PRINCIPAL CAUSES WHICH TEND TO MAINTAIN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN THE
UNITED STATES.
A democratic republic subsists in the United States; and the principal
object of this book has been to account for the fact of its existence.
Several of the causes which contribute to maintain the institutions of
America have been voluntarily passed by, or only hinted at, as I was
borne along by my subject. Others I have been unable to discuss and
those on which I have dwelt most, are, as it were, buried in the details
of the former part of this work.
I think, therefore, that before I proceed to speak of the future, I
cannot do better than collect within a small compass the reasons which
best explain the present. In this retrospective chapter I shall be
succinct; for I shall take care to remind the reader very summarily of
what he already knows; and I shall only select the most prominent of
those facts which I have not yet pointed out.
All the causes which contribute to the maintenance of the democratic
republic in the United States are reducible to three heads:
I. The peculiar and accidental situation in which Providence has placed
the Americans.
II. The laws.
III. The manners and customs of the people.
* * * * *
ACCIDENTAL OR PROVIDENTIAL CAUSES WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO THE MAINTENANCE OF
THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN THE UNITED STATES.
The Union has no Neighbors.--No Metropolis.--The Americans have had the
Chances of Birth in their favor.--America an empty country.--How this
circumstance contributes powerfully to the Maintenance of the democratic
Republic in America.--How the American Wilds are Peopled.--Avidity of
the Anglo-Americans in taking Possession of the Solitudes of the New
World.--Influence of physical Prosperity upon the political Opinions of
the Americans.
A thousand circumstances, independent of the will of man, concur to
facilitate the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United
States. Some of these peculiarities are known, the others may easily
be pointed out; but I shall confine myself to the most prominent among
them.
The Americans have no neighbors, and consequently they have no great
wars, or financial crises, or inroads, or conquests to dread; they
require neither great taxes, nor great armies, nor great generals; and
they have nothing to fear from a scourge which is more formidable to
republics than all these evils combined, namely, military glory. It
is impossible to deny the inconceivable influence which military
glory exercises upon the spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the
Americans have twice elected to be the head of their government, is a
man of violent temper and mediocre talents; no one circumstance in the
whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a
free people; and indeed the majority of the enlightened classes of
the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was raised to the
presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty station, solely by the
recollection of a victory which he gained, twenty years ago, under the
walls of New Orleans; a victory which was, however, a very ordinary
achievement, and which could only be remembered in a country where
battles are rare. Now the people who are thus carried away by the
illusions of glory, are unquestionably the most cold and calculating,
the most unmilitary (if I may use the expression), and the most prosaic
of all the peoples of the earth.
America has no great capital city,[199] whose influence is directly or
indirectly felt over the whole extent of the country, which I hold to be
one of the first causes of the maintenance of republican institutions
in the United States. In cities, men cannot be prevented from concerting
together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts
sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large
assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace
exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently
executes its own wishes without their intervention.
To subject the provinces to the metropolis, is therefore not only
to place the destiny of the empire in the hands of a portion of the
community, which may be reprobated as unjust, but to place it in the
hands of a populace acting under its own impulses, which must be avoided
as dangerous. The preponderance of capital cities is therefore a serious
blow upon the representative system; and it exposes modern republics to
the same defect as the republics of antiquity, which all perished from
not being acquainted with that system.
It would be easy for me to adduce a great number of secondary causes
which have contributed to establish, and which concur to maintain, the
democratic republic of the United States. But I discern two principal
circumstances among these favorable elements, which I hasten to point
out. I have already observed that the origin of the American settlements
may be looked upon as the first and most efficacious cause to which the
present prosperity of the United States may be attributed. The Americans
had the chances of birth in their favor; and their forefathers imported
that equality of conditions into the country, whence the democratic
republic has very naturally taken its rise. Nor was this all they did;
for besides this republican condition of society, the early settlers
bequeathed to their descendants those customs, manners, and opinions,
which contribute most to the success of a republican form of government.
When I reflect upon the consequences of this primary circumstance,
methinks I see the destiny of America embodied in the first puritan who
landed on those shores, just as the human race was represented by the
first man.
The chief circumstance which has favored the establishment and the
maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States, is the nature
of the territory which the Americans inhabit. Their ancestors gave them
the love of equality and of freedom: but God himself gave them the means
of remaining equal and free, by placing them upon a boundless continent,
which is open to their exertions. General prosperity is favorable to
the stability of all governments, but more particularly of a democratic
constitution, which depends upon the disposition of the majority, and
more particularly of that portion of the community which is most exposed
to feel the pressure of want. When the people rules, it must be rendered
happy, or it will overturn the state: and misery is apt to stimulate it
to those excesses to which ambition rouses kings. The physical causes,
independent of the laws, which contribute to promote general prosperity,
are more numerous in America than they have ever been in any other
country in the world, at any other period of history. In the United
States, not only is legislation democratic, but nature herself favors
the cause of the people.
In what part of human tradition can be found anything at all similar to
that which is occurring under our eyes in North America? The celebrated
communities of antiquity were all founded in the midst of hostile
nations, which they were obliged to subjugate before they could flourish
in their place. Even the moderns have found, in some parts of South
America, vast regions inhabited by a people of inferior civilisation,
but which occupied and cultivated the soil. To found their new states,
it was necessary to extirpate or to subdue a numerous population, until
civilisation has been made to blush for their success. But North America
was only inhabited by wandering tribes, who took no thought of the
natural riches of the soil: and that vast country was still, properly
speaking, an empty continent, a desert land awaiting its inhabitants.
Everything is extraordinary in America, the social condition of
the inhabitants, as well as the laws; but the soil upon which these
institutions are founded is more extraordinary than all the rest. When
man was first placed upon the earth by the Creator, that earth was
inexhaustible in its youth; but man was weak and ignorant: and when he
had learned to explore the treasures which it contained, hosts of his
fellow-creatures covered its surface, and he was obliged to earn an
asylum for repose and for freedom by the sword. At that same period
North America was discovered, as if it had been kept in reserve by the
Deity, and had just risen from beneath the waters of the deluge.
That continent still presents, as it did in the primeval time, rivers
which rise from never-failing sources, green and moist solitudes, and
fields which the ploughshare of the husbandman has never turned. In this
state it is offered to man, not in the barbarous and isolated condition
of the early ages, but to a being who is already in possession of
the most potent secrets of the natural world, who is united to his
fellow-men, and instructed by the experience of fifty centuries. At
this very time thirteen millions of civilized Europeans are peaceably
spreading over those fertile plains, with whose resources and whose
extent they are not yet accurately acquainted. Three or four thousand
soldiers drive the wandering races of the aborigines before them; these
are followed by the pioneers, who pierce the woods, scare off the beasts
of prey, explore the courses of the inland streams, and make ready the
triumphal procession of civilisation across the waste.
The favorable influence of the temporal prosperity of America upon the
institutions of that country has been so often described by others,
and adverted to by myself, that I shall not enlarge upon it beyond the
addition of a few facts. An erroneous notion is generally entertained,
that the deserts of America are peopled by European emigrants, who
annually disembark upon the coasts of the New World, while the American
population increases and multiplies upon the soil which its forefathers
tilled. The European settler, however, usually arrives in the United
States without friends, and sometimes without resources; in order to
subsist he is obliged to work for hire, and he rarely proceeds beyond
that belt of industrious population which adjoins the ocean. The desert
cannot be explored without capital or credit, and the body must be
accustomed to the rigors of a new climate before it can be exposed to
the chances of forest life. It is the Americans themselves who daily
quit the spots which gave them birth, to acquire extensive domains in
a remote country. Thus the European leaves his country for the
transatlantic shores; and the American, who is born on that very coast,
plunges into the wilds of central America. This double emigration is
incessant: it begins in the remotest parts of Europe, it crosses the
Atlantic ocean, and it advances over the solitudes of the New World.
