American Institutions And Their Influence

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It was remarked by a man of genius, that "ignorance lies at the
two ends of knowledge." Perhaps it would have been more correct
to say that absolute convictions are to be met with at the two
extremities, and that doubt lies in the middle; for the human
intellect may be considered in three distinct states, which
frequently succeed one another.

A man believes implicitly, because he adopts a proposition
without inquiry. He doubts as soon as he is assailed by the
objections which his inquiries may have aroused. But he
frequently succeeds in satisfying these doubts, and then he
begins to believe afresh: he no longer lays hold on a truth in
its most shadowy and uncertain form, but he sees it clearly
before him, and he advances onward by the light it gives
him.[Footnote:

It may, however, be doubted whether this rational and
self-guiding conviction arouses as much fervor or enthusiastic
devotedness in men as their first dogmatical belief.

]

When the liberty of the press acts upon men who are in the first
of these three states, it does not immediately disturb their
habit of believing implicitly without investigation, but it
constantly modifies the objects of their intuitive convictions.
The human mind continues to discern but one point upon the whole
intellectual horizon, and that point is in continual motion.
Such are the symptoms of sudden revolutions, and of the
misfortunes that are sure to befall those generations which
abruptly adopt the unconditional freedom of the press.

The circle of novel ideas is, however, soon terminated; the torch
of experience is upon them, and the doubt and mistrust which
their uncertainty produces, become universal. We may rest
assured that the majority of mankind will either believe they
know not wherefore, or will not know what to believe. Few are
the beings who can ever hope to attain that state of rational and
independent conviction which true knowledge can beget, in
defiance of the attacks of doubt.

It has been remarked that in times of great religious fervor, men
sometimes change their religious opinions; whereas, in times of
general scepticism, every one clings to his own persuasion. The
same thing takes place in politics under the liberty of the
press. In countries where all the theories of social science
have been contested in their turn, the citizens who have adopted
one of them, stick to it, not so much because they are assured of
its excellence, as because they are not convinced of the
superiority of any other. In the present age men are not very
ready to die in defence of their opinions, but they are rarely
inclined to change them; and there are fewer martyrs as well as
fewer apostates.

Another still more valid reason may yet be adduced: when no
abstract opinions are looked upon as certain, men cling to the
mere propensities and external interest of their position, which
are naturally more tangible and more permanent than any opinions
in the world.

It is not a question of easy solution whether the aristocracy or
the democracy is most fit to govern a country. But it is certain
that democracy annoys one part of the community, and that
aristocracy oppresses another part. When the question is reduced
to the simple expression of the struggle between poverty and
wealth, the tendency of each side of the dispute becomes
perfectly evident without farther controversy.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XII.

POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Daily use which the Anglo-Americans make of the Right of
Association.--Three kinds of political Association.--In what
Manner the Americans apply the representative System to
Associations.--Dangers resulting to the State.--Great
Convention of 1831 relative to the Tariff. Legislative
character of this Convention.--Why the unlimited Exercise of
the Right of Association is less dangerous in the United States
than elsewhere.--Why it may be looked upon as
necessary.--Utility of Associations in a democratic People.

In no country in the world has the principle of association been
more successfully used, or more unsparingly applied to a
multitude of different objects, than in America. Beside the
permanent associations which are established by law under the
names of townships, cities, and counties, a vast number of others
are formed and maintained by the agency of private individuals.

The citizen of the United States is taught from his earliest
infancy to rely upon his own exertions, in order to resist the
evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon the social
authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he only claims
its assistance when he is quite unable to shift without it. This
habit may even be traced in the schools of the rising generation,
where the children in their games are wont to submit to rules
which they have themselves established, and to punish
misdemeanors which they have themselves defined. The same spirit
pervades every act of social life. If a stoppage occurs in a
thoroughfare, and the circulation of the public is hindered, the
neighbors immediately constitute a deliberative body; and this
extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an executive power, which
remedies the inconvenience, before anybody has thought of
recurring to an authority superior to that of the persons
immediately concerned. If the public pleasures are concerned, an
association is formed to provide for the splendor and the
regularity of the entertainment. Societies are formed to resist
enemies which are exclusively of a moral nature, and to diminish
the vice of intemperance: in the United States associations are
established to promote public order, commerce, industry,
morality, and religion; for there is no end which the human will,
seconded by the collective exertions of individuals, despairs of
attaining.

I shall hereafter have occasion to show the effects of
association upon the course of society, and I must confine myself
for the present to the political world. When once the right of
association is recognized, the citizens may employ it in several
different ways.

