Editing Alexis de Tocqueville (section)

== Political career ==
[[File:Cloître sainte Constance (lycée Fabert de Metz).JPG|thumb|240px|left|The Fabert School in [[Metz]], where Tocqueville was a student between 1817 and 1823]]

Tocqueville, who despised the [[July Monarchy]] (1830–1848), began his political career in 1839. From 1839 to 1851, he served as member of the lower house of parliament for the [[Manche]] [[Departments of France|department]] ([[Valognes]]). He sat on the [[Centre-left politics|centre-left]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jardin|first1=Andre |title=Tocqueville: A Biography |date=1989|publisher=Macmillan|pages=386–387}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Liberty and democracy: It took a Frenchman |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2006/11/23/it-took-a-frenchman|newspaper=[[The Economist]]|date=23 November 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250324202353/https://www.economist.com/culture/2006/11/23/it-took-a-frenchman|archive-date=24 March 2025|url-access=subscription|url-status=live}}</ref> defended [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] views and upheld [[free trade]] while supporting the [[French rule in Algeria|colonisation of Algeria]] carried on by [[Louis-Philippe of France|Louis-Philippe]]'s regime. In 1842, he was elected as a member of the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1842&year-max=1842&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=12 April 2021|website=[[American Philosophical Society]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250123212442/https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1842&year-max=1842&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|archive-date=23 January 2025}}</ref>

In 1847, Tocqueville sought to found a Young Left (''Jeune Gauche'') party which would advocate wage increases, a [[progressive tax]],<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kahan|first1=Alan S.|title=Alexis de Tocqueville|date=2010|publisher=A&C Black |page=101}}</ref> and other labor concerns in order to undermine the appeal of the socialists.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Jaume|first1=Lucien|title=Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty|date=2013|publisher=Princeton University Press|page=84}}</ref>

=== In the Second Republic ===
After the fall of the July Monarchy in the [[French Revolution of 1848|Revolution of 1848]], Tocqueville was [[1848 French Constituent Assembly election|elected a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848]], where he became a member of the commission charged with the drafting of the new Constitution of the [[French Second Republic|Second Republic]] (1848–1851). He defended [[bicameralism]] and the election of the [[President of France|President of the Republic]] by [[universal suffrage]]. As the countryside was thought to be more conservative than the labouring population of Paris, he conceived of universal suffrage as a means to counteract the revolutionary spirit of Paris.

During the Second Republic, Tocqueville sided with the [[Party of Order]] against the socialists. A few days after the February 1848 insurrection, he anticipated that a violent clash between the Parisian workers' population led by socialists agitating in favour of a "Democratic and Social Republic" and the conservatives, which included the aristocracy and the rural population, would be inescapable. Indeed, these social tensions eventually exploded in the [[June Days Uprising]] of 1848.<ref name="Paris, 1999">"Regularization" is a term used by Tocqueville himself, see {{lang|fr|Souvenirs}}, Third part, pp. 289–290 French ed. (Paris, [[Éditions Gallimard|Gallimard]], 1999).</ref>

Led by [[Louis Eugène Cavaignac|General Cavaignac]], the suppression of the uprising was supported by Tocqueville, who advocated the "regularization" of the [[state of siege]] declared by Cavaignac and other measures promoting suspension of the constitutional order.<ref name="Paris, 1999" /> Between May and September, Tocqueville participated in the Constitutional Commission which wrote the new Constitution. His proposals, such as his amendment about the President and his reelection, reflected lessons he drew from his North American experience.<ref>Coutant Arnaud, ''Tocqueville et la constitution democratique'', Paris, Mare et Martin, 2008, 680 p. See also [http://www.arnaud-coutant.fr/ "Le blog de arnaud.coutant.over-blog.com"].</ref>[[File:Commission révision Constitution 1851.JPG|thumb|250px|Tocqueville at the 1851 "Commission de la révision de la Constitution à l'Assemblée nationale"]]
A supporter of Cavaignac and of the Party of Order, Tocqueville accepted an invitation to enter [[Odilon Barrot]]'s government as [[Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (France)|Minister of Foreign Affairs]] from 3 June to 31 October 1849. During the troubled days of June 1849, he pleaded with Interior Minister [[Jules Armand Dufaure]] for the reestablishment of the state of siege in the capital and approved the arrest of demonstrators. Tocqueville, who since February 1848 had supported laws restricting political freedoms, approved the two laws voted immediately after the June 1849 days which restricted the liberty of clubs and [[freedom of the press]].<ref name="Tocqueville 2006">{{cite book|last1=Epstein|first1=Joseph|author-link1=Joseph Epstein (writer)|date=2006|title=Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|isbn=0-06-059898-0|page=148}}</ref>

This active support in favour of laws restricting political freedoms stands in contrast of his defence of freedoms in ''Democracy in America''. According to Tocqueville, he favoured order as "the ''[[sine qua non]]'' for the conduct of serious politics. He [hoped] to bring the kind of stability to French political life that would permit the steady growth of liberty unimpeded by the regular rumblings of the earthquakes of revolutionary change″.<ref name="Tocqueville 2006" />

=== Opposition to Louis Napoleon ===
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against [[Napoleon III|Louis Napoléon Bonaparte]] for the presidential election of 1848. Opposed to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup which followed his election, Tocqueville was among the deputies who gathered at the [[10th arrondissement of Paris]] in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoleon III judged for "high treason" as he had violated the constitutional limit on terms of office. Detained at [[Vincennes]] and then released, Tocqueville, who supported the [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Restoration]] of the [[Bourbons]] against Napoleon III's [[Second French Empire|Second Empire]] (1851–1871), quit political life and retreated to his castle ({{lang|fr|[https://www.chateaudetocqueville.com/ Château de Tocqueville]}}).<ref name="ReferenceA">Epstein, ''Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide'' (2006), p. 160.</ref>

Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein concluded: "Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed—had given it, in all, thirteen years of his life ... . He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, archives, and his own desk."<ref name="ReferenceA" /> There, he began the draft of {{lang|fr|L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution}}, publishing the first tome in 1856 but leaving the second one unfinished.