American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville et al

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The partisans of centralisation in Europe maintain that the government
directs the affairs of each locality better than the citizens could do
it for themselves: this may be true when the central power is
enlightened, and when the local districts are ignorant; when it is as
alert as they are slow; when it is accustomed to act, and they to obey.
Indeed, it is evident that this double tendency must augment with the
increase of centralisation, and that the readiness of the one, and the
incapacity of the others, must become more and more prominent. But I
deny that such is the case when the people is as enlightened, as awake
to its interests, and as accustomed to reflect on them, as the Americans
are. I am persuaded, on the contrary, that in this case the collective
strength of the citizens will always conduce more efficaciously to the
public welfare than the authority of the government. It is difficult to
point out with certainty the means of arousing a sleeping population,
and of giving it passions and knowledge which it does not possess; it
is, I am well aware, an arduous task to persuade men to busy themselves
about their own affairs; and it would frequently be easier to interest
them in the punctilios of court etiquette than in the repairs of their
common dwelling. But whenever a central administration affects to
supersede the persons most interested, I am inclined to suppose that it
is either misled, or desirous to mislead. However enlightened and
however skilful a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all
the details of the existence of a great nation. Such vigilance exceeds
the powers of man. And when it attempts to create and set in motion so
many complicated springs, it must submit to a very imperfect result, or
consume itself in bootless efforts.

Centralisation succeeds more easily, indeed, in subjecting the external
actions of men to a certain uniformity, which at last commands our
regard, independently of the objects to which it is applied, like those
devotees who worship the statue and forget the deity it represents.
Centralisation imparts without difficulty an admirable regularity to the
routine of business; rules the details of the social police with
sagacity; represses the smallest disorder and the most petty
misdemeanors; maintains society in a _status quo_, alike secure from
improvement and decline; and perpetuates a drowsy precision in the
conduct of affairs, which is hailed by the heads of the administration
as a sign of perfect order and public tranquillity;[110] in short, it
excels more in prevention than in action. Its force deserts it when
society is to be disturbed or accelerated in its course; and if once the
co-operation of private citizens is necessary to the furtherance of its
measures, the secret of its impotence is disclosed. Even while it
invokes their assistance, it is on the condition that they shall act
exactly as much as the government chooses, and exactly in the manner it
appoints. They are to take charge of the details, without aspiring to
guide the system; they are to work in a dark and subordinate sphere, and
only to judge the acts in which they have themselves co-operated, by
their results. These, however, are not conditions on which the alliance
of the human will is to be obtained; its carriage must be free, and its
actions responsible, or (such is the constitution of man) the citizen
had rather remain a passive spectator than a dependent actor in schemes
with which he is unacquainted.

It is undeniable, that the want of those uniform regulations which
control the conduct of every inhabitant of France is not unfrequently
felt in the United States. Gross instances of social indifference and
neglect are to be met with; and from time to time disgraceful blemishes
are seen, in complete contrast with the surrounding civilisation. Useful
undertakings, which cannot succeed without perpetual attention and
rigorous exactitude, are very frequently abandoned in the end; for in
America, as well as in other countries, the people is subject to sudden
impulses and momentary exertions. The European who is accustomed to find
a functionary always at hand to interfere with all he undertakes, has
some difficulty in accustoming himself to the complex mechanism of the
administration of the townships. In general it may be affirmed that the
lesser details of the police, which render life easy and comfortable,
are neglected in America; but that the essential guarantees of man in
society are as strong there as elsewhere. In America the power which
conducts the government is far less regular, less enlightened, and less
learned, but a hundredfold more authoritative, than in Europe. In no
country in the world do the citizens make such exertions for the common
weal; and I am acquainted with no people which has established schools
as numerous and as efficacious, places of public worship better suited
to the wants of the inhabitants, or roads kept in better repair.
Uniformity or permanence of design, the minute arrangement of
details,[111] and the perfection of an ingenious administration, must
not be sought for in the United States; but it will be easy to find, on
the other hand, the symptoms of a power, which, if it is somewhat
barbarous, is at least robust; and of an existence, which is checkered
with accidents indeed, but cheered at the same time by animation and
effort.

