American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville et al

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Conclusion

Appendix

INTRODUCTION.

Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in
the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general
equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence
which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by
giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the
laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar
habits to the governed.

I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond
the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no
less empire over civil society than over the government; it creates
opinions, engenders sentiments, the ordinary practices of life, and
modifies whatever it does not produce.

The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I
perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from
which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all
my observations constantly terminated.

I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I
discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World
presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily
advancing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in
the United States; and that the democracy which governs the American
communities, appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe.

I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader.

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going
on among us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and
consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such
may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the
most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is
to be found in history.

Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when
the territory was divided among a small number of families, who were the
owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of
governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to
generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man; and
landed property was the sole source of power.

Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began
to exert itself; the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor
and the rich, the villain and the lord; equality penetrated into the
government through the church, and the being who, as a serf, must have
vegetated in perpetual bondage, took his place as a priest in the midst
of nobles, and not unfrequently above the heads of kings.

The different relations of men became more complicated and more
numerous, as society gradually became more stable and more civilized.
Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal
functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their
dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of
the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail.

While the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and
the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders
were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to
be perceptible in state affairs. The transactions of business opened a
new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political
influence in which he was at once flattered and despised.

Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste
for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science
became the means of government, intelligence led to social power, and
the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the state.

The value attached to the privileges of birth, decreased in the exact
proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the
eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it
might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and
equality was thus introduced into the government by the aristocracy
itself.

In the course of these seven hundred years, it sometimes happened that,
in order to resist the authority of the crown, or to diminish the power
of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights
to the people. Or, more frequently the king permitted the lower orders
to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the
aristocracy.

In France the kings have always been the most active and the most
constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious, they spared
no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were
temperate or weak, they allowed the people to rise above themselves.
Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices.
Louis XI. and Louis XIV. reduced every rank beneath the throne to the
same subjection; Louis XV. descended, himself and all his court, into
the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal
property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every
improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture, was a fresh
element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery,
every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved
satisfaction, was a step toward the universal level. The taste for
luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, the most superficial, as
well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich
the poor and to impoverish the rich.

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of
strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition
to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea, as a germe of power
placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory,
the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all
the gifts which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned to
the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the
possession of its adversaries, they still served its cause by throwing
into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests spread,
therefore, with those of civilisation and knowledge; and literature
became an arsenal, where the poorest and weakest could always find
weapons to their hand.

In perusing the pages of our history, we shall scarcely meet with a
single great event, in the lapse of seven hundred years, which has not
turned to the advantage of equality.

The crusades and the wars of the English decimated the nobles, and
divided their possessions; the erection of communes introduced an
element of democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the
invention of firearms equalized the villain and the noble on the field
of battle; printing opened the same resources to the minds of all
classes; the post was organized so as to bring the same information to
the door of the poor man's cottage and to the gate of the palace; and
protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to
heaven. The discovery of America offered a thousand new paths to
fortune, and placed riches and power within the reach of the adventurous
and the obscure.

If we examine what has happened in France at intervals of fifty years,
beginning with the eleventh century, we shall invariably perceive that a
twofold revolution has taken place in the state of society. The noble
has gone down on the social ladder, and the _roturier_ has gone up; the
one descends as the other rises. Every half-century brings them nearer
to each other, and they will very shortly meet.

Nor is this phenomenon at all peculiar to France. Whithersoever we turn
our eyes, we shall discover the same continual revolution throughout the
whole of Christendom.

The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to
the advantage of democracy; all men have aided it by their exertions;
those who have intentionally labored in its cause, and those who have
served it unwittingly--those who have fought for it, and those who have
declared themselves its opponents--have all been driven along in the
same track, have all labored to one end, some ignorantly, and some
unwillingly; all have been blind instruments in the hands of God.

The gradual development of the equality of conditions is, therefore, a
providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine
decree: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human
interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its
progress.

