The Old Regime and the Revolution (Google eBook)

Alexis de Tocqueville

Harper, 1856 - France - 344 pages

Contents

• PREFACE Page 1: 13
• CHAPTER m: 24
• CHAPTER V: 35
• That we owe Administrative Centralization not to the Revolution: 50
• That what is now called the Guardianship of the State Tntdk: 61
• CHAPTER IV: 73
• CHAPTER V: 79
• How the Capital of France had acquired more Preponderance over: 95
• That Frenchmen had grown more like each other than any other: 101
• CHAPTER X: 124
• Of the kind of Liberty enjoyed under the old Regime and of its: 137
• How the Condition of the French Peasantry was worse in some re spects in the Eighteenth Century than it had been in the Thir: 151
• How toward the middle of the Eighteenth Century literary: 170
• CHAPTER XIV: 182
• CHAPTER XV: 192
• CHAPTER XVI: 206
• CHAPTER: 218
• Of certain Practices by means of which the Government completed: 228
• CHAPTER XIX: 234
• CHAPTER XX: 246
• APPEHDIX: 257
• NOTES 271344: 271

Popular passages

Page 35 - ... if diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the old common law of Europe meliorated and adapted to its present state — by following wise examples you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world.‎

Page 25 - ... order and government, that it became intelligible to all, and susceptible of simultaneous imitation in a hundred different places. By seeming to tend rather to the regeneration of the human race than to the reform of France alone, it roused passions such as the most violent political revolutions had been incapable of awakening. It inspired proselytism, and gave birth to propagandism; and hence assumed that quasi religious character which so terrified those who saw it, or, rather, became a sort...‎

Page 248 - No nation but such a one as this could give birth to a revolution so sudden, so radical, so impetuous in its course, and yet so full of missteps, contradictory facts, and conflicting examples. The French could not have done it but for the reasons I have alleged ; but it must be admitted even these reasons would not suffice to explain such a revolution in any country but France.‎

Page 15 - Deprived of the old government, deprived in a manner of all government, France fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and...‎

Page 193 - ... being as fully exhibited in Morelly's Code de la Nature, as in any of the writings of Proudhon, or Louis Blanc. compelling those who were weak of body, or of mind, to expend their labor upon them, and giving in return such portion of the product as may seem required for preserving the slave...‎

Page 165 - French eighteenth-century enlightenment was related directly to the institutional anachronisms which fettered the major classes in France. Tocqueville remarked that all [the philosophic writers] concurred in one central point, from which their particular notions diverged. They all started with the principle that it was necessary to substitute simple and elementary rules, based on reason and natural law, for the complicated and traditional customs which regulated society in their time.3 Then, for...‎

Page 319 - It has been said that the character of the philosophy of the eighteenth century was a sort of adoration of human intellect, an unlimited confidence in its power to transform at will laws, institutions, customs. To be accurate, it must be said that the human intellect which some of these philosophers adored was simply their own. They showed, in fact, an uncommon want of faith in the wisdom of the masses. I could mention several who despised the public almost as heartily as they despised the Deity.‎

Page 15 - ... tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist...‎

Page 319 - Toward the latter they evinced the pride of rivals— the former they treated with the pride of parvenus. They were as far from real and respectful submission to the will of the majority as from submission to the will of God. Nearly all subsequent revolutionaries have borne the same character. Very different from this is the respect shown by Englishmen and Americans for the sentiments of the majority of their fellow citizens. Their intellect is proud and self-reliant, but never insolent; and it has...‎

Page 199 - What do they need in order to remain free ? A taste for freedom. Do not ask me to analyze that sublime taste; it can only be felt. It has a place in every great heart which God has prepared to receive it: it fills and inflames it. To try to explain it to those inferior minds who have never felt it is to waste time.‎

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Old Regime and the Revolution
• Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
• Translated by: John Bonner
• Publisher: Harper, 1856
• Length: 344 pages