Granting for an instant that the villages and counties of the United
States would be more usefully governed by a remote authority, which they
had never seen, than by functionaries taken from the midst of
them--admitting, for the sake of argument, that the country would be
more secure, and the resources of society better employed, if the whole
administration centred in a single arm, still the _political_ advantages
which the Americans derive from their system would induce me to prefer
it to the contrary plan. It profits me but little, after all, that a
vigilant authority protects the tranquillity of my pleasures, and
constantly averts all danger from my path, without my care or my
concern, if the same authority is the absolute mistress of my liberty
and of my life, and if it so monopolises all the energy of existence,
that when it languishes everything languishes around it, that when it
sleeps everything must sleep, that when it dies the state itself must
perish.

In certain countries of Europe the natives consider themselves as a kind
of settlers, indifferent to the fate of the spot upon which they live.
The greatest changes are effected without their concurrence and (unless
chance may have apprised them of the event) without their knowledge; nay
more, the citizen is unconcerned as to the condition of his village, the
police of his street, the repairs of the church or the parsonage; for he
looks upon all these things as unconnected with himself, and as the
property of a powerful stranger whom he calls the government. He has
only a life-interest in these possessions, and he entertains no notions
of ownership or of improvement. This want of interest in his own affairs
goes so far, that if his own safety or that of his children is
endangered, instead of trying to avert the peril, he will fold his arms,
and wait till the nation comes to his assistance. This same individual,
who has so completely sacrificed his own free will, has no natural
propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest
officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as
soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between
servitude and license are perpetual. When a nation has arrived at this
state, it must either change its customs and its laws, or perish: the
source of public virtue is dry; and though it may contain subjects, the
race of citizens is extinct. Such communities are a natural prey to
foreign conquest; and if they do not disappear from the scene of life,
it is because they are surrounded by other nations similar or inferior
to themselves; it is because the instinctive feeling of their country's
claims still exists in their hearts; and because an involuntary pride in
the name it bears, or the vague reminiscence of its by-gone fame,
suffices to give them the impulse of self-preservation.

Nor can the prodigious exertions made by certain people in the defence
of a country, in which they may almost be said to have lived as aliens,
be adduced in favor of such a system; for it will be found that in these
cases their main incitement was religion. The permanence, the glory, and
the prosperity of the nation, were become parts of their faith; and in
defending the country they inhabited, they defended that holy city of
which they were all citizens. The Turkish tribes have never taken an
active share in the conduct of the affairs of society, but they
accomplished stupendous enterprises as long as the victories of the
sultans were the triumphs of the Mohammedan faith. In the present age
they are in rapid decay, because their religion is departing, and
despotism only remains. Montesquieu, who attributed to absolute power an
authority peculiar to itself, did it, as I conceive, undeserved honor;
for despotism, taken by itself, can produce no durable results. On close
inspection we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the
cause of the long-lived prosperity of absolute governments. Whatever
exertions may be made, no true power can be founded among men which does
not depend upon the free union of their inclinations; and patriotism and
religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently
direct the whole of a body politic to one end.

Laws cannot succeed in rekindling the ardor of an extinguished faith;
but men may be interested in the fate of their country by the laws. By
this influence, the vague impulse of patriotism, which never abandons
the human heart, may be directed and revived: and if it be connected
with the thoughts, the passions and daily habits of life, it may be
consolidated into a durable and rational sentiment. Let it not be said
that the time for the experiment is already past; for the old age of
nations is not like the old age of men, and every fresh generation is a
new people ready for the care of the legislator.

