There can be no success without special devotion to some one end;
individual or nation, to be successful and prosperous, beware of
attempting every thing. Human nature is finite, and, like it, you must
set some bounds to your wishes and efforts. Learn how to check yourself
and to be content, is the precept of wisdom. If it is a wise rule,
then are the Americans, at least partially, wise, for they practise it
partially. In general, the American is little disposed to be contented;
his idea of equality is to be inferior to none, but he endeavours to
rise only in one direction. His only means, and the object of his
whole thought, is to subdue the material world, or, in other words,
it is industry in its various branches, business, speculation, work,
action. To this sole object every thing is made subordinate, education,
politics, private and public life. Every thing in American society,
from religion and morals to domestic usages and daily habits of life,
is bent in the direction of this common aim of each and all. If there
are some exceptions to this general rule, they are few, and may be
referred to two causes; first, American society, exclusive as it is,
is not destined to remain forever imprisoned in this narrow circle,
and it already contains the germs of its future condition ages hence,
whatever that may be; and secondly, human nature, although bounded, is
not exclusive, and no force in the world can stifle its eternal protest
against exclusiveness in taste, institutions, and manners. Speculation
and business, work and action, these, then, under various forms, make
the exclusive object to which the Americans have devoted themselves,
with a zeal that amounts to fanaticism; this was marked out for them by
the finger of Providence, in order that a continent should be brought
under the dominion of civilisation with the least possible delay.
I cannot reflect without sorrow, that at one moment France seem called
to take part in this great mission with the two nations, between
whom God has placed it, not less morally in regard to character and
institutions, than physically in respect to geographical position;
namely the English and Spaniards. Whilst Spain, then queen of the
world, grasped South America and the vast empire of Mexico, civilised,
sword in hand, the native tribes, and built those monumental cities,
which will bear witness to its genius and its power, ages after
the calumnies of its slanderers shall have been forgotten, whilst
England was planting some insignificant colonies on the barren shore
of North America, France was exploring the vast basin of the Father
of Waters, and taking possession of the St. Lawrence, compared with
which our Rhine, _tranquille et fier_, is but a modest rivulet: we
were crowning with fortifications the steep rock of Quebec, building
Montreal, founding New Orleans and St. Louis, and here and there
subduing the rich plains of Illinois. At that time, we were occupying
the most fertile, best watered, and finest portion of North America,
the part best suited to become the seat of a magnificent empire, in
harmony with our notions of unity. Our engineers, with a sagacity for
which the Americans now express the greatest admiration, had marked
out by fortresses, the sites most suitable for large towns. Our flag
floated over Pittsburg, then Fort Duquesne, Detroit, Chicago, Erie,
then Presqu'île, Kingston, then Fort Frontenac, Michillimackinac,
Ticonderoga, Vincennes, Fort Charters, Peoria, and St. John, as well
as over the capitals of Canada, and Louisiana. Then our language might
have set up its claim to be the universal language; the French name
bade fair to become the first, not only in the world of ideas, by art
and letters, like the Greek; but also in the material and political
world, by the number of individuals who would take pride in bearing it,
by the immensity of the territory over which its dominion stretched,
like the Roman. Louis XIV. in the days of his deification, in the
Olympus which he had built himself, meditated this noble destiny for
his people and his race. With a lofty pride, he seemed to read their
future triumphs on the pages of fate. But there is left to us, who
are separated from him only by a single century, there is left, alas!
nought but vain and impotent regrets. The English have driven us
forever, not only from America, but also from the East Indies, where
that great prince had given us a footing. The descendants of our
fathers in Canada and Louisiana struggle in vain against the British
flood that swallows them up; our language is whelmed in the same
deluge; even our names for the cities we founded and the regions we
discovered, are corrupted in the harsh throats of our fortunate rivals,
and are too Saxonised to be any longer recognised. We have ourselves
forgotten, that there was ever a time when we could have claimed to
rule the New World; we no longer remember the generous men who devoted
themselves, that they might secure the dominion to us. To preserve the
name of the heroic La Salle from oblivion, it has become necessary that
the American Congress should raise a monument to his memory in the
rotunda of the Capital, between those to William Penn and John Smith.
We have had no stone for him among all our innumerable sculptures; our
painters have covered miles of canvass with their colours, but have not
drawn a line in honour of him.