Millions of men are marching at once toward the same horizon; their
language, their religion, their manners differ, their object is the
same. The gifts of fortune are promised in the west, and to the west
they bend their course.
No event can be compared with this continuous removal of the human race,
except perhaps those irruptions which preceded the fall of the Roman
Empire. Then, as well as now, generations of men were impelled forward
in the same direction to meet and struggle on the same spot; but the
designs of Providence were not the same; then, every new comer was the
harbinger of destruction and of death; now, every adventurer brings with
him the elements of prosperity and of life. The future still conceals
from us the ulterior consequences of this emigration of the American
toward the west; but we can hardly apprehend its more immediate results.
As a portion of the inhabitants annually leave the states in which
they were born, the population of these states increases very slowly,
although they have long been established: thus in Connecticut, which
only contains 59 inhabitants to the square mile, the population has not
been increased by more than one quarter in forty years, while that of
England has been augmented by one third in the lapse of the same period.
The European emigrant always lands, therefore, in a country which is but
half full, and where hands are in request: he becomes a workman in easy
circumstances; his son goes to seek his fortune in unpeopled regions,
and he becomes a rich landowner. The former amasses the capital
which the latter invests, and the stranger as well as the native is
unacquainted with want.
The laws of the United States are extremely favorable to the division
of property; but a cause which is more powerful than the laws prevents
property from being divided to excess.[200] This is very perceptible in
the states which are beginning to be thickly peopled; Massachusetts is
the most populous part of the Union, but it contains only 80 inhabitants
to the square mile, which is much less than in France, where 162 are
reckoned to the same extent of country. But in Massachusetts estates are
very rarely divided; the eldest son takes the land, and the others go
to seek their fortune in the desert. The law has abolished the right of
primogeniture, but circumstances have concurred to re-establish it
under a form of which none can complain, and by which no just rights are
impaired.
A single fact will suffice to show the prodigious number of individuals
who leave New England, in this manner, to settle themselves in the
wilds. We were assured in 1830, that thirty-six of the members of
congress were born in the little state of Connecticut. The population of
Connecticut, which constitutes only one forty-third part of that of
the United States, thus furnished one-eighth of the whole body of
representatives. The state of Connecticut, however, only sends five
delegates to congress; and the thirty-one others sit for the new western
states. If these thirty-one individuals had remained in Connecticut,
it is probable that instead of becoming rich landowners they would
have remained humble laborers, that they would have lived in obscurity
without being able to rise into public life, and that, far from becoming
useful members of the legislature, they might have been unruly citizens.
These reflections do not escape the observation of the Americans any
more than of ourselves. "It cannot be doubted," says Chancellor Kent in
his Treatise on American Law, "that the division of landed estates must
produce great evils when it is carried to such excess that each parcel
of land is insufficient to support a family; but these disadvantages
have never been felt in the United States, and many generations must
elapse before they can be felt. The extent of our inhabited territory,
the abundance of adjacent land, and the continual stream of emigration
flowing from the shores of the Atlantic toward the interior of
the country, suffice as yet, and will long suffice, to prevent the
parcelling out of estates."
It is difficult to describe the rapacity with which the American rushes
forward to secure the immense booty which fortune proffers to him.
In the pursuit he fearlessly braves the arrow of the Indian and the
distempers of the forest; he is unimpressed by the silence of the woods;
the approach of beasts of prey does not disturb him; for he is goaded
onward by a passion more intense than the love of life. Before him lies
a boundless continent, and he urges onward as if time pressed, and he
was afraid of finding no room for his exertions. I have spoken of the
emigration from the older states, but how shall I describe that which
takes place from the more recent ones? Fifty years have scarcely elapsed
since that of Ohio was founded; the greater part of its inhabitants were
not born within its confines; its capital has only been built thirty
years, and its territory is still covered by an immense extent of
uncultivated fields; nevertheless, the population of Ohio is already
proceeding westward, and most of the settlers who descend to the fertile
savannahs of Illinois are citizens of Ohio. These men left their first
country to improve their condition; they quit their resting-place to
meliorate it still more; fortune awaits them everywhere, but happiness
they cannot attain. The desire of prosperity has become an ardent and
restless passion in their minds, which grows by what it gains. They
early broke the ties which bound them to their natal earth, and they
have contracted no fresh ones on their way. Emigration was at first
necessary to them as a means of subsistence; and it soon becomes a sort
of game of chance, which they pursue for the emotions it excites, as
much as for the gain it procures.
Sometimes the progress of man is so rapid that the desert reappears
behind him. The woods stoop to give him a passage, and spring up again
when he has passed. It is not uncommon in crossing the new states of
the west to meet with deserted dwellings in the midst of the wilds; the
traveller frequently discovers the vestiges of a log-house in the most
solitary retreats, which bear witness to the power, and no less to the
inconstancy of man. In these abandoned fields, and over those ruins of
a day, the primeval forest soon scatters a fresh vegetation; the beasts
resume the haunts which were once their own; and nature covers the
traces of man's path with branches and with flowers, which obliterate
his evanescent track.
I remember that in crossing one of the woodland districts which still
cover the state of New York, I reached the shore of a lake, which was
embosomed with forests coeval with the world. A small island, covered
with woods, whose thick foliage concealed its banks, rose from the
centre of the waters. Upon the shores of the lake no object attested
the presence of man, except a column of smoke which might be seen on the
horizon rising from the tops of the trees to the clouds, and seeming
to hang from heaven rather than to be mounting to the sky. An Indian
shallop was hauled up on the sand, which tempted me to visit the islet
that had at first attracted my attention, and in a few minutes I set
foot upon its banks. The whole island formed one of those delicious
solitudes of the New World, which almost lead civilized man to regret
the haunts of the savage. A luxuriant vegetation bore witness to the
incomparable fruitfulness of the soil. The deep silence, which is common
to the wilds of North America, was only broken by the hoarse cooing
of the wood-pigeon and the tapping of the woodpecker upon the bark of
trees. I was far from supposing that this spot had ever been inhabited,
so completely did nature seem to be left to her own caprices; but when
I reached the centre of the isle I thought that I discovered some traces
of man. I then proceeded to examine the surrounding objects with care,
and I soon perceived that an European had undoubtedly been led to seek a
refuge in this retreat. Yet what changes had taken place in the scene of
his labors! The logs which he had hastily hewn to build himself a
shed had sprouted afresh; the very props were intertwined with living
verdure, and his cabin was transformed into a bower. In the midst of
these shrubs a few stones were to be seen, blackened with fire and
sprinkled with thin ashes; here the hearth had no doubt been, and the
chimney in falling had covered it with rubbish. I stood for some time in
silent admiration of the exuberance of nature and the littleness of man;
and when I was obliged to leave that enchanting solitude, I exclaimed
with melancholy, "Are ruins, then, already here?"
In Europe we are wont to look upon a restless disposition, an unbounded
desire of riches, and an excessive love of independence, as propensities
very formidable to society. Yet these are the very elements which ensure
a long and peaceful duration to the republics of America. Without these
unquiet passions the population would collect in certain spots, and
would soon be subject to wants like those of the Old World, which it is
difficult to satisfy; for such is the present good fortune of the New
World, that the vices of its inhabitants are scarcely less favorable
to society than their virtues. These circumstances exercise a great
influence on the estimation in which human actions are held in the two
hemispheres. The Americans frequently term what we should call cupidity
a laudable industry; and they blame as faint-heartedness what we
consider to be the virtue of moderate desires.
