Maintenance Of Good Morals In America
Some philosophers and historians have said, or have hinted, that the
strictness of female morality was increased or diminished simply by the
distance of a country from the equator. This solution of the difficulty
was an easy one; and nothing was required but a globe and a pair of
compasses to settle in an instant one of the most difficult problems in
the condition of mankind. But I am not aware that this principle of the
materialists is supported by facts. The same nations have been chaste or
dissolute at different periods of their history; the strictness or the
laxity of their morals depended therefore on some variable cause, not
only on the natural qualities of their country, which were invariable.
I do not deny that in certain climates the passions which are occasioned
by the mutual attraction of the sexes are peculiarly intense; but I
am of opinion that this natural intensity may always be excited or
restrained by the condition of society and by political institutions.
Although the travellers who have visited North America differ on a great
number of points, they all agree in remarking that morals are far
more strict there than elsewhere. It is evident that on this point
the Americans are very superior to their progenitors the English.
A superficial glance at the two nations will establish the fact.
In England, as in all other countries of Europe, public malice is
constantly attacking the frailties of women. Philosophers and statesmen
are heard to deplore that morals are not sufficiently strict, and the
literary productions of the country constantly lead one to suppose so.
In America all books, novels not excepted, suppose women to be chaste,
and no one thinks of relating affairs of gallantry. No doubt this great
regularity of American morals originates partly in the country, in the
race of the people, and in their religion: but all these causes, which
operate elsewhere, do not suffice to account for it; recourse must
be had to some special reason. This reason appears to me to be the
principle of equality and the institutions derived from it. Equality
of conditions does not of itself engender regularity of morals, but
it unquestionably facilitates and increases it. *a [Footnote a: See
Appendix T.]
Amongst aristocratic nations birth and fortune frequently make two such
different beings of man and woman, that they can never be united to each
other. Their passions draw them together, but the condition of society,
and the notions suggested by it, prevent them from contracting a
permanent and ostensible tie. The necessary consequence is a great
number of transient and clandestine connections. Nature secretly avenges
herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man. This is
not so much the case when the equality of conditions has swept away all
the imaginary, or the real, barriers which separated man from woman. No
girl then believes that she cannot become the wife of the man who loves
her; and this renders all breaches of morality before marriage very
uncommon: for, whatever be the credulity of the passions, a woman will
hardly be able to persuade herself that she is beloved, when her lover
is perfectly free to marry her and does not.
The same cause operates, though more indirectly, on married life.
Nothing better serves to justify an illicit passion, either to the minds
of those who have conceived it or to the world which looks on, than
compulsory or accidental marriages. *b In a country in which a woman is
always free to exercise her power of choosing, and in which education
has prepared her to choose rightly, public opinion is inexorable to her
faults. The rigor of the Americans arises in part from this cause.
They consider marriages as a covenant which is often onerous, but every
condition of which the parties are strictly bound to fulfil, because
they knew all those conditions beforehand, and were perfectly free not
to have contracted them.
[Footnote b: The literature of Europe sufficiently corroborates this
remark. When a European author wishes to depict in a work of imagination
any of these great catastrophes in matrimony which so frequently occur
amongst us, he takes care to bespeak the compassion of the reader by
bringing before him ill-assorted or compulsory marriages. Although
habitual tolerance has long since relaxed our morals, an author could
hardly succeed in interesting us in the misfortunes of his characters,
if he did not first palliate their faults. This artifice seldom fails:
the daily scenes we witness prepare us long beforehand to be indulgent.
But American writers could never render these palliations probable to
their readers; their customs and laws are opposed to it; and as they
despair of rendering levity of conduct pleasing, they cease to depict
it. This is one of the causes to which must be attributed the small
number of novels published in the United States.]
