The expansion of empires in the nineteenth century accompanied the cross cultural spread of democratic ideals. This article identifies three existing approaches that seek to reconcile Alexis de Tocqueville’s democratic thought with his imperial advocacy, arguing that none has adequately resolved the moral dilemma inherent in his endorsement of empire. Through an analysis of administrative centralization, national honor, and the doctrine of interest rightly understood, this paper elaborates two moral imaginations of the French Empire articulated in Tocqueville’s political thought. The first is a thin moral imagination grounded in liberty. This article justifies local liberty as a legitimate normative standard and demonstrates Tocqueville’s consistent commitment to this principle across his writings on democracy and colonial affairs. The second constitutes a thick moral imagination grounded in interest. It ensures that Tocqueville’s critique of the moral imagination embodied in John Stuart Mill’s benevolent imperial doctrine does not amount to self-criticism. For Tocqueville, empire ought to be a project of self-sacrifice, in which national honor and virtue attain unity through self- sacrifice. By interpreting Tocqueville’s conception of national interest through the lens of national honor, together with the doctrine of interest rightly understood, this article argues that his endorsement of empire demanded France to sacrifice part of its own interests. Its morality lies not primarily in the benefits conferred upon colonies, such as local liberty, but in the self-sacrifice inherent in the empire’s own interests: the sacrifice of domestic material interests for the sake of domestic spiritual interests.