Democracy In America, Vol. 1
by Alexis de Toqueville
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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[Footnote m: Even if we knew the exact pecuniary contributions of
every French and American citizen to the coffers of the State, we
should only come at a portion of the truth. Governments do not
only demand supplies of money, but they call for personal
services, which may be looked upon as equivalent to a given sum.
When a State raises an army, besides the pay of the troops, which
is furnished by the entire nation, each soldier must give up his
time, the value of which depends on the use he might make of it
if he were not in the service. The same remark applies to the
militia; the citizen who is in the militia devotes a certain
portion of valuable time to the maintenance of the public peace,
and he does in reality surrender to the State those earnings
which he is prevented from gaining. Many other instances might
be cited in addition to these. The governments of France and of
America both levy taxes of this kind, which weigh upon the
citizens; but who can estimate with accuracy their relative
amount in the two countries?

This, however, is not the last of the difficulties which
prevent us from comparing the expenditure of the Union with that
of France. The French Government contracts certain obligations
which do not exist in America, and vice versa. The French
Government pays the clergy; in America the voluntary principle
prevails. In America there is a legal provision for the poor; in
France they are abandoned to the charity of the public. The
French public officers are paid by a fixed salary; in America
they are allowed certain perquisites. In France contributions in
kind take place on very few roads; in America upon almost all the
thoroughfares: in the former country the roads are free to all
travellers; in the latter turnpikes abound. All these
differences in the manner in which contributions are levied in
the two countries enhance the difficulty of comparing their
expenditure; for there are certain expenses which the citizens
would not be subject to, or which would at any rate be much less
considerable, if the State did not take upon itself to act in the
name of the public.]

Hence we must conclude that it is no less difficult to
compare the social expenditure than it is to estimate the
relative wealth of France and America. I will even add that it
would be dangerous to attempt this comparison; for when
statistics are not based upon computations which are strictly
accurate, they mislead instead of guiding aright. The mind is
easily imposed upon by the false affectation of exactness, which
prevails even in the misstatements of science, and it adopts with
confidence errors which are dressed in the forms of mathematical
truth.

We abandon, therefore, our numerical investigation, with the
hope of meeting with data of another kind. In the absence of
positive documents, we may form an opinion as to the proportion
which the taxation of a people bears to its real prosperity, by
observing whether its external appearance is flourishing;
whether, after having discharged the calls of the State, the poor
man retains the means of subsistence, and the rich the means of
enjoyment; and whether both classes are contented with their
position, seeking, however, to ameliorate it by perpetual
exertions, so that industry is never in want of capital, nor
capital unemployed by industry. The observer who draws his
inferences from these signs will, undoubtedly, be led to the
conclusion that the American of the United States contributes a
much smaller portion of his income to the State than the citizen
of France. Nor, indeed, can the result be otherwise.

A portion of the French debt is the consequence of two
successive invasions; and the Union has no similar calamity to
fear. A nation placed upon the continent of Europe is obliged to
maintain a large standing army; the isolated position of the
Union enables it to have only 6,000 soldiers. The French have a
fleet of 300 sail; the Americans have 52 vessels. *n How, then,
can the inhabitants of the Union be called upon to contribute as
largely as the inhabitants of France? No parallel can be drawn
between the finances of two countries so differently situated.

[Footnote n: See the details in the Budget of the French Minister
of Marine; and for America, the National Calendar of 1833, p.
228. [But the public debt of the United States in 1870, caused
by the Civil War, amounted to $2,480,672,427; that of France was
more than doubled by the extravagance of the Second Empire and by
the war of 1870.]]

It is by examining what actually takes place in the Union,
and not by comparing the Union with France, that we may discover
whether the American Government is really economical. On casting
my eyes over the different republics which form the
confederation, I perceive that their Governments lack
perseverance in their undertakings, and that they exercise no
steady control over the men whom they employ. Whence I naturally
infer that they must often spend the money of the people to no
purpose, or consume more of it than is really necessary to their
undertakings. Great efforts are made, in accordance with the
democratic origin of society, to satisfy the exigencies of the
lower orders, to open the career of power to their endeavors, and
to diffuse knowledge and comfort amongst them. The poor are
maintained, immense sums are annually devoted to public
instruction, all services whatsoever are remunerated, and the
most subordinate agents are liberally paid. If this kind of
government appears to me to be useful and rational, I am
nevertheless constrained to admit that it is expensive.

Wherever the poor direct public affairs and dispose of the
national resources, it appears certain that, as they profit by
the expenditure of the State, they are apt to augment that
expenditure.

I conclude, therefore, without having recourse to inaccurate
computations, and without hazarding a comparison which might
prove incorrect, that the democratic government of the Americans
is not a cheap government, as is sometimes asserted; and I have
no hesitation in predicting that, if the people of the United
States is ever involved in serious difficulties, its taxation
will speedily be increased to the rate of that which prevails in
the greater part of the aristocracies and the monarchies of
Europe. *o

[Footnote o: [That is precisely what has since occurred.]]

Chapter XIII: Government Of The Democracy In America - Part III
Corruption And Vices Of The Rulers In A Democracy, And Consequent
Effects Upon Public Morality

In aristocracies rulers sometimes endeavor to corrupt the people
- In democracies rulers frequently show themselves to be corrupt
- In the former their vices are directly prejudicial to the
morality of the people - In the latter their indirect influence
is still more pernicious.

A distinction must be made, when the aristocratic and the
democratic principles mutually inveigh against each other, as
tending to facilitate corruption. In aristocratic governments
the individuals who are placed at the head of affairs are rich
men, who are solely desirous of power. In democracies statesmen
are poor, and they have their fortunes to make. The consequence
is that in aristocratic States the rulers are rarely accessible
to corruption, and have very little craving for money; whilst the
reverse is the case in democratic nations.

But in aristocracies, as those who are desirous of arriving
at the head of affairs are possessed of considerable wealth, and
as the number of persons by whose assistance they may rise is
comparatively small, the government is, if I may use the
expression, put up to a sort of auction. In democracies, on the
contrary, those who are covetous of power are very seldom
wealthy, and the number of citizens who confer that power is
extremely great. Perhaps in democracies the number of men who
might be bought is by no means smaller, but buyers are rarely to
be met with; and, besides, it would be necessary to buy so many
persons at once that the attempt is rendered nugatory.

Many of the men who have been in the administration in
France during the last forty years have been accused of making
their fortunes at the expense of the State or of its allies; a
reproach which was rarely addressed to the public characters of
the ancient monarchy. But in France the practice of bribing
electors is almost unknown, whilst it is notoriously and publicly
carried on in England. In the United States I never heard a man
accused of spending his wealth in corrupting the populace; but I
have often heard the probity of public officers questioned; still
more frequently have I heard their success attributed to low
intrigues and immoral practices.

If, then, the men who conduct the government of an
aristocracy sometimes endeavor to corrupt the people, the heads
of a democracy are themselves corrupt. In the former case the
morality of the people is directly assailed; in the latter an
indirect influence is exercised upon the people which is still
more to be dreaded.

As the rulers of democratic nations are almost always
exposed to the suspicion of dishonorable conduct, they in some
measure lend the authority of the Government to the base
practices of which they are accused. They thus afford an example
which must prove discouraging to the struggles of virtuous
independence, and must foster the secret calculations of a
vicious ambition. If it be asserted that evil passions are
displayed in all ranks of society, that they ascend the throne by
hereditary right, and that despicable characters are to be met
with at the head of aristocratic nations as well as in the sphere
of a democracy, this objection has but little weight in my
estimation. The corruption of men who have casually risen to
power has a coarse and vulgar infection in it which renders it
contagious to the multitude. On the contrary, there is a kind of
aristocratic refinement and an air of grandeur in the depravity
of the great, which frequently prevent it from spreading abroad.

The people can never penetrate into the perplexing labyrinth
of court intrigue, and it will always have difficulty in
detecting the turpitude which lurks under elegant manners,
refined tastes, and graceful language. But to pillage the public
purse, and to vend the favors of the State, are arts which the
meanest villain may comprehend, and hope to practice in his turn.

In reality it is far less prejudicial to witness the
immorality of the great than to witness that immorality which
leads to greatness. In a democracy private citizens see a man of
their own rank in life, who rises from that obscure position, and
who becomes possessed of riches and of power in a few years; the
spectacle excites their surprise and their envy, and they are led
to inquire how the person who was yesterday their equal is to-day
their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues
is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are
themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was. They are
therefore led (and not unfrequently their conjecture is a correct
one) to impute his success mainly to some one of his defects; and
an odious mixture is thus formed of the ideas of turpitude and
power, unworthiness and success, utility and dishonor.

Efforts Of Which A Democracy Is Capable

The Union has only had one struggle hitherto for its existence -
Enthusiasm at the commencement of the war - Indifference towards
its close - Difficulty of establishing military conscription or
impressment of seamen in America - Why a democratic people is
less capable of sustained effort than another.

I here warn the reader that I speak of a government which
implicitly follows the real desires of a people, and not of a
government which simply commands in its name. Nothing is so
irresistible as a tyrannical power commanding in the name of the
people, because, whilst it exercises that moral influence which
belongs to the decision of the majority, it acts at the same time
with the promptitude and the tenacity of a single man.

It is difficult to say what degree of exertion a democratic
government may be capable of making a crisis in the history of
the nation. But no great democratic republic has hitherto
existed in the world. To style the oligarchy which ruled over
France in 1793 by that name would be to offer an insult to the
republican form of government. The United States afford the
first example of the kind.

The American Union has now subsisted for half a century, in
the course of which time its existence has only once been
attacked, namely, during the War of Independence. At the
commencement of that long war, various occurrences took place
which betokened an extraordinary zeal for the service of the
country. *p But as the contest was prolonged, symptoms of private
egotism began to show themselves. No money was poured into the
public treasury; few recruits could be raised to join the army;
the people wished to acquire independence, but was very
ill-disposed to undergo the privations by which alone it could be
obtained. "Tax laws," says Hamilton in the "Federalist" (No.
12), "have in vain been multiplied; new methods to enforce the
collection have in vain been tried; the public expectation has
been uniformly disappointed and the treasuries of the States have
remained empty. The popular system of administration inherent in
the nature of popular government, coinciding with the real
scarcity of money incident to a languid and mutilated state of
trade, has hitherto defeated every experiment for extensive
collections, and has at length taught the different legislatures
the folly of attempting them."

[Footnote p: One of the most singular of these occurrences was
the resolution which the Americans took of temporarily abandoning
the use of tea. Those who know that men usually cling more to
their habits than to their life will doubtless admire this great
though obscure sacrifice which was made by a whole people.]

The United States have not had any serious war to carry on
ever since that period. In order, therefore, to appreciate the
sacrifices which democratic nations may impose upon themselves,
we must wait until the American people is obliged to put half its
entire income at the disposal of the Government, as was done by
the English; or until it sends forth a twentieth part of its
population to the field of battle, as was done by France. *q

[Footnote q: [The Civil War showed that when the necessity arose
the American people, both in the North and in the South, are
capable of making the most enormous sacrifices, both in money and
in men.]]

In America the use of conscription is unknown, and men are
induced to enlist by bounties. The notions and habits of the
people of the United States are so opposed to compulsory
enlistment that I do not imagine it can ever be sanctioned by the
laws. What is termed the conscription in France is assuredly the
heaviest tax upon the population of that country; yet how could a
great continental war be carried on without it? The Americans
have not adopted the British impressment of seamen, and they have
nothing which corresponds to the French system of maritime
conscription; the navy, as well as the merchant service, is
supplied by voluntary service. But it is not easy to conceive
how a people can sustain a great maritime war without having
recourse to one or the other of these two systems. Indeed, the
Union, which has fought with some honor upon the seas, has never
possessed a very numerous fleet, and the equipment of the small
number of American vessels has always been excessively expensive.

I have heard American statesmen confess that the Union will
have great difficulty in maintaining its rank on the seas without
adopting the system of impressment or of maritime conscription;
but the difficulty is to induce the people, which exercises the
supreme authority, to submit to impressment or any compulsory
system.

It is incontestable that in times of danger a free people
displays far more energy than one which is not so. But I incline
to believe that this is more especially the case in those free
nations in which the democratic element preponderates. Democracy
appears to me to be much better adapted for the peaceful conduct
of society, or for an occasional effort of remarkable vigor, than
for the hardy and prolonged endurance of the storms which beset
the political existence of nations. The reason is very evident;
it is enthusiasm which prompts men to expose themselves to
dangers and privations, but they will not support them long
without reflection. There is more calculation, even in the
impulses of bravery, than is generally attributed to them; and
although the first efforts are suggested by passion, perseverance
is maintained by a distinct regard of the purpose in view. A
portion of what we value is exposed, in order to save the
remainder.

But it is this distinct perception of the future, founded
upon a sound judgment and an enlightened experience, which is
most frequently wanting in democracies. The populace is more apt
to feel than to reason; and if its present sufferings are great,
it is to be feared that the still greater sufferings attendant
upon defeat will be forgotten.

Another cause tends to render the efforts of a democratic
government less persevering than those of an aristocracy. Not
only are the lower classes less awakened than the higher orders
to the good or evil chances of the future, but they are liable to
suffer far more acutely from present privations. The noble
exposes his life, indeed, but the chance of glory is equal to the
chance of harm. If he sacrifices a large portion of his income
to the State, he deprives himself for a time of the pleasures of
affluence; but to the poor man death is embellished by no pomp or
renown, and the imposts which are irksome to the rich are fatal
to him.

This relative impotence of democratic republics is, perhaps,
the greatest obstacle to the foundation of a republic of this
kind in Europe. In order that such a State should subsist in one
country of the Old World, it would be necessary that similar
institutions should be introduced into all the other nations.

I am of opinion that a democratic government tends in the
end to increase the real strength of society; but it can never
combine, upon a single point and at a given time, so much power
as an aristocracy or a monarchy. If a democratic country
remained during a whole century subject to a republican
government, it would probably at the end of that period be more
populous and more prosperous than the neighboring despotic
States. But it would have incurred the risk of being conquered
much oftener than they would in that lapse of years.

Self-Control Of The American Democracy

The American people acquiesces slowly, or frequently does not
acquiesce, in what is beneficial to its interests - The faults of
the American democracy are for the most part reparable.

The difficulty which a democracy has in conquering the
passions and in subduing the exigencies of the moment, with a
view to the future, is conspicuous in the most trivial
occurrences of the United States. The people, which is
surrounded by flatterers, has great difficulty in surmounting its
inclinations, and whenever it is solicited to undergo a privation
or any kind of inconvenience, even to attain an end which is
sanctioned by its own rational conviction, it almost always
refuses to comply at first. The deference of the Americans to
the laws has been very justly applauded; but it must be added
that in America the legislation is made by the people and for the
people. Consequently, in the United States the law favors those
classes which are most interested in evading it elsewhere. It
may therefore be supposed that an offensive law, which should not
be acknowledged to be one of immediate utility, would either not
be enacted or would not be obeyed.

In America there is no law against fraudulent bankruptcies;
not because they are few, but because there are a great number of
bankruptcies. The dread of being prosecuted as a bankrupt acts
with more intensity upon the mind of the majority of the people
than the fear of being involved in losses or ruin by the failure
of other parties, and a sort of guilty tolerance is extended by
the public conscience to an offence which everyone condemns in
his individual capacity. In the new States of the Southwest the
citizens generally take justice into their own hands, and murders
are of very frequent occurrence. This arises from the rude
manners and the ignorance of the inhabitants of those deserts,
who do not perceive the utility of investing the law with
adequate force, and who prefer duels to prosecutions.

Someone observed to me one day, in Philadelphia, that almost
all crimes in America are caused by the abuse of intoxicating
liquors, which the lower classes can procure in great abundance,
from their excessive cheapness. "How comes it," said I, "that
you do not put a duty upon brandy?" "Our legislators," rejoined
my informant, "have frequently thought of this expedient; but the
task of putting it in operation is a difficult one; a revolt
might be apprehended, and the members who should vote for a law
of this kind would be sure of losing their seats." "Whence I am
to infer," replied I, "that the drinking population constitutes
the majority in your country, and that temperance is somewhat
unpopular."

When these things are pointed out to the American statesmen,
they content themselves with assuring you that time will operate
the necessary change, and that the experience of evil will teach
the people its true interests. This is frequently true, although
a democracy is more liable to error than a monarch or a body of
nobles; the chances of its regaining the right path when once it
has acknowledged its mistake, are greater also; because it is
rarely embarrassed by internal interests, which conflict with
those of the majority, and resist the authority ofreason. But a
democracy can only obtain truth as the result of experience, and
many nations may forfeit their existence whilst they are awaiting
the consequences of their errors.

The great privilege of the Americans does not simply consist
in their being more enlightened than other nations, but in their
being able to repair the faults they may commit. To which it
must be added, that a democracy cannot derive substantial benefit
from past experience, unless it be arrived at a certain pitch of
knowledge and civilization. There are tribes and peoples whose
education has been so vicious, and whose character presents so
strange a mixture of passion, of ignorance, and of erroneous
notions upon all subjects, that they are unable to discern the
causes of their own wretchedness, and they fall a sacrifice to
ills with which they are unacquainted.

I have crossed vast tracts of country that were formerly
inhabited by powerful Indian nations which are now extinct; I
have myself passed some time in the midst of mutilated tribes,
which witness the daily decline of their numerical strength and
of the glory of their independence; and I have heard these
Indians themselves anticipate the impending doom of their race.
Every European can perceive means which would rescue these
unfortunate beings from inevitable destruction. They alone are
insensible to the expedient; they feel the woe which year after
year heaps upon their heads, but they will perish to a man
without accepting the remedy. It would be necessary to employ
force to induce them to submit to the protection and the
constraint of civilization.

The incessant revolutions which have convulsed the South
American provinces for the last quarter of a century have
frequently been adverted to with astonishment, and expectations
have been expressed that those nations would speedily return to
their natural state. But can it be affirmed that the turmoil of
revolution is not actually the most natural state of the South
American Spaniards at the present time? In that country society
is plunged into difficulties from which all its efforts are
insufficient to rescue it. The inhabitants of that fair portion
of the Western Hemisphere seem obstinately bent on pursuing the
work of inward havoc. If they fall into a momentary repose from
the effects of exhaustion, that repose prepares them for a fresh
state of frenzy. When I consider their condition, which
alternates between misery and crime, I should be inclined to
believe that despotism itself would be a benefit to them, if it
were possible that the words despotism and benefit could ever be
united in my mind.

Conduct Of Foreign Affairs By The American Democracy

Direction given to the foreign policy of the United States by
Washington and Jefferson - Almost all the defects inherent in
democratic institutions are brought to light in the conduct of
foreign affairs - Their advantages are less perceptible.

We have seen that the Federal Constitution entrusts the
permanent direction of the external interests of the nation to
the President and the Senate, *r which tends in some degree to
detach the general foreign policy of the Union from the control
of the people. It cannot therefore be asserted with truth that
the external affairs of State are conducted by the democracy.

[Footnote r: "The President," says the Constitution, Art. II,
sect. 2, Section 2, "shall have power, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of
the senators present concur." The reader is reminded that the
senators are returned for a term of six years, and that they are
chosen by the legislature of each State.]

The policy of America owes its rise to Washington, and after
him to Jefferson, who established those principles which it
observes at the present day. Washington said in the admirable
letter which he addressed to his fellow-citizens, and which may
be looked upon as his political bequest to the country: "The
great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in
extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little
political connection as possible. So far as we have already
formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good
faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests
which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence, she must
be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are
essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must
be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in
the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary
combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our
detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a
different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient
government, the period is not far off when we may defy material
injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude
as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to
be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the
impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly
hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or
war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why
forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our
own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our
destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and
prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship,
interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer
clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign
world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let
me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to
existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to
public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best
policy. I repeat it; therefore, let those engagements be
observed in their genuine sense; but in my opinion it is
unnecessary, and would be unwise, to extend them. Taking care
always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a
respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary
alliances for extraordinary emergencies." In a previous part of
the same letter Washington makes the following admirable and just
remark: "The nation which indulges towards another an habitual
hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is
a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is
sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

The political conduct of Washington was always guided by
these maxims. He succeeded in maintaining his country in a state
of peace whilst all the other nations of the globe were at war;
and he laid it down as a fundamental doctrine, that the true
interest of the Americans consisted in a perfect neutrality with
regard to the internal dissensions of the European Powers.

Jefferson went still further, and he introduced a maxim into
the policy of the Union, which affirms that "the Americans ought
never to solicit any privileges from foreign nations, in order
not to be obliged to grant similar privileges themselves."

These two principles, which were so plain and so just as to
be adapted to the capacity of the populace, have greatly
simplified the foreign policy of the United States. As the Union
takes no part in the affairs of Europe, it has, properly
speaking, no foreign interests to discuss, since it has at
present no powerful neighbors on the American continent. The
country is as much removed from the passions of the Old World by
its position as by the line of policy which it has chosen, and it
is neither called upon to repudiate nor to espouse the
conflicting interests of Europe; whilst the dissensions of the
New World are still concealed within the bosom of the future.

The Union is free from all pre-existing obligations, and it
is consequently enabled to profit by the experience of the old
nations of Europe, without being obliged, as they are, to make
the best of the past, and to adapt it to their present
circumstances; or to accept that immense inheritance which they
derive from their forefathers - an inheritance of glory mingled
with calamities, and of alliances conflicting with national
antipathies. The foreign policy of the United States is reduced
by its very nature to await the chances of the future history of
the nation, and for the present it consists more in abstaining
from interference than in exerting its activity.

It is therefore very difficult to ascertain, at present,
what degree of sagacity the American democracy will display in
the conduct of the foreign policy of the country; and upon this
point its adversaries, as well as its advocates, must suspend
their judgment. As for myself I have no hesitation in avowing my
conviction, that it is most especially in the conduct of foreign
relations that democratic governments appear to me to be
decidedly inferior to governments carried on upon different
principles. Experience, instruction, and habit may almost always
succeed in creating a species of practical discretion in
democracies, and that science of the daily occurrences of life
which is called good sense. Good sense may suffice to direct the
ordinary course of society; and amongst a people whose education
has been provided for, the advantages of democratic liberty in
the internal affairs of the country may more than compensate for
the evils inherent in a democratic government. But such is not
always the case in the mutual relations of foreign nations.

Foreign politics demand scarcely any of those qualities
which a democracy possesses; and they require, on the contrary,
the perfect use of almost all those faculties in which it is
deficient. Democracy is favorable to the increase of the
internal resources of the State; it tends to diffuse a moderate
independence; it promotes the growth of public spirit, and
fortifies the respect which is entertained for law in all classes
of society; and these are advantages which only exercise an
indirect influence over the relations which one people bears to
another. But a democracy is unable to regulate the details of an
important undertaking, to persevere in a design, and to work out
its execution in the presence of serious obstacles. It cannot
combine its measures with secrecy, and it will not await their
consequences with patience. These are qualities which more
especially belong to an individual or to an aristocracy; and they
are precisely the means by which an individual people attains to
a predominant position.

If, on the contrary, we observe the natural defects of
aristocracy, we shall find that their influence is comparatively
innoxious in the direction of the external affairs of a State.
The capital fault of which aristocratic bodies may be accused is
that they are more apt to contrive their own advantage than that
of the mass of the people. In foreign politics it is rare for
the interest of the aristocracy to be in any way distinct from
that of the people.

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 interest 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. *s If
the Constitution and the favor of the public had not entrusted
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.

[Footnote s: 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
torrent 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."]

Almost all the nations which have ever 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 - besides 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 perpetuity.

Chapter XIV: Advantages American Society Derive From Democracy -
Part I

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
institutions 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 only be obtained 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, whilst 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 the 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 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 that 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 public
officers. It is easy to perceive that the American democracy
frequently errs in the choice of the individuals to whom it
entrusts 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
sometimes been 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
mistaken, 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 not 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 the 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 interest 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. *a

[Footnote a: [The legislation of England for the forty years is
certainly not fairly open to this criticism, which was written
before the Reform Bill of 1832, and accordingly Great Britain has
thus far escaped and surmounted the perils and calamities to
which she seemed to be exposed.]]

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; whilst 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 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 mansions 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. Whilst the manners of a
people are simple and its faith unshaken, whilst 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, whilst 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 entrench
themselves within the dull precincts of a narrow egotism. They
are emancipated from prejudice without having acknowledged the
empire of reason; they are neither animated by the instinctive
patriotism of monarchical subjects nor by the thinking patriotism
of republican citizens; but they have stopped halfway 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 forever.

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 to 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 everyone takes as zealous an interest in the affairs
of his township, his county, and of the whole State, as if they
were his own, because everyone, 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 regards 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 very 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 people - Respect of rights in the United
States - Whence it arises.

After the idea of virtue, I know 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 almost 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 purposes; 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 everyone
has property of his own to defend, everyone recognizes the
principle upon which he holds it.

The same thing occurs in the political world. In America
the lowest classes have conceived a very high notion of political
rights, because they exercise those rights; and they refrain from
attacking those of other people, in order to ensure their own
from attack. Whilst in Europe the same classes sometimes
recalcitrate even against the supreme power, the American submits
without a murmur to the authority of the pettiest magistrate.

This truth is exemplified by the most trivial details of
national peculiarities. In France very few pleasures are
exclusively reserved for the higher classes; the poor are
admitted wherever the rich are received, and they consequently
behave with propriety, and respect whatever contributes to the
enjoyments in which they themselves participate. In England,
where wealth has a monopoly of amusement as well as of power,
complaints are made that whenever the poor happen to steal into
the enclosures which are reserved for the pleasures of the rich,
they commit acts of wanton mischief: can this be wondered at,
since care has been taken that they should have nothing to lose?
*b

[Footnote b: [This, too, has been amended by much larger
provisions for the amusements of the people in public parks,
gardens, museums, etc.; and the conduct of the people in these
places of amusement has improved in the same proportion.]]

The government of democracy brings the notion of political
rights to the level of the humblest citizens, just as the
dissemination of wealth brings the notion of property within the
reach of all the members of the community; and I confess that, to
my mind, this is one of its greatest advantages. I do not assert
that it is easy to teach men to exercise political rights; but I
maintain that, when it is possible, the effects which result from
it are highly important; and I add that, if there ever was a time
at which such an attempt ought to be made, that time is our own.
It is clear that the influence of religious belief is shaken, and
that the notion of divine rights is declining; it is evident that
public morality is vitiated, and the notion of moral rights is
also disappearing: these are general symptoms of the substitution
of argument for faith, and of calculation for the impulses of
sentiment. If, in the midst of this general disruption, you do
not succeed in connecting the notion of rights with that of
personal interest, which is the only immutable point in the human
heart, what means will you have of governing the world except by
fear? When I am told that, since the laws are weak and the
populace is wild, since passions are excited and the authority of
virtue is paralyzed, no measures must be taken to increase the
rights of the democracy, I reply, that it is for these very
reasons that some measures of the kind must be taken; and I am
persuaded that governments are still more interested in taking
them than society at large, because governments are liable to be
destroyed and society cannot perish.

I am not, however, inclined to exaggerate the example which
America furnishes. In those States the people are invested with
political rights at a time when they could scarcely be abused,
for the citizens were few in number and simple in their manners.
As they have increased, the Americans have not augmented the
power of the democracy, but they have, if I may use the
expression, extended its dominions. It cannot be doubted that the
moment at which political rights are granted to a people that had
before been without them is a very critical, though it be a
necessary one. A child may kill before he is aware of the value
of life; and he may deprive another person of his property before
he is aware that his own may be taken away from him. The lower
orders, when first they are invested with political rights,
stand, in relation to those rights, in the same position as the
child does to the whole of nature, and the celebrated adage may
then be applied to them, Homo puer robustus. This truth may even
be perceived in America. The States in which the citizens have
enjoyed their rights longest are those in which they make the
best use of them.

It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile
in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing
more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty. Such is not the
case with despotic institutions: despotism often promises to make
amends for a thousand previous ills; it supports the right, it
protects the oppressed, and it maintains public order. The nation
is lulled by the temporary prosperity which accrues to it, until
it is roused to a sense of its own misery. Liberty, on the
contrary, is generally established in the midst of agitation, it
is perfected by civil discord, and its benefits cannot be
appreciated until it is already old.

Chapter XIV: Advantages American Society Derive From Democracy -
Part II

Respect For The Law In The United States

Respect of the Americans for the law - Parental affection which
they entertain for it - Personal interest of everyone to increase
the authority of the law.

