《论美国的民主·卷二·四部·第七章·承前续论》第6节
Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them ta despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious--the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse. But it happens that at the same period and amongst the same nations in which men conceive a natural contempt for the rights of private persons, the rights of society at large are naturally extended and consolidated: in other words, men become less attached to private rights at the very time at which it would be most necessary to retain and to defend what little remains of them. It is therefore most especially in the present democratic ages, that the true friends of the liberty and the greatness of man ought constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed--no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a government. The reason is plain:--if the private right of an individual is violated at a time when the human mind is fully impressed with the importance and the sanctity of such rights, the injury done is confined to the individual whose right is infringed; but to violate such a right, at the present day, is deeply to corrupt the manners of the nation and to put the whole community in jeopardy, because the very notion of this kind of right constantly tends amongst us to be impaired and lost.
注释摘要
这一段承接前面关于形式与革命的讨论，把焦点从外在程序转向了更根本的东西——民主社会里人们对私人权利的轻视倾向。托克维尔在这里的推理是逐层收紧的：他先提出一个普遍心理规律，即人对某项权利的依附和敬重，通常与它的重要性或是持有它的时间长度成正比。接着他立刻把这个规律扣到民主社会身上，说在这里私人权利恰恰同时具备了三个不利特征：微小、新近、极不稳定。三种特征叠加…