American society is composed of quite different elements, from those of
which European society in general, and French society in particular,
consists. On analysing the latter, we find, in the first place, the
shadow of an aristocracy, comprising the wrecks of the great families
of the old order that have been saved from the revolutionary storm,
and the descendants of the Imperial nobility, who seem to be already
separated from their fathers by the distance of ages.
Next below this is a numerous body of the Middle Classes
(_bourgeoisie_), consisting of two distinct sets; the one, the active
class, is engaged in commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the
liberal professions; the other, generally designated amongst us as
the _bourgeoisie oisive_, consists of men without active employment,
landholders who derive an income of 500 or 1500 dollars from their
estates, by rents or sharing the produce with the cultivator, without
attempting to increase it, and the small body of holders of public
stock.
These two divisions of the Middle Class differ essentially from each
other, the one labouring, the other only consuming and enjoying what
they have. The one increases its means, and consequently is able
to keep itself above the waves, and maintain, if not to raise, its
level; the other, as M. Lafitte has said, successively transported
by time into one stage of society after another, in each of which
large additions are made to the general wealth, finds itself growing
relatively poorer, and must decrease in numbers. They differ no less
in their origin; the one belongs essentially to the commons; the other
has some pretensions to nobility, it is the offspring, or at least the
heir and successor of the country-gentry. During the period of the
Restoration, they differed also in their political views; the members
of the one class for the most part took the left side, those of the
other preferred the right side. At present, the former accepts the new
dynasty without reluctance; the latter, more difficult to be satisfied
in regard to the preservation of order, and ready to take alarm at
every violation of old established privileges, still preserves a secret
preference for the legitimate line. In respect to religious sentiments,
the latter is sceptical, and prone to believe that the Voltairean
philosophy and the theories broached by the Opposition during the
fifteen years, are the _nec plus ultra_ of the human understanding;
the former, shaken in its faith, still keeps alive the sacred fire of
religious feeling, rejects the disorganising doctrines of the 18th
century, and holds in scorn the lucubrations of the liberal publicists
of the Restoration. The one piques itself on its adherence to the
positive, the material; the other concerns itself about the great
conservative principles of society, but refuses to recognise the new
interests, which must be allowed to share in the privileges of those of
the past.
These two sections of the Middle Class are not wholly and sharply
separated from each other; but they run into and across each other. A
large proportion partakes somewhat of both characters, and joins one
side or the other, according to times and circumstances. Yet, although
often confounded in the same individual, the two interests are,
nevertheless, substantially distinct from each other. The base of the
pyramid is occupied by the peasants and operatives, divided into two
sections; the one of which has become possessed of property, the other
has not yet reached that point but aspires after it with eagerness. On
one side, we have the mechanics and small proprietors; on the other,
the labourers. It is universally acknowledged that the Middle Class, at
present, rules in France. The aristocracy is driven from power or keeps
itself aloof. The mechanics and small proprietors hardly yet begin to
raise their heads. The labourers are nothing.
In the Northern States of the American Union, society is much less
complex in its composition, than in France. Exclusive of the coloured
caste, there are here only two classes; the middle class and the
democracy. Of the two conflicting interests, one only has a public
existence here; it is labour. The Middle Class consists of the
manufacturers, merchants, lawyers, physicians. A small number of
cultivators, and persons devoted to letters or the fine arts, is to be
added to these.
The democracy is composed of the farmers and mechanics. In general,
the cultivator is the owner of the soil; in the West, this rule is
without exceptions. Great landholders do not exist, at least as a
class, in the North and the Northwest. There is strictly speaking no
class of mere labourers; for although there are day-labourers, and
both in the cities and country many workmen without capital, yet these
are in fact apprentices, for the most part foreigners, who become
in turn proprietors and master-workmen, and not unfrequently rich
manufacturers, wealthy speculators.
Between these two classes there is, however, no line of demarcation,
for the attempts of some coteries to establish certain fashionable
distinctions do not deserve notice, or at least are only of a negative
value, as timid and often absurd protestations against the abuse of
equality. The two classes have the same domestic habits, and lead the
same life, and differ considerably only in respect of the sect to which
they are attached, and the pews they occupy. The relations which
exist at present between the wealthy _bourgeoisie_ and the wrecks of
the aristocracy in France, give an accurate notion of the relative
condition of the two classes of American Society.
Political influence is, at present, entirely in the hands of the
American democracy, as with us it is monopolised by the Middle Classes.
The latter have no chance of getting possession of power in the United
States, except temporarily, or by means of accidental divisions in
the democratic ranks, when they may rally to their standard a portion
of the farmers and mechanics, as happened in 1834, after General
Jackson's attack on the Bank. So in France, it will be impossible for
the aristocracy to raise, not its own banner (for it has none), but
that of the legitimate line, unless the folly of the government should
excite new troubles, and inspire the Middle Class, who now support it
heartily, with fears for the public security.
