An American who had travelled for a long time in Europe once said to me,
"The English treat their servants with a stiffness and imperiousness
of manner which surprise us; but on the other hand the French sometimes
treat their attendants with a degree of familiarity or of politeness
which we cannot conceive. It looks as if they were afraid to give
orders: the posture of the superior and the inferior is ill-maintained."
The remark was a just one, and I have often made it myself. I have
always considered England as the country in the world where, in our
time, the bond of domestic service is drawn most tightly, and France as
the country where it is most relaxed. Nowhere have I seen masters stand
so high or so low as in these two countries. Between these two extremes
the Americans are to be placed. Such is the fact as it appears upon the
surface of things: to discover the causes of that fact, it is necessary
to search the matter thoroughly.
No communities have ever yet existed in which social conditions have
been so equal that there were neither rich nor poor, and consequently
neither masters nor servants. Democracy does not prevent the existence
of these two classes, but it changes their dispositions and modifies
their mutual relations. Amongst aristocratic nations servants form a
distinct class, not more variously composed than that of masters. A
settled order is soon established; in the former as well as in the
latter class a scale is formed, with numerous distinctions or marked
gradations of rank, and generations succeed each other thus without any
change of position. These two communities are superposed one above the
other, always distinct, but regulated by analogous principles. This
aristocratic constitution does not exert a less powerful influence
on the notions and manners of servants than on those of masters; and,
although the effects are different, the same cause may easily be traced.
Both classes constitute small communities in the heart of the nation,
and certain permanent notions of right and wrong are ultimately
engendered amongst them. The different acts of human life are viewed by
one particular and unchanging light. In the society of servants, as in
that of masters, men exercise a great influence over each other: they
acknowledge settled rules, and in the absence of law they are guided by
a sort of public opinion: their habits are settled, and their conduct is
placed under a certain control.
These men, whose destiny is to obey, certainly do not understand fame,
virtue, honesty, and honor in the same manner as their masters; but they
have a pride, a virtue, and an honesty pertaining to their condition;
and they have a notion, if I may use the expression, of a sort of
servile honor. *a Because a class is mean, it must not be supposed that
all who belong to it are mean-hearted; to think so would be a great
mistake. However lowly it may be, he who is foremost there, and who
has no notion of quitting it, occupies an aristocratic position which
inspires him with lofty feelings, pride, and self-respect, that fit
him for the higher virtues and actions above the common. Amongst
aristocratic nations it was by no means rare to find men of noble and
vigorous minds in the service of the great, who felt not the servitude
they bore, and who submitted to the will of their masters without any
fear of their displeasure. But this was hardly ever the case amongst
the inferior ranks of domestic servants. It may be imagined that he
who occupies the lowest stage of the order of menials stands very low
indeed. The French created a word on purpose to designate the servants
of the aristocracy--they called them lackeys. This word "lackey"
served as the strongest expression, when all others were exhausted, to
designate human meanness. Under the old French monarchy, to denote by
a single expression a low-spirited contemptible fellow, it was usual to
say that he had the "soul of a lackey"; the term was enough to convey
all that was intended. [Footnote a: If the principal opinions by which
men are guided are examined closely and in detail, the analogy appears
still more striking, and one is surprised to find amongst them, just as
much as amongst the haughtiest scions of a feudal race, pride of birth,
respect for their ancestry and their descendants, disdain of their
inferiors, a dread of contact, a taste for etiquette, precedents, and
antiquity.]
The permanent inequality of conditions not only gives servants certain
peculiar virtues and vices, but it places them in a peculiar relation
with respect to their masters. Amongst aristocratic nations the poor man
is familiarized from his childhood with the notion of being commanded:
to whichever side he turns his eyes the graduated structure of society
and the aspect of obedience meet his view. Hence in those countries the
master readily obtains prompt, complete, respectful, and easy obedience
from his servants, because they revere in him not only their master but
the class of masters. He weighs down their will by the whole weight of
the aristocracy. He orders their actions--to a certain extent he even
directs their thoughts. In aristocracies the master often exercises,
even without being aware of it, an amazing sway over the opinions, the
habits, and the manners of those who obey him, and his influence extends
even further than his authority.
In aristocratic communities there are not only hereditary families of
servants as well as of masters, but the same families of servants
adhere for several generations to the same families of masters (like two
parallel lines which neither meet nor separate); and this considerably
modifies the mutual relations of these two classes of persons. Thus,
although in aristocratic society the master and servant have no natural
resemblance--although, on the contrary, they are placed at an immense
distance on the scale of human beings by their fortune, education, and
opinions--yet time ultimately binds them together. They are connected
by a long series of common reminiscences, and however different they
may be, they grow alike; whilst in democracies, where they are naturally
almost alike, they always remain strangers to each other. Amongst an
aristocratic people the master gets to look upon his servants as an
inferior and secondary part of himself, and he often takes an interest
in their lot by a last stretch of egotism.
