American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville et al

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It appears to me in the first place, that a careful distinction must be
made between the institutions of the United States and democratic
institutions in general. When I reflect upon the state of Europe, its
mighty nations, its populous cities, its formidable armies, and the
complex nature of its politics, I cannot suppose that even the
Anglo-Americans, if they were transported to our hemisphere, with their
ideas, their religion, and their manners, could exist without
considerably altering their laws. But a democratic nation may be
imagined, organized differently from the American people. It is not
impossible to conceive a government really established upon the will of
the majority; but in which the majority, repressing its natural
propensity to equality, should consent, with a view to the order and the
stability of the state, to invest a family or an individual with all the
prerogatives of the executive. A democratic society might exist, in
which the forces of the nation would be more centralized than they are
in the United States; the people would exercise a less direct and less
irresistible influence upon public affairs, and yet every citizen,
invested with certain rights, would participate, within his sphere, in
the conduct of the government. The observations I made among the
Anglo-Americans induce me to believe that democratic institutions of
this kind, prudently introduced into society, so as gradually to mix
with the habits and to be infused with the opinions of the people, might
subsist in other countries beside America. If the laws of the United
States were the only imaginable democratic laws, or the most perfect
which it is possible to conceive, I should admit that the success of
those institutions affords no proof of the success of democratic
institutions in general, in a country less favored by natural
circumstances. But as the laws of America appear to me to be defective
in several respects, and as I can readily imagine others of the same
general nature, the peculiar advantages of that country do not prove
that democratic institutions cannot succeed in a nation less favored by
circumstances, if ruled by better laws.

If human nature were different in America from what it is elsewhere; or
if the social condition of the Americans engendered habits and opinions
among them different from those which originate in the same social
condition in the Old World, the American democracies would afford no
means of predicting what may occur in other democracies. If the
Americans displayed the same propensities as all other democratic
nations, and if their legislators had relied upon the nature of the
country and the favor of circumstances to restrain those propensities
within due limits, the prosperity of the United States would be
exclusively attributable to physical causes, and it would afford no
encouragement to a people inclined to imitate their example, without
sharing their natural advantages. But neither of these suppositions is
borne out by facts.

In America the same passions are to be met with as in Europe; some
originating in human nature, others in the democratic condition of
society. Thus in the United States I found that restlessness of heart
which is natural to men, when all ranks are nearly equal and the chances
of elevation are the same to all. I found the democratic feeling of envy
expressed under a thousand different forms. I remarked that the people
frequently displayed, in the conduct of affairs, a consummate mixture of
ignorance and presumption, and I inferred that, in America, men are
liable to the same failings and the same absurdities as among ourselves.
But upon examining the state of society more attentively, I speedily
discovered that the Americans had made great and successful efforts to
counteract these imperfections of human nature, and to correct the
natural defects of democracy. Their divers municipal laws appeared to me
to be a means of restraining the ambition of the citizens within a
narrow sphere, and of turning those same passions, which might have
worked havoc in the state, to the good of the township or the parish.
The American legislators have succeeded to a certain extent in opposing
the notion of rights, to the feelings of envy; the permanence of the
religious world, to the continual shifting of politics; the experience
of the people, to its theoretical ignorance; and its practical knowledge
of business, to the impatience of its desires.

The Americans, then, have not relied upon the nature of their country,
to counterpoise those dangers which originate in their constitution and
in their political laws. To evils which are common to all democratic
peoples, they have applied remedies which none but themselves had ever
thought of before; and although they were the first to make the
experiment, they have succeeded in it.

The manners and laws of the Americans are not the only ones which may
suit a democratic people; but the Americans have shown that it would be
wrong to despair of regulating democracy by the aid of manners and of
laws. If other nations should borrow this general and pregnant idea from
the Americans, without however intending to imitate them in the peculiar
application which they have made of it; if they should attempt to fit
themselves for that social condition, which it seems to be the will of
Providence to impose upon the generations of this age, and so to escape
from the despotism of the anarchy which threatens them; what reason is
there to suppose that their efforts would not be crowned with success?
The organization and the establishment of democracy in Christendom, is
the great political problem of the time. The Americans, unquestionably,
have not resolved this problem, but they furnish useful data to those
who undertake the task.

* * * * *

IMPORTANCE OF WHAT PRECEDES WITH RESPECT TO THE STATE OF EUROPE.

