When the principle of equality is in growth, not only amongst a single
nation, but amongst several neighboring nations at the same time, as is
now the case in Europe, the inhabitants of these different countries,
notwithstanding the dissimilarity of language, of customs, and of laws,
nevertheless resemble each other in their equal dread of war and their
common love of peace. *a It is in vain that ambition or anger puts arms
in the hands of princes; they are appeased in spite of themselves by a
species of general apathy and goodwill, which makes the sword drop
from their grasp, and wars become more rare. As the spread of equality,
taking place in several countries at once, simultaneously impels their
various inhabitants to follow manufactures and commerce, not only do
their tastes grow alike, but their interests are so mixed and entangled
with one another that no nation can inflict evils on other nations
without those evils falling back upon itself; and all nations ultimately
regard war as a calamity, almost as severe to the conqueror as to
the conquered. Thus, on the one hand, it is extremely difficult in
democratic ages to draw nations into hostilities; but on the other hand,
it is almost impossible that any two of them should go to war without
embroiling the rest. The interests of all are so interlaced, their
opinions and their wants so much alike, that none can remain quiet when
the others stir. Wars therefore become more rare, but when they break
out they spread over a larger field. Neighboring democratic nations not
only become alike in some respects, but they eventually grow to resemble
each other in almost all. *b This similitude of nations has consequences
of great importance in relation to war.
[Footnote a: It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that the dread
of war displayed by the nations of Europe is not solely attributable
to the progress made by the principle of equality amongst them;
independently of this permanent cause several other accidental causes of
great weight might be pointed out, and I may mention before all the rest
the extreme lassitude which the wars of the Revolution and the Empire
have left behind them.]
[Footnote b: This is not only because these nations have the same social
condition, but it arises from the very nature of that social condition
which leads men to imitate and identify themselves with each other. When
the members of a community are divided into castes and classes, they not
only differ from one another, but they have no taste and no desire to be
alike; on the contrary, everyone endeavors, more and more, to keep his
own opinions undisturbed, to retain his own peculiar habits, and to
remain himself. The characteristics of individuals are very strongly
marked. When the state of society amongst a people is democratic--that
is to say, when there are no longer any castes or classes in the
community, and all its members are nearly equal in education and in
property--the human mind follows the opposite direction. Men are much
alike, and they are annoyed, as it were, by any deviation from that
likeness: far from seeking to preserve their own distinguishing
singularities, they endeavor to shake them off, in order to identify
themselves with the general mass of the people, which is the sole
representative of right and of might to their eyes. The characteristics
of individuals are nearly obliterated. In the ages of aristocracy even
those who are naturally alike strive to create imaginary differences
between themselves: in the ages of democracy even those who are not
alike seek only to become so, and to copy each other--so strongly is the
mind of every man always carried away by the general impulse of mankind.
Something of the same kind may be observed between nations: two nations
having the same aristocratic social condition, might remain thoroughly
distinct and extremely different, because the spirit of aristocracy
is to retain strong individual characteristics; but if two neighboring
nations have the same democratic social condition, they cannot fail
to adopt similar opinions and manners, because the spirit of democracy
tends to assimilate men to each other.]
If I inquire why it is that the Helvetic Confederacy made the greatest
and most powerful nations of Europe tremble in the fifteenth century,
whilst at the present day the power of that country is exactly
proportioned to its population, I perceive that the Swiss are become
like all the surrounding communities, and those surrounding communities
like the Swiss: so that as numerical strength now forms the only
difference between them, victory necessarily attends the largest army.
Thus one of the consequences of the democratic revolution which is going
on in Europe is to make numerical strength preponderate on all fields
of battle, and to constrain all small nations to incorporate themselves
with large States, or at least to adopt the policy of the latter. As
numbers are the determining cause of victory, each people ought of
course to strive by all the means in its power to bring the greatest
possible number of men into the field. When it was possible to enlist a
kind of troops superior to all others, such as the Swiss infantry or the
French horse of the sixteenth century, it was not thought necessary to
raise very large armies; but the case is altered when one soldier is as
efficient as another.
The same cause which begets this new want also supplies means of
satisfying it; for, as I have already observed, when men are all alike,
they are all weak, and the supreme power of the State is naturally much
stronger amongst democratic nations than elsewhere. Hence, whilst these
nations are desirous of enrolling the whole male population in the
ranks of the army, they have the power of effecting this object: the
consequence is, that in democratic ages armies seem to grow larger
in proportion as the love of war declines. In the same ages, too,
the manner of carrying on war is likewise altered by the same causes.
Machiavelli observes in "The Prince," "that it is much more difficult to
subdue a people which has a prince and his barons for its leaders,
than a nation which is commanded by a prince and his slaves." To avoid
offence, let us read public functionaries for slaves, and this important
truth will be strictly applicable to our own time.
A great aristocratic people cannot either conquer its neighbors, or be
conquered by them, without great difficulty. It cannot conquer them,
because all its forces can never be collected and held together for a
considerable period: it cannot be conquered, because an enemy meets at
every step small centres of resistance by which invasion is arrested.
War against an aristocracy may be compared to war in a mountainous
country; the defeated party has constant opportunities of rallying its
forces to make a stand in a new position. Exactly the reverse occurs
amongst democratic nations: they easily bring their whole disposable
force into the field, and when the nation is wealthy and populous it
soon becomes victorious; but if ever it is conquered, and its territory
invaded, it has few resources at command; and if the enemy takes the
capital, the nation is lost. This may very well be explained: as
each member of the community is individually isolated and extremely
powerless, no one of the whole body can either defend himself or present
a rallying point to others. Nothing is strong in a democratic country
except the State; as the military strength of the State is destroyed
by the destruction of the army, and its civil power paralyzed by the
capture of the chief city, all that remains is only a multitude without
strength or government, unable to resist the organized power by which it
is assailed. I am aware that this danger may be lessened by the creation
of provincial liberties, and consequently of provincial powers, but this
remedy will always be insufficient. For after such a catastrophe, not
only is the population unable to carry on hostilities, but it may be
apprehended that they will not be inclined to attempt it. In accordance
with the law of nations adopted in civilized countries, the object of
wars is not to seize the property of private individuals, but simply to
get possession of political power. The destruction of private property
is only occasionally resorted to for the purpose of attaining the latter
object. When an aristocratic country is invaded after the defeat of
its army, the nobles, although they are at the same time the
wealthiest members of the community, will continue to defend themselves
individually rather than submit; for if the conqueror remained master
of the country, he would deprive them of their political power, to which
they cling even more closely than to their property. They therefore
prefer fighting to subjection, which is to them the greatest of all
misfortunes; and they readily carry the people along with them because
the people has long been used to follow and obey them, and besides has
but little to risk in the war. Amongst a nation in which equality of
conditions prevails, each citizen, on the contrary, has but slender
share of political power, and often has no share at all; on the other
hand, all are independent, and all have something to lose; so that they
are much less afraid of being conquered, and much more afraid of war,
than an aristocratic people. It will always be extremely difficult to
decide a democratic population to take up arms, when hostilities have
reached its own territory. Hence the necessity of giving to such a
people the rights and the political character which may impart to every
citizen some of those interests that cause the nobles to act for the
public welfare in aristocratic countries.
It should never be forgotten by the princes and other leaders of
democratic nations, that nothing but the passion and the habit of
freedom can maintain an advantageous contest with the passion and the
habit of physical well-being. I can conceive nothing better prepared
for subjection, in case of defeat, than a democratic people without free
institutions.
Formerly it was customary to take the field with a small body of troops,
to fight in small engagements, and to make long, regular sieges: modern
tactics consist in fighting decisive battles, and, as soon as a line
of march is open before the army, in rushing upon the capital city, in
order to terminate the war at a single blow. Napoleon, it is said, was
the inventor of this new system; but the invention of such a system did
not depend on any individual man, whoever he might be. The mode in which
Napoleon carried on war was suggested to him by the state of society in
his time; that mode was successful, because it was eminently adapted
to that state of society, and because he was the first to employ it.
Napoleon was the first commander who marched at the head of an army
from capital to capital, but the road was opened for him by the ruin of
feudal society. It may fairly be believed that, if that extraordinary
man had been born three hundred years ago, he would not have derived the
same results from his method of warfare, or, rather, that he would have
had a different method.
I shall add but a few words on civil wars, for fear of exhausting the
patience of the reader. Most of the remarks which I have made respecting
foreign wars are applicable a fortiori to civil wars. Men living in
democracies are not naturally prone to the military character; they
sometimes assume it, when they have been dragged by compulsion to the
field; but to rise in a body and voluntarily to expose themselves to the
horrors of war, and especially of civil war, is a course which the
men of democracies are not apt to adopt. None but the most adventurous
members of the community consent to run into such risks; the bulk of the
population remains motionless. But even if the population were inclined
to act, considerable obstacles would stand in their way; for they can
resort to no old and well-established influence which they are willing
to obey--no well-known leaders to rally the discontented, as well as
to discipline and to lead them--no political powers subordinate to the
supreme power of the nation, which afford an effectual support to the
resistance directed against the government. In democratic countries the
moral power of the majority is immense, and the physical resources
which it has at its command are out of all proportion to the physical
resources which may be combined against it. Therefore the party which
occupies the seat of the majority, which speaks in its name and wields
its power, triumphs instantaneously and irresistibly over all private
resistance; it does not even give such opposition time to exist,
but nips it in the bud. Those who in such nations seek to effect a
revolution by force of arms have no other resource than suddenly to
seize upon the whole engine of government as it stands, which can
better be done by a single blow than by a war; for as soon as there is
a regular war, the party which represents the State is always certain to
conquer. The only case in which a civil war could arise is, if the army
should divide itself into two factions, the one raising the standard
of rebellion, the other remaining true to its allegiance. An army
constitutes a small community, very closely united together, endowed
with great powers of vitality, and able to supply its own wants for some
time. Such a war might be bloody, but it could not be long; for either
the rebellious army would gain over the government by the sole display
of its resources, or by its first victory, and then the war would be
over; or the struggle would take place, and then that portion of the
army which should not be supported by the organized powers of the State
would speedily either disband itself or be destroyed. It may therefore
be admitted as a general truth, that in ages of equality civil wars will
become much less frequent and less protracted. *c
[Footnote c: It should be borne in mind that I speak here of sovereign
and independent democratic nations, not of confederate democracies; in
confederacies, as the preponderating power always resides, in spite of
all political fictions, in the state governments, and not in the
federal government, civil wars are in fact nothing but foreign wars in
disguise.]
