necessary evil. He measured from the first the risk to which the
principles to the maintenance of which he was devoted were exposed, the
peril which, threatened liberty itself. Believing that the Republic now
afforded the only and perhaps the last chance of liberty in France, and
that its downfall would result in throwing power into the hands of an
individual ruler, he determined to give all his support to the new
government, and to endeavor to work out the good of his country by means
which gave little encouragement or hope of success. He took part in the
Constituent Assembly, was one of the committee to form the Constitution,
and in the autumn of 1848 represented France as plenipotentiary at the
Conference held at Brussels, which had for its object the mediation of
France and England between Austria and Sardinia. The next year, having
just been elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, he was invited
by the President of the Republic to take the portfolio of Foreign
Affairs in the ministry of M. Barrot. He did not hold office long.
The ministry was too honest and too firm to suit the designs of the
President, and on the 31st of October Louis Napoleon announced, in a
message which took the Assembly by surprise, that it had been dismissed,
and a new set of ministers appointed. The President endeavored to retain
Tocqueville, and to win him over to his party; but Tocqueville already
presaged the fall of the Republic, and witnessed with anxiety and
discouragement the approach of the Empire. He remained a member of the
Assembly to the last. He was one of the deputies arrested on the 2d of
December, 1851, and was confined for a time at Vincennes. "Here ended
his political life. It ended with liberty in France."

The remaining years of Tocqueville's life were spent in a retirement
which might have been happy, had he not felt too deeply for happiness
the despotism which weighed upon France. He engaged in the studies that
resulted in his masterly work on "The Old Régime and the Revolution";