In France simple tastes, orderly manners, domestic affections, and the
attachment which men feel to the place of their birth, are looked upon
as great guarantees of the tranquillity and happiness of the state. But
in America nothing seems to be more prejudicial to society than these
virtues. The French Canadians, who have faithfully preserved the
traditions of their pristine manners, are already embarrassed for room
upon their small territory; and this little community, which has so
recently begun to exist, will shortly be a prey to the calamities
incident to old nations. In Canada the most enlightened, patriotic,
and humane inhabitants, make extraordinary efforts to render the people
dissatisfied with those simple enjoyments which still content it. There
the seductions of wealth are vaunted with as much zeal, as the charms
of an honest but limited income in the Old World: and more exertions
are made to excite the passions of the citizens there than to calm them
elsewhere. If we listen to the eulogies, we shall hear that nothing is
more praiseworthy than to exchange the pure and homely pleasures which
even the poor man tastes in his own country, for the dull delights of
prosperity under a foreign sky; to leave the patrimonial hearth, and
the turf beneath which his forefathers sleep; in short, to abandon the
living and the dead in quest of fortune.
At the present time America presents a field for human effort, far more
extensive than any sum of labor which can be applied to work it. In
America, too much knowledge cannot be diffused; for all knowledge, while
it may serve him who possesses it, turns also to the advantage of those
who are without it. New wants are not to be feared, since they can be
satisfied without difficulty; the growth of human passions need not be
dreaded, since all passions may find an easy and a legitimate object:
nor can men be put in possession of too much freedom, since they are
scarcely ever tempted to misuse their liberties.
The American republics of the present day are like companies of
adventurers, formed to explore in common the waste lands of the New
World, and busied in a flourishing trade. The passions which agitate
the Americans most deeply, are not their political, but their commercial
passions; or, to speak more correctly, they introduce the habits they
contract in business into their political life. They love order, without
which affairs do not prosper; and they set an especial value upon a
regular conduct, which is the foundation of a solid business; they
prefer the good sense which amasses large fortunes, to that enterprising
spirit which frequently dissipates them; general ideas alarm their
minds, which are accustomed to positive calculations; and they hold
practice in more honor than theory.
It is in America that one learns to understand the influence which
physical prosperity exercises over political actions, and even over
opinions which ought to acknowledge no sway but that of reason; and it
is more especially among strangers that this truth is perceptible. Most
of the European emigrants to the New World carry with them that wild
love of independence and of change, which our calamities are apt to
engender. I sometimes met with Europeans, in the United States, who had
been obliged to leave their own country on account of their political
opinions. They all astonished me by the language they held; but one of
them surprised me more than all the rest. As I was crossing one of the
most remote districts of Pennsylvania, I was benighted, and obliged
to beg for hospitality at the gate of a wealthy planter, who was a
Frenchman by birth. He bade me sit down beside his fire, and we began to
talk with that freedom which befits persons who meet in the backwoods,
two thousand leagues from their native country. I was aware that my host
had been a great leveller and an ardent demagogue, forty years ago,
and that his name was not unknown to fame. I was therefore not a little
surprised to hear him discuss the rights of property as an economist or
a landowner might have done: he spoke of the necessary gradations which
fortune established among men, of obedience to established laws, of
the influence of good morals in commonwealths, and of the support which
religious opinions give to order and to freedom; he even went so far
as to quote an evangelical authority in corroboration of one of his
political tenets.
I listened, and marvelled at the feebleness of human reason. A
proposition is true or false, but no art can prove it to be one or the
other, in the midst of the uncertainties of science and the conflicting
lessons of experience, until a new incident disperses the clouds of
doubt; I was poor, I become rich; and I am not to expect that prosperity
will act upon my conduct, and leave my judgment free: my opinions
change with my fortune, and the happy circumstances which I turn to
my advantage, furnish me with that decisive argument which was before
wanting.
[The sentence beginning "I was poor, I become rich," &c, struck the
editor, on perusal, as obscure, if not contradictory. The original seems
more explicit, and justice to the author seems to require that it should
be presented to the reader. "J'étais pauvre, me voici riche; du moins,
si le bien-être, en agissant sur ma conduite, laissait mon jugement en
liberté! Mais non, mes opinions sont en effet changées avec ma fortune,
et, dans l'événement heureux dont je profite, j'ai réellement découvert
la raison déterminante qui jusque-là m'avait manqué."--_American
Editor_.]
The influence of prosperity acts still more freely upon the American
than upon strangers. The American has always seen the connexion of
public order and public prosperity, intimately united as they are, go on
before his eyes; he does not conceive that one can subsist without the
other; he has therefore nothing to forget: nor has he, like so many
Europeans, to unlearn the lessons of his early education.
* * * * *
INFLUENCE OF THE LAWS UPON THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN
THE UNITED STATES.
Three principal Causes of the Maintenance of the democratic
Republic.--Federal Constitutions.--Municipal Institutions.--Judicial
Power.
The principal aim of this book has been to make known the laws of the
United States; if this purpose has been accomplished, the reader is
already enabled to judge for himself which are the laws that really tend
to maintain the democratic republic, and which endanger its existence.
If I have not succeeded in explaining this in the whole course of my
work, I cannot hope to do so within the limits of a single chapter. It
is not my intention to retrace the path I have already pursued; and
a very few lines will suffice to recapitulate what I have previously
explained.
Three circumstances seem to me to contribute most powerfully to the
maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States.
The first is that federal form of government which the Americans have
adopted, and which enables the Union to combine the power of a great
empire with the security of a small state;--
The second consists in those municipal institutions which limit the
despotism of the majority, and at the same time impart a taste for
freedom, and a knowledge of the art of being free, to the people;--
The third is to be met with in the constitution of the judicial power.
I have shown in what manner the courts of justice serve to repress the
excesses of democracy; and how they check and direct the impulses of the
majority, without stopping its activity.
* * * * *
INFLUENCE OF MANNERS UPON THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN
THE UNITED STATES.
I have previously remarked that the manners of the people may be
considered as one of the general causes to which the maintenance of a
democratic republic in the United States is attributable. I here use the
word _manners_, with the meaning which the ancients attached to the word
_mores_; for I apply it not only to manners, in their proper sense of
what constitutes the character of social intercourse, but I extend it to
the various notions and opinions current among men, and to the mass
of those ideas which constitute their character of mind. I comprise,
therefore, under this term the whole moral and intellectual condition of
a people. My intention is not to draw a picture of American manners,
but simply to point out such features of them as are favorable to the
maintenance of political institutions.
* * * * *
RELIGION CONSIDERED AS A POLITICAL INSTITUTION, WHICH POWERFULLY
CONTRIBUTES TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AMONG THE
AMERICANS.
North America peopled by Men who professed a democratic and republican
Christianity.--Arrival of the Catholics.--For what Reason the Catholics
form the most democratic and the most republican Class at the present
Time.
Every religion is to be found in juxtaposition to a political opinion,
which is connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left
to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual
institutions of society upon one uniform principle; and man will
endeavor, if I may use the expression, to harmonize the state in which
he lives upon earth, with the state he believes to await him in heaven.
The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who, after
having shaken off the authority of the pope, acknowledged no other
religious supremacy: they brought with them into the New World a form
of Christianity, which I cannot better describe, than by styling it a
democratic and republican religion. This sect contributed powerfully to
the establishment of a democracy and a republic; and from the earliest
settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion contracted an
alliance which has never been dissolved.
About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a catholic population into
the United States; on the other hand, the catholics of America made
proselytes, and at the present moment more than a million of Christians,
professing the truths of the church of Rome, are to be met with in
the Union. These catholics are faithful to the observances of their
religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of
their doctrines. Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and
the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States;
and although this fact may surprise the observer at first, the cause by
which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon reflection.