It is not always feasible to consult the whole people,
either directly or indirectly, in the formation of the law; but
it cannot be denied that, when such a measure is possible the
authority of the law is very much augmented. This popular origin,
which impairs the excellence and the wisdom of legislation,
contributes prodigiously to increase its power. There is an
amazing strength in the expression of the determination of a
whole people, and when it declares itself the imagination of
those who are most inclined to contest it is overawed by its
authority. The truth of this fact is very well known by parties,
and they consequently strive to make out a majority whenever they
can. If they have not the greater number of voters on their
side, they assert that the true majority abstained from voting;
and if they are foiled even there, they have recourse to the body
of those persons who had no votes to give.

In the United States, except slaves, servants, and paupers
in the receipt of relief from the townships, there is no class of
persons who do not exercise the elective franchise, and who do
not indirectly contribute to make the laws. Those who design to
attack the laws must consequently either modify the opinion of
the nation or trample upon its decision.

A second reason, which is still more weighty, may be further
adduced; in the United States everyone is personally interested
in enforcing the obedience of the whole community to the law; for
as the minority may shortly rally the majority to its principles,
it is interested in professing that respect for the decrees of
the legislator which it may soon have occasion to claim for its
own. However irksome an enactment may be, the citizen of the
United States complies with it, not only because it is the work
of the majority, but because it originates in his own authority,
and he regards it as a contract to which he is himself a party.

In the United States, then, that numerous and turbulent
multitude does not exist which always looks upon the law as its
natural enemy, and accordingly surveys it with fear and with fear
and with distrust. It is impossible, on the other hand, not to
perceive that all classes display the utmost reliance upon the
legislation of their country, and that they are attached to it by
a kind of parental affection.

I am wrong, however, in saying all classes; for as in
America the European scale of authority is inverted, the wealthy
are there placed in a position analogous to that of the poor in
the Old World, and it is the opulent classes which frequently
look upon the law with suspicion. I have already observed that
the advantage of democracy is not, as has been sometimes
asserted, that it protects the interests of the whole community,
but simply that it protects those of the majority. In the United
States, where the poor rule, the rich have always some reason to
dread the abuses of their power. This natural anxiety of the rich
may produce a sullen dissatisfaction, but society is not
disturbed by it; for the same reason which induces the rich to
withhold their confidence in the legislative authority makes them
obey its mandates; their wealth, which prevents them from making
the law, prevents them from withstanding it. Amongst civilized
nations revolts are rarely excited, except by such persons as
have nothing to lose by them; and if the laws of a democracy are
not always worthy of respect, at least they always obtain it; for
those who usually infringe the laws have no excuse for not
complying with the enactments they have themselves made, and by
which they are themselves benefited, whilst the citizens whose
interests might be promoted by the infraction of them are
induced, by their character and their stations, to submit to the
decisions of the legislature, whatever they may be. Besides
which, the people in America obeys the law not only because it
emanates from the popular authority, but because that authority
may modify it in any points which may prove vexatory; a law is
observed because it is a self-imposed evil in the first place,
and an evil of transient duration in the second.

Activity Which Pervades All The Branches Of The Body Politic In
The United States; Influence Which It Exercises Upon Society

More difficult to conceive the political activity which pervades
the United States than the freedom and equality which reign there
-  The great activity which perpetually agitates the legislative
bodies is only an episode to the general activity - Difficult for
an American to confine himself to his own business - Political
agitation extends to all social intercourse - Commercial activity
of the Americans partly attributable to this cause - Indirect
advantages which society derives from a democratic government.

On passing from a country in which free institutions are
established to one where they do not exist, the traveller is
struck by the change; in the former all is bustle and activity,
in the latter everything is calm and motionless. In the one,
amelioration and progress are the general topics of inquiry; in
the other, it seems as if the community only aspired to repose in
the enjoyment of the advantages which it has acquired.
Nevertheless, the country which exerts itself so strenuously to
promote its welfare is generally more wealthy and more prosperous
than that which appears to be so contented with its lot; and when
we compare them together, we can scarcely conceive how so many
new wants are daily felt in the former, whilst so few seem to
occur in the latter.

If this remark is applicable to those free countries in
which monarchical and aristocratic institutions subsist, it is
still more striking with regard to democratic republics. In
these States it is not only a portion of the people which is
busied with the amelioration of its social condition, but the
whole community is engaged in the task; and it is not the
exigencies and the convenience of a single class for which a
provision is to be made, but the exigencies and the convenience
of all ranks of life.

It is not impossible to conceive the surpassing liberty
which the Americans enjoy; some idea may likewise be formed of
the extreme equality which subsists amongst them, but the
political activity which pervades the United States must be seen
in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot upon the
American soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a
confused clamor is heard on every side; and a thousand
simultaneous voices demand the immediate satisfaction of their
social wants. Everything is in motion around you; here, the
people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon the
building of a church; there, the election of a representative is
going on; a little further the delegates of a district are
posting to the town in order to consult upon some local
improvements; or in another place the laborers of a village quit
their ploughs to deliberate upon the project of a road or a
public school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of
declaring their disapprobation of the line of conduct pursued by
the Government; whilst in other assemblies the citizens salute
the authorities of the day as the fathers of their country.
Societies are formed which regard drunkenness as the principal
cause of the evils under which the State labors, and which
solemnly bind themselves to give a constant example of
temperance. *c

[Footnote c: At the time of my stay in the United States the
temperance societies already consisted of more than 270,000
members, and their effect had been to diminish the consumption of
fermented liquors by 500,000 gallons per annum in the State of
Pennsylvania alone.]

The great political agitation of the American legislative
bodies, which is the only kind of excitement that attracts the
attention of foreign countries, is a mere episode or a sort of
continuation of that universal movement which originates in the
lowest classes of the people and extends successively to all the
ranks of society. It is impossible to spend more efforts in the
pursuit of enjoyment.

The cares of political life engross a most prominent place
in the occupation of a citizen in the United States, and almost
the only pleasure of which an American has any idea is to take a
part in the Government, and to discuss the part he has taken.
This feeling pervades the most trifling habits of life; even the
women frequently attend public meetings and listen to political
harangues as a recreation after their household labors. Debating
clubs are to a certain extent a substitute for theatrical
entertainments: an American cannot converse, but he can discuss;
and when he attempts to talk he falls into a dissertation. He
speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should
chance to warm in the course of the discussion, he will
infallibly say, "Gentlemen," to the person with whom he is
conversing.

In some countries the inhabitants display a certain
repugnance to avail themselves of the political privileges with
which the law invests them; it would seem that they set too high
a value upon their time to spend it on the interests of the
community; and they prefer to withdraw within the exact limits of
a wholesome egotism, marked out by four sunk fences and a
quickset hedge. But if an American were condemned to confine his
activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of
his existence; he would feel an immense void in the life which he
is accustomed to lead, and his wretchedness would be unbearable.
*d I am persuaded that, if ever a despotic government is
established in America, it will find it more difficult to
surmount the habits which free institutions have engendered than
to conquer the attachment of the citizens to freedom.

[Footnote d: The same remark was made at Rome under the first
Caesars. Montesquieu somewhere alludes to the excessive
despondency of certain Roman citizens who, after the excitement
of political life, were all at once flung back into the
stagnation of private life.]

This ceaseless agitation which democratic government has
introduced into the political world influences all social
intercourse. I am not sure that upon the whole this is not the
greatest advantage of democracy. And I am much less inclined to
applaud it for what it does than for what it causes to be done.
It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts
public business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower
orders should take a part in public business without extending
the circle of their ideas, and without quitting the ordinary
routine of their mental acquirements. The humblest individual
who is called upon to co-operate in the government of society
acquires a certain degree of self-respect; and as he possesses
authority, he can command the services of minds much more
enlightened than his own. He is canvassed by a multitude of
applicants, who seek to deceive him in a thousand different ways,
but who instruct him by their deceit. He takes a part in
political undertakings which did not originate in his own
conception, but which give him a taste for undertakings of the
kind. New ameliorations are daily pointed out in the property
which he holds in common with others, and this gives him the
desire of improving that property which is more peculiarly his
own. He is perhaps neither happier nor better than those who
came before him, but he is better informed and more active. I
have no doubt that the democratic institutions of the United
States, joined to the physical constitution of the country, are
the cause (not the direct, as is so often asserted, but the
indirect cause) of the prodigious commercial activity of the
inhabitants. It is not engendered by the laws, but the people
learns how to promote it by the experience derived from
legislation.

When the opponents of democracy assert that a single
individual performs the duties which he undertakes much better
than the government of the community, it appears to me that they
are perfectly right. The government of an individual, supposing
an equality of instruction on either side, is more consistent,
more persevering, and more accurate than that of a multitude, and
it is much better qualified judiciously to discriminate the
characters of the men it employs. If any deny what I advance,
they have certainly never seen a democratic government, or have
formed their opinion upon very partial evidence. It is true that
even when local circumstances and the disposition of the people
allow democratic institutions to subsist, they never display a
regular and methodical system of government. Democratic liberty
is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes, with
the skill of an adroit despotism. It frequently abandons them
before they have borne their fruits, or risks them when the
consequences may prove dangerous; but in the end it produces more
than any absolute government, and if it do fewer things well, it
does a greater number of things. Under its sway the transactions
of the public administration are not nearly so important as what
is done by private exertion. Democracy does not confer the most
skilful kind of government upon the people, but it produces that
which the most skilful governments are frequently unable to
awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a
superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it,
and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most
amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of democracy.

In the present age, when the destinies of Christendom seem
to be in suspense, some hasten to assail democracy as its foe
whilst it is yet in its early growth; and others are ready with
their vows of adoration for this new deity which is springing
forth from chaos: but both parties are very imperfectly
acquainted with the object of their hatred or of their desires;
they strike in the dark, and distribute their blows by mere
chance.

We must first understand what the purport of society and the
aim of government is held to be. If it be your intention to
confer a certain elevation upon the human mind, and to teach it
to regard the things of this world with generous feelings, to
inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage, to give
birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of
honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to
refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the
arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty,
and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to
act with power upon all other nations, nor unprepared for those
high enterprises which, whatever be the result of its efforts,
will leave a name forever famous in time - if you believe such to
be the principal object of society, you must avoid the government
of democracy, which would be a very uncertain guide to the end
you have in view.

But if you hold it to be expedient to divert the moral and
intellectual activity of man to the production of comfort, and to
the acquirement of the necessaries of life; if a clear
understanding be more profitable to man than genius; if your
object be not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but to create
habits of peace; if you had rather witness vices than crimes and
are content to meet with fewer noble deeds, provided offences be
diminished in the same proportion; if, instead of living in the
midst of a brilliant state of society, you are contented to have
prosperity around you; if, in short, you are of opinion that the
principal object of a Government is not to confer the greatest
possible share of power and of glory upon the body of the nation,
but to ensure the greatest degree of enjoyment and the least
degree of misery to each of the individuals who compose it - if
such be your desires, you can have no surer means of satisfying
them than by equalizing the conditions of men, and establishing
democratic institutions.

But if the time be passed at which such a choice was
possible, and if some superhuman power impel us towards one or
the other of these two governments without consulting our wishes,
let us at least endeavor to make the best of that which is
allotted to us; and let us so inquire into its good and its evil
propensities as to be able to foster the former and repress the
latter to the utmost.

Chapter XV: Unlimited Power Of Majority, And Its Consequences -
Part I

Chapter Summary

Natural strength of the majority in democracies - Most of the
American Constitutions have increased this strength by artificial
means - How this has been done - Pledged delegates - Moral power
of the majority - Opinion as to its infallibility - Respect for
its rights, how augmented in the United States.

Unlimited Power Of The Majority In The United States, And Its
Consequences

The very essence of democratic government consists in the
absolute sovereignty of the majority; for there is nothing in
democratic States which is capable of resisting it. Most of the
American Constitutions have sought to increase this natural
strength of the majority by artificial means. *a

[Footnote a: We observed, in examining the Federal Constitution,
that the efforts of the legislators of the Union had been
diametrically opposed to the present tendency. The consequence
has been that the Federal Government is more independent in its
sphere than that of the States. But the Federal Government
scarcely ever interferes in any but external affairs; and the
governments of the State are in the governments of the States are
in reality the authorities which direct society in America.]

The legislature is, of all political institutions, the one
which is most easily swayed by the wishes of the majority. The
Americans determined that the members of the legislature should
be elected by the people immediately, and for a very brief term,
in order to subject them, not only to the general convictions,
but even to the daily passion, of their constituents. The
members of both houses are taken from the same class in society,
and are nominated in the same manner; so that the modifications
of the legislative bodies are almost as rapid and quite as
irresistible as those of a single assembly. It is to a
legislature thus constituted that almost all the authority of the
government has been entrusted.

But whilst the law increased the strength of those
authorities which of themselves were strong, it enfeebled more
and more those which were naturally weak. It deprived the
representatives of the executive of all stability and
independence, and by subjecting them completely to the caprices
of the legislature, it robbed them of the slender influence which
the nature of a democratic government might have allowed them to
retain. In several States the judicial power was also submitted
to the elective discretion of the majority, and in all of them
its existence was made to depend on the pleasure of the
legislative authority, since the representatives were empowered
annually to regulate the stipend of the judges.

Custom, however, has done even more than law. A proceeding
which will in the end set all the guarantees of representative
government at naught is becoming more and more general in the
United States; it frequently happens that the electors, who
choose a delegate, point out a certain line of conduct to him,
and impose upon him a certain number of positive obligations
which he is pledged to fulfil. With the exception of the tumult,
this comes to the same thing as if the majority of the populace
held its deliberations in the market-place.

Several other circumstances concur in rendering the power of
the majority in America not only preponderant, but irresistible.
The moral authority of the majority is partly based upon the
notion that there is more intelligence and more wisdom in a great
number of men collected together than in a single individual, and
that the quantity of legislators is more important than their
quality. The theory of equality is in fact applied to the
intellect of man: and human pride is thus assailed in its last
retreat by a doctrine which the minority hesitate to admit, and
in which they very slowly concur. Like all other powers, and
perhaps more than all other powers, the authority of the many
requires the sanction of time; at first it enforces obedience by
constraint, but its laws are not respected until they have long
been maintained.

The right of governing society, which the majority supposes
itself to derive from its superior intelligence, was introduced
into the United States by the first settlers, and this idea,
which would be sufficient of itself to create a free nation, has
now been amalgamated with the manners of the people and the minor
incidents of social intercourse.

The French, under the old monarchy, held it for a maxim
(which is still a fundamental principle of the English
Constitution) that the King could do no wrong; and if he did do
wrong, the blame was imputed to his advisers. This notion was
highly favorable to habits of obedience, and it enabled the
subject to complain of the law without ceasing to love and honor
the lawgiver. The Americans entertain the same opinion with
respect to the majority.

The moral power of the majority is founded upon yet another
principle, which is, that the interests of the many are to be
preferred to those of the few. It will readily be perceived that
the respect here professed for the rights of the majority must
naturally increase or diminish according to the state of parties.
When a nation is divided into several irreconcilable factions,
the privilege of the majority is often overlooked, because it is
intolerable to comply with its demands.

If there existed in America a class of citizens whom the
legislating majority sought to deprive of exclusive privileges
which they had possessed for ages, and to bring down from an
elevated station to the level of the ranks of the multitude, it
is probable that the minority would be less ready to comply with
its laws. But as the United States were colonized by men holding
equal rank amongst themselves, there is as yet no natural or
permanent source of dissension between the interests of its
different inhabitants.

There are certain communities in which the persons who
constitute the minority can never hope to draw over the majority
to their side, because they must then give up the very point
which is at issue between them. Thus, an aristocracy can never
become a majority whilst it retains its exclusive privileges, and
it cannot cede its privileges without ceasing to be an
aristocracy.

In the United States political questions cannot be taken up
in so general and absolute a manner, and all parties are willing
to recognize the right of the majority, because they all hope to
turn those rights to their own advantage at some future time.
The majority therefore in that country exercises a prodigious
actual authority, and a moral influence which is scarcely less
preponderant; no obstacles exist which can impede or so much as
retard its progress, or which can induce it to heed the
complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of
things is fatal in itself and dangerous for the future.

How The Unlimited Power Of The Majority Increases In America The
Instability Of Legislation And Administration Inherent In
Democracy The Americans increase the mutability of the laws which
is inherent in democracy by changing the legislature every year,
and by investing it with unbounded authority - The same effect is
produced upon the administration - In America social amelioration
is conducted more energetically but less perseveringly than in
Europe.

I have already spoken of the natural defects of democratic
institutions, and they all of them increase at the exact ratio of
the power of the majority. To begin with the most evident of them
all; the mutability of the laws is an evil inherent in democratic
government, because it is natural to democracies to raise men to
power in very rapid succession. But this evil is more or less
sensible in proportion to the authority and the means of action
which the legislature possesses.

In America the authority exercised by the legislative bodies
is supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes
with celerity, and with irresistible power, whilst they are
supplied by new representatives every year. That is to say, the
circumstances which contribute most powerfully to democratic
instability, and which admit of the free application of caprice
to every object in the State, are here in full operation. In
conformity with this principle, America is, at the present day,
the country in the world where laws last the shortest time.
Almost all the American constitutions have been amended within
the course of thirty years: there is therefore not a single
American State which has not modified the principles of its
legislation in that lapse of time. As for the laws themselves, a
single glance upon the archives of the different States of the
Union suffices to convince one that in America the activity of
the legislator never slackens. Not that the American democracy is
naturally less stable than any other, but that it is allowed to
follow its capricious propensities in the formation of the laws.
*b

[Footnote b: The legislative acts promulgated by the State of
Massachusetts alone, from the year 1780 to the present time,
already fill three stout volumes; and it must not be forgotten
that the collection to which I allude was published in 1823, when
many old laws which had fallen into disuse were omitted. The
State of Massachusetts, which is not more populous than a
department of France, may be considered as the most stable, the
most consistent, and the most sagacious in its undertakings of
the whole Union.]

The omnipotence of the majority, and the rapid as well as
absolute manner in which its decisions are executed in the United
States, has not only the effect of rendering the law unstable,
but it exercises the same influence upon the execution of the law
and the conduct of the public administration. As the majority is
the only power which it is important to court, all its projects
are taken up with the greatest ardor, but no sooner is its
attention distracted than all this ardor ceases; whilst in the
free States of Europe the administration is at once independent
and secure, so that the projects of the legislature are put into
execution, although its immediate attention may be directed to
other objects.

In America certain ameliorations are undertaken with much
more zeal and activity than elsewhere; in Europe the same ends
are promoted by much less social effort, more continuously
applied.

Some years ago several pious individuals undertook to
ameliorate the condition of the prisons. The public was excited
by the statements which they put forward, and the regeneration of
criminals became a very popular undertaking. New prisons were
built, and for the first time the idea of reforming as well as of
punishing the delinquent formed a part of prison discipline. But
this happy alteration, in which the public had taken so hearty an
interest, and which the exertions of the citizens had
irresistibly accelerated, could not be completed in a moment.
Whilst the new penitentiaries were being erected (and it was the
pleasure of the majority that they should be terminated with all
possible celerity), the old prisons existed, which still
contained a great number of offenders. These jails became more
unwholesome and more corrupt in proportion as the new
establishments were beautified and improved, forming a contrast
which may readily be understood. The majority was so eagerly
employed in founding the new prisons that those which already
existed were forgotten; and as the general attention was diverted
to a novel object, the care which had hitherto been bestowed upon
the others ceased. The salutary regulations of discipline were
first relaxed, and afterwards broken; so that in the immediate
neighborhood of a prison which bore witness to the mild and
enlightened spirit of our time, dungeons might be met with which
reminded the visitor of the barbarity of the Middle Ages.

Chapter XV: Unlimited Power Of Majority, And Its Consequences -
Part II

Tyranny Of The Majority

How the principle of the sovereignty of the people is to be
understood -Impossibility of conceiving a mixed government - The
sovereign power must centre somewhere - Precautions to be taken
to control its action - These precautions have not been taken in
the United States - Consequences.

I hold it to be an impious and an execrable maxim that,
politically speaking, a people has a right to do whatsoever it
pleases, and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in
the will of the majority. Am I then, in contradiction with
myself?

A general law - which bears the name of Justice - has been
made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that
people, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people
are consequently confined within the limits of what is just. A
nation may be considered in the light of a jury which is
empowered to represent society at large, and to apply the great
and general law of justice. Ought such a jury, which represents
society, to have more power than the society in which the laws it
applies originate?

When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the
right which the majority has of commanding, but I simply appeal
from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
It has been asserted that a people can never entirely outstep the
boundaries of justice and of reason in those affairs which are
more peculiarly its own, and that consequently, full power may
fearlessly be given to the majority by which it is represented.
But this language is that of a slave.

A majority taken collectively may be regarded as a being
whose opinions, and most frequently whose interests, are opposed
to those of another being, which is styled a minority. If it be
admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that
power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be
liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their
characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the
presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their
strength. *c And for these reasons I can never willingly invest
any number of my fellow- creatures with that unlimited authority
which I should refuse to any one of them.

[Footnote c: No one will assert that a people cannot forcibly
wrong another people; but parties may be looked upon as lesser
nations within a greater one, and they are aliens to each other:
if, therefore, it be admitted that a nation can act tyrannically
towards another nation, it cannot be denied that a party may do
the same towards another party.]

I do not think that it is possible to combine several
principles in the same government, so as at the same time to
maintain freedom, and really to oppose them to one another. The
form of government which is usually termed mixed has always
appeared to me to be a mere chimera. Accurately speaking there
is no such thing as a mixed government (with the meaning usually
given to that word), because in all communities some one
principle of action may be discovered which preponderates over
the others. England in the last century, which has been more
especially cited as an example of this form of Government, was in
point of fact an essentially aristocratic State, although it
comprised very powerful elements of democracy; for the laws and
customs of the country were such that the aristocracy could not
but preponderate in the end, and subject the direction of public
affairs to its own will. The error arose from too much attention
being paid to the actual struggle which was going on between the
nobles and the people, without considering the probable issue of
the contest, which was in reality the important point. When a
community really has a mixed government, that is to say, when it
is equally divided between two adverse principles, it must either
pass through a revolution or fall into complete dissolution.

I am therefore of opinion that some one social power must
always be made to predominate over the others; but I think that
liberty is endangered when this power is checked by no obstacles
which may retard its course, and force it to moderate its own
vehemence.

Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing;
human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion,
and God alone can be omnipotent, because His wisdom and His
justice are always equal to His power. But no power upon earth is
so worthy of honor for itself, or of reverential obedience to the
rights which it represents, that I would consent to admit its
uncontrolled and all-predominant authority. When I see that the
right and the means of absolute command are conferred on a people
or upon a king, upon an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or
a republic, I recognize the germ of tyranny, and I journey onward
to a land of more hopeful institutions.

In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic
institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often
asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their
overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the
excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very
inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.

When an individual or a party is wronged in the United
States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion,
public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature,
it represents the majority, and implicitly obeys its injunctions;
if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority, and
remains a passive tool in its hands; the public troops consist of
the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with
the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain States even
the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or
absurd the evil of which you complain may be, you must submit to
it as well as you can. *d

[Footnote d: A striking instance of the excesses which may be
occasioned by the despotism of the majority occurred at Baltimore
in the year 1812. At that time the war was very popular in
Baltimore. A journal which had taken the other side of the
question excited the indignation of the inhabitants by its
opposition. The populace assembled, broke the printing-presses,
and attacked the houses of the newspaper editors. The militia
was called out, but no one obeyed the call; and the only means of
saving the poor wretches who were threatened by the frenzy of the
mob was to throw them into prison as common malefactors. But
even this precaution was ineffectual; the mob collected again
during the night, the magistrates again made a vain attempt to
call out the militia, the prison was forced, one of the newspaper
editors was killed upon the spot, and the others were left for
dead; the guilty parties were acquitted by the jury when they
were brought to trial.

I said one day to an inhabitant of Pennsylvania, "Be so good
as to explain to me how it happens that in a State founded by
Quakers, and celebrated for its toleration, freed blacks are not
allowed to exercise civil rights. They pay the taxes; is it not
fair that they should have a vote?"

"You insult us," replied my informant, "if you imagine that
our legislators could have committed so gross an act of injustice
and intolerance."

"What! then the blacks possess the right of voting in this
county?"

"Without the smallest doubt."

"How comes it, then, that at the polling-booth this morning
I did not perceive a single negro in the whole meeting?"

"This is not the fault of the law: the negroes have an
undisputed right of voting, but they voluntarily abstain from
making their appearance."

"A very pretty piece of modesty on their parts!" rejoined I.

"Why, the truth is, that they are not disinclined to vote,
but they are afraid of being maltreated; in this country the law
is sometimes unable to maintain its authority without the support
of the majority. But in this case the majority entertains very
strong prejudices against the blacks, and the magistrates are
unable to protect them in the exercise of their legal
privileges."

"What! then the majority claims the right not only of
making the laws, but of breaking the laws it has made?"]

If, on the other hand, a legislative power could be so
constituted as to represent the majority without necessarily
being the slave of its passions; an executive, so as to retain a
certain degree of uncontrolled authority; and a judiciary, so as
to remain independent of the two other powers; a government would
be formed which would still be democratic without incurring any
risk of tyrannical abuse.

I do not say that tyrannical abuses frequently occur in
America at the present day, but I maintain that no sure barrier
is established against them, and that the causes which mitigate
the government are to be found in the circumstances and the
manners of the country more than in its laws.

Effects Of The Unlimited Power Of The Majority Upon The Arbitrary
Authority Of The American Public Officers

Liberty left by the American laws to public officers within a
certain sphere -Their power.

A distinction must be drawn between tyranny and arbitrary
power. Tyranny may be exercised by means of the law, and in that
case it is not arbitrary; arbitrary power may be exercised for
the good of the community at large, in which case it is not
tyrannical. Tyranny usually employs arbitrary means, but, if
necessary, it can rule without them.

In the United States the unbounded power of the majority,
which is favorable to the legal despotism of the legislature, is
likewise favorable to the arbitrary authority of the magistrate.
The majority has an entire control over the law when it is made
and when it is executed; and as it possesses an equal authority
over those who are in power and the community at large, it
considers public officers as its passive agents, and readily
confides the task of serving its designs to their vigilance. The
details of their office and the privileges which they are to
enjoy are rarely defined beforehand; but the majority treats them
as a master does his servants when they are always at work in his
sight, and he has the power of directing or reprimanding them at
every instant.

In general the American functionaries are far more
independent than the French civil officers within the sphere
which is prescribed to them. Sometimes, even, they are allowed by
the popular authority to exceed those bounds; and as they are
protected by the opinion, and backed by the co-operation, of the
majority, they venture upon such manifestations of their power as
astonish a European. By this means habits are formed in the
heart of a free country which may some day prove fatal to its
liberties.

Power Exercised By The Majority In America Upon Opinion

In America, when the majority has once irrevocably decided a
question, all discussion ceases - Reason of this - Moral power
exercised by the majority upon opinion - Democratic republics
have deprived despotism of its physical instruments - Their
despotism sways the minds of men.

It is in the examination of the display of public opinion in
the United States that we clearly perceive how far the power of
the majority surpasses all the powers with which we are
acquainted in Europe. Intellectual principles exercise an
influence which is so invisible, and often so inappreciable, that
they baffle the toils of oppression. At the present time the
most absolute monarchs in Europe are unable to prevent certain
notions, which are opposed to their authority, from circulating
in secret throughout their dominions, and even in their courts.
Such is not the case in America; as long as the majority is still
undecided, discussion is carried on; but as soon as its decision
is irrevocably pronounced, a submissive silence is observed, and
the friends, as well as the opponents, of the measure unite in
assenting to its propriety. The reason of this is perfectly
clear: no monarch is so absolute as to combine all the powers of
society in his own hands, and to conquer all opposition with the
energy of a majority which is invested with the right of making
and of executing the laws.

The authority of a king is purely physical, and it controls
the actions of the subject without subduing his private will; but
the majority possesses a power which is physical and moral at the
same time; it acts upon the will as well as upon the actions of
men, and it represses not only all contest, but all controversy.
I know no country in which there is so little true
independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America. In
any constitutional state in Europe every sort of religious and
political theory may be advocated and propagated abroad; for
there is no country in Europe so subdued by any single authority
as not to contain citizens who are ready to protect the man who
raises his voice in the cause of truth from the consequences of
his hardihood. If he is unfortunate enough to live under an
absolute government, the people is upon his side; if he inhabits
a free country, he may find a shelter behind the authority of the
throne, if he require one. The aristocratic part of society
supports him in some countries, and the democracy in others. But
in a nation where democratic institutions exist, organized like
those of the United States, there is but one sole authority, one
single element of strength and of success, with nothing beyond
it.

In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to
the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write
whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond
them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-fe,
but he is tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily
obloquy. His political career is closed forever, since he has
offended the only authority which is able to promote his success.
Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused to
him. Before he published his opinions he imagined that he held
them in common with many others; but no sooner has he declared
them openly than he is loudly censured by his overbearing
opponents, whilst those who think without having the courage to
speak, like him, abandon him in silence. He yields at length,
oppressed by the daily efforts he has been making, and he
subsides into silence, as if he was tormented by remorse for
having spoken the truth.