Book Four: Influence Of Democratic Opinions On Political Society
Chapter I: That Equality Naturally Gives Men A Taste For Free
Institutions
I should imperfectly fulfil the purpose of this book, if, after having
shown what opinions and sentiments are suggested by the principle of
equality, I did not point out, ere I conclude, the general influence
which these same opinions and sentiments may exercise upon the
government of human societies. To succeed in this object I shall
frequently have to retrace my steps; but I trust the reader will not
refuse to follow me through paths already known to him, which may lead
to some new truth.
The principle of equality, which makes men independent of each other,
gives them a habit and a taste for following, in their private actions,
no other guide but their own will. This complete independence, which
they constantly enjoy towards their equals and in the intercourse of
private life, tends to make them look upon all authority with a jealous
eye, and speedily suggests to them the notion and the love of
political freedom. Men living at such times have a natural bias to free
institutions. Take any one of them at a venture, and search if you can
his most deep-seated instincts; you will find that of all governments he
will soonest conceive and most highly value that government, whose head
he has himself elected, and whose administration he may control. Of all
the political effects produced by the equality of conditions, this love
of independence is the first to strike the observing, and to alarm the
timid; nor can it be said that their alarm is wholly misplaced, for
anarchy has a more formidable aspect in democratic countries than
elsewhere. As the citizens have no direct influence on each other, as
soon as the supreme power of the nation fails, which kept them all in
their several stations, it would seem that disorder must instantly
reach its utmost pitch, and that, every man drawing aside in a different
direction, the fabric of society must at once crumble away.
I am, however, persuaded that anarchy is not the principal evil which
democratic ages have to fear, but the least. For the principle
of equality begets two tendencies; the one leads men straight to
independence, and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other
conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road, to
servitude. Nations readily discern the former tendency, and are prepared
to resist it; they are led away by the latter, without perceiving its
drift; hence it is peculiarly important to point it out. For myself, I
am so far from urging as a reproach to the principle of equality that it
renders men untractable, that this very circumstance principally calls
forth my approbation. I admire to see how it deposits in the mind
and heart of man the dim conception and instinctive love of political
independence, thus preparing the remedy for the evil which it engenders;
it is on this very account that I am attached to it.
Chapter II: That The Notions Of Democratic Nations On Government Are
Naturally Favorable To The Concentration Of Power
The notion of secondary powers, placed between the sovereign and his
subjects, occurred naturally to the imagination of aristocratic nations,
because those communities contained individuals or families raised above
the common level, and apparently destined to command by their birth,
their education, and their wealth. This same notion is naturally wanting
in the minds of men in democratic ages, for converse reasons: it
can only be introduced artificially, it can only be kept there with
difficulty; whereas they conceive, as it were, without thinking upon the
subject, the notion of a sole and central power which governs the whole
community by its direct influence. Moreover in politics, as well as
in philosophy and in religion, the intellect of democratic nations is
peculiarly open to simple and general notions. Complicated systems are
repugnant to it, and its favorite conception is that of a great nation
composed of citizens all resembling the same pattern, and all governed
by a single power.
The very next notion to that of a sole and central power, which presents
itself to the minds of men in the ages of equality, is the notion of
uniformity of legislation. As every man sees that he differs but
little from those about him, he cannot understand why a rule which is
applicable to one man should not be equally applicable to all others.
Hence the slightest privileges are repugnant to his reason; the faintest
dissimilarities in the political institutions of the same people offend
him, and uniformity of legislation appears to him to be the first
condition of good government. I find, on the contrary, that this same
notion of a uniform rule, equally binding on all the members of the
community, was almost unknown to the human mind in aristocratic ages;
it was either never entertained, or it was rejected. These contrary
tendencies of opinion ultimately turn on either side to such blind
instincts and such ungovernable habits that they still direct the
actions of men, in spite of particular exceptions. Notwithstanding the
immense variety of conditions in the Middle Ages, a certain number of
persons existed at that period in precisely similar circumstances; but
this did not prevent the laws then in force from assigning to each
of them distinct duties and different rights. On the contrary, at the
present time all the powers of government are exerted to impose the
same customs and the same laws on populations which have as yet but few
points of resemblance. As the conditions of men become equal amongst
a people, individuals seem of less importance, and society of greater
dimensions; or rather, every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest,
is lost in the crowd, and nothing stands conspicuous but the great and
imposing image of the people at large. This naturally gives the men of
democratic periods a lofty opinion of the privileges of society, and a
very humble notion of the rights of individuals; they are ready to admit
that the interests of the former are everything, and those of the latter
nothing. They are willing to acknowledge that the power which represents
the community has far more information and wisdom than any of the
members of that community; and that it is the duty, as well as the
right, of that power to guide as well as govern each private citizen.
If we closely scrutinize our contemporaries, and penetrate to the root
of their political opinions, we shall detect some of the notions which I
have just pointed out, and we shall perhaps be surprised to find so much
accordance between men who are so often at variance. The Americans hold,
that in every State the supreme power ought to emanate from the people;
but when once that power is constituted, they can conceive, as it were,
no limits to it, and they are ready to admit that it has the right to
do whatever it pleases. They have not the slightest notion of peculiar
privileges granted to cities, families, or persons: their minds appear
never to have foreseen that it might be possible not to apply
with strict uniformity the same laws to every part, and to all the
inhabitants. These same opinions are more and more diffused in Europe;
they even insinuate themselves amongst those nations which most
vehemently reject the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Such
nations assign a different origin to the supreme power, but they ascribe
to that power the same characteristics. Amongst them all, the idea of
intermediate powers is weakened and obliterated: the idea of rights
inherent in certain individuals is rapidly disappearing from the minds
of men; the idea of the omnipotence and sole authority of society at
large rises to fill its place. These ideas take root and spread in
proportion as social conditions become more equal, and men more alike;
they are engendered by equality, and in turn they hasten the progress of
equality.
In France, where the revolution of which I am speaking has gone further
than in any other European country, these opinions have got complete
hold of the public mind. If we listen attentively to the language of the
various parties in France, we shall find that there is not one which
has not adopted them. Most of these parties censure the conduct of the
government, but they all hold that the government ought perpetually to
act and interfere in everything that is done. Even those which are
most at variance are nevertheless agreed upon this head. The unity, the
ubiquity, the omnipotence of the supreme power, and the uniformity of
its rules, constitute the principal characteristics of all the political
systems which have been put forward in our age. They recur even in the
wildest visions of political regeneration: the human mind pursues them
in its dreams. If these notions spontaneously arise in the minds of
private individuals, they suggest themselves still more forcibly to
the minds of princes. Whilst the ancient fabric of European society
is altered and dissolved, sovereigns acquire new conceptions of their
opportunities and their duties; they learn for the first time that the
central power which they represent may and ought to administer by
its own agency, and on a uniform plan, all the concerns of the whole
community. This opinion, which, I will venture to say, was never
conceived before our time by the monarchs of Europe, now sinks deeply
into the minds of kings, and abides there amidst all the agitation of
more unsettled thoughts.
Our contemporaries are therefore much less divided than is commonly
supposed; they are constantly disputing as to the hands in which
supremacy is to be vested, but they readily agree upon the duties and
the rights of that supremacy. The notion they all form of government is
that of a sole, simple, providential, and creative power. All secondary
opinions in politics are unsettled; this one remains fixed, invariable,
and consistent. It is adopted by statesmen and political philosophers;
it is eagerly laid hold of by the multitude; those who govern and those
who are governed agree to pursue it with equal ardor: it is the foremost
notion of their minds, it seems inborn. It originates therefore in no
caprice of the human intellect, but it is a necessary condition of the
present state of mankind.
Chapter III: That The Sentiments Of Democratic Nations Accord With Their
Opinions In Leading Them To Concentrate Political Power
If it be true that, in ages of equality, men readily adopt the notion of
a great central power, it cannot be doubted on the other hand that their
habits and sentiments predispose them to recognize such a power and to
give it their support. This may be demonstrated in a few words, as the
greater part of the reasons, to which the fact may be attributed, have
been previously stated. *a As the men who inhabit democratic countries
have no superiors, no inferiors, and no habitual or necessary partners
in their undertakings, they readily fall back upon themselves and
consider themselves as beings apart. I had occasion to point this out
at considerable length in treating of individualism. Hence such men can
never, without an effort, tear themselves from their private affairs to
engage in public business; their natural bias leads them to abandon the
latter to the sole visible and permanent representative of the interests
of the community, that is to say, to the State. Not only are they
naturally wanting in a taste for public business, but they have
frequently no time to attend to it. Private life is so busy in
democratic periods, so excited, so full of wishes and of work, that
hardly any energy or leisure remains to each individual for public life.
I am the last man to contend that these propensities are unconquerable,
since my chief object in writing this book has been to combat them. I
only maintain that at the present day a secret power is fostering them
in the human heart, and that if they are not checked they will wholly
overgrow it.
[Footnote a: See Appendix W.]
I have also had occasion to show how the increasing love of well-being,
and the fluctuating character of property, cause democratic nations
to dread all violent disturbance. The love of public tranquillity is
frequently the only passion which these nations retain, and it becomes
more active and powerful amongst them in proportion as all other
passions droop and die. This naturally disposes the members of the
community constantly to give or to surrender additional rights to the
central power, which alone seems to be interested in defending them by
the same means that it uses to defend itself. As in ages of equality no
man is compelled to lend his assistance to his fellow-men, and none
has any right to expect much support from them, everyone is at once
independent and powerless. These two conditions, which must never be
either separately considered or confounded together, inspire the
citizen of a democratic country with very contrary propensities. His
independence fills him with self-reliance and pride amongst his equals;
his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of some outward
assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them, because they are
all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament he naturally turns
his eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of
universal depression. Of that power his wants and especially his desires
continually remind him, until he ultimately views it as the sole and
necessary support of his own weakness. *b This may more completely
explain what frequently takes place in democratic countries, where the
very men who are so impatient of superiors patiently submit to a master,
exhibiting at once their pride and their servility.
