It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.

In the case of Algeria the Port of Algiers and the control over the Strait of Gibraltar were considered by Tocqueville to be particular valuable. Even though in his 1841 report on Algeria Tocqueville admitted that Bugeaud succeeded in implementing a technique of war that enabled him to defeat Abd al-Qadir's resistance and applauded him on one hand he opposed on the other hand the conquest of Kabylie in his first Letter about Algeria (1837). A career in politics is closed to him for he has offended the only power that holds the keys.

He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution Volume I. Democracy in America (1835) his major work publiAlexis de Tocquevilled after his travels in the United States is today considered an early work of sociology and political science. Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (French: [alɛksi(s) ʃaʁl ɑ̃ʁi kleʁɛl də tɔkvil]; 29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856).