Fetters and headsmen were the coarse instruments which
tyranny formerly employed; but the civilization of our age has
refined the arts of despotism which seemed, however, to have been
sufficiently perfected before. The excesses of monarchical power
had devised a variety of physical means of oppression: the
democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as
entirely an affair of the mind as that will which it is intended
to coerce. Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the
body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul
escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose
superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by
tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and
the soul is enslaved. The sovereign can no longer say, "You
shall think as I do on pain of death;" but he says, "You are free
to think differently from me, and to retain your life, your
property, and all that you possess; but if such be your
determination, you are henceforth an alien among your people. You
may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you,
for you will never be chosen by your fellow-citizens if you
solicit their suffrages, and they will affect to scorn you if you
solicit their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be
deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow-creatures will
shun you like an impure being, and those who are most persuaded
of your innocence will abandon you too, lest they should be
shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life,
but it is an existence in comparably worse than death."

Monarchical institutions have thrown an odium upon
despotism; let us beware lest democratic republics should restore
oppression, and should render it less odious and less degrading
in the eyes of the many, by making it still more onerous to the
few.

Works have been published in the proudest nations of the Old
World expressly intended to censure the vices and deride the
follies of the times; Labruyere inhabited the palace of Louis XIV
when he composed his chapter upon the Great, and Moliere
criticised the courtiers in the very pieces which were acted
before the Court. But the ruling power in the United States is
not to be made game of; the smallest reproach irritates its
sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in
truth renders it indignant; from the style of its language to the
more solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the
subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can
escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. The
majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and
there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from
strangers or from experience.

If great writers have not at present existed in America, the
reason is very simply given in these facts; there can be no
literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of
opinion does not exist in America. The Inquisition has never
been able to prevent a vast number of anti-religious books from
circulating in Spain. The empire of the majority succeeds much
better in the United States, since it actually removes the wish
of publishing them. Unbelievers are to be met with in America,
but, to say the truth, there is no public organ of infidelity.
Attempts have been made by some governments to protect the
morality of nations by prohibiting licentious books. In the
United States no one is punished for this sort of works, but no
one is induced to write them; not because all the citizens are
immaculate in their manners, but because the majority of the
community is decent and orderly.

In these cases the advantages derived from the exercise of
this power are unquestionable, and I am simply discussing the
nature of the power itself. This irresistible authority is a
constant fact, and its judicious exercise is an accidental
occurrence.

Effects Of The Tyranny Of The Majority Upon The National
Character Of The Americans

Effects of the tyranny of the majority more sensibly felt
hitherto in the manners than in the conduct of society - They
check the development of leading characters - Democratic
republics organized like the United States bring the practice of
courting favor within the reach of the many - Proofs of this
spirit in the United States - Why there is more patriotism in the
people than in those who govern in its name.

The tendencies which I have just alluded to are as yet very
slightly perceptible in political society, but they already begin
to exercise an unfavorable influence upon the national character
of the Americans. I am inclined to attribute the singular
paucity of distinguished political characters to the
ever-increasing activity of the despotism of the majority in the
United States. When the American Revolution broke out they arose
in great numbers, for public opinion then served, not to
tyrannize over, but to direct the exertions of individuals.
Those celebrated men took a full part in the general agitation of
mind common at that period, and they attained a high degree of
personal fame, which was reflected back upon the nation, but
which was by no means borrowed from it.

In absolute governments the great nobles who are nearest to
the throne flatter the passions of the sovereign, and voluntarily
truckle to his caprices. But the mass of the nation does not
degrade itself by servitude: it often submits from weakness, from
habit, or from ignorance, and sometimes from loyalty. Some
nations have been known to sacrifice their own desires to those
of the sovereign with pleasure and with pride, thus exhibiting a
sort of independence in the very act of submission. These
peoples are miserable, but they are not degraded. There is a
great difference between doing what one does not approve and
feigning to approve what one does; the one is the necessary case
of a weak person, the other befits the temper of a lackey.

In free countries, where everyone is more or less called
upon to give his opinion in the affairs of state; in democratic
republics, where public life is incessantly commingled with
domestic affairs, where the sovereign authority is accessible on
every side, and where its attention can almost always be
attracted by vociferation, more persons are to be met with who
speculate upon its foibles and live at the cost of its passions
than in absolute monarchies. Not because men are naturally worse
in these States than elsewhere, but the temptation is stronger,
and of easier access at the same time. The result is a far more
extensive debasement of the characters of citizens.

Democratic republics extend the practice of currying favor
with the many, and they introduce it into a greater number of
classes at once: this is one of the most serious reproaches that
can be addressed to them. In democratic States organized on the
principles of the American republics, this is more especially the
case, where the authority of the majority is so absolute and so
irresistible that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and
almost abjure his quality as a human being, if te intends to
stray from the track which it lays down.

In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in
the United States I found very few men who displayed any of that
manly candor and that masculine independence of opinion which
frequently distinguished the Americans in former times, and which
constitutes the leading feature in distinguished characters,
wheresoever they may be found. It seems, at first sight, as if
all the minds of the Americans were formed upon one model, so
accurately do they correspond in their manner of judging. A
stranger does, indeed, sometimes meet with Americans who dissent
from these rigorous formularies; with men who deplore the defects
of the laws, the mutability and the ignorance of democracy; who
even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies which impair the
national character, and to point out such remedies as it might be
possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things
besides yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are
confided, are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very
ready to communicate truths which are useless to you, but they
continue to hold a different language in public.

If ever these lines are read in America, I am well assured
of two things: in the first place, that all who peruse them will
raise their voices to condemn me; and in the second place, that
very many of them will acquit me at the bottom of their
conscience.

I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a
virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the
leaders of the people. This may be explained by analogy;
despotism debases the oppressed much more than the oppressor: in
absolute monarchies the king has often great virtues, but the
courtiers are invariably servile. It is true that the American
courtiers do not say "Sire," or "Your Majesty" - a distinction
without a difference. They are forever talking of the natural
intelligence of the populace they serve; they do not debate the
question as to which of the virtues of their master is
pre-eminently worthy of admiration, for they assure him that he
possesses all the virtues under heaven without having acquired
them, or without caring to acquire them; they do not give him
their daughters and their wives to be raised at his pleasure to
the rank of his concubines, but, by sacrificing their opinions,
they prostitute themselves. Moralists and philosophers in America
are not obliged to conceal their opinions under the veil of
allegory; but, before they venture upon a harsh truth, they say,
"We are aware that the people which we are addressing is too
superior to all the weaknesses of human nature to lose the
command of its temper for an instant; and we should not hold this
language if we were not speaking to men whom their virtues and
their intelligence render more worthy of freedom than all the
rest of the world." It would have been impossible for the
sycophants of Louis XIV to flatter more dexterously. For my
part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their
nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will
cling to power. The only means of preventing men from degrading
themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority
which is the surest method of debasing them.

The Greatest Dangers Of The American Republics Proceed From The
Unlimited Power Of The Majority

Democratic republics liable to perish from a misuse of their
power, and not by impotence - The Governments of the American
republics are more centralized and more energetic than those of
the monarchies of Europe - Dangers resulting from this - Opinions
of Hamilton and Jefferson upon this point.

Governments usually fall a sacrifice to impotence or to
tyranny. In the former case their power escapes from them; it is
wrested from their grasp in the latter. Many observers, who have
witnessed the anarchy of democratic States, have imagined that
the government of those States was naturally weak and impotent.
The truth is, that when once hostilities are begun between
parties, the government loses its control over society. But I do
not think that a democratic power is naturally without force or
without resources: say, rather, that it is almost always by the
abuse of its force and the misemployment of its resources that a
democratic government fails. Anarchy is almost always produced
by its tyranny or its mistakes, but not by its want of strength.

It is important not to confound stability with force, or the
greatness of a thing with its duration. In democratic republics,
the power which directs *e society is not stable; for it often
changes hands and assumes a new direction. But whichever way it
turns, its force is almost irresistible. The Governments of the
American republics appear to me to be as much centralized as
those of the absolute monarchies of Europe, and more energetic
than they are. I do not, therefore, imagine that they will
perish from weakness. *f

[Footnote e: This power may be centred in an assembly, in which
case it will be strong without being stable; or it may be centred
in an individual, in which case it will be less strong, but more
stable.]

[Footnote f: I presume that it is scarcely necessary to remind
the reader here, as well as throughout the remainder of this
chapter, that I am speaking, not of the Federal Government, but
of the several governments of each State, which the majority
controls at its pleasure.]

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that
event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the
majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to
desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.
Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought
about by despotism.

Mr. Hamilton expresses the same opinion in the "Federalist,"
No. 51. "It is of great importance in a republic not only to
guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to
guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other
part. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil
society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be
obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society,
under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite
and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as
in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured
against the violence of the stronger: and as in the latter state
even the stronger individuals are prompted by the uncertainty of
their condition to submit to a government which may protect the
weak as well as themselves, so in the former state will the more
powerful factions be gradually induced by a like motive to wish
for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as
well as the more powerful. It can be little doubted that, if the
State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left
to itself, the insecurity of right under the popular form of
government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such
reiterated oppressions of the factious majorities, that some
power altogether independent of the people would soon be called
for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved
the necessity of it."

Jefferson has also thus expressed himself in a letter to
Madison: *g "The executive power in our Government is not the
only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude.
The tyranny of the Legislature is really the danger most to be
feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The
tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a
more distant period." I am glad to cite the opinion of Jefferson
upon this subject rather than that of another, because I consider
him to be the most powerful advocate democracy has ever sent
forth.

[Footnote g: March 15, 1789.]

Chapter XVI: Causes Mitigating Tyranny In The United States -
Part I

Chapter Summary

The national majority does not pretend to conduct all business -
Is obliged to employ the town and county magistrates to execute
its supreme decisions.

I have already pointed out the distinction which is to be
made between a centralized government and a centralized
administration. The former exists in America, but the latter is
nearly unknown there. If the directing power of the American
communities had both these instruments of government at its
disposal, and united the habit of executing its own commands to
the right of commanding; if, after having established the general
principles of government, it descended to the details of public
business; and if, having regulated the great interests of the
country, it could penetrate into the privacy of individual
interests, freedom would soon be banished from the New World.

But in the United States the majority, which so frequently
displays the tastes and the propensities of a despot, is still
destitute of the more perfect instruments of tyranny. In the
American republics the activity of the central Government has
never as yet been extended beyond a limited number of objects
sufficiently prominent to call forth its attention. The
secondary affairs of society have never been regulated by its
authority, and nothing has hitherto betrayed its desire of
interfering in them. The majority is become more and more
absolute, but it has not increased the prerogatives of the
central government; those great prerogatives have been confined
to a certain sphere; and although the despotism of the majority
may be galling upon one point, it cannot be said to extend to
all. However the predominant party in the nation may be carried
away by its passions, however ardent it may be in the pursuit of
its projects, it cannot oblige all the citizens to comply with
its desires in the same manner and at the same time throughout
the country. When the central Government which represents that
majority has issued a decree, it must entrust the execution of
its will to agents, over whom it frequently has no control, and
whom it cannot perpetually direct. The townships, municipal
bodies, and counties may therefore be looked upon as concealed
break-waters, which check or part the tide of popular excitement.
If an oppressive law were passed, the liberties of the people
would still be protected by the means by which that law would be
put in execution: the majority cannot descend to the details and
(as I will venture to style them) the puerilities of
administrative tyranny. Nor does the people entertain that full
consciousness of its authority which would prompt it to interfere
in these matters; it knows the extent of its natural powers, but
it is unacquainted with the increased resources which the art of
government might furnish.

This point deserves attention, for if a democratic republic
similar to that of the United States were ever founded in a
country where the power of a single individual had previously
subsisted, and the effects of a centralized administration had
sunk deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not
hesitate to assert, that in that country a more insufferable
despotism would prevail than any which now exists in the
monarchical States of Europe, or indeed than any which could be
found on this side of the confines of Asia.

The Profession Of The Law In The United States Serves To
Counterpoise The Democracy

Utility of discriminating the natural propensities of the members
of the legal profession - These men called upon to act a
prominent part in future society -In what manner the peculiar
pursuits of lawyers give an aristocratic turn to their ideas -
Accidental causes which may check this tendency - Ease with which
the aristocracy coalesces with legal men - Use of lawyers to a
despot - The profession of the law constitutes the only
aristocratic element with which the natural elements of democracy
will combine - Peculiar causes which tend to give an aristocratic
turn of mind to the English and American lawyers - The
aristocracy of America is on the bench and at the bar - Influence
of lawyers upon American society - Their peculiar magisterial
habits affect the legislature, the administration, and even the
people.

In visiting the Americans and in studying their laws we
perceive that the authority they have entrusted to members of the
legal profession, and the influence which these individuals
exercise in the Government, is the most powerful existing
security against the excesses of democracy. This effect seems to
me to result from a general cause which it is useful to
investigate, since it may produce analogous consequences
elsewhere.

The members of the legal profession have taken an important
part in all the vicissitudes of political society in Europe
during the last five hundred years. At one time they have been
the instruments of those who were invested with political
authority, and at another they have succeeded in converting
political authorities into their instrument. In the Middle Ages
they afforded a powerful support to the Crown, and since that
period they have exerted themselves to the utmost to limit the
royal prerogative. In England they have contracted a close
alliance with the aristocracy; in France they have proved to be
the most dangerous enemies of that class. It is my object to
inquire whether, under all these circumstances, the members of
the legal profession have been swayed by sudden and momentary
impulses; or whether they have been impelled by principles which
are inherent in their pursuits, and which will always recur in
history. I am incited to this investigation by reflecting that
this particular class of men will most likely play a prominent
part in that order of things to which the events of our time are
giving birth.

Men who have more especially devoted themselves to legal
pursuits derive from those occupations certain habits of order, a
taste for formalities, and a kind of instinctive regard for the
regular connection of ideas, which naturally render them very
hostile to the revolutionary spirit and the unreflecting passions
of the multitude.

The special information which lawyers derive from their
studies ensures them a separate station in society, and they
constitute a sort of privileged body in the scale of
intelligence. This notion of their superiority perpetually
recurs to them in the practice of their profession: they are the
masters of a science which is necessary, but which is not very
generally known; they serve as arbiters between the citizens; and
the habit of directing the blind passions of parties in
litigation to their purpose inspires them with a certain contempt
for the judgment of the multitude. To this it may be added that
they naturally constitute a body, not by any previous
understanding, or by an agreement which directs them to a common
end; but the analogy of their studies and the uniformity of their
proceedings connect their minds together, as much as a common
interest could combine their endeavors.

A portion of the tastes and of the habits of the aristocracy
may consequently be discovered in the characters of men in the
profession of the law. They participate in the same instinctive
love of order and of formalities; and they entertain the same
repugnance to the actions of the multitude, and the same secret
contempt of the government of the people. I do not mean to say
that the natural propensities of lawyers are sufficiently strong
to sway them irresistibly; for they, like most other men, are
governed by their private interests and the advantages of the
moment.

In a state of society in which the members of the legal
profession are prevented from holding that rank in the political
world which they enjoy in private life, we may rest assured that
they will be the foremost agents of revolution. But it must then
be inquired whether the cause which induces them to innovate and
to destroy is accidental, or whether it belongs to some lasting
purpose which they entertain. It is true that lawyers mainly
contributed to the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789; but
it remains to be seen whether they acted thus because they had
studied the laws, or because they were prohibited from
co-operating in the work of legislation.

Five hundred years ago the English nobles headed the people,
and spoke in its name; at the present time the aristocracy
supports the throne, and defends the royal prerogative. But
aristocracy has, notwithstanding this, its peculiar instincts and
propensities. We must be careful not to confound isolated
members of a body with the body itself. In all free governments,
of whatsoever form they may be, members of the legal profession
will be found at the head of all parties. The same remark is
also applicable to the aristocracy; for almost all the democratic
convulsions which have agitated the world have been directed by
nobles.

A privileged body can never satisfy the ambition of all its
members; it has always more talents and more passions to content
and to employ than it can find places; so that a considerable
number of individuals are usually to be met with who are inclined
to attack those very privileges which they find it impossible to
turn to their own account.

I do not, then, assert that all the members of the legal
profession are at all times the friends of order and the
opponents of innovation, but merely that most of them usually are
so. In a community in which lawyers are allowed to occupy,
without opposition, that high station which naturally belongs to
them, their general spirit will be eminently conservative and
anti-democratic. When an aristocracy excludes the leaders of that
profession from its ranks, it excites enemies which are the more
formidable to its security as they are independent of the
nobility by their industrious pursuits; and they feel themselves
to be its equal in point of intelligence, although they enjoy
less opulence and less power. But whenever an aristocracy
consents to impart some of its privileges to these same
individuals, the two classes coalesce very readily, and assume,
as it were, the consistency of a single order of family
interests.

I am, in like manner, inclined to believe that a monarch
will always be able to convert legal practitioners into the most
serviceable instruments of his authority. There is a far greater
affinity between this class of individuals and the executive
power than there is between them and the people; just as there is
a greater natural affinity between the nobles and the monarch
than between the nobles and the people, although the higher
orders of society have occasionally resisted the prerogative of
the Crown in concert with the lower classes.

Lawyers are attached to public order beyond every other
consideration, and the best security of public order is
authority. It must not be forgotten that, if they prize the free
institutions of their country much, they nevertheless value the
legality of those institutions far more: they are less afraid of
tyranny than of arbitrary power; and provided that the
legislature take upon itself to deprive men of their
independence, they are not dissatisfied.

I am therefore convinced that the prince who, in presence of
an encroaching democracy, should endeavor to impair the judicial
authority in his dominions, and to diminish the political
influence of lawyers, would commit a great mistake. He would let
slip the substance of authority to grasp at the shadow. He would
act more wisely in introducing men connected with the law into
the government; and if he entrusted them with the conduct of a
despotic power, bearing some marks of violence, that power would
most likely assume the external features of justice and of
legality in their hands.

The government of democracy is favorable to the political
power of lawyers; for when the wealthy, the noble, and the prince
are excluded from the government, they are sure to occupy the
highest stations, in their own right, as it were, since they are
the only men of information and sagacity, beyond the sphere of
the people, who can be the object of the popular choice. If,
then, they are led by their tastes to combine with the
aristocracy and to support the Crown, they are naturally brought
into contact with the people by their interests. They like the
government of democracy, without participating in its
propensities and without imitating its weaknesses; whence they
derive a twofold authority, from it and over it. The people in
democratic states does not mistrust the members of the legal
profession, because it is well known that they are interested in
serving the popular cause; and it listens to them without
irritation, because it does not attribute to them any sinister
designs. The object of lawyers is not, indeed, to overthrow the
institutions of democracy, but they constantly endeavor to give
it an impulse which diverts it from its real tendency, by means
which are foreign to its nature. Lawyers belong to the people by
birth and interest, to the aristocracy by habit and by taste, and
they may be looked upon as the natural bond and connecting link
of the two great classes of society.

The profession of the law is the only aristocratic element
which can be amalgamated without violence with the natural
elements of democracy, and which can be advantageously and
permanently combined with them. I am not unacquainted with the
defects which are inherent in the character of that body of men;
but without this admixture of lawyer-like sobriety with the
democratic principle, I question whether democratic institutions
could long be maintained, and I cannot believe that a republic
could subsist at the present time if the influence of lawyers in
public business did not increase in proportion to the power of
the people.

This aristocratic character, which I hold to be common to
the legal profession, is much more distinctly marked in the
United States and in England than in any other country. This
proceeds not only from the legal studies of the English and
American lawyers, but from the nature of the legislation, and the
position which those persons occupy in the two countries. The
English and the Americans have retained the law of precedents;
that is to say, they continue to found their legal opinions and
the decisions of their courts upon the opinions and the decisions
of their forefathers. In the mind of an English or American
lawyer a taste and a reverence for what is old is almost always
united to a love of regular and lawful proceedings.

This predisposition has another effect upon the character of
the legal profession and upon the general course of society. The
English and American lawyers investigate what has been done; the
French advocate inquires what should have been done; the former
produce precedents, the latter reasons. A French observer is
surprised to hear how often an English dr an American lawyer
quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his
own; whilst the reverse occurs in France. There the most
trifling litigation is never conducted without the introduction
of an entire system of ideas peculiar to the counsel employed;
and the fundamental principles of law are discussed in order to
obtain a perch of land by the decision of the court. This
abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the
opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and
American lawyer, this subjection of thought which he is obliged
to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more
sluggish inclinations in England and America than in France.

The French codes are often difficult of comprehension, but
they can be read by every one; nothing, on the other hand, can be
more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded
upon precedents. The indispensable want of legal assistance
which is felt in England and in the United States, and the high
opinion which is generally entertained of the ability of the
legal profession, tend to separate it more and more from the
people, and to place it in a distinct class. The French lawyer
is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his
country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the
hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter
of an occult science.

The station which lawyers occupy in England and America
exercises no less an influence upon their habits and their
opinions. The English aristocracy, which has taken care to
attract to its sphere whatever is at all analogous to itself, has
conferred a high degree of importance and of authority upon the
members of the legal profession. In English society lawyers do
not occupy the first rank, but they are contented with the
station assigned to them; they constitute, as it were, the
younger branch of the English aristocracy, and they are attached
to their elder brothers, although they do not enjoy all their
privileges. The English lawyers consequently mingle the taste
and the ideas of the aristocratic circles in which they move with
the aristocratic interests of their profession.

And indeed the lawyer-like character which I am endeavoring
to depict is most distinctly to be met with in England: there
laws are esteemed not so much because they are good as because
they are old; and if it be necessary to modify them in any
respect, or to adapt them the changes which time operates in
society, recourse is had to the most inconceivable contrivances
in order to uphold the traditionary fabric, and to maintain that
nothing has been done which does not square with the intentions
and complete the labors of former generations. The very
individuals who conduct these changes disclaim all intention of
innovation, and they had rather resort to absurd expedients than
plead guilty to so great a crime. This spirit appertains more
especially to the English lawyers; they seem indifferent to the
real meaning of what they treat, and they direct all their
attention to the letter, seeming inclined to infringe the rules
of common sense and of humanity rather than to swerve one title
from the law. The English legislation may be compared to the
stock of an old tree, upon which lawyers have engrafted the most
various shoots, with the hope that, although their fruits may
differ, their foliage at least will be confounded with the
venerable trunk which supports them all.

In America there are no nobles or men of letters, and the
people is apt to mistrust the wealthy; lawyers consequently form
the highest political class, and the most cultivated circle of
society. They have therefore nothing to gain by innovation,
which adds a conservative interest to their natural taste for
public order. If I were asked where I place the American
aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not
composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie,
but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.

The more we reflect upon all that occurs in the United
States the more shall we be persuaded that the lawyers as a body
form the most powerful, if not the only, counterpoise to the
democratic element. In that country we perceive how eminently
the legal profession is qualified by its powers, and even by its
defects, to neutralize the vices which are inherent in popular
government. When the American people is intoxicated by passion,
or carried away by the impetuosity of its ideas, it is checked
and stopped by the almost invisible influence of its legal
counsellors, who secretly oppose their aristocratic propensities
to its democratic instincts, their superstitious attachment to
what is antique to its love of novelty, their narrow views to its
immense designs, and their habitual procrastination to its ardent
impatience.

The courts of justice are the most visible organs by which
the legal profession is enabled to control the democracy. The
judge is a lawyer, who, independently of the taste for regularity
and order which he has contracted in the study of legislation,
derives an additional love of stability from his own inalienable
functions. His legal attainments have already raised him to a
distinguished rank amongst his fellow-citizens; his political
power completes the distinction of his station, and gives him the
inclinations natural to privileged classes.

Armed with the power of declaring the laws to be
unconstitutional, *a the American magistrate perpetually
interferes in political affairs. He cannot force the people to
make laws, but at least he can oblige it not to disobey its own
enactments; or to act inconsistently with its own principles. I
am aware that a secret tendency to diminish the judicial power
exists in the United States, and by most of the constitutions of
the several States the Government can, upon the demand of the two
houses of the legislature, remove the judges from their station.
By some other constitutions the members of the tribunals are
elected, and they are even subjected to frequent re-elections. I
venture to predict that these innovations will sooner or later be
attended with fatal consequences, and that it will be found out
at some future period that the attack which is made upon the
judicial power has affected the democratic republic itself.

[Footnote a: See chapter VI. on the "Judicial Power in the United
States."]

It must not, however, be supposed that the legal spirit of
which I have been speaking has been confined, in the United
States, to the courts of justice; it extends far beyond them. As
the lawyers constitute the only enlightened class which the
people does not mistrust, they are naturally called upon to
occupy most of the public stations. They fill the legislative
assemblies, and they conduct the administration; they
consequently exercise a powerful influence upon the formation of
the law, and upon its execution. The lawyers are, however,
obliged to yield to the current of public opinion, which is too
strong for them to resist it, but it is easy to find indications
of what their conduct would be if they were free to act as they
chose. The Americans, who have made such copious innovations in
their political legislation, have introduced very sparing
alterations in their civil laws, and that with great difficulty,
although those laws are frequently repugnant to their social
condition. The reason of this is, that in matters of civil law
the majority is obliged to defer to the authority of the legal
profession, and that the American lawyers are disinclined to
innovate when they are left to their own choice.

It is curious for a Frenchman, accustomed to a very
different state of things, to hear the perpetual complaints which
are made in the United States against the stationary propensities
of legal men, and their prejudices in favor of existing
institutions.

The influence of the legal habits which are common in
America extends beyond the limits I have just pointed out.
Scarcely any question arises in the United States which does not
become, sooner or later, a subject of judicial debate; hence all
parties are obliged to borrow the ideas, and even the language,
usual in judicial proceedings in their daily controversies. As
most public men are, or have been, legal practitioners, they
introduce the customs and technicalities of their profession into
the affairs of the country. The jury extends this habitude to
all classes. The language of the law thus becomes, in some
measure, a vulgar tongue; the spirit of the law, which is
produced in the schools and courts of justice, gradually
penetrates beyond their walls into the bosom of society, where it
descends to the lowest classes, so that the whole people
contracts the habits and the tastes of the magistrate. The
lawyers of the United States form a party which is but little
feared and scarcely perceived, which has no badge peculiar to
itself, which adapts itself with great flexibility to the
exigencies of the time, and accommodates itself to all the
movements of the social body; but this party extends over the
whole community, and it penetrates into all classes of society;
it acts upon the country imperceptibly, but it finally fashions
it to suit its purposes.

Chapter XVI: Causes Mitigating Tyranny In The United States -
Part II

Trial By Jury In The United States Considered As A Political
Institution

Trial by jury, which is one of the instruments of the sovereignty
of the people, deserves to be compared with the other laws which
establish that sovereignty - Composition of the jury in the
United States - Effect of trial by jury upon the national
character - It educates the people - It tends to establish the
authority of the magistrates and to extend a knowledge of law
among the people.

Since I have been led by my subject to recur to the
administration of justice in the United States, I will not pass
over this point without adverting to the institution of the jury.
Trial by jury may be considered in two separate points of view,
as a judicial and as a political institution. If it entered into
my present purpose to inquire how far trial by jury (more
especially in civil cases) contributes to insure the best
administration of justice, I admit that its utility might be
contested. As the jury was first introduced at a time when
society was in an uncivilized state, and when courts of justice
were merely called upon to decide on the evidence of facts, it is
not an easy task to adapt it to the wants of a highly civilized
community when the mutual relations of men are multiplied to a
surprising extent, and have assumed the enlightened and
intellectual character of the age. *b

[Footnote b: The investigation of trial by jury as a judicial
institution, and the appreciation of its effects in the United
States, together with the advantages the Americans have derived
from it, would suffice to form a book, and a book upon a very
useful and curious subject. The State of Louisiana would in
particular afford the curious phenomenon of a French and English
legislation, as well as a French and English population, which
are gradually combining with each other. See the "Digeste des
Lois de la Louisiane," in two volumes; and the "Traite sur les
Regles des Actions civiles," printed in French and English at New
Orleans in 1830.]

