In a letter to his friend Eugène Stoffels dated October 5, 1836, Tocqueville once stated that he did not believe there was a less revolutionary person in France than himself (OT V, 436). Behind this is, on the one hand, the traumatic memory of the French Revolution (OT VI, 384), conveyed within his family circle, when Tocqueville’s imprisoned parents escaped the guillotine only through the 9th Thermidor and the fall of Robespierre (see Chap. 1 ) – in contrast to several relatives like his great-grandfather and great role model Malesherbes, who lost their lives during the Terreur of the Jacobins. The problems of modern France, reconciling itself with democracy and a new social order, were, for Tocqueville, largely due to the wounds inflicted on society at that time, which still internally divided it during the phases of the Restoration and the July Monarchy. On the other hand, the question that caused revolutionary unrest in France at that time and still in 1848, namely whether the country was constitutionally and legally constituted as a hereditary monarchy or a republic (see Chap. 95), was of far too secondary importance for Tocqueville and his focus on the social and moral side of democracy to have justified the risks of a political overthrow. Tocqueville saw the danger of revolutions primarily because they often served as an alibi for the expansion of state power, which he generally feared. The proclamation of the freedom of the people, which is common in revolutions, was therefore rarely followed by a moral constitution and institutional safeguarding of that very freedom. At the end of the difficult transition from aristocracy to democracy in Europe, “these agitations, which make all thrones totter,” it is, therefore, to be expected that “sovereigns will find themselves stronger than they were” (DA II, 1244).