Meanwhile, the gigantic upstarts of Europe defy us, elbow us, and crowd
us in. In vain did the genius of the the second Charlemagne restore
to us the capital of the first Frank Kaiser, and the finest provinces
of Clovis; capital and provinces have been snatched from us almost
immediately. One step more downward, and we should have been forever
forced back among the secondary states, the worn out and decrepit
nations, with no successors to receive and sustain with honor the
inheritance of our fathers' glories. What is it that has thus degraded
a great people, and robbed it of its well-earned future? In an absolute
monarchy like ours, it was enough, that we should be ridden by such a
prince as Louis XV., who had inherited nothing from his great ancestor
but his vices; it was enough, that during fifty years, France was the
plaything of his infamous selfishness, and of the shameful imbecility
of his creatures. Absolute governments may sometimes produce wonders
in a short space of time, but they are exposed to cruel reverses. Had
we been the conquerors in America, instead of having been conquered by
the English, what would have been the consequences? To judge what the
people of New France would have been, by what the Canadians and the
Creoles of Louisiana are, the boldness and rapidity of the progress
of civilisation would have been much less than it has been. When it
is proposed to conquer nations on the field of battle, France may
enter the lists with confidence; but when it is proposed to subdue
nature, the Englishman is our superior. He has firmer sinews and more
vigourous muscle; physically he is better made for labour; he carries
it on with more perseverance and method; he becomes interested in it,
and obstinately bent upon it. If he meets any obstacle in his task, he
attacks it with the devouring passion which a Frenchman can feel only
in the presence of an adversary in a human form.
With what zeal and devotion has the Anglo-American fulfilled his
mission as a pioneer in a new continent! Behold how he makes his way
over the rocks and precipices; see how he struggles in close fight
with the rivers, with the swamps, with the primeval forests; see how
he slaughters the wolf and the bear, how he exterminates the Indian,
who in his eyes is only another wild beast! In this conflict with
the external world, with the land and the waters, with mountains and
pestilential marshes, he appears full of that impetuosity with which
Greece flung itself into Asia at the voice of Alexander; of that
fanatical daring with which Mahomet inspired his Arabs for the conquest
of the Eastern Empire; of that delirious courage which animated our
fathers forty years ago, when they threw themselves upon Europe. On the
same rivers, therefore, on which our colonists floated, carelessly
singing, in the bark canoe of the savage, they have launched fleets
of superb steamers. Where we fraternised with the Red Skins, sleeping
with them in the forests, living like them on the chase, travelling,
in their manner, through rugged trails afoot, the persevering American
has felled the aged trees, guided the plough, inclosed the fields,
substituted the best breeds of English cattle for the wild deer,
created farms, flourishing villages, and opulent cities, dug canals,
and made roads. Those waterfalls which we admired as lovers of the
picturesque, and the height of which our officers measured at the risk
of their lives, he has shut up for the use of his mills and factories,
regardless of the scenery. If these countries had continued to belong
to the French, the population would certainly have been more gay than
the present American race; it would have enjoyed more highly, whatever
it should have possessed, but it would have had less of comfort and
wealth, and ages would have passed away, before man had become master
of those regions, which have been reclaimed in less than fifty years by
the Americans.
If we examine the acts passed by the local legislatures at each
session, we shall find that at least three-fourths relate to the
banks, which give credit to the working men; to the establishment of
new religious societies and churches, which are the citadels where the
guardians of industry keep watch; to routes and means of communication,
roads, canals, railways, bridges, and steamboats, which facilitate
the access of the producer to the markets; to primary instruction
for the use of the mechanic and the labourer; to various commercial
regulations; or to the incorporation of towns and villages, the work
of these hardy pioneers. There is no mention of an army; the fine
arts are not so much as named; literary institutions and the higher
scientific studies are rarely honoured with notice. The tendency of
the laws is above all to promote industry, material labour, the task
of the moment. In the older States, they always profess the greatest
respect for property, because the legislature feels that the greatest
encouragement to industry is to respect its fruits. They are especially
conservative of landed property, either from a lingering remembrance of
the feudal laws of the mother country, or because they are anxious to
preserve some element of stability in the midst of the general change;
yet the laws generally pay less regard to the rights of property than
is the case in Europe. Wo to whatever is inactive and unproductive,
if it can be accused, on however slight a foundation, of resting upon
monopoly and privilege! The rights of industry here have the precedence
of all others, efface all others, and it is on this account, that,
except in in the affair of public credit, in which the towns and States
pique themselves on the most scrupulous exactness in fulfilling their
engagements, in every dispute between the capitalists and the producer,
the latter has almost always the better.