It is not the _administrative_, but the _political_ effects of the local
system that I most admire in America. In the United States the interests
of the country are everywhere kept in view; they are an object of
solicitude to the people of the whole Union, and every citizen is as
warmly attached to them as if they were his own. He takes pride in the
glory of his nation; he boasts of his success, to which he conceives
himself to have contributed; and he rejoices in the general prosperity
by which he profits. The feeling he entertains toward the state is
analogous to that which unites him to his family, and it is by a kind of
egotism that he interests himself in the welfare of his country.

The European generally submits to a public officer because he represents
a superior force; but to an American he represents a right. In America
it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and
to law. If the opinion which the citizen entertains of himself is
exaggerated, it is at least salutary; he unhesitatingly confides in his
own powers, which appear to him to be all-sufficient. When a private
individual meditates an undertaking, however directly connected it may
be with the welfare of society, he never thinks of soliciting the
co-operation of the government: but he publishes his plan, offers to
execute it himself, courts the assistance of other individuals, and
struggles manfully against all obstacles. Undoubtedly he is less
successful than the state might have been in his position; but in the
end, the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the
government could effect.

As the administrative authority is within the reach of the citizens,
whom it in some degree represents, it excites neither their jealousy nor
their hatred: as its resources are limited, every one feels that he must
not rely solely on its assistance. Thus when the administration thinks
fit to interfere, it is not abandoned to itself as in Europe; the duties
of the private citizens are not supposed to have lapsed because the
state assists in their fulfilment; but every one is ready, on the
contrary, to guide and to support it. This action of individual
exertions, joined to that of the public authorities, frequently performs
what the most energetic central administration would be unable to
execute. It would be easy to adduce several facts in proof of what I
advance, but I had rather give only one, with which I am more thoroughly
acquainted.[112] In America, the means which the authorities have at
their disposal for the discovery of crimes and the arrest of criminals
are few. A state police does not exist, and passports are unknown. The
criminal police of the United States cannot be compared with that of
France; the magistrates and public prosecutors are not numerous, and the
examinations of prisoners are rapid and oral. Nevertheless in no country
does crime more rarely elude punishment. The reason is that every one
conceives himself to be interested in furnishing evidence of the act
committed, and in stopping the delinquent. During my stay in the United
States, I saw the spontaneous formation of committees for the pursuit
and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime in a certain
county. In Europe a criminal is an unhappy being, who is struggling for
his life against the ministers of justice, while the population is
merely a spectator of the conflict: in America he is looked upon as an
enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.

I believe that provincial institutions are useful to all nations, but
nowhere do they appear to me to be more indispensable than among a
democratic people. In an aristocracy, order can always be maintained in
the midst of liberty; and as the rulers have a great deal to lose, order
is to them a first-rate consideration. In like manner an aristocracy
protects the people from the excesses of despotism, because it always
possesses an organized power ready to resist a despot. But a democracy
without provincial institutions has no security against these evils. How
can a populace, unaccustomed to freedom in small concerns, learn to use
it temperately in great affairs? What resistance can be offered to
tyranny in a country where every private individual is impotent, and
where the citizens are united by no common tie? Those who dread the
license of the mob, and those who fear the rule of absolute power, ought
alike to desire the progressive growth of provincial liberties.

On the other hand, I am convinced that democratic nations are most
exposed to fall beneath the yoke of a central administration, for
several reasons, among which is the following:--

The constant tendency of these nations is to concentrate all the
strength of the government in the hands of the only power which directly
represents the people: because, beyond the people nothing is to be
perceived but a mass of equal individuals confounded together. But when
the same power is already in possession of all the attributes of the
government, it can scarcely refrain from penetrating into the details of
the administration; and an opportunity of doing so is sure to present
itself in the end, as was the case in France. In the French revolution
there were two impulses in opposite directions, which must never be
confounded; the one was favorable to liberty, the other to despotism.
Under the ancient monarchy the king was the sole author of the laws; and
below the power of the sovereign, certain vestiges of provincial
institutions half-destroyed, were still distinguishable. These
provincial institutions were incoherent, ill-compacted, and frequently
absurd; in the hands of the aristocracy they had sometimes been
converted into instruments of oppression. The revolution declared itself
the enemy of royalty and of provincial institutions at the same time; it
confounded all that had preceded it--despotic power and the checks to
its abuses--in an indiscriminate hatred; and its tendency was at once to
republicanism and to centralisation. This double character of the French
revolution is a fact which has been adroitly handled by the friends of
absolute power. Can they be accused of laboring in the cause of
despotism, when they are defending of the revolution?[113] In this
manner popularity may be conciliated with hostility to the rights of the
people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed admirer of
freedom.