[Footnote b: In democratic communities nothing but the central power has
any stability in its position or any permanence in its undertakings. All
the members of society are in ceaseless stir and transformation. Now it
is in the nature of all governments to seek constantly to enlarge their
sphere of action; hence it is almost impossible that such a government
should not ultimately succeed, because it acts with a fixed principle
and a constant will, upon men, whose position, whose notions, and whose
desires are in continual vacillation. It frequently happens that the
members of the community promote the influence of the central power
without intending it. Democratic ages are periods of experiment,
innovation, and adventure. At such times there are always a multitude of
men engaged in difficult or novel undertakings, which they follow alone,
without caring for their fellowmen. Such persons may be ready to admit,
as a general principle, that the public authority ought not to interfere
in private concerns; but, by an exception to that rule, each of them
craves for its assistance in the particular concern on which he is
engaged, and seeks to draw upon the influence of the government for his
own benefit, though he would restrict it on all other occasions. If a
large number of men apply this particular exception to a great
variety of different purposes, the sphere of the central power extends
insensibly in all directions, although each of them wishes it to be
circumscribed. Thus a democratic government increases its power simply
by the fact of its permanence. Time is on its side; every incident
befriends it; the passions of individuals unconsciously promote it; and
it may be asserted, that the older a democratic community is, the more
centralized will its government become.]
The hatred which men bear to privilege increases in proportion as
privileges become more scarce and less considerable, so that democratic
passions would seem to burn most fiercely at the very time when they
have least fuel. I have already given the reason of this phenomenon.
When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend
the eye; whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst
of general uniformity: the more complete is this uniformity, the more
insupportable does the sight of such a difference become. Hence it is
natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together
with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds upon.
This never-dying, ever-kindling hatred, which sets a democratic people
against the smallest privileges, is peculiarly favorable to the gradual
concentration of all political rights in the hands of the representative
of the State alone. The sovereign, being necessarily and incontestably
above all the citizens, excites not their envy, and each of them thinks
that he strips his equals of the prerogative which he concedes to the
crown. The man of a democratic age is extremely reluctant to obey his
neighbor who is his equal; he refuses to acknowledge in such a person
ability superior to his own; he mistrusts his justice, and is jealous
of his power; he fears and he contemns him; and he loves continually to
remind him of the common dependence in which both of them stand to the
same master. Every central power which follows its natural tendencies
courts and encourages the principle of equality; for equality singularly
facilitates, extends, and secures the influence of a central power.
In like manner it may be said that every central government worships
uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinite number
of small details which must be attended to if rules were to be adapted
to men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting men to rules: thus the
government likes what the citizens like, and naturally hates what they
hate. These common sentiments, which, in democratic nations, constantly
unite the sovereign and every member of the community in one and the
same conviction, establish a secret and lasting sympathy between them.
The faults of the government are pardoned for the sake of its tastes;
public confidence is only reluctantly withdrawn in the midst even of
its excesses and its errors, and it is restored at the first call.
Democratic nations often hate those in whose hands the central power is
vested; but they always love that power itself.
Thus, by two separate paths, I have reached the same conclusion. I have
shown that the principle of equality suggests to men the notion of
a sole, uniform, and strong government: I have now shown that the
principle of equality imparts to them a taste for it. To governments of
this kind the nations of our age are therefore tending. They are drawn
thither by the natural inclination of mind and heart; and in order to
reach that result, it is enough that they do not check themselves in
their course. I am of opinion, that, in the democratic ages which are
opening upon us, individual independence and local liberties will ever
be the produce of artificial contrivance; that centralization will be
the natural form of government. *c
[Footnote c: See Appendix X.]
Chapter IV: Of Certain Peculiar And Accidental Causes Which Either Lead
A People To Complete Centralization Of Government, Or Which Divert Them
From It
If all democratic nations are instinctively led to the centralization of
government, they tend to this result in an unequal manner. This depends
on the particular circumstances which may promote or prevent the
natural consequences of that state of society--circumstances which are
exceedingly numerous; but I shall only advert to a few of them. Amongst
men who have lived free long before they became equal, the tendencies
derived from free institutions combat, to a certain extent, the
propensities superinduced by the principle of equality; and although
the central power may increase its privileges amongst such a people, the
private members of such a community will never entirely forfeit their
independence. But when the equality of conditions grows up amongst a
people which has never known, or has long ceased to know, what freedom
is (and such is the case upon the Continent of Europe), as the former
habits of the nation are suddenly combined, by some sort of natural
attraction, with the novel habits and principles engendered by the state
of society, all powers seem spontaneously to rush to the centre.
These powers accumulate there with astonishing rapidity, and the State
instantly attains the utmost limits of its strength, whilst private
persons allow themselves to sink as suddenly to the lowest degree of
weakness.
The English who emigrated three hundred years ago to found a democratic
commonwealth on the shores of the New World, had all learned to take
a part in public affairs in their mother-country; they were conversant
with trial by jury; they were accustomed to liberty of speech and of the
press--to personal freedom, to the notion of rights and the practice
of asserting them. They carried with them to America these free
institutions and manly customs, and these institutions preserved them
against the encroachments of the State. Thus amongst the Americans it
is freedom which is old--equality is of comparatively modern date. The
reverse is occurring in Europe, where equality, introduced by absolute
power and under the rule of kings, was already infused into the habits
of nations long before freedom had entered into their conceptions.
I have said that amongst democratic nations the notion of government
naturally presents itself to the mind under the form of a sole and
central power, and that the notion of intermediate powers is not
familiar to them. This is peculiarly applicable to the democratic
nations which have witnessed the triumph of the principle of equality
by means of a violent revolution. As the classes which managed local
affairs have been suddenly swept away by the storm, and as the confused
mass which remains has as yet neither the organization nor the habits
which fit it to assume the administration of these same affairs, the
State alone seems capable of taking upon itself all the details of
government, and centralization becomes, as it were, the unavoidable
state of the country. Napoleon deserves neither praise nor censure for
having centred in his own hands almost all the administrative power
of France; for, after the abrupt disappearance of the nobility and
the higher rank of the middle classes, these powers devolved on him of
course: it would have been almost as difficult for him to reject as to
assume them. But no necessity of this kind has ever been felt by the
Americans, who, having passed through no revolution, and having governed
themselves from the first, never had to call upon the State to act for
a time as their guardian. Thus the progress of centralization amongst a
democratic people depends not only on the progress of equality, but on
the manner in which this equality has been established.
At the commencement of a great democratic revolution, when hostilities
have but just broken out between the different classes of society, the
people endeavors to centralize the public administration in the hands of
the government, in order to wrest the management of local affairs
from the aristocracy. Towards the close of such a revolution, on the
contrary, it is usually the conquered aristocracy that endeavors to
make over the management of all affairs to the State, because such an
aristocracy dreads the tyranny of a people which has become its equal,
and not unfrequently its master. Thus it is not always the same class
of the community which strives to increase the prerogative of the
government; but as long as the democratic revolution lasts there is
always one class in the nation, powerful in numbers or in wealth, which
is induced, by peculiar passions or interests, to centralize the public
administration, independently of that hatred of being governed by one's
neighbor, which is a general and permanent feeling amongst democratic
nations. It may be remarked, that at the present day the lower orders in
England are striving with all their might to destroy local independence,
and to transfer the administration from all points of the circumference
to the centre; whereas the higher classes are endeavoring to retain this
administration within its ancient boundaries. I venture to predict that
a time will come when the very reverse will happen.
These observations explain why the supreme power is always stronger, and
private individuals weaker, amongst a democratic people which has passed
through a long and arduous struggle to reach a state of equality than
amongst a democratic community in which the citizens have been equal
from the first. The example of the Americans completely demonstrates
the fact. The inhabitants of the United States were never divided by
any privileges; they have never known the mutual relation of master and
inferior, and as they neither dread nor hate each other, they have never
known the necessity of calling in the supreme power to manage their
affairs. The lot of the Americans is singular: they have derived from
the aristocracy of England the notion of private rights and the taste
for local freedom; and they have been able to retain both the one and
the other, because they have had no aristocracy to combat.
If at all times education enables men to defend their independence, this
is most especially true in democratic ages. When all men are alike, it
is easy to found a sole and all-powerful government, by the aid of
mere instinct. But men require much intelligence, knowledge, and art to
organize and to maintain secondary powers under similar circumstances,
and to create amidst the independence and individual weakness of the
citizens such free associations as may be in a condition to struggle
against tyranny without destroying public order.
Hence the concentration of power and the subjection of individuals will
increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion
as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance. It
is true, that in ages of imperfect civilization the government is
frequently as wanting in the knowledge required to impose a despotism
upon the people as the people are wanting in the knowledge required to
shake it off; but the effect is not the same on both sides. However rude
a democratic people may be, the central power which rules it is never
completely devoid of cultivation, because it readily draws to its own
uses what little cultivation is to be found in the country, and, if
necessary, may seek assistance elsewhere. Hence, amongst a nation which
is ignorant as well as democratic, an amazing difference cannot fail
speedily to arise between the intellectual capacity of the ruler and
that of each of his subjects. This completes the easy concentration
of all power in his hands: the administrative function of the State is
perpetually extended, because the State alone is competent to administer
the affairs of the country. Aristocratic nations, however unenlightened
they may be, never afford the same spectacle, because in them
instruction is nearly equally diffused between the monarch and the
leading members of the community.
The pacha who now rules in Egypt found the population of that country
composed of men exceedingly ignorant and equal, and he has borrowed the
science and ability of Europe to govern that people. As the personal
attainments of the sovereign are thus combined with the ignorance and
democratic weakness of his subjects, the utmost centralization has been
established without impediment, and the pacha has made the country his
manufactory, and the inhabitants his workmen.
I think that extreme centralization of government ultimately enervates
society, and thus after a length of time weakens the government itself;
but I do not deny that a centralized social power may be able to execute
great undertakings with facility in a given time and on a particular
point. This is more especially true of war, in which success depends
much more on the means of transferring all the resources of a nation
to one single point, than on the extent of those resources. Hence it is
chiefly in war that nations desire and frequently require to increase
the powers of the central government. All men of military genius are
fond of centralization, which increases their strength; and all men of
centralizing genius are fond of war, which compels nations to combine
all their powers in the hands of the government. Thus the democratic
tendency which leads men unceasingly to multiply the privileges of the
State, and to circumscribe the rights of private persons, is much more
rapid and constant amongst those democratic nations which are exposed by
their position to great and frequent wars, than amongst all others.
I have shown how the dread of disturbance and the love of well-being
insensibly lead democratic nations to increase the functions of
central government, as the only power which appears to be intrinsically
sufficiently strong, enlightened, and secure, to protect them from
anarchy. I would now add, that all the particular circumstances
which tend to make the state of a democratic community agitated and
precarious, enhance this general propensity, and lead private persons
more and more to sacrifice their rights to their tranquility. A people
is therefore never so disposed to increase the functions of central
government as at the close of a long and bloody revolution, which, after
having wrested property from the hands of its former possessors,
has shaken all belief, and filled the nation with fierce hatreds,
conflicting interests, and contending factions. The love of public
tranquillity becomes at such times an indiscriminating passion, and the
members of the community are apt to conceive a most inordinate devotion
to order.
