American Institutions And Their Influence

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In the United States politics are the end and aim of education;
in Europe its principal object is to fit men for private life.
The interference of the citizens in public affairs is too rare an
occurrence for it to be anticipated beforehand. Upon casting a
glance over society in the two hemispheres, these differences are
indicated even by its external aspect.

In Europe, we frequently introduce the ideas and the habits of
private life into public affairs; and as we pass at once from the
domestic circle to the government of the state, we may frequently
be heard to discuss the great interests of society in the same
manner in which we converse with our friends. The Americans, on
the other hand, transfuse the habits of public life into their
manners in private; and in their country the jury is introduced
into the games of school-boys, and parliamentary forms are
observed in the order of a feast.

* * * * *

THE LAWS CONTRIBUTE MORE TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC IN THE UNITED STATES THAN THE PHYSICAL
CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE COUNTRY, AND THE MANNERS
MORE THAN THE LAWS.

All the Nations of America have a democratic State of
Society.--Yet democratic Institutions subsist only among the
Anglo-Americans.--The Spaniards of South America, equally
favored by physical Causes as the Anglo-Americans, unable to
maintain a democratic Republic.--Mexico, which has adopted the
Constitution of the United States, in the same
Predicament.--The Anglo-Americans of the West less able to
maintain it than those of the East.--Reason of these different
Results.

I have remarked that the maintenance of democratic institutions
in the United States is attributable to the circumstances, the
laws, and the manners of that country.[Footnote:

I remind the reader of the general signification which I give to
the word _manners_, namely, the moral and intellectual
characteristics of social man taken collectively.

] Most Europeans are only acquainted with the first of these
three causes, and they are apt to give it a preponderating
importance which it does not really possess.

It is true that the Anglo-Americans settled in the New World in a
state of social equality; the low-born and the noble were not to
be found among them; and professional prejudices were always as
entirely unknown as the prejudices of birth. Thus, as the
condition of society was democratic, the empire of democracy was
established without difficulty. But this circumstance is by no
means peculiar to the United States; almost all the transatlantic
colonies were founded by men equal among themselves, or who
became so by inhabiting them. In no one part of the New World
have Europeans been able to create an aristocracy. Nevertheless
democratic institutions prosper nowhere but in the United States.

The American Union has no enemies to contend with; if stands in
the wilds like an island in the ocean. But the Spaniards of
South America were no less isolated by nature; yet their position
has not relieved them from the charge of standing armies. They
make war upon each other when they have no foreign enemies to
oppose; and the Anglo-American democracy is the only one which
has hitherto been able to maintain itself in peace.

The territory of the Union presents a boundless field to human
activity, and inexhaustible materials for industry and labor.
The passion of wealth takes the place of ambition, and the warmth
of faction is mitigated by a sense of prosperity. But in what
portion of the globe shall we meet with more fertile plains, with
mightier rivers, or with more unexplored and inexhaustible
riches, than in South America?

Nevertheless South America has been unable to maintain democratic
institutions. If the welfare of nations depended on their being
placed in a remote position, with an unbounded space of habitable
territory before them, the Spaniards of South America would have
no reason to complain of their fate. And although they might
enjoy less prosperity than the inhabitants of the United States,
their lot might still be such as to excite the envy of some
nations in Europe. There are, however, no nations upon the face
of the earth more miserable than those of South America.

Thus, not only are physical causes inadequate to produce results
analogous to those which occur in North America, but they are
unable to raise the population of South America above the level
of European states, where they act in a contrary direction.
Physical causes do not therefore affect the destiny of nations so
much as has been supposed.

I have met with men in New England who were on the point of
leaving a country, where they might have remained in easy
circumstances, to go to seek their fortunes in the wilds. Not
far from that district I found a French population in Canada,
which was closely crowded on a narrow territory, although the
same wilds were at hand; and while the emigrant from the United
States purchased an extensive estate with the earnings of a short
term of labor, the Canadian paid as much for land as he would
have done in France. Nature offers the solitudes of the New
World to Europeans; but they are not always acquainted with the
means of turning her gifts to account. Other peoples of America
have the same physical conditions of prosperity as the
Anglo-Americans, but without their laws and their manners; and
these peoples are wretched. The laws and manners of the
Anglo-Americans are therefore that cause of their greatness which
is the object of my inquiry.

I am far from supposing that the American laws are pre-eminently
good in themselves; I do not hold them to be applicable to all
democratic peoples; and several of them seem to me to be
dangerous, even in the United States. Nevertheless, it cannot be
denied that the American legislation, taken collectively, is
extremely well adapted to the genius of the people and the nature
of the country which it is intended to govern. The American laws
are therefore good, and to them must be attributed a large
portion of the success which attends the government of democracy
in America: but I do not believe them to be the principal cause
of that success; and if they seem to me to have more influence
upon the social happiness of the Americans than the nature of the
country, on the other hand there is reason to believe that their
effect is still inferior to that produced by the manners of the
people.