Servants, on their part, are not averse to regard themselves in the same
light; and they sometimes identify themselves with the person of the
master, so that they become an appendage to him in their own eyes as
well as in his. In aristocracies a servant fills a subordinate position
which he cannot get out of; above him is another man, holding a superior
rank which he cannot lose. On one side are obscurity, poverty, obedience
for life; on the other, and also for life, fame, wealth, and command.
The two conditions are always distinct and always in propinquity; the
tie that connects them is as lasting as they are themselves. In this
predicament the servant ultimately detaches his notion of interest from
his own person; he deserts himself, as it were, or rather he transports
himself into the character of his master, and thus assumes an imaginary
personality. He complacently invests himself with the wealth of those
who command him; he shares their fame, exalts himself by their rank,
and feeds his mind with borrowed greatness, to which he attaches
more importance than those who fully and really possess it. There is
something touching, and at the same time ridiculous, in this strange
confusion of two different states of being. These passions of masters,
when they pass into the souls of menials, assume the natural dimensions
of the place they occupy--they are contracted and lowered. What was
pride in the former becomes puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the
latter. The servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to
the marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to his
slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few of these old
servants of the aristocracy are still to be met with here and there;
they have survived their race, which will soon disappear with them
altogether. In the United States I never saw anyone at all like them.
The Americans are not only unacquainted with the kind of man, but it is
hardly possible to make them understand that such ever existed. It is
scarcely less difficult for them to conceive it, than for us to form a
correct notion of what a slave was amongst the Romans, or a serf in the
Middle Ages. All these men were in fact, though in different degrees,
results of the same cause: they are all retiring from our sight, and
disappearing in the obscurity of the past, together with the social
condition to which they owed their origin.
Equality of conditions turns servants and masters into new beings, and
places them in new relative positions. When social conditions are nearly
equal, men are constantly changing their situations in life: there is
still a class of menials and a class of masters, but these classes are
not always composed of the same individuals, still less of the same
families; and those who command are not more secure of perpetuity than
those who obey. As servants do not form a separate people, they have
no habits, prejudices, or manners peculiar to themselves; they are not
remarkable for any particular turn of mind or moods of feeling. They
know no vices or virtues of their condition, but they partake of the
education, the opinions, the feelings, the virtues, and the vices of
their contemporaries; and they are honest men or scoundrels in the same
way as their masters are. The conditions of servants are not less equal
than those of masters. As no marked ranks or fixed subordination are to
be found amongst them, they will not display either the meanness or the
greatness which characterizes the aristocracy of menials as well as all
other aristocracies. I never saw a man in the United States who reminded
me of that class of confidential servants of which we still retain a
reminiscence in Europe, neither did I ever meet with such a thing as a
lackey: all traces of the one and of the other have disappeared.
In democracies servants are not only equal amongst themselves, but it
may be said that they are in some sort the equals of their masters. This
requires explanation in order to be rightly understood. At any moment a
servant may become a master, and he aspires to rise to that condition:
the servant is therefore not a different man from the master. Why
then has the former a right to command, and what compels the latter to
obey?--the free and temporary consent of both their wills. Neither of
them is by nature inferior to the other; they only become so for a time
by covenant. Within the terms of this covenant, the one is a
servant, the other a master; beyond it they are two citizens of the
commonwealth--two men. I beg the reader particularly to observe that
this is not only the notion which servants themselves entertain of their
own condition; domestic service is looked upon by masters in the same
light; and the precise limits of authority and obedience are as clearly
settled in the mind of the one as in that of the other.
When the greater part of the community have long attained a condition
nearly alike, and when equality is an old and acknowledged fact, the
public mind, which is never affected by exceptions, assigns certain
general limits to the value of man, above or below which no man can
long remain placed. It is in vain that wealth and poverty, authority
and obedience, accidentally interpose great distances between two men;
public opinion, founded upon the usual order of things, draws them to a
common level, and creates a species of imaginary equality between them,
in spite of the real inequality of their conditions. This all-powerful
opinion penetrates at length even into the hearts of those whose
interest might arm them to resist it; it affects their judgment whilst
it subdues their will. In their inmost convictions the master and the
servant no longer perceive any deep-seated difference between them, and
they neither hope nor fear to meet with any such at any time. They are
therefore neither subject to disdain nor to anger, and they discern in
each other neither humility nor pride. The master holds the contract of
service to be the only source of his power, and the servant regards
it as the only cause of his obedience. They do not quarrel about their
reciprocal situations, but each knows his own and keeps it.
In the French army the common soldier is taken from nearly the same
classes as the officer, and may hold the same commissions; out of the
ranks he considers himself entirely equal to his military superiors, and
in point of fact he is so; but when under arms he does not hesitate to
obey, and his obedience is not the less prompt, precise, and ready,
for being voluntary and defined. This example may give a notion of what
takes place between masters and servants in democratic communities.
It would be preposterous to suppose that those warm and deep-seated
affections, which are sometimes kindled in the domestic service of
aristocracy, will ever spring up between these two men, or that they
will exhibit strong instances of self-sacrifice. In aristocracies
masters and servants live apart, and frequently their only intercourse
is through a third person; yet they commonly stand firmly by one
another. In democratic countries the master and the servant are close
together; they are in daily personal contact, but their minds do not
intermingle; they have common occupations, hardly ever common interests.