I have already examined several of the incidents which may concur to
promote the centralization of power, but the principal cause still
remains to be noticed. The foremost of the incidental causes which
may draw the management of all affairs into the hands of the ruler in
democratic countries, is the origin of that ruler himself, and his own
propensities. Men who live in the ages of equality are naturally fond
of central power, and are willing to extend its privileges; but if it
happens that this same power faithfully represents their own interests,
and exactly copies their own inclinations, the confidence they place in
it knows no bounds, and they think that whatever they bestow upon it is
bestowed upon themselves.
The attraction of administrative powers to the centre will always be
less easy and less rapid under the reign of kings who are still in some
way connected with the old aristocratic order, than under new princes,
the children of their own achievements, whose birth, prejudices,
propensities, and habits appear to bind them indissolubly to the cause
of equality. I do not mean that princes of aristocratic origin who live
in democratic ages do not attempt to centralize; I believe they apply
themselves to that object as diligently as any others. For them,
the sole advantages of equality lie in that direction; but their
opportunities are less great, because the community, instead of
volunteering compliance with their desires, frequently obeys them with
reluctance. In democratic communities the rule is that centralization
must increase in proportion as the sovereign is less aristocratic. When
an ancient race of kings stands at the head of an aristocracy, as the
natural prejudices of the sovereign perfectly accord with the natural
prejudices of the nobility, the vices inherent in aristocratic
communities have a free course, and meet with no corrective. The reverse
is the case when the scion of a feudal stock is placed at the head of
a democratic people. The sovereign is constantly led, by his education,
his habits, and his associations, to adopt sentiments suggested by the
inequality of conditions, and the people tend as constantly, by their
social condition, to those manners which are engendered by equality.
At such times it often happens that the citizens seek to control the
central power far less as a tyrannical than as an aristocratical power,
and that they persist in the firm defence of their independence, not
only because they would remain free, but especially because they are
determined to remain equal. A revolution which overthrows an ancient
regal family, in order to place men of more recent growth at the head
of a democratic people, may temporarily weaken the central power; but
however anarchical such a revolution may appear at first, we need not
hesitate to predict that its final and certain consequence will be to
extend and to secure the prerogatives of that power. The foremost or
indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in
centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love
equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of
despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it
were to a single principle.
Chapter V: That Amongst The European Nations Of Our Time The Power Of
Governments Is Increasing, Although The Persons Who Govern Are Less
Stable
On reflecting upon what has already been said, the reader will be
startled and alarmed to find that in Europe everything seems to conduce
to the indefinite extension of the prerogatives of government, and to
render all that enjoyed the rights of private independence more weak,
more subordinate, and more precarious. The democratic nations of Europe
have all the general and permanent tendencies which urge the Americans
to the centralization of government, and they are moreover exposed to a
number of secondary and incidental causes with which the Americans are
unacquainted. It would seem as if every step they make towards equality
brings them nearer to despotism. And indeed if we do but cast our
looks around, we shall be convinced that such is the fact. During the
aristocratic ages which preceded the present time, the sovereigns of
Europe had been deprived of, or had relinquished, many of the rights
inherent in their power. Not a hundred years ago, amongst the greater
part of European nations, numerous private persons and corporations were
sufficiently independent to administer justice, to raise and maintain
troops, to levy taxes, and frequently even to make or interpret the
law. The State has everywhere resumed to itself alone these natural
attributes of sovereign power; in all matters of government the State
tolerates no intermediate agent between itself and the people, and in
general business it directs the people by its own immediate influence. I
am far from blaming this concentration of power, I simply point it out.
At the same period a great number of secondary powers existed in Europe,
which represented local interests and administered local affairs. Most
of these local authorities have already disappeared; all are speedily
tending to disappear, or to fall into the most complete dependence.
From one end of Europe to the other the privileges of the nobility, the
liberties of cities, and the powers of provincial bodies, are either
destroyed or upon the verge of destruction. Europe has endured, in
the course of the last half-century, many revolutions and
counter-revolutions which have agitated it in opposite directions: but
all these perturbations resemble each other in one respect--they have
all shaken or destroyed the secondary powers of government. The local
privileges which the French did not abolish in the countries they
conquered, have finally succumbed to the policy of the princes who
conquered the French. Those princes rejected all the innovations of the
French Revolution except centralization: that is the only principle they
consented to receive from such a source. My object is to remark, that
all these various rights, which have been successively wrested, in our
time, from classes, corporations, and individuals, have not served
to raise new secondary powers on a more democratic basis, but have
uniformly been concentrated in the hands of the sovereign. Everywhere
the State acquires more and more direct control over the humblest
members of the community, and a more exclusive power of governing
each of them in his smallest concerns. *a Almost all the charitable
establishments of Europe were formerly in the hands of private persons
or of corporations; they are now almost all dependent on the supreme
government, and in many countries are actually administered by that
power. The State almost exclusively undertakes to supply bread to the
hungry, assistance and shelter to the sick, work to the idle, and to
act as the sole reliever of all kinds of misery. Education, as well
as charity, is become in most countries at the present day a national
concern. The State receives, and often takes, the child from the arms of
the mother, to hand it over to official agents: the State undertakes to
train the heart and to instruct the mind of each generation. Uniformity
prevails in the courses of public instruction as in everything else;
diversity, as well as freedom, is disappearing day by day. Nor do I
hesitate to affirm, that amongst almost all the Christian nations of our
days, Catholic as well as Protestant, religion is in danger of falling
into the hands of the government. Not that rulers are over-jealous of
the right of settling points of doctrine, but they get more and more
hold upon the will of those by whom doctrines are expounded; they
deprive the clergy of their property, and pay them by salaries; they
divert to their own use the influence of the priesthood, they make them
their own ministers--often their own servants--and by this alliance with
religion they reach the inner depths of the soul of man. *b
[Footnote a: This gradual weakening of individuals in relation to
society at large may be traced in a thousand ways. I shall select
from amongst these examples one derived from the law of wills. In
aristocracies it is common to profess the greatest reverence for the
last testamentary dispositions of a man; this feeling sometimes even
became superstitious amongst the older nations of Europe: the power of
the State, far from interfering with the caprices of a dying man, gave
full force to the very least of them, and insured to him a perpetual
power. When all living men are enfeebled, the will of the dead is less
respected: it is circumscribed within a narrow range, beyond which it
is annulled or checked by the supreme power of the laws. In the Middle
Ages, testamentary power had, so to speak, no limits: amongst the French
at the present day, a man cannot distribute his fortune amongst his
children without the interference of the State; after having domineered
over a whole life, the law insists upon regulating the very last act of
it.]
[Footnote b: In proportion as the duties of the central power are
augmented, the number of public officers by whom that power is
represented must increase also. They form a nation in each nation; and
as they share the stability of the government, they more and more fill
up the place of an aristocracy.
In almost every part of Europe the government rules in two ways; it
rules one portion of the community by the fear which they entertain of
its agents, and the other by the hope they have of becoming its agents.]
But this is as yet only one side of the picture. The authority of
government has not only spread, as we have just seen, throughout the
sphere of all existing powers, till that sphere can no longer contain
it, but it goes further, and invades the domain heretofore reserved
to private independence. A multitude of actions, which were formerly
entirely beyond the control of the public administration, have been
subjected to that control in our time, and the number of them is
constantly increasing. Amongst aristocratic nations the supreme
government usually contented itself with managing and superintending
the community in whatever directly and ostensibly concerned the national
honor; but in all other respects the people were left to work out their
own free will. Amongst these nations the government often seemed to
forget that there is a point at which the faults and the sufferings of
private persons involve the general prosperity, and that to prevent
the ruin of a private individual must sometimes be a matter of public
importance. The democratic nations of our time lean to the opposite
extreme. It is evident that most of our rulers will not content
themselves with governing the people collectively: it would seem as
if they thought themselves responsible for the actions and private
condition of their subjects--as if they had undertaken to guide and to
instruct each of them in the various incidents of life, and to secure
their happiness quite independently of their own consent. On the other
hand private individuals grow more and more apt to look upon the
supreme power in the same light; they invoke its assistance in all their
necessities, and they fix their eyes upon the administration as their
mentor or their guide.
I assert that there is no country in Europe in which the public
administration has not become, not only more centralized, but more
inquisitive and more minute it everywhere interferes in private concerns
more than it did; it regulates more undertakings, and undertakings of a
lesser kind; and it gains a firmer footing every day about, above, and
around all private persons, to assist, to advise, and to coerce them.
Formerly a sovereign lived upon the income of his lands, or the revenue
of his taxes; this is no longer the case now that his wants have
increased as well as his power. Under the same circumstances which
formerly compelled a prince to put on a new tax, he now has recourse
to a loan. Thus the State gradually becomes the debtor of most of the
wealthier members of the community, and centralizes the largest amounts
of capital in its own hands. Small capital is drawn into its keeping
by another method. As men are intermingled and conditions become more
equal, the poor have more resources, more education, and more desires;
they conceive the notion of bettering their condition, and this teaches
them to save. These savings are daily producing an infinite number of
small capitals, the slow and gradual produce of labor, which are always
increasing. But the greater part of this money would be unproductive if
it remained scattered in the hands of its owners. This circumstance has
given rise to a philanthropic institution, which will soon become, if I
am not mistaken, one of our most important political institutions. Some
charitable persons conceived the notion of collecting the savings of
the poor and placing them out at interest. In some countries these
benevolent associations are still completely distinct from the State;
but in almost all they manifestly tend to identify themselves with the
government; and in some of them the government has superseded them,
taking upon itself the enormous task of centralizing in one place, and
putting out at interest on its own responsibility, the daily savings of
many millions of the working classes. Thus the State draws to itself the
wealth of the rich by loans, and has the poor man's mite at its disposal
in the savings banks. The wealth of the country is perpetually flowing
around the government and passing through its hands; the accumulation
increases in the same proportion as the equality of conditions; for in
a democratic country the State alone inspires private individuals with
confidence, because the State alone appears to be endowed with strength
and durability. *c Thus the sovereign does not confine himself to
the management of the public treasury; he interferes in private money
matters; he is the superior, and often the master, of all the members
of the community; and, in addition to this, he assumes the part of their
steward and paymaster.
