HKB
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Often appears with: unchecked magistrates · rights and liberties · public officers as passive agents · custom and the manners of a people · crime and punishment · arbitrary power
Usually: argument (1) · censure (1)
“The authority of a king is purely physical, and it controls the actions of the subject without subduing his private will; but the majority possesses a power which is physical and moral at the same time; it acts upon the will as well as upon the actions of men, and it represses not only all contest, but all controversy.” Alexis de Tocqueville, American Institutions and Their Influence · insight
Tocqueville distinguishes tyranny from arbitrary power and argues that the majority’s control over both lawmaking and execution enables magistrates to act with arbitrary authority, treating public officers as servants whose duties are undefined.
be exercised for the good of the community at large, in which case it is not tyrannical. Tyranny usually employs arbitrary means, but, if necessary, it can rule without them. In the United States the unbounded power of the majority, which is favorable to the legal despotism of the legislature, is likewise favorable to the arbitrary authority of the magistrates. The majority has an entire control over the law when it…