Even though Tocqueville never considered himself a political economist, he was very interested in the development of this field throughout his life (Drescher 1968; Lamberti 1983; Drolet 2003a, Swedberg 2005). He studied the works of Adolphe Quetelet, André-Michel Guerry, Thomas Robert Malthus, James McCulloch, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Alban Villeneuve-Bargemont, John Stuart Mill, and Nassau William Senior and used the knowledge gained from reading to write about the prison system in the United States (The penitentiary system in the United States and its application in France, 1833), democracy in America (On Democracy in America, 1835/40), pauperism in France and England (Memoirs on Pauperism, 1835/37), the colonization of Algeria (First letter on Algeria, 1837, Second letter on Algeria, 1837, Work on Algeria, 1841 and Report on Algeria, 1847) and the economic and financial policy in the Ancien Regime (The Old Regime and the Revolution, 1856). Especially Say, Malthus, and Villeneuve-Bargemont were important to him, as Michael Drolet has traced: Say and Malthus, because they showed that economic policy must be a necessary part of government work, and Villeneuve-Bargemont, because he emphasized the need to reconcile individual freedom with social justice. In the current reception of the political economy of the 19th century, however, Karl Marx is at the center of the debates. Even though there was no direct exchange between Tocqueville and Marx, the comparison of the two thinkers is worthwhile because it illustrates Tocqueville’s approach and the political thrust of his work.