My present object is to consider the jury as a political
institution, and any other course would divert me from my
subject. Of trial by jury, considered as a judicial institution,
I shall here say but very few words. When the English adopted
trial by jury they were a semi-barbarous people; they are become,
in course of time, one of the most enlightened nations of the
earth; and their attachment to this institution seems to have
increased with their increasing cultivation. They soon spread
beyond their insular boundaries to every corner of the habitable
globe; some have formed colonies, others independent states; the
mother-country has maintained its monarchical constitution; many
of its offspring have founded powerful republics; but wherever
the English have been they have boasted of the privilege of trial
by jury. *c They have established it, or hastened to re-establish
it, in all their settlements. A judicial institution which
obtains the suffrages of a great people for so long a series of
ages, which is zealously renewed at every epoch of civilization,
in all the climates of the earth and under every form of human
government, cannot be contrary to the spirit of justice. *d

[Footnote c: All the English and American jurists are unanimous
upon this head. Mr. Story, judge of the Supreme Court of the
United States, speaks, in his "Treatise on the Federal
Constitution," of the advantages of trial by jury in civil cases:
- " The inestimable privilege of a trial by jury in civil cases -
a privilege scarcely inferior to that in criminal cases, which is
counted by all persons to be essential to political and civil
liberty. . . ." (Story, book iii., chap. xxxviii.)]

[Footnote d: If it were our province to point out the utility of
the jury as a judicial institution in this place, much might be
said, and the following arguments might be brought forward
amongst others: -

By introducing the jury into the business of the courts you
are enabled to diminish the number of judges, which is a very
great advantage. When judges are very numerous, death is
perpetually thinning the ranks of the judicial functionaries, and
laying places vacant for newcomers. The ambition of the
magistrates is therefore continually excited, and they are
naturally made dependent upon the will of the majority, or the
individual who fills up the vacant appointments; the officers of
the court then rise like the officers of an army. This state of
things is entirely contrary to the sound administration of
justice, and to the intentions of the legislator. The office of
a judge is made inalienable in order that he may remain
independent: but of what advantage is it that his independence
should be protected if he be tempted to sacrifice it of his own
accord? When judges are very numerous many of them must
necessarily be incapable of performing their important duties,
for a great magistrate is a man of no common powers; and I am
inclined to believe that a half-enlightened tribunal is the
worst of all instruments for attaining those objects which it is
the purpose of courts of justice to accomplish. For my own part,
I had rather submit the decision of a case to ignorant jurors
directed by a skilful judge than to judges a majority of whom are
imperfectly acquainted with jurisprudence and with the laws.]

I turn, however, from this part of the subject. To look
upon the jury as a mere judicial institution is to confine our
attention to a very narrow view of it; for however great its
influence may be upon the decisions of the law courts, that
influence is very subordinate to the powerful effects which it
produces on the destinies of the community at large. The jury is
above all a political institution, and it must be regarded in
this light in order to be duly appreciated.

By the jury I mean a certain number of citizens chosen
indiscriminately, and invested with a temporary right of judging.
Trial by jury, as applied to the repression of crime, appears to
me to introduce an eminently republican element into the
government upon the following grounds:-

The institution of the jury may be aristocratic or
democratic, according to the class of society from which the
jurors are selected; but it always preserves its republican
character, inasmuch as it places the real direction of society in
the hands of the governed, or of a portion of the governed,
instead of leaving it under the authority of the Government.
Force is never more than a transient element of success; and
after force comes the notion of right. A government which should
only be able to crush its enemies upon a field of battle would
very soon be destroyed. The true sanction of political laws is
to be found in penal legislation, and if that sanction be wanting
the law will sooner or later lose its cogency. He who punishes
infractions of the law is therefore the real master of society.
Now the institution of the jury raises the people itself, or at
least a class of citizens, to the bench of judicial authority.
The institution of the jury consequently invests the people, or
that class of citizens, with the direction of society. *e

[Footnote e: An important remark must, however, be made. Trial
by jury does unquestionably invest the people with a general
control over the actions of citizens, but it does not furnish
means of exercising this control in all cases, or with an
absolute authority. When an absolute monarch has the right of
trying offences by his representatives, the fate of the prisoner
is, as it were, decided beforehand. But even if the people were
predisposed to convict, the composition and the
non-responsibility of the jury would still afford some chances
favorable to the protection of innocence.]

In England the jury is returned from the aristocratic
portion of the nation; *f the aristocracy makes the laws, applies
the laws, and punishes all infractions of the laws; everything is
established upon a consistent footing, and England may with truth
be said to constitute an aristocratic republic. In the United
States the same system is applied to the whole people. Every
American citizen is qualified to be an elector, a juror, and is
eligible to office. *g The system of the jury, as it is
understood in America, appears to me to be as direct and as
extreme a consequence of the sovereignty of the people as
universal suffrage. These institutions are two instruments of
equal power, which contribute to the supremacy of the majority.
All the sovereigns who have chosen to govern by their own
authority, and to direct society instead of obeying its
directions, have destroyed or enfeebled the institution of the
jury. The monarchs of the House of Tudor sent to prison jurors
who refused to convict, and Napoleon caused them to be returned
by his agents.

[Footnote f: [This may be true to some extent of special juries,
but not of common juries. The author seems not to have been
aware that the qualifications of jurors in England vary
exceedingly.]]

[Footnote g: See Appendix, Q.]

However clear most of these truths may seem to be, they do
not command universal assent, and in France, at least, the
institution of trial by jury is still very imperfectly
understood. If the question arises as to the proper
qualification of jurors, it is confined to a discussion of the
intelligence and knowledge of the citizens who may be returned,
as if the jury was merely a judicial institution. This appears
to me to be the least part of the subject. The jury is
pre-eminently a political institution; it must be regarded as one
form of the sovereignty of the people; when that sovereignty is
repudiated, it must be rejected, or it must be adapted to the
laws by which that sovereignty is established. The jury is that
portion of the nation to which the execution of the laws is
entrusted, as the Houses of Parliament constitute that part of
the nation which makes the laws; and in order that society may be
governed with consistency and uniformity, the list of citizens
qualified to serve on juries must increase and diminish with the
list of electors. This I hold to be the point of view most
worthy of the attention of the legislator, and all that remains
is merely accessory.

I am so entirely convinced that the jury is pre-eminently a
political institution that I still consider it in this light when
it is applied in civil causes. Laws are always unstable unless
they are founded upon the manners of a nation; manners are the
only durable and resisting power in a people. When the jury is
reserved for criminal offences, the people only witnesses its
occasional action in certain particular cases; the ordinary
course of life goes on without its interference, and it is
considered as an instrument, but not as the only instrument, of
obtaining justice. This is true a fortiori when the jury is only
applied to certain criminal causes.

When, on the contrary, the influence of the jury is extended
to civil causes, its application is constantly palpable; it
affects all the interests of the community; everyone co-operates
in its work: it thus penetrates into all the usages of life, it
fashions the human mind to its peculiar forms, and is gradually
associated with the idea of justice itself.

The institution of the jury, if confined to criminal causes,
is always in danger, but when once it is introduced into civil
proceedings it defies the aggressions of time and of man. If it
had been as easy to remove the jury from the manners as from the
laws of England, it would have perished under Henry VIII, and
Elizabeth, and the civil jury did in reality, at that period,
save the liberties of the country. In whatever manner the jury
be applied, it cannot fail to exercise a powerful influence upon
the national character; but this influence is prodigiously
increased when it is introduced into civil causes. The jury, and
more especially the jury in civil cases, serves to communicate
the spirit of the judges to the minds of all the citizens; and
this spirit, with the habits which attend it, is the soundest
preparation for free institutions. It imbues all classes with a
respect for the thing judged, and with the notion of right. If
these two elements be removed, the love of independence is
reduced to a mere destructive passion. It teaches men to practice
equity, every man learns to judge his neighbor as he would
himself be judged; and this is especially true of the jury in
civil causes, for, whilst the number of persons who have reason
to apprehend a criminal prosecution is small, every one is liable
to have a civil action brought against him. The jury teaches
every man not to recoil before the responsibility of his own
actions, and impresses him with that manly confidence without
which political virtue cannot exist. It invests each citizen
with a kind of magistracy, it makes them all feel the duties
which they are bound to discharge towards society, and the part
which they take in the Government. By obliging men to turn their
attention to affairs which are not exclusively their own, it rubs
off that individual egotism which is the rust of society.

The jury contributes most powerfully to form the judgement
and to increase the natural intelligence of a people, and this
is, in my opinion, its greatest advantage. It may be regarded as
a gratuitous public school ever open, in which every juror learns
to exercise his rights, enters into daily communication with the
most learned and enlightened members of the upper classes, and
becomes practically acquainted with the laws of his country,
which are brought within the reach of his capacity by the efforts
of the bar, the advice of the judge, and even by the passions of
the parties. I think that the practical intelligence and
political good sense of the Americans are mainly attributable to
the long use which they have made of the jury in civil causes. I
do not know whether the jury is useful to those who are in
litigation; but I am certain it is highly beneficial to those who
decide the litigation; and I look upon it as one of the most
efficacious means for the education of the people which society
can employ.

What I have hitherto said applies to all nations, but the
remark I am now about to make is peculiar to the Americans and to
democratic peoples. I have already observed that in democracies
the members of the legal profession and the magistrates
constitute the only aristocratic body which can check the
irregularities of the people. This aristocracy is invested with
no physical power, but it exercises its conservative influence
upon the minds of men, and the most abundant source of its
authority is the institution of the civil jury. In criminal
causes, when society is armed against a single individual, the
jury is apt to look upon the judge as the passive instrument of
social power, and to mistrust his advice. Moreover, criminal
causes are entirely founded upon the evidence of facts which
common sense can readily appreciate; upon this ground the judge
and the jury are equal. Such, however, is not the case in civil
causes; then the judge appears as a disinterested arbiter between
the conflicting passions of the parties. The jurors look up to
him with confidence and listen to him with respect, for in this
instance their intelligence is completely under the control of
his learning. It is the judge who sums up the various arguments
with which their memory has been wearied out, and who guides them
through the devious course of the proceedings; he points their
attention to the exact question of fact which they are called
upon to solve, and he puts the answer to the question of law into
their mouths. His influence upon their verdict is almost
unlimited.

If I am called upon to explain why I am but little moved by
the arguments derived from the ignorance of jurors in civil
causes, I reply, that in these proceedings, whenever the question
to be solved is not a mere question of fact, the jury has only
the semblance of a judicial body. The jury sanctions the
decision of the judge, they by the authority of society which
they represent, and he by that of reason and of law. *h

[Footnote h: See Appendix, R.]

In England and in America the judges exercise an influence
upon criminal trials which the French judges have never
possessed. The reason of this difference may easily be
discovered; the English and American magistrates establish their
authority in civil causes, and only transfer it afterwards to
tribunals of another kind, where that authority was not acquired.
In some cases (and they are frequently the most important ones)
the American judges have the right of deciding causes alone. *i
Upon these occasions they are accidentally placed in the position
which the French judges habitually occupy, but they are invested
with far more power than the latter; they are still surrounded by
the reminiscence of the jury, and their judgment has almost as
much authority as the voice of the community at large,
represented by that institution. Their influence extends beyond
the limits of the courts; in the recreations of private life as
well as in the turmoil of public business, abroad and in the
legislative assemblies, the American judge is constantly
surrounded by men who are accustomed to regard his intelligence
as superior to their own, and after having exercised his power in
the decision of causes, he continues to influence the habits of
thought and the characters of the individuals who took a part in
his judgment.

[Footnote i: The Federal judges decide upon their own authority
almost all the questions most important to the country.]

The jury, then, which seems to restrict the rights of
magistracy, does in reality consolidate its power, and in no
country are the judges so powerful as there, where the people
partakes their privileges. It is more especially by means of the
jury in civil causes that the American magistrates imbue all
classes of society with the spirit of their profession. Thus the
jury, which is the most energetic means of making the people
rule, is also the most efficacious means of teaching it to rule
well.

Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining The Democratic
Republic - Part I

Principal Causes Which Tend To Maintain The Democratic Republic
In The United States

A democratic republic subsists in the United States, and the
principal object of this book has been to account for the fact of
its existence. Several of the causes which contribute to maintain
the institutions of America have been involuntarily passed by or
only hinted at as I was borne along by my subject. Others I have
been unable to discuss, and those on which I have dwelt most are,
as it were, buried in the details of the former parts of this
work. I think, therefore, that before I proceed to speak of the
future, I cannot do better than collect within a small compass
the reasons which best explain the present. In this
retrospective chapter I shall be succinct, for I shall take care
to remind the reader very summarily of what he already knows; and
I shall only select the most prominent of those facts which I
have not yet pointed out.

All the causes which contribute to the maintenance of the
democratic republic in the United States are reducible to three
heads: -

I. The peculiar and accidental situation in which Providence
has placed the Americans.

II. The laws.

III. The manners and customs of the people.

Accidental Or Providential Causes Which Contribute To The
Maintenance Of The Democratic Republic In The United States
The Union has no neighbors - No metropolis - The Americans have
had the chances of birth in their favor - America an empty
country - How this circumstance contributes powerfully to the
maintenance of the democratic republic in America - How the
American wilds are peopled - Avidity of the Anglo-Americans in
taking possession of the solitudes of the New World -Influence of
physical prosperity upon the political opinions of the Americans.

A thousand circumstances, independent of the will of man,
concur to facilitate the maintenance of a democratic republic in
the United States. Some of these peculiarities are known, the
others may easily be pointed out; but I shall confine myself to
the most prominent amongst them.

The Americans have no neighbors, and consequently they have
no great wars, or financial crises, or inroads, or conquest to
dread; they require neither great taxes, nor great armies, nor
great generals; and they have nothing to fear from a scourge
which is more formidable to republics than all these evils
combined, namely, military glory. It is impossible to deny the
inconceivable influence which military glory exercises upon the
spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the Americans have
twice elected to the head of their Government, is a man of a
violent temper and mediocre talents; no one circumstance in the
whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to
govern a free people, and indeed the majority of the enlightened
classes of the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was
raised to the Presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty
station, solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained
twenty years ago under the walls of New Orleans, a victory which
was, however, a very ordinary achievement, and which could only
be remembered in a country where battles are rare. Now the
people which is thus carried away by the illusions of glory is
unquestionably the most cold and calculating, the most unmilitary
(if I may use the expression), and the most prosaic of all the
peoples of the earth.

America has no great capital *a city, whose influence is
directly or indirectly felt over the whole extent of the country,
which I hold to be one of the first causes of the maintenance of
republican institutions in the United States. In cities men
cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening
a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate
resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of
which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a
prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently
executes its own wishes without their intervention.

[Footnote a: The United States have no metropolis, but they
already contain several very large cities. Philadelphia reckoned
161,000 inhabitants and New York 202,000 in the year 1830. The
lower orders which inhabit these cities constitute a rabble even
more formidable than the populace of European towns. They consist
of freed blacks in the first place, who are condemned by the laws
and by public opinion to a hereditary state of misery and
degradation. They also contain a multitude of Europeans who have
been driven to the shores of the New World by their misfortunes
or their misconduct; and these men inoculate the United States
with all our vices, without bringing with them any of those
interests which counteract their baneful influence. As
inhabitants of a country where they have no civil rights, they
are ready to turn all the passions which agitate the community to
their own advantage; thus, within the last few months serious
riots have broken out in Philadelphia and in New York.
Disturbances of this kind are unknown in the rest of the country,
which is nowise alarmed by them, because the population of the
cities has hitherto exercised neither power nor influence over
the rural districts. Nevertheless, I look upon the size of
certain American cities, and especially on the nature of their
population, as a real danger which threatens the future security
of the democratic republics of the New World; and I venture to
predict that they will perish from this circumstance unless the
government succeeds in creating an armed force, which, whilst it
remains under the control of the majority of the nation, will be
independent of the town population, and able to repress its
excesses.

[The population of the city of New York had risen, in 1870,
to 942,292, and that of Philadelphia to 674,022. Brooklyn, which
may be said to form part of New York city, has a population of
396,099, in addition to that of New York. The frequent
disturbances in the great cities of America, and the excessive
corruption of their local governments - over which there is no
effectual control - are amongst the greatest evils and dangers of
the country.]]

To subject the provinces to the metropolis is therefore not
only to place the destiny of the empire in the hands of a portion
of the community, which may be reprobated as unjust, but to place
it in the hands of a populace acting under its own impulses,
which must be avoided as dangerous. The preponderance of capital
cities is therefore a serious blow upon the representative
system, and it exposes modern republics to the same defect as the
republics of antiquity, which all perished from not having been
acquainted with that form of government.

It would be easy for me to adduce a great number of
secondary causes which have contributed to establish, and which
concur to maintain, the democratic republic of the United States.
But I discern two principal circumstances amongst these favorable
elements, which I hasten to point out. I have already observed
that the origin of the American settlements may be looked upon as
the first and most efficacious cause to which the present
prosperity of the United States may be attributed. The Americans
had the chances of birth in their favor, and their forefathers
imported that equality of conditions into the country whence the
democratic republic has very naturally taken its rise. Nor was
this all they did; for besides this republican condition of
society, the early settler bequeathed to their descendants those
customs, manners, and opinions which contribute most to the
success of a republican form of government. When I reflect upon
the consequences of this primary circumstance, methinks I see the
destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan who landed on
those shores, just as the human race was represented by the first
man.

The chief circumstance which has favored the establishment
and the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States
is the nature of the territory which the American inhabit. Their
ancestors gave them the love of equality and of freedom, but God
himself gave them the means of remaining equal and free, by
placing them upon a boundless continent, which is open to their
exertions. General prosperity is favorable to the stability of
all governments, but more particularly of a democratic
constitution, which depends upon the dispositions of the
majority, and more particularly of that portion of the community
which is most exposed to feel the pressure of want. When the
people rules, it must be rendered happy, or it will overturn the
State, and misery is apt to stimulate it to those excesses to
which ambition rouses kings. The physical causes, independent of
the laws, which contribute to promote general prosperity, are
more numerous in America than they have ever been in any other
country in the world, at any other period of history. In the
United States not only is legislation democratic, but nature
herself favors the cause of the people.

In what part of human tradition can be found anything at all
similar to that which is occurring under our eyes in North
America? The celebrated communities of antiquity were all
founded in the midst of hostile nations, which they were obliged
to subjugate before they could flourish in their place. Even the
moderns have found, in some parts of South America, vast regions
inhabited by a people of inferior civilization, but which
occupied and cultivated the soil. To found their new states it
was necessary to extirpate or to subdue a numerous population,
until civilization has been made to blush for their success. But
North America was only inhabited by wandering tribes, who took no
thought of the natural riches of the soil, and that vast country
was still, properly speaking, an empty continent, a desert land
awaiting its
inhabitants.

Everything is extraordinary in America, the social condition
of the inhabitants, as well as the laws; but the soil upon which
these institutions are founded is more extraordinary than all the
rest. When man was first placed upon the earth by the Creator,
the earth was inexhaustible in its youth, but man was weak and
ignorant; and when he had learned to explore the treasures which
it contained, hosts of his fellow creatures covered its surface,
and he was obliged to earn an asylum for repose and for freedom
by the sword. At that same period North America was discovered,
as if it had been kept in reserve by the Deity, and had just
risen from beneath the waters of the deluge.

That continent still presents, as it did in the primeval
time, rivers which rise from never-failing sources, green and
moist solitudes, and fields which the ploughshare of the
husbandman has never turned. In this state it is offered to man,
not in the barbarous and isolated condition of the early ages,
but to a being who is already in possession of the most potent
secrets of the natural world, who is united to his fellow-men,
and instructed by the experience of fifty centuries. At this
very time thirteen millions of civilized Europeans are peaceably
spreading over those fertile plains, with whose resources and
whose extent they are not yet themselves accurately acquainted.
Three or four thousand soldiers drive the wandering races of the
aborigines before them; these are followed by the pioneers, who
pierce the woods, scare off the beasts of prey, explore the
courses of the inland streams, and make ready the triumphal
procession of civilization across the waste.

The favorable influence of the temporal prosperity of
America upon the institutions of that country has been so often
described by others, and adverted to by myself, that I shall not
enlarge upon it beyond the addition of a few facts. An erroneous
notion is generally entertained that the deserts of America are
peopled by European emigrants, who annually disembark upon the
coasts of the New World, whilst the American population increases
and multiplies upon the soil which its forefathers tilled. The
European settler, however, usually arrives in the United States
without friends, and sometimes without resources; in order to
subsist he is obliged to work for hire, and he rarely proceeds
beyond that belt of industrious population which adjoins the
ocean. The desert cannot be explored without capital or credit;
and the body must be accustomed to the rigors of a new climate
before it can be exposed to the chances of forest life. It is
the Americans themselves who daily quit the spots which gave them
birth to acquire extensive domains in a remote country. Thus the
European leaves his cottage for the trans-Atlantic shores; and
the American, who is born on that very coast, plunges in his turn
into the wilds of Central America. This double emigration is
incessant; it begins in the remotest parts of Europe, it crosses
the Atlantic Ocean, and it advances over the solitudes of the New
World. Millions of men are marching at once towards the same
horizon; their language, their religion, their manners differ,
their object is the same. The gifts of fortune are promised in
the West, and to the West they bend their course. *b

[Footnote b: [The number of foreign immigrants into the United
States in the last fifty years (from 1820 to 1871) is stated to
be 7,556,007. Of these, 4,104,553 spoke English - that is, they
came from Great Britain, Ireland, or the British colonies;
2,643,069 came from Germany or northern Europe; and about half a
million from the south of Europe.]]

No event can be compared with this continuous removal of the
human race, except perhaps those irruptions which preceded the
fall of the Roman Empire. Then, as well as now, generations of
men were impelled forwards in the same direction to meet and
struggle on the same spot; but the designs of Providence were not
the same; then, every newcomer was the harbinger of destruction
and of death; now, every adventurer brings with him the elements
of prosperity and of life. The future still conceals from us the
ulterior consequences of this emigration of the Americans towards
the West; but we can readily apprehend its more immediate
results. As a portion of the inhabitants annually leave the
States in which they were born, the population of these States
increases very slowly, although they have long been established:
thus in Connecticut, which only contains fifty-nine inhabitants
to the square mile, the population has not increased by more than
one-quarter in forty years, whilst that of England has been
augmented by one-third in the lapse of the same period. The
European emigrant always lands, therefore, in a country which is
but half full, and where hands are in request: he becomes a
workman in easy circumstances; his son goes to seek his fortune
in unpeopled regions, and he becomes a rich landowner. The
former amasses the capital which the latter invests, and the
stranger as well as the native is unacquainted with want.

The laws of the United States are extremely favorable to the
division of property; but a cause which is more powerful than the
laws prevents property from being divided to excess. *c This is
very perceptible in the States which are beginning to be thickly
peopled; Massachusetts is the most populous part of the Union,
but it contains only eighty inhabitants to the square mile, which
is must less than in France, where 162 are reckoned to the same
extent of country. But in Massachusetts estates are very rarely
divided; the eldest son takes the land, and the others go to seek
their fortune in the desert. The law has abolished the rights of
primogeniture, but circumstances have concurred to re-establish
it under a form of which none can complain, and by which no just
rights are impaired.

[Footnote c: In New England the estates are exceedingly small,
but they are rarely subjected to further division.]

A single fact will suffice to show the prodigious number of
individuals who leave New England, in this manner, to settle
themselves in the wilds. We were assured in 1830 that thirty-six
of the members of Congress were born in the little State of
Connecticut. The population of Connecticut, which constitutes
only one forty-third part of that of the United States, thus
furnished one-eighth of the whole body of representatives. The
States of Connecticut, however, only sends five delegates to
Congress; and the thirty-one others sit for the new Western
States. If these thirty-one individuals had remained in
Connecticut, it is probable that instead of becoming rich
landowners they would have remained humble laborers, that they
would have lived in obscurity without being able to rise into
public life, and that, far from becoming useful members of the
legislature, they might have been unruly citizens.

These reflections do not escape the observation of the
Americans any more than of ourselves. "It cannot be doubted,"
says Chancellor Kent in his "Treatise on American Law," "that the
division of landed estates must produce great evils when it is
carried to such excess as that each parcel of land is
insufficient to support a family; but these disadvantages have
never been felt in the United States, and many generations must
elapse before they can be felt. The extent of our inhabited
territory, the abundance of adjacent land, and the continual
stream of emigration flowing from the shores of the Atlantic
towards the interior of the country, suffice as yet, and will
long suffice, to prevent the parcelling out of estates."

It is difficult to describe the rapacity with which the
American rushes forward to secure the immense booty which fortune
proffers to him. In the pursuit he fearlessly braves the arrow
of the Indian and the distempers of the forest; he is unimpressed
by the silence of the woods; the approach of beasts of prey does
not disturb him; for he is goaded onwards by a passion more
intense than the love of life. Before him lies a boundless
continent, and he urges onwards as if time pressed, and he was
afraid of finding no room for his exertions. I have spoken of
the emigration from the older States, but how shall I describe
that which takes place from the more recent ones? Fifty years
have scarcely elapsed since that of Ohio was founded; the greater
part of its inhabitants were not born within its confines; its
capital has only been built thirty years, and its territory is
still covered by an immense extent of uncultivated fields;
nevertheless the population of Ohio is already proceeding
westward, and most of the settlers who descend to the fertile
savannahs of Illinois are citizens of Ohio. These men left their
first country to improve their condition; they quit their
resting-place to ameliorate it still more; fortune awaits them
everywhere, but happiness they cannot attain. The desire of
prosperity is become an ardent and restless passion in their
minds which grows by what it gains. They early broke the ties
which bound them to their natal earth, and they have
contracted no fresh ones on their way. Emigration was at first
necessary to them as a means of subsistence; and it soon becomes
a sort of game of chance, which they pursue for the emotions it
excites as much as for the gain it procures.

Sometimes the progress of man is so rapid that the desert
reappears behind him. The woods stoop to give him a passage, and
spring up again when he has passed. It is not uncommon in
crossing the new States of the West to meet with deserted
dwellings in the midst of the wilds; the traveller frequently
discovers the vestiges of a log house in the most solitary
retreats, which bear witness to the power, and no less to the
inconstancy of man. In these abandoned fields, and over these
ruins of a day, the primeval forest soon scatters a fresh
vegetation, the beasts resume the haunts which were once their
own, and Nature covers the traces of man's path with branches and
with flowers, which obliterate his evanescent track.

I remember that, in crossing one of the woodland districts
which still cover the State of New York, I reached the shores of
a lake embosomed in forests coeval with the world. A small
island, covered with woods whose thick foliage concealed its
banks, rose from the centre of the waters. Upon the shores of
the lake no object attested the presence of man except a column
of smoke which might be seen on the horizon rising from the tops
of the trees to the clouds, and seeming to hang from heaven
rather than to be mounting to the sky. An Indian shallop was
hauled up on the sand, which tempted me to visit the islet that
had first attracted my attention, and in a few minutes I set foot
upon its banks. The whole island formed one of those delicious
solitudes of the New World which almost lead civilized man to
regret the haunts of the savage. A luxuriant vegetation bore
witness to the incomparable fruitfulness of the soil. The deep
silence which is common to the wilds of North America was only
broken by the hoarse cooing of the wood-pigeon, and the tapping
of the woodpecker upon the bark of trees. I was far from
supposing that this spot had ever been inhabited, so completely
did Nature seem to be left to her own caprices; but when I
reached the centre of the isle I thought that I discovered some
traces of man. I then proceeded to examine the surrounding
objects with care, and I soon perceived that a European had
undoubtedly been led to seek a refuge in this retreat. Yet what
changes had taken place in the scene of his labors! The logs
which he had hastily hewn to build himself a shed had sprouted
afresh; the very props were intertwined with living verdure, and
his cabin was transformed into a bower. In the midst of these
shrubs a few stones were to be seen, blackened with fire and
sprinkled with thin ashes; here the hearth had no doubt been, and
the chimney in falling had covered it with rubbish. I stood for
some time in silent admiration of the exuberance of Nature and
the littleness of man: and when I was obliged to leave that
enchanting solitude, I exclaimed with melancholy, "Are ruins,
then, already here?"

In Europe we are wont to look upon a restless disposition,
an unbounded desire of riches, and an excessive love of
independence, as propensities very formidable to society. Yet
these are the very elements which ensure a long and peaceful
duration to the republics of America. Without these unquiet
passions the population would collect in certain spots, and would
soon be subject to wants like those of the Old World, which it is
difficult to satisfy; for such is the present good fortune of the
New World, that the vices of its inhabitants are scarcely less
favorable to society than their virtues. These circumstances
exercise a great influence on the estimation in which human
actions are held in the two hemispheres. The Americans
frequently term what we should call cupidity a laudable industry;
and they blame as faint-heartedness what we consider to be the
virtue of moderate desires.

