American Institutions And Their Influence

A >> Alexis de Tocqueville >> American Institutions And Their Influence

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49

CHAPTER XVIII.
The present and probable future Condition of the three Races
which Inhabit the Territory of the United States.
The present and probable future Condition of the Indian
Tribes which Inhabit the Territory possessed by the Union.
Situation of the black Population in the United States, and
Dangers with which its Presence threatens the Whites.
What are the Chances in favor of the Duration of the American
Union, and what Dangers threaten it.
Of the republican Institutions of the United States, and what
their Chances of Duration are.
Reflections on the Causes of the commercial Prosperity of the
United States.
Conclusion.

Appendix

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION.

Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my
stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than
the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the
prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the
whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public
opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims
to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed.

I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far
beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and
that it has no less empire over civil society than over the
government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, the
ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not
produce.

The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I
perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact
from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point
at which all my observations constantly terminated.

I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined
that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the
New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of
conditions is daily advancing towards those extreme limits which
it seems to have reached in the United States; and that the
democracy which governs the American communities, appears to be
rapidly rising into power in Europe.

I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the
reader.

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is
going on among us; but there are two opinions as to its nature
and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident,
which as such may still be checked; to others it seems
irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient,
and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.

Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago,
when the territory was divided among a small number of families,
who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the
inhabitants; the fight of governing descended with the family
inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only
means by which man could act on man; and landed property was the
sole source of power.

Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and
began to exert itself; the clergy opened its ranks to all
classes, to the poor and the rich, the villain and the lord;
equality penetrated into the government through the church, and
the being who, as a serf, must have vegetated in perpetual
bondage, took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and
not unfrequently above the heads of kings.

The different relations of men became more complicated and more
numerous, as society gradually became more stable and more
civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order
of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the
tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the
monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and
their mail.

While the kings were ruining themselves by their great
enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private
wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce.
The influence of money began to be perceptible in state affairs.
The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the
financier rose to a station of political influence in which he
was at once flattered and despised.

Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing
taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to
talent; science became the means of government, intelligence led
to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the
affairs of the state.

The value attached to the privileges of birth, decreased in the
exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to
advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all
price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred
for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into
the government by the aristocracy itself.

In the course of these seven hundred years, it sometimes happened
that, in order to resist the authority of the crown, or to
diminish the power of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain
share of political rights to the people. Or, more frequently the
king permitted the lower orders to enjoy a degree of power, with
the intention of repressing the aristocracy.

In France the kings have always been the most active and the most
constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious, they
spared no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles;
when they were temperate or weak, they allowed the people to rise
above themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents,
others by their vices. Louis XI. and Louis XIV. reduced every
rank beneath the throne to the same subjection; Louis
XV. descended, himself and all his court, into the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and
personal property began in its turn to confer influence and
power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or
manufacture, was a fresh element of the equality of conditions.
Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it
engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a
step toward the universal level. The taste for luxury, the love
of war, the sway of fashion, the most superficial, as well as the
deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich the
poor and to empoverish the rich.

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the
source of strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to
consider every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every
new idea, as a germe of power placed within the reach of the
people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the grace of wit, the
glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all the gifts
which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned to
the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the
possession of its adversaries, they still served its cause by
throwing into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests
spread, therefore, with those of civilisation and knowledge; and
literature became an arsenal, where the poorest and weakest could
always find weapons to their hand.

In perusing the pages of our history, we shall scarcely meet with
a single great event, in the lapse of seven hundred years, which
has not turned to the advantage of equality.

The crusades and the wars of the English decimated the nobles,
and divided their possessions; the erection of communes
introduced an element of democratic liberty into the bosom of
feudal monarchy; the invention of firearms equalized the villain
and the noble on the field of battle; printing opened the same
resources to the minds of all classes; the post was organized so
as to bring the same information to the door of the poor man's
cottage and to the gate of the palace; and protestantism
proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to
heaven. The discovery of America offered a thousand new paths to
fortune, and placed riches and power within the reach of the
adventurous and the obscure.