[Footnote c: On the one hand the taste for worldly welfare is
perpetually increasing, and on the other the government gets more and
more complete possession of the sources of that welfare. Thus men are
following two separate roads to servitude: the taste for their own
welfare withholds them from taking a part in the government, and their
love of that welfare places them in closer dependence upon those who
govern.]
The central power not only fulfils of itself the whole of the duties
formerly discharged by various authorities--extending those duties, and
surpassing those authorities--but it performs them with more alertness,
strength, and independence than it displayed before. All the governments
of Europe have in our time singularly improved the science of
administration: they do more things, and they do everything with more
order, more celerity, and at less expense; they seem to be constantly
enriched by all the experience of which they have stripped private
persons. From day to day the princes of Europe hold their subordinate
officers under stricter control, and they invent new methods for guiding
them more closely, and inspecting them with less trouble. Not content
with managing everything by their agents, they undertake to manage the
conduct of their agents in everything; so that the public administration
not only depends upon one and the same power, but it is more and more
confined to one spot and concentrated in the same hands. The government
centralizes its agency whilst it increases its prerogative--hence a
twofold increase of strength.
In examining the ancient constitution of the judicial power, amongst
most European nations, two things strike the mind--the independence of
that power, and the extent of its functions. Not only did the courts of
justice decide almost all differences between private persons, but in
very many cases they acted as arbiters between private persons and the
State. I do not here allude to the political and administrative offices
which courts of judicature had in some countries usurped, but the
judicial office common to them all. In most of the countries of Europe,
there were, and there still are, many private rights, connected for
the most part with the general right of property, which stood under
the protection of the courts of justice, and which the State could not
violate without their sanction. It was this semi-political power which
mainly distinguished the European courts of judicature from all others;
for all nations have had judges, but all have not invested their judges
with the same privileges. Upon examining what is now occurring amongst
the democratic nations of Europe which are called free, as well as
amongst the others, it will be observed that new and more dependent
courts are everywhere springing up by the side of the old ones, for
the express purpose of deciding, by an extraordinary jurisdiction,
such litigated matters as may arise between the government and private
persons. The elder judicial power retains its independence, but its
jurisdiction is narrowed; and there is a growing tendency to reduce it
to be exclusively the arbiter between private interests. The number of
these special courts of justice is continually increasing, and their
functions increase likewise. Thus the government is more and more
absolved from the necessity of subjecting its policy and its rights to
the sanction of another power. As judges cannot be dispensed with, at
least the State is to select them, and always to hold them under its
control; so that, between the government and private individuals, they
place the effigy of justice rather than justice itself. The State is
not satisfied with drawing all concerns to itself, but it acquires an
ever-increasing power of deciding on them all without restriction and
without appeal. *d
[Footnote d: A strange sophism has been made on this head in France.
When a suit arises between the government and a private person, it is
not to be tried before an ordinary judge--in order, they say, not to
mix the administrative and the judicial powers; as if it were not to
mix those powers, and to mix them in the most dangerous and oppressive
manner, to invest the government with the office of judging and
administering at the same time.]
There exists amongst the modern nations of Europe one great cause,
independent of all those which have already been pointed out, which
perpetually contributes to extend the agency or to strengthen the
prerogative of the supreme power, though it has not been sufficiently
attended to: I mean the growth of manufactures, which is fostered by the
progress of social equality. Manufactures generally collect a multitude
of men of the same spot, amongst whom new and complex relations
spring up. These men are exposed by their calling to great and sudden
alternations of plenty and want, during which public tranquillity is
endangered. It may also happen that these employments sacrifice the
health, and even the life, of those who gain by them, or of those who
live by them. Thus the manufacturing classes require more regulation,
superintendence, and restraint than the other classes of society, and
it is natural that the powers of government should increase in the same
proportion as those classes.
This is a truth of general application; what follows more especially
concerns the nations of Europe. In the centuries which preceded that in
which we live, the aristocracy was in possession of the soil, and was
competent to defend it: landed property was therefore surrounded by
ample securities, and its possessors enjoyed great independence.
This gave rise to laws and customs which have been perpetuated,
notwithstanding the subdivision of lands and the ruin of the nobility;
and, at the present time, landowners and agriculturists are still those
amongst the community who must easily escape from the control of the
supreme power. In these same aristocratic ages, in which all the
sources of our history are to be traced, personal property was of small
importance, and those who possessed it were despised and weak:
the manufacturing class formed an exception in the midst of those
aristocratic communities; as it had no certain patronage, it was not
outwardly protected, and was often unable to protect itself.
Hence a habit sprung up of considering manufacturing property as
something of a peculiar nature, not entitled to the same deference,
and not worthy of the same securities as property in general; and
manufacturers were looked upon as a small class in the bulk of the
people, whose independence was of small importance, and who might with
propriety be abandoned to the disciplinary passions of princes. On
glancing over the codes of the middle ages, one is surprised to see,
in those periods of personal independence, with what incessant royal
regulations manufactures were hampered, even in their smallest details:
on this point centralization was as active and as minute as it can ever
be. Since that time a great revolution has taken place in the world;
manufacturing property, which was then only in the germ, has spread
till it covers Europe: the manufacturing class has been multiplied and
enriched by the remnants of all other ranks; it has grown and is still
perpetually growing in number, in importance, in wealth. Almost all
those who do not belong to it are connected with it at least on some one
point; after having been an exception in society, it threatens to
become the chief, if not the only, class; nevertheless the notions and
political precedents engendered by it of old still cling about it. These
notions and these precedents remain unchanged, because they are old,
and also because they happen to be in perfect accordance with the new
notions and general habits of our contemporaries. Manufacturing property
then does not extend its rights in the same ratio as its importance. The
manufacturing classes do not become less dependent, whilst they become
more numerous; but, on the contrary, it would seem as if despotism
lurked within them, and naturally grew with their growth. *e As a
nation becomes more engaged in manufactures, the want of roads, canals,
harbors, and other works of a semi-public nature, which facilitate the
acquisition of wealth, is more strongly felt; and as a nation becomes
more democratic, private individuals are less able, and the State more
able, to execute works of such magnitude. I do not hesitate to assert
that the manifest tendency of all governments at the present time is to
take upon themselves alone the execution of these undertakings; by which
means they daily hold in closer dependence the population which they
govern.
[Footnote e: I shall quote a few facts in corroboration of this remark.
Mines are the natural sources of manufacturing wealth: as manufactures
have grown up in Europe, as the produce of mines has become of more
general importance, and good mining more difficult from the subdivision
of property which is a consequence of the equality of conditions, most
governments have asserted a right of owning the soil in which the mines
lie, and of inspecting the works; which has never been the case with any
other kind of property. Thus mines, which were private property, liable
to the same obligations and sheltered by the same guarantees as all
other landed property, have fallen under the control of the State.
The State either works them or farms them; the owners of them are mere
tenants, deriving their rights from the State; and, moreover, the State
almost everywhere claims the power of directing their operations: it
lays down rules, enforces the adoption of particular methods, subjects
the mining adventurers to constant superintendence, and, if refractory,
they are ousted by a government court of justice, and the government
transfers their contract to other hands; so that the government not
only possesses the mines, but has all the adventurers in its power.
Nevertheless, as manufactures increase, the working of old mines
increases also; new ones are opened, the mining population extends and
grows up; day by day governments augment their subterranean dominions,
and people them with their agents.]
On the other hand, in proportion as the power of a State increases, and
its necessities are augmented, the State consumption of manufactured
produce is always growing larger, and these commodities are generally
made in the arsenals or establishments of the government. Thus, in every
kingdom, the ruler becomes the principal manufacturer; he collects
and retains in his service a vast number of engineers, architects,
mechanics, and handicraftsmen. Not only is he the principal
manufacturer, but he tends more and more to become the chief, or rather
the master of all other manufacturers. As private persons become
more powerless by becoming more equal, they can effect nothing in
manufactures without combination; but the government naturally seeks to
place these combinations under its own control.
It must be admitted that these collective beings, which are called
combinations, are stronger and more formidable than a private individual
can ever be, and that they have less of the responsibility of their own
actions; whence it seems reasonable that they should not be allowed to
retain so great an independence of the supreme government as might be
conceded to a private individual.
Rulers are the more apt to follow this line of policy, as their own
inclinations invite them to it. Amongst democratic nations it is only by
association that the resistance of the people to the government can ever
display itself: hence the latter always looks with ill-favor on those
associations which are not in its own power; and it is well worthy of
remark, that amongst democratic nations, the people themselves often
entertain a secret feeling of fear and jealousy against these
very associations, which prevents the citizens from defending the
institutions of which they stand so much in need. The power and the
duration of these small private bodies, in the midst of the weakness and
instability of the whole community, astonish and alarm the people;
and the free use which each association makes of its natural powers is
almost regarded as a dangerous privilege. All the associations which
spring up in our age are, moreover, new corporate powers, whose rights
have not been sanctioned by time; they come into existence at a
time when the notion of private rights is weak, and when the power of
government is unbounded; hence it is not surprising that they lose their
freedom at their birth. Amongst all European nations there are some
kinds of associations which cannot be formed until the State has
examined their by-laws, and authorized their existence. In several
others, attempts are made to extend this rule to all associations; the
consequences of such a policy, if it were successful, may easily be
foreseen. If once the sovereign had a general right of authorizing
associations of all kinds upon certain conditions, he would not be long
without claiming the right of superintending and managing them, in order
to prevent them from departing from the rules laid down by himself. In
this manner, the State, after having reduced all who are desirous of
forming associations into dependence, would proceed to reduce into the
same condition all who belong to associations already formed--that is
to say, almost all the men who are now in existence. Governments thus
appropriate to themselves, and convert to their own purposes, the
greater part of this new power which manufacturing interests have in
our time brought into the world. Manufacturers govern us--they govern
manufactures.
I attach so much importance to all that I have just been saying, that
I am tormented by the fear of having impaired my meaning in seeking
to render it more clear. If the reader thinks that the examples I have
adduced to support my observations are insufficient or ill-chosen--if
he imagines that I have anywhere exaggerated the encroachments of the
supreme power, and, on the other hand, that I have underrated the extent
of the sphere which still remains open to the exertions of individual
independence, I entreat him to lay down the book for a moment, and to
turn his mind to reflect for himself upon the subjects I have attempted
to explain. Let him attentively examine what is taking place in France
and in other countries--let him inquire of those about him--let him
search himself, and I am much mistaken if he does not arrive, without
my guidance, and by other paths, at the point to which I have sought
to lead him. He will perceive that for the last half-century,
centralization has everywhere been growing up in a thousand different
ways. Wars, revolutions, conquests, have served to promote it: all men
have labored to increase it. In the course of the same period, during
which men have succeeded each other with singular rapidity at the head
of affairs, their notions, interests, and passions have been infinitely
diversified; but all have by some means or other sought to centralize.