The federal laws undoubtedly constitute the most important part
of the legislation of the United States. Mexico, which is not
less fortunately situated than the Anglo-American Union, has
adopted these same laws, but is unable to accustom itself to the
government of democracy. Some other cause is therefore at work
independently of those physical circumstances and peculiar laws
which enable the democracy to rule in the United States.

Another still more striking proof may be adduced. Almost all the
inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of
a common stock; they speak the same language, they worship God in
the same manner, they are affected by the same physical causes,
and they obey the same laws. Whence, then, do their
characteristic differences arise? Why, in the eastern states of
the Union, does the republican government display vigor and
regularity, and proceed with mature deliberation? Whence does it
derive the wisdom and durability which mark its acts, while in
the western states, on the contrary, society seems to be ruled by
the powers of chance? There, public business is conducted with
an irregularity, and a passionate and feverish excitement, which
does not announce a long or sure duration.

I am no longer comparing the Anglo-American states to foreign
nations; but I am contrasting them with each other, and
endeavoring to discover why they are so unlike. The arguments
which are derived from the nature of the country and the
difference of legislation, are here all set aside. Recourse must
be had to some other cause; and what other cause can there be
except the manners of the people?

It is in the eastern states that the Anglo-Americans have been
longest accustomed to the government of democracy, and that they
have adopted the habits and conceived the notions most favorable
to its maintenance. Democracy has gradually penetrated into
their customs, their opinions, and the forms of social
intercourse; it is to be found in all the details of daily life
equally as in the laws. In the eastern states the instruction
and practical education of the people have been most perfected,
and religion has been most thoroughly amalgamated with liberty.
Now these habits, opinions, customs, and convictions, are
precisely the constituent elements of that which I have
denominated manners.

In the western states, on the contrary, a portion of the same
advantages is still wanting. Many of the Americans of the west
were born in the woods, and they mix the ideas and the customs of
savage life with the civilisation of their parents. Their
passions are more intense; their religious morality less
authoritative; and their convictions are less secure. The
inhabitants exercise no sort of control over their
fellow-citizens, for they are scarcely acquainted with each
other. The nations of the west display, to a certain extent, the
inexperience and the rude habits of a people in its infancy; for
although they are composed of old elements, their assemblage is
of recent date.

The manners of the Americans of the United States are, then, the
real cause which renders that people the only one of the American
nations that is able to support a democratic government; and it
is the influence of manners which produces the different degrees
of order and of prosperity, that may be distinguished in the
several Anglo-American democracies. Thus the effect which the
geographical position of a country may have upon the duration of
democratic institutions is exaggerated in Europe. Too much
importance is attributed to legislation, too little to manners.
These three great causes serve, no doubt, to regulate and direct
the American democracy; but if they were to be classed in their
proper order, I should say that the physical circumstances are
less efficient than the laws, and the laws very subordinate to
the manners of the people. I am convinced that the most
advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain
a constitution in spite of the manners of a country: while the
latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws
to some advantage. The importance of manners is a common truth
to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention.
It may be regarded as a central point in the range of human
observation, and the common termination of all inquiry. So
seriously do I insist upon this head, that if I have hitherto
failed in making the reader feel the important influence which I
attribute to the practical experience, the habits, the opinions.
in short, to the manners of the Americans, upon the maintenance
of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object of
my work.

* * * * *

WHETHER LAWS AND MANNERS ARE SUFFICIENT TO MAINTAIN
DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS IN OTHER COUNTRIES BESIDE AMERICA.

The Anglo-Americans, if transported into Europe, would be obliged
to modify their Laws.--Distinction to be made between
democratic Institutions and American Institutions.--Democratic
Laws may be conceived better than, or at least different from,
those which the American Democracy has adopted.--The Example of
America only proves that it is possible to regulate Democracy
by the assistance of Manners and Legislation.

I have asserted that the success of democratic institutions in
the United States is more intimately connected with the laws
themselves, and the manners of the people, than with the nature
of the country. But does it follow that the same causes would of
themselves produce the same results, if they were put into
operation elsewhere; and if the country is no adequate substitute
for laws and manners, can laws and manners in their turn prove a
substitute for a country? It will readily be understood that the
necessary elements of a reply to this question are wanting: other
peoples are to be found in the New World beside the
Anglo-Americans, and as these peoples are affected by the same
physical circumstances as the latter, they may fairly be compared
together. But there are no nations out of America which have
adopted the same laws and manners, being destitute of the
physical advantages peculiar to the Anglo-Americans. No standard
of comparison therefore exists, and we can only hazard an opinion
upon this subject.