In France, simple tastes, orderly manners, domestic
affections, and the attachments which men feel to the place of
their birth, are looked upon as great guarantees of the
tranquillity and happiness of the State. But in America nothing
seems to be more prejudicial to society than these virtues. The
French Canadians, who have faithfully preserved the traditions of
their pristine manners, are already embarrassed for room upon
their small territory; and this little community, which has so
recently begun to exist, will shortly be a prey to the calamities
incident to old nations. In Canada, the most enlightened,
patriotic, and humane inhabitants make extraordinary efforts to
render the people dissatisfied with those simple enjoyments which
still content it. There, the seductions of wealth are vaunted
with as much zeal as the charms of an honest but limited income
in the Old World, and more exertions are made to excite the
passions of the citizens there than to calm them elsewhere. If
we listen to their eulogies, we shall hear that nothing is more
praiseworthy than to exchange the pure and homely pleasures which
even the poor man tastes in his own country for the dull delights
of prosperity under a foreign sky; to leave the patrimonial
hearth and the turf beneath which his forefathers sleep; in
short, to abandon the living and the dead in quest of fortune.

At the present time America presents a field for human
effort far more extensive than any sum of labor which can be
applied to work it. In America too much knowledge cannot be
diffused; for all knowledge, whilst it may serve him who
possesses it, turns also to the advantage of those who are
without it. New wants are not to be feared, since they can be
satisfied without difficulty; the growth of human passions need
not be dreaded, since all passions may find an easy and a
legitimate object; nor can men be put in possession of too much
freedom, since they are scarcely ever tempted to misuse their
liberties.

The American republics of the present day are like companies
of adventurers formed to explore in common the waste lands of the
New World, and busied in a flourishing trade. The passions which
agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political but
their commercial passions; or, to speak more correctly, they
introduce the habits they contract in business into their
political life. They love order, without which affairs do not
prosper; and they set an especial value upon a regular conduct,
which is the foundation of a solid business; they prefer the good
sense which amasses large fortunes to that enterprising spirit
which frequently dissipates them; general ideas alarm their
minds, which are accustomed to positive calculations, and they
hold practice in more honor than theory.

It is in America that one learns to understand the influence
which physical prosperity exercises over political actions, and
even over opinions which ought to acknowledge no sway but that of
reason; and it is more especially amongst strangers that this
truth is perceptible. Most of the European emigrants to the New
World carry with them that wild love of independence and of
change which our calamities are so apt to engender. I sometimes
met with Europeans in the United States who had been obliged to
leave their own country on account of their political opinions.
They all astonished me by the language they held, but one of them
surprised me more than all the rest. As I was crossing one of
the most remote districts of Pennsylvania I was benighted, and
obliged to beg for hospitality at the gate of a wealthy planter,
who was a Frenchman by birth. He bade me sit down beside his
fire, and we began to talk with that freedom which befits persons
who meet in the backwoods, two thousand leagues from their native
country. I was aware that my host had been a great leveller and
an ardent demagogue forty years ago, and that his name was not
unknown to fame. I was, therefore, not a little surprised to
hear him discuss the rights of property as an economist or a
landowner might have done: he spoke of the necessary gradations
which fortune establishes among men, of obedience to established
laws, of the influence of good morals in commonwealths, and of
the support which religious opinions give to order and to
freedom; he even went to far as to quote an evangelical authority
in corroboration of one of his political tenets.

I listened, and marvelled at the feebleness of human reason.
A proposition is true or false, but no art can prove it to be one
or the other, in the midst of the uncertainties of science and
the conflicting lessons of experience, until a new incident
disperses the clouds of doubt; I was poor, I become rich, and I
am not to expect that prosperity will act upon my conduct, and
leave my judgment free; my opinions change with my fortune, and
the happy circumstances which I turn to my advantage furnish me
with that decisive argument which was before wanting. The
influence of prosperity acts still more freely upon the American
than upon strangers. The American has always seen the connection
of public order and public prosperity, intimately united as they
are, go on before his eyes; he does not conceive that one can
subsist without the other; he has therefore nothing to forget;
nor has he, like so many Europeans, to unlearn the lessons of his
early education.

Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining The Democratic
Republic - Part II

Influence Of The Laws Upon The Maintenance Of The Democratic
Republic In The United States

Three principal causes of the maintenance of the democratic
republic - Federal Constitutions - Municipal institutions -
Judicial power.

The principal aim of this book has been to make known the
laws of the United States; if this purpose has been accomplished,
the reader is already enabled to judge for himself which are the
laws that really tend to maintain the democratic republic, and
which endanger its existence. If I have not succeeded in
explaining this in the whole course of my work, I cannot hope to
do so within the limits of a single chapter. It is not my
intention to retrace the path I have already pursued, and a very
few lines will suffice to recapitulate what I have previously
explained.

Three circumstances seem to me to contribute most powerfully
to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United
States.

The first is that Federal form of Government which the
Americans have adopted, and which enables the Union to combine
the power of a great empire with the security of a small State.

The second consists in those municipal institutions which
limit the despotism of the majority, and at the same time impart
a taste for freedom and a knowledge of the art of being free to
the people.

The third is to be met with in the constitution of the
judicial power. I have shown in what manner the courts of justice
serve to repress the excesses of democracy, and how they check
and direct the impulses of the majority without stopping its
activity.

Influence Of Manners Upon The Maintenance Of The Democratic
Republic In The United States

I have previously remarked that the manners of the people
may be considered as one of the general causes to which the
maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States is
attributable. I here used the word manners with the meaning
which the ancients attached to the word mores, for I apply it not
only to manners in their proper sense of what constitutes the
character of social intercourse, but I extend it to the various
notions and opinions current among men, and to the mass of those
ideas which constitute their character of mind. I comprise,
therefore, under this term the whole moral and intellectual
condition of a people. My intention is not to draw a picture of
American manners, but simply to point out such features of them
as are favorable to the maintenance of political institutions.

Religion Considered As A Political Institution, Which Powerfully
Contributes To The Maintenance Of The Democratic Republic Amongst
The Americans

North America peopled by men who professed a democratic and
republican Christianity - Arrival of the Catholics - For what
reason the Catholics form the most democratic and the most
republican class at the present time.

Every religion is to be found in juxtaposition to a
political opinion which is connected with it by affinity. If the
human mind be left to follow its own bent, it will regulate the
temporal and spiritual institutions of society upon one uniform
principle; and man will endeavor, if I may use the expression, to
harmonize the state in which he lives upon earth with the state
which he believes to await him in heaven. The greatest part of
British America was peopled by men who, after having shaken off
the authority of the Pope, acknowledged no other religious
supremacy; they brought with them into the New World a form of
Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a
democratic and republican religion. This sect contributed
powerfully to the establishment of a democracy and a republic,
and from the earliest settlement of the emigrants politics and
religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.

About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic
population into the United States; on the other hand, the
Catholics of America made proselytes, and at the present moment
more than a million of Christians professing the truths of the
Church of Rome are to be met with in the Union. *d The Catholics
are faithful to the observances of their religion; they are
fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines.
Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most
democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States;
and although this fact may surprise the observer at first, the
causes by which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon
reflection.

[Footnote d: [It is difficult to ascertain with accuracy the
amount of the Roman Catholic population of the United States, but
in 1868 an able writer in the "Edinburgh Review" (vol. cxxvii. p.
521) affirmed that the whole Catholic population of the United
States was then about 4,000,000, divided into 43 dioceses, with
3,795 churches, under the care of 45 bishops and 2,317 clergymen.
But this rapid increase is mainly supported by immigration from
the Catholic countries of Europe.]]

I think that the Catholic religion has erroneously been
looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Amongst the
various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the
contrary, to be one of those which are most favorable to the
equality of conditions. In the Catholic Church, the religious
community is composed of only two elements, the priest and the
people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, and
all below him are equal.

On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human
capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and
ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details
of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich
and needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and
the weak, it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but,
reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds
all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar,
even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism
predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not
prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of
Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent,
more than to render them equal.

Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy; if the sovereign
be removed, all the other classes of society are more equal than
they are in republics. It has not unfrequently occurred that the
Catholic priest has left the service of the altar to mix with the
governing powers of society, and to take his place amongst the
civil gradations of men. This religious influence has sometimes
been used to secure the interests of that political state of
things to which he belonged. At other times Catholics have taken
the side of aristocracy from a spirit of religion.

But no sooner is the priesthood entirely separated from the
government, as is the case in the United States, than is found
that no class of men are more naturally disposed than the
Catholics to transfuse the doctrine of the equality of conditions
into the political world. If, then, the Catholic citizens of the
United States are not forcibly led by the nature of their tenets
to adopt democratic and republican principles, at least they are
not necessarily opposed to them; and their social position, as
well as their limited number, obliges them to adopt these
opinions. Most of the Catholics are poor, and they have no
chance of taking a part in the government unless it be open to
all the citizens. They constitute a minority, and all rights
must be respected in order to insure to them the free exercise of
their own privileges. These two causes induce them,
unconsciously, to adopt political doctrines, which they would
perhaps support with less zeal if they were rich and
preponderant.

The Catholic clergy of the United States has never attempted
to oppose this political tendency, but it seeks rather to justify
its results. The priests in America have divided the
intellectual world into two parts: in the one they place the
doctrines of revealed religion, which command their assent; in
the other they leave those truths which they believe to have been
freely left open to the researches of political inquiry. Thus
the Catholics of the United States are at the same time the most
faithful believers and the most zealous citizens.

It may be asserted that in the United States no religious
doctrine displays the slightest hostility to democratic and
republican institutions. The clergy of all the different sects
hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws,
and the human intellect flows onwards in one sole current.

I happened to be staying in one of the largest towns in the
Union, when I was invited to attend a public meeting which had
been called for the purpose of assisting the Poles, and of
sending them supplies of arms and money. I found two or three
thousand persons collected in a vast hall which had been prepared
to receive them. In a short time a priest in his ecclesiastical
robes advanced to the front of the hustings: the spectators rose,
and stood
uncovered, whilst he spoke in the following terms: -

"Almighty God! the God of Armies! Thou who didst
strengthen the hearts and guide the arms of our fathers when they
were fighting for the sacred rights of national independence;
Thou who didst make them triumph over a hateful oppression, and
hast granted to our people the benefits of liberty and peace;
Turn, O Lord, a favorable eye upon the other hemisphere;
pitifully look down upon that heroic nation which is even now
struggling as we did in the former time, and for the same rights
which we defended with our blood. Thou, who didst create Man in
the likeness of the same image, let not tyranny mar Thy work, and
establish inequality upon the earth. Almighty God! do Thou
watch over the destiny of the Poles, and render them worthy to be
free. May Thy wisdom direct their councils, and may Thy strength
sustain their arms! Shed forth Thy terror over their enemies,
scatter the powers which take counsel against them; and vouchsafe
that the injustice which the world has witnessed for fifty years,
be not consummated in our time. O Lord, who holdest alike the
hearts of nations and of men in Thy powerful hand; raise up
allies to the sacred cause of right; arouse the French nation
from the apathy in which its rulers retain it, that it go forth
again to fight for the liberties of the world.

"Lord, turn not Thou Thy face from us, and grant that we may
always be the most religious as well as the freest people of the
earth. Almighty God, hear our supplications this day. Save the
Poles, we beseech Thee, in the name of Thy well-beloved Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ, who died upon the cross for the salvation of
men. Amen."

The whole meeting responded "Amen!" with devotion.

Indirect Influence Of Religious Opinions Upon Political Society
In The United States

Christian morality common to all sects - Influence of religion
upon the manners of the Americans - Respect for the marriage tie
- In what manner religion confines the imagination of the
Americans within certain limits, and checks the passion of
innovation - Opinion of the Americans on the political utility of
religion - Their exertions to extend and secure its predominance.

I have just shown what the direct influence of religion upon
politics is in the United States, but its indirect influence
appears to me to be still more considerable, and it never
instructs the Americans more fully in the art of being free than
when it says nothing of freedom.

The sects which exist in the United States are innumerable.
They all differ in respect to the worship which is due from man
to his Creator, but they all agree in respect to the duties which
are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own
peculiar manner, but all the sects preach the same moral law in
the name of God. If it be of the highest importance to man, as
an individual, that his religion should be true, the case of
society is not the same. Society has no future life to hope for
or to fear; and provided the citizens profess a religion, the
peculiar tenets of that religion are of very little importance to
its interests. Moreover, almost all the sects of the United
States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and
Christian morality is everywhere the same.

It may be believed without unfairness that a certain number
of Americans pursue a peculiar form of worship, from habit more
than from conviction. In the United States the sovereign
authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be
common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the
Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of
men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its
utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its
influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and
free nation of the earth.

I have remarked that the members of the American clergy in
general, without even excepting those who do not admit religious
liberty, are all in favor of civil freedom; but they do not
support any particular political system. They keep aloof from
parties and from public affairs. In the United States religion
exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details
of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community,
and by regulating domestic life it regulates the State.

I do not question that the great austerity of manners which
is observable in the United States, arises, in the first
instance, from religious faith. Religion is often unable to
restrain man from the numberless temptations of fortune; nor can
it check that passion for gain which every incident of his life
contributes to arouse, but its influence over the mind of woman
is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is
certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is so
much respected as in America, or where conjugal happiness is more
highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe almost all the
disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic
life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of
home, is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of
heart, and the evil of fluctuating desires. Agitated by the
tumultuous passions which frequently disturb his dwelling, the
European is galled by the obedience which the legislative powers
of the State exact. But when the American retires from the
turmoil of public life to the bosom of his family, he finds in it
the image of order and of peace. There his pleasures are simple
and natural, his joys are innocent and calm; and as he finds that
an orderly life is the surest path to happiness, he accustoms
himself without difficulty to moderate his opinions as well as
his tastes. Whilst the European endeavors to forget his domestic
troubles by agitating society, the American derives from his own
home that love of order which he afterwards carries with him into
public affairs.

In the United States the influence of religion is not
confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of
the people. Amongst the Anglo-Americans, there are some who
profess the doctrines of Christianity from a sincere belief in
them, and others who do the same because they are afraid to be
suspected of unbelief. Christianity, therefore, reigns without
any obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have
before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed
and determinate, although the political world is abandoned to the
debates and the experiments of men. Thus the human mind is never
left to wander across a boundless field; and, whatever may be its
pretensions, it is checked from time to time by barriers which it
cannot surmount. Before it can perpetrate innovation, certain
primal and immutable principles are laid down, and the boldest
conceptions of human device are subjected to certain forms which
retard and stop their completion.

The imagination of the Americans, even in its greatest
flights, is circumspect and undecided; its impulses are checked,
and its works unfinished. These habits of restraint recur in
political society, and are singularly favorable both to the
tranquillity of the people and to the durability of the
institutions it has established. Nature and circumstances
concurred to make the inhabitants of the United States bold men,
as is sufficiently attested by the enterprising spirit with which
they seek for fortune. If the mind of the Americans were free
from all trammels, they would very shortly become the most daring
innovators and the most implacable disputants in the world. But
the revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an
ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does
not easily permit them to violate the laws that oppose their
designs; nor would they find it easy to surmount the scruples of
their partisans, even if they were able to get over their own.
Hitherto no one in the United States has dared to advance the
maxim, that everything is permissible with a view to the
interests of society; an impious adage which seems to have been
invented in an age of freedom to shelter all the tyrants of
future ages. Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what
they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids
them to commit, what is rash or unjust.

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government
of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost
of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not
impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free
institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the
inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious
belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere
faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart? but
I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the
maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not
peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to
the whole nation, and to every rank of society.

In the United States, if a political character attacks a
sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect
from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together,
everyone abandons him, and he remains alone.

Whilst I was in America, a witness, who happened to be
called at the assizes of the county of Chester (State of New
York), declared that he did not believe in the existence of God,
or in the immortality of the soul. The judge refused to admit
his evidence, on the ground that the witness had destroyed
beforehand all the confidence of the Court in what he was about
to say. *e The newspapers related the fact without any further
comment.

[Footnote e: The New York "Spectator" of August 23, 1831, relates
the fact in the following terms: - "The Court of Common Pleas of
Chester county (New York) a few days since rejected a witness who
declared his disbelief in the existence of God. The presiding
judge remarked that he had not before been aware that there was a
man living who did not believe in the existence of God; that this
belief constituted the sanction of all testimony in a court of
justice, and that he knew of no cause in a Christian country
where a witness had been permitted to testify without such
belief."]

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of
liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to
make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this
conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith
which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

I have known of societies formed by the Americans to send
out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western States to found
schools and churches there, lest religion should be suffered to
die away in those remote settlements, and the rising States be
less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from which
they emanated. I met with wealthy New Englanders who abandoned
the country in which they were born in order to lay the
foundations of Christianity and of freedom on the banks of the
Missouri, or in the prairies of Illinois. Thus religious zeal is
perpetually stimulated in the United States by the duties of
patriotism. These men do not act from an exclusive consideration
of the promises of a future life; eternity is only one motive of
their devotion to the cause; and if you converse with these
missionaries of Christian civilization, you will be surprised to
find how much value they set upon the goods of this world, and
that you meet with a politician where you expected to find a
priest. They will tell you that "all the American republics are
collectively involved with each other; if the republics of the
West were to fall into anarchy, or to be mastered by a despot,
the republican institutions which now flourish upon the shores of
the Atlantic Ocean would be in great peril. It is, therefore,
our interest that the new States should be religious, in order to
maintain our liberties."

Such are the opinions of the Americans, and if any hold that
the religious spirit which I admire is the very thing most amiss
in America, and that the only element wanting to the freedom and
happiness of the human race is to believe in some blind
cosmogony, or to assert with Cabanis the secretion of thought by
the brain, I can only reply that those who hold this language
have never been in America, and that they have never seen a
religious or a free nation. When they return from their
expedition, we shall hear what they have to say.

There are persons in France who look upon republican
institutions as a temporary means of power, of wealth, and
distinction; men who are the condottieri of liberty, and who
fight for their own advantage, whatever be the colors they wear:
it is not to these that I address myself. But there are others
who look forward to the republican form of government as a
tranquil and lasting state, towards which modern society is daily
impelled by the ideas and manners of the time, and who sincerely
desire to prepare men to be free. When these men attack
religious opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions to
the prejudice of their interests. Despotism may govern without
faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in
the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the
monarchy which they attack; and it is more needed in democratic
republics than in any others. How is it possible that society
should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened in
proportion as the political tie is relaxed? and what can be done
with a people which is its own master, if it be not submissive to
the Divinity?

Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining The Democratic
Republic - Part III

Principal Causes Which Render Religion Powerful In America
Care taken by the Americans to separate the Church from the State
-  The laws, public opinion, and even the exertions of the clergy
concur to promote this end - Influence of religion upon the mind
in the United States attributable to this cause - Reason of this
- What is the natural state of men with regard to religion at the
present time - What are the peculiar and incidental causes which
prevent men, in certain countries, from arriving at this state.

The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained the
gradual decay of religious faith in a very simple manner.
Religious zeal, said they, must necessarily fail, the more
generally liberty is established and knowledge diffused.
Unfortunately, facts are by no means in accordance with their
theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief
is only equalled by their ignorance and their debasement, whilst
in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the
world fulfils all the outward duties of religious fervor.

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect
of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and
the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great
political consequences resulting from this state of things, to
which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the
spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses
diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that
they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over
the same country. My desire to discover the causes of this
phenomenon increased from day to day. In order to satisfy it I
questioned the members of all the different sects; and I more
especially sought the society of the clergy, who are the
depositaries of the different persuasions, and who are more
especially interested in their duration. As a member of the
Roman Catholic Church I was more particularly brought into
contact with several of its priests, with whom I became
intimately acquainted. To each of these men I expressed my
astonishment and I explained my doubts; I found that they
differed upon matters of detail alone; and that they mainly
attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country to
the separation of Church and State. I do not hesitate to affirm
that during my stay in America I did not meet with a single
individual, of the clergy or of the laity, who was not of the
same opinion upon this point.

This led me to examine more attentively than I had hitherto
done, the station which the American clergy occupy in political
society. I learned with surprise that they filled no public
appointments; *f not one of them is to be met with in the
administration, and they are not even represented in the
legislative assemblies. In several States *g the law excludes
them from political life, public opinion in all. And when I came
to inquire into the prevailing spirit of the clergy I found that
most of its members seemed to retire of their own accord from the
exercise of power, and that they made it the pride of their
profession to abstain from politics.

[Footnote f: Unless this term be applied to the functions which
many of them fill in the schools. Almost all education is
entrusted to the clergy.]

[Footnote g: See the Constitution of New York, art. 7, Section 4:
-
"And whereas the ministers of the gospel are, by their
profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of
souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of
their functions: therefore no minister of the gospel, or priest
of any denomination whatsoever, shall at any time hereafter,
under any pretence or description whatever, be eligible to, or
capable of holding, any civil or military office or place within
this State."

See also the constitutions of North Carolina, art. 31;
Virginia; South Carolina, art. I, Section 23; Kentucky, art. 2,
Section 26; Tennessee, art. 8, Section I; Louisiana, art. 2,
Section 22.]

I heard them inveigh against ambition and deceit, under
whatever political opinions these vices might chance to lurk; but
I learned from their discourses that men are not guilty in the
eye of God for any opinions concerning political government which
they may profess with sincerity, any more than they are for their
mistakes in building a house or in driving a furrow. I perceived
that these ministers of the gospel eschewed all parties with the
anxiety attendant upon personal interest. These facts convinced
me that what I had been told was true; and it then became my
object to investigate their causes, and to inquire how it
happened that the real authority of religion was increased by a
state of things which diminished its apparent force: these causes
did not long escape my researches.

The short space of threescore years can never content the
imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world
satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a
natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to
exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. These
different feelings incessantly urge his soul to the contemplation
of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither.
Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less
natural to the human heart than hope itself. Men cannot abandon
their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect,
and a sort of violent distortion of their true natures; but they
are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments; for
unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of
mankind. If we only consider religious institutions in a purely
human point of view, they may be said to derive an inexhaustible
element of strength from man himself, since they belong to one of
the constituent principles of human nature.

I am aware that at certain times religion may strengthen
this influence, which originates in itself, by the artificial
power of the laws, and by the support of those temporal
institutions which direct society. Religions, intimately united
to the governments of the earth, have been known to exercise a
sovereign authority derived from the twofold source of terror and
of faith; but when a religion contracts an alliance of this
nature, I do not hesitate to affirm that it commits the same
error as a man who should sacrifice his future to his present
welfare; and in obtaining a power to which it has no claim, it
risks that authority which is rightfully its own. When a religion
founds its empire upon the desire of immortality which lives in
every human heart, it may aspire to universal dominion; but when
it connects itself with a government, it must necessarily adopt
maxims which are only applicable to certain nations. Thus, in
forming an alliance with a political power, religion augments its
authority over a few, and forfeits the hope of reigning over all.

As long as a religion rests upon those sentiments which are
the consolation of all affliction, it may attract the affections
of mankind. But if it be mixed up with the bitter passions of
the world, it may be constrained to defend allies whom its
interests, and not the principle of love, have given to it; or to
repel as antagonists men who are still attached to its own
spirit, however opposed they may be to the powers to which it is
allied. The Church cannot share the temporal power of the State
without being the object of a portion of that animosity which the
latter excites.

The political powers which seem to be most firmly
established have frequently no better guarantee for their
duration than the opinions of a generation, the interests of the
time, or the life of an individual. A law may modify the social
condition which seems to be most fixed and determinate; and with
the social condition everything else must change. The powers of
society are more or less fugitive, like the years which we spend
upon the earth; they succeed each other with rapidity, like the
fleeting cares of life; and no government has ever yet been
founded upon an invariable disposition of the human heart, or
upon an imperishable interest.

As long as a religion is sustained by those feelings,
propensities, and passions which are found to occur under the
same forms, at all the different periods of history, it may defy
the efforts of time; or at least it can only be destroyed by
another religion. But when religion clings to the interests of
the world, it becomes almost as fragile a thing as the powers of
earth. It is the only one of them all which can hope for
immortality; but if it be connected with their ephemeral
authority, it shares their fortunes, and may fall with those
transient passions which supported them for a day. The alliance
which religion contracts with political powers must needs be
onerous to itself; since it does not require their assistance to
live, and by giving them its assistance to live, and by giving
them its assistance it may be exposed to decay.

The danger which I have just pointed out always exists, but
it is not always equally visible. In some ages governments seem
to be imperishable; in others, the existence of society appears
to be more precarious than the life of man. Some constitutions
plunge the citizens into a lethargic somnolence, and others rouse
them to feverish excitement. When governments appear to be so
strong, and laws so stable, men do not perceive the dangers which
may accrue from a union of Church and State. When governments
display so much weakness, and laws so much inconstancy, the
danger is self-evident, but it is no longer possible to avoid it;
to be effectual, measures must be taken to discover its approach.

In proportion as a nation assumes a democratic condition of
society, and as communities display democratic propensities, it
becomes more and more dangerous to connect religion with
political institutions; for the time is coming when authority
will be bandied from hand to hand, when political theories will
succeed each other, and when men, laws, and constitutions will
disappear, or be modified from day to day, and this, not for a
season only, but unceasingly. Agitation and mutability are
inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as
stagnation and inertness are the law of absolute monarchies.

If the Americans, who change the head of the Government once
in four years, who elect new legislators every two years, and
renew the provincial officers every twelvemonth; if the
Americans, who have abandoned the political world to the attempts
of innovators, had not placed religion beyond their reach, where
could it abide in the ebb and flow of human opinions? where would
that respect which belongs to it be paid, amidst the struggles of
faction? and what would become of its immortality, in the midst
of perpetual decay? The American clergy were the first to
perceive this truth, and to act in conformity with it. They saw
that they must renounce their religious influence, if they were
to strive for political power; and they chose to give up the
support of the State, rather than to share its vicissitudes.

In America, religion is perhaps less powerful than it has
been at certain periods in the history of certain peoples; but
its influence is more lasting. It restricts itself to its own
resources, but of those none can deprive it: its circle is
limited to certain principles, but those principles are entirely
its own, and under its undisputed control.

On every side in Europe we hear voices complaining of the
absence of religious faith, and inquiring the means of restoring
to religion some remnant of its pristine authority. It seems to
me that we must first attentively consider what ought to be the
natural state of men with regard to religion at the present time;
and when we know what we have to hope and to fear, we may discern
the end to which our efforts ought to be directed.

The two great dangers which threaten the existence of
religions are schism and indifference. In ages of fervent
devotion, men sometimes abandon their religion, but they only
shake it off in order to adopt another. Their faith changes the
objects to which it is directed, but it suffers no decline. The
old religion then excites enthusiastic attachment or bitter
enmity in either party; some leave it with anger, others cling to
it with increased devotedness, and although persuasions differ,
irreligion is unknown. Such, however, is not the case when a
religious belief is secretly undermined by doctrines which may be
termed negative, since they deny the truth of one religion
without affirming that of any other. Progidious revolutions then
take place in the human mind, without the apparent co-operation
of the passions of man, and almost without his knowledge. Men
lose the objects of their fondest hopes, as if through
forgetfulness. They are carried away by an imperceptible current
which they have not the courage to stem, but which they follow
with regret, since it bears them from a faith they love, to a
scepticism that plunges them into despair.

In ages which answer to this description, men desert their
religious opinions from lukewarmness rather than from dislike;
they do not reject them, but the sentiments by which they were
once fostered disappear. But if the unbeliever does not admit
religion to be true, he still considers it useful. Regarding
religious institutions in a human point of view, he acknowledges
their influence upon manners and legislation. He admits that
they may serve to make men live in peace with one another, and to
prepare them gently for the hour of death. He regrets the faith
which he has lost; and as he is deprived of a treasure which he
has learned to estimate at its full value, he scruples to take it
from those who still possess it.

On the other hand, those who continue to believe are not
afraid openly to avow their faith. They look upon those who do
not share their persuasion as more worthy of pity than of
opposition; and they are aware that to acquire the esteem of the
unbelieving, they are not obliged to follow their example. They
are hostile to no one in the world; and as they do not consider
the society in which they live as an arena in which religion is
bound to face its thousand deadly foes, they love their
contemporaries, whilst they condemn their weaknesses and lament
their errors.

As those who do not believe, conceal their incredulity; and
as those who believe, display their faith, public opinion
pronounces itself in favor of religion: love, support, and honor
are bestowed upon it, and it is only by searching the human soul
that we can detect the wounds which it has received. The mass of
mankind, who are never without the feeling of religion, do not
perceive anything at variance with the established faith. The
instinctive desire of a future life brings the crowd about the
altar, and opens the hearts of men to the precepts and
consolations of religion.

But this picture is not applicable to us: for there are men
amongst us who have ceased to believe in Christianity, without
adopting any other religion; others who are in the perplexities
of doubt, and who already affect not to believe; and others,
again, who are afraid to avow that Christian faith which they
still cherish in secret.

