Alexis de Tocqueville biography by Hugh Brogan

French lawyer/politician Alexis de Tocqueville spent 10 months in the USA in 1831-1832 (when he was 26), then wrote his famous book Democracy in America. I’m now enjoying a new (2006) biography of Tocqueville by Hugh Brogan; from page 271:

“… what he had seen in America had convinced him that the prudent and gradual introduction of democratic institutions, which in this way would become part of the habits and opinions of the people … was a real possibility, and he was to spend the rest of his life advocating it; but he could not pretend that he was offering anything more than a hope. And although he would exert his considerable powers of persuasion to convert his readers to that hope, he was well aware that ultimate success or failure lay predominantly with forces outside his control. The convictions, passions and interests that divided France were not going to yield immediately to sweet reason. Hence Tocqueville’s doctrine was for long more honoured in Britain and the United States, where it was not particularly needed (being a rationalization of their actual history and politics) than in France, where it was.
But he never quite gave up hope.”

Then Brogan quotes from Democracy in America:

“It is difficult to induce the people to take part in government; it is still more difficult to supply them with the experience and the beliefs which they lack, but need in order to govern well. The democratic will is volatile; its agents, vulgar; its laws, imperfect. I admit all this.”

I’m looking forward to reading about Tocqueville’s career as a democratic reformer, after publication of his book.