Would it, then, be wise to imagine that a social impulse which dates
from so far back, can be checked by the efforts of a generation? Is it
credible that the democracy which has annihilated the feudal system, and
vanquished kings, will respect the citizen and the capitalist? Will it
stop now that it has grown so strong and its adversaries so weak?

None can say which way we are going, for all terms of comparison are
wanting: the equality of conditions is more complete in the Christian,
countries of the present day, than it has been at any time, or in any
part of the world; so that the extent of what already exists prevents us
from foreseeing what may be yet to come.

The whole book which is here offered to the public, has been written
under the impression of a kind of religious dread, produced in the
author's mind by the contemplation of so irresistible a revolution,
which has advanced for centuries in spite of such amazing obstacles, and
which is still proceeding in the midst of the ruins it has made.

It is not necessary that God himself should speak in order to disclose
to us the unquestionable signs of his will; we can discern them in the
habitual course of nature, and in the invariable tendency of events; I
know, without a special revelation, that the planets move in the orbits
traced by the Creator's fingers.

If the men of our time were led by attentive observation and by sincere
reflection, to acknowledge that the gradual and progressive development
of social equality is at once the past and future of their history, this
solitary truth would confer the sacred character of a divine decree upon
the change. To attempt to check democracy would be in that case to
resist the will of God; and the nations would then be constrained to
make the best of the social lot awarded to them by Providence.

The Christian nations of our age seem to me to present a most alarming
spectacle; the impulse which is bearing them along is so strong that it
cannot be stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided:
their fate is in their hands; yet a little while and it may be so no
longer.

The first duty which is at this time imposed upon those who direct our
affairs is to educate the democracy; to warm its faith, if that be
possible; to purify its morals; to direct its energies; to substitute a
knowledge of business for its inexperience, and an acquaintance with its
true interests for its blind propensities; to adapt its government to
time and place, and to modify it in compliance with the occurrences and
the actors of the age.

A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world.

This, however, is what we think of least; launched in the middle of a
rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins which may still
be descried upon the shore we have left, while the current sweeps us
along, and drives us backward toward the gulf.

In no country in Europe has the great social revolution which I have
been describing, made such rapid progress as in France; but it has
always been borne on by chance. The heads of the state have never had
any forethought for its exigences, and its victories have been obtained
without their consent or without their knowledge. The most powerful, the
most intelligent, and the most moral classes of the nation have never
attempted to connect themselves with it in order to guide it. The people
have consequently been abandoned to its wild propensities, and it has
grown up like those outcasts who receive their education in the public
streets, and who are unacquainted with aught but the vices and
wretchedness of society. The existence of a democracy was seemingly
unknown, when, on a sudden, it took possession of the supreme power.
Everything was then submitted to its caprices; it was worshipped as the
idol of strength; until, when it was enfeebled by its own excesses, the
legislator conceived the rash project of annihilating its power, instead
of instructing it and correcting its vices; no attempt was made to fit
it to govern, but all were bent on excluding it from the government.

The consequence of this has been that the democratic revolution has been
effected only in the material parts of society, without that concomitant
change in laws, ideas, customs, and manners, which was necessary to
render such a revolution beneficial. We have gotten a democracy, but
without the conditions which lessen its vices, and render its natural
advantages more prominent; and although we already perceive the evils it
brings, we are ignorant of the benefits it may confer.

While the power of the crown, supported by the aristocracy, peaceably
governed the nations of Europe, society possessed, in the midst of its
wretchedness, several different advantages which can now scarcely be
appreciated or conceived.

The power of a part of his subjects was an insurmountable barrier to the
tyranny of the prince; and the monarch who felt the almost divine
character which he enjoyed in the eyes of the multitude, derived a
motive for the just use of his power from the respect which he inspired.

High as they were placed above the people, the nobles could not but take
that calm and benevolent interest in its fate which the shepherd feels
toward his flock; and without acknowledging the poor as their equals,
they watched over the destiny of those whose welfare Providence had
intrusted to their care.