Amidst these lukewarm partisans and ardent antagonists a
small number of believers exist, who are ready to brave all
obstacles and to scorn all dangers in defence of their faith.
They have done violence to human weakness, in order to rise
superior to public opinion. Excited by the effort they have
made, they scarcely knew where to stop; and as they know that the
first use which the French made of independence was to attack
religion, they look upon their contemporaries with dread, and
they recoil in alarm from the liberty which their fellow-citizens
are seeking to obtain. As unbelief appears to them to be a
novelty, they comprise all that is new in one indiscriminate
animosity. They are at war with their age and country, and they
look upon every opinion which is put forth there as the necessary
enemy of the faith.

Such is not the natural state of men with regard to religion
at the present day; and some extraordinary or incidental cause
must be at work in France to prevent the human mind from
following its original propensities and to drive it beyond the
limits at which it ought naturally to stop. I am intimately
convinced that this extraordinary and incidental cause is the
close connection of politics and religion. The unbelievers of
Europe attack the Christians as their political opponents, rather
than as their religious adversaries; they hate the Christian
religion as the opinion of a party, much more than as an error of
belief; and they reject the clergy less because they are the
representatives of the Divinity than because they are the allies
of authority.

In Europe, Christianity has been intimately united to the
powers of the earth. Those powers are now in decay, and it is,
as it were, buried under their ruins. The living body of
religion has been bound down to the dead corpse of superannuated
polity: cut but the bonds which restrain it, and that which is
alive will rise once more. I know not what could restore the
Christian Church of Europe to the energy of its earlier days;
that power belongs to God alone; but it may be the effect of
human policy to leave the faith in the full exercise of the
strength which it still retains.

How The Instruction, The Habits, And The Practical Experience Of
The Americans Promote The Success Of Their Democratic
Institutions

What is to be understood by the instruction of the American
people - The human mind more superficially instructed in the
United States than in Europe - No one completely uninstructed -
Reason of this - Rapidity with which opinions are diffused even
in the uncultivated States of the West - Practical experience
more serviceable to the Americans than book-learning.

I have but little to add to what I have already said
concerning the influence which the instruction and the habits of
the Americans exercise upon the maintenance of their political
institutions.

America has hitherto produced very few writers of
distinction; it possesses no great historians, and not a single
eminent poet. The inhabitants of that country look upon what are
properly styled literary pursuits with a kind of disapprobation;
and there are towns of very second-rate importance in Europe in
which more literary works are annually published than in the
twenty-four States of the Union put together. The spirit of the
Americans is averse to general ideas; and it does not seek
theoretical discoveries. Neither politics nor manufactures direct
them to these occupations; and although new laws are perpetually
enacted in the United States, no great writers have hitherto
inquired into the general principles of their legislation. The
Americans have lawyers and commentators, but no jurists; *h and
they furnish examples rather than lessons to the world. The same
observation applies to the mechanical arts. In America, the
inventions of Europe are adopted with sagacity; they are
perfected, and adapted with admirable skill to the wants of the
country. Manufactures exist, but the science of manufacture is
not cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few
inventors. Fulton was obliged to proffer his services to foreign
nations for a long time before he was able to devote them to his
own country.

[Footnote h: [This cannot be said with truth of the country of
Kent, Story, and Wheaton.]]

The observer who is desirous of forming an opinion on the
state of instruction amongst the Anglo-Americans must consider
the same object from two different points of view. If he only
singles out the learned, he will be astonished to find how rare
they are; but if he counts the ignorant, the American people will
appear to be the most enlightened community in the world. The
whole population, as I observed in another place, is situated
between these two extremes. In New England, every citizen
receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is
moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences of his religion,
the history of his country, and the leading features of its
Constitution. In the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it
is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all
these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of
phenomenon.

When I compare the Greek and Roman republics with these
American States; the manuscript libraries of the former, and
their rude population, with the innumerable journals and the
enlightened people of the latter; when I remember all the
attempts which are made to judge the modern republics by the
assistance of those of antiquity, and to infer what will happen
in our time from what took place two thousand years ago, I am
tempted to burn my books, in order to apply none but novel ideas
to so novel a condition of society.

What I have said of New England must not, however, be
applied indistinctly to the whole Union; as we advance towards
the West or the South, the instruction of the people diminishes.
In the States which are adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, a certain
number of individuals may be found, as in our own countries, who
are devoid of the rudiments of instruction. But there is not a
single district in the United States sunk in complete ignorance;
and for a very simple reason: the peoples of Europe started from
the darkness of a barbarous condition, to advance toward the
light of civilization; their progress has been unequal; some of
them have improved apace, whilst others have loitered in their
course, and some have stopped, and are still sleeping upon the
way. *i

[Footnote i: [In the Northern States the number of persons
destitute of instruction is inconsiderable, the largest number
being 241,152 in the State of New York (according to Spaulding's
"Handbook of American Statistics" for 1874); but in the South no
less than 1,516,339 whites and 2,671,396 colored persons are
returned as "illiterate."]]

Such has not been the case in the United States. The Anglo-
Americans settled in a state of civilization, upon that territory
which their descendants occupy; they had not to begin to learn,
and it was sufficient for them not to forget. Now the children
of these same Americans are the persons who, year by year,
transport their dwellings into the wilds; and with their
dwellings their acquired information and their esteem for
knowledge. Education has taught them the utility of instruction,
and has enabled them to transmit that instruction to their
posterity. In the United States society has no infancy, but it
is born in man's estate.

The Americans never use the word "peasant," because they
have no idea of the peculiar class which that term denotes; the
ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and
the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved amongst
them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the
vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage
of civilization. At the extreme borders of the Confederate
States, upon the confines of society and of the wilderness, a
population of bold adventurers have taken up their abode, who
pierce the solitudes of the American woods, and seek a country
there, in order to escape that poverty which awaited them in
their native provinces. As soon as the pioneer arrives upon the
spot which is to serve him for a retreat, he fells a few trees
and builds a loghouse. Nothing can offer a more miserable aspect
than these isolated dwellings. The traveller who approaches one
of them towards nightfall, sees the flicker of the hearth-flame
through the chinks in the walls; and at night, if the wind rises,
he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro in the midst of the
great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this poor hut is
the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison
can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling which shelters
him. Everything about him is primitive and unformed, but he is
himself the result of the labor and the experience of eighteen
centuries. He wears the dress, and he speaks the language of
cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious of the future,
and ready for argument upon the present; he is, in short, a
highly civilized being, who consents, for a time, to inhabit the
backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World
with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers.

It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with
which public opinion circulates in the midst of these deserts. *j
I do not think that so much intellectual intercourse takes place
in the most enlightened and populous districts of France. *k It
cannot be doubted that, in the United States, the instruction of
the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic
republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where
instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from
moral education which amends the heart. But I by no means
exaggerate this benefit, and I am still further from thinking, as
so many people do think in Europe, that men can be
instantaneously made citizens by teaching them to read and write.
True information is mainly derived from experience; and if the
Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves,
their book-learning would not assist them much at the present
day.

[Footnote j: I travelled along a portion of the frontier of the
United States in a sort of cart which was termed the mail. We
passed, day and night, with great rapidity along the roads which
were scarcely marked out, through immense forests; when the gloom
of the woods became impenetrable the coachman lighted branches of
fir, and we journeyed along by the light they cast. From time to
time we came to a hut in the midst of the forest, which was a
post- office. The mail dropped an enormous bundle of letters at
the door of this isolated dwelling, and we pursued our way at
full gallop, leaving the inhabitants of the neighboring log
houses to send for their share of the treasure.

[When the author visited America the locomotive and the
railroad were scarcely invented, and not yet introduced in the
United States. It is superfluous to point out the immense effect
of those inventions in extending civilization and developing the
resources of that vast continent. In 1831 there were 51 miles of
railway in the United States; in 1872 there were 60,000 miles of
railway.]]

[Footnote k: In 1832 each inhabitant of Michigan paid a sum
equivalent to 1 fr. 22 cent. (French money) to the post-office
revenue, and each inhabitant of the Floridas paid 1 fr. 5 cent.
(See "National Calendar," 1833, p. 244.) In the same year each
inhabitant of the Departement du Nord paid 1 fr. 4 cent. to the
revenue of the French post-office. (See the "Compte rendu de
l'administration des Finances," 1833, p. 623.) Now the State of
Michigan only contained at that time 7 inhabitants per square
league and Florida only 5: the public instruction and the
commercial activity of these districts is inferior to that of
most of the States in the Union, whilst the Departement du Nord,
which contains 3,400 inhabitants per square league, is one of the
most enlightened and manufacturing parts of France.]

I have lived a great deal with the people in the United
States, and I cannot express how much I admire their experience
and their good sense. An American should never be allowed to
speak of Europe; for he will then probably display a vast deal of
presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those
crude and vague notions which are so useful to the ignorant all
over the world. But if you question him respecting his own
country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately
disperse; his language will become as clear and as precise as his
thoughts. He will inform you what his rights are, and by what
means he exercises them; he will be able to point out the customs
which obtain in the political world. You will find that he is
well acquainted with the rules of the administration, and that he
is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the
United States does not acquire his practical science and his
positive notions from books; the instruction he has acquired may
have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but it did not
furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by
participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in
the forms of government from governing. The great work of
society is ever going on beneath his eyes, and, as it were, under
his hands.

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 schoolboys, and parliamentary forms
are observed in the order of a feast.

Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining The Democratic
Republic - Part IV

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 only subsist amongst 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. *l 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.

[Footnote l: 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.]

It is true that the Anglo-Saxons settled in the New World in
a state of social equality; the low-born and the noble were not
to be found amongst 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
trans-Atlantic colonies were founded by men equal amongst
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; it 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. *m

[Footnote m: [A remark which, since the great Civil War of
1861-65, ceases to be applicable.]]

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 fortune 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 whilst 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 efficient cause of their
greatness which is the object of my inquiry.

I am far from supposing that the American laws are
preeminently good in themselves; I do not hold them to be
applicable to all democratic peoples; and several of them seem 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 the 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 the durability which mark its acts,
whilst 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 civilization of their parents.
Their passions are more intense; their religious morality less
authoritative; and their convictions 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; whilst 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 Besides 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 the 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 besides the Anglo-
Americans, and as these people 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 amongst 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 interfused with the
opinions of the people, might subsist in other countries besides
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 amongst 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 amongst 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 or 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 towards 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 by what it might become at the present time.

If absolute power were re-established amongst 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 forever 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
towards 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 crossed the throne,
so as alternately to display to the people the weakness of their
right and the harshness of their 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 himself is full of animosity
and alarm; he finds that he is as 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.

Whilst 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 afford 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 the 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 or exerting that
opinion; and when every citizen - being equally weak, equally
poor, and equally dependent - has only his personal impotence to
oppose to the organized force of the government?

The annals of France furnish nothing analogous to the
condition in which that country might then be thrown. But it may
more aptly be assimilated to the times of old, and to those
hideous eras of Roman oppression, when the manners of the people
were corrupted, their traditions obliterated, their habits
destroyed, their opinions shaken, and freedom, expelled from the
laws, could find no refuge in the land; when nothing protected
the citizens, and the citizens no longer protected themselves;
when human nature was the sport of man, and princes wearied out
the clemency of Heaven before they exhausted the patience of
their subjects. Those who hope to revive the monarchy of Henry
IV or of Louis XIV, appear to me to be afflicted with mental
blindness; and when I consider the present condition of several
European nations - a condition to which all the others tend - I
am led to believe that they will soon be left with no other
alternative than democratic liberty, or the tyranny of the
Caesars. *n

[Footnote n: [This prediction of the return of France to imperial
despotism, and of the true character of that despotic power, was
written in 1832, and realized to the letter in 1852.]]

And indeed it is deserving of consideration, whether men are
to be entirely emancipated or entirely enslaved; whether their
rights are to be made equal, or wholly taken away from them. If
the rulers of society were reduced either gradually to raise the
crowd to their own level, or to sink the citizens below that of
humanity, would not the doubts of many be resolved, the
consciences of many be healed, and the community prepared to make
great sacrifices with little difficulty? In that case, the
gradual growth of democratic manners and institutions should be
regarded, not as the best, but as the only means of preserving
freedom; and without liking the government of democracy, it might
be adopted as the most applicable and the fairest remedy for the
present ills of society.

It is difficult to associate a people in the work of
government; but it is still more difficult to supply it with
experience, and to inspire it with the feelings which it requires
in order to govern well. I grant that the caprices of democracy
are perpetual; its instruments are rude; its laws imperfect. But
if it were true that soon no just medium would exist between the
empire of democracy and the dominion of a single arm, should we
not rather incline towards the former than submit voluntarily to
the latter? And if complete equality be our fate, is it not
better to be levelled by free institutions than by despotic
power?

Those who, after having read this book, should imagine that
my intention in writing it has been to propose the laws and
manners of the Anglo-Americans for the imitation of all
democratic peoples, would commit a very great mistake; they must
have paid more attention to the form than to the substance of my
ideas. My aim has been to show, by the example of America, that
laws, and especially manners, may exist which will allow a
democratic people to remain free. But I am very far from
thinking that we ought to follow the example of the American
democracy, and copy the means which it has employed to attain its
ends; for I am well aware of the influence which the nature of a
country and its political precedents exercise upon a
constitution; and I should regard it as a great misfortune for
mankind if liberty were to exist all over the world under the
same forms.

But I am of opinion that if we do not succeed in gradually
introducing democratic institutions into France, and if we
despair of imparting to the citizens those ideas and sentiments
which first prepare them for freedom, and afterwards allow them
to enjoy it, there will be no independence at all, either for the
middling classes or the nobility, for the poor or for the rich,
but an equal tyranny over all; and I foresee that if the
peaceable empire of the majority be not founded amongst us in
time, we shall sooner or later arrive at the unlimited authority
of a single despot.

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races In The United
States - Part I

The Present And Probable Future Condition Of The Three Races
Which Inhabit The Territory Of The United States

The principal part of the task which I had imposed upon
myself is now performed. I have shown, as far as I was able, the
laws and the manners of the American democracy. Here I might
stop; but the reader would perhaps feel that I had not satisfied
his expectations.

The absolute supremacy of democracy is not all that we meet
with in America; the inhabitants of the New World may be
considered from more than one point of view. In the course of
this work my subject has often led me to speak of the Indians and
the Negroes; but I have never been able to stop in order to show
what place these two races occupy in the midst of the democratic
people whom I was engaged in describing. I have mentioned in
what spirit, and according to what laws, the Anglo-American Union
was formed; but I could only glance at the dangers which menace
that confederation, whilst it was equally impossible for me to
give a detailed account of its chances of duration, independently
of its laws and manners. When speaking of the united republican
States, I hazarded no conjectures upon the permanence of
republican forms in the New World, and when making frequent
allusion to the commercial activity which reigns in the Union, I
was unable to inquire into the future condition of the Americans
as a commercial people.

These topics are collaterally connected with my subject
without forming a part of it; they are American without being
democratic; and to portray democracy has been my principal aim.
It was therefore necessary to postpone these questions, which I
now take up as the proper termination of my work.

The territory now occupied or claimed by the American Union
spreads from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific
Ocean. On the east and west its limits are those of the
continent itself. On the south it advances nearly to the tropic,
and it extends upwards to the icy regions of the North. The human
beings who are scattered over this space do not form, as in
Europe, so many branches of the same stock. Three races,
naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to each
other, are discoverable amongst them at the first glance. Almost
insurmountable barriers had been raised between them by education
and by law, as well as by their origin and outward
characteristics; but fortune has brought them together on the
same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do not
amalgamate, and each race fulfils its destiny apart.

Amongst these widely differing families of men, the first
which attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power
and in enjoyment, is the white or European, the man pre-eminent;
and in subordinate grades, the negro and the Indian. These two
unhappy races have nothing in common; neither birth, nor
features, nor language, nor habits. Their only resemblance lies
in their misfortunes. Both of them occupy an inferior rank in
the country they inhabit; both suffer from tyranny; and if their
wrongs are not the same, they originate, at any rate, with the
same authors.

If we reasoned from what passes in the world, we should
almost say that the European is to the other races of mankind,
what man is to the lower animals; - he makes them subservient to
his use; and when he cannot subdue, he destroys them. Oppression
has, at one stroke, deprived the descendants of the Africans of
almost all the privileges of humanity. The negro of the United
States has lost all remembrance of his country; the language
which his forefathers spoke is never heard around him; he abjured
their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to belong
to Africa, without acquiring any claim to European privileges.
But he remains half way between the two communities; sold by the
one, repulsed by the other; finding not a spot in the universe to
call by the name of country, except the faint image of a home
which the shelter of his master's roof affords.

The negro has no family; woman is merely the temporary
companion of his pleasures, and his children are upon an equality
with himself from the moment of their birth. Am I to call it a
proof of God's mercy or a visitation of his wrath, that man in
certain states appears to be insensible to his extreme
wretchedness, and almost affects, with a depraved taste, the
cause of his misfortunes? The negro, who is plunged in this
abyss of evils, scarcely feels his own calamitous situation.
Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him
the thoughts and desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more
than he hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the
servile imitation of those who oppress him: his understanding is
degraded to the level of his soul.

The negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born: nay, he
may have been purchased in the womb, and have begun his slavery
before he began his existence. Equally devoid of wants and of
enjoyment, and useless to himself, he learns, with his first
notions of existence, that he is the property of another, who has
an interest in preserving his life, and that the care of it does
not devolve upon himself; even the power of thought appears to
him a useless gift of Providence, and he quietly enjoys the
privileges of his debasement. If he becomes free, independence
is often felt by him to be a heavier burden than slavery; for
having learned, in the course of his life, to submit to
everything except reason, he is too much unacquainted with her
dictates to obey them. A thousand new desires beset him, and he
is destitute of the knowledge and energy necessary to resist
them: these are masters which it is necessary to contend with,
and he has learnt only to submit and obey. In short, he sinks to
such a depth of wretchedness, that while servitude brutalizes,
liberty destroys him.

Oppression has been no less fatal to the Indian than to the
negro race, but its effects are different. Before the arrival of
white men in the New World, the inhabitants of North America
lived quietly in their woods, enduring the vicissitudes and
practising the virtues and vices common to savage nations. The
Europeans, having dispersed the Indian tribes and driven them
into the deserts, condemned them to a wandering life full of
inexpressible sufferings.

Savage nations are only controlled by opinion and by custom.
When the North American Indians had lost the sentiment of
attachment to their country; when their families were dispersed,
their traditions obscured, and the chain of their recollections
broken; when all their habits were changed, and their wants
increased beyond measure, European tyranny rendered them more
disorderly and less civilized than they were before. The moral
and physical condition of these tribes continually grew worse,
and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched.
Nevertheless, the Europeans have not been able to metamorphose
the character of the Indians; and though they have had power to
destroy them, they have never been able to make them submit to
the rules of civilized society.

The lot of the negro is placed on the extreme limit of
servitude, while that of the Indian lies on the uttermost verge
of liberty; and slavery does not produce more fatal effects upon
the first, than independence upon the second. The negro has lost
all property in his own person, and he cannot dispose of his
existence without committing a sort of fraud: but the savage is
his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental authority
is scarcely known to him; he has never bent his will to that of
any of his kind, nor learned the difference between voluntary
obedience and a shameful subjection; and the very name of law is
unknown to him. To be free, with him, signifies to escape from
all the shackles of society. As he delights in this barbarous
independence, and would rather perish than sacrifice the least
part of it, civilization has little power over him.

The negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate
himself amongst men who repulse him; he conforms to the tastes of
his oppressors, adopts their opinions, and hopes by imitating
them to form a part of their community. Having been told from
infancy that his race is naturally inferior to that of the
whites, he assents to the proposition and is ashamed of his own
nature. In each of his features he discovers a trace of slavery,
and, if it were in his power, he would willingly rid himself of
everything that makes him what he is.

The Indian, on the contrary, has his imagination inflated
with the pretended nobility of his origin, and lives and dies in
the midst of these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform
his habits to ours, he loves his savage life as the
distinguishing mark of his race, and he repels every advance to
civilization, less perhaps from the hatred which he entertains
for it, than from a dread of resembling the Europeans. *a While
he has nothing to oppose to our perfection in the arts but the
resources of the desert, to our tactics nothing but undisciplined
courage; whilst our well-digested plans are met by the
spontaneous instincts of savage life, who can wonder if he fails
in this unequal contest?

[Footnote a: The native of North America retains his opinions and
the most insignificant of his habits with a degree of tenacity
which has no parallel in history. For more than two hundred
years the wandering tribes of North America have had daily
intercourse with the whites, and they have never derived from
them either a custom or an idea. Yet the Europeans have
exercised a powerful influence over the savages: they have made
them more licentious, but not more European. In the summer of
1831 I happened to be beyond Lake Michigan, at a place called
Green Bay, which serves as the extreme frontier between the
United States and the Indians on the north-western side. Here I
became acquainted with an American officer, Major H., who, after
talking to me at length on the inflexibility of the Indian
character, related the following fact: - "I formerly knew a young
Indian," said he, "who had been educated at a college in New
England, where he had greatly distinguished himself, and had
acquired the external appearance of a member of civilized
society. When the war broke out between ourselves and the
English in 1810, I saw this young man again; he was serving in
our army, at the head of the warriors of his tribe, for the
Indians were admitted amongst the ranks of the Americans, upon
condition that they would abstain from their horrible custom of
scalping their victims. On the evening of the battle of . . .,
C. came and sat himself down by the fire of our bivouac. I asked
him what had been his fortune that day: he related his exploits;
and growing warm and animated by the recollection of them, he
concluded by suddenly opening the breast of his coat, saying,
'You must not betray me - see here!' And I actually beheld," said
the Major, "between his body and his shirt, the skin and hair of
an English head, still dripping with gore."]

The negro, who earnestly desires to mingle his race with
that of the European, cannot effect if; while the Indian, who
might succeed to a certain extent, disdains to make the attempt.
The servility of the one dooms him to slavery, the pride of the
other to death.

I remember that while I was travelling through the forests
which still cover the State of Alabama, I arrived one day at the
log house of a pioneer. I did not wish to penetrate into the
dwelling of the American, but retired to rest myself for a while
on the margin of a spring, which was not far off, in the woods.
While I was in this place (which was in the neighborhood of the
Creek territory), an Indian woman appeared, followed by a
negress, and holding by the hand a little white girl of five or
six years old, whom I took to be the daughter of the pioneer. A
sort of barbarous luxury set off the costume of the Indian; rings
of metal were hanging from her nostrils and ears; her hair, which
was adorned with glass beads, fell loosely upon her shoulders;
and I saw that she was not married, for she still wore that
necklace of shells which the bride always deposits on the nuptial
couch. The negress was clad in squalid European garments. They
all three came and seated themselves upon the banks of the
fountain; and the young Indian, taking the child in her arms,
lavished upon her such fond caresses as mothers give; while the
negress endeavored by various little artifices to attract the
attention of the young Creole.

The child displayed in her slightest gestures a
consciousness of superiority which formed a strange contrast with
her infantine weakness; as if she received the attentions of her
companions with a sort of condescension. The negress was seated
on the ground before her mistress, watching her smallest desires,
and apparently divided between strong affection for the child and
servile fear; whilst the savage displayed, in the midst of her
tenderness, an air of freedom and of pride which was almost
ferocious. I had approached the group, and I contemplated them
in silence; but my curiosity was probably displeasing to the
Indian woman, for she suddenly rose, pushed the child roughly
from her, and giving me an angry look plunged into the thicket. I
had often chanced to see individuals met together in the same
place, who belonged to the three races of men which people North
America. I had perceived from many different results the
preponderance of the whites. But in the picture which I have
just been describing there was something peculiarly touching; a
bond of affection here united the oppressors with the oppressed,
and the effort of nature to bring them together rendered still
more striking the immense distance placed between them by
prejudice and by law.

The Present And Probable Future Condition Of The Indian Tribes
Which Inhabit The Territory Possessed By The Union

Gradual disappearance of the native tribes - Manner in which it
takes place -Miseries accompanying the forced migrations of the
Indians - The savages of North America had only two ways of
escaping destruction; war or civilization -They are no longer
able to make war - Reasons why they refused to become civilized
when it was in their power, and why they cannot become so now
that they desire it - Instance of the Creeks and Cherokees -
Policy of the particular States towards these Indians - Policy of
the Federal Government.

None of the Indian tribes which formerly inhabited the
territory of New England - the Naragansetts, the Mohicans, the
Pecots - have any existence but in the recollection of man. The
Lenapes, who received William Penn, a hundred and fifty years
ago, upon the banks of the Delaware, have disappeared; and I
myself met with the last of the Iroquois, who were begging alms.
The nations I have mentioned formerly covered the country to the
sea-coast; but a traveller at the present day must penetrate more
than a hundred leagues into the interior of the continent to find
an Indian. Not only have these wild tribes receded, but they are
destroyed; *b and as they give way or perish, an immense and
increasing people fills their place. There is no instance upon
record of so prodigious a growth, or so rapid a destruction: the
manner in which the latter change takes place is not difficult to
describe.

[Footnote b: In the thirteen original States there are only 6,273
Indians remaining. (See Legislative Documents, 20th Congress,
No. 117, p. 90.) [The decrease in now far greater, and is verging
on extinction. See page 360 of this volume.]]

When the Indians were the sole inhabitants of the wilds from
whence they have since been expelled, their wants were few.
Their arms were of their own manufacture, their only drink was
the water of the brook, and their clothes consisted of the skins
of animals, whose flesh furnished them with food.

The Europeans introduced amongst the savages of North
America fire-arms, ardent spirits, and iron: they taught them to
exchange for manufactured stuffs, the rough garments which had
previously satisfied their untutored simplicity. Having acquired
new tastes, without the arts by which they could be gratified,
the Indians were obliged to have recourse to the workmanship of
the whites; but in return for their productions the savage had
nothing to offer except the rich furs which still abounded in his
woods. Hence the chase became necessary, not merely to provide
for his subsistence, but in order to procure the only objects of
barter which he could furnish to Europe. *c Whilst the wants of
the natives were thus increasing, their resources continued to
diminish.

[Footnote c: Messrs. Clarke and Cass, in their Report to Congress
on February 4, 1829, p. 23, expressed themselves thus: - "The
time when the Indians generally could supply themselves with food
and clothing, without any of the articles of civilized life, has
long since passed away. The more remote tribes, beyond the
Mississippi, who live where immense herds of buffalo are yet to
be found and who follow those animals in their periodical
migrations, could more easily than any others recur to the habits
of their ancestors, and live without the white man or any of his
manufactures. But the buffalo is constantly receding. The
smaller animals, the bear, the deer, the beaver, the otter, the
muskrat, etc., principally minister to the comfort and support of
the Indians; and these cannot be taken without guns, ammunition,
and traps. Among the Northwestern Indians particularly, the labor
of supplying a family with food is excessive. Day after day is
spent by the hunter without success, and during this interval his
family must subsist upon bark or roots, or perish. Want and
misery are around them and among them. Many die every winter
from actual starvation."

The Indians will not live as Europeans live, and yet they
can neither subsist without them, nor exactly after the fashion
of their fathers. This is demonstrated by a fact which I
likewise give upon official authority. Some Indians of a tribe on
the banks of Lake Superior had killed a European; the American
government interdicted all traffic with the tribe to which the
guilty parties belonged, until they were delivered up to justice.
This measure had the desired effect.]

From the moment when a European settlement is formed in the
neighborhood of the territory occupied by the Indians, the beasts
of chase take the alarm. *d Thousands of savages, wandering in
the forests and destitute of any fixed dwelling, did not disturb
them; but as soon as the continuous sounds of European labor are
heard in their neighborhood, they begin to flee away, and retire
to the West, where their instinct teaches them that they will
find deserts of immeasurable extent. "The buffalo is constantly
receding," say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report of the
year 1829; "a few years since they approached the base of the
Alleghany; and a few years hence they may even be rare upon the
immense plains which extend to the base of the Rocky Mountains."
I have been assured that this effect of the approach of the
whites is often felt at two hundred leagues' distance from their
frontier. Their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name
is unknown to them; and who suffer the evils of usurpation long
before they are acquainted with the authors of their distress. *e

[Footnote d: "Five years ago," (says Volney in his "Tableau des
Etats-Unis," p. 370) "in going from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, a
territory which now forms part of the State of Illinois, but
which at the time I mention was completely wild (1797), you could
not cross a prairie without seeing herds of from four to five
hundred buffaloes. There are now none remaining; they swam
across the Mississippi to escape from the hunters, and more
particularly from the bells of the American cows."]

[Footnote e: The truth of what I here advance may be easily
proved by consulting the tabular statement of Indian tribes
inhabiting the United States and their territories. (Legislative
Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117, pp. 90-105.) It is there shown
that the tribes in the centre of America are rapidly decreasing,
although the Europeans are still at a considerable distance from
them.]

