Wealth & Money Quote by Alexis de Tocqueville

Tocqueville isn’t taking a moral swing at wealth itself; he’s taking aim at permanence. The line is calibrated to puncture a comforting democratic myth: that inequality is automatically corrosive. For him, the real threat isn’t the existence of “great fortunes” but their ability to congeal into heredity, into institutions, into a self-reproducing caste that can outlast elections and absorb the state by sheer continuity.

The phrasing turns on a quiet but brutal distinction between “rich men” and “a class.” Individuals can be tolerated, even admired, in a democracy; a class is what democracy is structurally designed to prevent. “Remain in the same hands” is doing heavy work: it points to inheritance, property law, marriage networks, elite schooling, and all the soft machinery that makes privilege feel natural. Once wealth becomes stable across generations, it stops being an economic fact and becomes a political actor. It writes rules, sets tastes, defines what counts as “reasonable,” and narrows the range of imaginable reform.

Context matters: Tocqueville is reading early America as a society where landed aristocracy has been broken up, not by utopian equality but by mobility and fragmentation of property. He’s also shadowboxing with Europe, where fortunes were welded to titles and legal protections. The subtext is pragmatic, almost cold: democracies don’t need to eliminate inequality; they need to keep power from fossilizing. Wealth that circulates can be a pressure valve. Wealth that settles becomes a constitution you never voted for.