...almost all the tastes and habits which the equality of condition produces naturally lead men to commercial and industrial occupations.The last I love, for de T ends the sentence with the brilliant and highly enlightening remark,Circumscribed within the narrow space which politics leave them, rich men in democracies eagerly embark in commercial enterprise; there they can extend and employ their natural advantages; and indeed, it is even by the boldness and the magnitude of their industrial speculations that we may measure the slight esteem in which productive industry would have been held by them, if they had been born amidst an aristocracy.
A similar observation is likewise applicable to all men living in democracies, whether they be poor or rich. Those who live in the midst of democratic fluctuations have always before their eyes the image of chance; and they end by liking all undertakings in which chance plays a part. They are therefore all led to engage in commerce, not only for the sake of the profit it holds out to them, but for the love of the constant excitement occasioned by that pursuit.In no country in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the United States. It is not uncommon for the same man, in the course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the grades which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support these vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy; it would seem that their desires contract as easily as they expand with their fortunes.
The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do..."
... this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness, and soon renders the survey of them exceedingly wearisome.Lol! And so true.
[a nation whose motto is "ordem e progresso" is not off to a good start...]