Recollections (Souvenirs)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 535 passages
Cite this work
- APAAlexis de Tocqueville. (n.d.). Recollections (Souvenirs). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexis-de-tocqueville/recollections-souvenirs
- MLAAlexis de Tocqueville. Recollections (Souvenirs). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexis-de-tocqueville/recollections-souvenirs.
- ChicagoAlexis de Tocqueville. Recollections (Souvenirs). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexis-de-tocqueville/recollections-souvenirs.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The memoir Tocqueville wrote about the revolution of 1848 and about the months in which he was himself foreign minister, with no intention of publishing it.
Context and history
That changes the tone entirely. The author of 'Democracy in America' writes here without the caution of the public work: raw portraits of his contemporaries, judgements on himself, and a description of the June days seen from inside the Assembly. It was published in 1893, when everyone involved was dead, by his express wish. It is valuable as first-hand historical evidence and also as counterpoint: the same man who had analysed democracy at a distance here watches it break out under his feet, and one sees how much what he had understood in the abstract cost him in fact.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The French Revolution, which aboh'shed all privileges and destroyed all exclusive rights, has allowed one to remain, that of landed property. Let not the landlords deceive themselves as to the strength of their position, nor think that the rights of property form an insurmountable barrier because they have not as yet been surmounted ; for our times are unlike any others. When the rights of property were merely the origin and commencement of a number of other rights, they were easily defended, or rather, they were never attacked ; they then formed the surrounding wall of society, of which all other rights were the outposts ; no blows reached them ; no serious attempt was ever made to touch them. But to-day, when the rights of property are nothing more than the last remnants of an overthrown aristocratic world ; when they alone are left intact, isolated privileges amid the universal levelling of society ; when they are no longer protected behind a number of still more controversible and odious rights, the case is altered, and they alone are left daily to resist the direct and unceasing shock of democratic opinion. . . . "... Before long, the political struggle will be restricted to those who have and those who have not ; property will form the great field of battle ; and the principal political questions will turn upon the more or less important modifications to be introduced into the rights of landlords. We shall then have once more among us great public agitations and great political parties. " How is it that these premonitory symptoms escape the general view ?…