At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.

What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.

The electors see their representative not only as a legislator for the state but also as the natural protector of local interests in the legislature; indeed, they almost seem to think that he has a power of attorney to represent each constituent, and they trust him to be as eager in their private interests as in those of the country.

Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.

But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.