In the Southern States, the existence of slavery produces quite a
different state of society, from that of the North; half of the
population there consists of mere labourers in the strictest sense,
that is of slaves. Slavery necessarily requires great estates, which
in fact, form aristocracy. Great estates still continue to be held in
the South, notwithstanding the custom of equal partition has very much
narrowed them.
Between these two extremes in the South, an intermediate class has
sprung up, consisting, like our Middle Class, of the workingmen and
the men of leisure, the new interest and the old interest. Commerce,
manufactures, and the liberal professions, on one side; on the other,
the landholders, corresponding to our moderate country landholders,
living on their estates by the sweat of their slaves, having no taste
for work, not prepared for it by education, and even taking little
oversight of the daily business of the plantation; men who would be
incapable of applying themselves to any occupation if slavery were
abolished, just as our proprietors would be unable to get a living, if
they were to be deprived of their estates.
It is plain that the equal partition of estates must have tended to
increase the number of this class of men of leisure; it is numerous
in the old Southern States, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and
also in Louisiana; the check which these States at first experienced
in their career, whilst the North was advancing without let, and the
contemporaneous increase of this class, are two correlative facts,
which account for each other. But we do not find this class in the
new States of the South. The new generation there, as in the North,
devoured with the passion of making money, has become as industrious
as the Yankees. The cultivation of cotton offers it a wide field of
activity; in Alabama and Mississippi, the cotton lands are sold at a
very low price. The internal slave-trade furnishes hands in abundance,
which are easily procured on credit when one has friends, but no
patrimony. The sons of the old Southern States, instead of vegetating
on a fragment of the paternal estate, with a handful of negroes, sell
off their property at home, extend their means by aid of a loan, which
they are sure of being able to repay promptly, and go to the Southwest,
to establish a a cotton-plantation, a sort of agricultural manufactory,
in which they are obliged to exercise more or less of the activity, and
to feel more or less of the hopes and fears of a manufacturer.
Thus the class which works little or not at all, is disappearing in the
United States. In the Western States, which are the true New World, it
no longer exists at all, in the North or in the South; you meet with no
one there who is not engaged in agriculture, commerce, manufactures,
the liberal professions, or the clerical office. The United States,
then, differ from us in having no aristocracy, no idle Middle Class, no
class of mere labourers, at the least in the North. But a distinction
should be made in regard to the absence of these three classes; for
while it may be admitted that the two last are absolutely becoming
extinct, it would be more correct to say that the first has not yet
begun to exist.
Civilisation, in its passage from one continent to the other, has,
then, got rid of two classes. This twofold disappearance is, however,
only a single phenomenon, or, at most, two phases of a single fact, the
industrial progress of mankind. It seems to me to be inevitable, that,
in this matter, the Old World should follow the example of the New; it
moves towards the same end under the influence of peculiar causes, and
it is irresistibly driven onward by what is commonly called the force
of events, that is, by the decree of providence.
There is a rule superior to all social conventions, codes of
legislation, or systems of jurisprudence; it is, that when a class has
ceased to take part in the workings of society, its doom is pronounced;
it cannot preserve its privileges, unless the march of civilisation
comes to a stand, and it is kept stationary, as it was in Rome from
Augustus to Constantine; but when the column again sets forward, those
who will not serve as soldiers, and are unfit to be officers, those who
can do duty neither in the ranks nor in command, who can act neither
in the tent nor the field, all these are abandoned as stragglers,
and their names are struck from the roll. The law is inflexible and
unsparing; no human power can rescue those whom it condemns from their
doom; they only can save themselves, by taking part in the general
movement.
This explains the annihilation of the aristocracy of the nobility in
France. Between it and royalty, as between royalty and the English
aristocracy, there was a long struggle, but the results were as
different as the characters of the nations. In France, monarchical
unity triumphed; Louis XI. struck down the aristocracy; Richelieu
muzzled it; Louis XIV. obliged it to wear the collar. Thus reduced in
a political point of view, it was left in possession of the field of
taste and art, which it devoted to the promotion of irreligion and
corruption of manners. When, therefore, it was weighed in 1789, it was
found wanting; the decree of destiny had gone forth, and the revolution
executed it with a cannibal ferocity. The unhappy aristocracy
remembered its lofty nature only at the point of death; it mounted the
scaffold with dignity.
