In the United States as soon as a man has acquired some education and
pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or
industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer. All that he
asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure
of his earnings. Amongst the greater part of European nations, when a
man begins to feel his strength and to extend his desires, the first
thing that occurs to him is to get some public employment. These
opposite effects, originating in the same cause, deserve our passing
notice.
When public employments are few in number, ill-paid and precarious,
whilst the different lines of business are numerous and lucrative, it is
to business, and not to official duties, that the new and eager desires
engendered by the principle of equality turn from every side. But if,
whilst the ranks of society are becoming more equal, the education of
the people remains incomplete, or their spirit the reverse of bold--if
commerce and industry, checked in their growth, afford only slow and
arduous means of making a fortune--the various members of the community,
despairing of ameliorating their own condition, rush to the head of the
State and demand its assistance. To relieve their own necessities at the
cost of the public treasury, appears to them to be the easiest and most
open, if not the only, way they have to rise above a condition which no
longer contents them; place-hunting becomes the most generally followed
of all trades. This must especially be the case, in those great
centralized monarchies in which the number of paid offices is immense,
and the tenure of them tolerably secure, so that no one despairs of
obtaining a place, and of enjoying it as undisturbedly as a hereditary
fortune.
I shall not remark that the universal and inordinate desire for place is
a great social evil; that it destroys the spirit of independence in the
citizen, and diffuses a venal and servile humor throughout the frame
of society; that it stifles the manlier virtues: nor shall I be at
the pains to demonstrate that this kind of traffic only creates an
unproductive activity, which agitates the country without adding to its
resources: all these things are obvious. But I would observe, that a
government which encourages this tendency risks its own tranquillity,
and places its very existence in great jeopardy. I am aware that at a
time like our own, when the love and respect which formerly clung to
authority are seen gradually to decline, it may appear necessary to
those in power to lay a closer hold on every man by his own interest,
and it may seem convenient to use his own passions to keep him in order
and in silence; but this cannot be so long, and what may appear to be a
source of strength for a certain time will assuredly become in the end a
great cause of embarrassment and weakness.
Amongst democratic nations, as well as elsewhere, the number of official
appointments has in the end some limits; but amongst those nations,
the number of aspirants is unlimited; it perpetually increases, with a
gradual and irresistible rise in proportion as social conditions become
more equal, and is only checked by the limits of the population.
Thus, when public employments afford the only outlet for ambition, the
government necessarily meets with a permanent opposition at last; for
it is tasked to satisfy with limited means unlimited desires. It is very
certain that of all people in the world the most difficult to restrain
and to manage are a people of solicitants. Whatever endeavors are made
by rulers, such a people can never be contented; and it is always to be
apprehended that they will ultimately overturn the constitution of the
country, and change the aspect of the State, for the sole purpose of
making a clearance of places. The sovereigns of the present age, who
strive to fix upon themselves alone all those novel desires which are
aroused by equality, and to satisfy them, will repent in the end, if I
am not mistaken, that they ever embarked in this policy: they will one
day discover that they have hazarded their own power, by making it so
necessary; and that the more safe and honest course would have been to
teach their subjects the art of providing for themselves. *a
[Footnote a: As a matter of fact, more recent experience has shown that
place-hunting is quite as intense in the United States as in any country
in Europe. It is regarded by the Americans themselves as one of the
great evils of their social condition, and it powerfully affects their
political institutions. But the American who seeks a place seeks not so
much a means of subsistence as the distinction which office and public
employment confer. In the absence of any true aristocracy, the public
service creates a spurious one, which is as much an object of ambition
as the distinctions of rank in aristocratic countries.--Translator's
Note.]