Editing Alexis de Tocqueville (section)

== Death ==
A longtime sufferer from bouts of [[tuberculosis]], Tocqueville eventually succumbed to the disease on 16 April 1859 and was buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in [[Normandy]].{{citation needed|date=July 2020}} He was survived by his English wife of 23 years, Mary Mottley. Although she was "too liberal ... too Protestant, too middle-class, and too English" for some in his family, de Tocqueville described Mottley as perhaps his only true friend.<ref name=":5" /> While they had hoped for a family, they had no children.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=Mary Mottley A Remembrance Madame Marie de Tocqueville |url=http://www.stmarysalv.free-online.co.uk/marymottley.htm |access-date=2024-12-31 |website=www.stmarysalv.free-online.co.uk}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Sueur |first=Sheila Le |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u64gjgEACAAJ |title=Open Every Door: Mary Mottley - Mme. Marie de Tocqueville |date=2015 |publisher=Dandelion Books |isbn=978-0-9967089-0-6 |language=en}}</ref>

In advance of their marriage, Mottley converted to [[Roman Catholicism]],<ref name=":4" /> Tocqueville's professed religion,<ref>Tocqueville, Alexis de. ''Democracy in America'', Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000, pp. 282–283.</ref> before their marriage.<ref name=":4" /> While she appeared to be comparatively devout, Tocqueville's own attitude toward religion has been described as "utilitarian", regarding it as a "social cement, a safety valve for passions that might otherwise feed a revolutionary torrent dangerous to individual liberty".<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Berlin |first=Isiah |date=1965 |title=The Thought of de Tocqueville: Review of Jack Lively, The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford, 1962: Clarendon Press) |url=https://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/singles/bib101a.pdf |journal=History |issue=50 |pages=(198–206), 205}}</ref> Provided it was separated from state power, Tocqueville did not believe that his church was bound to be anti-democratic.<ref name=":6" />