This instinctive centralization has been the only settled point amidst
the extreme mutability of their lives and of their thoughts.
If the reader, after having investigated these details of human affairs,
will seek to survey the wide prospect as a whole, he will be struck
by the result. On the one hand the most settled dynasties shaken or
overthrown--the people everywhere escaping by violence from the sway
of their laws--abolishing or limiting the authority of their rulers or
their princes--the nations, which are not in open revolution, restless
at least, and excited--all of them animated by the same spirit of
revolt: and on the other hand, at this very period of anarchy, and
amongst these untractable nations, the incessant increase of the
prerogative of the supreme government, becoming more centralized, more
adventurous, more absolute, more extensive--the people perpetually
falling under the control of the public administration--led
insensibly to surrender to it some further portion of their individual
independence, till the very men, who from time to time upset a throne
and trample on a race of kings, bend more and more obsequiously to the
slightest dictate of a clerk. Thus two contrary revolutions appear
in our days to be going on; the one continually weakening the supreme
power, the other as continually strengthening it: at no other period
in our history has it appeared so weak or so strong. But upon a more
attentive examination of the state of the world, it appears that these
two revolutions are intimately connected together, that they originate
in the same source, and that after having followed a separate course,
they lead men at last to the same result. I may venture once more to
repeat what I have already said or implied in several parts of this
book: great care must be taken not to confound the principle of equality
itself with the revolution which finally establishes that principle in
the social condition and the laws of a nation: here lies the reason of
almost all the phenomena which occasion our astonishment. All the old
political powers of Europe, the greatest as well as the least, were
founded in ages of aristocracy, and they more or less represented or
defended the principles of inequality and of privilege. To make the
novel wants and interests, which the growing principle of equality
introduced, preponderate in government, our contemporaries had to
overturn or to coerce the established powers. This led them to make
revolutions, and breathed into many of them, that fierce love of
disturbance and independence, which all revolutions, whatever be their
object, always engender. I do not believe that there is a single country
in Europe in which the progress of equality has not been preceded or
followed by some violent changes in the state of property and persons;
and almost all these changes have been attended with much anarchy and
license, because they have been made by the least civilized portion of
the nation against that which is most civilized. Hence proceeded the
two-fold contrary tendencies which I have just pointed out. As long as
the democratic revolution was glowing with heat, the men who were
bent upon the destruction of old aristocratic powers hostile to that
revolution, displayed a strong spirit of independence; but as the
victory or the principle of equality became more complete, they
gradually surrendered themselves to the propensities natural to that
condition of equality, and they strengthened and centralized their
governments. They had sought to be free in order to make themselves
equal; but in proportion as equality was more established by the aid
of freedom, freedom itself was thereby rendered of more difficult
attainment.
These two states of a nation have sometimes been contemporaneous:
the last generation in France showed how a people might organize a
stupendous tyranny in the community, at the very time when they were
baffling the authority of the nobility and braving the power of all
kings--at once teaching the world the way to win freedom, and the way to
lose it. In our days men see that constituted powers are dilapidated
on every side--they see all ancient authority gasping away, all ancient
barriers tottering to their fall, and the judgment of the wisest is
troubled at the sight: they attend only to the amazing revolution which
is taking place before their eyes, and they imagine that mankind is
about to fall into perpetual anarchy: if they looked to the final
consequences of this revolution, their fears would perhaps assume a
different shape. For myself, I confess that I put no trust in the spirit
of freedom which appears to animate my contemporaries. I see well
enough that the nations of this age are turbulent, but I do not clearly
perceive that they are liberal; and I fear lest, at the close of
those perturbations which rock the base of thrones, the domination of
sovereigns may prove more powerful than it ever was before.
Chapter VI: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear
I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a democratic
state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular
facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceived, upon
my return to Europe, how much use had already been made by most of our
rulers, of the notions, the sentiments, and the wants engendered by this
same social condition, for the purpose of extending the circle of
their power. This led me to think that the nations of Christendom would
perhaps eventually undergo some sort of oppression like that which
hung over several of the nations of the ancient world. A more accurate
examination of the subject, and five years of further meditations, have
not diminished my apprehensions, but they have changed the object of
them. No sovereign ever lived in former ages so absolute or so powerful
as to undertake to administer by his own agency, and without the
assistance of intermediate powers, all the parts of a great empire: none
ever attempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict
uniformity of regulation, and personally to tutor and direct every
member of the community. The notion of such an undertaking never
occurred to the human mind; and if any man had conceived it, the want
of information, the imperfection of the administrative system, and above
all, the natural obstacles caused by the inequality of conditions, would
speedily have checked the execution of so vast a design. When the Roman
emperors were at the height of their power, the different nations of the
empire still preserved manners and customs of great diversity; although
they were subject to the same monarch, most of the provinces were
separately administered; they abounded in powerful and active
municipalities; and although the whole government of the empire was
centred in the hands of the emperor alone, and he always remained, upon
occasions, the supreme arbiter in all matters, yet the details of social
life and private occupations lay for the most part beyond his control.
The emperors possessed, it is true, an immense and unchecked power,
which allowed them to gratify all their whimsical tastes, and to employ
for that purpose the whole strength of the State. They frequently abused
that power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life:
their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the
greater number; it was fixed to some few main objects, and neglected the
rest; it was violent, but its range was limited.
But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the
democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character;
it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without
tormenting them. I do not question, that in an age of instruction
and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in
collecting all political power into their own hands, and might interfere
more habitually and decidedly within the circle of private interests,
than any sovereign of antiquity could ever do. But this same principle
of equality which facilitates despotism, tempers its rigor. We have seen
how the manners of society become more humane and gentle in proportion
as men become more equal and alike. When no member of the community has
much power or much wealth, tyranny is, as it were, without opportunities
and a field of action. As all fortunes are scanty, the passions of men
are naturally circumscribed--their imagination limited, their pleasures
simple. This universal moderation moderates the sovereign himself, and
checks within certain limits the inordinate extent of his desires.
Independently of these reasons drawn from the nature of the state of
society itself, I might add many others arising from causes beyond my
subject; but I shall keep within the limits I have laid down to myself.
Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain
periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but these crises
will be rare and brief. When I consider the petty passions of our
contemporaries, the mildness of their manners, the extent of their
education, the purity of their religion, the gentleness of their
morality, their regular and industrious habits, and the restraint which
they almost all observe in their vices no less than in their virtues,
I have no fear that they will meet with tyrants in their rulers, but
rather guardians. *a I think then that the species of oppression by
which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever
before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype
of it in their memories. I am trying myself to choose an expression
which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it,
but in vain; the old words "despotism" and "tyranny" are inappropriate:
the thing itself is new; and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to
define it.
[Footnote a: See Appendix Y.]
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear
in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is
an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly
endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they
glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the
fate of all the rest--his children and his private friends constitute to
him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is
close to them, but he sees them not--he touches them, but he feels them
not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred
still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his
country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power,
which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and
to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular,
provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if,
like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it
seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well
content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing
but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors,
but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their
necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal
concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and
subdivides their inheritances--what remains, but to spare them all
the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day
renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less
frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and
gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of
equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to
endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in
its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then
extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of
society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform,
through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters
cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not
shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it
to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power
does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but
it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till
each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and
industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. I have
always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind
which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is
commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that
it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the
people. Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting
passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free: as they
cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities,
they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary,
and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They
combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty;
this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage
by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man
allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is
not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large that holds
the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state
of dependence just long enough to select their master, and then relapse
into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite
contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism
and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough
for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered
it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me:
the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of
extorted obedience.
I do not however deny that a constitution of this kind appears to me to
be infinitely preferable to one, which, after having concentrated
all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an
irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms which
democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be
the worst. When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a
legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression
which he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is
always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and
disarmed, may still imagine, that whilst he yields obedience it is to
himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that
all the rest give way. In like manner I can understand that when the
sovereign represents the nation, and is dependent upon the people, the
rights and the power of which every citizen is deprived, not only serve
the head of the State, but the State itself; and that private persons
derive some return from the sacrifice of their independence which they
have made to the public. To create a representation of the people in
every centralized country, is therefore, to diminish the evil which
extreme centralization may produce, but not to get rid of it. I admit
that by this means room is left for the intervention of individuals in
the more important affairs; but it is not the less suppressed in the
smaller and more private ones. It must not be forgotten that it is
especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my
own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great
things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one
without possessing the other. Subjection in minor affairs breaks out
every day, and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does
not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till
they are led to surrender the exercise of their will. Thus their
spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that
obedience, which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions, only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals, and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people, which has
been rendered so dependent on the central power, to choose from time to
time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of
their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them
from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for
themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity. *b
I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and
only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations which have
introduced freedom into their political constitution, at the very
time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative
constitution, have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those
minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted--the people are
held to be unequal to the task, but when the government of the country
is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are
alternately made the playthings of their ruler, and his masters--more
than kings, and less than men. After having exhausted all the different
modes of election, without finding one to suit their purpose, they are
still amazed, and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they
remark did not originate in the constitution of the country far more
than in that of the electoral body. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive
how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should
succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be
governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and
energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient
people. A constitution, which should be republican in its head and
ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to
be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the
people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its
representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon
return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.
[Footnote b: See Appendix Z.]
Chapter VII: Continuation Of The Preceding Chapters
I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic
government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are
equal, than amongst any other; and I think that if such a government
were once established amongst such a people, it would not only oppress
men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of the highest
qualities of humanity. Despotism therefore appears to me peculiarly to
be dreaded in democratic ages. I should have loved freedom, I believe,
at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship
it. On the other hand, I am persuaded that all who shall attempt, in
the ages upon which we are entering, to base freedom upon aristocratic
privilege, will fail--that all who shall attempt to draw and to retain
authority within a single class, will fail. At the present day no ruler
is skilful or strong enough to found a despotism, by re-establishing
permanent distinctions of rank amongst his subjects: no legislator is
wise or powerful enough to preserve free institutions, if he does not
take equality for his first principle and his watchword. All those of
our contemporaries who would establish or secure the independence and
the dignity of their fellow-men, must show themselves the friends of
equality; and the only worthy means of showing themselves as such, is to
be so: upon this depends the success of their holy enterprise. Thus the
question is not how to reconstruct aristocratic society, but how to make
liberty proceed out of that democratic state of society in which God has
placed us.