Every thing is here arranged to facilitate industry; the towns
are built on the English plan; men of business, instead of being
scattered over the town, occupy a particular quarter, which is
devoted exclusively to them, in which there is not a building used as
a dwelling-house, and nothing but offices and warehouses are to be
seen. The brokers, bankers, and lawyers here have their cells, the
merchants their counting-rooms; here the banks, insurance offices, and
other companies, have their chambers, and other buildings are filled
from cellar to garret with articles of merchandise. At any hour, one
merchant has but a few steps to go after any other, after a broker or a
lawyer. This, it will be seen, is not according to the Paris fashion,
by which a great deal of precious time is lost by men of business
in running after one another; in this respect, Paris is the worst
arranged commercial city in the world. New York is, however inferior in
this particular to London or Liverpool; it has nothing like the great
docks and the Commercial House.
The manners and customs are altogether those of a working, busy
society. At the age of fifteen years, a man is engaged in business;
at twenty-one he is established, he has his farm, his workshop, his
counting-room, or his office, in a word his employment, whatever it
may be. He now also takes a wife, and at twentytwo is the father of
a family, and consequently has a powerful stimulus to excite him to
industry. A man who has no profession, and, which is nearly the same
thing, who is not married, enjoys little consideration; he, who is
an active and useful member of society, who contributes his share to
augment the national wealth and increase the numbers of the population,
he only is looked upon with respect and favour. The American is
educated with the idea that he will have some particular occupation,
that he is to be a farmer, artisan, manufacturer, merchant, speculator,
lawyer, physician, or minister, perhaps all in succession, and that,
if he is active and intelligent, he will make his fortune. He has no
conception of living without a profession, even when his family is
rich, for he sees nobody about him, not engaged in business. The man of
leisure is a variety of the human species, of which the Yankee does not
suspect the existence, and he knows that if rich to-day, his father may
be ruined tomorrow. Besides the father himself is engaged in business,
according to custom, and does not think of dispossessing himself of
his fortune; if the son wishes to have one at present, let him make it
himself!
The habits of life are those of an exclusively working people. From
the moment he gets up, the American is at his work, and he is engaged
in it till the hour of sleep. Pleasure is never permitted to interrupt
his business; public affairs only have the right to occupy a few
moments. Even meal-time is not for him a period of relaxation, in
which his wearied mind seeks repose in the bosom of his friends; it
is only a disagreeable interruption of business, an interruption to
which he yields because it cannot be avoided, but which he abridges
as much as possible. In the evening, if no political meeting requires
his attendance, if he does not go to discuss some question of public
interest, or to a religious meeting, he sits at home, thoughtful and
absorbed in his meditations, whether on the transactions of the day
or the projects of the morrow. He refrains from business on Sunday,
because his religion commands it, but it also requires him to abstain
from all amusement and recreation, music, cards, dice, or billiards,
under penalty of sacrilege. On Sunday an American would not venture to
receive his friends; his servants would not consent to it, and he can
hardly secure their services for himself, at their own hour, on that
day. A few days since, the mayor of New York was _accused_ by one of
the newspapers of having entertained on Sunday some English noblemen,
who came out in their own yacht to give the American democracy a
strange idea of British tastes. The mayor hastened to declare publicly,
that he was too well acquainted with his duties as a Christian to
entertain his friends on the _Sabbath_. Nothing is therefore, more
melancholy than the seventh day in this country; after such a Sunday,
the labour of Monday is a delightful pastime.
Approach an English merchant in his counting-room in the morning, and
you will find him stiff and dry, answering you only by monosyllables;
accost him at the hour of closing the mails, he will be at no pains to
conceal his impatience; he will dismiss you without always taking care
to do it politely. The same man, in his drawing-room in the evening, or
at his country-house in summer, will be full of courtesy and attention
towards you. The Englishman divides his time, and does but one thing
at once; in the morning he is wholly absorbed in business; in the
evening he plays the man of leisure, reposing and enjoying life; he
is a gentleman, having before his eyes, in the English aristocracy, a
perfect model to form his manners, and to teach him how to spend his
fortune with dignity and grace. The modern Frenchman is a confused
mixture of the Englishman of the evening and the Englishman of the
morning; in the morning a little of the former, in the evening a little
of the latter. The old French model was the former, or rather, to do
each one justice, was the original after which the English aristocracy
has formed itself. The American of the North and the Northwest, whose
character now gives the tone in the United States, is permanently a man
of business, he is always the Englishman of the morning. You find many
of the Englishmen of the evening on the plantations of the South, and
some are beginning to be met with in the great cities of the North.
