DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA [Four volumes] [Sir Robert Peel's copies]

London: Saunders and Otley, 1836/1840. Second Edition, First Edition. Hardcover. Octavos, 4 volumes. In Very Good condition. Bound in quarter brown leather with marbled paper boards, newly rebacked with paneled spines and red and black labels with gilt lettering. Edges of text blocks marbled, marbled endpapers. Some rubbing to boards and bumping to corners. All four volumes with Drayton Manor armorial bookplates of Sir Robert Peel to the front pastedowns. Small stain to lower fore corner of volume one page 317-end. Volume two with a small closed tear to upper edge of pages 9-12. A few instances of later pencil markings. Volume one with half-title. With hand-colored fold-out map. Map with offsetting from both verso of half-title and title page, one closed tear along crease. Shelved in Case 1. Howes T278 and T279; Sabin 96062 and 96063.




The second edition in English of the first part and the first edition in English of the second part.




Translation of de Tocqueville's 'De la d'émocratie en Amérique.'




Sir Robert Peel, Bt. (1788-1850) was a British Conservative stateman, who served twice as Prime Minister and twice as Home Secretary, as well as founding the Metropolitan Police Service. He notably issued the Tamworth Manifesto and voted against his party to repeal the Corn Laws.




A reference to the work by Robert Peel can be found in his acceptance speech as Rector of Glasgow University in 1837:


"Let me earnestly advise your perusal of the work, if you have not yet read it, of a very able and intelligent Frenchman, who has made the institutions of the United States the peculiar object of his observation and study. He is an advocate of popular principles in a most extensive sense - his feelings are altogether with the present dynasty of France, as compared with the former. His testimony, as well from actual personal experience, as on account of freedom from prejudice, is above exception. M. Tocqueville is the name of the Frenchman to whom I allude; and this is the account which he gives of the results produced by republican institutions in the United States, in respect to that which one would have thought was the especial good they would realise ; namely, independence of thought, and liberty of speech and action. He says - " I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind, and freedom of discussion, as in America. In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion. Within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond them." (Loud cheers.) " In democratic states, organised on the principles of the American republics, the authority of the majority is so absolute, so irresistible, that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and almost abjure his quality as a human being, if he intends to stray from the track which it lays down." There is freedom for you, if you are inclined to have a will of your own! "If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism." (Long-continued cheering.) M. Tocqueville then quotes the expression of opinion by Jefferson, whom he declares to be the most powerful advocate of democratic principles the United States ever produced. "The executive power," said Jefferson, "is not the only, perhaps not the most prominent, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is the danger most to be feared.". 1377830. Shelved Dupont Bookstore.