Note 654 — BOOK IV[649]

Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was appointed an assistant judge, and in 1831 was sent to America, in company with Gustave de Beaumont, to study the penal system on that continent. On his return he published a treatise on this subject, and in 1835 appeared his great work on American Democracy, which secured his election to the Academy of Moral Science in 1839 and to the French Academy in 1841. Two years earlier he had been sent to the Chamber as deputy for the Arrondissement of Valognes, in Normandy, in which his father's property of Tocqueville was situated, and this seat he retained until his withdrawal from political life in 1851. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Presidency of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte from June to October 1849.—T.