Chapter Summary
Great distinction to be made between parties—Parties which are to each
other as rival nations—Parties properly so called—Difference between
great and small parties—Epochs which produce them—Their
characteristics—America has had great parties—They are
extinct—Federalists—Republicans—Defeat of the Federalists—Difficulty of
creating parties in the United States—What is done with this
intention—Aristocratic or democratic character to be met with in all
parties—Struggle of General Jackson against the Bank.
Parties In The United States
A great distinction must be made between parties. Some countries are so
large that the different populations which inhabit them have
contradictory interests, although they are the subjects of the same
Government, and they may thence be in a perpetual state of opposition.
In this case the different fractions of the people may more properly be
considered as distinct nations than as mere parties; and if a civil war
breaks out, the struggle is carried on by rival peoples rather than by
factions in the State.
But when the citizens entertain different opinions upon subjects which
affect the whole country alike, such, for instance, as the principles
upon which the government is to be conducted, then distinctions arise
which may correctly be styled parties. Parties are a necessary evil in
free governments; but they have not at all times the same character and
the same propensities.
At certain periods a nation may be oppressed by such insupportable
evils as to conceive the design of effecting a total change in its
political constitution; at other times the mischief lies still deeper,
and the existence of society itself is endangered. Such are the times
of great revolutions and of great parties. But between these epochs of
misery and of confusion there are periods during which human society
seems to rest, and mankind to make a pause. This pause is, indeed, only
apparent, for time does not stop its course for nations any more than
for men; they are all advancing towards a goal with which they are
unacquainted; and we only imagine them to be stationary when their
progress escapes our observation, as men who are going at a foot-pace
seem to be standing still to those who run.
But however this may be, there are certain epochs at which the changes
that take place in the social and political constitution of nations are
so slow and so insensible that men imagine their present condition to
be a final state; and the human mind, believing itself to be firmly
based upon certain foundations, does not extend its researches beyond
the horizon which it descries. These are the times of small parties and
of intrigue.
The political parties which I style great are those which cling to
principles more than to their consequences; to general, and not to
especial cases; to ideas, and not to men. These parties are usually
distinguished by a nobler character, by more generous passions, more
genuine convictions, and a more bold and open conduct than the others.
In them private interest, which always plays the chief part in
political passions, is more studiously veiled under the pretext of the
public good; and it may even be sometimes concealed from the eyes of
the very persons whom it excites and impels.
Minor parties are, on the other hand, generally deficient in political
faith. As they are not sustained or dignified by a lofty purpose, they
ostensibly display the egotism of their character in their actions.
They glow with a factitious zeal; their language is vehement, but their
conduct is timid and irresolute. The means they employ are as wretched
as the end at which they aim. Hence it arises that when a calm state of
things succeeds a violent revolution, the leaders of society seem
suddenly to disappear, and the powers of the human mind to lie
concealed. Society is convulsed by great parties, by minor ones it is
agitated; it is torn by the former, by the latter it is degraded; and
if these sometimes save it by a salutary perturbation, those invariably
disturb it to no good end.
America has already lost the great parties which once divided the
nation; and if her happiness is considerably increased, her morality
has suffered by their extinction. When the War of Independence was
terminated, and the foundations of the new Government were to be laid
down, the nation was divided between two opinions—two opinions which
are as old as the world, and which are perpetually to be met with under
all the forms and all the names which have ever obtained in free
communities—the one tending to limit, the other to extend indefinitely,
the power of the people. The conflict of these two opinions never
assumed that degree of violence in America which it has frequently
displayed elsewhere. Both parties of the Americans were, in fact,
agreed upon the most essential points; and neither of them had to
destroy a traditionary constitution, or to overthrow the structure of
society, in order to ensure its own triumph. In neither of them,
consequently, were a great number of private interests affected by
success or by defeat; but moral principles of a high order, such as the
love of equality and of independence, were concerned in the struggle,
and they sufficed to kindle violent passions.