The very circumstances which render matrimonial fidelity more obligatory
also render it more easy. In aristocratic countries the object of
marriage is rather to unite property than persons; hence the husband is
sometimes at school and the wife at nurse when they are betrothed. It
cannot be wondered at if the conjugal tie which holds the fortunes of
the pair united allows their hearts to rove; this is the natural result
of the nature of the contract. When, on the contrary, a man always
chooses a wife for himself, without any external coercion or even
guidance, it is generally a conformity of tastes and opinions which
brings a man and a woman together, and this same conformity keeps and
fixes them in close habits of intimacy.
Our forefathers had conceived a very strange notion on the subject of
marriage: as they had remarked that the small number of love-matches
which occurred in their time almost always turned out ill, they
resolutely inferred that it was exceedingly dangerous to listen to the
dictates of the heart on the subject. Accident appeared to them to be a
better guide than choice. Yet it was not very difficult to perceive that
the examples which they witnessed did in fact prove nothing at all. For
in the first place, if democratic nations leave a woman at liberty
to choose her husband, they take care to give her mind sufficient
knowledge, and her will sufficient strength, to make so important a
choice: whereas the young women who, amongst aristocratic nations,
furtively elope from the authority of their parents to throw themselves
of their own accord into the arms of men whom they have had neither time
to know, nor ability to judge of, are totally without those securities.
It is not surprising that they make a bad use of their freedom of action
the first time they avail themselves of it; nor that they fall into such
cruel mistakes, when, not having received a democratic education, they
choose to marry in conformity to democratic customs. But this is
not all. When a man and woman are bent upon marriage in spite of the
differences of an aristocratic state of society, the difficulties to
be overcome are enormous. Having broken or relaxed the bonds of filial
obedience, they have then to emancipate themselves by a final effort
from the sway of custom and the tyranny of opinion; and when at length
they have succeeded in this arduous task, they stand estranged from
their natural friends and kinsmen: the prejudice they have crossed
separates them from all, and places them in a situation which soon
breaks their courage and sours their hearts. If, then, a couple married
in this manner are first unhappy and afterwards criminal, it ought not
to be attributed to the freedom of their choice, but rather to their
living in a community in which this freedom of choice is not admitted.
Moreover it should not be forgotten that the same effort which makes a
man violently shake off a prevailing error, commonly impels him beyond
the bounds of reason; that, to dare to declare war, in however just
a cause, against the opinion of one's age and country, a violent and
adventurous spirit is required, and that men of this character seldom
arrive at happiness or virtue, whatever be the path they follow. And
this, it may be observed by the way, is the reason why in the most
necessary and righteous revolutions, it is so rare to meet with virtuous
or moderate revolutionary characters. There is then no just ground
for surprise if a man, who in an age of aristocracy chooses to consult
nothing but his own opinion and his own taste in the choice of a wife,
soon finds that infractions of morality and domestic wretchedness invade
his household: but when this same line of action is in the natural and
ordinary course of things, when it is sanctioned by parental authority
and backed by public opinion, it cannot be doubted that the internal
peace of families will be increased by it, and conjugal fidelity more
rigidly observed.
Almost all men in democracies are engaged in public or professional
life; and on the other hand the limited extent of common incomes obliges
a wife to confine herself to the house, in order to watch in person and
very closely over the details of domestic economy. All these distinct
and compulsory occupations are so many natural barriers, which, by
keeping the two sexes asunder, render the solicitations of the one less
frequent and less ardent--the resistance of the other more easy.
Not indeed that the equality of conditions can ever succeed in making
men chaste, but it may impart a less dangerous character to their
breaches of morality. As no one has then either sufficient time or
opportunity to assail a virtue armed in self-defence, there will be
at the same time a great number of courtesans and a great number
of virtuous women. This state of things causes lamentable cases of
individual hardship, but it does not prevent the body of society from
being strong and alert: it does not destroy family ties, or enervate the
morals of the nation. Society is endangered not by the great profligacy
of a few, but by laxity of morals amongst all. In the eyes of a
legislator, prostitution is less to be dreaded than intrigue.