Bold adventurers soon penetrate into the country the Indians
have deserted, and when they have advanced about fifteen or
twenty leagues from the extreme frontiers of the whites, they
begin to build habitations for civilized beings in the midst of
the wilderness. This is done without difficulty, as the
territory of a hunting-nation is ill-defined; it is the common
property of the tribe, and belongs to no one in particular, so
that individual interests are not concerned in the protection of
any part of it.

A few European families, settled in different situations at
a considerable distance from each other, soon drive away the wild
animals which remain between their places of abode. The Indians,
who had previously lived in a sort of abundance, then find it
difficult to subsist, and still more difficult to procure the
articles of barter which they stand in need of.

To drive away their game is to deprive them of the means of
existence, as effectually as if the fields of our agriculturists
were stricken with barrenness; and they are reduced, like
famished wolves, to prowl through the forsaken woods in quest of
prey. Their instinctive love of their country attaches them to
the soil which gave them birth, *f even after it has ceased to
yield anything but misery and death. At length they are
compelled to acquiesce, and to depart: they follow the traces of
the elk, the buffalo, and the beaver, and are guided by these
wild animals in the choice of their future country. Properly
speaking, therefore, it is not the Europeans who drive away the
native inhabitants of America; it is famine which compels them to
recede; a happy distinction which had escaped the casuists of
former times, and for which we are indebted to modern discovery!

[Footnote f: "The Indians," say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their
Report to Congress, p. 15, "are attached to their country by the
same feelings which bind us to ours; and, besides, there are
certain superstitious notions connected with the alienation of
what the Great Spirit gave to their ancestors, which operate
strongly upon the tribes who have made few or no cessions, but
which are gradually weakened as our intercourse with them is
extended. 'We will not sell the spot which contains the bones of
our fathers,' is almost always the first answer to a proposition
for a sale."]

It is impossible to conceive the extent of the sufferings
which attend these forced emigrations. They are undertaken by a
people already exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which
the newcomers betake themselves are inhabited by other tribes
which receive them with jealous hostility. Hunger is in the
rear; war awaits them, and misery besets them on all sides. In
the hope of escaping from such a host of enemies, they separate,
and each individual endeavors to procure the means of supporting
his existence in solitude and secrecy, living in the immensity of
the desert like an outcast in civilized society. The social tie,
which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved; they
have lost their country, and their people soon desert them: their
very families are obliterated; the names they bore in common are
forgotten, their language perishes, and all traces of their
origin disappear. Their nation has ceased to exist, except in the
recollection of the antiquaries of America and a few of the
learned of Europe.

I should be sorry to have my reader suppose that I am
coloring the picture too highly; I saw with my own eyes several
of the cases of misery which I have been describing; and I was
the witness of sufferings which I have not the power to portray.

At the end of the year 1831, whilst I was on the left bank
of the Mississippi at a place named by Europeans, Memphis, there
arrived a numerous band of Choctaws (or Chactas, as they are
called by the French in Louisiana). These savages had left their
country, and were endeavoring to gain the right bank of the
Mississippi, where they hoped to find an asylum which had been
promised them by the American government. It was then the middle
of winter, and the cold was unusually severe; the snow had frozen
hard upon the ground, and the river was drifting huge masses of
ice. The Indians had their families with them; and they brought
in their train the wounded and sick, with children newly born,
and old men upon the verge of death. They possessed neither
tents nor wagons, but only their arms and some provisions. I saw
them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will that solemn
spectacle fade from my remembrance. No cry, no sob was heard
amongst the assembled crowd; all were silent. Their calamities
were of ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The
Indians had all stepped into the bark which was to carry them
across, but their dogs remained upon the bank. As soon as these
animals perceived that their masters were finally leaving the
shore, they set up a dismal howl, and, plunging all together into
the icy waters of the Mississippi, they swam after the boat.

The ejectment of the Indians very often takes place at the
present day, in a regular, and, as it were, a legal manner. When
the European population begins to approach the limit of the
desert inhabited by a savage tribe, the government of the United
States usually dispatches envoys to them, who assemble the
Indians in a large plain, and having first eaten and drunk with
them, accost them in the following manner: "What have you to do
in the land of your fathers? Before long, you must dig up their
bones in order to live. In what respect is the country you
inhabit better than another? Are there no woods, marshes, or
prairies, except where you dwell? And can you live nowhere but
under your own sun? Beyond those mountains which you see at the
horizon, beyond the lake which bounds your territory on the west,
there lie vast countries where beasts of chase are found in great
abundance; sell your lands to us, and go to live happily in those
solitudes." After holding this language, they spread before the
eyes of the Indians firearms, woollen garments, kegs of brandy,
glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, earrings, and
looking-glasses. *g If, when they have beheld all these riches,
they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not the
means of refusing their required consent, and that the government
itself will not long have the power of protecting them in their
rights. What are they to do? Half convinced, and half
compelled, they go to inhabit new deserts, where the importunate
whites will not let them remain ten years in tranquillity. In
this manner do the Americans obtain, at a very low price, whole
provinces, which the richest sovereigns of Europe could not
purchase. *h

[Footnote g: See, in the Legislative Documents of Congress (Doc.
117), the narrative of what takes place on these occasions. This
curious passage is from the above-mentioned report, made to
Congress by Messrs. Clarke and Cass in February, 1829. Mr. Cass
is now the Secretary of War.

"The Indians," says the report, "reach the treaty-ground
poor and almost naked. Large quantities of goods are taken there
by the traders, and are seen and examined by the Indians. The
women and children become importunate to have their wants
supplied, and their influence is soon exerted to induce a sale.
Their improvidence is habitual and unconquerable. The
gratification of his immediate wants and desires is the ruling
passion of an Indian. The expectation of future advantages
seldom produces much effect. The experience of the past is lost,
and the prospects of the future disregarded. It would be utterly
hopeless to demand a cession of land, unless the means were at
hand of gratifying their immediate wants; and when their
condition and circumstances are fairly considered, it ought not
to surprise us that they are so anxious to relieve themselves."]

[Footnote h: On May 19, 1830, Mr. Edward Everett affirmed before
the House of Representatives, that the Americans had already
acquired by treaty, to the east and west of the Mississippi,
230,000,000 of acres. In 1808 the Osages gave up 48,000,000
acres for an annual payment of $1,000. In 1818 the Quapaws
yielded up 29,000,000 acres for $4,000. They reserved for
themselves a territory of 1,000,000 acres for a hunting-ground.
A solemn oath was taken that it should be respected: but before
long it was invaded like the rest. Mr. Bell, in his Report of the
Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, has these words:
- "To pay an Indian tribe what their ancient hunting-grounds are
worth to them, after the game is fled or destroyed, as a mode of
appropriating wild lands claimed by Indians, has been found more
convenient, and certainly it is more agreeable to the forms of
justice, as well as more merciful, than to assert the possession
of them by the sword. Thus the practice of buying Indian titles
is but the substitute which humanity and expediency have imposed,
in place of the sword, in arriving at the actual enjoyment of
property claimed by the right of discovery, and sanctioned by the
natural superiority allowed to the claims of civilized
communities over those of savage tribes. Up to the present time
so invariable has been the operation of certain causes, first in
diminishing the value of forest lands to the Indians, and
secondly in disposing them to sell readily, that the plan of
buying their right of occupancy has never threatened to retard,
in any perceptible degree, the prosperity of any of the States."
(Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, No. 227, p. 6.)]

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part II

These are great evils; and it must be added that they appear
to me to be irremediable. I believe that the Indian nations of
North America are doomed to perish; and that whenever the
Europeans shall be established on the shores of the Pacific
Ocean, that race of men will be no more. *i The Indians had only
the two alternatives of war or civilization; in other words, they
must either have destroyed the Europeans or become their equals.

[Footnote i: This seems, indeed, to be the opinion of almost all
American statesmen. "Judging of the future by the past," says
Mr. Cass, "we cannot err in anticipating a progressive diminution
of their numbers, and their eventual extinction, unless our
border should become stationary, and they be removed beyond it,
or unless some radical change should take place in the principles
of our intercourse with them, which it is easier to hope for than
to expect."]

At the first settlement of the colonies they might have
found it possible, by uniting their forces, to deliver themselves
from the small bodies of strangers who landed on their continent.
*j They several times attempted to do it, and were on the point
of succeeding; but the disproportion of their resources, at the
present day, when compared with those of the whites, is too great
to allow such an enterprise to be thought of. Nevertheless,
there do arise from time to time among the Indians men of
penetration, who foresee the final destiny which awaits the
native population, and who exert themselves to unite all the
tribes in common hostility to the Europeans; but their efforts
are unavailing. Those tribes which are in the neighborhood of
the whites, are too much weakened to offer an effectual
resistance; whilst the others, giving way to that childish
carelessness of the morrow which characterizes savage life, wait
for the near approach of danger before they prepare to meet it;
some are unable, the others are unwilling, to exert themselves.

[Footnote j: Amongst other warlike enterprises, there was one of
the Wampanaogs, and other confederate tribes, under Metacom in
1675, against the colonists of New England; the English were also
engaged in war in Virginia in 1622.]

It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never conform to
civilization; or that it will be too late, whenever they may be
inclined to make the experiment.

Civilization is the result of a long social process which
takes place in the same spot, and is handed down from one
generation to another, each one profiting by the experience of
the last. Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the
most difficulty which habitually live by the chase. Pastoral
tribes, indeed, often change their place of abode; but they
follow a regular order in their migrations, and often return
again to their old stations, whilst the dwelling of the hunter
varies with that of the animals he pursues.

Several attempts have been made to diffuse knowledge amongst
the Indians, without controlling their wandering propensities; by
the Jesuits in Canada, and by the Puritans in New England; *k but
none of these endeavors were crowned by any lasting success.
Civilization began in the cabin, but it soon retired to expire in
the woods. The great error of these legislators of the Indians
was their not understanding that, in order to succeed in
civilizing a people, it is first necessary to fix it; which
cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil; the
Indians ought in the first place to have been accustomed to
agriculture. But not only are they destitute of this
indispensable preliminary to civilization, they would even have
great difficulty in acquiring it. Men who have once abandoned
themselves to the restless and adventurous life of the hunter,
feel an insurmountable disgust for the constant and regular labor
which tillage requires. We see this proved in the bosom of our
own society; but it is far more visible among peoples whose
partiality for the chase is a part of their national character.

[Footnote k: See the "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," by
Charlevoix, and the work entitled "Lettres edifiantes."]

Independently of this general difficulty, there is another,
which applies peculiarly to the Indians; they consider labor not
merely as an evil, but as a disgrace; so that their pride
prevents them from becoming civilized, as much as their
indolence. *l

[Footnote l: "In all the tribes," says Volney, in his "Tableau
des Etats-Unis," p. 423, "there still exists a generation of old
warriors, who cannot forbear, when they see their countrymen
using the hoe, from exclaiming against the degradation of ancient
manners, and asserting that the savages owe their decline to
these innovations; adding, that they have only to return to their
primitive habits in order to recover their power and their
glory."]

There is no Indian so wretched as not to retain under his
hut of bark a lofty idea of his personal worth; he considers the
cares of industry and labor as degrading occupations; he compares
the husbandman to the ox which traces the furrow; and even in our
most ingenious handicraft, he can see nothing but the labor of
slaves. Not that he is devoid of admiration for the power and
intellectual greatness of the whites; but although the result of
our efforts surprises him, he contemns the means by which we
obtain it; and while he acknowledges our ascendancy, he still
believes in his superiority. War and hunting are the only
pursuits which appear to him worthy to be the occupations of a
man. *m The Indian, in the dreary solitude of his woods,
cherishes the same ideas, the same opinions as the noble of the
Middle ages in his castle, and he only requires to become a
conqueror to complete the resemblance; thus, however strange it
may seem, it is in the forests of the New World, and not amongst
the Europeans who people its coasts, that the ancient prejudices
of Europe are still in existence.

[Footnote m: The following description occurs in an official
document: "Until a young man has been engaged with an enemy, and
has performed some acts of valor, he gains no consideration, but
is regarded nearly as a woman. In their great war-dances all the
warriors in succession strike the post, as it is called, and
recount their exploits. On these occasions their auditory
consists of the kinsmen, friends, and comrades of the narrator.
The profound impression which his discourse produces on them is
manifested by the silent attention it receives, and by the loud
shouts which hail its termination. The young man who finds
himself at such a meeting without anything to recount is very
unhappy; and instances have sometimes occurred of young warriors,
whose passions had been thus inflamed, quitting the war-dance
suddenly, and going off alone to seek for trophies which they
might exhibit, and adventures which they might be allowed to
relate."]

More than once, in the course of this work, I have
endeavored to explain the prodigious influence which the social
condition appears to exercise upon the laws and the manners of
men; and I beg to add a few words on the same subject.

When I perceive the resemblance which exists between the
political institutions of our ancestors, the Germans, and of the
wandering tribes of North America; between the customs described
by Tacitus, and those of which I have sometimes been a witness, I
cannot help thinking that the same cause has brought about the
same results in both hemispheres; and that in the midst of the
apparent diversity of human affairs, a certain number of primary
facts may be discovered, from which all the others are derived.
In what we usually call the German institutions, then, I am
inclined only to perceive barbarian habits; and the opinions of
savages in what we style feudal principles.

However strongly the vices and prejudices of the North
American Indians may be opposed to their becoming agricultural
and civilized, necessity sometimes obliges them to it. Several
of the Southern nations, and amongst others the Cherokees and the
Creeks, *n were surrounded by Europeans, who had landed on the
shores of the Atlantic; and who, either descending the Ohio or
proceeding up the Mississippi, arrived simultaneously upon their
borders. These tribes have not been driven from place to place,
like their Northern brethren; but they have been gradually
enclosed within narrow limits, like the game within the thicket,
before the huntsmen plunge into the interior. The Indians who
were thus placed between civilization and death, found themselves
obliged to live by ignominious labor like the whites. They took
to agriculture, and without entirely forsaking their old habits
or manners, sacrificed only as much as was necessary to their
existence.

[Footnote n: These nations are now swallowed up in the States of
Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. There were
formerly in the South four great nations (remnants of which still
exist), the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Creeks, and the
Cherokees. The remnants of these four nations amounted, in 1830,
to about 75,000 individuals. It is computed that there are now
remaining in the territory occupied or claimed by the
Anglo-American Union about 300,000 Indians. (See Proceedings of
the Indian Board in the City of New York.) The official documents
supplied to Congress make the number amount to 313,130. The
reader who is curious to know the names and numerical strength of
all the tribes which inhabit the Anglo-American territory should
consult the documents I refer to. (Legislative Documents, 20th
Congress, No. 117, pp. 90-105.) [In the Census of 1870 it is
stated that the Indian population of the United States is only
25,731, of whom 7,241 are in California.]]

The Cherokees went further; they created a written language;
established a permanent form of government; and as everything
proceeds rapidly in the New World, before they had all of them
clothes, they set up a newspaper. *o

[Footnote o: I brought back with me to France one or two copies
of this singular publication.]

The growth of European habits has been remarkably
accelerated among these Indians by the mixed race which has
sprung up. *p Deriving intelligence from their father's side,
without entirely losing the savage customs of the mother, the
half-blood forms the natural link between civilization and
barbarism. Wherever this race has multiplied the savage state has
become modified, and a great change has taken place in the
manners of the people. *q

[Footnote p: See in the Report of the Committee on Indian
Affairs, 21st Congress, No. 227, p. 23, the reasons for the
multiplication of Indians of mixed blood among the Cherokees.
The principal cause dates from the War of Independence. Many
Anglo-Americans of Georgia, having taken the side of England,
were obliged to retreat among the Indians, where they married.]

[Footnote q: Unhappily the mixed race has been less numerous and
less influential in North America than in any other country. The
American continent was peopled by two great nations of Europe,
the French and the English. The former were not slow in
connecting themselves with the daughters of the natives, but
there was an unfortunate affinity between the Indian character
and their own: instead of giving the tastes and habits of
civilized life to the savages, the French too often grew
passionately fond of the state of wild freedom they found them
in. They became the most dangerous of the inhabitants of the
desert, and won the friendship of the Indian by exaggerating his
vices and his virtues. M. de Senonville, the governor of Canada,
wrote thus to Louis XIV in 1685: "It has long been believed that
in order to civilize the savages we ought to draw them nearer to
us. But there is every reason to suppose we have been mistaken.
Those which have been brought into contact with us have not
become French, and the French who have lived among them are
changed into savages, affecting to dress and live like them."
("History of New France," by Charlevoix, vol. ii., p. 345.) The
Englishman, on the contrary, continuing obstinately attached to
the customs and the most insignificant habits of his forefathers,
has remained in the midst of the American solitudes just what he
was in the bosom of European cities; he would not allow of any
communication with savages whom he despised, and avoided with
care the union of his race with theirs. Thus while the French
exercised no salutary influence over the Indians, the English
have always remained alien from them.]

The success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians are
capable of civilization, but it does not prove that they will
succeed in it. This difficulty which the Indians find in
submitting to civilization proceeds from the influence of a
general cause, which it is almost impossible for them to escape.
An attentive survey of history demonstrates that, in general,
barbarous nations have raised themselves to civilization by
degrees, and by their own efforts. Whenever they derive
knowledge from a foreign people, they stood towards it in the
relation of conquerors, and not of a conquered nation. When the
conquered nation is enlightened, and the conquerors are half
savage, as in the case of the invasion of Rome by the Northern
nations or that of China by the Mongols, the power which victory
bestows upon the barbarian is sufficient to keep up his
importance among civilized men, and permit him to rank as their
equal, until he becomes their rival: the one has might on his
side, the other has intelligence; the former admires the
knowledge and the arts of the conquered, the latter envies the
power of the conquerors. The barbarians at length admit
civilized man into their palaces, and he in turn opens his
schools to the barbarians. But when the side on which the
physical force lies, also possesses an intellectual
preponderance, the conquered party seldom become civilized; it
retreats, or is destroyed. It may therefore be said, in a general
way, that savages go forth in arms to seek knowledge, but that
they do not receive it when it comes to them.

If the Indian tribes which now inhabit the heart of the
continent could summon up energy enough to attempt to civilize
themselves, they might possibly succeed. Superior already to the
barbarous nations which surround them, they would gradually gain
strength and experience, and when the Europeans should appear
upon their borders, they would be in a state, if not to maintain
their independence, at least to assert their right to the soil,
and to incorporate themselves with the conquerors. But it is the
misfortune of Indians to be brought into contact with a civilized
people, which is also (it must be owned) the most avaricious
nation on the globe, whilst they are still semi-barbarian: to
find despots in their instructors, and to receive knowledge from
the hand of oppression. Living in the freedom of the woods, the
North American Indian was destitute, but he had no feeling of
inferiority towards anyone; as soon, however, as he desires to
penetrate into the social scale of the whites, he takes the
lowest rank in society, for he enters, ignorant and poor, within
the pale of science and wealth. After having led a life of
agitation, beset with evils and dangers, but at the same time
filled with proud emotions, *r he is obliged to submit to a
wearisome, obscure, and degraded state; and to gain the bread
which nourishes him by hard and ignoble labor; such are in his
eyes the only results of which civilization can boast: and even
this much he is not sure to obtain.

[Footnote r: There is in the adventurous life of the hunter a
certain irresistible charm, which seizes the heart of man and
carries him away in spite of reason and experience. This is
plainly shown by the memoirs of Tanner. Tanner is a European who
was carried away at the age of six by the Indians, and has
remained thirty years with them in the woods. Nothing can be
conceived more appalling that the miseries which he describes.
He tells us of tribes without a chief, families without a nation
to call their own, men in a state of isolation, wrecks of
powerful tribes wandering at random amid the ice and snow and
desolate solitudes of Canada. Hunger and cold pursue them; every
day their life is in jeopardy. Amongst these men, manners have
lost their empire, traditions are without power. They become
more and more savage. Tanner shared in all these miseries; he was
aware of his European origin; he was not kept away from the
whites by force; on the contrary, he came every year to trade
with them, entered their dwellings, and witnessed their
enjoyments; he knew that whenever he chose to return to civilized
life he was perfectly able to do so - and he remained thirty
years in the deserts. When he came into civilized society he
declared that the rude existence which he described, had a secret
charm for him which he was unable to define: he returned to it
again and again: at length he abandoned it with poignant regret;
and when he was at length fixed among the whites, several of his
children refused to share his tranquil and easy situation. I saw
Tanner myself at the lower end of Lake Superior; he seemed to me
to be more like a savage than a civilized being. His book is
written without either taste or order; but he gives, even
unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the passions,
the vices, and, above all, of the destitution in which he lived.]

When the Indians undertake to imitate their European
neighbors, and to till the earth like the settlers, they are
immediately exposed to a very formidable competition. The white
man is skilled in the craft of agriculture; the Indian is a rough
beginner in an art with which he is unacquainted. The former
reaps abundant crops without difficulty, the latter meets with a
thousand obstacles in raising the fruits of the earth.

The European is placed amongst a population whose wants he
knows and partakes. The savage is isolated in the midst of a
hostile people, with whose manners, language, and laws he is
imperfectly acquainted, but without whose assistance he cannot
live. He can only procure the materials of comfort by bartering
his commodities against the goods of the European, for the
assistance of his countrymen is wholly insufficient to supply his
wants. When the Indian wishes to sell the produce of his labor,
he cannot always meet with a purchaser, whilst the European
readily finds a market; and the former can only produce at a
considerable cost that which the latter vends at a very low rate.
Thus the Indian has no sooner escaped those evils to which
barbarous nations are exposed, than he is subjected to the still
greater miseries of civilized communities; and he finds is
scarcely less difficult to live in the midst of our abundance,
than in the depth of his own wilderness.

He has not yet lost the habits of his erratic life; the
traditions of his fathers and his passion for the chase are still
alive within him. The wild enjoyments which formerly animated
him in the woods, painfully excite his troubled imagination; and
his former privations appear to be less keen, his former perils
less appalling. He contrasts the independence which he possessed
amongst his equals with the servile position which he occupies in
civilized society. On the other hand, the solitudes which were
so long his free home are still at hand; a few hours' march will
bring him back to them once more. The whites offer him a sum,
which seems to him to be considerable, for the ground which he
has begun to clear. This money of the Europeans may possibly
furnish him with the means of a happy and peaceful subsistence in
remoter regions; and he quits the plough, resumes his native
arms, and returns to the wilderness forever. *s The condition of
the Creeks and Cherokees, to which I have already alluded,
sufficiently corroborates the truth of this deplorable picture.

[Footnote s: The destructive influence of highly civilized
nations upon others which are less so, has been exemplified by
the Europeans themselves. About a century ago the French founded
the town of Vincennes up on the Wabash, in the middle of the
desert; and they lived there in great plenty until the arrival of
the American settlers, who first ruined the previous inhabitants
by their competition, and afterwards purchased their lands at a
very low rate. At the time when M. de Volney, from whom I borrow
these details, passed through Vincennes, the number of the French
was reduced to a hundred individuals, most of whom were about to
pass over to Louisiana or to Canada. These French settlers were
worthy people, but idle and uninstructed: they had contracted
many of the habits of savages. The Americans, who were perhaps
their inferiors, in a moral point of view, were immeasurably
superior to them in intelligence: they were industrious, well
informed, rich, and accustomed to govern their own community.

I myself saw in Canada, where the intellectual difference
between the two races is less striking, that the English are the
masters of commerce and manufacture in the Canadian country, that
they spread on all sides, and confine the French within limits
which scarcely suffice to contain them. In like manner, in
Louisiana, almost all activity in commerce and manufacture
centres in the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

But the case of Texas is still more striking: the State of
Texas is a part of Mexico, and lies upon the frontier between
that country and the United States. In the course of the last
few years the Anglo-Americans have penetrated into this province,
which is still thinly peopled; they purchase land, they produce
the commodities of the country, and supplant the original
population. It may easily be foreseen that if Mexico takes no
steps to check this change, the province of Texas will very
shortly cease to belong to that government.

If the different degrees - comparatively so slight - which
exist in European civilization produce results of such magnitude,
the consequences which must ensue from the collision of the most
perfect European civilization with Indian savages may readily be
conceived.]

The Indians, in the little which they have done, have
unquestionably displayed as much natural genius as the peoples of
Europe in their most important designs; but nations as well as
men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence and
their zeal. Whilst the savages were engaged in the work of
civilization, the Europeans continued to surround them on every
side, and to confine them within narrower limits; the two races
gradually met, and they are now in immediate juxtaposition to
each other. The Indian is already superior to his barbarous
parent, but he is still very far below his white neighbor. With
their resources and acquired knowledge, the Europeans soon
appropriated to themselves most of the advantages which the
natives might have derived from the possession of the soil; they
have settled in the country, they have purchased land at a very
low rate or have occupied it by force, and the Indians have been
ruined by a competition which they had not the means of
resisting. They were isolated in their own country, and their
race only constituted a colony of troublesome aliens in the midst
of a numerous and domineering people. *t

[Footnote t: See in the Legislative Documents (21st Congress, No.
89) instances of excesses of every kind committed by the whites
upon the territory of the Indians, either in taking possession of
a part of their lands, until compelled to retire by the troops of
Congress, or carrying off their cattle, burning their houses,
cutting down their corn, and doing violence to their persons. It
appears, nevertheless, from all these documents that the claims
of the natives are constantly protected by the government from
the abuse of force. The Union has a representative agent
continually employed to reside among the Indians; and the report
of the Cherokee agent, which is among the documents I have
referred to, is almost always favorable to the Indians. "The
intrusion of whites," he says, "upon the lands of the Cherokees
would cause ruin to the poor, helpless, and inoffensive
inhabitants." And he further remarks upon the attempt of the
State of Georgia to establish a division line for the purpose of
limiting the boundaries of the Cherokees, that the line drawn
having been made by the whites, and entirely upon ex parte
evidence of their several rights, was of no validity whatever.]

Washington said in one of his messages to Congress, "We are
more enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations, we
are therefore bound in honor to treat them with kindness and even
with generosity." But this virtuous and high-minded policy has
not been followed. The rapacity of the settlers is usually
backed by the tyranny of the government. Although the Cherokees
and the Creeks are established upon the territory which they
inhabited before the settlement of the Europeans, and although
the Americans have frequently treated with them as with foreign
nations, the surrounding States have not consented to acknowledge
them as independent peoples, and attempts have been made to
subject these children of the woods to Anglo-American
magistrates, laws, and customs. *u Destitution had driven these
unfortunate Indians to civilization, and oppression now drives
them back to their former condition: many of them abandon the
soil which they had begun to clear, and return to their savage
course of life.

[Footnote u: In 1829 the State of Alabama divided the Creek
territory into counties, and subjected the Indian population to
the power of European magistrates.

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part III

In 1830 the State of Mississippi assimilated the Choctaws
and Chickasaws to the white population, and declared that any of
them that should take the title of chief would be punished by a
fine of $1,000 and a year's imprisonment. When these laws were
enforced upon the Choctaws, who inhabited that district, the
tribe assembled, their chief communicated to them the intentions
of the whites, and read to them some of the laws to which it was
intended that they should submit; and they unanimously declared
that it was better at once to retreat again into the wilds.]

If we consider the tyrannical measures which have been
adopted by the legislatures of the Southern States, the conduct
of their Governors, and the decrees of their courts of justice,
we shall be convinced that the entire expulsion of the Indians is
the final result to which the efforts of their policy are
directed. The Americans of that part of the Union look with
jealousy upon the aborigines, *v they are aware that these tribes
have not yet lost the traditions of savage life, and before
civilization has permanently fixed them to the soil, it is
intended to force them to recede by reducing them to despair.
The Creeks and Cherokees, oppressed by the several States, have
appealed to the central government, which is by no means
insensible to their misfortunes, and is sincerely desirous of
saving the remnant of the natives, and of maintaining them in the
free possession of that territory, which the Union is pledged to
respect. *w But the several States oppose so formidable a
resistance to the execution of this design, that the government
is obliged to consent to the extirpation of a few barbarous
tribes in order not to endanger the safety of the American Union.

[Footnote v: The Georgians, who are so much annoyed by the
proximity of the Indians, inhabit a territory which does not at
present contain more than seven inhabitants to the square mile.
In France there are one hundred and sixty-two inhabitants to the
same extent of country.]

[Footnote w: In 1818 Congress appointed commissioners to visit
the Arkansas Territory, accompanied by a deputation of Creeks,
Choctaws, and Chickasaws. This expedition was commanded by
Messrs. Kennerly, M'Coy, Wash Hood, and John Bell. See the
different reports of the commissioners, and their journal, in the
Documents of Congress, No. 87, House of Representatives.]

But the federal government, which is not able to protect the
Indians, would fain mitigate the hardships of their lot; and,
with this intention, proposals have been made to transport them
into more remote regions at the public cost.

