American Institutions And Their Influence

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The propensity which democracies have to obey the impulse of
passion rather than the suggestions of prudence, and to abandon a
mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice, was
very clearly seen in America on the breaking out of the French
revolution. It was then as evident to the simplest capacity as
it is at the present time, that the interests of the Americans
forbade them to take any part in the contest which was about to
deluge Europe with blood, but which could by no means injure the
welfare of their own country. Nevertheless the sympathies of the
people declared themselves with so much violence in behalf of
France, that nothing but the inflexible character of Washington,
and the immense popularity which he enjoyed, could have prevented
the Americans from declaring war against England. And even then,
the exertions, which the austere reason of that great man made to
repress the generous but imprudent passions of his
fellow-citizens, very nearly deprived him of the sole recompense
which he had ever claimed--that of his country's love. The
majority then reprobated the line of policy which he adopted and
which has since been unanimously approved by the
nation.[Footnote:

See the fifth volume of Marshall's Life of Washington. "In a
government constituted like that of the United States," he says,
"it is impossible for the chief magistrate, however firm he may
be, to oppose for any length of time the torrents of popular
opinion; and the prevalent opinion of that day seemed to incline
to war. In fact, in the session of congress held at the time, it
was frequently seen that Washington had lost the majority in the
house of representatives." The violence of the language used
against him in public was extreme, and in a political meeting
they did not scruple to compare him indirectly to the treacherous
Arnold. "By the opposition," says Marshall, "the friends of the
administration were declared to be an aristocratic and corrupt
faction, who, from a desire to introduce monarchy, were hostile
to France, and under the influence of Britain; that they were a
paper nobility, whose extreme sensibility at every measure which
threatened the funds, induced a tame submission to injuries and
insults, which the interests and honor of the nation required
them to resist."

]

If the constitution and the favor of the public had not intrusted
the direction of the foreign affairs of the country to
Washington, it is certain that the American nation would at that
time have taken the very measures which it now condemns.

Almost all the nations which have exercised a powerful influence
upon the destinies of the world, by conceiving, following up, and
executing vast designs--from the Romans to the English--have been
governed by aristocratic institutions. Nor will this be a
subject of wonder when we recollect that nothing in the world has
so absolute a fixity of purpose as an aristocracy. The mass of
the people may be led astray by ignorance or passion; the mind of
a king may be biased, and his perseverance in his designs may be
shaken--beside which a king is not immortal; but an aristocratic
body is too numerous to be led astray by the blandishments of
intrigue, and yet not numerous enough to yield readily to the
intoxicating influence of unreflecting passion: it has the energy
of a firm and enlightened individual, added to the power which it
derives from its perpetuity.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV.

WHAT THE REAL ADVANTAGES ARE WHICH AMERICAN SOCIETY
DERIVES FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY.

Before I enter upon the subject of the present chapter, I am
induced to remind the reader of what I have more than once
adverted to in the course of this book. The political
institution of the United states appear to me to be one of the
forms of government which a democracy may adopt, but I do not
regard the American constitution as the best, or as the only one
which a democratic people may establish. In showing the
advantages which the Americans derive from the government of
democracy, I am therefore very far from meaning, or from
believing, that similar advantages can be obtained only from the
same laws.

* * * * *

GENERAL TENDENCY OF THE LAWS UNDER THE RULE OF THE
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, AND HABITS OF THOSE WHO APPLY
THEM.

Defects of a democratic Government easy to be discovered.--Its
advantages only to be discerned by long Observation.--Democracy
in America often inexpert, but the general Tendency of the Laws
advantageous.--In the American Democracy public Officers have
no permanent Interests distinct from those of the
Majority.--Result of this State of Things.

The defects and the weaknesses of a democratic government may
very readily be discovered; they are demonstrated by the most
flagrant instances, while its beneficial influence is less
perceptibly exercised. A single glance suffices to detect its
evil consequences, but its good qualities can only be discerned
by long observation. The laws of the American democracy are
frequently defective or incomplete; they sometimes attack vested
rights, or give a sanction to others which are dangerous to the
community; but even if they were good, the frequent changes which
they undergo would be an evil. How comes it, then, that the
American republics prosper, and maintain their position?

In the consideration of laws, a distinction must be carefully
observed between the end at which they aim, and the means by
which they are directed to that end; between their absolute and
their relative excellence. If it be the intention of the
legislator to favor the interests of the minority at the expense
of the majority, and if the measures he takes are so combined as
to accomplish the object he has in view with the least possible
expense of time and exertion, the law may be well drawn up,
although its purpose be bad; and the more efficacious it is, the
greater is the mischief which it causes.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the
greatest possible number; for they emanate from a majority of the
citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an
interest opposed to their own advantage. The laws of an
aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and
power in the hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by
its very nature, constitutes a minority. It may therefore be
asserted, as a general proposition, that the purpose of a
democracy, in the conduct of its legislation, is useful to a
greater number of citizens than that of an aristocracy. This is,
however, the sum total of its advantages.

Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of
legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed of
a self-control which protects them from the errors of a temporary
excitement; and they form lasting designs which they mature with
the assistance of favorable opportunities. Aristocratic
government proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how
to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same
time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies,
whose laws are almost always ineffective, or inopportune. The
means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of
aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are
frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has in
view is more useful.

Let us now imagine a community so organized by nature, or by its
constitution, that it can support the transitory action of bad
laws, and it can await, without destruction, the general tendency
of the legislation: we shall then be able to conceive that a
democratic government, notwithstanding its defects, will be most
fitted to conduce to the prosperity of this community. This is
precisely what has occurred in the United States; and I repeat,
what I have before remarked, that the great advantage of the
Americans consists in their being able to commit faults which
they may afterward repair.

An analogous observation may be made respecting officers. It is
easy to perceive that the American democracy frequently errs in
the choice of the individuals to whom it intrusts the power of
the administration; but it is more difficult to say why the state
prospers under their rule. In the first place it is to be
remarked, that if in a democratic state the governors have less
honesty and less capacity than elsewhere, the governed on the
other hand are more enlightened and more attentive to their
interests. As the people in democracies is more incessantly
vigilant in its affairs, and more jealous of its rights, it
prevents its representatives from abandoning that general line of
conduct which its own interest prescribes. In the second place,
it must be remembered that if the democratic magistrate is more
apt to misuse his power, he possesses it for a shorter period of
time. But there is yet another reason which is still more
general and conclusive. It is no doubt of importance to the
welfare of nations that they should be governed by men of talents
and virtue; but it is perhaps still more important that the
interests of those men should not differ from the interests of
the community at large; for if such were the case, virtues of a
high order might become useless, and talents might be turned to a
bad account.

I say that it is important that the interests of the persons in
authority should not conflict with or oppose the interests of the
community at large; but I do not insist upon their having the
same interests as the _whole_ population, because I am not
aware that such a state of things ever existed in any country.

No political form has hitherto been discovered, which is equally
favorable to the prosperity and the development of all the
classes into which society is divided. These classes continue to
form, as it were, a certain number of distinct nations in the
same nation; and experience has shown that it is no less
dangerous to place the fate of these classes exclusively in the
hands of any one of them, than it is to make one people the
arbiter of the destiny of another. When the rich alone govern,
the interest of the poor is always endangered; and when the poor
make the laws, that of the rich incurs very serious risks. The
advantage of democracy does not consist, therefore, as has been
sometimes asserted, in favoring the prosperity of all, but simply
in contributing to the well-being of the greatest possible
number.

The men who are entrusted with the direction of public affairs in
the United States, are frequently inferior, both in point of
capacity and of morality, to those whom aristocratic institutions
would raise to power. But their interest is identified and
confounded with that of the majority of their fellow-citizens.
They may frequently be faithless, and frequently mistake; but
they will never systematically adopt a line of conduct opposed to
the will of the majority; and it is impossible that they should
give a dangerous or an exclusive tendency to the government.

The mal-administration of a democratic magistrate is a mere
isolated fact, which only occurs during the short period for
which he is elected. Corruption and incapacity do not act as
common interests, which may connect men permanently with one
another. A corrupt or an incapable magistrate will concert his
measures with another magistrate, simply because that individual
is as corrupt and as incapable as himself; and these two men will
never unite their endeavors to promote the corruption and
inaptitude of their remote posterity. The ambition and
manoeuvres of the one will serve, on the contrary, to unmask the
other. The vices of a magistrate, in democratic states, are
usually peculiar to his own person.

But under aristocratic governments public men are swayed by the
interests of their order, which, if it is sometimes confounded
with the interests of the majority, is very frequently distinct
from them. This interest is the common and lasting bond which
unites them together; it induces them to coalesce, and to combine
their efforts in order to attain an end which does not always
ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and it
serves not only to connect the persons in authority, but to unite
them to a considerable portion of the community, since a numerous
body of citizens belongs to the aristocracy, without being
invested with official functions. The aristocratic magistrate is
therefore constantly supported by a portion of the community, as
well as by the government of which he is a member.

