The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Democracy In America (1835), Volume II: Part Ii
• Chapter 1: How It Can Be Strictly Said That In the United States It Is the People Who Govern
• Chapter 2: Of Parties In the United States
• Of the Remnants of the Aristocratic Party In the United States
• Chapter 3: Of Freedom of the Press In the United States
• That the Opinions Established Under the Dominion of Freedom of the Press In the United States Are Often More Tenacious Than Those That Are Found Elsewhere Under the Dominion of Censorship. N
• Chapter 4: Of Political Association In the United States
• Different Ways In Which the Right of Association Is Understood In Europe and In the United States, and the Different Use That Is Made of That Right
• Chapter 5: Of the Government of Democracy In America
• Of Universal Suffrage
• Of the Choices of the People and of the Instincts of American Democracy In Its Choices
• Of the Causes That Can Partially Correct These Democratic Instincts
• Influence That American Democracy Has Exercised On Electoral Laws M
• Of Public Officials Under the Dominion of American Democracy
• Of the Arbitrariness of Magistrates 2 Under the Dominion of American Democracy X
• Administrative Instability In the United States
• Of Public Expenses Under the Dominion of American Democracy
• Of the Instincts of American Democracy In Determining the Salaries of Officials
• Difficulty of Discerning the Causes That Lead the American Government to Economy X
• [influence of the Government of Democracy On the Tax Base {and On the Use of the Tax Revenues}] a
• [influence of Democratic Government On the Use of Tax Revenues]
• Can the Public Expenditures of the United States Be Compared With Those of France J
• Of the Corruption and Vices of Those Who Govern In Democracy; of the Effects On Public Morality That Result From That Corruption and Those Vices
• Of What Efforts Democracy Is Capable
• Of the Power That American Democracy Generally Exercises Over Itself
• Of the Manner In Which American Democracy Conducts the Foreign Affairs of the State
• Chapter 6 A: What Are the Real Advantages That American Society Gains From the Government of Democracy?
• Of the General Tendency of Laws Under the Dominion of American Democracy, and of the Instinct of Those Who Apply Them
• Of Public Spirit In the United States O
• Of the Idea of Rights In the United States
• Of the Respect For the Law In the United States X
• Activity That Reigns In All Parts of the Political Body In the United States; Influence That It Exercises On Society
• Chapter 7: Of the Omnipotence of the Majority In the United States and Its Effects a
• How the Omnipotence of the Majority In America Increases the Legislative and Administrative Instability That Is Natural to Democracies
• Tyranny of the Majority M
• Effects of the Omnipotence of the Majority On the Arbitrariness of American Public Officials
• Of the Power Exercised By the Majority In America Over Thought
• Effect of Tyranny of the Majority On the National Character of the Americans; of the Courtier Spirit In the United States
• That the Greatest Danger to the American Republics Comes From the Omnipotence of the Majority
• Chapter 8: Of What Tempers Tyranny of the Majority In the United States
• Absence of Administrative Centralization
• Of the Spirit of the Jurist In the United States, and How It Serves As Counterweight to Democracy F
• Of the Jury In the United States Considered As a Political Institution W
• Chapter 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic In the United States a
• Of the Accidental Or Providential Causes That Contribute to Maintaining the Democratic Republic In the United States E
• Of the Influence of Laws On Maintaining the Democratic Republic In the United States
• Of the Influence of Mores On Maintaining the Democratic Republic In the United States
• Of Religion Considered As a Political Institution, How It Serves Powerfully to Maintain the Democratic Republic Among the Americans [*]
• Indirect Influence Exercised By Religious Beliefs On Political Society In the United States
• Of the Principal Causes That Make Religion Powerful In America P
• How the Enlightenment, Habits, and Practical Experience of the Americans Contribute to the Success of Democratic Institutions
• That Laws Serve More to Maintain the Democratic Republic In the United States Than Physical Causes, and Mores More Than Laws
• Would Laws and Mores Be Sufficient to Maintain Democratic Institutions Elsewhere Than In America?
• Importance of What Precedes In Relation to Europe T
• Chapter 10: Some Considerations On the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States a
• Present State and Probable Future of the Indian Tribes That Inhabit the Territory Possessed By the Union H
• Position That the Black Race Occupies In the United States; 30 Dangers to Which Its Presence Exposes the Whites C
• What Are the Chances For the American Union to Last? What Dangers Threaten It? M
• Of Republican Institutions In the United States, What Are Their Chances of Lasting?
• Some Considerations On the Causes of the Commercial Greatness of the United States
• Conclusion a
• Notes
• First Part
• (a) Page 36
• (b) Page 38
• (c) Page 40 On the American Languages
• (d) Page 42
• (e) Page 64
• (f) Page 70
• (g) Page 84
• (h) Page 97 Summary of Electoral Conditions In the United States
• (i) Page 161
• (k) Page 165
• (l) Page 170
• (m) Page 171
• (n) Page 185
• (o) Page 276
• Second Part

Of the Causes That Can Partially Correct These Democratic Instincts

When great perils threaten the State, you often see people happily choose the citizens most appropriate to save them.