I think that the catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as
the natural enemy of democracy. Among the various sects of Christians,
catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are
most favorable to the equality of conditions. In the catholic church,
the religious community is composed of only two elements; the priest and
the people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, and all
below him are equal.
On doctrinal points the catholic faith places all human capacities upon
the same level; it subjects the wise and the ignorant, the man of genius
and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes
the same observances upon the rich and needy, it inflicts the same
austerities upon the strong and the weak, it listens to no compromises
with mortal man, but reducing all the human race to the same standard,
it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same
altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If catholicism
predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare
them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of protestantism,
which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render them
equal.
Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy; if the sovereign be removed,
all the other classes of society are more equal than they are in
republics. It has not unfrequently occurred that the catholic priest
has left the service of the altar to mix with the governing powers of
society, and to make his place among the civil gradations of men. This
religious influence has sometimes been used to secure the interests
of that political state of things to which he belonged. At other times
catholics have taken the side of aristocracy from a spirit of religion.
But no sooner is the priesthood entirely separated from the government,
as is the case in the United States, than it is found that no class
of men are more naturally disposed than the catholics to transfuse the
doctrine of the equality of conditions into the political world. If,
then, the catholic citizens of the United States are not forcibly led
by the nature of their tenets to adopt democratic and republican
principles, at least they are not necessarily opposed to them; and their
social position, as well as their limited number, obliges them to adopt
these opinions. Most of the catholics are poor, and they have no
chance of taking a part in the government unless it be open to all the
citizens. They constitute a minority, and all rights must be respected
in order to ensure to them the free exercise of their own privileges.
These two causes induce them, unconsciously, to adopt political
doctrines which they would perhaps support with less zeal if they were
rich and preponderant.
The catholic clergy of the United States has never attempted to oppose
this political tendency; but it seeks rather to justify its results. The
priests in America have divided the intellectual world into two parts:
in the one they place the doctrines of revealed religion, which command
their assent; in the other they leave those truths, which they believe
to have been freely left open to the researches of political inquiry.
Thus the catholics of the United States are at the same time the most
faithful believers and the most zealous citizens.
It may be asserted that in the United States no religious doctrine
displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican
institutions. The clergy of all the different sects holds the same
language; their opinions are consonant to the laws, and the human
intellect flows onward in one sole current.
I happened to be staying in one of the largest towns in the Union, when
I was invited to attend a public meeting which had been called for the
purpose of assisting the Poles, and of sending them supplies of arms and
money. I found two or three thousand persons collected in a vast hall
which had been prepared to receive them. In a short time a priest in
his ecclesiastical robes advanced to the front of the hustings: the
spectators rose, and stood uncovered, while he spoke in the following
terms:--
"Almighty God! the God of armies! Thou who didst strengthen the hearts
and guide the arms of our fathers when they were fighting for the sacred
rights of national independence; thou who didst make them triumph over
a hateful oppression, and hast granted to our people the benefits
of liberty and peace; turn, O Lord, a favorable eye upon the other
hemisphere; pitifully look down upon that heroic nation which is even
now struggling as we did in the former time, and for the same rights
which we defended with our blood. Thou, who didst create man in the
likeness of the same image, let no tyranny mar thy work, and establish
inequality upon the earth. Almighty God! do thou watch over the destiny
of the Poles, and render them worthy to be free. May thy wisdom direct
their councils, and may thy strength sustain their arms! Shed forth thy
terror over their enemies; scatter the powers which take counsel against
them; and vouchsafe that the injustice which the world has beheld for
fifty years, be not consummated in our time. O Lord, who holdest alike
the hearts of nations and of men in thy powerful hand, raise up allies
to the sacred cause of right; arouse the French nation from the apathy
in which its rulers retain it, that it go forth again to fight for the
liberties of the world.
"Lord, turn not thou thy face from us, and grant that we may always be
the most religious as well as the freest people of the earth. Almighty
God, hear our supplications this day. Save the Poles, we beseech thee,
in the name of thy well beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died
upon the cross for the salvation of men. Amen."
The whole meeting responded "Amen!" with devotion.
* * * * *
INDIRECT INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS UPON POLITICAL SOCIETY IN THE
UNITED STATES.
Christian Morality common to all Sects.--Influence of Religion upon the
Manners of the Americans.--Respect for the marriage Tie.--In what
manner Religion confines the Imagination of the Americans within certain
Limits, and checks the Passion of Innovation.--Opinion of the Americans
on the political Utility of Religion.--Their Exertions to extend and
secure its Predominance.
I have just shown what the direct influence of religion upon politics
is in the United States; but its indirect influence appears to me to be
still more considerable, and it never instructs the Americans more fully
in the art of being free than when it says nothing of freedom.
The sects which exist in the United States are innumerable. They all
differ in respect to the worship which is due from man to his Creator;
but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to
man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner; but all
the sects preach the same moral law in the name of God. If it be of the
slightest importance to man, as an individual, that his religion should
be true, the case of society is not the same. Society has no future life
to hope for or to fear; and provided the citizens profess a religion,
the peculiar tenets of that religion are of very little importance to
its interests. Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are
comprised within the great unity of christianity, and Christian morality
is everywhere the same.
It may be believed without unfairness, that a certain number of
Americans pursue a peculiar form of worship, from habit more than from
conviction. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious,
and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country
in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater
influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no
greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature,
than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most
enlightened and free nation of the earth.
I have remarked that the members of the American clergy in general,
without even excepting those who do not admit religious liberty, are
all in favor of civil freedom; but they do not support any particular
political system. They keep aloof from parties, and from public affairs.
In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the
laws, and upon the details of public opinion; but it directs the manners
of the community, and by regulating domestic life, it regulates the
state.
I do not question that the great austerity of manners which is
observable in the United States, arises, in the first instance, from
religious faith. Religion is often unable to restrain man from the
numberless temptations of fortune; nor can it check that passion for
gain which every incident of his life contributes to arouse; but
its influence over the mind of women is supreme, and women are the
protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world
where the tie of marriage is so much respected as in America, or where
conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe
almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of
domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of
home, is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and
the evil of fluctuating desires. Agitated by the tumultuous passions
which frequently disturb his dwelling, the European is galled by the
obedience which the legislative powers of the state exact. But when the
American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom of his
family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace. There his
pleasures are simple and natural, his joys are innocent and calm; and
as he finds that an orderly life is the surest path to happiness, he
accustoms himself without difficulty to moderate his opinions as well as
his tastes. While the European endeavors to forget his domestic troubles
by agitating society, the American derives from his own home that love
of order, which he afterward carries with him into public affairs.
In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the
manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people. Among
the Anglo-Americans, there are some who profess the doctrines of
Christianity from a sincere belief in them, and others who do the same
because they are afraid to be suspected of unbelief. Christianity,
therefore, reigns without any obstacle, by universal consent; the
consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the
moral world is fixed and determinate, although the political world is
abandoned to the debates and the experiments of men. Thus the human mind
is never left to wander across a boundless field; and, whatever may be
its pretensions, it is checked from time to time by barriers which it
cannot surmount. Before it can perpetrate innovation, certain primal and
immutable principles are laid down, and the boldest conceptions of
human device are subjected to certain forms which retard and stop their
completion.
The imagination of the Americans, even in its greatest flights, is
circumspect and undecided; its impulses are checked, and its works
unfinished. These habits of restraint recur in political society, and
are singularly favorable both to the tranquillity of the people and
the durability of the institutions it has established. Nature and
circumstances concurred to make the inhabitants of the United States
bold men, as is sufficiently attested by the enterprising spirit with
which they seek for fortune. If the minds of the Americans were free
from all trammels, they would very shortly become the most daring
innovators and the most implacable disputants in the world. But the
revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect
for Christian morality and equity, which does not easily permit them to
violate the laws that oppose their designs; nor would they find it easy
to surmount the scruples of their partisans, even if they were able to
get over their own. Hitherto no one, in the United States, has dared
to advance the maxim, that everything is permissible with a view to
the interests of society; an impious adage, which seems to have been
invented in an age of freedom, to shelter all the tyrants of future
ages. Thus while the law permits the Americans to do what they please,
religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what
is rash and unjust.
Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society,
but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political
institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for
freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions. Indeed, it is
in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States
themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all the
Americans have a sincere faith in their religion; for who can search the
human heart? but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to
the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar
to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole
nation, and to every rank of society.
In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may
not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him;
but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him, and he
remains alone.
While I was in America, a witness, who happened to be called at the
assizes of the county of Chester (state of New York), declared that he
did not believe in the existence of God or in the immortality of the
soul. The judge refused to admit his evidence, on the ground that the
witness had destroyed beforehand all the confidence of the court in what
he was about to say.[201] The newspapers related the fact without any
farther comment.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so
intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive
the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring
from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul
rather than to live.
I have known of societies formed by the Americans to send out ministers
of the gospel into the new western states, to found schools and churches
there, lest religion should be suffered to die away in those remote
settlements, and the rising states be less fitted to enjoy free
institutions than the people from which they emanated. I met with
wealthy New Englanders who abandoned the country in which they were
born, in order to lay the foundations of Christianity and of freedom on
the banks of the Missouri or in the prairies of Illinois. Thus religious
zeal is perpetually stimulated in the United States by the duties of
patriotism. These men do not act from an exclusive consideration of the
promises of a future life; eternity is only one motive of their devotion
to the cause; and if you converse with these missionaries of Christian
civilisation, you will be surprised to find how much value they set upon
the goods of this world, and that you meet with a politician where you
expected to find a priest. They will tell you that "all the American
republics are collectively involved with each other; if the republics of
the west were to fall into anarchy, or to be mastered by a despot,
the republican institutions which now flourish upon the shores of the
Atlantic ocean would be in great peril. It is therefore our interest
that the new states should be religious, in order to maintain our
liberties."
Such are the opinions of the Americans; and if any hold that the
religious spirit which I admire is the very thing most amiss in America,
and that the only element wanting to the freedom and happiness of the
human race is to believe in some blind cosmogony, or to assert with
Cabanis the secretion of thought by the brain, I can only reply, that
those who hold this language have never been in America, and that they
have never seen a religious or a free nation. When they return from
their expedition, we shall hear what they have to say.
There are persons in France who look upon republican institutions as
a temporary means of power, of wealth and distinction; men who are
the _condottieri_ of liberty, and who fight for their own advantage,
whatever be the colors they wear: it is not to these that I address
myself. But there are others who look forward to the republican form of
government as a tranquil and lasting state, toward which modern
society is daily impelled by the ideas and manners of the time, and
who sincerely desire to prepare men to be free. When these men attack
religious opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions to the
prejudice of their interests. Despotism may govern without faith, but
liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which
they set forth in glowing colors, than in the monarchy which they
attack; and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any
others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if
the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is
relaxed? and what can be done with a people which is its own master, if
it be not submissive to the Divinity?
* * * * *
PRINCIPAL CAUSES WHICH RENDER RELIGION POWERFUL IN AMERICA.
Care taken by the Americans to separate the Church from the State.--The
Laws, public Opinion, and even the Exertions of the Clergy concur to
promote this end.--Influence of Religion upon the Mind, in the United
States, attributable to this Cause.--Reason of this.--What is the
natural State of Men with regard to Religion at the present time.--What
are the peculiar and incidental Causes which prevent Men, in certain
Countries, from arriving at this State.
The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained the gradual decay
of religious faith in a very simple manner. Religious zeal, said they,
must necessarily fail, the more generally liberty is established and
knowledge diffused. Unfortunately, facts are by no means in accordance
with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose
unbelief is only equalled by their ignorance and their debasement, while
in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world
fulfils all the outward duties of religion with fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the
country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I
stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences
resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In
France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit
of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in
America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned
in common over the same country. My desire to discover the causes of
this phenomenon increased from day to day. In order to satisfy it, I
questioned the members of all the different sects; and I more especially
sought the society of the clergy, who are the depositaries of the
different persuasions, and who are more especially interested in
their duration. As a member of the Roman catholic church I was more
particularly brought into contact with several of its priests, with
whom I became intimately acquainted. To each of these men I expressed my
astonishment and I explained my doubts: I found that they differed upon
matters of detail alone; and that they mainly attributed the peaceable
dominion of religion in their country, to the separation of church and
state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America, I did
not meet with a single individual, of the clergy or of the laity, who
was not of the same opinion upon this point.
This led me to examine more attentively than I had hitherto done, the
station which the American clergy occupy in political society. I learned
with surprise that they fill no public appointments;[202] not one of
them is to be met with in the administration, and they are not even
represented in the legislative assemblies. In several states[203] the
law excludes them from political life; public opinion in all. And when
I came to inquire into the prevailing spirit of the clergy, I found
that most of its members seemed to retire of their own accord from the
exercise of power, and that they made it the pride of their profession
to abstain from politics.
I heard them inveigh against ambition and deceit, under whatever
political opinions these vices might chance to lurk; but I learned
from their discourses that men are not guilty in the eye of God for any
opinions concerning political government, which they may profess with
sincerity, any more than they are for their mistakes in building a house
or in driving a furrow. I perceived that these ministers of the gospel
eschewed all parties, with the anxiety attendant upon personal interest.
These facts convinced me that what I had been told was true; and it
then became my object to investigate their causes, and to inquire how it
happened that the real authority of religion was increased by a state
of things which diminished its apparent force: these causes did not long
escape my researches.
The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination
of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man
alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence,
and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads
annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urge his soul to
the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings
thither. Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no
less natural to the human heart than hope itself. Men cannot abandon
their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect, and
a sort of violent distortion of their true natures; but they are
invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments; for unbelief is an
accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind. If we only
consider religious institutions in a purely human point of view, they
may be said to derive an inexhaustible element of strength from man
himself, since they belong to one of the constituent principles of human
nature.
I am aware that at certain times religion may strengthen this influence,
which originates in itself, by the artificial power of the laws, and
by the support of those temporal institutions which direct society.
Religions, intimately united to the governments of the earth, have been
known to exercise a sovereign authority derived from the twofold source
of terror and of faith; but when a religion contracts an alliance of
this nature, I do not hesitate to affirm that it commits the same error,
as a man who should sacrifice his future to his present welfare; and
in obtaining a power to which it has no claim, it risks that authority
which is rightfully its own. When a religion founds its empire upon the
desire of immortality which lives in every human heart, it may aspire
to universal dominion: but when it connects itself with a government,
it must necessarily adopt maxims which are only applicable to certain
nations. Thus, in forming an alliance with a political power, religion
augments its authority over a few, and forfeits the hope of reigning
over all.
As long as a religion rests upon those sentiments which are the
consolation of all affliction, it may attract the affections of mankind.
But if it be mixed up with the bitter passions of the world, it may be
constrained to defend allies whom its interests, and not the principle
of love, have given to it; or to repel as antagonists men who are still
attached to its own spirit, however opposed they may be to the powers
to which it is allied. The church cannot share the temporal power of the
state, without being the object of a portion of that animosity which the
latter excites.
The political powers which seem to be most firmly established have
frequently no better guarantee for their duration, than the opinions of
a generation, the interests of the time, or the life of an individual.
A law may modify the social condition which seems to be most fixed and
determinate; and with the social condition everything else must change.
