“I hold it to be impious and detestable maxim, that, politically speaking, the people have a right to do anything; and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the majority. Am I, then, in contradiction with myself? Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and writer. Alexis began his research for Democracy in America after being sent to the United States from France to learn about the new countries prison system. He arrived in the United States in 1831, it was