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But, after a careful perusal of the chapters on this subject, the editor is inclined to the opinion, that M. De Tocqueville intends to speak of the tyranny of the party in excluding from public employment all those who do not adopt the Shibboleth of the majority. The language at pp. 286, 287, which he puts in the mouth of a majority, and his observations immediately preceding this note, seem to furnish the key to his meaning; although it must be admitted that there are other passages to which a wider construction may be given. Perhaps they may be reconciled by the idea that the author considers the acts and opinions of the dominant party as the just and true expression of public opinion. And hence, when he speaks of the intolerance of public opinion, he means the exclusiveness of the party, which, for the time being, may be predominant. He had seen men of acknowledged competency removed from office, or excluded from it, wholly on the ground of their entertaining opinions hostile to those of the dominant party, or majority And he had seen this system extended to the very lowest officers of the government, and applied by the electors in their choice of all officers of all descriptions; and this he deemed persecution—tyranny—despotism. But he surely is mistaken in representing the effect of this system of terror as stifling all complaint, silencing all opposition, and inducing “enemies and friends to yoke themselves alike to the triumphant car of the majority.” He mistook a temporary state of parties for a permanent and ordinary result, and he was carried away by the immense majority that then supported the administration, to the belief of a universal acquiescence. Without intending here to speak of the merits or demerits of those who represented that majority, it is proper to remark, that the great change which, has taken place since the period when the author wrote, in the political condition of the very persons who he supposed then wielded the terrors of disfranchisement against their opponents, in itself furnishes a full and complete demonstration of the error of his opinions respecting the “true independence of mind and freedom of discussion” in America. For without such discussion to enlighten the minds of the people, and without a stern independence of the rewards and threats of those in power, the change alluded to could not have occurred.
There is reason to complain not only of the ambiguity, but of the style of exaggeration which pervades all the remarks of the author on this subject—so different for the well considered and nicely adjusted language employed by him on all other topics. Thus, p. 282, he implies that there is no means of redress afforded even by the judiciary, for a wrong committed by the majority. His error is, first, in supposing the jury to constitute the judicial power; second, overlooking what he has himself elsewhere so well described, the independence of the judiciary and its means of controlling the action of a majority in a state or in the federal government; and thirdly, in omitting the proper consideration of the frequent changes of popular sentiment by which the majority of yesterday becomes the minority of to-day, and its acts of injustice are reversed.
Certain it is that the instances which he cites at this page, do not establish his position respecting the disposition of the majority. The riot at Baltimore was, like other riots in England and in France, the result of popular phrensy