An association consists simply in the public assent which a
number of individuals give to certain doctrines; and in the
engagement which they contract to promote the spread of those
doctrines by their exertions. The right of associating with
these views is very analogous to the liberty of unlicensed
writing; but societies thus formed possess more authority than
the press. When an opinion is represented by a society, it
necessarily assumes a more exact and explicit form. It numbers
its partisans, and compromises their welfare in its cause; they,
on the other hand, become acquainted with each other, and their
zeal is increased by their number. An association unites the
efforts of minds which have a tendency to diverge, in one single
channel, and urges them vigorously toward one single end which it
points out.

The second degree in the right of association is the power of
meeting. When an association is allowed to establish centres of
action at certain important points in the country, its activity
is increased, and its influence extended. Men have the
opportunity of seeing each other; means of execution are more
readily combined; and opinions are maintained with a degree of
warmth and energy which written language cannot approach.

Lastly, in the exercise of the right of political association,
there is a third degree: the partisans of an opinion may unite in
electoral bodies, and choose delegates to represent them in a
central assembly. This is, properly speaking, the application of
the representative system to a party.

Thus, in the first instance, a society is formed between
individuals professing the same opinion, and the tie which keeps
it together is of a purely intellectual nature: in the second
case, small assemblies are formed which only represent a fraction
of the party. Lastly, in the third case, they constitute a
separate nation in the midst of the nation, a government within
the government. Their delegates, like the real delegates of the
majority, represent the entire collective force of their party;
and they enjoy a certain degree of that national dignity and
great influence which belong to the chosen representatives of the
people. It is true that they have not the right of making the
laws; but they have the power of attacking those which are in
being, and of drawing up beforehand those which they may
afterward cause to be adopted.

If, in a people which is imperfectly accustomed to the exercise
of freedom, or which is exposed to violent political passions, a
deliberating minority, which confines itself to the contemplation
of future laws, be placed in juxtaposition to the legislative
majority, I cannot but believe that public tranquillity incurs
very great risks in that nation. There is doubtless a very wide
difference between proving that one law is in itself better than
another, and proving that the former ought to be substituted for
the latter. But the imagination of the populace is very apt to
overlook this difference, which is so apparent in the minds of
thinking men. It sometimes happens that a nation is divided into
two nearly equal parties, each of which affects to represent the
majority. If, in immediate contiguity to the directing power,
another power be established, which exercises almost as much
moral authority as the former, it is not to be believed that it
will long be content to speak without acting; or that it will
always be restrained by the abstract consideration of the nature
of associations, which are meant to direct, but not to enforce
opinions, to suggest but not to make the laws.

The more we consider the independence of the press in its
principal consequences, the more are we convinced that it is the
chief, and, so to speak, the constitutive element of freedom in
the modern world. A nation which is determined to remain free,
is therefore right in demanding the unrestrained exercise of this
independence. But the _unrestrained_ liberty of political
association cannot be entirely assimilated to the liberty of the
press. The one is at the same time less necessary and more
dangerous than the other. A nation may confine it within certain
limits without forfeiting any part of its self-control; and it
may sometimes be obliged to do so in order to maintain its own
authority.

In America the liberty of association for political purposes is
unbounded. An example will show in the clearest light to what an
extent this privilege is tolerated.

The question of the Tariff, or of free trade, produced a great
manifestation of party feeling in America; the tariff was not
only a subject of debate as a matter of opinion, but it exercised
a favorable or a prejudicial influence upon several very powerful
interests of the states. The north attributed a great portion of
its prosperity, and the south all its sufferings, to this system.
Insomuch, that for a long time the tariff was the sole source of
the political animosities which agitated the Union.

In 1831, when the dispute was raging with the utmost virulence, a
private citizen of Massachusetts proposed to all the enemies of
the tariff, by means of the public prints, to send delegates to
Philadelphia in order to consult together upon the means which
were most fitted to promote the freedom of trade. This proposal
circulated in a few days from Maine to New Orleans by the power
of the printing press: the opponents of the tariff adopted it
with enthusiasm; meetings were formed on all sides, and delegates
were named. The majority of these individuals were well known,
and some of them had earned a considerable degree of celebrity.
South Carolina alone, which afterward took up arms in the same
cause, sent sixty-three delegates. On the 1st October, 1831,
this assembly, which, according to the American custom, had taken
the name of a convention, met at Philadelphia; it consisted of
more than two hundred members. Its debates were public, and they
at once assumed a legislative character; the extent of the powers
of congress, the theories of free trade, and the different
clauses of the tariff, were discussed in turn. At the end of ten
days' deliberation, the convention broke up, after having
published an address to the American people, in which it is
declared:

I. The congress had not the right of making a tariff, and that
the existing tariff was unconstitutional.

II. That the prohibition of free trade was prejudicial to the
interests of all nations, and to that of the American people in
particular.