If we examine what has happened in France at intervals of fifty
years, beginning with the eleventh century, we shall invariably
perceive that a twofold revolution has taken place in the state
of society. The noble has gone down on the social ladder, and
the _roturier_ has gone up; the one descends as the other
rises. Every half-century brings them nearer to each other, and
they will very shortly meet.

Nor is this phenomenon at all peculiar to France. Whithersoever
we turn our eyes, we shall discover the same continual revolution
throughout the whole of Christendom.

The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere
turned to the advantage of democracy; all men have aided it by
their exertions; those who have intentionally labored in its
cause, and those who have served it unwittingly--those who have
fought for it, and those who have declared themselves its
opponents--have all been driven along in the same track, have all
labored to one end, some ignorantly, and some unwillingly; all
have been blind instruments in the hands of God.

The gradual development of the equality of conditions is,
therefore, a providential fact, and it possesses all the
characteristics of a divine decree: it is universal, it is
durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all
events as well as all men contribute to its progress.

Would it, then, be wise to imagine that a social impulse which
dates from so far back, can be checked by the efforts of a
generation? Is it credible that the democracy which has
annihilated the feudal system, and vanquished kings, will respect
the citizen and the capitalist? Will it stop now that it has
grown so strong and its adversaries so weak?

None can say which way we are going, for all terms of comparison
are wanting: the equality of conditions is more complete in the
Christian, countries of the present day, than it has been at any
time, or in any part of the world; so that the extent of what
already exists prevents us from foreseeing what may be yet to
come.

The whole book which is here offered to the public, has been
written under the impression of a kind of religious dread,
produced in the author's mind by the contemplation of so
irresistible a revolution, which has advanced for centuries in
spite of such amazing obstacles, and which is still proceeding in
the midst of the ruins it has made.

It is not necessary that God himself should speak in order to
disclose to us the unquestionable signs of his will; we can
discern them in the habitual course of nature, and in the
invariable tendency of events; I know, without a special
revelation, that the planets move in the orbits traced by the
Creator's fingers.

If the men of our time were led by attentive observation and by
sincere reflection, to acknowledge that the gradual and
progressive development of social equality is at once the past
and future of their history, this solitary truth would confer the
sacred character of a divine decree upon the change. To attempt
to check democracy would be in that case to resist the will of
God; and the nations would then be constrained to make the best
of the social lot awarded to them by Providence.

The Christian nations of our age seem to me to present a most
alarming spectacle; the impulse which is bearing them along is so
strong that it cannot be stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that
it cannot be guided: their fate is in their hands; yet a little
while and it may be so no longer.

The first duty which is at this time imposed upon those who
direct our affairs is to educate the democracy; to warm its
faith, if that be possible; to purify its morals; to direct its
energies; to substitute a knowledge of business for its
inexperience, and an acquaintance with its true interests for its
blind propensities; to adapt its government to time and place,
and to modify it in compliance with the occurrences and the
actors of the age.

A new science of politics is indispensable to a new world.

This, however, is what we think of least; launched in the middle
of a rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins which
may still be descried upon the shore we have left, while the
current sweeps us along, and drives us backward toward the gulf.

In no country in Europe has the great social revolution which I
have been describing, made such rapid progress as in France; but
it has always been borne on by chance. The heads of the state
have never had any forethought for its exigencies, and its
victories have been obtained without their consent or without
their knowledge. The most powerful, the most intelligent, and
the most moral classes of the nation have never attempted to
connect themselves with it in order to guide it. The people have
consequently been abandoned to its wild propensities, and it has
grown up like those outcasts who receive their education in the
public streets, and who are unacquainted with aught but the vices
and wretchedness of society. The existence of a democracy was
seemingly unknown, when, on a sudden, it took possession of the
supreme power. Everything was then submitted to its caprices; it
was worshipped as the idol of strength; until, when it was
enfeebled by its own excesses, the legislator conceived the rash
project of annihilating its power, instead of instructing it and
correcting its vices; no attempt was made to fit it to govern,
but all were bent on excluding it from the government.

The consequence of this has been that the democratic revolution
has been effected only in the material parts of society, without
that concomitant change in laws, ideas, customs, and mariners,
which was necessary to render such a revolution beneficial. We
have gotten a democracy, but without the conditions which lessen
its vices, and render its natural advantages more prominent; and
although we already perceive the evils it brings, we are ignorant
of the benefits it may confer.