I have visited the two nations in which the system of provincial liberty
has been most perfectly established, and I have listened to the opinions
of different parties in those countries. In America I met with men who
secretly aspired to destroy the democratic institutions of the Union; in
England, I found others who attacked aristocracy openly; but I know of
no one who does not regard provincial independence as a great benefit.
In both countries I have heard a thousand different causes assigned for
the evils of the state; but the local system was never mentioned among
them. I have heard citizens attribute the power and prosperity of their
country to a multitude of reasons: but they _all_ placed the advantages
of local institutions in the foremost rank.

Am I to suppose that when men who are naturally so divided on religious
opinions, and on political theories, agree on one point (and that, one
of which they have daily experience), they are all in error? The only
nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which
have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the
institution are the only persons who pass a censure upon it.

* * * * *

Notes:

[63] It is by this periphrasis that I attempt to render the French
expressions "_Commune_" and "_Système Communal_." I am not aware that
any English word precisely corresponds to the general term of the
original. In France every association of human dwellings forms a
_commune_, and every commune is governed by a _maire_ and a _conseil
municipal_. In other words, the _mancipium_ or municipal privilege,
which belongs in England to chartered corporations alone, is alike
extended to every commune into which the cantons and departments of
France were divided at the revolution. Thence the different application
of the expression, which is general in one country and restricted in the
other. In America, the counties of the northern states are divided into
townships, those of the southern into parishes; besides which, municipal
bodies, bearing the name of corporations, exist in the cities. I shall
apply these several expressions to render the term _commune_. The term
"parish," now commonly used in England, belongs exclusively to the
ecclesiastical division; it denotes the limits over which a _parson's_
(_personae ecclesiae_ or perhaps _parochianus_) rights extend.--
_Translator's Note_.

[64] In 1830, there were 305 townships in the state of Massachusetts and
610,014 inhabitants; which gives an average of about 2,000 inhabitants
to each township.

[65] The same rules are not applicable to the great towns, which
generally have a mayor, and a corporation divided into two bodies; this,
however, is an exception which requires a sanction of a law. See the act
of 22d February, 1822, for appointing the authorities of the city of
Boston. It frequently happens that small towns as well as cities are
subject to a peculiar administration. In 1832, 104 townships in the
state of New York were governed in this manner.--_Williams's Register_.

[66] Three selectmen are appointed in the small townships, and nine in
the large ones. See "The Town Officer," p. 186. See also the principal
laws of the state of Massachusetts relative to the selectmen:--

Act of the 20th February, 1786, vol. i, p. 219; 24th February, 1796,
vol. i., p. 488, 7th March, 1801, vol. ii., p. 45; 16th June, 1795, vol.
i., p. 475; 12th March, 1808, vol. ii., p. 186; 28th February, 1787,
vol. i., p. 302; 22d June, 1797, vol. i., p. 539.

[67] See laws of Massachusetts, vol. i., p. 150 Act of the 25th March,
1786.

[68] All these magistrates actually exist; their different functions are
all detailed in a book called, "The Town Officer," by Isaac Goodwin,
Worcester, 1827; and in the Collection of the General Laws of
Massachusetts, 3 vols., Boston, 1823.

[69] See the act of 14th February, 1821. Laws of Massachusetts, vol i.,
p. 551.