It must be acknowledged that the unrestrained liberty of
political association has not hitherto produced, in the United
States, those fatal consequences which might perhaps be expected
from it elsewhere. The right of association was imported from
England, and it has always existed in America. So that the
exercise of this privilege is now amalgamated with the manners
and customs of the people. At the present time, the liberty of
association is become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny
of the majority. In the United States, as soon as a party has
become preponderant, all the public authority passes under its
control; its private supporters occupy all the places, and have
all the force of the administration at their disposal. As the
most distinguished partisans of the other side of the question
are unable to surmount the obstacles which exclude them from
power, they require some means of establishing themselves upon
their own basis, and of opposing the moral authority of the
minority to the physical power which domineers over it. Thus, a
dangerous expedient is used to obviate a still more formidable
danger.

The omnipotence of the majority appears to me to present such
extreme perils to the American republics, that the dangerous
measure which is used to repress it, seems to be more
advantageous than prejudicial. And here I am about to advance a
proposition which may remind the reader of what I said before in
speaking of municipal freedom. There are no countries in which
associations are more needed, to prevent the despotism of
faction, or the arbitrary power of a prince, than those which are
democratically constituted. In aristocratic nations, the body of
the nobles and the more opulent part of the community are in
themselves natural associations, which act as checks upon the
abuses of power. In countries in which those associations do not
exist, if private individuals are unable to create an artificial
and a temporary substitute for them, I can imagine no permanent
protection against the most galling tyranny; and a great people
may be oppressed by a small faction, or by a single individual,
with impunity.

The meeting of a great political convention (for there are
conventions of all kinds), which may frequently become a
necessary measure, is always a serious occurrence, even in
America, and one which is never looked forward to by the
judicious friends of the country, without alarm. This was very
perceptible in the convention of 1831, at which the exertions of
all the most distinguished members of the assembly tended to
moderate its language, and to restrain the subjects which it
treated within certain limits. It is probable, in fact, that the
convention of 1831 exercised a very great influence upon the
minds of the malecontents, and prepared them for the open revolt
against the commercial laws of the Union, which took place in
1832.

It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of association
for political purposes, is the privilege which a people is
longest in learning how to exercise. If it does not throw the
nation into anarchy, it perpetually augments the chances of that
calamity. On one point, however, this perilous liberty offers a
security against dangers of another kind; in countries where
associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America
there are numerous factions, but no conspiracies.

* * * * *

Different ways in which the Right of Association is understood in
Europe and in the United States. Different use which is made
of it.

The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting
for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his
fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them. I am
therefore led to conclude, that the right of association is
almost as inalienable as the right of personal liberty. No
legislator can attack it without impairing the very foundations
of society. Nevertheless, if the liberty of association is a
fruitful source of advantages and prosperity to some nations, it
may be perverted or carried to excess by others, and the element
of life may be changed into an element of destruction. A
comparison of the different methods which associations pursue, in
those countries in which they are managed with discretion, as
well as in those where liberty degenerates into license, may
perhaps be thought useful both to governments and to parties.
The greater part of Europeans look upon an association as a
weapon which is to be hastily fashioned, and immediately tried in
the conflict. A society is to be formed for discussion, but the
idea of impending action prevails in the minds of those who
constitute it: it is, in fact, an army; and the time given to
parley, serves to reckon up the strength and to animate the
courage of the host, after which they direct the march against
the enemy. Resources which lie within the bounds of the law may
suggest themselves to the persons who compose it, as means, but
never as the only means, of success.

Such, however, is not the manner in which the right of
association is understood in the United States. In America, the
citizens who form the minority associate, in order, in the first
place, to show their numerical strength, and so to diminish the
moral authority of the majority; and, in the second place, to
stimulate competition, and to discover those arguments which are
most fitted to act upon the majority; for they always entertain
hopes of drawing over their opponents to their own side, and of
afterward disposing of the supreme power in their name.
Political associations in the United States are therefore
peaceable in their intentions, and strictly legal in the means
which they employ; and they assert with perfect truth, that they
only aim at success by lawful expedients.

