WHAT IS THE DUTY OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO DEMOCRACY?
There are men whom this fearful struggle does not alarm: they have full
confidence in human nature. According to them, if left to itself, its
progress is towards good: all the evils of society arise from
governments which debase men by violence or corrupt them by fraud:
liberty--liberty for everybody and everything--liberty will almost
always suffice to enlighten or to control the wills of men, to prevent
evil or to cure it: a little government--the least possible--may be
allowed for the repression of extreme disorder and the control of brute
force.
Others have a more summary way of disposing of all dread of the triumph
of evil in man or in society. There is, they say, no such thing as
natural and necessary evil, since no human inclination is bad in itself;
it becomes so, only when it does not attain the end after which it
aspires--it is a torrent which overflows its banks when obstructed. If
society were organized in such a manner that each of the instincts of
man found its proper place and received its due satisfaction, evil would
disappear, strife would cease, and all the various forces of humanity,
harmoniously combine to produce social order.
The former of these speculators misunderstand man; the latter
misunderstand man, and deny God.
Let any man dive into his own heart and observe himself with attention.
If he have the power to look, and the will to see, he will behold, with
a sort of terror, the incessant war waged by the good and evil
dispositions within him--reason and caprice, duty and passion; in short,
to call them all by their comprehensive names, good and evil. We
contemplate with anxiety the outward troubles and vicissitudes of human
life; but what should we feel if we could behold the inward
vicissitudes, the troubles of the human soul?--if we could see how many
dangers, snares, enemies, combats, victories, and defeats can be crowded
into a day--an hour? I do not say this to discourage man, nor to humble
or under-value his free will. He is called upon to conquer in the battle
of life, and the honour of the conquest belongs to his free will. But
victory is impossible, and defeat certain, if he has not a just
conception and a profound feeling of his dangers, his weaknesses, and
his need of assistance. To believe that the free will of man tends to
good, and is of itself sufficient to accomplish good, betrays an
immeasurable ignorance of his nature. It is the error of pride; an error
which tends to destroy both moral and political order; which enfeebles
the government of communities no less than the government of the inward
man.
For the struggle is the same, the peril as imminent, the aid as
necessary, in society as in the individual man. Many of those now living
have been doomed to see, several times in the course of their lives, the
social edifice tottering to its fall, and all the props that should
uphold, all the bonds that should unite it, failing. Over what an
immense extent, and with what fearful rapidity, have all the causes of
social war and social destruction, which are always fermenting in the
midst of us, each time burst forth! Which of us has not shuddered at the
sudden discovery of the abyss over which we live--the frail barriers
which separate us from it, and the destructive legions ready to rush
forth upon society as soon as its jaws are unclosed? For my own part, I
was a spectator, day by day, hour by hour, of the purest, the wisest,
the gentlest, and the shortest of these formidable convulsions; in July,
1830, I saw, in the streets and the palaces, at the gate of the national
councils and in the midst of popular assemblies, society abandoned to
itself, an actor or spectator of the revolution. And at the same time
that I admired the generous sentiments, the proofs of strong
intelligence and disinterested virtue and heroic moderation which I
witnessed, I shuddered as I saw a mighty torrent of insensate ideas,
brutal passions, perverse inclinations, and terrible chimeras, rise and
swell, minute by minute, ready to overflow, and submerge a land where
all the dikes that had contained it were broken down. Society had
gloriously repulsed the violation of its laws and its honour, and now it
was on the point of falling into ruins in the midst of its glory. Here
it was that I learned the vital conditions of social order, and the
necessity of resistance to ensure the safety of the social fabric.
Resistance not only to evil, but to the principle of evil; not only to
disorder, but to the passions and the ideas which engender
disorder--this is the paramount and peremptory duty of every government.
And the greater the empire of Democracy, the more important is it that
government should hold fast to its true character, and act its true part
in the struggle which agitates society. Why is it that so many
democracies--some of them very brilliant--have so rapidly perished?
