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• 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 Instincts of American Democracy in Determining the Salaries of Officials

One great reason leads democracies, in general, to economize on the salaries of public officials.

In democracies, since those who institute the salaries are very numerous, they have very little chance ever to get them.

In aristocracies, on the contrary, those who institute large salaries almost always have a vague hope to profit from them. These salaries are capital that they create for themselves, or at the very least resources that they prepare for their children.

It must be admitted, however, that democracy appears to be very parsimonious only toward its principal agents.

In America, officials of secondary rank are paid more than elsewhere, but high officials are paid much less. [{There are states in which the Governor receives less money as a salary than one of our sub-prefects.}]

These opposite effects are produced by the same cause; the people, in both cases, set the salaries of public officials. They think about their own needs, and this comparison guides them. Since they themselves live in great comfort, it seems natural to them that those who are serving them share it.7 But when it is time to set the lot of the great officers of the State, this rule escapes them, and they proceed only haphazardly.

The poor man does not have a clear idea of the needs that the superior classes of society may feel. What would appear to be a modest sum to a rich man, appears to be a prodigious sum to the poor man who contents himself with what’s necessary; and he considers that the Governor of the state, provided with his two thousand écus, should still be happy and excite envy.8

If you try to make him understand that the representative of a great nation must appear with a certain splendor in the eyes of foreigners, he will understand you at first. But when, thinking about his simple dwelling and about the modest fruits of his hard labor, he thinks about all that he could do with this very salary that you judge insufficient, he will find himself surprised and almost frightened by the sight of such riches.

Add that the secondary official is nearly at the level of the people, while the other towers above them. So the first can still excite their interest, but the other begins to arouse their envy.

This is seen very clearly in the United States, where salaries seem in a way to decrease as the power of the officials grows greater.9

Under the dominion of aristocracy, on the contrary, high officials receive very large emoluments, while lower level ones often have hardly enough on which to live. It is easy to find the reason for this fact in causes analogous to those that we have indicated above.w

If the democracy does not imagine the pleasures of the rich man or envies them, the aristocracy from its perspective does not understand the miseries of the poor man; or rather it is unaware of them. The poor man is not, strictly speaking, similar to the rich man; he is a being of another species. So the aristocracy worries very little about the fate of its lower level agents. It raises their salaries only when they refuse to serve for too small a price.

The parsimonious tendency of democracy toward principal officials has caused great economical propensities to be attributed to democracy that it does not have.

It is true that democracy gives scarcely what is needed to live honestly to those who govern it, but it spends enormous sums to relieve the needs or to facilitate the pleasures of the people.10 That is a better use of the tax revenue, not an economy.

In general, democracy gives little to those who govern and a great deal to the governed. The opposite is seen in aristocracies where the money of the State profits above all the class that leads public affairs.

[7. ] The comfort in which secondary officials live in the United States is also due to another cause. This one is foreign to the general instincts of democracy: every type of private career is highly productive. The State would not find secondary officials if it did not agree to pay them well. So it is in the position of a commercial enterprise, obliged, whatever its tastes for economy, to sustain a burdensome competition.

[8. ] The state of Ohio, which has a million inhabitants, gives the Governor only 1,200 dollars in salary or 6,504 francs.

[w. ] Hervé de Tocqueville: “I ask for the deletion of this paragraph and the following for the reason that I gave on page 135. They are, moreover, superfluous and entirely unnecessary, because the author is not treating aristocracy. In addition, they are written with a bitterness against the aristocracy that cannot come from the pen of Alexis and that will bring his impartiality into question” (YTC, CIIIb, 2, p. 15). Cf. note r for p. 338.

[10. ] See among other items, in American budgets, what it costs for the support of the poor and for free education.

In 1831, in the state of New York, the sum of 1,200,000 francs was spent for the support of the poor. And the sum devoted to public education was estimated to amount to 5,420,000 francs at least (William’s New York Annual Register, 1832, pp. 205 and 243).

The state of New York in 1830 had only 1,900,000 inhabitants, which is not double the population of the département du Nord.