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DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA - VOLUME 1
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA - VOLUME 1 ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE A request to all readers:
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Democracy In America
Alexis De Tocqueville
Translator - Henry Reeve
Book One
Introduction
Special Introduction By Hon. John T. Morgan
In the eleven years that separated the Declaration of the
Independence of the United States from the completion of that act
in the ordination of our written Constitution the great minds of
America were bent upon the study of the principles of government
that were essential to the preservation of the liberties which
had been won at great cost and with heroic labors and sacrifices.
Their studies were conducted in view of the imperfections that
experience had developed in the government of the Confederation
and they were therefore practical and thorough.
When the Constitution was thus perfected and established a
new form of government was created but it was neither
speculative nor experimental as to the principles on which it was
based. If they were true principles as they were the
government founded upon them was destined to a life and an
influence that would continue while the liberties it was intended
to preserve should be valued by the human family. Those
liberties had been wrung from reluctant monarchs in many
contests in many countries and were grouped into creeds and
established in ordinances sealed with blood in many great
struggles of the people. They were not new to the people. They
were consecrated theories but no government had been previously
established for the great purpose of their preservation and
enforcement. That which was experimental in our plan of
government was the question whether democratic rule could be so
organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license
and result in the tyranny of absolutism without saving to the
people the power so often found necessary of repressing or
destroying their enemy when he was found in the person of a
single despot.
When in 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville came to study Democracy
in America the trial of nearly a half-century of the working of
our system had been made and it had been proved by many crucial
tests to be a government of "liberty regulated by law" with
such results in the development of strength in population
wealth and military and commercial power as no age had ever
witnessed.
[See Alexis De Tocqueville]
De Tocqueville had a special inquiry to prosecute in his
visit to America in which his generous and faithful soul and the
powers of his great intellect were engaged in the patriotic
effort to secure to the people of France the blessings that
Democracy in America had ordained and established throughout
nearly the entire Western Hemisphere. He had read the story of
the FrenchRevolution much of which had been recently written in
the blood of men and women of great distinction who were his
progenitors; and had witnessed the agitations and terrors of the
Restoration and of the Second Republic fruitful in crime and
sacrifice and barren of any good to mankind.
He had just witnessed the spread of republican government
through all the vast continental possessions of Spain in America
and the loss of her great colonies. He had seen that these
revolutions were accomplished almost without the shedding of
blood and he was filled with anxiety to learn the causes that
had placed republican government in France in such contrast
with Democracy in America.
De Tocqueville was scarcely thirty years old when he began
his studies of Democracy in America. It was a bold effort for
one who had no special training in government or in the study of
political economy but he had the example of Lafayette in
establishing the military foundation of these liberties and of
Washington Jefferson Madison and Hamilton all of whom were
young men in building upon the Independence of the United States
that wisest and best plan of general government that was ever
devised for a free people.
He found that the American people through their chosen
representatives who were instructed by their wisdom and
experience and were supported by their virtues - cultivated
purified and ennobled by self-reliance and the love of God - had
matured in the excellent wisdom of their counsels a new plan of
government which embraced every security for their liberties and
equal rights and privileges to all in the pursuit of happiness.
He came as an honest and impartial student and his great
commentary like those of Paul was written for the benefit of
all nations and people and in vindication of truths that will
stand for their deliverance from monarchical rule while time
shall last.
A French aristocrat of the purest strain of blood and of the
most honorable lineage whose family influence was coveted by
crowned heads; who had no quarrel with the rulers of the nation
and was secure against want by his inherited estates; was moved
by the agitations that compelled France to attempt to grasp
suddenly the liberties and happiness we had gained in our
revolution and by his devout love of France to search out and
subject to the test of reason the basic principles of free
government that had been embodied in our Constitution. This was
the mission of De Tocqueville and no mission was ever more
honorably or justly conducted or concluded with greater eclat
or better results for the welfare of mankind.
His researches were logical and exhaustive. They included
every phase of every question that then seemed to be apposite to
the great inquiry he was making.