The powers of society are more or less fugitive, like the years which
we spend upon the earth; they succeed each other with rapidity like the
fleeting cares of life; and no government has ever yet been founded upon
an invariable disposition of the human heart, or upon an imperishable
interest.
As long as religion is sustained by those feelings, propensities, and
passions, which are found to occur under the same forms at all the
different periods of history, it may defy the efforts of time; or at
least it can only be destroyed by another religion. But when religion
clings to the interests of the world, it becomes almost as fragile a
thing as the powers of the earth. It is the only one of them all which
can hope for immortality; but if it be connected with their ephemeral
authority, it shares their fortunes, and may fall with those transient
passions which supported them for a day. The alliance which religion
contracts with political powers must needs be onerous to itself; since
it does not require their assistance to live, and by giving them its
assistance it may be exposed to decay.
The danger which I have just pointed out always exists, but it is
not always equally visible. In some ages governments seem to be
imperishable, in others the existence of society appears to be more
precarious than the life of man. Some constitutions plunge the
citizens into a lethargic somnolence, and others rouse them to feverish
excitement. When government appears to be so strong, and laws so stable,
men do not perceive the dangers which may accrue from a union of church
and state. When governments display so much inconstancy, the danger is
self-evident, but it is no longer possible to avoid it; to be effectual,
measures must be taken to discover its approach.
In proportion as a nation assumes a democratic condition of society, and
as communities display democratic propensities, it becomes more and more
dangerous to connect religion with political institutions; for the
time is coming when authority will be bandied from hand to hand, when
political theories will succeed each other, and when men, laws and
constitutions, will disappear or be modified from day to day, and this
not for a season only, but unceasingly. Agitation and mutability are
inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and
inertness are the law of absolute monarchies.
If the Americans, who change the head of the government once in
four years, who elect new legislators every two years, and renew the
provincial officers every twelvemonth; if the Americans, who have
abandoned the political world to the attempts of innovators, had not
placed religion beyond their reach, where could it abide in the ebb and
flow of human opinions? where would that respect which belongs to it
be paid, amid the struggles of faction? and what would become of its
immortality in the midst of perpetual decay? The American clergy were
the first to perceive this truth, and to act in conformity with it. They
saw that they must renounce their religious influence, if they were to
strive for political power; and they chose to give up the support of the
state, rather than to share in its vicissitudes.
In America, religion is perhaps less powerful than it has been at
certain periods in the history of certain peoples; but its influence
is more lasting. It restricts itself to its own resources, but of those
none can deprive it: its circle is limited to certain principles, but
those principles are entirely its own, and under its undisputed control.
On every side in Europe we hear voices complaining of the absence of
religious faith, and inquiring the means of restoring to religion some
remnant of its pristine authority. It seems to me that we must first
attentively consider what ought to be _the natural state_ of men with
regard to religion, at the present time; and when we know what we have
to hope and to fear, we may discern the end to which our efforts ought
to be directed.
The two great dangers which threaten the existence of religions are
schism and indifference. In ages of fervent devotion, men sometimes
abandon their religion, but they only shake it off in order to adopt
another. Their faith changes the objects to which it is directed, but
it suffers no decline. The old religion, then, excites enthusiastic
attachment or bitter enmity in either party; some leave it with anger,
others cling to it with increased devotedness, and although persuasions
differ, irreligion is unknown. Such, however, is not the case when a
religious belief is secretly undermined by doctrines which may be termed
negative, since they deny the truth of one religion without affirming
that of any other. Prodigious revolutions then take place in the human
mind, without the apparent co-operation of the passions of man, and
almost without his knowledge. Men lose the object of their fondest
hopes, as if through forgetfulness. They are carried away by an
imperceptible current which they have not the courage to stem, but which
they follow with regret, since it bears them from a faith they love, to
a scepticism that plunges them into despair.
In ages which answer to this description, men desert their religious
opinions from lukewarmness rather than from dislike; they do not reject
them, but the sentiments by which they were once fostered disappear. But
if the unbeliever does not admit religion to be true, he still considers
it useful. Regarding religious institutions in a human point of view,
he acknowledges their influence upon manners and legislation. He admits
that they may serve to make men live in peace with one another and to
prepare them gently for the hour of death. He regrets the faith which
he has lost; and as he is deprived of a treasure which he has learned to
estimate at its full value, he scruples to take it from those who still
possess it.
On the other hand, those who continue to believe, are not afraid
openly to avow their faith. They look upon those who do not share their
persuasion as more worthy of pity than of opposition; and they are
aware, that to acquire the esteem of the unbelieving, they are not
obliged to follow their example. They are hostile to no one in the
world; and as they do not consider the society in which they live as an
arena in which religion is bound to face its thousand deadly foes, they
love their contemporaries, while they condemn their weaknesses, and
lament their errors.
As those who do not believe, conceal their incredulity; and as those who
believe, display their faith, public opinion pronounces itself in favor
of religion: love, support, and honor, are bestowed upon it, and it is
only by searching the human soul, that we can detect the wounds which it
has received. The mass of mankind, who are never without the feeling
of religion, do not perceive anything at variance with the established
faith. The instinctive desire of a future life brings the crowd about
the altar, and opens the hearts of men to the precepts and consolations
of religion.
But this picture is not applicable to us; for there are men among us
who have ceased to believe in Christianity, without adopting any other
religion; others who are in the perplexities of doubt, and who already
affect not to believe; and others, again, who are afraid to avow that
Christian faith which they still cherish in secret.
Amid these lukewarm partisans and ardent antagonists, a small number of
believers exist, who are ready to brave all obstacles, and to scorn
all dangers in defence of their faith. They have done violence to human
weakness, in order to rise superior to public opinion. Excited by the
effort they have made, they scarcely know where to stop; and as they
know that the first use which the French made, of independence, was to
attack religion, they look upon their contemporaries with dread, and
they recoil in alarm from the liberty which their fellow-citizens are
seeking to obtain. As unbelief appears to them to be a novelty, they
comprise all that is new in one indiscriminate animosity. They are at
war with their age and country, and they look upon every opinion which
is put forth there as the necessary enemy of the faith.
Such is not the natural state of men with regard to religion at the
present day; and some extraordinary or incidental cause must be at
work in France, to prevent the human mind from following its original
propensities, and to drive it beyond the limits at which it ought
naturally to stop.
I am intimately convinced that this extraordinary and incidental cause
is the close connexion of politics and religion. The unbelievers of
Europe attack the Christians as their political opponents, rather than
as their religious adversaries; they hate the Christian religion as
the opinion of a party, much more than as an error of belief; and they
reject the clergy less because they are the representatives of the
Divinity, than because they are the allies of authority.
In Europe, Christianity has been intimately united to the powers of
the earth. Those powers are now in decay, and it is, as it were, buried
under their ruins. The living body of religion has been bound down to
the dead corpse of superannuated polity; cut the bonds which restrain
it, and that which is alive will rise once more. I know not what could
restore the Christian church of Europe to the energy of its earlier
days; that power belongs to God alone; but it may be the effect of human
policy to leave the faith in all the full exercise of the strength which
it still retains.
* * * * *
HOW THE INSTRUCTION, THE HABITS, AND THE PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE
AMERICANS PROMOTE THE SUCCESS OF THEIR DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS.
What is to be understood by the instruction of the American People.--The
human Mind is more superficially instructed in the United States than in
Europe.--No one completely uninstructed.--Reason of this Rapidity with
which Opinions are diffused even in the uncultivated States of the
West.--Practical Experience more serviceable to the Americans than
Book-learning.
I have but little to add to what I have already said, concerning the
influence which the instruction and the habits of the Americans exercise
upon the maintenance of their political institutions.
