Excerpt from The American Theory of Government Considered With Reference to the Present"But it is a novelty in the history of society, " says De Tocqueville, "to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself, when apprised by the Legislature that the wheels of Government had stopped, to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait two whole years until a remedy was discovered, which it voluntarily adopted without having wrung a tear or a drop of blood from mankind."These generous remarks were made by the learned and profound Frenchman, in reference to the noble forbearance exhibited by the American people in the peaceful formation of their Constitution. But we are now exhibiting to the world a spectacle of another kind: not, indeed, a novelty, but only one of those crises not very uncommon in the history of nations. We are in the midst of a mighty revolution, and are now passing through one of the ordinary, though painful stages in the progress of a people from youth to mature age. And it would seem that this bloody revolution must and will run its due course.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.