Americans Simple And Easy
Democracy does not attach men strongly to each other; but it places
their habitual intercourse upon an easier footing. If two Englishmen
chance to meet at the Antipodes, where they are surrounded by strangers
whose language and manners are almost unknown to them, they will first
stare at each other with much curiosity and a kind of secret uneasiness;
they will then turn away, or, if one accosts the other, they will
take care only to converse with a constrained and absent air upon very
unimportant subjects. Yet there is no enmity between these men; they
have never seen each other before, and each believes the other to be a
respectable person. Why then should they stand so cautiously apart? We
must go back to England to learn the reason.
When it is birth alone, independent of wealth, which classes men in
society, everyone knows exactly what his own position is upon the
social scale; he does not seek to rise, he does not fear to sink. In
a community thus organized, men of different castes communicate very
little with each other; but if accident brings them together, they are
ready to converse without hoping or fearing to lose their own position.
Their intercourse is not upon a footing of equality, but it is not
constrained. When moneyed aristocracy succeeds to aristocracy of birth,
the case is altered. The privileges of some are still extremely great,
but the possibility of acquiring those privileges is open to all: whence
it follows that those who possess them are constantly haunted by the
apprehension of losing them, or of other men's sharing them; those who
do not yet enjoy them long to possess them at any cost, or, if they
fail to appear at least to possess them--which is not impossible. As the
social importance of men is no longer ostensibly and permanently fixed
by blood, and is infinitely varied by wealth, ranks still exist, but it
is not easy clearly to distinguish at a glance those who respectively
belong to them. Secret hostilities then arise in the community; one set
of men endeavor by innumerable artifices to penetrate, or to appear to
penetrate, amongst those who are above them; another set are constantly
in arms against these usurpers of their rights; or rather the same
individual does both at once, and whilst he seeks to raise himself into
a higher circle, he is always on the defensive against the intrusion of
those below him.
Such is the condition of England at the present time; and I am of
opinion that the peculiarity before adverted to is principally to be
attributed to this cause. As aristocratic pride is still extremely great
amongst the English, and as the limits of aristocracy are ill-defined,
everybody lives in constant dread lest advantage should be taken of his
familiarity. Unable to judge at once of the social position of those
he meets, an Englishman prudently avoids all contact with them. Men
are afraid lest some slight service rendered should draw them into
an unsuitable acquaintance; they dread civilities, and they avoid the
obtrusive gratitude of a stranger quite as much as his hatred. Many
people attribute these singular anti-social propensities, and the
reserved and taciturn bearing of the English, to purely physical causes.
I may admit that there is something of it in their race, but much more
of it is attributable to their social condition, as is proved by the
contrast of the Americans.
In America, where the privileges of birth never existed, and where
riches confer no peculiar rights on their possessors, men unacquainted
with each other are very ready to frequent the same places, and find
neither peril nor advantage in the free interchange of their thoughts.
If they meet by accident, they neither seek nor avoid intercourse; their
manner is therefore natural, frank, and open: it is easy to see that
they hardly expect or apprehend anything from each other, and that they
do not care to display, any more than to conceal, their position in the
world. If their demeanor is often cold and serious, it is never haughty
or constrained; and if they do not converse, it is because they are
not in a humor to talk, not because they think it their interest to be
silent. In a foreign country two Americans are at once friends, simply
because they are Americans. They are repulsed by no prejudice; they are
attracted by their common country. For two Englishmen the same blood
is not enough; they must be brought together by the same rank. The
Americans remark this unsociable mood of the English as much as the
French do, and they are not less astonished by it. Yet the Americans are
connected with England by their origin, their religion, their language,
and partially by their manners; they only differ in their social
condition. It may therefore be inferred that the reserve of the English
proceeds from the constitution of their country much more than from that
of its inhabitants.