“Public Treasury” quote is bogus

The other day one of my conservative friends, grousing about the presidential election, repeated a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville about democracy:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

The problem is that de Tocqueville never said it. Others have also attributed it to Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish lawyer and writer, but Tytler never said it, either.

The statement has been traced only as far back as December 9, 1951. According to the excellent research by Loren Collins, it was seen in the Daily Oklahoman, quoted by a nobody named Elmer T. Peterson:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”

Like the Einstein Bees quote, the Jefferson Inflation quote and many others, this seems to be another case of someone attributing a quote to a famous person in order to give it added weight.

Some people think that if something gets repeated often enough it becomes true.