It appears to me in the first place, that a careful distinction
must be made between the institutions of the United States and
democratic institutions in general. When I reflect upon the
state of Europe, its mighty nations, its populous cities, its
formidable armies, and the complex nature of its politics, I
cannot suppose that even the Anglo-Americans, if they were
transported to our hemisphere, with their ideas, their religion,
and their manners, could exist without considerably altering
their laws. But a democratic nation may be imagined, organized
differently from the American people. It is not impossible to
conceive a government really established upon the will of the
majority; but in which the majority, repressing its natural
propensity to equality, should consent, with a view to the order
and the stability of the state, to invest a family or an
individual with all the prerogatives of the executive. A
democratic society might exist, in which the forces of the nation
would be more centralized than they are in the United States; the
people would exercise a less direct and less irresistible
influence upon public affairs, and yet every citizen, invested
with certain rights, would participate, within his sphere, in the
conduct of the government. The observations I made among the
Anglo-Americans induce me to believe that democratic institutions
of this kind, prudently introduced into society, so as gradually
to mix with the habits and to be infused with the opinions of the
people, might subsist in other countries beside America. If the
laws of the United States were the only imaginable democratic
laws, or the most perfect which it is possible to conceive, I
should admit that the success of those institutions affords no
proof of the success of democratic institutions in general, in a
country less favored by natural circumstances. But as the laws
of America appear to me to be defective in several respects, and
as I can readily imagine others of the same general nature, the
peculiar advantages of that country do not prove that democratic
institutions cannot succeed in a nation less favored by
circumstances, if ruled by better laws.

If human nature were different in America from what it is
elsewhere; or if the social condition of the Americans engendered
habits and opinions among them different from those which
originate in the same social condition in the Old World, the
American democracies would afford no means of predicting what may
occur in other democracies. If the Americans displayed the same
propensities as all other democratic nations, and if their
legislators had relied upon the nature of the country and the
favor of circumstances to restrain those propensities within due
limits, the prosperity of the United States would be exclusively
attributable to physical causes, and it would afford no
encouragement to a people inclined to imitate their example,
without sharing their natural advantages. But neither of these
suppositions is borne out by facts.

In America the same passions are to be met with as in Europe;
some originating in human nature, others in the democratic
condition of society. Thus in the United States I found that
restlessness of heart which is natural to men, when all ranks are
nearly equal and the chances of elevation are the same to all. I
found the democratic feeling of envy expressed under a thousand
different forms. I remarked that the people frequently
displayed, in the conduct of affairs, a consummate mixture of
ignorance and presumption, and I inferred that, in America, men
are liable to the same failings and the same absurdities as among
ourselves. But upon examining the state of society more
attentively, I speedily discovered that the Americans had made
great and successful efforts to counteract these imperfections of
human nature, and to correct the natural defects of democracy.
Their divers municipal laws appeared to me to be a means of
restraining the ambition of the citizens within a narrow sphere,
and of turning those same passions, which might have worked havoc
in the state, to the good of the township or the parish. The
American legislators have succeeded to a certain extent in
opposing the notion of rights, to the feelings of envy; the
permanence of the religious world, to the continual shifting of
politics; the experience of the people, to its theoretical
ignorance; and its practical knowledge of business, to the
impatience of its desires.

The Americans, then, have not relied upon the nature of their
country, to counterpoise those dangers which originate in their
constitution and in their political laws. To evils which are
common to all democratic peoples, they have applied remedies
which none but themselves had ever thought of before; and
although they were the first to make the experiment, they have
succeeded in it.

The manners and laws of the Americans are not the only ones which
may suit a democratic people; but the Americans have shown that
it would be wrong to despair of regulating democracy by the aid
of manners and of laws. If other nations should borrow this
general and pregnant idea from the Americans, without however
intending to imitate them in the peculiar application which they
have made of it; if they should attempt to fit themselves for
that social condition, which it seems to be the will of
Providence to impose upon the generations of this age, and so to
escape from the despotism of the anarchy which threatens them;
what reason is there to suppose that their efforts would not be
crowned with success? The organization and the establishment of
democracy in Christendom, is the great political problem of the
time. The Americans, unquestionably, have not resolved this
problem, but they furnish useful data to those who undertake the
task.

* * * * *

IMPORTANCE OF WHAT PRECEDES WITH RESPECT TO THE
STATE OF EUROPE.

It may readily be discovered with what intention I undertook the
foregoing inquiries. The question here discussed is interesting
not only to the United States, but to the whole world; it
concerns, not a nation, but all mankind. If those nations whose
social condition is democratic could only remain free as long as
they are inhabitants of the wilds, we could not but despair of
the future destiny of the human race; for democracy is rapidly
acquiring a more extended sway, and the wilds are gradually
peopled with men. If it were true that laws and manners are
insufficient to maintain democratic institutions, what refuge
would remain open to the nations except the despotism of a single
individual? I am aware that there are many worthy persons at the
present time who are not alarmed at this latter alternative, and
who are so tired of liberty as to be glad of repose, far from
those storms by which it is attended. But these individuals are
ill acquainted with the haven to which they are bound. They are
so deluded by their recollections, as to judge the tendency of
absolute power by what it was formerly, and not what it might
become at the present time.

