.—1845-1850. (search)
ainst Rome is! George writes me from London (where he is trying to induce Palmerston to acknowledge the independence of Hungary) that he has a letter from Madame de Tocqueville, in which she abjures for her husband all connection or sympathy with the Roman expedition. And yet he is Minister of Foreign Affairs! To George Sumnerary power, of unjust decrees, of martial law. Why not sound the idea in the ears of Europe? July 31. Coolidge Joseph Coolidge. brought me yesterday Madame de Tocqueville's note to you. It is very pleasant, curious, and instructive. I was glad to read that disavowal of the Roman expedition, and that sympathy with Hungary. grandson of the General, in August, 1850, and Jean J. Ampere, Ampere's Promenade en Amerique, vol. II. p. 36. Revue des deux Mondes, 1853, p. 20. friend of Tocqueville, in September, 1851, all of whom he took pleasure in escorting to places of interest. In a letter written in April, 1848, Sumner explained his early interest
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3, Chapter 31: the prison—discipline debates in Tremont Temple.—1846-1847. (search)
fter personal inspection were uniformly in its favor. Among the visitors were Beaumont and Tocqueville in 1831, and Demetz and Blout in 1837, from France; Crawford, in 1834, from England; and JuliEuropean penologists, particularly by those who had officially visited the American prisons. Tocqueville wrote Sumner from his chateau in Normandy, August 6, a letter in which he expressed his surprot hastily, but after serious inquiry and long debate. Works, vol. i. p. 530. Contrary to Tocqueville's expectations, the separate system lost ground with the decline of interest in the discussiohe bill. Sumner had an interest unusual with public men in questions outside of politics. Tocqueville plied Mr. Webster with questions on prison discipline, but found that he was not interested in the subject, saying that it was useless to try to reform criminals. Tocqueville added: Webster, like thousands of statesmen, cares only for power. Life and Letters of Dr. F. Lieber, p. 256. T
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3, Chapter 41: search for health.—journey to Europe.—continued disability.—1857-1858. (search)
umner into relations with them. He enjoyed Tocqueville's conversations on European politics, and wnd stayed at home all day till evening. M. de Tocqueville called. His conversation was quite inter with Mr. Senior. Among the guests were M. de Tocqueville and Lord Granville. Other guests werenterested me was about public speakers. M. de Tocqueville said that Odilon Barrot was the only oneenior, where were M. Guizot, M. Remusat, M. de Tocqueville, De Corcelle, Lord Granville, De Circour handed me a most hospitable letter from M. de Tocqueville. After an hour in the streets of Granvit half-past 10 o'clock; then a walk with M. de Tocqueville in the grounds; then conversation and releaving home he wrote letters to Cobden and Tocqueville on European and American affairs. To the l Washington:— I was happy, dear Monsieur de Tocqueville, to hear from you; but I should have re, and do not forget to commend me to Madame de Tocqueville. To John Jay, June 1, from the Van[1 more...]
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3, chapter 14 (search)
gain! He then talked a great deal of Theodore Parker, and said to me, He is our first man; but he is wanting in veneration. He took pleasure in repeating what Tocqueville had said to him: Take care lest they take you for a French senator. We were then under the empire. Sumner made a lasting impression on all whom he met at Mns with George T. Curtis, B. F. Hallett, Judge Fletcher, R. C. Winthrop, George S. Hillard, etc.; persons, including Prescott, Bancroft, Lord Brougham, Bunsen, Tocqueville, etc. I broached to him my criminal law theories, and he encouraged me to pursue them, suggesting the aid that I should find in Bentham. He also spoke of havin; vol. v. p. 288. Dr. G. Bailey of the National Era, June 5, 1859; Sumner expected to meet Dr. Bailey in Paris, but he died at sea on his way to Europe. and Tocqueville, April 16, 1859. Theodore Parker died in Florence a few months later, May 10, 1860. Sumner wrote to Parker, Aug. 22, 1859:— You will mourn Horace Mann.
The Daily Dispatch: November 23, 1864., [Electronic resource], article 1 (search)
nts, and for the same reason. "The necessity," says Coleridge, "for external government to man is in the inverse ratio of the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete the first is least wanted. Hence the more virtue, the more liberty." What virtue is left among the Northern masses? What virtue in map anywhere, except that which proceeds from the regenerating influence of Christianity? Hence the universal failure of such governments as that of the United States. M. de Tocqueville, in his impartial and philosophical survey of American equality, long ago portrayed seeds in the undisguised "tyranny of the majority" of the eventual destruction of civil liberty. There is nothing new under the sun. The forms of free government alone remain in the United States; but it is substantially a military despotism. It has gone the way of all like experiments of the "vox populi vox dei." But it might have finished with dignity, instead of selecting as its first master a