JOURNEYS TO ENGLAND AND IRELAND
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Journeys to England and Ireland
Translated by
G EORGE L AWRENCE AND K. P. M AYER
edited by
]. P. M AYER
Originally published in 1979 by Arno Press
Published 1988 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 87-30234
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859.
Journeys to England and Ireland.
Translation from French.
Originally published: New York: Arno Press, 1979.
1. Great BritainDescription and travel1801-1900.
2. Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. I. Title.
DA 625.T63 1987 914.10475 87-30234
ISBN 0-88738-716-0
ISBN 13: 978-0-88738-716-6 (pbk)
I N MEMORIAM
Madame la Comtesse Christian de Tocqueville
1875-1954)
Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
These pages are perhaps the most penetrating writings on the spirit of British politics. In effect, as indicated by John Stuart Mill, Tocqueville was the Montesquieu of the nineteenth century, above all if one thinks of the present Irish situation.
His political observations reach out into the future, now our present.
J.P.Mayer
31 May 1987
The Grey House
Stoke Poges
Buckinghamshire
England
FOREWORD TO THE ARNO PRESS EDITION
Once again this book has found another publisher. The Anchor edition has been out of print for several years and by friendly agreement between Doubleday and the Arno Press the book is now again available for the student and the general reader.
I have corrected a few minor misprints and added as Appendix 7 two letters by Tocqueville which appear here for the first time in English. They put Tocquevilles masterly analysis of English life and institutions into the wider framework of his political sociology.
I am grateful to the Arno Press for making this book accessible again. Tocquevilles observations on English and particularly Irish problems, have lost nothing of their validity for today - on the contrary.
With regard to note 1 on p. 21, the note should now read : See now Alexis de Tocqueville, uvres Compltes, ed. J.P. Mayer, Volume VIII, 1, pp. 47f f, where the complete letter by Tocqueville to Beaumont has now been published.
With regard to p. 92, there should now be a note on Sutton Sharpe [sic]: Sutton Sharpe (1797-1843) was a member of the British Radical circle, a friend of George Grote, the historian of Greece. Cf. S. Drescher, Tocqueville and England, Cambridge, Mass., 1964. Dreschers book is quite informative, but his Own translations from Tocquevilles French are rather loose. He draws our attention, among other discoveries, to Cottus Administration de la Justice criminelle en Angleterre (1822), assuming that no other scholar will have read our edition of Tocquevilles Journey to America , where on pp. 317f. the reference to Cottu has been given.
University of Reading
Tocqueville Research Centre J.P.Mayer
December 1976
FOREWORD TO THE ANCHOR EDITION
The present book was published by the Yale University Press in 1958 and by Fabers in London in the same year. By friendly agreement with both firms it is now reprinted in this series. I have taken the opportunity to add as Appendix 6 an important text by Tocqueville on certain aspects of British local government which was omitted from the previous edition. My colleague Andr Jardin, while preparing the Tocqueville-Beaumont correspondence for the uvres Completes , found these pages among some Tocqueville letters at the University Library at Yale. They belong to the Tocqueville Archives.
This section of the text has been previously published in French; cf. Contrat Social , Vol. VII, 6, Paris, November 1963.
The Grey House, Stoke Poges J.P. Mayer
May 1964
Alexis de Tocquevilles notebooks on England and Ireland appear in this volume for the first time in English. The text is based on Volume V, 2 of Tocquevilles uvres Compltes which I am directing. My colleague M. Andr Jardin has collaborated with me in establishing the French text from the manuscript.
I have added to Tocquevilles notebooks a long extract from an unpublished letter to his friend Gustave de Beaumont which shows his remarkable understanding of English social and constitutional history five years before his visit to England. The document on Bribery at Elections is reprinted from a House of Commons Report by kind permission of the Speaker of the House. I thank the Editor of The Times for allowing me to reproduce an article of mine published in his paper in 1955 in commemoration of Tocquevilles 150th anniversary. As this article uses material from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, it is my duty to thank Her Majesty the Queen for her gracious permission to republish these pages in the context of this book.
Finally, I wish to thank the Comte Jean de Tocqueville, who has permitted me to dedicate this volume to the memory of his mother to whose kind generosity and deep understanding I owe so much.
Editors notes have been added to Tocquevilles text.
With the publication of this book I have perhaps fulfilled what I set out to do in 1938 when I began working on Tocqueville: to define through him the principles underlying British politics, which he analysed against the background of the American and the French political mind.
J.P. M AYER
Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire
16th December 1957
So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English, that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
Tocqueville to Nassau Senior
(21th July 1851)
Tocqueville left New York for Havre on the 20th February 1832. He had stayed in America for nine months. Back in France, he and his friend Gustave de Beaumont, who had travelled with him through the United States, wrote their joint work on the Penitentiary System in the United States which had been the pretext of their journey. This task completed, Tocqueville began to write his Democracy in America. But before putting the finishing touches to this work, he decided to visit England.
He had private reasons, too, for visiting the United Kingdom. He had become attached to Mary Mottley, an English middle-class girl, whom he had met at Versailles in 1828 where he had been a judge, and, no doubt, felt in 1833 that it would be well to make the acquaintance of her family in England. He married Mary Mottley in 1836. But that private reason apart, while working on the