[70] See the act of 20th February, 1819. Laws of Massachusetts, vol ii.,
p. 494.

[71] The council of the governor is an elective body.

[72] See the act of 2d November, 1791. Laws of Massachusetts, vol i., p.
61.

[73] See "The Town Officer," especially at the words SELECTMEN,
ASSESSORS, COLLECTORS, SCHOOLS, SURVEYORS OF HIGHWAYS. I take one
example in a thousand: the state prohibits travelling on a Sunday; the
_tything-men_, who are town-officers, are especially charged to keep
watch and to execute the law. See the laws of Massachusetts, vol. i., p.
410. The selectmen draw up the lists of electors for the election of the
governor, and transmit the result of the ballot to the secretary of the
state. See act of 24th February, 1796; _Ib_., vol. i., p. 488.

[74] Thus, for instance, the selectmen authorise the construction of
drains, point out the proper sites for slaughter-houses and other trades
which are a nuisance to the neighborhood. See the act of 7th June, 1735;
Laws of Massachusetts, vol. i., p. 193.

[75] The selectmen take measures for the security of the public in case
of contagious disease, conjointly with the justices of the peace. See
the act of 22d June, 1797; vol. i., p. 539.

[76] I say _almost_, for there are various circumstances in the annals
of a township which are regulated by the justice of the peace in his
individual capacity, or by the justices of the peace, assembled in the
chief town of the county; thus licenses are granted by the justices. See
the act of 28th Feb., 1787; vol. i., p. 297.

[77] Thus licenses are only granted to such persons as can produce a
certificate of good conduct from the selectmen. If the selectmen refuse
to give the certificate, the party may appeal to the justices assembled
in the court of sessions; and they may grant the license. See the act of
12th March, 1808; vol. ii., p. 186.

The townships have the right to make by-laws, and to enforce them by
fines which are fixed by law; but these by-laws must be approved by the
court of sessions. See the act of 23d March, 1786; vol. i., p. 254.

[78] In Massachusetts the county-magistrates are frequently called upon
to investigate the acts of the town-magistrates; but it will be shown
farther on that this investigation is a consequence, not of their
administrative, but of their judicial power.

[79] The town committees of schools are obliged to make an annual report
to the secretary of the state on the condition of the School. See the
act of 10th March, 1827; vol. iii., p. 183.

[80] We shall hereafter learn what a governor is; I shall content myself
with remarking in this place, that he represents the executive power of
the whole state.

[81] See the constitution of Massachusetts, chap ii., § 1; chap iii., §
3.

[82] Thus, for example, a stranger arrives in a township from a country
where a contagious disease prevails, and he falls ill. Two justices of
the peace can, with the assent of the selectmen, order the sheriff of
the county to remove and take care of him. Act of 22d June, 1797; vol.
i., p. 540.

In general the justices interfere in all the important acts of the
administration, and give them a semi-judicial character.

[83] I say the greater number because certain administrative
misdemeanors are brought before the ordinary tribunals. If, for
instance, a township refuses to make the necessary expenditure for its
schools, or to name a school-committee, it is liable to a heavy fine.
But this penalty is pronounced by the supreme judicial court or the
court of common pleas. See the act of 10th March, 1827; laws of
Massachusetts, vol. iii., p. 190. Or when a township neglects to provide
the necessary war-stores. Act of 21st February, 1822; Id. vol. ii., p.
570.

[84] In their individual capacity, the justices of the peace take a part
in the business of the counties and townships. The more important acts
of the municipal government are rarely decided upon without the
co-operation of one of their body.

[85] These affairs may be brought under the following heads: 1. The
erection of prisons and courts of justice. 2. The county budget, which
is afterward voted by the state. 3. The assessment of the taxes so
voted. 4. Grants of certain patents. 5. The laying down and repairs of
the county roads.

[86] Thus, when a road is under consideration, almost all difficulties
are disposed of by the aid of the jury.