It may readily be discovered with what intention I undertook the
foregoing inquiries. The question here discussed is interesting not only
to the United States, but to the whole world; it concerns, not a nation,
but all mankind. If those nations whose social condition is democratic
could only remain free as long as they are inhabitants of the wilds, we
could not but despair of the future destiny of the human race; for
democracy is rapidly acquiring a more extended sway, and the wilds are
gradually peopled with men. If it were true that laws and manners are
insufficient to maintain democratic institutions, what refuge would
remain open to the nations except the despotism of a single individual?
I am aware that there are many worthy persons at the present time who
are not alarmed at this latter alternative, and who are so tired of
liberty as to be glad of repose, far from those storms by which it is
attended. But these individuals are ill acquainted with the haven to
which they are bound. They are so deluded by their recollections, as to
judge the tendency of absolute power by what it was formerly, and not
what it might become at the present time.

If absolute power were re-established among the democratic nations of
Europe, I am persuaded that it would assume a new form, and appear under
features unknown to our forefathers. There was a time in Europe, when
the laws and the consent of the people had invested princes with almost
unlimited authority; but they scarcely ever availed themselves of it. I
do not speak of the prerogatives of the nobility, of the authority of
supreme courts of justice, of corporations and their chartered rights,
or of provincial privileges, which served to break the blows of the
sovereign authority, and to maintain a spirit of resistance in the
nation. Independently of these political institutions--which, however
opposed they might be to personal liberty, served to keep alive the love
of freedom in the mind of the public, and which may be esteemed to have
been useful in this respect--the manners and opinions of the nation
confined the royal authority within barriers which were not less
powerful, although they were less conspicuous. Religion, the affections
of the people, the benevolence of the prince, the sense of honor, family
pride, provincial prejudices, custom, and public opinion, limited the
power of kings, and restrained their authority within an invisible
circle. The constitution of nations was despotic at that time but their
manners were free. Princes had the right, but they had neither the means
nor the desire, of doing whatever they pleased.

But what now remains of those barriers which formerly arrested the
aggressions of tyranny? Since religion has lost its empire over the
souls of men, the most prominent boundary which divided good from evil
is overthrown: the very elements of the moral world are indeterminate;
the princes and the peoples of the earth are guided by chance, and none
can define the natural limits of despotism and the bounds of license.
Long revolutions have for ever destroyed the respect which surrounded
the rulers of the state; and since they have been relieved from the
burden of public esteem, princes may henceforward surrender themselves
without fear to the seductions of arbitrary power.

When kings find that the hearts of their subjects are turned toward
them, they are clement, because they are conscious of their strength;
and they are chary of the affection of their people, because the
affection of their people is the bulwark of the throne. A mutual
interchange of good will then takes place between the prince and the
people, which resembles the gracious intercourse of domestic society.
The subjects may murmur at the sovereign's decree, but they are grieved
to displease him; and the sovereign chastises his subjects with the
light hand of parental affection.

But when once the spell of royalty is broken in the tumult of
revolution; when successive monarchs have occupied the throne, and
alternately displayed to the people the weakness of right, and the
harshness of power, the sovereign is no longer regarded by any as the
father of the state, and he is feared by all as its master. If he be
weak, he is despised; if he be strong, he is detested. He is himself
full of animosity and alarm; he finds that he is a stranger in his own
country, and he treats his subjects like conquered enemies.

When the provinces and the towns formed so many different nations in the
midst of their common country, each of them had a will of its own, which
was opposed to the general spirit of subjection; but now that all the
parts of the same empire, after having lost their immunities, their
customs, their prejudices, their traditions, and their names, are
subjected and accustomed to the same laws, it is not more difficult to
oppress them collectively, than it was formerly to oppress them singly.

While the nobles enjoyed their power, and indeed long after that power
was lost, the honor of aristocracy conferred an extraordinary degree of
force upon their personal opposition. They afforded instances of men
who, notwithstanding their weakness, still entertained a high opinion of
their personal value, and dared to cope single-handed with the efforts
of the public authority. But at the present day, when all ranks are more
and more confounded, when the individual disappears in the throng, and
is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity, when the honor of
monarchy has almost lost its empire without being succeeded by public
virtue, and when nothing can enable man to rise above himself, who shall
say at what point the exigencies of power and servility of weakness will
stop?

As long as family feeling was kept alive, the antagonist of oppression
was never alone; he looked about him, and found his clients, his
hereditary friends, and his kinsfolk. If this support was wanting, he
was sustained by his ancestors and animated by his posterity. But when
patrimonial estates are divided, and when a few years suffice to
confound the distinctions of a race, where can family feeling be found?
What force can there be in the customs of a country which has changed,
and is still perpetually changing its aspect; in which every act of
tyranny has a precedent, and every crime an example; in which there is
nothing so old that its antiquity can save it from destruction, and
nothing so unparalleled that its novelty can prevent it from being done?
What resistance can be offered by manners of so pliant a make, that they
have already often yielded? What strength can even public opinion have
retained, when no twenty persons are connected by a common tie; when not
a man, nor a family, nor chartered corporation, nor class, nor free
institution, has the power of representing that opinion; and when every
citizen--being equally weak, equally poor, and equally dependant--has
only his personal impotence to oppose to the organized force of the
government?