Tall, slender, and light of figure, the American seems built expressly
for labour; he has no equal for despatch of business. Nobody also
can conform so easily to new situations and circumstances; he is
always ready to adopt new processes and implements, or to change
his occupation. He is a mechanic by nature; among us there is not a
schoolboy who has not made a _vaudeville_, a ballad, or a republican or
monarchical constitution; in Massachusetts and Connecticut, there is
not a labourer who has not invented a machine or a tool. There is not
a man of much consideration, who has not his scheme for a railroad, a
project for a village or a town, or who has not _in petto_ some grand
speculation in the drowned lands of Red River, in the cotton lands of
the Yazoo, or in the corn fields of Illinois. Eminently a pioneer, the
American who is not more or less Europeanised, the pure Yankee in a
word, is not only a working man, but he is a migratory one. He has
no root in the soil, he has no feeling of reverence and love for the
natal spot and the paternal roof; he is always disposed to emigrate,
always ready to start in the first steamer that comes along, from the
place where he had but just now landed. He is devoured with a passion
for locomotion, he cannot stay in one place; he must go and come, he
must stretch his limbs and keep his muscles in play. When his feet are
not in motion, his fingers must be in action, he must be whittling a
piece of wood, cutting the back of his chair, or notching the edge of
the table, or his jaws must be at work grinding tobacco. Whether it be
that a continual competition has given him the habit, or that he has
an exaggerated estimate of the value of time, or that the unsettled
state of everything around him keeps his nervous system in a state of
perpetual agitation, or that he has come thus from the hands of nature,
he always has something to be done, he is always in a terrible hurry.
He is fit for all sorts of work, except those which require slow and
minute processes. The idea of these fills him with horror; it is his
hell. "We are born in haste," says an American writer, "we finish our
education on the run; we marry on the wing; we make a fortune at a
stroke, and lose it in the same manner, to make and lose it again ten
times over, in the twinkling of an eye. Our body is a locomotive, going
at the rate of twentyfive miles an hour; our soul, a high-pressure
engine; our life is like a shooting star, and death overtakes us at
last like a flash of lightning."[CM]
"Work," says American society to the poor man; "work, and at eighteen
years of age, although a mere workman, you shall get more than
a captain in Europe. You shall live in plenty, be well-clothed,
well-lodged, and be able to lay up a part of your earnings. Be
attentive to your work, be sober and religious, and you will find a
devoted and submissive partner of your fortunes; you shall have a more
comfortable home, than many of the higher classes of the commonalty
in Europe. From a journeyman, you will become a master; you will have
apprentices and dependents under you in turn; you shall have credit
without stint; you shall become a manufacturer or agriculturist on
a great scale; you shall speculate and become rich; you shall found
a town and give it your own name; you shall be a member of the
legislature of the State, or alderman of the city, and finally member
of Congress; your son will have as good a chance to be made President
as the son of the President himself. Work, and if the fortune of
business should be against you, and you fall, you will soon be able to
rise again; for a failure is nothing but a wound in battle; it will not
deprive you of the esteem or confidence of any one, if you have always
been prudent and temperate, a good Christian and a faithful husband."
"Work," it says to the rich, "work, and do not stop to think of
enjoying your wealth. You shall increase your income without increasing
your expenses; you shall enlarge your fortune, but it will be only to
increase the sources of labour for the poor, and to extend your power
over the material world. Be simple and severe in your exterior, but at
home you may have the richest carpets, plate in abundance, the finest
linens of Ireland and Saxony; externally your house shall be on the
same model with all the others of the town; you shall have neither
livery nor equipage; you shall not patronise the theatre, which tends
to relax morals; you shall avoid play; you shall sign the articles and
pledges of the Temperance Society; you shall not even indulge in good
cheer; you shall set an example of constant attendance at church; you
shall always show the most profound respect for morals and religion,
for the farmer and mechanic around you have their eyes fixed upon you;
they take you for their pattern, they still acknowledge you to be the
arbiter of manners and customs, although they have taken from you the
political sceptre. If you give yourself up to pleasure, to parade, to
amusement, to dissipation and luxury, they also will give the reins to
their gross appetites and their violent passions. Your country will be
ruined, and you will be ruined with it."