The judgment of all who have studied his commentaries seems
to have been unanimous that his talents and learning were fully
equal to his task. He began with the physical geography of this
country and examined the characteristics of the people of all
races and conditions their social and religious sentiments
their education and tastes; their industries their commerce
their local governments their passions and prejudices and their
ethics and literature; leaving nothing unnoticed that might
afford an argument to prove that our plan and form of government
was or was not adapted especially to a peculiar people or that
it would be impracticable in any different country or among any
different people.
The pride and comfort that the American people enjoy in the
great commentaries of De Tocqueville are far removed from the
selfish adulation that comes from a great and singular success.
It is the consciousness of victory over a false theory of
government which has afflicted mankind for many ages that gives
joy to the true American as it did to De Tocqueville in his
great triumph.
When De Tocqueville wrote we had lived less than fifty
years under our Constitution. In that time no great national
commotion had occurred that tested its strength or its power of
resistance to internal strife such as had converted his beloved
France into fields of slaughter torn by tempests of wrath.
He had a strong conviction that no government could be
ordained that could resist these internal forces when they are
directed to its destruction by bad men or unreasoning mobs and
many then believed as some yet believe that our government is
unequal to such pressure when the assault is thoroughly
desperate.
Had De Tocqueville lived to examine the history of the
United States from 1860 to 1870 his misgivings as to this power
of self- preservation would probably have been cleared off. He
would have seen that at the end of the most destructive civil
war that ever occurred when animosities of the bitterest sort
had banished all good feeling from the hearts of our people the
States of the American Union still in complete organization and
equipped with all their official entourage aligned themselves in
their places and took up the powers and duties of local
government in perfect order and without embarrassment. This
would have dispelled his apprehensions if he had any about the
power of the United States to withstand the severest shocks of
civil war. Could he have traced the further course of events
until they open the portals of the twentieth century he would
have cast away his fears of our ability to restore peace order
and prosperity in the face of any difficulties and would have
rejoiced to find in the Constitution of the United States the
remedy that is provided for the healing of the nation.
De Tocqueville examined with the care that is worthy the
importance of the subject the nature and value of the system of
"local self-government" as we style this most important feature
of our plan and (as has often happened) when this or any subject
has become a matter of anxious concern his treatment of the
questions is found to have been masterly and his preconceptions
almost prophetic.
We are frequently indebted to him for able expositions and
true doctrines relating to subjects that have slumbered in the
minds of the people until they were suddenly forced on our
attention by unexpected events.
In his introductory chapter M. De Tocqueville says:
"Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my
stay in the United States nothing struck me more forcibly than
the general equality of conditions." He referred doubtless to
social and political conditions among the people of the white
race who are described as "We the people" in the opening
sentence of the Constitution. The last three amendments of the
Constitution have so changed this that those who were then negro
slaves are clothed with the rights of citizenship including the
right of suffrage. This was a political party movement intended
to be radical and revolutionary but it will ultimately react
because it has not the sanction of public opinion.
If M. De Tocqueville could now search for a law that would
negative this provision in its effect upon social equality he
would fail to find it. But he would find it in the unwritten law
of the natural aversion of the races. He would find it in public
opinion which is the vital force in every law in a free
government. This is a subject that our Constitution failed to
regulate because it was not contemplated by its authors. It is
a question that will settle itself without serious difficulty.
The equality in the suffrage thus guaranteed to the negro race
alone - for it was not intended to include other colored races -
creates a new phase of political conditions that M. De
Tocqueville could not foresee. Yet in his commendation of the
local town and county governments he applauds and sustains that
elementary feature of our political organization which in the
end will render harmless this wide departure from the original
plan and purpose of American Democracy. "Local Self-Government"
independent of general control except for general purposes is
the root and origin of all free republican government and is the
antagonist of all great political combinations that threaten the
rights of minorities. It is the public opinion formed in the
independent expressions of towns and other small civil districts
that is the real conservatism of free government. It is equally
the enemy of that dangerous evil the corruption of the
ballot-box from which it is now apprehended that one of our
greatest troubles is to arise.
The voter is selected under our laws because he has
certain physical qualifications - age and sex. His
disqualifications when any are imposed relate to his education
or property and to the fact that he has not been convicted of
crime. Of all men he should be most directly amenable to public
opinion.
The test of moral character and devotion to the duties of
good citizenship are ignored in the laws because the courts can
seldom deal with such questions in a uniform and satisfactory
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