In the 1820s, even before the publication of the first volume of Tocqueville’s De la démocratie en Amérique, the political debate about the political model effect of the United States began in France (Appleby 1971; 1986). American society was seen by liberals as egalitarian because it did not know the class and status differences that had developed over centuries in Europe. This view was not least due to François Guizot, who described the equalization of social conditions as characteristic of the democratic process as a whole.