Amongst such a people the servant always considers himself as a
sojourner in the dwelling of his masters. He knew nothing of their
forefathers--he will see nothing of their descendants--he has nothing
lasting to expect from their hand. Why then should he confound his
life with theirs, and whence should so strange a surrender of himself
proceed? The reciprocal position of the two men is changed--their mutual
relations must be so too.
I would fain illustrate all these reflections by the example of the
Americans; but for this purpose the distinctions of persons and places
must be accurately traced. In the South of the Union, slavery exists;
all that I have just said is consequently inapplicable there. In the
North, the majority of servants are either freedmen or the children
of freedmen; these persons occupy a contested position in the public
estimation; by the laws they are brought up to the level of their
masters--by the manners of the country they are obstinately detruded
from it. They do not themselves clearly know their proper place, and
they are almost always either insolent or craven. But in the Northern
States, especially in New England, there are a certain number of whites,
who agree, for wages, to yield a temporary obedience to the will of
their fellow-citizens. I have heard that these servants commonly perform
the duties of their situation with punctuality and intelligence; and
that without thinking themselves naturally inferior to the person who
orders them, they submit without reluctance to obey him. They appear to
me to carry into service some of those manly habits which independence
and equality engender. Having once selected a hard way of life, they do
not seek to escape from it by indirect means; and they have sufficient
respect for themselves, not to refuse to their master that obedience
which they have freely promised. On their part, masters require nothing
of their servants but the faithful and rigorous performance of the
covenant: they do not ask for marks of respect, they do not claim their
love or devoted attachment; it is enough that, as servants, they
are exact and honest. It would not then be true to assert that,
in democratic society, the relation of servants and masters is
disorganized: it is organized on another footing; the rule is different,
but there is a rule.
It is not my purpose to inquire whether the new state of things which
I have just described is inferior to that which preceded it, or simply
different. Enough for me that it is fixed and determined: for what is
most important to meet with among men is not any given ordering, but
order. But what shall I say of those sad and troubled times at which
equality is established in the midst of the tumult of revolution--when
democracy, after having been introduced into the state of society, still
struggles with difficulty against the prejudices and manners of the
country? The laws, and partially public opinion, already declare that
no natural or permanent inferiority exists between the servant and
the master. But this new belief has not yet reached the innermost
convictions of the latter, or rather his heart rejects it; in the secret
persuasion of his mind the master thinks that he belongs to a peculiar
and superior race; he dares not say so, but he shudders whilst he allows
himself to be dragged to the same level. His authority over his servants
becomes timid and at the same time harsh: he has already ceased to
entertain for them the feelings of patronizing kindness which long
uncontested power always engenders, and he is surprised that, being
changed himself, his servant changes also. He wants his attendants to
form regular and permanent habits, in a condition of domestic service
which is only temporary: he requires that they should appear contented
with and proud of a servile condition, which they will one day shake
off--that they should sacrifice themselves to a man who can neither
protect nor ruin them--and in short that they should contract an
indissoluble engagement to a being like themselves, and one who will
last no longer than they will.
Amongst aristocratic nations it often happens that the condition of
domestic service does not degrade the character of those who enter upon
it, because they neither know nor imagine any other; and the amazing
inequality which is manifest between them and their master appears to
be the necessary and unavoidable consequence of some hidden law of
Providence. In democracies the condition of domestic service does not
degrade the character of those who enter upon it, because it is freely
chosen, and adopted for a time only; because it is not stigmatized by
public opinion, and creates no permanent inequality between the servant
and the master. But whilst the transition from one social condition
to another is going on, there is almost always a time when men's
minds fluctuate between the aristocratic notion of subjection and
the democratic notion of obedience. Obedience then loses its moral
importance in the eyes of him who obeys; he no longer considers it as
a species of divine obligation, and he does not yet view it under
its purely human aspect; it has to him no character of sanctity or
of justice, and he submits to it as to a degrading but profitable
condition. At that moment a confused and imperfect phantom of equality
haunts the minds of servants; they do not at once perceive whether the
equality to which they are entitled is to be found within or without
the pale of domestic service; and they rebel in their hearts against a
subordination to which they have subjected themselves, and from which
they derive actual profit. They consent to serve, and they blush to
obey; they like the advantages of service, but not the master; or
rather, they are not sure that they ought not themselves to be masters,
and they are inclined to consider him who orders them as an unjust
usurper of their own rights. Then it is that the dwelling of every
citizen offers a spectacle somewhat analogous to the gloomy aspect of
political society. A secret and intestine warfare is going on there
between powers, ever rivals and suspicious of one another: the master is
ill-natured and weak, the servant ill-natured and intractable; the one
constantly attempts to evade by unfair restrictions his obligation to
protect and to remunerate--the other his obligation to obey. The reins
of domestic government dangle between them, to be snatched at by one
or the other. The lines which divide authority from oppression, liberty
from license, and right from might, are to their eyes so jumbled
together and confused, that no one knows exactly what he is, or what he
may be, or what he ought to be. Such a condition is not democracy, but
revolution.