The party which desired to limit the power of the people endeavored to
apply its doctrines more especially to the Constitution of the Union,
whence it derived its name of Federal. The other party, which affected
to be more exclusively attached to the cause of liberty, took that of
Republican. America is a land of democracy, and the Federalists were
always in a minority; but they reckoned on their side almost all the
great men who had been called forth by the War of Independence, and
their moral influence was very considerable. Their cause was, moreover,
favored by circumstances. The ruin of the Confederation had impressed
the people with a dread of anarchy, and the Federalists did not fail to
profit by this transient disposition of the multitude. For ten or
twelve years they were at the head of affairs, and they were able to
apply some, though not all, of their principles; for the hostile
current was becoming from day to day too violent to be checked or
stemmed. In 1801 the Republicans got possession of the Government;
Thomas Jefferson was named President; and he increased the influence of
their party by the weight of his celebrity, the greatness of his
talents, and the immense extent of his popularity.
The means by which the Federalists had maintained their position were
artificial, and their resources were temporary; it was by the virtues
or the talents of their leaders that they had risen to power. When the
Republicans attained to that lofty station, their opponents were
overwhelmed by utter defeat. An immense majority declared itself
against the retiring party, and the Federalists found themselves in so
small a minority that they at once despaired of their future success.
From that moment the Republican or Democratic party *a has proceeded
from conquest to conquest, until it has acquired absolute supremacy in
the country. The Federalists, perceiving that they were vanquished
without resource, and isolated in the midst of the nation, fell into
two divisions, of which one joined the victorious Republicans, and the
other abandoned its rallying-point and its name. Many years have
already elapsed since they ceased to exist as a party.
a
[ [It is scarcely necessary to remark that in more recent times the
signification of these terms has changed. The Republicans are the
representatives of the old Federalists, and the Democrats of the old
Republicans.—Trans. Note (1861).]] The accession of the Federalists to
power was, in my opinion, one of the most fortunate incidents which
accompanied the formation of the great American Union; they resisted
the inevitable propensities of their age and of the country. But
whether their theories were good or bad, they had the effect of being
inapplicable, as a system, to the society which they professed to
govern, and that which occurred under the auspices of Jefferson must
therefore have taken place sooner or later. But their Government gave
the new republic time to acquire a certain stability, and afterwards to
support the rapid growth of the very doctrines which they had combated.
A considerable number of their principles were in point of fact
embodied in the political creed of their opponents; and the Federal
Constitution which subsists at the present day is a lasting monument of
their patriotism and their wisdom.
Great political parties are not, then, to be met with in the United
States at the present time. Parties, indeed, may be found which
threaten the future tranquillity of the Union; but there are none which
seem to contest the present form of Government or the present course of
society. The parties by which the Union is menaced do not rest upon
abstract principles, but upon temporal interests. These interests,
disseminated in the provinces of so vast an empire, may be said to
constitute rival nations rather than parties. Thus, upon a recent
occasion, the North contended for the system of commercial prohibition,
and the South took up arms in favor of free trade, simply because the
North is a manufacturing and the South an agricultural district; and
that the restrictive system which was profitable to the one was
prejudicial to the other. *b
b
[ [The divisions of North and South have since acquired a far greater
degree of intensity, and the South, though conquered, still presents a
formidable spirit of opposition to Northern government.—Translator’s
Note, 1875.]]
In the absence of great parties, the United States abound with lesser
controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute
shades of difference upon questions of very little moment. The pains
which are taken to create parties are inconceivable, and at the present
day it is no easy task. In the United States there is no religious
animosity, because all religion is respected, and no sect is
predominant; there is no jealousy of rank, because the people is
everything, and none can contest its authority; lastly, there is no
public indigence to supply the means of agitation, because the physical
position of the country opens so wide a field to industry that man is
able to accomplish the most surprising undertakings with his own native
resources. Nevertheless, ambitious men are interested in the creation
of parties, since it is difficult to eject a person from authority upon
the mere ground that his place is coveted by others. The skill of the
actors in the political world lies therefore in the art of creating
parties. A political aspirant in the United States begins by
discriminating his own interest, and by calculating upon those
interests which may be collected around and amalgamated with it; he
then contrives to discover some doctrine or some principle which may
suit the purposes of this new association, and which he adopts in order
to bring forward his party and to secure his popularity; just as the
imprimatur of a King was in former days incorporated with the volume
which it authorized, but to which it nowise belonged. When these
preliminaries are terminated, the new party is ushered into the
political world.