America has hitherto produced very few writers of distinction; it
possesses no great historians, and not a single eminent poet. The
inhabitants of that country look upon what are properly styled literary
pursuits with a kind of disapprobation; and there are towns of very
second rate importance in Europe, in which more literary works are
annually published, than in the twenty-four states of the Union put
together. The spirit of the Americans is averse to general ideas; and it
does not seek theoretical discoveries. Neither politics nor manufactures
direct them to these occupations; and although new laws are perpetually
enacted in the United States, no great writers have hitherto inquired
into the principles of their legislation. The Americans have lawyers
and commentators, but no jurists; and they furnish examples rather than
lessons to the world. The same observation applies to the mechanical
arts. In America, the inventions of Europe are adopted with sagacity;
they are perfected, and adapted with admirable skill to the wants of
the country. Manufactures exist, but the science of manufacture is not
cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few inventors. Fulton
was obliged to proffer his services to foreign nations for a long time
before he was able to devote them to his own country.
[The remark that in America "there are very good workmen but very
few inventors," will excite surprise in this country. The inventive
character of Fulton he seems to admit, but would apparently deprive us
of the credit of his name, by the remark that he was obliged to proffer
his services to foreign nations for a long time. He might have added,
that those proffers were disregarded and neglected, and that it was
finally in his own country that he found the aid necessary to put in
execution his great project. If there be patronage extended by the
citizens of the United States to any one thing in preference to another,
it is to the results of inventive genius. Surely Franklin, Rittenhouse,
and Perkins, have been heard of by our author; and he must have heard
something of that wonderful invention, the cotton-gin of Whitney, and
of the machines for making cards to comb wool. The original machines of
Fulton for the application of steam have been constantly improving, so
that there is scarcely a vestige of them remaining. But to sum up the
whole in one word, can it be possible that our author did not visit the
patent office at Washington? Whatever may be said of the _utility_ of
nine-tenths of the inventions of which the descriptions and models are
there deposited, no one who has ever seen that depository, or who has
read a description of its contents, can doubt that they furnish the most
incontestible evidence of extraordinary inventive genius--a genius that
has excited the astonishment of other European travellers.--_American
Editor_.]
The observer who is desirous of forming an opinion on the state of
instruction among the Anglo-Americans, must consider the same object
from two different points of view. If he only singles out the learned,
he will be astonished to find how rare they are; but if he counts the
ignorant, the American people will appear to be the most enlightened
community in the world. The whole population, as I observed in another
place, is situated between these two extremes.
In New England, every citizen receives the elementary notions of human
knowledge; he is moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences of his
religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its
constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is
extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these
things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.
When I compare the Greek and Roman republics with these American states;
the manuscript libraries of the former, and their rude population, with
the innumerable journals and the enlightened people of the latter; when
I remember all the attempts which are made to judge the modern republics
by the assistance of those of antiquity, and to infer what will happen
in our time from what took place two thousand years ago, I am tempted
to burn my books, in order to apply none but novel ideas to so novel a
condition of society.
What I have said of New England must not, however, be applied
indiscriminately to the whole Union: as we advance towards the west or
the south, the instruction of the people diminishes. In the states which
are adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, a certain number of individuals may
be found, as in our own countries, who are devoid of the rudiments of
instruction. But there is not a single district in the United States
sunk in complete ignorance; and for a very simple reason; the peoples
of Europe started from the darkness of a barbarous condition to advance
toward the light of civilisation; their progress has been unequal; some
of them have improved apace, while others have loitered in their course,
and some have stopped, and are still sleeping upon the way.
Such has not been the case in the United States. The Anglo-Americans
settled in a state of civilisation, upon that territory which their
descendants occupy; they had not to begin to learn, and it was
sufficient not to forget. Now the children of these same Americans are
the persons who, year by year, transport their dwellings into the wilds:
and with their dwellings their acquired information and their esteem for
knowledge. Education has taught them the utility of instruction, and
has enabled them to transmit that instruction to their posterity. In the
United States society has no infancy, but it is born in man's estate.
The Americans never use the word "peasant," because they have no idea of
the peculiar class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote
ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager,
have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with
the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an
early stage of civilisation. At the extreme borders of the confederate
states, upon the confines of society and of the wilderness, a population
of bold adventurers have taken up their abode, who pierce the solitudes
of the American woods, and seek a country there, in order to escape that
poverty which awaited them in their native provinces. As soon as the
pioneer arrives upon the spot which is to serve him for a retreat,
he fells a few trees and builds a log-house. Nothing can offer a more
miserable aspect than these isolated dwellings. The traveller who
approaches one of them toward night-fall, sees the flicker of the
hearth-flame through the chinks in the walls; and at night, if the wind
rises, he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro in the midst of
the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this poor hut is the
asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison can be drawn
between the pioneer and the dwelling which shelters him. Everything
about him is primitive and unformed, but he is himself the result of the
labor and the experience of eighteen centuries. He wears the dress,
and he speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past,
curious of the future, and ready for argument upon the present; he is,
in short, a highly civilized being, who consents, for a time, to inhabit
the back-woods, and who penetrates into the wilds of a New World with
the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers.
It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which public
opinion circulates in the midst of these deserts.[204] I do not
think that so much intellectual intercourse takes place in the most
enlightened and populous districts of France.[205] It cannot be doubted
that in the United States, the instruction of the people powerfully
contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must
always be the case, I believe, where instruction, which awakens the
understanding, is not separated from moral education which amends the
heart. But I by no means exaggerate this benefit, and I am still farther
from thinking, as so many people do think in Europe, that men can be
instantaneously made citizens by teaching them to read and write. True
information is mainly derived from experience, and if the Americans had
not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning
would not assist them much at the present day.
I have lived a great deal with the people in the United States, and I
cannot express how much I admire their experience and their good sense.
An American should never be allowed to speak of Europe; for he will then
probably display a vast deal of presumption and very foolish pride. He
will take up with those crude and vague notions which are so useful to
the ignorant all over the world. But if you question him respecting his
own country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately
disperse; his language will become as clear and as precise as his
thoughts. He will inform you what his rights are, and by what means he
exercises them; he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in
the political world. You will find that he is well acquainted with the
rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism
of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his
practical science and his positive notions from books; the instruction
he has acquired may have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but
it did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by
participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the
forms of government, from governing. The great work of society is ever
going on beneath his eyes, and, as it were, under his hands.
In the United States politics are the end and aim of education;
in Europe its principal object is to fit men for private life. The
interference of the citizens in public affairs is too rare an occurrence
for it to be anticipated beforehand. Upon casting a glance over society
in the two hemispheres, these differences are indicated even by its
external aspect.
In Europe, we frequently introduce the ideas and the habits of private
life into public affairs; and as we pass at once from the domestic
circle to the government of the state, we may frequently be heard to
discuss the great interests of society in the same manner in which we
converse with our friends. The Americans, on the other hand, transfuse
the habits of public life into their manners in private; and in their
country the jury is introduced into the games of school-boys, and
parliamentary forms are observed in the order of a feast.
* * * * *
THE LAWS CONTRIBUTE MORE TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
IN THE UNITED STATES THAN THE PHYSICAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE COUNTRY, AND
THE MANNERS MORE THAN THE LAWS.
All the Nations of America have a democratic State of Society.--Yet
democratic Institutions subsist only among the Anglo-Americans.--The
Spaniards of South America, equally favored by physical Causes as the
Anglo-Americans, unable to maintain a democratic Republic.--Mexico,
which has adopted the Constitution of the United States, in the same
Predicament.--The Anglo-Americans of the West less able to maintain it
than those of the East.--Reason of these different Results.
I have remarked that the maintenance of democratic institutions in the
United States is attributable to the circumstances, the laws, and the
manners of that country.[206] Most Europeans are only acquainted
with the first of these three causes, and they are apt to give it a
preponderating importance which it does not really possess.