For the same reason, the idle portion of the Middle Class tends towards
its fall, for it accomplishes no purpose, which cannot be effected
without it. It does not enrich society by its labour, although it lays
claim to be reckoned in the number of producers, under the pretext that
it holds the soil and exercises a sort of superintendence over its
cultivation. The truth is, that it is wholly ignorant of agriculture;
it has received by tradition a certain routine, but the peasantry is as
fully possessed of the tradition, and needs no teachers on that matter.
The proprietor is sometimes, indeed, paid in kind by the peasant, and
then sells the grain himself; but the peasant could easily attend to
that business, and would manage it quite as well as his landlord.
Neither does this class serve as the representative of knowledge;
for in this respect, its acquisitions are limited to a little polite
literature, an agreeable accomplishment surely, but not answering to
the wants and spirit of the age.
Where a nobility exists and maintains its prerogatives, as in England,
it performs a twofold office. In the first place, it devotes itself
to the most difficult of all arts, that of governing men, and in this
it excels; whether because it cultivates it by the traditions of
experience, or because it vigilantly recruits its ranks by enlisting
in them such men as have already proved their superiour knowledge of
the different interests of society. This reason cannot be urged by
our idle Middle Class as an argument for its preservation; for it is
notoriously ignorant of the science of government.
The second office of a nobility, not less essential than the first in
our polished age, is to serve as a pattern and example in the art of
living, to teach the art of consuming, without which that of producing
procures only partial and illusive gratification, and to encourage the
fine arts. On this head nothing can be said in favour of the class
alluded to. It excels neither in grace, nor elegance, nor address. The
importance which it has acquired by the destruction of the aristocracy,
has been fatal to the old French politeness, to that exquisite courtesy
on which our fathers prided themselves. Within the last fifty years,
whilst the English have been improving in this respect, much more
successfully than their stiff and unpliant humour seemed to promise, we
have forgotten much and unlearned much, under the controlling influence
of our Middle Class.
As for the art of consuming with grace and living well, and that care
of the person, the only fraction of which that they can be sensible
to, the English call comfort, our Middle Class has lessons to learn,
but none to give. It is not, however, the fault of nature; for no
people has received finer and acuter senses than ours. Surely, our
nerves are more sensitive, our ear and our palate more delicate than
those of the English. Our superiority on these points, is attested
by the fact, that, from one end of the world to the other, we are in
possession of most of the trades which relate to the person; the office
of cook, head-dresser, dancing-master, valet, or tailor, is everywhere
monopolised by the French. But to surround oneself with the English
comfort, and that more refined comfort which we can conceive of, one
must be rich. Now our Middle Class is poor, and politically considered
this is one of its greatest faults; it grows poorer daily, either by
the operation of the law which commands the equal partition of estates,
or of that idleness which condemns it to a stationary income, whilst
public wealth and luxury are increasing all around it. It cannot,
therefore, encourage the fine arts, for the patronage of the arts is
costly; besides taste is growing rare in France since the fall of the
aristocracy.
Nor can it be affirmed that the unemployed Middle Class in France
represents the element of order, and that if it were to disappear,
France itself would perish in frightful convulsions. For the labouring
class is already ripe for a better state of society, and requires only
the advantages of instruction, and of more favourable terms and more
numerous opportunities for industry, to be in a condition to exercise
all the rights of a citizen as usefully as the greater portion of the
Middle Class. And even if the latter represents in whole or in part
the element of order, it is only by the aid and the instrumentality
of four hundred thousand bayonets, exclusive of those of the Middle
Class itself, and thus it retains its predominance only by opposing the
multitude to the multitude; a critical and dangerous position, which
cannot long be held, for the very bayonets are beginning to become
intelligent.
The _bourgeoisie oisive_ has, then, only one course to take; that
is, to pass into the ranks of the working men, to fit themselves to
become the leaders of the people in its labours. When this is done,
our fields, which belong especially to their domain, will change their
aspect as if by enchantment, and our peasants, who, it cannot be too
often repeated, at present form the poorest and most numerous class in
France, will be raised to a better condition, of which they are worthy.
The idle Middle Class must now become with the government, to which the
first step in all great projects of improvement belong, responsible
for the progress of twentyfive millions of agricultural labourers.
In this change it has every thing to gain itself. By this means it will
maintain and confirm its own social rank, for it will thus recover the
confidence of the multitude, and will turn its superiority to a good
account by exercising a beneficent patronage towards its inferiors. It
will exchange a straitened condition for competency or even wealth,
and the tedium of a life of inaction for the satisfaction of having
done well, the consciousness of having faithfully performed a great
duty. This honourable desertion of the standard of idleness for that
of industry is now going forward daily. Let us rejoice at it: let
us pray that it may speedily become universal. Let us especially
urge government to accelerate it, by encouraging the development of
industry, by all the means and aids that can improve the condition
and resources of agriculture, and inspire the young generation with a
desire to devote themselves to this first of arts.