These two truths appear to me simple, clear, and fertile in
consequences; and they naturally lead me to consider what kind of
free government can be established amongst a people in which social
conditions are equal. It results from the very constitution of
democratic nations and from their necessities, that the power of
government amongst them must be more uniform, more centralized, more
extensive, more searching, and more efficient than in other countries.
Society at large is naturally stronger and more active, individuals more
subordinate and weak; the former does more, the latter less; and this is
inevitably the case. It is not therefore to be expected that the range
of private independence will ever be as extensive in democratic as
in aristocratic countries--nor is this to be desired; for, amongst
aristocratic nations, the mass is often sacrificed to the individual,
and the prosperity of the greater number to the greatness of the few.
It is both necessary and desirable that the government of a democratic
people should be active and powerful: and our object should not be to
render it weak or indolent, but solely to prevent it from abusing its
aptitude and its strength.
The circumstance which most contributed to secure the independence of
private persons in aristocratic ages, was, that the supreme power did
not affect to take upon itself alone the government and administration
of the community; those functions were necessarily partially left to
the members of the aristocracy: so that as the supreme power was always
divided, it never weighed with its whole weight and in the same manner
on each individual. Not only did the government not perform everything
by its immediate agency; but as most of the agents who discharged its
duties derived their power not from the State, but from the circumstance
of their birth, they were not perpetually under its control. The
government could not make or unmake them in an instant, at pleasure,
nor bend them in strict uniformity to its slightest caprice--this was
an additional guarantee of private independence. I readily admit that
recourse cannot be had to the same means at the present time: but I
discover certain democratic expedients which may be substituted for
them. Instead of vesting in the government alone all the administrative
powers of which corporations and nobles have been deprived, a portion of
them may be entrusted to secondary public bodies, temporarily composed
of private citizens: thus the liberty of private persons will be more
secure, and their equality will not be diminished.
The Americans, who care less for words than the French, still designate
by the name of "county" the largest of their administrative districts:
but the duties of the count or lord-lieutenant are in part performed by
a provincial assembly. At a period of equality like our own it would be
unjust and unreasonable to institute hereditary officers; but there is
nothing to prevent us from substituting elective public officers to a
certain extent. Election is a democratic expedient which insures the
independence of the public officer in relation to the government,
as much and even more than hereditary rank can insure it amongst
aristocratic nations. Aristocratic countries abound in wealthy and
influential persons who are competent to provide for themselves, and
who cannot be easily or secretly oppressed: such persons restrain a
government within general habits of moderation and reserve. I am very
well aware that democratic countries contain no such persons naturally;
but something analogous to them may be created by artificial means. I
firmly believe that an aristocracy cannot again be founded in the world;
but I think that private citizens, by combining together, may constitute
bodies of great wealth, influence, and strength, corresponding to the
persons of an aristocracy. By this means many of the greatest political
advantages of aristocracy would be obtained without its injustice or
its dangers. An association for political, commercial, or manufacturing
purposes, or even for those of science and literature, is a powerful
and enlightened member of the community, which cannot be disposed of at
pleasure, or oppressed without remonstrance; and which, by defending its
own rights against the encroachments of the government, saves the common
liberties of the country.
In periods of aristocracy every man is always bound so closely to many
of his fellow-citizens, that he cannot be assailed without their coming
to his assistance. In ages of equality every man naturally stands alone;
he has no hereditary friends whose co-operation he may demand--no class
upon whose sympathy he may rely: he is easily got rid of, and he is
trampled on with impunity. At the present time, an oppressed member
of the community has therefore only one method of self-defence--he
may appeal to the whole nation; and if the whole nation is deaf to his
complaint, he may appeal to mankind: the only means he has of making
this appeal is by the press. Thus the liberty of the press is infinitely
more valuable amongst democratic nations than amongst all others; it is
the only cure for the evils which equality may produce. Equality sets
men apart and weakens them; but the press places a powerful weapon
within every man's reach, which the weakest and loneliest of them all
may use. Equality deprives a man of the support of his connections; but
the press enables him to summon all his fellow-countrymen and all his
fellow-men to his assistance. Printing has accelerated the progress of
equality, and it is also one of its best correctives.
I think that men living in aristocracies may, strictly speaking, do
without the liberty of the press: but such is not the case with those
who live in democratic countries. To protect their personal independence
I trust not to great political assemblies, to parliamentary privilege,
or to the assertion of popular sovereignty. All these things may, to
a certain extent, be reconciled with personal servitude--but that
servitude cannot be complete if the press is free: the press is the
chiefest democratic instrument of freedom.
Something analogous may be said of the judicial power. It is a part of
the essence of judicial power to attend to private interests, and to fix
itself with predilection on minute objects submitted to its observation;
another essential quality of judicial power is never to volunteer its
assistance to the oppressed, but always to be at the disposal of the
humblest of those who solicit it; their complaint, however feeble they
may themselves be, will force itself upon the ear of justice and claim
redress, for this is inherent in the very constitution of the courts
of justice. A power of this kind is therefore peculiarly adapted to the
wants of freedom, at a time when the eye and finger of the government
are constantly intruding into the minutest details of human actions, and
when private persons are at once too weak to protect themselves, and too
much isolated for them to reckon upon the assistance of their fellows.
The strength of the courts of law has ever been the greatest security
which can be offered to personal independence; but this is more
especially the case in democratic ages: private rights and interests are
in constant danger, if the judicial power does not grow more extensive
and more strong to keep pace with the growing equality of conditions.
Equality awakens in men several propensities extremely dangerous to
freedom, to which the attention of the legislator ought constantly to be
directed. I shall only remind the reader of the most important amongst
them. Men living in democratic ages do not readily comprehend the
utility of forms: they feel an instinctive contempt for them--I have
elsewhere shown for what reasons. Forms excite their contempt and often
their hatred; as they commonly aspire to none but easy and present
gratifications, they rush onwards to the object of their desires, and
the slightest delay exasperates them. This same temper, carried
with them into political life, renders them hostile to forms, which
perpetually retard or arrest them in some of their projects. Yet this
objection which the men of democracies make to forms is the very thing
which renders forms so useful to freedom; for their chief merit is to
serve as a barrier between the strong and the weak, the ruler and the
people, to retard the one, and give the other time to look about him.
Forms become more necessary in proportion as the government becomes
more active and more powerful, whilst private persons are becoming more
indolent and more feeble. Thus democratic nations naturally stand more
in need of forms than other nations, and they naturally respect them
less. This deserves most serious attention. Nothing is more pitiful
than the arrogant disdain of most of our contemporaries for questions
of form; for the smallest questions of form have acquired in our time an
importance which they never had before: many of the greatest interests
of mankind depend upon them. I think that if the statesmen of
aristocratic ages could sometimes contemn forms with impunity, and
frequently rise above them, the statesmen to whom the government of
nations is now confided ought to treat the very least among them
with respect, and not neglect them without imperious necessity. In
aristocracies the observance of forms was superstitious; amongst us they
ought to be kept with a deliberate and enlightened deference.
Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and
extremely dangerous, is that which leads them ta despise and undervalue
the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right,
and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to
its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed
it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are
commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely
precarious--the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without
regret, and almost always violated without remorse. But it happens that
at the same period and amongst the same nations in which men conceive
a natural contempt for the rights of private persons, the rights of
society at large are naturally extended and consolidated: in other
words, men become less attached to private rights at the very time at
which it would be most necessary to retain and to defend what little
remains of them. It is therefore most especially in the present
democratic ages, that the true friends of the liberty and the greatness
of man ought constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of
government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals
to the general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so
obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed--no
private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with
impunity to the caprices of a government. The reason is plain:--if the
private right of an individual is violated at a time when the human mind
is fully impressed with the importance and the sanctity of such rights,
the injury done is confined to the individual whose right is infringed;
but to violate such a right, at the present day, is deeply to corrupt
the manners of the nation and to put the whole community in jeopardy,
because the very notion of this kind of right constantly tends amongst
us to be impaired and lost.
There are certain habits, certain notions, and certain vices which are
peculiar to a state of revolution, and which a protracted revolution
cannot fail to engender and to propagate, whatever be, in other
respects, its character, its purpose, and the scene on which it takes
place. When any nation has, within a short space of time, repeatedly
varied its rulers, its opinions, and its laws, the men of whom it is
composed eventually contract a taste for change, and grow accustomed
to see all changes effected by sudden violence. Thus they naturally
conceive a contempt for forms which daily prove ineffectual; and they do
not support without impatience the dominion of rules which they have so
often seen infringed. As the ordinary notions of equity and morality no
longer suffice to explain and justify all the innovations daily begotten
by a revolution, the principle of public utility is called in, the
doctrine of political necessity is conjured up, and men accustom
themselves to sacrifice private interests without scruple, and
to trample on the rights of individuals in order more speedily to
accomplish any public purpose.
These habits and notions, which I shall call revolutionary, because all
revolutions produce them, occur in aristocracies just as much as amongst
democratic nations; but amongst the former they are often less powerful
and always less lasting, because there they meet with habits, notions,
defects, and impediments, which counteract them: they consequently
disappear as soon as the revolution is terminated, and the nation
reverts to its former political courses. This is not always the case
in democratic countries, in which it is ever to be feared that
revolutionary tendencies, becoming more gentle and more regular, without
entirely disappearing from society, will be gradually transformed into
habits of subjection to the administrative authority of the government.
I know of no countries in which revolutions re more dangerous than
in democratic countries; because, independently of the accidental and
transient evils which must always attend them, they may always create
some evils which are permanent and unending. I believe that there are
such things as justifiable resistance and legitimate rebellion: I do not
therefore assert, as an absolute proposition, that the men of democratic
ages ought never to make revolutions; but I think that they have
especial reason to hesitate before they embark in them, and that it is
far better to endure many grievances in their present condition than to
have recourse to so perilous a remedy.
I shall conclude by one general idea, which comprises not only all the
particular ideas which have been expressed in the present chapter, but
also most of those which it is the object of this book to treat of.
In the ages of aristocracy which preceded our own, there were private
persons of great power, and a social authority of extreme weakness. The
outline of society itself was not easily discernible, and constantly
confounded with the different powers by which the community was ruled.