The difference which exists between the Americans and ourselves
depends on several causes. In Europe there are numerous parties
so diametrically opposed to the majority, that they can never
hope to acquire its support, and at the same time they think that
they are sufficiently strong in themselves to struggle and to
defend their cause. When a party of this kind forms an
association, its object is, not to conquer, but to fight. In
America, the individuals who hold opinions very much opposed to
those of the majority, are no sort of impediment to its power;
and all other parties hope to win it over to their own principles
in the end. The exercise of the right of association becomes
dangerous in proportion to the impossibility which excludes great
parties from acquiring the majority. In a country like the
United States, in which the differences of opinion are mere
differences of hue, the right of association may remain
unrestrained without evil consequences. The inexperience of many
of the European nations in the enjoyment of liberty, leads them
only to look upon the liberty of association as a right of
attacking the government. The first notion which presents itself
to a party, as well as to an individual, when it has acquired a
consciousness of its own strength, is that of violence: the
notion of persuasion arises at a later period, and is only
derived from experience. The English, who are divided into
parties which differ most essentially from each other, rarely
abuse the right of association, because they have long been
accustomed to exercise it. In France, the passion for war is so
intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to
the welfare of the state, that a man does not consider himself
honored in defending it, at the risk of his life.

But perhaps the most powerful of the causes which tend to
mitigate the excesses of political association in the United
States is universal suffrage. In countries in which universal
suffrage exists, the majority is never doubtful, because neither
party can pretend to represent that portion of the community
which has not voted. The associations which are formed are
aware, as well as the nation at large, that they do not represent
the majority; this is, indeed, a condition inseparable from their
existence; for if they did represent the preponderating power,
they would change the law instead of soliciting its reform. The
consequence of this is, that the moral influence of the
government which they attack is very much increased, and their
own power is very much enfeebled.

In Europe there are few associations which do not affect to
represent the majority, or which do not believe that they
represent it. This conviction or this pretension tends to
augment their force amazingly, and contributes no less to
legalize their measures. Violence may seem to be excusable in
defence of the cause of oppressed right. Thus it is, in the vast
labyrinth of human laws, that extreme liberty sometimes corrects
abuses of license, and that extreme democracy obviates the
dangers of democratic government. In Europe, associations
consider themselves, in some degree, as the legislative and
executive councils of the people, which is unable to speak for
itself. In America, where they only represent a minority of the
nation, they argue and they petition.

The means which the associations of Europe employ, are in
accordance with the end which they propose to obtain. As the
principal aim of these bodies is to act, and not to debate, to
fight rather than to persuade, they are naturally led to adopt a
form of organization which differs from the ordinary customs of
civil bodies, and which assumes the habits and the maxims of
military life. They centralize the direction of their resources
as much as possible, and they intrust the power of the whole
party to a very small number of leaders.

The members of these associations reply to a watchword, like
soldiers on duty: they profess the doctrine of passive obedience;
say rather, that in uniting together they at once abjure the
exercise of their own judgment and free will; and the tyrannical
control, which these societies exercise, is often far more
insupportable than the authority possessed over society by the
government which they attack. Their moral force is much
diminished by these excesses, and they lose the powerful interest
which is always excited by a struggle between oppressors and the
oppressed. The man who in given cases consents to obey his
fellows with servility, and who submits his activity, and even
his opinions, to their control, can have no claim to rank as a
free citizen.

The Americans have also established certain forms of government
which are applied to their associations, but these are invariably
borrowed from the forms of the civil administration. The
independence of each individual is formally recognized; the
tendency of the members of the association points, as it does in
the body of the community, toward the same end, but they are not
obliged to follow the same track. No one abjures the exercise of
his reason and his free will; but every one exerts that reason
and that will for the benefit of a common undertaking.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIII.

GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.

I am well aware of the difficulties which attend this part of my
subject, but although every expression which I am about to make
use of may clash, upon some one point, with the feelings of the
different parties which divide my country, I shall speak my
opinion with the most perfect openness.

In Europe we are at a loss how to judge the true character and
the more permanent propensities of democracy, because in Europe
two conflicting principles exist, and we do not know what to
attribute to the principles themselves, and what to refer to the
passions which they bring into collision. Such, however, is not
the case in America; there the people reigns without any
obstacle, and it has no perils to dread, and no injuries to
avenge. In America, democracy is swayed by its own free
propensities; its course is natural, and its activity is
unrestrained: the United States consequently afford the most
favorable opportunity of studying its real character. And to no
people can this inquiry be more vitally interesting than to the
French nation, which is blindly driven onward by a daily and
irresistible impulse, toward a state of things which may prove
either despotic or republican, but which will assuredly be
democratic.

* * * * *