It is possible to imagine various social systems differently organised
but equally favourable, theoretically, to the promotion of industry.
We may imagine a society organised for labour under the influence of
the principle of authority; that is, a society composed of a gradation
of ranks; we may conceive another constituted under the auspices of
the principle of liberty or independence. To organise _a priori_, for
purposes of industry, any given people, it is necessary, under penalty
of engendering a Utopian scheme, to consult the circumstances of its
origin and the condition of its territory, to know whence and how
it has come, and whither it is going. With the people of the United
States, a scion of the English stock, and thoroughly imbued with
Protestantism, the principle of independence, of individualism, of
competition, in fine, could not but be successful. The iron hearts of
the Puritans, the _Ultras_ of Protestantism, could not fail to find
this principle congenial to them. It is owing to this course that the
sons of New England, which was peopled by the _Pilgrims_, have played
the chief part in the occupation of the great valley of the Mississippi.
The civilisation of the West[CN] has sprung from the secret and
silent co-operation of two or three hundred thousand young farmers,
who started, each on his own account, from New England, often alone,
sometimes with a small company of friends. This system would not have
succeeded with Frenchmen. The Yankee alone in the woods, with no
companion but his wife, is all-sufficient for himself. The Frenchman is
eminently social; he could not bear the solitude in which the Yankee
would feel at his ease. The latter, although solitary, becomes excited
by his own plans and eager to accomplish them. The Frenchman cannot
become interested in any industrial enterprise except in connection
with others, whose concurrence with him is evident and palpable, or
rather he rarely becomes interested in any material task, for he
reserves his affections and sympathies for living objects. It is quite
impossible for him to fall in love with a _clearing_, to feel the same
transports at the success of a manufacture as for the safety of a
friend or the happiness of a mistress; but he is capable of applying
himself to the task with ardour, if his characteristic passions, his
thirst for glory and his spirit of emulation, are brought into play
by contact with human beings. If it were proposed, then, to settle
colonies with Frenchmen, it would be necessary to put little reliance
on individual efforts. In all things, as well as in a line of battle,
a Frenchman must feel his neighbour's elbow. Americans might be thrown
separately upon a new land, they would form little centres round which
constantly expanding circles of population and cultivation would grow
up. But if the new settlers were Frenchmen, it would be necessary to
carry with them a society ready constituted, social bonds already
binding them in, or at least a regular social framework, and bolts to
which the social bonds are to be attached; that is, they must have, at
starting, the great circle with its centre strongly marked.
Canada is almost the only colony that has been founded exclusively by
Frenchmen,[CO] and a complete social organisation was carried thither.
The country once explored, the royal fleet landed the _seigneurs_, who
had received fiefs from royal grants, and who were followed by vassals
transplanted from Normandy and Brittany, among whom the lands were
distributed. At the same time an endowed regular and secular clergy,
with ample domains and the right of collecting the tithe, was brought
to the St. Lawrence. Next came traders and companies, to whom was given
the monopoly of the fur-trade and the commerce of the colony. In a
word the three orders, the clergy, nobility, and third estate, were
imported ready made from Old France into New. The only thing which the
colonists left behind them, was the poverty of the greatest number.
The system was a good one for that period; the principle of order and
of ranks, which prevailed under the only form then practicable, was
in keeping with the character of the people. The proof of this is to
be found in the fact, that Canada has flourished under this system in
which the English conquerors have made no changes, and the population
has increased in the bosom of general ease. I have seen nothing which
more completely realised the _aurea mediocritas_, than the pretty
villages on the banks of the St. Lawrence. They do not exhibit the
ambitious prosperity of those of the United States; they are much more
modest than those of the republic; but if there is less show, there is
also more content and happiness. Canada reminded me of Switzerland; it
is the same aspect of calm contentment and quiet happiness. It would
be a subject of admiration were it not by the side of the American
colossus; its rapid growth would attract attention, were it not for
the miraculous expansion of the United States. Neither would it be
right to assert that the progress of Canada has been in spite of the
colonial system; the dispute about the _because_ and the _although_ is
easily settled in this case. All that was burdensome about the original
system remains untouched, and there is no complaint against it. The
seignorial dues, the tithe, the seignorial mill, and the _four banal_,
still exist in full vigour; and do not appear in the interminable list
of ninety-three grievances, lately drawn up by the Canadians.