While the power of the crown, supported by the aristocracy,
peaceably governed the nations of Europe, society possessed, in
the midst of its wretchedness, several different advantages which
can now scarcely be appreciated or conceived.

The power of a part of his subjects was an insurmountable barrier
to the tyranny of the prince; and the monarch who felt the almost
divine character which he enjoyed in the eyes of the multitude,
derived a motive for the just use of his power from the respect
which he inspired.

High as they were placed above the people, the nobles could not
but take that calm and benevolent interest in its fate which the
shepherd feels toward his flock; and without acknowledging the
poor as their equals, they watched over the destiny of those
whose welfare Providence had intrusted to their care.

The people, never having conceived the idea of a social condition
different from its own, and entertaining no expectation of ever
ranking with its chiefs, received benefits from them without
discussing their rights. It grew attached to them when they were
clement and just, but it submitted without resistance or
servility to their exactions, as to the inevitable visitations of
the arm of God. Custom, and the manners of the time, had
moreover created a species of law in the midst of violence, and
established certain limits to oppression.

As the noble never suspected that any one would attempt to
deprive him of the privileges which he believed to be legitimate,
and as the serf looked upon his own inferiority as a consequence
of the immutable order of nature, it is easy to imagine that a
mutual exchange of good-will took place between two classes so
differently gifted by fate. Inequality and wretchedness were
then to be found in society; but the souls of neither rank of men
were degraded.

Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the
habit of obedience; but by the exercise of power which they
believe to be illegal, and by obedience to a rule which they
consider to be usurped and oppressive.

On one side were wealth, strength, and leisure, accompanied by
the refinement of luxury, the elegance of taste, the pleasures of
wit, and the religion of art. On the other were labor, and a
rude ignorance; but in the midst of this coarse and ignorant
multitude, it was not uncommon to meet with energetic passions,
generous sentiments, profound religious convictions, and
independent virtues.

The body of a state thus organized, might boast of its stability,
its power, and above all, of its glory.

But the scene is now changed, and gradually the two ranks mingle;
the divisions which once severed mankind, are lowered; property
is divided, power is held in common, the light of intelligence
spreads, and the capacities of all classes are equally
cultivated; the state becomes democratic, and the empire of
democracy is slowly and peaceably introduced into the
institutions and manners of the nation.

I can conceive a society in which all men would profess an equal
attachment and respect for the laws of which they are the common
authors; in which the authority of the state would be respected
as necessary, though not as divine; and the loyalty of the
subject to the chief magistrate would not be a passion, but a
quiet and rational persuasion. Every individual being in the
possession of rights which he is sure to retain, a kind of manly
reliance and reciprocal courtesy would arise between all classes,
alike removed from pride and meanness.

The people, well acquainted with its true interests, would allow,
that in order to profit by the advantages of society, it is
necessary to satisfy its demands. In this state of things, the
voluntary association of the citizens might supply the individual
exertions of the nobles, and the community would be alike
protected from anarchy and from oppression.

I admit that in a democratic state thus constituted, society will
not be stationary; but the impulses of the social body may be
regulated and directed forward; if there be less splendor than in
the halls of an aristocracy, the contrast of misery will be less
frequent also; the pleasures of enjoyment may be less excessive,
but those of comfort will be more general; the sciences may be
less perfectly cultivated, but ignorance will be less common; the
impetuosity of the feelings will be repressed, and the habits of
the nation softened; there will be more vices and fewer crimes.

In the absence of enthusiasm and of an ardent faith, great
sacrifices may be obtained from the members of a commonwealth by
an appeal to their understandings and their experience: each
individual will feel the same necessity for uniting with his
fellow-citizens to protect his own weakness; and as he knows that
if they are to assist he must co-operate, he will readily
perceive that his personal interest is identified with the
interest of the community.

The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less
glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the
citizens will enjoy a greater degree of prosperity, and the
people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of melioration,
but because it is conscious of the advantages of its condition.

If all the consequences of this state of things were not good or
useful, society would at least have appropriated all such as were
useful and good; and having once and for ever renounced the
social advantages of aristocracy, mankind would enter into
possession of all the benefits which democracy can afford.

