Reprint of the original, first published in 1861.

Excerpt from Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis De Tocqueville, Vol. 1 of 2 The original of this work, edited by M. Gustave de Beaumont, is already well known and widely circulated in France. I do not feel that any apology is needed for offering to the public a translation. M. de Tocqueville's letters are valuable as sources of information and instruction, and above all as a moral study. The depth and seriousness of his mind, combined with an almost feminine grace and delicacy, the elevation which pervaded his whole character, and which breathes in nearly every sentence that he wrote, will be peculiarly appreciated by an English reader. And yet I feel great diffidence in introducing M. de Tocqueville's thoughts, clothed in other words than his own. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.

Current discussions of liberalism in world affairs tend to take a shortsighted view of the historical antecedents of the school of thought. Most jump directly from Kant to Wilson with little pause in between. In this book, Clinton has selected three thinkers to exemplify developments in the liberal world, all of whom were figures of real consequence in their own time, yet altogether different in temperament and subsequent fashion. Clinton shows how their interests and concerns, both complementary and divergent, make sense of nineteenth-century liberalism without turning it into the rigid doctrine it has never been - and never can be. By using their published works, speeches, and other correspondences, Clinton explores the way they applied their general insights on politics and society to the particular conditions of the international life. In so doing he provides a comparative study of the variants on a distinctively 'liberal' approach to international relations of this period, which may hold lessons for our own time.

Comprehensive in its chronology, the works it discusses, and the commentators it critically examines, Alexis de Tocqueville and American Intellectuals tells the surprising story of Tocqueville's reception in American thought and culture from the time of his 1831 visit to the United States to the turn of the twenty-first century.