The power that makes us weak

QUESTION I’m trying to locate an 18th or 19th century quote about ‘soft despotism’ that perfectly sums up the current political situation. The author had a French name.

French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was born into an aristocratic family which had been rocked by revolutionary upheaval.

In 1831, he travelled to the U.S. and returned with a wealth of observations which he codified in his book Democracy In America (1835).

The work remains a valuable explanation of America to europeans and to Americans themselves. Of soft despotism, de Tocqueville writes: ‘It covers society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd.

‘Men are seldom forced to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.

‘ Such a power compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.’

Soft despotism gives people the illusion that they are in control when, in fact, they have little influence. ‘Burt’ Reynolds, Truro, Cornwall.

QUESTION I recently drank a bottle of Ernie Els’s Big Easy Shiraz. Which other celebrities make wine?

FURTHER to earlier answers, Sting and his wife Trudie Styler have a vineyard just 45 minutes south of Florence. They make organic and ‘biodynamic’ wines, honey and olive oil.

Their estate has 12 acres of vegetable gardens, olive groves and about 80 bee colonies.

Some wines are named after Sting’s songs, including Message In A Bottle Bianco, When We Dance and Sister Moon.

Jim Bulley, Bristol.