But here it may be asked what we have adopted in the place of
those institutions, those ideas, and those customs of our
forefathers which we have abandoned.

The spell of royalty is broken, but it has not been succeeded by
the majesty of the laws; the people have learned to despise all
authority. But fear now extorts a larger tribute of obedience
than that which was formerly paid by reverence and by love.

I perceive that we have destroyed those independent beings which
were able to cope with tyranny single-handed; but it is the
government that has inherited the privileges of which families,
corporations, and individuals, have been deprived; the weakness
of the whole community has, therefore, succeeded to that
influence of a small body of citizens, which, if it was sometimes
oppressive, was often conservative.

The division of property has lessened the distance which
separated the rich from the poor; but it would seem that the
nearer they draw to each other, the greater is their mutual
hatred, and the more vehement the envy and the dread with which
they resist each other's claims to power; the notion of right is
alike insensible to both classes, and force affords to both the
only argument for the present, and the only guarantee for the
future.

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without
their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has
adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions,
without understanding the science which controls it, and his
egotism is no less blind than his devotedness was formerly.

If society is tranquil, it is not because it relies upon its
strength and its well-being, but because it knows its weakness
and its infirmities; a single effort may cost it its life;
everybody, feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy
enough to seek the cure; the desires, the regret, the sorrows,
and the joys of the time, produce nothing that is visible or
permanent, like the passions of old men which terminate in
impotence.

We have, then, abandoned whatever advantages the old state of
things afforded, without receiving any compensation from our
present condition; having destroyed an aristocracy, we seem
inclined to survey its ruins with complacency, and to fix our
abode in the midst of them.

The phenomena which the intellectual world presents, are not less
deplorable. The democracy of France, checked in its course or
abandoned to its lawless passions, has overthrown whatever
crossed its path, and has shaken all that it has not destroyed.
Its control over society has not been gradually introduced, or
peaceably established, but it has constantly advanced in the
midst of disorder, and the agitation of a conflict. In the heat
of the struggle each partisan is hurried beyond the limits of his
opinions by the opinions and the excesses of his opponents, until
he loses sight of the end of his exertions, and holds a language
which disguises his real sentiments or secret instincts. Hence
arises the strange confusion which we are beholding.

I cannot recall to my mind a passage in history more worthy of
sorrow and of pity than the scenes which are happening under our
eyes; it is as if the natural bond which unites the opinions of
man to his tastes, and his actions to his principles, was now
broken; the sympathy which has always been acknowledged between
the feelings and the ideas of mankind, appears to be dissolved,
and all the laws of moral analogy to be abolished.

Zealous Christians may be found among us, whose minds are
nurtured in the love and knowledge of a future life, and who
readily espouse the cause of human liberty, as the source of all
moral greatness. Christianity, which has declared that all men
are equal in the sight of God, will not refuse to acknowledge
that all citizens are equal in the eye of the law. But, by a
singular concourse of events, religion is entangled in those
institutions which democracy assails, and it is not unfrequently
brought to reject the equality it loves, and to curse that cause
of liberty as a foe, which it might hallow by its alliance.

By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks
are turned to the earth more than to heaven; they are the
partisans of liberty, not only as the source of the noblest
virtues, but more especially as the root of all solid advantages;
and they sincerely desire to extend its sway, and to impart its
blessings to mankind. It is natural that they should hasten to
invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that
liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality
without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their
adversaries, and they inquire no farther; some of them attack it
openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.

In former ages slavery has been advocated by the venal and
slavish-minded, while the independent and the warm-hearted were
struggling without hope to save the liberties of mankind. But
men of high and generous characters are now to be met with, whose
opinions are at variance with their inclinations, and who praise
that servility which they have themselves never known. Others,
on the contrary, speak in the name of liberty as if they were
able to feel its sanctity and its majesty, and loudly claim for
humanity those rights which they have always disowned.

There are virtuous and peaceful individuals whose pure morality,
quiet habits, affluence, and talents, fit them to be the leaders
of the surrounding population; their love of their country is
sincere, and they are prepared to make the greatest sacrifices to
its welfare, but they confound the abuses of civilisation with
its benefits, and the idea of evil is inseparable in their minds
from that of novelty.