This last change, which took place very gradually, dates its commencement from my reading, or rather study, of M. de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” which fell into my hands immediately after its first appearance. In that remarkable work, the excellences of Democracy were pointed out in a more conclusive, because a more specific manner than I had ever known them to be, even by the most enthusiastic democrats; while the specific dangers which beset Democracy, considered as the government of the numerical majority, were brought into equally strong light, and subjected to a masterly analysis, not as reasons for resisting what the author considered as an inevitable result of human progress, but as indications of the weak points of popular government, the defences by which it needs to be guarded, and the correctives which must be added to it in order that while full play is given to its beneficial tendencies, those which are of a different nature may be neutralized or mitigated. I was now well prepared for speculations of this character, and from this time onward my own thoughts moved more and more in the same channel, though the consequent modifications in my practical political creed were spread over many years, as would be shown by comparing my first review of “Democracy in America,” written and published in 1835, with the one in 1840 (reprinted in the “Dissertations”), and this last, with the “Considerations on Representative Government.”
Note from KBJ: Mill wrote two reviews of Democracy in America because it was published in two parts. Part one was published in 1835, when Mill was 29. Part two was published in 1840, when Mill was 34.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 