The principal efforts of the men of those times were required to
strengthen, aggrandize, and secure the supreme power; and on the other
hand, to circumscribe individual independence within narrower limits,
and to subject private interests to the interests of the public. Other
perils and other cares await the men of our age. Amongst the greater
part of modern nations, the government, whatever may be its origin, its
constitution, or its name, has become almost omnipotent, and private
persons are falling, more and more, into the lowest stage of weakness
and dependence. In olden society everything was different; unity and
uniformity were nowhere to be met with. In modern society everything
threatens to become so much alike, that the peculiar characteristics of
each individual will soon be entirely lost in the general aspect of the
world. Our forefathers were ever prone to make an improper use of the
notion, that private rights ought to be respected; and we are naturally
prone on the other hand to exaggerate the idea that the interest of a
private individual ought always to bend to the interest of the many. The
political world is metamorphosed: new remedies must henceforth be sought
for new disorders. To lay down extensive, but distinct and settled
limits, to the action of the government; to confer certain rights on
private persons, and to secure to them the undisputed enjoyment of those
rights; to enable individual man to maintain whatever independence,
strength, and original power he still possesses; to raise him by the
side of society at large, and uphold him in that position--these appear
to me the main objects of legislators in the ages upon which we are now
entering. It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use
men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little
more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work, and
more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot
long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak,
and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised,
to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and
enfeebled citizens.
I trace amongst our contemporaries two contrary notions which are
equally injurious. One set of men can perceive nothing in the principle
of equality but the anarchical tendencies which it engenders: they
dread their own free agency--they fear themselves. Other thinkers, less
numerous but more enlightened, take a different view: besides that track
which starts from the principle of equality to terminate in anarchy,
they have at last discovered the road which seems to lead men to
inevitable servitude. They shape their souls beforehand to this
necessary condition; and, despairing of remaining free, they already
do obeisance in their hearts to the master who is soon to appear. The
former abandon freedom, because they think it dangerous; the latter,
because they hold it to be impossible. If I had entertained the latter
conviction, I should not have written this book, but I should have
confined myself to deploring in secret the destiny of mankind. I have
sought to point out the dangers to which the principle of equality
exposes the independence of man, because I firmly believe that these
dangers are the most formidable, as well as the least foreseen, of all
those which futurity holds in store: but I do not think that they are
insurmountable. The men who live in the democratic ages upon which we
are entering have naturally a taste for independence: they are naturally
impatient of regulation, and they are wearied by the permanence even of
the condition they themselves prefer. They are fond of power; but they
are prone to despise and hate those who wield it, and they easily elude
its grasp by their own mobility and insignificance. These propensities
will always manifest themselves, because they originate in the
groundwork of society, which will undergo no change: for a long time
they will prevent the establishment of any despotism, and they will
furnish fresh weapons to each succeeding generation which shall struggle
in favor of the liberty of mankind. Let us then look forward to the
future with that salutary fear which makes men keep watch and ward
for freedom, not with that faint and idle terror which depresses and
enervates the heart.
Chapter VIII: General Survey Of The Subject
Before I close forever the theme that has detained me so long, I would
fain take a parting survey of all the various characteristics of modern
society, and appreciate at last the general influence to be exercised by
the principle of equality upon the fate of mankind; but I am stopped
by the difficulty of the task, and in presence of so great an object my
sight is troubled, and my reason fails. The society of the modern world
which I have sought to delineate, and which I seek to judge, has but
just come into existence. Time has not yet shaped it into perfect form:
the great revolution by which it has been created is not yet over: and
amidst the occurrences of our time, it is almost impossible to discern
what will pass away with the revolution itself, and what will survive
its close. The world which is rising into existence is still half
encumbered by the remains of the world which is waning into decay; and
amidst the vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of
ancient institutions and former manners will remain, or how much will
completely disappear. Although the revolution which is taking place in
the social condition, the laws, the opinions, and the feelings of men,
is still very far from being terminated, yet its results already admit
of no comparison with anything that the world has ever before witnessed.
I go back from age to age up to the remotest antiquity; but I find no
parallel to what is occurring before my eyes: as the past has ceased to
throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Nevertheless, in the midst of a prospect so wide, so novel and so
confused, some of the more prominent characteristics may already be
discerned and pointed out. The good things and the evils of life are
more equally distributed in the world: great wealth tends to disappear,
the number of small fortunes to increase; desires and gratifications
are multiplied, but extraordinary prosperity and irremediable penury are
alike unknown. The sentiment of ambition is universal, but the scope
of ambition is seldom vast. Each individual stands apart in solitary
weakness; but society at large is active, provident, and powerful: the
performances of private persons are insignificant, those of the State
immense. There is little energy of character; but manners are mild, and
laws humane. If there be few instances of exalted heroism or of virtues
of the highest, brightest, and purest temper, men's habits are regular,
violence is rare, and cruelty almost unknown. Human existence becomes
longer, and property more secure: life is not adorned with brilliant
trophies, but it is extremely easy and tranquil. Few pleasures are
either very refined or very coarse; and highly polished manners are as
uncommon as great brutality of tastes. Neither men of great learning,
nor extremely ignorant communities, are to be met with; genius becomes
more rare, information more diffused. The human mind is impelled by the
small efforts of all mankind combined together, not by the strenuous
activity of certain men. There is less perfection, but more abundance,
in all the productions of the arts. The ties of race, of rank, and of
country are relaxed; the great bond of humanity is strengthened. If
I endeavor to find out the most general and the most prominent of all
these different characteristics, I shall have occasion to perceive, that
what is taking place in men's fortunes manifests itself under a thousand
other forms. Almost all extremes are softened or blunted: all that was
most prominent is superseded by some mean term, at once less lofty and
less low, less brilliant and less obscure, than what before existed in
the world.
When I survey this countless multitude of beings, shaped in each other's
likeness, amidst whom nothing rises and nothing falls, the sight of such
universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am tempted to regret
that state of society which has ceased to be. When the world was full of
men of great importance and extreme insignificance, of great wealth and
extreme poverty, of great learning and extreme ignorance, I turned aside
from the latter to fix my observation on the former alone, who gratified
my sympathies. But I admit that this gratification arose from my own
weakness: it is because I am unable to see at once all that is around
me, that I am allowed thus to select and separate the objects of my
predilection from among so many others. Such is not the case with that
almighty and eternal Being whose gaze necessarily includes the whole of
created things, and who surveys distinctly, though at once, mankind and
man. We may naturally believe that it is not the singular prosperity of
the few, but the greater well-being of all, which is most pleasing in
the sight of the Creator and Preserver of men. What appears to me to be
man's decline, is to His eye advancement; what afflicts me is acceptable
to Him. A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more
just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and its beauty. I would
strive then to raise myself to this point of the divine contemplation,
and thence to view and to judge the concerns of men.
No man, upon the earth, can as yet affirm absolutely and generally,
that the new state of the world is better than its former one; but it
is already easy to perceive that this state is different. Some vices
and some virtues were so inherent in the constitution of an aristocratic
nation, and are so opposite to the character of a modern people, that
they can never be infused into it; some good tendencies and some bad
propensities which were unknown to the former, are natural to the
latter; some ideas suggest themselves spontaneously to the imagination
of the one, which are utterly repugnant to the mind of the other. They
are like two distinct orders of human beings, each of which has its
own merits and defects, its own advantages and its own evils. Care
must therefore be taken not to judge the state of society, which is now
coming into existence, by notions derived from a state of society
which no longer exists; for as these states of society are exceedingly
different in their structure, they cannot be submitted to a just or fair
comparison. It would be scarcely more reasonable to require of our
own contemporaries the peculiar virtues which originated in the social
condition of their forefathers, since that social condition is itself
fallen, and has drawn into one promiscuous ruin the good and evil which
belonged to it.
But as yet these things are imperfectly understood. I find that a great
number of my contemporaries undertake to make a certain selection from
amongst the institutions, the opinions, and the ideas which originated
in the aristocratic constitution of society as it was: a portion of
these elements they would willingly relinquish, but they would keep the
remainder and transplant them into their new world. I apprehend that
such men are wasting their time and their strength in virtuous
but unprofitable efforts. The object is not to retain the peculiar
advantages which the inequality of conditions bestows upon mankind, but
to secure the new benefits which equality may supply. We have not to
seek to make ourselves like our progenitors, but to strive to work out
that species of greatness and happiness which is our own. For myself,
who now look back from this extreme limit of my task, and discover from
afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted my more
attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions and
of hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward
off--mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with
a firmer hold to the belief, that for democratic nations to be virtuous
and prosperous they require but to will it. I am aware that many of my
contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters
here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and
unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or
from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false
and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men
and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely
independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal
circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide
verge of that circle he is powerful and free: as it is with man, so with
communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of
men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the
principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to
knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.
Part I.
Appendix A
For information concerning all the countries of the West which have
not been visited by Europeans, consult the account of two expeditions
undertaken at the expense of Congress by Major Long. This traveller
particularly mentions, on the subject of the great American desert, that
a line may be drawn nearly parallel to the 20th degree of longitude *a
(meridian of Washington), beginning from the Red River and ending at
the River Platte. From this imaginary line to the Rocky Mountains, which
bound the valley of the Mississippi on the west, lie immense plains,
which are almost entirely covered with sand, incapable of cultivation,
or scattered over with masses of granite. In summer, these plains are
quite destitute of water, and nothing is to be seen on them but herds of
buffaloes and wild horses. Some hordes of Indians are also found
there, but in no great numbers. Major Long was told that in travelling
northwards from the River Platte you find the same desert lying
constantly on the left; but he was unable to ascertain the truth of this
report. However worthy of confidence may be the narrative of Major Long,
it must be remembered that he only passed through the country of which
he speaks, without deviating widely from the line which he had traced
out for his journey.
[Footnote a: The 20th degree of longitude, according to the meridian of
Washington, agrees very nearly with the 97th degree on the meridian of
Greenwich.]
Appendix B
South America, in the region between the tropics, produces an incredible
profusion of climbing plants, of which the flora of the Antilles alone
presents us with forty different species. Among the most graceful of
these shrubs is the passion-flower, which, according to Descourtiz,
grows with such luxuriance in the Antilles, as to climb trees by means
of the tendrils with which it is provided, and form moving bowers of
rich and elegant festoons, decorated with blue and purple flowers, and
fragrant with perfume. The Mimosa scandens (Acacia a grandes gousses) is
a creeper of enormous and rapid growth, which climbs from tree to tree,
and sometimes covers more than half a league.
Appendix C