The common purpose which connects the interest of the magistrates
in aristocracies, with that of a portion of their contemporaries,
identifies it with that of future generations; their influence
belongs to the future as much as to the present. The
aristocratic magistrate is urged at the same time toward the same
point, by the passions of the community, by his own, and I may
almost add, by those of his posterity. Is it, then, wonderful
that he does not resist such repeated impulses? And, indeed,
aristocracies are often carried away by the spirit of their order
without being corrupted by it; and they unconsciously fashion
society to their own ends, and prepare it for their own
descendants.

The English aristocracy is perhaps the most liberal which ever
existed, and no body of men has ever, uninterruptedly, furnished
so many honorable and enlightened individuals to the government
of a country. It cannot, however, escape observation, that in
the legislation of England the good of the poor has been
sacrificed to the advantage of the rich, and the rights of the
majority to the privileges of the few. The consequence is, that
England, at the present day, combines the extremes of fortune in
the bosom of her society; and her perils and calamities are
almost equal to her power and her renown.

In the United States, where the public officers have no interests
to promote connected with their caste, the general and constant
influence of the government is beneficial, although the
individuals who conduct it are frequently unskilful and sometimes
contemptible. There is, indeed, a secret tendency in democratic
institutions to render the exertions of the citizens subservient
to the prosperity of the community, notwithstanding their private
vices and mistakes; while in aristocratic institutions there is a
secret propensity, which, notwithstanding the talents and the
virtues of those who conduct the government, leads them to
contribute to the evils which oppress their fellow creatures. In
aristocratic governments public men may frequently do injuries
which they do not intend; and in democratic states they produce
advantages which they never thought of.

* * * * *

PUBLIC SPIRIT IN THE UNITED STATES.

Patriotism of Instinct.--Patriotism of Reflection.--Their
different Characteristics.--Nations ought to strive to acquire
the second when the first has disappeared.--Efforts of the
Americans to acquire it.--Interest of the Individual intimately
connected with that of the Country.

There is one sort of patriotic attachment which principally
arises from that instinctive, disinterested, and undefinable
feeling which connects the affections of man with his birthplace.
This natural fondness is united to a taste for ancient customs,
and to a reverence for ancestral traditions of the past; those
who cherish it love their country as they love the mansion of
their fathers. They enjoy the tranquillity which it affords
them; they cling to the peaceful habits which they have
contracted within its bosom; they are attached to the
reminiscences which it awakens, and they are even pleased by the
state of obedience in which they are placed. This patriotism is
sometimes stimulated by religious enthusiasm, and then it is
capable of making the most prodigious efforts. It is in itself a
kind of religion; it does not reason, but it acts from the
impulse of faith and of sentiment. By some nations the monarch
has been regarded as a personification of the country; and the
fervor of patriotism being converted into the fervor of loyalty,
they took a sympathetic pride in his conquests, and gloried in
his power. At one time, under the ancient monarchy, the French
felt a sort of satisfaction in the sense of their dependence upon
the arbitrary pleasure of their king, and they were wont to say
with pride: "We are the subjects of the most powerful king in the
world."

But, like all instinctive passions, this kind of patriotism is
more apt to prompt transient exertion than to supply the motives
of continuous endeavor. It may save the state in critical
circumstances, but it will not unfrequently allow the nation to
decline in the midst of peace. While the manners of a people are
simple, and its faith unshaken, while society is steadily based
upon traditional institutions, whose legitimacy has never been
contested, this instinctive patriotism is wont to endure.

But there is another species of attachment to a country which is
more rational than the one we have been describing. It is
perhaps less generous and less ardent, but it is more fruitful
and more lasting; it is coeval with the spread of knowledge, it
is nurtured by the laws, it grows by the exercise of civil
rights, and in the end, it is confounded with the personal
interest of the citizen. A man comprehends the influence which
the prosperity of his country has upon his own welfare; he is
aware that the laws authorize him to contribute his assistance to
that prosperity, and he labors to promote it as a portion of his
interest in the first place, and as a portion of his right in the
second.

But epochs sometimes occur, in the course of the existence of a
nation, at which the ancient customs of a people are changed,
public morality destroyed, religious belief disturbed, and the
spell of tradition broken, while the diffusion of knowledge is
yet imperfect, and the civil rights of the community are ill
secured, or confined within very narrow limits. The country then
assumes a dim and dubious shape in the eyes of the citizens; they
no longer behold it in the soil which they inhabit, for that soil
is to them a dull inanimate clod; nor in the usages of their
forefathers, which they have been taught to look upon as a
debasing yoke; nor in religion, for of that they doubt; nor in
the laws, which do not originate in their own authority; nor in
the legislator, whom they fear and despise. The country is lost
to their senses, they can neither discover it under its own, nor
under borrowed features, and they intrench themselves within the
dull precincts of a narrow egotism. They are emancipated from
prejudice, without having acknowledged the empire of reason; they
are animated neither by the instinctive patriotism of monarchical
subjects, nor by the thinking patriotism of republican citizens;
but they have stopped half-way between the two, in the midst of
confusion and of distress.