If absolute power were re-established among the democratic
nations of Europe, I am persuaded that it would assume a new
form, and appear under features unknown to our forefathers.
There was a time in Europe, when the laws and the consent of the
people had invested princes with almost unlimited authority; but
they scarcely ever availed themselves of it. I do not speak of
the prerogatives of the nobility, of the authority of supreme
courts of justice, of corporations and their chartered rights, or
of provincial privileges, which served to break the blows of the
sovereign authority, and to maintain a spirit of resistance in
the nation. Independently of these political
institutions--which, however opposed they might be to personal
liberty, served to keep alive the love of freedom in the mind of
the public, and which may be esteemed to have been useful in this
respect--the manners and opinions of the nation confined the
royal authority within barriers which were not less powerful,
although they were less conspicuous. Religion, the affections of
the people, the benevolence of the prince, the sense of honor,
family pride, provincial prejudices, custom, and public opinion,
limited the power of kings, and restrained their authority within
an invisible circle. The constitution of nations was despotic at
that time but their manners were free. Princes had the right,
but they had neither the means nor the desire, of doing whatever
they pleased.

But what now remains of those barriers which formerly arrested
the aggressions of tyranny? Since religion has lost its empire
over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary which divided
good from evil is overthrown: the very elements of the moral
world are indeterminate; the princes and the peoples of the earth
are guided by chance, and none can define the natural limits of
despotism and the bounds of license. Long revolutions have for
ever destroyed the respect which surrounded the rulers of the
state; and since they have been relieved from the burden of
public esteem, princes may henceforward surrender themselves
without fear to the seductions of arbitrary power.

When kings find that the hearts of their subjects are turned
toward them, they are clement, because they are conscious of
their strength; and they are chary of the affection of their
people, because the affection of their people is the bulwark of
the throne. A mutual interchange of good will then takes place
between the prince and the people, which resembles the gracious
intercourse of domestic society. The subjects may murmur at the
sovereign's decree, but they are grieved to displease him; and
the sovereign chastises his subjects with the light hand of
parental affection.

But when once the spell of royalty is broken in the tumult of
revolution; when successive monarchs have occupied the throne,
and alternately displayed to the people the weakness of right,
and the harshness of power, the sovereign is no longer regarded
by any as the father of the state, and he is feared by all as its
master. If he be weak, he is despised; if he be strong, he is
detested. He is himself full of animosity and alarm; he finds
that he is a stranger in his own country, and he treats his
subjects like conquered enemies.

When the provinces and the towns formed so many different nations
in the midst of their common country, each of them had a will of
its own, which was opposed to the general spirit of subjection;
but now that all the parts of the same empire, after having lost
their immunities, their customs, their prejudices, their
traditions, and their names, are subjected and accustomed to the
same laws, it is not more difficult to oppress them collectively,
than it was formerly to oppress them singly.

While the nobles enjoyed their power, and indeed long after that
power was lost, the honor of aristocracy conferred an
extraordinary degree of force upon their personal opposition.
They afforded instances of men who, notwithstanding their
weakness, still entertained a high opinion of their personal
value, and dared to cope single-handed with the efforts of the
public authority. But at the present day, when all ranks are
more and more confounded, when the individual disappears in the
throng, and is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity,
when the honor of monarchy has almost lost its empire without
being succeeded by public virtue, and when nothing can enable man
to rise above himself, who shall say at what point the exigencies
of power and servility of weakness will stop?

As long as family feeling was kept alive, the antagonist of
oppression was never alone; he looked about him, and found his
clients, his hereditary friends, and his kinsfolk. If this
support was wanting, he was sustained by his ancestors and
animated by his posterity. But when patrimonial estates are
divided, and when a few years suffice to confound the
distinctions of a race, where can family feeling be found? What
force can there be in the customs of a country which has changed,
and is still perpetually changing its aspect; in which every act
of tyranny has a precedent, and every crime an example; in which
there is nothing so old that its antiquity can save it from
destruction, and nothing so unparalleled that its novelty can
prevent it from being done? What resistance can be offered by
manners of so pliant a make, that they have already often
yielded? What strength can even public opinion have retained,
when no twenty persons are connected by a common tie; when not a
man, nor a family, nor chartered corporation, nor class, nor free
institution, has the power of representing that opinion; and when
every citizen--being equally weak, equally poor, and equally
dependant--has only his personal impotence to oppose to the
organized force of the government?