It has been remarked that, in pressing danger, man rarely remains at his usual level; he rises well above, or falls below. The same thing happens to peoples themselves. Extreme perils, instead of elevating a nation, sometimes finish demoralizing it; they arouse its passions without guiding them; and, far from enlightening its mind, they trouble it. The Jews still slit their own throats amid the smoking ruins of the Temple. But, among nations as among men, it is more common to see extraordinary virtues arise from very present dangers. Then great characters appear like those monuments, hidden by the darkness of night, that suddenly stand out against the glow of a fire. Genius is no longer averse to reappearing on its own, and the people, struck by their own dangers, temporarily forget their envious passions. Then, it is not uncommon to see celebrated names emerge from the electoral urn. I said above that in America the statesmen of today seemh greatly inferior to those who appeared at the head of public affairs fifty years ago. This is due not only to laws, but also to circumstances. When America fought for the most just of causes, that of one people escaping from the yoke of another people; when it was a matter of having a new nation emerge in the world, all souls rose to reach the lofty goal of their efforts. In this general excitement, superior men courted the people and the people, embracing them, placed them at their head. But such events are rare; judgment must be based on the ordinary course of things.

If temporary events sometimes succeed in combating the passions of democracy, enlightenment and, above all, mores exercise a no less powerful and more enduring influence on its inclinations. This is clearly noticed in the United States.

In New England, where education and liberty are the daughters of morality and religion, where society, already old and long settled, has been able to form maxims and habits, the people, while escaping from all the superiorities that wealth and birth have ever created among men, have become used to respecting and submitting to intellectual and moral superiorities without displeasure; consequently, you see democracy in New England make better choices than anywhere else.

In contrast, as you descend toward the south, in the states where the social bond is less ancient and less powerful, where instruction is less widespread, and where the principles of morality, religion, and liberty are less happily combined, you notice that talents and virtues become more and more rare among those governing.

When, finally, you enter the new states of the Southwest, where the social body, formed yesterday, still presents only an agglomeration of adventurers or speculators, you are astounded to see what hands hold the public power, and you wonder by what force independent of legislation and men the State can grow and society prosper there.

There are certain laws of a democratic nature, however, that succeed in partially correcting these dangerous democratic instincts.

When you enter the House chamber in Washington, you feel struck by the vulgar aspect of the great assembly. Often your eye searches in vain for a celebrated man within the assembly. Nearly all its members are obscure persons, whose names bring no image to mind. They are, for the most part, village lawyers, tradesmen, or even men belonging to the lowest classes. In a country where instruction is nearly universal, it is said that the representatives of the people do not always know how to write correctly.j

[<If they speak, their language is usually without dignity and the ideas they express are devoid of scope and loftiness.>]

Two steps from there opens the Senate chamber, whose narrow enclosure contains a large portion of the famous men of America. You notice hardly a single man there who does not evoke the idea of recent celebrity. They are eloquent lawyers, distinguished generals, skilled magistrates, or known statesmen. All the words that issue from this [august] assembly would do honor to the greatest parliamentary debates of Europe.

What causes this bizarre contrast? Why is the nation’s elite found in this chamber rather than in the other? Why does the first assembly gather so many vulgar elements, while the second seems to have a monopoly of talents and enlightenment? Both come from the people, however; both are the result of universal suffrage, and, until now, no voice has been raised in America to maintain that the Senate might be the enemy of popular interests. So what causes such an enormous difference? I see only a single fact that explains it. The election that produces the House of Representatives is direct; the one producing the Senate is subject to two stages. The universality of citizens names the legislature of each state, and the federal Constitution, transforming each of these legislatures into electoral bodies, draws from them the members of the Senate. So the Senators express the result of universal suffrage, though indirectly. For the legislature, which names the Senators, is not an aristocratic or privileged body that derives its electoral right from itself; it is essentially dependent on the universality of citizens. In general it is elected by them annually, and they can always direct its choices by remaking it with new members. But it is sufficient for the popular will to pass through this chosen assembly in order, in a sense, to be transformed and to emerge clothed in more noble and more beautiful forms. So the men elected in this way always represent exactly the governing majority of the nation; but they represent only the elevated thoughts that circulate in its midst, the generous instincts that animate it, and not the small passions that often trouble it and the vices that dishonor it.

It is easy to see a moment in the future when the American republics will be forced to multiply the use of two stages in their electoral system, under pain of getting miserably lost among the pitfalls of democracy.k

I will have no difficulty in admitting it; I see in indirect election the only means to put the use of political liberty within reach of all classes of the people. Those who hope to make this means the exclusive weapon of one party, and those who fear this means, seem to me to be equally in error.

[h. ] The manuscript says “were.”

[j. ] The manuscript says: “the representatives of the people do not know . . .”

[k. ] On the contrary, the seventeenth amendment to the American Constitution, approved 31 May 1913, establishes direct election of Senators, by regularizing in large part a preexisting situation, by which the second voters committed themselves to scrupulously following the desires expressed by the votes of the first voters.