The Power of Prudence

Tocqueville's Vision of Townships, Pt. II

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Linlithgow, from the railway station, with the Town Hall, St. Michael's Church, and Palace, 1843-1847

Good morning, readers!

This is part of a series considering Tocqueville’s vision of the “township” in Democracy in America. To read Part I in this series, click here.

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At the very beginning of Volume 1, in Chapter Two, Tocqueville suggests that England’s thirteen colonies inherited ideas of “township government” and “free [local] institutions” from longstanding “English habit,” which spread from Great Britain to North America. In England, ancient traditions of monarchy and aristocracy would seem, to us, to hamper free institutions or ideas of home rule. The fact that they were such steady and vital habits in Great Britain only serves to affirm Tocqueville’s suggestion that mores grow in and through the lives of localities—not exclusively through national custom and tradition.