The tumultuous and constantly harassed life which equality makes men
lead, not only distracts them from the passion of love, by denying
them time to indulge in it, but it diverts them from it by another more
secret but more certain road. All men who live in democratic ages more
or less contract the ways of thinking of the manufacturing and trading
classes; their minds take a serious, deliberate, and positive turn; they
are apt to relinquish the ideal, in order to pursue some visible and
proximate object, which appears to be the natural and necessary aim
of their desires. Thus the principle of equality does not destroy the
imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth. No men are
less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy; and few of
them are ever known to give way to those idle and solitary meditations
which commonly precede and produce the great emotions of the heart. It
is true they attach great importance to procuring for themselves that
sort of deep, regular, and quiet affection which constitutes the charm
and safeguard of life, but they are not apt to run after those violent
and capricious sources of excitement which disturb and abridge it.
I am aware that all this is only applicable in its full extent to
America, and cannot at present be extended to Europe. In the course of
the last half-century, whilst laws and customs have impelled several
European nations with unexampled force towards democracy, we have not
had occasion to observe that the relations of man and woman have become
more orderly or more chaste. In some places the very reverse may be
detected: some classes are more strict--the general morality of the
people appears to be more lax. I do not hesitate to make the remark, for
I am as little disposed to flatter my contemporaries as to malign them.
This fact must distress, but it ought not to surprise us. The propitious
influence which a democratic state of society may exercise upon orderly
habits, is one of those tendencies which can only be discovered after
a time. If the equality of conditions is favorable to purity of morals,
the social commotion by which conditions are rendered equal is adverse
to it. In the last fifty years, during which France has been undergoing
this transformation, that country has rarely had freedom, always
disturbance. Amidst this universal confusion of notions and this general
stir of opinions--amidst this incoherent mixture of the just and unjust,
of truth and falsehood, of right and might--public virtue has become
doubtful, and private morality wavering. But all revolutions, whatever
may have been their object or their agents, have at first produced
similar consequences; even those which have in the end drawn the bonds
of morality more tightly began by loosening them. The violations of
morality which the French frequently witness do not appear to me to have
a permanent character; and this is already betokened by some curious
signs of the times.
Nothing is more wretchedly corrupt than an aristocracy which retains its
wealth when it has lost its power, and which still enjoys a vast deal
of leisure after it is reduced to mere vulgar pastimes. The energetic
passions and great conceptions which animated it heretofore, leave it
then; and nothing remains to it but a host of petty consuming vices,
which cling about it like worms upon a carcass. No one denies that the
French aristocracy of the last century was extremely dissolute; whereas
established habits and ancient belief still preserved some respect for
morality amongst the other classes of society. Nor will it be contested
that at the present day the remnants of that same aristocracy exhibit
a certain severity of morals; whilst laxity of morals appears to have
spread amongst the middle and lower ranks. So that the same families
which were most profligate fifty years ago are nowadays the most
exemplary, and democracy seems only to have strengthened the morality
of the aristocratic classes. The French Revolution, by dividing the
fortunes of the nobility, by forcing them to attend assiduously to their
affairs and to their families, by making them live under the same roof
with their children, and in short by giving a more rational and serious
turn to their minds, has imparted to them, almost without their being
aware of it, a reverence for religious belief, a love of order, of
tranquil pleasures, of domestic endearments, and of comfort; whereas the
rest of the nation, which had naturally these same tastes, was carried
away into excesses by the effort which was required to overthrow the
laws and political habits of the country. The old French aristocracy has
undergone the consequences of the Revolution, but it neither felt the
revolutionary passions nor shared in the anarchical excitement which
produced that crisis; it may easily be conceived that this aristocracy
feels the salutary influence of the Revolution in its manners, before
those who achieve it. It may therefore be said, though at first it seems
paradoxical, that, at the present day, the most anti-democratic classes
of the nation principally exhibit the kind of morality which may
reasonably be anticipated from democracy. I cannot but think that when
we shall have obtained all the effects of this democratic Revolution,
after having got rid of the tumult it has caused, the observations which
are now only applicable to the few will gradually become true of the
whole community.