The annals of France furnish nothing analogous to the condition in which
that country might then be thrown. But it may more aptly be assimilated
to the times of old, and to those hideous eras of Roman oppression, when
the manners of the people were corrupted, their traditions obliterated,
their habits destroyed, their opinions shaken, and freedom, expelled
from the laws, could find no refuge in the land; when nothing protected
the citizens, and the citizens no longer protected themselves; when
human nature was the sport of man, and princes wearied out the clemency
of Heaven before they exhausted the patience of their subjects. Those
who hope to revive the monarchy of Henry IV. or of Louis XIV., appear to
me to be afflicted with mental blindness; and when I consider the
present condition of several European nations--a condition to which all
the others tend--I am led to believe that they will soon be left with no
other alternative than democratic liberty, or the tyranny of the
Caesars.

And, indeed, it is deserving of consideration, whether men are to be
entirely emancipated, or entirely enslaved; whether their rights are to
be made equal, or wholly taken away from them. If the rulers of society
were reduced either gradually to raise the crowd to their own level, or
to sink the citizens below that of humanity, would not the doubts of
many be resolved, the consciences of many be healed, and the community
be prepared to make great sacrifices with little difficulty? In that
case, the gradual growth of democratic manners and institutions should
be regarded, not as the best, but as the only means of preserving
freedom; and without liking the government of democracy, it might be
adopted as the most applicable and the fairest remedy for the present
ills of society.

It is difficult to associate a people in the work of government; but it
is still more difficult to supply it with experience, and to inspire it
with the feelings which it requires in order to govern well. I grant
that the caprices of democracy are perpetual; its instruments are rude,
its laws imperfect. But if it were true that soon no just medium would
exist between the empire of democracy and the dominion of a single arm,
should we not rather incline toward the former, than submit voluntarily
to the latter? And if complete equality be our fate, is it not better to
be levelled by free institutions than by despotic power?

Those who, after having read this book, should imagine that my intention
in writing it has been to propose the laws and manners of the
Anglo-Americans for the imitation of all democratic peoples, would
commit a very great mistake; they must have paid more attention to the
form than to the substance of my ideas. My aim has been to show, by the
example of America, that laws, and especially manners, may exist, which
will allow a democratic people to remain free. But I am very far from
thinking that we ought to follow the example of the American democracy,
and copy the means which it has employed to attain its ends; for I am
well aware of the influence which the nature of a country and its
political precedents exercise upon a constitution; and I should regard
it as a great misfortune for mankind, if liberty were to exist, all over
the world, under the same forms.

But I am of opinion that if we do not succeed in gradually introducing
democratic institutions into France, and if we despair of imparting to
the citizens those ideas and sentiments which first prepare them for
freedom, and afterward allow them to enjoy it, there will be no
independence at all, either for the middling classes or the nobility,
for the poor or for the rich, but an equal tyranny over all; and I
foresee that if the peaceable empire of the majority be not founded
among us in time, we shall sooner or later arrive at the unlimited
authority of a single despot.

* * * * *

Notes:

[199] The United States have no metropolis; but they already contain
several very large cities. Philadelphia reckoned 161,000 inhabitants,
and New York 202,000, in the year 1830. The lower orders which inhabit
these cities constitute a rabble even more formidable than the populace
of European towns. They consist of freed blacks in the first place, who
are condemned by the laws and by public opinion, to an hereditary state
of misery and degradation. They also contain a multitude of Europeans
who have been driven to the shores of the New World by their misfortunes
or their misconduct; and these men inoculate the United States with all
our vices, without bringing with them any of those interests which
counteract their baneful influence. As inhabitants of a country where
they have no civil rights, they are ready to turn all the passions which
agitate the community to their own advantage; thus, within the last few
months serious riots have broken out in Philadelphia and in New York.
Disturbances of this kind are unknown in the rest of the country, which
is nowise alarmed by them, because the population of the cities has
hitherto exercised neither power nor influence over the rural districts.

Nevertheless, I look upon the size of certain American cities, and
especially on the nature of their population, as a real danger which
threatens the future security of the democratic republics of the New
World: and I venture to predict that they will perish from this
circumstance, unless the government succeed in creating an armed force,
which, while it remains under the control of the majority of the nation,
will be independent of the town population, and able to repress its
excesses.

[200] In New England the estates are exceedingly small, but they are
rarely subjected to farther division.

[201] The New York Spectator of August 23, 1831, relates the fact in the
following terms: "The court of common pleas of Chester county (New
York), a few days since rejected a witness who declared his disbelief in
the existence of God. The presiding judge remarked, that he had not
before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the
existence of God; that this belief constituted the sanction of all
testimony in a court of justice; and that he knew of no cause in a
Christian country, where a witness had been permitted to testify without
such belief."