Because they would not suffer their governments to do their duty, and
fulfil the objects for which governments are instituted. They did more
than reduce them to weakness; they condemned them to falsehood. It is
the melancholy condition of democratic governments, that while
charged--as they must be--with the repression of disorder, they are
required to be complaisant and indulgent to the causes of disorder; they
are expected to arrest the evil when it breaks out, and yet they are
asked to foster it whilst it is hatching. I know no more deplorable
spectacle than a power which, in the struggle between the good and the
evil principle, continually bends the knee before the bad, and then
attempts to resume an attitude of vigour and independence when it
becomes necessary to resist its excesses. If you will not have excesses,
you must repress them in their origin. If you wish for liberty--for the
full and glorious development of human nature--learn first on what
conditions this is attainable; look forward to its consequences. Do not
blind yourselves to the perils and the combats it will occasion. And
when these combats and these perils arise, do not require your leaders
to be hypocritical or weak in their dealings with the enemy. Do not
force upon them the worship of idols, even were you yourselves those
idols. Permit them, nay command them, to worship and to serve the true
God alone.
I might here allow myself the satisfaction of recalling the names of all
the rulers who have fallen shamefully because they submitted basely to
be the slaves or the tools of the errors and passions of the democracies
it was their duty and their vocation to govern; but I had rather dwell
on the memory of those who lived gloriously by resisting them. It is
more to my taste to prove the truth by examples of the success which
crowns wisdom, than by those of the disasters which attend on folly.
Democratic France owes much to the Emperor Napoleon. He gave her two
things of immense value: within, civil order strongly constituted;
without, national independence firmly established. But had she ever a
government which treated her with greater severity, or showed less
complaisance for the favourite passions of Democracy? As to the
political constitution of the state, Napoleon’s only care was to raise
power from the abasement into which it had fallen, to restore to it all
the conditions of force and greatness. In this he saw a national
interest paramount to all others, whether the nation were governed
democratically or otherwise.
But Napoleon was a despot. If he rightly understood and ably served some
of the great interests of that new France he had to govern, he
profoundly misunderstood and injured others, not less sacred. How was it
possible that one so hostile to liberty should be favourable to the
political propensities of Democracy?
I shall not contest this. I run no risk of forgetting that Napoleon was
a despot, for I have not to learn it now--I thought so when he was
living. It may, however, be asked whether he could have been otherwise?
whether he could have tolerated political liberty, and whether we were
then in a state to receive it? I shall not attempt to decide these
questions. There are men, and very great men, who are suited to certain
diseased and transitory crises, and not to the sane and permanent state,
of society. Napoleon was, perhaps, one of those men. That he mistook
some of the essential wants of our time, nobody is more convinced than I
am. But he re-established order and authority in the midst of democratic
France. He believed, and he proved, that it was possible to serve and to
govern a democratic society without humouring all its inclinations. This
is his real greatness.
Washington has no resemblance to Napoleon. He was not a despot. He
founded the political liberty, at the same time as the national
independence, of his country. He used war only as a means to peace.
Raised to the supreme power without ambition, he descended from it
without regret, as soon as the safety of his country permitted. He is
the model for all democratic chiefs. Now you have only to examine his
life, his soul, his acts, his thoughts, his words; you will not find a
single mark of condescension, a single moment of indulgence, for the
favourite ideas of Democracy. He constantly struggled--struggled even to
weariness and to sadness--against its exactions. No man was ever more
profoundly imbued with the spirit of government, or with respect for
authority. He never exceeded the rights of power, according to the laws
of his country; but he confirmed and maintained them, in principle as
well as in practice, as firmly, as loftily, as he could have done in an
old monarchical or aristocratical state. He was one of those who knew
that it is no more possible to govern from below in a republic than in a
monarchy--in a democratic than in an aristocratic society.
Democratic societies enjoy no privilege which renders the spirit of
government less necessary in them than in others; no privilege which
renders their vital conditions different or inferior to those required
elsewhere. By an infallible consequence of the struggle which infallibly
arises in such societies, the possessor of power is continually called
on to decide between the contrary impulses by which he is solicited to
make himself the artisan of good or the accomplice of evil, the champion
of order or the slave of disorder. The mythic story of the choice of
Hercules is the daily and hourly history of his life. Every government,
whatever be its form or its name, which, by the vice of its organization
or situation, or by the corruption or feebleness of its will, cannot
fulfil this inevitable task, will speedily pass away like an evil
phantom, or will ruin the democracy it affects to establish.