Right at the beginning of the first volume of De la démocratie en Amérique, Tocqueville describes municipal self-government as a privilege of the beginning (Tocqueville 2010, 1, 108–110). The principle of self-government was already present in American communities before the formation of the states and the Union (Tocqueville 2010, 1, 101): “If one takes a cursory look at American society in 1650 and compares it with the state of Europe, and especially of the continent, at the same time,” he writes, on the continent of Europe “monarchy triumphed on all sides over the ruins of the oligarchic and feudal liberty of the Middle Ages”. Never had men experienced less political life; never had minds been less preoccupied with the ideas of true liberty. And it was then that the same principles, unknown or despised by the nations of Europe, “were proclaimed in the wilderness of the New World, and became the future creed of a great people” (Tocqueville 2010, 1, 68).