[The instance given by the author, of a person offered as a witness
having been rejected on the ground that he did not believe in the
existence of a God, seems to be adduced to prove either his assertion
that the Americans hold religion to be indispensable to the maintenance
of republican institutions--or his assertion, that if a man attacks all
the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone. But it
is questionable how far the fact quoted proves either of these
positions. The rule which prescribes as a qualification for a witness
the belief in a Supreme Being who will punish falsehood, without which
he is deemed wholly incompetent to testify, is established for the
protection of personal rights, and not to compel the adoption of any
system of religious belief. It came with all our fundamental principles
from England as a part of the common law which the colonists brought
with them. It is supposed to prevail in every country in Christendom,
whatever may be the form of its government; and the only doubt that
arises respecting its existence in France, is created by our author's
apparent surprise at finding such a rule in America.--_American
Editor_.]

[202] Unless this term be applied to the functions which many of them
fill in the schools. Almost all education is intrusted to the clergy.

[203] See the constitution of New York, art. 7, § 4:--"And whereas, the
ministers of the gospel are, by their profession, dedicated to the
service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from
the great duties of their functions; therefore no minister of the
gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall, at any time
hereafter, under any pretence or description whatever, be eligible to,
or capable of holding any civil or military office or place within this
state."

See also the constitutions of North Carolina, art. 31. Virginia. South
Carolina, art. 1, § 23. Kentucky, art. 2, § 26. Tennessee, art S, § 1.
Louisiana, art. 2, § 22.

[204] I travelled along a portion of the frontier of the United States
in a sort of cart which was termed the mail. We passed, day and night,
with great rapidity along roads which were scarcely marked out, through
immense forests: when the gloom of the woods became impenetrable, the
coachman lighted branches of fir and we journied along by the light they
cast. From time to time we came to a hut in the midst of the forest,
which was a postoffice. The mail dropped an enormous bundle of letters
at the door of this isolated dwelling, and we pursued our way at full
gallop, leaving the inhabitants of the neighboring log-houses to send
for their share of the treasure.

[205] In 1832, each inhabitant of Michigan paid a sum equivalent to 1
franc, 22 centimes (French money) to the postoffice revenue; and each
inhabitant of the Floridas paid 1 fr. 5 cent (See National Calendar,
1833, p. 244.) In the same year each inhabitant of the department du
Nord, paid 1 fr. 4 cent, to the revenue of the French postoffice. (See
the Compte rendu de l'Administration des Finances, 1833, p. 623.) Now
the state of Michigan only contained at that time 7 inhabitants per
square league; and Florida only 5; the instruction and the commercial
activity of these districts are inferior to those of most of the states
in the Union; while the department du Nord, which contains 3,400
inhabitants per square league, is one of the most enlightened and
manufacturing parts of France.

[206] I remind the reader of the general signification which I give to
the word _manners_, namely, the moral and intellectual characteristics
of social man taken collectively.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PRESENT AND PROBABLE FUTURE CONDITION OF THE THREE RACES WHICH
INHABIT THE TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The principal part of the task which I had imposed upon myself is now
performed: I have shown, as far as I was able, the laws and manners of
the American democracy. Here I might stop; but the reader would perhaps
feel that I had not satisfied his expectations.

The absolute supremacy of democracy is not all that we meet with in
America; the inhabitants of the New World may be considered from more
than one point of view. In the course of this work, my subject has often
led me to speak of the Indians and the negroes; but I have never been
able to stop in order to show what places these two races occupy, in the
midst of the democratic people whom I was engaged in describing. I have
mentioned in what spirit, and according to what laws, the Anglo-American
Union was formed; but I could only glance at the dangers which menace
that confederation, while it was equally impossible for me to give a
detailed account of its chances of duration, independently of its laws
and manners. When speaking of the United republican States, I hazarded
no conjectures upon the permanence of republican forms in the New World;
and when making frequent allusion to the commercial activity which
reigns in the Union, I was unable to inquire into the future condition
of the Americans as a commercial people.

These topics are collaterally connected with my subject, without forming
a part of it; they are American, without being democratic; and to
portray democracy has been my principal aim. It was therefore necessary
to postpone these questions, which I now take up as the proper
termination of my work.

The territory now occupied or claimed by the American Union, spreads
from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific ocean. On the
east and west its limits are those of the continent itself. On the south
it advances nearly to the tropic, and it extends upward to the icy
regions of the north.[207]

The human beings who are scattered over this space do not form, as in
Europe, so many branches of the same stock. Three races naturally
distinct, and I might almost say hostile to each other, are discoverable
among them at the first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers had been
raised between them by education and by law, as well as by their origin
and outward characteristics; but fortune has brought them together on
the same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do not amalgamate,
and each race fulfils its destiny apart.