All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a
stranger to be so incomprehensible and so puerile that he is at a loss
whether to pity a people which takes such arrant trifles in good
earnest, or to envy the happiness which enables it to discuss them. But
when he comes to study the secret propensities which govern the
factions of America, he easily perceives that the greater part of them
are more or less connected with one or the other of those two divisions
which have always existed in free communities. The deeper we penetrate
into the working of these parties, the more do we perceive that the
object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the
popular authority. I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even
that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of
aristocracy or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic
or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all
parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they
are the main point and the very soul of every faction in the United
States.
To quote a recent example. When the President attacked the Bank, the
country was excited and parties were formed; the well-informed classes
rallied round the Bank, the common people round the President. But it
must not be imagined that the people had formed a rational opinion upon
a question which offers so many difficulties to the most experienced
statesmen. The Bank is a great establishment which enjoys an
independent existence, and the people, accustomed to make and unmake
whatsoever it pleases, is startled to meet with this obstacle to its
authority. In the midst of the perpetual fluctuation of society the
community is irritated by so permanent an institution, and is led to
attack it in order to see whether it can be shaken and controlled, like
all the other institutions of the country.
Remains Of The Aristocratic Party In The United States
Secret opposition of wealthy individuals to democracy—Their
retirement—Their taste for exclusive pleasures and for luxury at
home—Their simplicity abroad—Their affected condescension towards the
people.
It sometimes happens in a people amongst which various opinions prevail
that the balance of the several parties is lost, and one of them
obtains an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles,
harasses its opponents, and appropriates all the resources of society
to its own purposes. The vanquished citizens despair of success and
they conceal their dissatisfaction in silence and in general apathy.
The nation seems to be governed by a single principle, and the
prevailing party assumes the credit of having restored peace and
unanimity to the country. But this apparent unanimity is merely a cloak
to alarming dissensions and perpetual opposition.
This is precisely what occurred in America; when the democratic party
got the upper hand, it took exclusive possession of the conduct of
affairs, and from that time the laws and the customs of society have
been adapted to its caprices. At the present day the more affluent
classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of
political affairs in the United States that wealth, far from conferring
a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of
attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the
lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in
vain, against the poorest classes of their fellow citizens. They
concentrate all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where
they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public; and they
constitute a private society in the State, which has its own tastes and
its own pleasures. They submit to this state of things as an
irremediable evil, but they are careful not to show that they are
galled by its continuance; it is even not uncommon to hear them laud
the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of
democratic institutions when they are in public. Next to hating their
enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them.
Mark, for instance, that opulent citizen, who is as anxious as a Jew of
the Middle Ages to conceal his wealth. His dress is plain, his demeanor
unassuming; but the interior of his dwelling glitters with luxury, and
none but a few chosen guests whom he haughtily styles his equals are
allowed to penetrate into this sanctuary. No European noble is more
exclusive in his pleasures, or more jealous of the smallest advantages
which his privileged station confers upon him. But the very same
individual crosses the city to reach a dark counting-house in the
centre of traffic, where every one may accost him who pleases. If he
meets his cobbler upon the way, they stop and converse; the two
citizens discuss the affairs of the State in which they have an equal
interest, and they shake hands before they part.
But beneath this artificial enthusiasm, and these obsequious attentions
to the preponderating power, it is easy to perceive that the wealthy
members of the community entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic
institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of
their scorn and of their fears. If the maladministration of the
democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis, and if monarchical
institutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of
what I advance will become obvious.
The two chief weapons which parties use in order to ensure success are
the public press and the formation of associations.