Between the thirty-third and thirty-seventh degrees of north
latitude, a vast tract of country lies, which has taken the name
of Arkansas, from the principal river that waters its extent. It
is bounded on the one side by the confines of Mexico, on the
other by the Mississippi. Numberless streams cross it in every
direction; the climate is mild, and the soil productive, but it
is only inhabited by a few wandering hordes of savages. The
government of the Union wishes to transport the broken remnants
of the indigenous population of the South to the portion of this
country which is nearest to Mexico, and at a great distance from
the American settlements.

We were assured, towards the end of the year 1831, that
10,000 Indians had already gone down to the shores of the
Arkansas; and fresh detachments were constantly following them;
but Congress has been unable to excite a unanimous determination
in those whom it is disposed to protect. Some, indeed, are
willing to quit the seat of oppression, but the most enlightened
members of the community refuse to abandon their recent dwellings
and their springing crops; they are of opinion that the work of
civilization, once interrupted, will never be resumed; they fear
that those domestic habits which have been so recently
contracted, may be irrevocably lost in the midst of a country
which is still barbarous, and where nothing is prepared for the
subsistence of an agricultural people; they know that their
entrance into those wilds will be opposed by inimical hordes, and
that they have lost the energy of barbarians, without acquiring
the resources of civilization to resist their attacks. Moreover,
the Indians readily discover that the settlement which is
proposed to them is merely a temporary expedient. Who can assure
them that they will at length be allowed to dwell in peace in
their new retreat? The United States pledge themselves to the
observance of the obligation; but the territory which they at
present occupy was formerly secured to them by the most solemn
oaths of Anglo-American faith. *x The American government does
not indeed rob them of their lands, but it allows perpetual
incursions to be made on them. In a few years the same white
population which now flocks around them, will track them to the
solitudes of the Arkansas; they will then be exposed to the same
evils without the same remedies, and as the limits of the earth
will at last fail them, their only refuge is the grave.

[Footnote x: The fifth article of the treaty made with the Creeks
in August, 1790, is in the following words: - "The United States
solemnly guarantee to the Creek nation all their land within the
limits of the United States."

The seventh article of the treaty concluded in 1791 with the
Cherokees says: - "The United States solemnly guarantee to the
Cherokee nation all their lands not hereby ceded." The following
article declared that if any citizen of the United States or
other settler not of the Indian race should establish himself
upon the territory of the Cherokees, the United States would
withdraw their protection from that individual, and give him up
to be punished as the Cherokee nation should think fit.]

The Union treats the Indians with less cupidity and rigor
than the policy of the several States, but the two governments
are alike destitute of good faith. The States extend what they
are pleased to term the benefits of their laws to the Indians,
with a belief that the tribes will recede rather than submit; and
the central government, which promises a permanent refuge to
these unhappy beings is well aware of its inability to secure it
to them. *y

[Footnote y: This does not prevent them from promising in the
most solemn manner to do so. See the letter of the President
addressed to the Creek Indians, March 23, 1829 (Proceedings of
the Indian Board, in the city of New York, p. 5): "Beyond the
great river Mississippi, where a part of your nation has gone,
your father has provided a country large enough for all of you,
and he advises you to remove to it. There your white brothers
will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the land, and
you can live upon it, you and all your children, as long as the
grass grows, or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be
yours forever."

The Secretary of War, in a letter written to the Cherokees,
April 18, 1829, (see the same work, p. 6), declares to them that
they cannot expect to retain possession of the lands at that time
occupied by them, but gives them the most positive assurance of
uninterrupted peace if they would remove beyond the Mississippi:
as if the power which could not grant them protection then, would
be able to afford it them hereafter!]

Thus the tyranny of the States obliges the savages to
retire, the Union, by its promises and resources, facilitates
their retreat; and these measures tend to precisely the same end.
*z "By the will of our Father in Heaven, the Governor of the
whole world," said the Cherokees in their petition to Congress,
*a "the red man of America has become small, and the white man
great and renowned. When the ancestors of the people of these
United States first came to the shores of America they found the
red man strong: though he was ignorant and savage, yet he
received them kindly, and gave them dry land to rest their weary
feet. They met in peace, and shook hands in token of friendship.
Whatever the white man wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter
willingly gave. At that time the Indian was the lord, and the
white man the suppliant. But now the scene has changed. The
strength of the red man has become weakness. As his neighbors
increased in numbers his power became less and less, and now, of
the many and powerful tribes who once covered these United
States, only a few are to be seen - a few whom a sweeping
pestilence has left. The northern tribes, who were once so
numerous and powerful, are now nearly extinct. Thus it has
happened to the red man of America. Shall we, who are remnants,
share the same fate?

[Footnote z: To obtain a correct idea of the policy pursued by
the several States and the Union with respect to the Indians, it
is necessary to consult, 1st, "The Laws of the Colonial and State
Governments relating to the Indian Inhabitants." (See the
Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, No. 319.) 2d, The Laws of
the Union on the same subject, and especially that of March 30,
1802. (See Story's "Laws of the United States.") 3d, The Report
of Mr. Cass, Secretary of War, relative to Indian Affairs,
November 29, 1823.]

[Footnote a: December 18, 1829.]

"The land on which we stand we have received as an
inheritance from our fathers, who possessed it from time
immemorial, as a gift from our common Father in Heaven. They
bequeathed it to us as their children, and we have sacredly kept
it, as containing the remains of our beloved men. This right of
inheritance we have never ceded nor ever forfeited. Permit us to
ask what better right can the people have to a country than the
right of inheritance and immemorial peaceable possession? We
know it is said of late by the State of Georgia and by the
Executive of the United States, that we have forfeited this
right; but we think this is said gratuitously. At what time have
we made the forfeit? What great crime have we committed, whereby
we must forever be divested of our country and rights? Was it
when we were hostile to the United States, and took part with the
King of Great Britain, during the struggle for independence? If
so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the first treaty of
peace between the United States and our beloved men? Why was not
such an article as the following inserted in the treaty: - 'The
United States give peace to the Cherokees, but, for the part they
took in the late war, declare them to be but tenants at will, to
be removed when the convenience of the States, within whose
chartered limits they live, shall require it'? That was the
proper time to assume such a possession. But it was not thought
of, nor would our forefathers have agreed to any treaty whose
tendency was to deprive them of their rights and their country."

Such is the language of the Indians: their assertions are
true, their forebodings inevitable. From whichever side we
consider the destinies of the aborigines of North America, their
calamities appear to be irremediable: if they continue barbarous,
they are forced to retire; if they attempt to civilize their
manners, the contact of a more civilized community subjects them
to oppression and destitution. They perish if they continue to
wander from waste to waste, and if they attempt to settle they
still must perish; the assistance of Europeans is necessary to
instruct them, but the approach of Europeans corrupts and repels
them into savage life; they refuse to change their habits as long
as their solitudes are their own, and it is too late to change
them when they are constrained to submit.

The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like
wild beasts; they sacked the New World with no more temper or
compassion than a city taken by storm; but destruction must
cease, and frenzy be stayed; the remnant of the Indian population
which had escaped the massacre mixed with its conquerors, and
adopted in the end their religion and their manners. *b The
conduct of the Americans of the United States towards the
aborigines is characterized, on the other hand, by a singular
attachment to the formalities of law. Provided that the Indians
retain their barbarous condition, the Americans take no part in
their affairs; they treat them as independent nations, and do not
possess themselves of their hunting grounds without a treaty of
purchase; and if an Indian nation happens to be so encroached
upon as to be unable to subsist upon its territory, they afford
it brotherly assistance in transporting it to a grave
sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers.

[Footnote b: The honor of this result is, however, by no means
due to the Spaniards. If the Indian tribes had not been tillers
of the ground at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, they
would unquestionably have been destroyed in South as well as in
North America.]

The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by
those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible
shame, nor did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its
rights; but the Americans of the United States have accomplished
this twofold purpose with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally,
philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating
a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world. *c
It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of
humanity.

[Footnote c: See, amongst other documents, the report made by Mr.
Bell in the name of the Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24,
1830, in which is most logically established and most learnedly
proved, that "the fundamental principle that the Indians had no
right by virtue of their ancient possession either of will or
sovereignty, has never been abandoned either expressly or by
implication." In perusing this report, which is evidently drawn
up by an experienced hand, one is astonished at the facility with
which the author gets rid of all arguments founded upon reason
and natural right, which he designates as abstract and
theoretical principles. The more I contemplate the difference
between civilized and uncivilized man with regard to the
principles of justice, the more I observe that the former
contests the justice of those rights which the latter simply
violates.]

[I leave this chapter wholly unchanged, for it has always
appeared to me to be one of the most eloquent and touching parts
of this book. But it has ceased to be prophetic; the destruction
of the Indian race in the United States is already consummated.
In 1870 there remained but 25,731 Indians in the whole territory
of the Union, and of these by far the largest part exist in
California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Dakota, and New Mexico and
Nevada. In New England, Pennsylvania, and New York the race is
extinct; and the predictions of M. de Tocqueville are fulfilled.
- Translator's Note.]

Situation Of The Black Population In The United States, And
Dangers With Which Its Presence Threatens The Whites

Why it is more difficult to abolish slavery, and to efface all
vestiges of it amongst the moderns than it was amongst the
ancients - In the United States the prejudices of the Whites
against the Blacks seem to increase in proportion as slavery is
abolished - Situation of the Negroes in the Northern and Southern
States - Why the Americans abolish slavery - Servitude, which
debases the slave, impoverishes the master - Contrast between the
left and the right bank of the Ohio - To what attributable - The
Black race, as well as slavery, recedes towards the South -
Explanation of this fact - Difficulties attendant upon the
abolition of slavery in the South -  Dangers to come - General
anxiety - Foundation of a Black colony in Africa - Why the
Americans of the South increase the hardships of slavery, whilst
they are distressed at its continuance.

The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in
which they have lived; but the destiny of the negroes is in some
measure interwoven with that of the Europeans. These two races
are attached to each other without intermingling, and they are
alike unable entirely to separate or to combine. The most
formidable of all the ills which threaten the future existence of
the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its
territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present
embarrassments or of the future dangers of the United States, the
observer is invariably led to consider this as a primary fact.

The permanent evils to which mankind is subjected are
usually produced by the vehement or the increasing efforts of
men; but there is one calamity which penetrated furtively into
the world, and which was at first scarcely distinguishable amidst
the ordinary abuses of power; it originated with an individual
whose name history has not preserved; it was wafted like some
accursed germ upon a portion of the soil, but it afterwards
nurtured itself, grew without effort, and spreads naturally with
the society to which it belongs. I need scarcely add that this
calamity is slavery. Christianity suppressed slavery, but the
Christians of the sixteenth century re-established it - as an
exception, indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one
of the races of mankind; but the wound thus inflicted upon
humanity, though less extensive, was at the same time rendered
far more difficult of cure.

It is important to make an accurate distinction between
slavery itself and its consequences. The immediate evils which
are produced by slavery were very nearly the same in antiquity as
they are amongst the moderns; but the consequences of these evils
were different. The slave, amongst the ancients, belonged to the
same race as his master, and he was often the superior of the two
in education *d and instruction. Freedom was the only
distinction between them; and when freedom was conferred they
were easily confounded together. The ancients, then, had a very
simple means of avoiding slavery and its evil consequences, which
was that of affranchisement; and they succeeded as soon as they
adopted this measure generally. Not but, in ancient States, the
vestiges of servitude subsisted for some time after servitude
itself was abolished. There is a natural prejudice which prompts
men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he
is become their equal; and the real inequality which is produced
by fortune or by law is always succeeded by an imaginary
inequality which is implanted in the manners of the people.
Nevertheless, this secondary consequence of slavery was limited
to a certain term amongst the ancients, for the freedman bore so
entire a resemblance to those born free, that it soon became
impossible to distinguish him from amongst them.

[Footnote d: It is well known that several of the most
distinguished authors of antiquity, and amongst them Aesop and
Terence, were, or had been slaves. Slaves were not always taken
from barbarous nations, and the chances of war reduced highly
civilized men to servitude.]

The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering
the law; amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners;
and, as far as we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where
those of the ancients left off. This arises from the circumstance
that, amongst the moderns, the abstract and transient fact of
slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact of
color. The tradition of slavery dishonors the race, and the
peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of slavery. No
African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New
World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are
now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen.
Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all
his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God
alone can obliterate the traces of its existence.

The modern slave differs from his master not only in his
condition, but in his origin. You may set the negro free, but
you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor
is this all; we scarcely acknowledge the common features of
mankind in this child of debasement whom slavery has brought
amongst us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his
understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to
look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.
*e The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have
three prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to
attack and far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of
servitude: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the
race, and the prejudice of color.

[Footnote e: To induce the whites to abandon the opinion they
have conceived of the moral and intellectual inferiority of their
former slaves, the negroes must change; but as long as this
opinion subsists, to change is impossible.]

It is difficult for us, who have had the good fortune to be
born amongst men like ourselves by nature, and equal to ourselves
by law, to conceive the irreconcilable differences which separate
the negro from the European in America. But we may derive some
faint notion of them from analogy. France was formerly a country
in which numerous distinctions of rank existed, that had been
created by the legislation. Nothing can be more fictitious than
a purely legal inferiority; nothing more contrary to the instinct
of mankind than these permanent divisions which had been
established between beings evidently similar. Nevertheless these
divisions subsisted for ages; they still subsist in many places;
and on all sides they have left imaginary vestiges, which time
alone can efface. If it be so difficult to root out an
inequality which solely originates in the law, how are those
distinctions to be destroyed which seem to be based upon the
immutable laws of Nature herself? When I remember the extreme
difficulty with which aristocratic bodies, of whatever nature
they may be, are commingled with the mass of the people; and the
exceeding care which they take to preserve the ideal boundaries
of their caste inviolate, I despair of seeing an aristocracy
disappear which is founded upon visible and indelible signs.
Those who hope that the Europeans will ever mix with the negroes,
appear to me to delude themselves; and I am not led to any such
conclusion by my own reason, or by the evidence of facts.

Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the most powerful,
they have maintained the blacks in a subordinate or a servile
position; wherever the negroes have been strongest they have
destroyed the whites; such has been the only retribution which
has ever taken place between the two races.

I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the
United States at the present day, the legal barrier which
separated the two races is tending to fall away, but not that
which exists in the manners of the country; slavery recedes, but
the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.
Whosoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived
that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no
longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites.
On the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger
in the States which have abolished slavery, than in those where
it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those
States where servitude has never been known.

It is true, that in the North of the Union, marriages may be
legally contracted between negroes and whites; but public opinion
would stigmatize a man who should connect himself with a negress
as infamous, and it would be difficult to meet with a single
instance of such a union. The electoral franchise has been
conferred upon the negroes in almost all the States in which
slavery has been abolished; but if they come forward to vote,
their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may bring an
action at law, but they will find none but whites amongst their
judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice
repulses them from that office. The same schools do not receive
the child of the black and of the European. In the theatres,
gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their
former masters; in the hospitals they lie apart; and although
they are allowed to invoke the same Divinity as the whites, it
must be at a different altar, and in their own churches, with
their own clergy. The gates of Heaven are not closed against
these unhappy beings; but their inferiority is continued to the
very confines of the other world; when the negro is defunct, his
bones are cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails
even in the equality of death. The negro is free, but he can
share neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor
the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been
declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or
in death.

In the South, where slavery still exists, the negroes are
less carefully kept apart; they sometimes share the labor and the
recreations of the whites; the whites consent to intermix with
them to a certain extent, and although the legislation treats
them more harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and
compassionate. In the South the master is not afraid to raise
his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a
moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure. In the North the
white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier which separates
him from the degraded race, and he shuns the negro with the more
pertinacity, since he fears lest they should some day be
confounded together.

Amongst the Americans of the South, nature sometimes
reasserts her rights, and restores a transient equality between
the blacks and the whites; but in the North pride restrains the
most imperious of human passions. The American of the Northern
States would perhaps allow the negress to share his licentious
pleasures, if the laws of his country did not declare that she
may aspire to be the legitimate partner of his bed; but he
recoils with horror from her who might become his wife.

Thus it is, in the United States, that the prejudice which
repels the negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are
emancipated, and inequality is sanctioned by the manners whilst
it is effaced from the laws of the country. But if the relative
position of the two races which inhabit the United States is such
as I have described, it may be asked why the Americans have
abolished slavery in the North of the Union, why they maintain it
in the South, and why they aggravate its hardships there? The
answer is easily given. It is not for the good of the negroes,
but for that of the whites, that measures are taken to abolish
slavery in the United States.

The first negroes were imported into Virginia about the year
1621. *f In America, therefore, as well as in the rest of the
globe, slavery originated in the South. Thence it spread from
one settlement to another; but the number of slaves diminished
towards the Northern States, and the negro population was always
very limited in New England. *g

[Footnote f: See Beverley's "History of Virginia." See also in
Jefferson's "Memoirs" some curious details concerning the
introduction of negroes into Virginia, and the first Act which
prohibited the importation of them in 1778.]

[Footnote g: The number of slaves was less considerable in the
North, but the advantages resulting from slavery were not more
contested there than in the South. In 1740, the Legislature of
the State of New York declared that the direct importation of
slaves ought to be encouraged as much as possible, and smuggling
severely punished in order not to discourage the fair trader.
(Kent's "Commentaries," vol. ii. p. 206.) Curious researches, by
Belknap, upon slavery in New England, are to be found in the
"Historical Collection of Massachusetts," vol. iv. p. 193. It
appears that negroes were introduced there in 1630, but that the
legislation and manners of the people were opposed to slavery
from the first; see also, in the same work, the manner in which
public opinion, and afterwards the laws, finally put an end to
slavery.]

A century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the
colonies, when the attention of the planters was struck by the
extraordinary fact, that the provinces which were comparatively
destitute of slaves, increased in population, in wealth, and in
prosperity more rapidly than those which contained the greatest
number of negroes. In the former, however, the inhabitants were
obliged to cultivate the soil themselves, or by hired laborers;
in the latter they were furnished with hands for which they paid
no wages; yet although labor and expenses were on the one side,
and ease with economy on the other, the former were in possession
of the most advantageous system. This consequence seemed to be
the more difficult to explain, since the settlers, who all
belonged to the same European race, had the same habits, the same
civilization, the same laws, and their shades of difference were
extremely slight.

Time, however, continued to advance, and the
Anglo-Americans, spreading beyond the coasts of the Atlantic
Ocean, penetrated farther and farther into the solitudes of the
West; they met with a new soil and an unwonted climate; the
obstacles which opposed them were of the most various character;
their races intermingled, the inhabitants of the South went up
towards the North, those of the North descended to the South; but
in the midst of all these causes, the same result occurred at
every step, and in general, the colonies in which there were no
slaves became more populous and more rich than those in which
slavery flourished. The more progress was made, the more was it
shown that slavery, which is so cruel to the slave, is
prejudicial to the master.

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part IV

But this truth was most satisfactorily demonstrated when
civilization reached the banks of the Ohio. The stream which the
Indians had distinguished by the name of Ohio, or Beautiful
River, waters one of the most magnificent valleys that has ever
been made the abode of man. Undulating lands extend upon both
shores of the Ohio, whose soil affords inexhaustible treasures to
the laborer; on either bank the air is wholesome and the climate
mild, and each of them forms the extreme frontier of a vast
State: That which follows the numerous windings of the Ohio upon
the left is called Kentucky, that upon the right bears the name
of the river. These two States only differ in a single respect;
Kentucky has admitted slavery, but the State of Ohio has
prohibited the existence of slaves within its borders. *h

[Footnote h: Not only is slavery prohibited in Ohio, but no free
negroes are allowed to enter the territory of that State, or to
hold property in it. See the Statutes of Ohio.]

Thus the traveller who floats down the current of the Ohio
to the spot where that river falls into the Mississippi, may be
said to sail between liberty and servitude; and a transient
inspection of the surrounding objects will convince him as to
which of the two is most favorable to mankind. Upon the left
bank of the stream the population is rare; from time to time one
descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields;
the primaeval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be
asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of
activity and of life. From the right bank, on the contrary, a
confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of industry;
the fields are covered with abundant harvests, the elegance of
the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer,
and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and
contentment which is the reward of labor. *i

[Footnote i: The activity of Ohio is not confined to individuals,
but the undertakings of the State are surprisingly great; a canal
has been established between Lake Erie and the Ohio, by means of
which the valley of the Mississippi communicates with the river
of the North, and the European commodities which arrive at New
York may be forwarded by water to New Orleans across five hundred
leagues of continent.]

The State of Kentucky was founded in 1775, the State of Ohio
only twelve years later; but twelve years are more in America
than half a century in Europe, and, at the present day, the
population of Ohio exceeds that of Kentucky by two hundred and
fifty thousand souls. *j These opposite consequences of slavery
and freedom may readily be understood, and they suffice to
explain many of the differences which we remark between the
civilization of antiquity and that of our own time.

[Footnote j: The exact numbers given by the census of 1830 were:
Kentucky, 688,-844; Ohio, 937,679. [In 1890 the population of
Ohio was 3,672,316, that of Kentucky, 1,858,635.]]

Upon the left bank of the Ohio labor is confounded with the
idea of slavery, upon the right bank it is identified with that
of prosperity and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on
the other it is honored; on the former territory no white
laborers can be found, for they would be afraid of assimilating
themselves to the negroes; on the latter no one is idle, for the
white population extends its activity and its intelligence to
every kind of employment. Thus the men whose task it is to
cultivate the rich soil of Kentucky are ignorant and lukewarm;
whilst those who are active and enlightened either do nothing or
pass over into the State of Ohio, where they may work without
dishonor.

It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to
pay wages to the slaves whom they employ; but they derive small
profits from their labor, whilst the wages paid to free workmen
would be returned with interest in the value of their services.
The free workman is paid, but he does his work quicker than the
slave, and rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of
economy. The white sells his services, but they are only
purchased at the times at which they may be useful; the black can
claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his
maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as
well as in the prime of manhood, in his profitless infancy as
well as in the productive years of youth. Payment must equally
be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men:
the free workman receives his wages in money, the slave in
education, in food, in care, and in clothing. The money which a
master spends in the maintenance of his slaves goes gradually and
in detail, so that it is scarcely perceived; the salary of the
free workman is paid in a round sum, which appears only to enrich
the individual who receives it, but in the end the slave has cost
more than the free servant, and his labor is less productive. *k

[Footnote k: Independently of these causes, which, wherever free
workmen abound, render their labor more productive and more
economical than that of slaves, another cause may be pointed out
which is peculiar to the United States: the sugar-cane has
hitherto been cultivated with success only upon the banks of the
Mississippi, near the mouth of that river in the Gulf of Mexico.
In Louisiana the cultivation of the sugar-cane is exceedingly
lucrative, and nowhere does a laborer earn so much by his work,
and, as there is always a certain relation between the cost of
production and the value of the produce, the price of slaves is
very high in Louisiana. But Louisiana is one of the confederated
States, and slaves may be carried thither from all parts of the
Union; the price given for slaves in New Orleans consequently
raises the value of slaves in all the other markets. The
consequence of this is, that in the countries where the land is
less productive, the cost of slave labor is still very
considerable, which gives an additional advantage to the
competition of free labor.]

The influence of slavery extends still further; it affects
the character of the master, and imparts a peculiar tendency to
his ideas and his tastes. Upon both banks of the Ohio, the
character of the inhabitants is enterprising and energetic; but
this vigor is very differently exercised in the two States. The
white inhabitant of Ohio, who is obliged to subsist by his own
exertions, regards temporal prosperity as the principal aim of
his existence; and as the country which he occupies presents
inexhaustible resources to his industry and ever-varying lures to
his activity, his acquisitive ardor surpasses the ordinary limits
of human cupidity: he is tormented by the desire of wealth, and
he boldly enters upon every path which fortune opens to him; he
becomes a sailor, a pioneer, an artisan, or a laborer with the
same indifference, and he supports, with equal constancy, the
fatigues and the dangers incidental to these various professions;
the resources of his intelligence are astonishing, and his
avidity in the pursuit of gain amounts to a species of heroism.

But the Kentuckian scorns not only labor, but all the
undertakings which labor promotes; as he lives in an idle
independence, his tastes are those of an idle man; money loses a
portion of its value in his eyes; he covets wealth much less than
pleasure and excitement; and the energy which his neighbor
devotes to gain, turns with him to a passionate love of field
sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily
exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed
from a very early age to expose his life in single combat. Thus
slavery not only prevents the whites from becoming opulent, but
even from desiring to become so.

As the same causes have been continually producing opposite
effects for the last two centuries in the British colonies of
North America, they have established a very striking difference
between the commercial capacity of the inhabitants of the South
and those of the North. At the present day it is only the
Northern States which are in possession of shipping,
manufactures, railroads, and canals. This difference is
perceptible not only in comparing the North with the South, but
in comparing the several Southern States. Almost all the
individuals who carry on commercial operations, or who endeavor
to turn slave labor to account in the most Southern districts of
the Union, have emigrated from the North. The natives of the
Northern States are constantly spreading over that portion of the
American territory where they have less to fear from competition;
they discover resources there which escaped the notice of the
inhabitants; and, as they comply with a system which they do not
approve, they succeed in turning it to better advantage than
those who first founded and who still maintain it.

Were I inclined to continue this parallel, I could easily
prove that almost all the differences which may be remarked
between the characters of the Americans in the Southern and in
the Northern States have originated in slavery; but this would
divert me from my subject, and my present intention is not to
point out all the consequences of servitude, but those effects
which it has produced upon the prosperity of the countries which
have admitted it.

The influence of slavery upon the production of wealth must
have been very imperfectly known in antiquity, as slavery then
obtained throughout the civilized world; and the nations which
were unacquainted with it were barbarous. And indeed
Christianity only abolished slavery by advocating the claims of
the slave; at the present time it may be attacked in the name of
the master, and, upon this point, interest is reconciled with
morality.

As these truths became apparent in the United States,
slavery receded before the progress of experience. Servitude had
begun in the South, and had thence spread towards the North; but
it now retires again. Freedom, which started from the North, now
descends uninterruptedly towards the South. Amongst the great
States, Pennsylvania now constitutes the extreme limit of slavery
to the North: but even within those limits the slave system is
shaken: Maryland, which is immediately below Pennsylvania, is
preparing for its abolition; and Virginia, which comes next to
Maryland, is already discussing its utility and its dangers. *l

[Footnote l: A peculiar reason contributes to detach the two
last- mentioned States from the cause of slavery. The former
wealth of this part of the Union was principally derived from the
cultivation of tobacco. This cultivation is specially carried on
by slaves; but within the last few years the market-price of
tobacco has diminished, whilst the value of the slaves remains
the same. Thus the ratio between the cost of production and the
value of the produce is changed. The natives of Maryland and
Virginia are therefore more disposed than they were thirty years
ago, to give up slave labor in the cultivation of tobacco, or to
give up slavery and tobacco at the same time.]

No great change takes place in human institutions without
involving amongst its causes the law of inheritance. When the
law of primogeniture obtained in the South, each family was
represented by a wealthy individual, who was neither compelled
nor induced to labor; and he was surrounded, as by parasitic
plants, by the other members of his family who were then excluded
by law from sharing the common inheritance, and who led the same
kind of life as himself. The very same thing then occurred in
all the families of the South as still happens in the wealthy
families of some countries in Europe, namely, that the younger
sons remain in the same state of idleness as their elder brother,
without being as rich as he is. This identical result seems to
be produced in Europe and in America by wholly analogous causes.
In the South of the United States the whole race of whites formed
an aristocratic body, which was headed by a certain number of
privileged individuals, whose wealth was permanent, and whose
leisure was hereditary. These leaders of the American nobility
kept alive the traditional prejudices of the white race in the
body of which they were the representatives, and maintained the
honor of inactive life. This aristocracy contained many who were
poor, but none who would work; its members preferred want to
labor, consequently no competition was set on foot against negro
laborers and slaves, and, whatever opinion might be entertained
as to the utility of their efforts, it was indispensable to
employ them, since there was no one else to work.

No sooner was the law of primogeniture abolished than
fortunes began to diminish, and all the families of the country
were simultaneously reduced to a state in which labor became
necessary to procure the means of subsistence: several of them
have since entirely disappeared, and all of them learned to look
forward to the time at which it would be necessary for everyone
to provide for his own wants. Wealthy individuals are still to
be met with, but they no longer constitute a compact and
hereditary body, nor have they been able to adopt a line of
conduct in which they could persevere, and which they could
infuse into all ranks of society. The prejudice which
stigmatized labor was in the first place abandoned by common
consent; the number of needy men was increased, and the needy
were allowed to gain a laborious subsistence without blushing for
their exertions. Thus one of the most immediate consequences of
the partible quality of estates has been to create a class of
free laborers. As soon as a competition was set on foot between
the free laborer and the slave, the inferiority of the latter
became manifest, and slavery was attacked in its fundamental
principle, which is the interest of the master.