A recent book by Larry Siedentop has drawn attention to the sources of the idea of mœurs in Tocqueville's De la démocratie en Amérique. According to Siedentop, Tocqueville found in the French debate of the 1820s a clear view of the historical and political primacy of society over government, and made this perspective the groundwork of his own reflection. Hence Tocqueville's concern with the ‘quality of the citizenry’, a theme where he ‘reached the highest ground of modern political theory’. By pointing to participation and its moralizing effects he resurrected the ideal of civic spirit, but in a liberal form rather than in classic terms. Siedentop also argues that Tocqueville differentiated himself from Terror-shocked Restoration liberals, who distrusted and feared participation as a means of creating public morality. In endorsing the contextualization of Tocqueville operated by Siedentop, this chapter will investigate the various usages of the notion of mœurs in the political thought of Restoration France, the ultimate goal being a better understanding of Tocqueville's stance in De la démocratie en Amérique (specifically considered in section 5).

It can safely be argued as an introductory point that mœurs were pivotal in French political discourse between 1815 and 1830. Two reasons can be given for this. The first is the centrality of the relationship between mores and institutions to most period accounts of the Revolution.