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948 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 1 4a How the Taste for Material Enjoyments Is United, among the Americans, with the Love of Liberty and Concern for Public Affairs When a democratic Stateb turns to absolute monarchy, the activity that was brought previously to public and private affairs comes suddenly to be concentrated on the latter, and a great material prosperity results for some time; but soon the movement slows and the development of production stops.c a. Liberty is useful for the production of well-being among all peoples, but principally among democratic peoples. It often happens among these peoples, however, that the excessive taste for wellbeing causes liberty to be abandoned. Men there are so preoccupied by their petty private affairs that they regard the attention that they give to great public affairs as a waste of time. That delivers them easily to the despotism of one man or to the tyranny of a party. The Americans offer the opposite example. They concern themselves with public affairs attentively and with the same ardor as with their private interests, which shows clearly that in their mind these two things go together (YTC, CVf, p. 32). b. The manuscript says “republic.” c. I said in another part of this work the reasons that led me to believe that, if despotism came to be established in a lasting way among a democratic people, it would show itself more ordered and heavier than anywhere else. The more I advance into my subject, the more it seems to me that I am finding new reasons to think so. [In the margin: All of that is weak because these are general truths that do not apply to democratic peoples more than to others. It is the special reasons that I must seek. The special reason here would be the particularly suffocating nature of despotism among democratic peoples.] material enjoyments and love of liberty 949 Now, the necessary effect of a despotism of this type is to constricttheimagination of man, to narrow in all ways the limits of his faculties and finally to make him indifferent and as if useless to himself. But perhaps I am exaggerating the danger. Who could believe in such excesses amid the enlightenment of our {Europe} age? So it is claimed. I agree, so I will not speak about the wars undertaken for a particular interest, the misappropriations of public wealth, the plundering by the agents of power, the general uncertainty of private fortunes, things still more fatal to the prosperity of citizens, that are like the usual consequence of the establishment of such a government and whose effect will soon make itself felt on the well-being of the citizens . All these things can be considered as accidents. I want to seek a permanent cause of the evil that I suppose, and I imagine a soft and intelligent despotism that, limiting itself to confiscating liberty, leaves men in possession of all the goods given birth by liberty. [In the margin: Commerce cannot bear war; but the character of democratic despotism is not tyrannical, but minutely detailed and annoying.] Some maintain that such a government {favors} would save human morality and is, everything considered, more favorable to happiness; I do not believe it. Nonetheless , it can be claimed. But you certainly cannot claim that such a government favors as well the development of material well-being and the acquisition of wealth. There is a more intimate connection than is thought between political activityand industrial activity. There is nothing that awakens the imagination of a people, that expands the circle of its ideas, that gives it the taste for enterprises of all types and the boldness to execute them, finally that forces citizens to see each other and to enlighten each other mutually with their knowledge, like the concern for public affairs . Men being so disposed, there is no progress that they do not imagine, and,from the simultaneous efforts of all, universal well-being is born. That is so true that I do not know if you can cite the example of a single manufacturing and commercial people, from the Tyrians to the English, who havenotbeen at the same time a free people. You saw the industrial genius of the Florentines do wonders amid the constantly recurring revolutions that devoured the products of the work of man as they came from his hands. Florence, amid the very excesses of its independence, was rich; it became poor as...

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