In this predicament, to retreat is impossible; for a people
cannot restore the vivacity of its earlier times, any more than a
man can return to the innocence and the bloom of childhood; such
things may be regretted, but they cannot be renewed. The only
thing, then, which remains to be done, is to proceed, and to
accelerate the union of private with public interests, since the
period of disinterested patriotism is gone by for ever.

I am certainly very far from averring, that, in order to obtain
this result, the exercise of political rights should be
immediately granted to all the members of the community. But I
maintain that the most powerful, and perhaps the only means of
interesting men in the welfare of their country, which we still
possess, is to make them partakers in the government. At the
present time civic zeal seems to me to be inseparable from the
exercise of political rights; and I hold that the number of
citizens will be found to augment or decrease in Europe in
proportion as those rights are extended.

In the United States, the inhabitants were thrown but as
yesterday upon the soil which they now occupy, and they brought
neither customs nor traditions with them there; they meet each
other for the first time with no previous acquaintance; in short,
the instinctive love of their country can scarcely exist in their
minds; but every one takes as zealous an interest in the affairs
of his township, his country, and of the whole state, as if they
were his own, because every one, in his sphere, takes an active
part in the government of society.

The lower orders in the United States are alive to the perception
of the influence exercised by the general prosperity upon their
own welfare; and simple as this observation is, it is one which
is but too rarely made by the people. But in America the people
regard this prosperity as the result of its own exertions; the
citizen looks upon the fortune of the public as his private
interest, and he co-operates in its success, not so much from a
sense of pride or of duty, as from what I shall venture to term
cupidity.

It is unnecessary to study the institutions and the history of
the Americans in order to discover the truth of this remark, for
their manners render it sufficiently evident. As the American
participates in all that is done in his country, he thinks
himself obliged to defend whatever may be censured; for it is not
only his country which is attacked upon these occasions, but it
is himself. The consequence is that his national pride resorts
to a thousand artifices, and to all the petty tricks of
individual vanity.

Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life
than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A stranger may
be well inclined to praise many of the institutions of their
country, but he begs permission to blame some of the
peculiarities which he observes--a permission which is however
inexorably refused. America is therefore a free country, in
which, lest anybody should be hurt by your remarks, you are not
allowed to speak freely of private individuals or of the state;
of the citizens or of the authorities; of public or of private
undertakings; or, in short, of anything at all, except it be of
the climate and the soil; and even then Americans will be found
ready to defend either the one or the other, as if they had been
contrived by the inhabitants of the country.

In our times, option must be made between the patriotism of all
and the government of a few; for the force and activity which the
first confers, are irreconcilable with the guarantees of
tranquillity which the second furnishes.

* * * * *

NOTION OF RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

No great People without a Notion of Rights.--How the Notion of
Rights can be given to a People.--Respect of Rights in the
United States.--Whence it arises.

After the idea of virtue, I am acquainted with no higher
principle than that of right; or, to speak more accurately, these
two ideas are commingled in one. The idea of right is simply
that of virtue introduced into the political world. It is the
idea of right which enabled men to define anarchy and tyranny;
and which taught them to remain independent without arrogance, as
well as to obey without servility. The man who submits to
violence is debased by his compliance; but when he obeys the
mandate of one who possesses that right of authority which he
acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above
the person who delivers the command. There are no great men
without virtue, and there are no great nations--it may also be
added that there would be no society--without the notion of
rights; for what is the condition of a mass of rational and
intelligent beings who are only united together by the bond of
force?

I am persuaded that the only means which we possess at the
present time of inculcating the notion of rights, and of
rendering it, as it were, palpable to the senses, is to invest
all the members of the community with the peaceful exercise of
certain rights: this is very clearly seen in children, who are
men without the strength and the experience of manhood. When a
child begins to move in the midst of the objects which surround
him, he is instinctively led to turn everything which he can lay
his hands upon to his own purpose; he has no notion of the
property of others; but as he gradually learns the value of
things, and begins to perceive that he may in his turn be
deprived of his possessions, he becomes more circumspect, and he
observes those rights in others which he wishes to have respected
in himself. The principle which the child derives from the
possession of his toys, is taught to the man by the objects which
he may call his own. In America those complaints against
property in general, which are so frequent in Europe, are never
heard, because in America there are no paupers; and as every one
has property of his own to defend, every one recognizes the
principle upon which he holds it.