With De Tocqueville we come among contemporaries removed by death. He
was born at Paris, 29th July, 1805, and died at Cannes, 16th April,
1859. Having known him personally, and seen him at his castle-home in
Normandy, I cannot fail to recognize the man in his writings, which on
this account have a double charm.
He was the younger son of noble parents, his father being of ancient
Norman descent, and his mother granddaughter of Malesherbes, the
venerated defender of Louis the Sixteenth; but his aristocratic birth
had no influence to check the generous sympathies with which his
heart always palpitated. In 1831 he came to America as a commissioner
from the French Government to examine our prisons, but with a larger
commission from his own soul to study republican institutions. His
conscientious application, rare probity, penetrating thought, and
refinement of style all appeared in his work, “De la Démocratie en
Amérique,” first published in 1835, whose peculiar success is marked
by the fourteenth French edition now before me, and the translations
into other languages. At once he was famous, and his work classical.
The Academy opened its gates. Since Montesquieu there had been no
equal success in the same department, and he was constantly likened
to the illustrious author of “The Spirit of Laws.” Less epigrammatic,
less artful, and less French than his prototype, he was more simple,
truthful, and prophetic. A second publication in 1840, with the same
title, the fruit of mature studies, presented American institutions in
another aspect, exhibiting his unimpaired faith in Democracy, which
with him was Equality as “first principle and symbol.”[634]
Entering the French Chambers, he became eminent for character,
discussing chiefly those measures in which civilization is most
concerned,--the reform of prisons, the abolition of slavery, penal
colonies, and the pretensions of socialism. His work, “L’Ancien Régime
et la Révolution,” awakens admiration, while his correspondence is
among the most charming in literature, exciting love as well as delight.
His honest and practical insight made him philosopher and prophet,
which he was always. A speech in the Chambers, 27th January, 1848, was
memorable as predicting the Revolution which occurred one month later.
But his foresight with regard to America brings him into our procession.
His clearness of vision appears in the distinctness with which he
recognized the peril from Slavery and from the pretensions of the
States. And in Slavery he saw also the prolonged and diversified
indignity to the African race. This was his statement:--
“The most formidable of all the evils which menace the future
of the United States springs from _the presence of the
blacks on their soil_. When we seek the cause of the present
embarrassments and of the future dangers of the Union, from
whatever point we set out, we almost always come upon this
primary fact.”[635]
Then with consummate power he depicts the lot of the unhappy African,
even when free: oppressed, but with whites for judges; shut out
from the jury; his son excluded from the school which receives the
descendant of the European; unable with gold to buy a place at the
theatre “by the side of him who was his master”; in hospitals separated
from the rest; permitted to worship the same God as the whites, but not
to pray at the same altar; and when life is passed, the difference of
condition prevailing still even over the equality of the grave.[636]
Impressed by the menace from Slavery, he further pictures the Union
succumbing to the States:--
“Either I strangely deceive myself, or the Federal Government
of the United States is tending every day to grow weaker. It
is withdrawing gradually from affairs; it is contracting more
and more the circle of its action. Naturally feeble, it is
abandoning even the appearance of force.”[637]
Such was the condition when De Tocqueville wrote; and so it continued
until the Rebellion broke forth, and the country rose to save the
Union. Foreseeing this peril, he did not despair of the Republic,
which, in his judgment, was “the natural state of the Americans,”[638]
with roots more profound than the Union.
In describing the future he becomes a prophet. Accepting the conclusion
that the number of inhabitants doubles in twenty-two years, and not
recognizing any causes to arrest this progressive movement, he foresees
the colossal empire:--
“The Americans of the United States, whatever they do, will
become one of the greatest people of the world; they will
cover with their offshoots almost all North America. The
continent which they inhabit is their domain; it cannot escape
them.”[639]
Then, declaring that the “English race,” not stopping within the limits
of the Union, will advance much beyond towards the Northeast,--that
at the Northwest they will encounter only Russian settlements without
importance,--that at the Southwest the vast solitudes of Mexican
territory will be appropriated,--and dwelling on the fortunate
geographical position of “the English of America,” with their climate,
their interior seas, their great rivers, and the fertility of their
soil, he is ready to say:--
“So, in the midst of the uncertainty of the future, there is
at least one event which is certain. At an epoch which we can
call near, since the question here is of the life of a people,
the Anglo-Americans alone will cover all the immense space
comprised between the polar ice and the tropics; they will
spread from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean even to the coasts
of the South Sea.”[640]
Then, declaring that the territory destined to the Anglo-American race
equals three fourths of Europe, that many centuries will pass before
the different offshoots of this race will cease to present a common
physiognomy, that no epoch can be foreseen when in the New World there
will be any permanent inequality of conditions, and that there are
processes of association and of knowledge by which the people are
assimilated with each other and with the rest of the world, the prophet
speaks:--
“There will then come a time when there will be seen in North
America one hundred and fifty millions of men, equal among
themselves, who will all belong to the same family, who will
have the same point of departure, the same civilization, the
same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same
manners, and among whom thought will circulate in the same form
and paint itself in the same colors. All else is doubtful, but
this is certain. Now here is a fact entirely new in the world,
of which imagination itself cannot grasp the import.”[641]
No American can fail to be strengthened in the future of the Republic
by the testimony of De Tocqueville. Honor and gratitude to his memory!