It is true that the Anglo-Americans settled in the New World in a state
of social equality; the low-born and the noble were not to be found
among them; and professional prejudices were always as entirely unknown
as the prejudices of birth. Thus, as the condition of society was
democratic, the empire of democracy was established without difficulty.
But this circumstance is by no means peculiar to the United States;
almost all the transatlantic colonies were founded by men equal among
themselves, or who became so by inhabiting them. In no one part of
the New World have Europeans been able to create an aristocracy.
Nevertheless democratic institutions prosper nowhere but in the United
States.
The American Union has no enemies to contend with; it stands in the
wilds like an island in the ocean. But the Spaniards of South America
were no less isolated by nature; yet their position has not relieved
them from the charge of standing armies. They make war upon each other
when they have no foreign enemies to oppose; and the Anglo-American
democracy is the only one which has hitherto been able to maintain
itself in peace.
The territory of the Union presents a boundless field to human activity,
and inexhaustible materials for industry and labor. The passion of
wealth takes the place of ambition, and the warmth of faction is
mitigated by a sense of prosperity. But in what portion of the globe
shall we meet with more fertile plains, with mightier rivers, or with
more unexplored and inexhaustible riches, than in South America?
Nevertheless South America has been unable to maintain democratic
institutions. If the welfare of nations depended on their being placed
in a remote position, with an unbounded space of habitable territory
before them, the Spaniards of South America would have no reason to
complain of their fate. And although they might enjoy less prosperity
than the inhabitants of the United States, their lot might still be such
as to excite the envy of some nations in Europe. There are, however, no
nations upon the face of the earth more miserable than those of South
America.
Thus, not only are physical causes inadequate to produce results
analogous to those which occur in North America, but they are unable
to raise the population of South America above the level of European
states, where they act in a contrary direction. Physical causes do not
therefore affect the destiny of nations so much as has been supposed.
I have met with men in New England who were on the point of leaving a
country, where they might have remained in easy circumstances, to go to
seek their fortunes in the wilds. Not far from that district I found
a French population in Canada, which was closely crowded on a narrow
territory, although the same wilds were at hand; and while the emigrant
from the United States purchased an extensive estate with the earnings
of a short term of labor, the Canadian paid as much for land as he would
have done in France. Nature offers the solitudes of the New World to
Europeans; but they are not always acquainted with the means of turning
her gifts to account. Other peoples of America have the same physical
conditions of prosperity as the Anglo-Americans, but without their laws
and their manners; and these peoples are wretched. The laws and manners
of the Anglo-Americans are therefore that cause of their greatness which
is the object of my inquiry.
I am far from supposing that the American laws are preeminently good
in themselves; I do not hold them to be applicable to all democratic
peoples; and several of them seem to me to be dangerous, even in the
United States. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the American
legislation, taken collectively, is extremely well adapted to the genius
of the people and the nature of the country which it is intended to
govern. The American laws are therefore good, and to them must be
attributed a large portion of the success which attends the government
of democracy in America: but I do not believe them to be the principal
cause of that success; and if they seem to me to have more influence
upon the social happiness of the Americans than the nature of the
country, on the other hand there is reason to believe that their effect
is still inferior to that produced by the manners of the people.
The federal laws undoubtedly constitute the most important part of the
legislation of the United States. Mexico, which is not less fortunately
situated than the Anglo-American Union, has adopted these same laws, but
is unable to accustom itself to the government of democracy. Some other
cause is therefore at work independently of those physical circumstances
and peculiar laws which enable the democracy to rule in the United
States.
Another still more striking proof may be adduced. Almost all the
inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a
common stock; they speak the same language, they worship God in the same
manner, they are affected by the same physical causes, and they obey the
same laws. Whence, then, do their characteristic differences arise?
Why, in the eastern states of the Union, does the republican government
display vigor and regularity, and proceed with mature deliberation?
Whence does it derive the wisdom and durability which mark its acts,
while in the western states, on the contrary, society seems to be ruled
by the powers of chance? There, public business is conducted with an
irregularity, and a passionate and feverish excitement, which does not
announce a long or sure duration.
I am no longer comparing the Anglo-American states to foreign nations;
but I am contrasting them with each other, and endeavoring to discover
why they are so unlike. The arguments which are derived from the nature
of the country and the difference of legislation, are here all set
aside. Recourse must be had to some other cause; and what other cause
can there be except the manners of the people?
It is in the eastern states that the Anglo-Americans have been longest
accustomed to the government of democracy, and that they have adopted
the habits and conceived the notions most favorable to its maintenance.
Democracy has gradually penetrated into their customs, their opinions,
and the forms of social intercourse; it is to be found in all the
details of daily life equally as in the laws. In the eastern states
the instruction and practical education of the people have been most
perfected, and religion has been most thoroughly amalgamated with
liberty. Now these habits, opinions, customs, and convictions, are
precisely the constituent elements of that which I have denominated
manners.
In the western states, on the contrary, a portion of the same advantages
is still wanting. Many of the Americans of the west were born in the
woods, and they mix the ideas and the customs of savage life with the
civilisation of their parents. Their passions are more intense; their
religious morality less authoritative; and their convictions are
less secure. The inhabitants exercise no sort of control over their
fellow-citizens, for they are scarcely acquainted with each other. The
nations of the west display, to a certain extent, the inexperience
and the rude habits of a people in its infancy; for although they are
composed of old elements, their assemblage is of recent date.
The manners of the Americans of the United States are, then, the real
cause which renders that people the only one of the American nations
that is able to support a democratic government; and it is the influence
of manners which produces the different degrees of order and of
prosperity, that may be distinguished in the several Anglo-American
democracies. Thus the effect which the geographical position of a
country may have upon the duration of democratic institutions is
exaggerated in Europe. Too much importance is attributed to legislation,
too little to manners. These three great causes serve, no doubt, to
regulate and direct the American democracy; but if they were to
be classed in their proper order, I should say that the physical
circumstances are less efficient than the laws, and the laws very
subordinate to the manners of the people. I am convinced that the most
advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a
constitution in spite of the manners of a country: while the latter
may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some
advantage. The importance of manners is a common truth to which study
and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as
a central point in the range of human observation, and the common
termination of all inquiry. So seriously do I insist upon this head,
that if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important
influence which I attribute to the practical experience, the habits,
the opinions, in short, to the manners of the Americans, upon the
maintenance of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object
of my work.
* * * * *
WHETHER LAWS AND MANNERS ARE SUFFICIENT TO MAINTAIN DEMOCRATIC
INSTITUTIONS IN OTHER COUNTRIES BESIDE AMERICA.
The Anglo-Americans, if transported into Europe, would be obliged
to modify their Laws.--Distinction to be made between democratic
Institutions and American Institutions.--Democratic Laws may be
conceived better than, or at least different from, those which the
American Democracy has adopted.--The Example of America only proves that
it is possible to regulate Democracy by the assistance of Manners and
Legislation.
I have asserted that the success of democratic institutions in the
United States is more intimately connected with the laws themselves, and
the manners of the people, than with the nature of the country. But
does it follow that the same causes would of themselves produce the same
results, if they were put into operation elsewhere; and if the country
is no adequate substitute for laws and manners, can laws and manners
in their turn prove a substitute for a country? It will readily be
understood that the necessary elements of a reply to this question
are wanting: other peoples are to be found in the New World beside the
Anglo-Americans, and as these peoples are affected by the same physical
circumstances as the latter, they may fairly be compared together. But
there are no nations out of America which have adopted the same laws
and manners, being destitute of the physical advantages peculiar to the
Anglo-Americans. No standard of comparison therefore exists, and we can
only hazard an opinion upon this subject.
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.