A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office
Not Tocqueville’s words — a paraphrase by J. I. Clark HareAlexis de Tocqueville1805–1859 · French political thinker, author of Democracy in America
The thought is Tocqueville’s; the sentence is not. This wording comes from American Constitutional Law (1889) by the American jurist J. I. Clark Hare — with one silent edit. Hare wrote, in reported speech and without a citation, that “it was long since remarked by De Tocqueville” that a decline of public morals would probably be marked by the abuse of impeachment; the version in circulation changes that “would” to “will” and drops the reporting clause. Tocqueville’s own line, in Henry Reeve’s translation of Democracy in America, reads: “When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments.”
“A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office” Not Tocqueville's words — J. I. Clark Hare, American Constitutional Law, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1889), p. 211, paraphrasing Tocqueville in indirect discourse and citing nothing. Tocqueville's own sentence, in Henry Reeve's translation of Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. 7: "When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments." Verbatim: “It was long since remarked by De Tocqueville that a decline of public morals in the United States would probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.”
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Provenance
Where the sentence actually comes from
Work
American Constitutional Law, Volume I
Author
J. I. Clark Hare (1816–1905)
Published
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1889 · p. 211
Paraphrasing
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. VII, trans. Henry Reeve
It was long since remarked by De Tocqueville that a decline of public morals in the United States would probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office; and the conviction of Andrew Johnson might have been the first step in the downward path, if a few steadfast men in the Senate had not held the duty of administering justice above popular clamor and the dictation which the members of a political party find it so difficult to withstand.
1889 · p. 211
Hare’s sentence is indirect discourse — a summary of Tocqueville, not a quotation of him — and it carries no footnote or citation. The popular version silently changes his “would probably be marked” to “will probably be marked,” strips the reporting clause, and sets the result in quotation marks as Tocqueville’s own.
Tocqueville’s chapter on political jurisdiction ends: “When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments.” — Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. VII, trans. Henry Reeve ↗. Searching both volumes of Reeve’s translation turns up no occurrence of “public morals” at all.
The familiar wording surfaces in 1889 in J. I. Clark Hare’s American Constitutional Law, vol. I, p. 211 ↗ — as reported speech, not quotation: “It was long since remarked by De Tocqueville that a decline of public morals in the United States would probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment…” Hare gives no source for it.
The Reeve edition on Project Gutenberg carries a translator’s note dated 1874 calling the impeachment of Andrew Johnson — “resorted to by his political opponents solely as a means of turning him out of office” — “a striking confirmation of the truth of this remark” ↗. Fifteen years later, Hare’s paraphrase turns to the same example in the same breath.
✓Public domain
Both texts are long out of copyright in the United States. Hare’s American Constitutional Law was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1889, and Henry Reeve’s English translation of Democracy in America dates from the 1830s — the Project Gutenberg edition reproduces the London: Saunders and Otley, 1835 title page and adds editorial notes dated 1874. No modern translation or modern rendering is involved.
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Fact-check
How Hare’s summary became Tocqueville’s quotation
The sentence travels in quotation marks with Tocqueville’s name attached — but the man who wrote it never claimed to be quoting, and the man being quoted never wrote it.
The sentence as writtenJ. I. Clark Hare, 1889 Actual author
Hare’s American Constitutional Law, vol. I, p. 211 ↗ reads: “It was long since remarked by De Tocqueville that a decline of public morals in the United States would probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.” The words are Hare’s own summary, and he attaches no source note to them.
~
The tense and the frameWhoever first re-quoted Hare Silent edit
Hare wrote “would probably be marked” inside reported speech introduced by “it was long since remarked by De Tocqueville.” The circulating version reads “will probably be marked” and drops the reporting frame entirely, turning a nineteenth-century jurist’s gloss into a direct prophecy in Tocqueville’s mouth.
Tocqueville’s chapter on political jurisdiction is an argument about mildness. In Europe, he wrote, a political tribunal could take a man’s life, and so it flinched; in America the whole penalty was removal from office, and nobody flinches from that. Because the sentence is easy to pronounce, he thought American political jurisdiction might be “the most formidable weapon which has ever been placed in the rude grasp of a popular majority.” The chapter’s closing line is a test, not a prophecy: watch whether the number of political impeachments rises, and you will know whether the republics are degenerating.
Hare, writing in 1889 with the Andrew Johnson trial behind him, compressed that test into something punchier — a decline of public morals, marked by impeachment used to crush political adversaries. It is a fair reading of Tocqueville. It is also Hare’s prose, offered as a summary rather than a quotation, and the compression is what survived. Somewhere between 1889 and the internet, the reporting frame fell away and the quotation marks went on.
Hare was summarizing. The quotation marks were added later.
The Andrew Johnson connection
The Reeve edition of Democracy in America circulating in the later nineteenth century already pointed at Johnson. A translator’s note dated 1874, appended to this very passage, calls the impeachment — “resorted to by his political opponents solely as a means of turning him out of office” — “a striking confirmation of the truth of this remark,” noting that Johnson was acquitted and reinstated.
Fifteen years later Hare reached for the same example, writing that “the conviction of Andrew Johnson might have been the first step in the downward path” had a few senators not held justice above party clamor. The phrase that made Hare’s sentence memorable — impeachment as a means of “crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office” — sits much closer to that 1874 gloss on Johnson than to anything Tocqueville wrote in 1835.
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1805–1859 · French political thinker, author of Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville sailed for the United States in 1831 on a commission to study American prisons and came home with something far larger: De la démocratie en Amérique, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840. His method was to watch American institutions closely enough to see where they would bend under pressure — which is why he is quoted, and misquoted, in every American constitutional crisis. His chapter on political jurisdiction is one of those pressure tests: he thought American impeachment was mild, and that its mildness was exactly what made it dangerous.
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Source
J. I. Clark Hare, American Constitutional Law, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1889), 211 — paraphrasing Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. 7, trans. Henry Reeve (London: Saunders and Otley, 1835).
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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-decline-of-public-morals-in-the-united-states-will/