The people, never having conceived the idea of a social condition
different from its own, and entertaining no expectation of ever ranking
with its chiefs, received benefits from them without discussing their
rights. It grew attached to them when they were clement and just, but it
submitted without resistance or servility to their exactions, as to the
inevitable visitations of the arm of God. Custom, and the manners of the
time, had moreover created a species of law in the midst of violence,
and established certain limits to oppression.

As the noble never suspected that any one would attempt to deprive him
of the privileges which he believed to be legitimate, and as the serf
looked upon his own inferiority as a consequence of the immutable order
of nature, it is easy to imagine that a mutual exchange of good-will
took place between two classes so differently gifted by fate. Inequality
and wretchedness were then to be found in society; but the souls of
neither rank of men were degraded.

Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit
of obedience; but by the exercise of power which they believe to be
illegal, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped
and oppressive.

On one side were wealth, strength, and leisure, accompanied by the
refinement of luxury, the elegance of taste, the pleasures of wit, and
the religion of art. On the other were labor, and a rude ignorance; but
in the midst of this coarse and ignorant multitude, it was not uncommon
to meet with energetic passions, generous sentiments, profound religious
convictions, and independent virtues.

The body of a state thus organized, might boast of its stability, its
power, and above all, of its glory.

But the scene is now changed, and gradually the two ranks mingle; the
divisions which once severed mankind, are lowered; property is divided,
power is held in common, the light of intelligence spreads, and the
capacities of all classes are equally cultivated; the state becomes
democratic, and the empire of democracy is slowly and peaceably
introduced into the institutions and manners of the nation.

I can conceive a society in which all men would profess an equal
attachment and respect for the laws of which they are the common
authors; in which the authority of the state would be respected as
necessary, though not as divine; and the loyalty of the subject to the
chief magistrate would not be a passion, but a quiet and rational
persuasion. Every individual being in the possession of rights which he
is sure to retain, a kind of manly reliance and reciprocal courtesy
would arise between all classes, alike removed from pride and meanness.

The people, well acquainted with its true interests, would allow, that
in order to profit by the advantages of society, it is necessary to
satisfy its demands. In this state of things, the voluntary association
of the citizens might supply the individual exertions of the nobles, and
the community would be alike protected from anarchy and from oppression.

I admit that in a democratic state thus constituted, society will not be
stationary; but the impulses of the social body may be regulated and
directed forward; if there be less splendor than in the halls of an
aristocracy, the contrast of misery will be less frequent also; the
pleasures of enjoyment may be less excessive, but those of comfort will
be more general; the sciences may be less perfectly cultivated, but
ignorance will be less common; the impetuosity of the feelings will be
repressed, and the habits of the nation softened; there will be more
vices and fewer crimes.

In the absence of enthusiasm and of an ardent faith, great sacrifices
may be obtained from the members of a commonwealth by an appeal to their
understandings and their experience: each individual will feel the same
necessity for uniting with his fellow-citizens to protect his own
weakness; and as he knows that if they are to assist he must co-operate,
he will readily perceive that his personal interest is identified with
the interest of the community.

The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and
perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a
greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not
because it despairs of melioration, but because it is conscious of the
advantages of its condition.

If all the consequences of this state of things were not good or useful,
society would at least have appropriated all such as were useful and
good; and having once and for ever renounced the social advantages of
aristocracy, mankind would enter into possession of all the benefits
which democracy can afford.

But here it may be asked what we have adopted in the place of those
institutions, those ideas, and those customs of our forefathers which we
have abandoned.

The spell of royalty is broken, but it has not been succeeded by the
majesty of the laws; the people have learned to despise all authority.
But fear now extorts a larger tribute of obedience than that which was
formerly paid by reverence and by love.

I perceive that we have destroyed those independent beings which were
able to cope with tyranny single-handed; but it is the government that
has inherited the privileges of which families, corporations, and
individuals, have been deprived; the weakness of the whole community
has, therefore, succeeded to that influence of a small body of citizens,
which, if it was sometimes oppressive, was often conservative.

The division of property has lessened the distance which separated the
rich from the poor; but it would seem that the nearer they draw to each
other, the greater is their mutual hatred, and the more vehement the
envy and the dread with which they resist each other's claims to power;
the notion of right is alike insensible to both classes, and force
affords to both the only argument for the present, and the only
guarantee for the future.

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their
faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the
doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions, without
understanding the science which controls it, and his egotism is no less
blind than his devotedness was formerly.

If society is tranquil, it is not because it relies upon its strength
and its well-being, but because it knows its weakness and its
infirmities; a single effort may cost it its life; everybody feels the
evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure; the
desires, the regret, the sorrows, and the joys of the time, produce
nothing that is visible or permanent, like the passions of old men which
terminate in impotence.

We have, then, abandoned whatever advantages the old state of things
afforded, without receiving any compensation from our present condition;
having destroyed an aristocracy, we seem inclined to survey its ruins
with complacency, and to fix our abode in the midst of them.

The phenomena which the intellectual world presents, are not less
deplorable. The democracy of France, checked in its course or abandoned
to its lawless passions, has overthrown whatever crossed its path, and
has shaken all that it has not destroyed. Its control over society has
not been gradually introduced, or peaceably established, but it has
constantly advanced in the midst of disorder, and the agitation of a
conflict. In the heat of the struggle each partisan is hurried beyond
the limits of his opinions by the opinions and the excesses of his
opponents, until he loses sight of the end of his exertions, and holds a
language which disguises his real sentiments or secret instincts. Hence
arises the strange confusion which we are beholding.

I cannot recall to my mind a passage in history more worthy of sorrow
and of pity than the scenes which are happening under our eyes; it is as
if the natural bond which unites the opinions of man to his tastes, and
his actions to his principles, was now broken; the sympathy which has
always been acknowledged between the feelings and the ideas of mankind,
appears to be dissolved, and all the laws of moral analogy to be
abolished.

Zealous Christians may be found among us, whose minds are nurtured in
the love and knowledge of a future life, and who readily espouse the
cause of human liberty, as the source of all moral greatness.
Christianity, which has declared that all men are equal in the sight of
God, will not refuse to acknowledge that all citizens are equal in the
eye of the law. But, by a singular concourse of events, religion is
entangled in those institutions which democracy assails, and it is not
unfrequently brought to reject the equality it loves, and to curse that
cause of liberty as a foe, which it might hallow by its alliance.

By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks are
turned to the earth more than to heaven; they are the partisans of
liberty, not only as the source of the noblest virtues, but more
especially as the root of all solid advantages; and they sincerely
desire to extend its sway, and to impart its blessings to mankind. It is
natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion,
for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality,
nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of
their adversaries, and they inquire no farther; some of them attack it
openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.

In former ages slavery has been advocated by the venal and
slavish-minded, while the independent and the warm-hearted were
struggling without hope to save the liberties of mankind. But men of
high and generous characters are now to be met with, whose opinions are
at variance with their inclinations, and who praise that servility which
they have themselves never known. Others, on the contrary, speak in the
name of liberty as if they were able to feel its sanctity and its
majesty, and loudly claim for humanity those rights which they have
always disowned.

There are virtuous and peaceful individuals whose pure morality, quiet
habits, affluence, and talents, fit them to be the leaders of the
surrounding population; their love of their country is sincere, and they
are prepared to make the greatest sacrifices to its welfare, but they
confound the abuses of civilisation with its benefits, and the idea of
evil is inseparable in their minds from that of novelty.

Not far from this class is another party, whose object is to materialise
mankind, to hit upon what is expedient without heeding what is just; to
acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue;
assuming the title of the champions of modern civilisation, and placing
themselves in a station which they usurp with insolence, and from which
they are driven by their own unworthiness.

Where are we then?

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty
attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and
the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest and
enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, while men without
patriotism and without principles, are the apostles of civilisation and
of intelligence.